Urban Farm, Homestead, or Farmstead? Wonderful Tiny Farm (WTF)

We have such a great opportunity to start our little farm from scratch and build it out just how we want - but what do we want? I'm really thinking a lot about garden design, irrigation, greenhouses, soil health (no till and cover crops) and lastly - how can I leverage technology to assist and scale those solutions within my community. I work for Microsoft and I'm particularly interested in how I leverage Azure and AI technologies to my advantage? 

There's plenty of corporations pledged to reduce carbon footprint and they are doing an amazing job. I see it everyday at Microsoft and also the customers I work with. I can't help think about the little guy? What about you and me? How can each one of us contribute in our own way? What can we do to reduce our carbon footprint?

Let's define some terms shall we? 

Homestead: The term used to reference a free government land program but today it means a home that is self sufficient.

Urban Farm: Farm or garden within a city or urban setting.

Farmstead: Usually refers to a farm (making a living at growing food) and it's buildings.

I mean .... any one of these terms could refer to our plans for our little part of the world and you will probably see or hear me do that.

We finally agreed on a name for our farm - Wonderful Tiny Farm or WTF. Pretty catchy yea?

So what does a farm of the future look like that you can do at a small scale? We have 10 acres on our little homestead which is more than your average land size. Can you make money doing this? What is the business model that works? Do you sell meat like chickens, goats, cows, etc? Can I eat an animal I grew? What about eggs, market garden vegetables and microgreens?

This is our next adventure and new journey with my awesome husband of 25 years, Burke - to answer these questions. Then to share with you our lessons learned and findings. Burke and I inevitably will disagree on most everything but at the end of the day, we made this decision to do this together AND with a little effort, we'll come out on top. 

We've talked about YouTube and video recording our journeys and what that might look like, so we will take a stab at that as well - so look forward to more content.

I'm looking forward to this content, excited about the journey, expecting a lot of disagreements from my husband, failing and hopefully - ultimately succeeding.