My father painted some wooden stakes red for me at the end of the summer so I can mark the edges of my various growing patches for better visibility. And I also used them to measure out how much arable area I have at the end of this season, to note the progress against last year.

Let’s look at it from my windows.

I expanded the patch where I grew oats this year. Next year, I will grow green peas and pole beans here. The patch with blueberries and strawberries is left the same as it was, but I completely flattened the raised strawberry patch – it was too much work, and it did not work particularly well. I will plant the flattened area with strawberries in the spring, and I expect it to both perform better and be easier to maintain.

My legacy patch was not particularly productive this year – all the pumpkins died, the beans rotted in the ground, and the sweet corn was pathetic. I am letting it fallow over the winter. I will plough it in the spring, fertilize it, and I will probably grow a few rows of potatoes and some corn or beans or both.

The biggest continuous patch was sown with peas and alfalfa this year, and I have sown it with wheat. It started to grow last week. If it turns out that one or both of the wheats were not a winter variety, I can sow it again in the spring. The strip on the left that is covered with fresh compost will be tilled in the spring, and I will grow butternut squash on trellises there.

The patch where soybeans failed this year was tilled in the fall, but not fertilized. I will fertilize it in the early spring and sow it with oats.

My second biggest continuous patch is where I grew potatoes this year and where bush beans failed. It is partially hidden behind the bushes in this picture. To the left of the bushes is the patch where I grew the Painted Mountain corn this year.

On the bigger patch, I plan to grow corn and yellow peas. On the smaller patch, I will probably try soybeans once more, this time with my own seed.

And in addition to this, I have the three raised beds and some large-ish patches near my greenhouses that cannot be photographed from my window and that I am too lazy to photograph outside. It is not necessary; you get the picture. In the raised beds, I will grow onions, soybeans, and carrots. Around the large greenhouse, I will grow runner beans and pole beans. I will also try to put outdoor shelter for tomatoes somewhere in all of this; I have not decided where yet.

No big trees were destroyed in the coppice in the last two winters, so this year, it is covered with growth. I will probably harvest all of it this year.

So, how much does all that add up to?

The various vegetable patches are about 400 m² in total. That is double what I had last year. I will add about 60 m2 of temporary growing patches for potatoes in the Ruth-Stout method too. But after the potatoes kill the grass, I will sow those areas with alfalfa, clover, and other legumes, because they will need to be either walked on or driven over from time to time and cannot be converted into permanent food-growing areas.

I think that 460 m2 is quite a respectable growing area for one person to manage. Which is why most of it will be used for various grains, legumes, and potatoes, because those are low-maintenance crops.

The coppice is (from memory) about 500 m2. Now that it is established, it should hopefully provide me with about 10% of my heating wood needs per year on average.

And that is all, and I actually think that this is maxing out the use that I can get from my piece of land. I will still have some grass to mow, but it won’t be that much, and it will be mostly to manage walking paths, not to manicure a useless lawn. And where I do not need to walk or grow food, I intend to encourage legume-rich flowering meadows, not a lawn. That way, bees should get a lot to feed on, and when I mow it, I should get nitrogen-rich compost. We shall see next year how all these plans turn out. Right now, I am doing repair and maintenance works mostly, before the winter comes.