At PRG’s latest open meeting, our own Mike Baliko gave a fascinating talk on his family’s experience with regenerative agriculture and homesteading. Mike and his family of six have been honing their homesteading skills, here in rural Greene, for more than a decade.
Food from Home
More and more of the family’s food comes from their land, including from vegetable gardening, berry bushes, and honey from beekeeping. The Balikos even make their own syrup, tapping the sap of Black Walnut trees on their property. And it’s delicious!
The Balikos raise chickens for eggs and pigs for meat. Mike’s hunting provides deer each year for the family’s venison. Mike and family do all the processing of their meat at home.
The Balikos explained that not all of their food comes from their 33-acre homestead, much of which is forested and rugged. Dairy products, and wheat for baking, are purchased, as are vegetables and fruit when out of season. But a planned greenhouse will allow them to raise even more of their own food.
And Lumber and Fuel from Home
The family make good use of the forest resources on their land, both for lumber and for fuel. They aim for sustainable use, including by utilizing trees that fall during storms.
Remarkably, the family was able to build their new barn entirely from timber from their own property. Chestnut Oak served for the high-up, heavy-duty beams. Locust, with its natural resistance to rot, is used closer to the ground.
Mike highlighted the big resource savings that came from using a mobile lumber mill on their property, avoiding the need to transport giant tree trunks to a distant mill, and to transport the resulting lumber back to their land.
Principles and Ideals
Mike and Heather shared the thinking and values that led them to choose their lifestyle.
A key principle is the idea of land stewardship, taking food from the land but also taking care of the land, using it in a sustainable way. This is seen in their approaches to maintain forest, clean water, and healthy soil.
Mike also explained some of the principles of regenerative farming that they aim to apply. To avoid potential impacts on water and soils, they avoid using synthetic chemicals, such as pesticides and fungicides. With a high-quality stream crossing their land, the family’s efforts to avoid contaminating water, and erosion, are especially important.
Regenerative farming emphasizes avoiding monocultural practices, such as growing just one crop, or raising just one type of animal, on the same piece of land, year after year. Instead, it practices rotation, not only of different crops, but of different farm animals’ access to an area, in a particular sequence. This could mean, for example, giving access first to cattle, with chickens to follow.
Mike cited the nationally-known Polyface Farm as an inspiration to the Balikos’ practices. He strongly recommended visiting the farm, in the Shenandoah Valley near Staunton, which has an open-door policy.
Raising and Educating a Family
Parents of four, the Balikos value the educational opportunities created by a homesteading lifestyle. From an early age, the children have known exactly “where food comes from,” and all the work and challenges of growing and raising what they eat.
The children also enjoy an ongoing outdoor education in terms of nature and wildlife. In the area near the stream, the Balikos have seen such species as Kingfishers and Green Herons, among many others -- even American Eels, after their long journey from the Atlantic Ocean!
Naturally, the outdoor education includes the challenges and hard lessons of co-existing with wildlife. The family knows firsthand that chickens are targets for Cooper’s Hawks, Long-tailed Weasels, and Black Bears. And they believe that a Red Fox is always nearby, always watching for a rare opportunity. With time, the family has adopted ever-better techniques to avoid feeding the wildlife, as with the electric fencing that has kept bears from the beehives and berry bushes. So far.
Challenges, and “Failing Forward”
For those who might be considering moving toward a homesteading-type lifestyle, Mike recommended a gradual approach, and not taking on too much at once. He cautioned against expecting things to work the first time around.
Recognizing that failures are inevitable, the Baliko philosophy is to try to “fail forward,” learning from experience and doing better next time.
Some big challenges related to water illustrate Mike’s point. At times, there’s been much too much water, during more than one “20-year” flood event. The flood damage led the Balikos to work to better channel some of the water, including by creating a little wetland area and a pond. The pond serves as water storage, supply of fish, and as a swimming hole.
At other times, drought made even the spring-fed pond go stagnant, and sludge algae abounded. The solutions were to bring in more water, collected from rain falling on the barn roof, and to aerate the pond, using a solar-powered pump.
Now the pond is healthy, supporting populations of bass, catfish, bluegill, crappie, crawfish and snails.
PRG thanks all of the Baliko family for sharing the special experiences and insights from their own version of rural Greene life!
