Scrap Kitchen- Starting a Farm from Scratch

About Scrap Kitchen- Starting a Farm from Scratch

We're starting a farm! Or at least we're trying to... After 4 years of learning and growing Magda and her partner are ready to farm for good. We're talking no-till, organic, soil-focused, community-building, back-to-the-earth goodness. Some real Solarpunk shit. If you're looking to learn more about farming or just want to see how this goes, join the journey. With in-depth updates as we try to secure land, crop plan and start a farm. xandua.substack.com (https://xandua.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Magda Nawrocka-Weekes

Category

leisure · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Feb 2024

Latest episode

19 May 2025

Latest episodes

27 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   19 May 2025

   Ep.25- Dandelion Whine

   Hi. I'm Magda. I’m a farmer. This is my fifth year farming and my first year farming for myself, on rented land. This is Scrap Farm, the newsletter/podcast where I document starting a farm and all of the intricacies and problems that come with it. This episode is called Dandelion Whine, because I'm being funny and also because I quite recently finished reading Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. When I started Dandelion Wine, it was in April, the book had this delicious sense of summer. Of bottling beautiful, glorious, sunshiny days. It was so good. The farm (we are starting a farm, you may have heard) was getting going. We were still waiting to till the ground but we were buying seeds and equipment. I finished Dandelion Wine in May and by then the vibes were disastrous. Not to spoil the book but it's about a child realising that everyone dies and that summer is over. And I did not need to hear that in early May, when we still haven't planted anything in the ground and the irrigation is causing more problems than I'll go into later. Honestly, it was a great book for April and a s**t book for May. The main result of reading it was that it put me in a weird mindset of feeling like I was behind this season. If anyone has ever started a small business, you're gonna feel behind no matter what you do, even if you're doing well. But actually, I think we are quite behind, and that's fine. Unfortunately, this feeling coincided with all the dandelions springing up. All their bright yellow blossoms covering the ground. Everywhere as we drove past, out to the farm to water our seedlings or over to go help harvest (at the farm that we had been working at last year), there they were. I had this feeling of endless, boundless possibility. Then all the dandelions shifted from yellow to white. One of my favourite things to do at this time of year is to make dandelion jam, which involves yellow dandelion flowers. Obviously. Not the puffy, white, less delicious ones. In the moment they changed from yellow to white, I felt the whole season has passed me by. Realistically, I was just being dramatic. When I got out of the car, and actually walked around. Stopped. Paused. In between all of the the white fluffy dandelion blossoms were still s**t-tons of yellow flowers. Thankfully, I have managed to harvest the prerequisite 365 flowers that I needed for my very specific dandelion jam recipe. Despite it all, I've made dandelion jam, and it's fine. It was a little later than I did it last year, but it was all okay. And the season has not started yet. The SUMMER has not started yet. So that has been my vibe; feeling like I'm behind and then having to calm the f**k down and realising I'm not. My life advice to you is to pause. Really look at what your problems are, and then make some jam. And yet this is called Dandelion Whine, because I do feel like I'm whining. But as I chastise myself, actually, I'm just sharing the realities of starting a farm. Farm Updates We have nothing in the ground. As of I'm recording this, it isthe 14th of May, and we still do not have plants in the ground. This is primarily because we still do not have water. The pipe that we were waiting on (we need 300 feet of PVC pipe to keep the water food-grade safe to wash our vegetables) was a week late. It got lost in transit. So that was one of the realities of farming for ya. Because of that, we were just straight-up a week behind. For a good few days we didn't know where a pipe was on the Continental US. Then came scheduling; my partner and I are working part time jobs. Our days off didn’t coincide with out landlords, which is somewhat essential then digging a 4’ deep 300’ trench and on his land. That means that as of the 12th, we finally dug a 300’ trench with a very specialised, massive piece of equipment (that we had to drive around on a trailer). And even I drove around on a trailer, which, if anyone knows me, that's absolutely terrifying. Long story short, we now have a trench with a pipe in it, which is fantastic! This is amazing news. I'm very excited about this. This pipe will allow us to irrigate the blocks that we have been preparing. We have a full 24 beds ready for planting. They're beautiful. They're pristine. But we still don't have any water for them. Interestingly, it has been a rainy May, we might have gotten away with seeding into the beds with no clue when we would be able to water them. Instead, I am thankful we are erring on the side of caution when it comes to transplanting, since we couldn’t even get water out to hand irrigate until yesterday. This caution might be a holdover from the 7-week drought we experienced two years ago that decimated the strawberry harvest but i guess that comes from knowing a place. Are we localising? Is this smart? Now the pipe is out there, another problem has arisen. Because why would we want things to be easy? The water flow rate from the well is supposedly 12 gallons per minute (which is a perfectly acceptable flow rate for the kind of irrigation that we're doing). At the end of our 300’ of pipe, it is coming out at 2 gallons per minute. 2 gallons per minute is not close enough to provide the flow or the pressure needed to irrigate our crops. We are in the midst of coming up with an ingenious method that involves filling tanks and using those tanks to provide the flow rate. But, of course, there are some limitations on how fast those tanks can refill after we use them to irrigate. At present, our living room wall is covered in Post-its to figure out what's going where, how we are connecting stuff, and exactly how much water we need for everything. Yeah. So that's another problem. We love problems here. In the middle of all this, we still have to start seeds. So I've been starting seeds that will be planted in a month's time under the assumption that in a month's time, we will have somewhere for them to go, and that somewhere will be waterable. I'm no longer making statements like “next week we will be able to irrigate” or anything fanciful like that. We are taking things way slower, scratch that, we're being cautious. We're not taking things slower than anyone else. We’re taking things as fast as they can go. I need to remind myself that the seeds we're starting are both hopeful and realistic. We are going to need plants to grow over the next few months. Caution only gets you so far. We have also put up our first YouTube video detailing what we did in the first two weeks of April. And while we were editing it, my partner looked at me and was like, “It's a bit embarrassing, isn't it?” And I hadn't really thought about it like that until now, but I think he’s right. Yeah. Starting a farm from scratch and making many mistakes along the way is a little bit embarrassing. But the thing is, it's also not embarrassing. Kill the bit that cringes, and all that. These mistakes that we’re making (then documenting and putting on the Internet) are only really embarrassing to us. People who have farmed on working farms for the past four years and have had a lot of guidance and advice on what mistakes not to make. But I still feel committed to highlighting them so that no one else makes them in the same way. Hopefully, someone learns something, or at least feels less like they're not the only ones making these mistakes. Embarrassment might not be the right word. We are still very much committed to learning in real time; to showing people the realities of starting a farm on less-than-ideal land. The YouTube video is linked below, if you're interested in seeing two people point at a field for twenty minutes. Hopefully, we have another one in the works. We’re aiming to release every couple of weeks to keep our friends and family updated. That’s about it for updates. The vibe is that things are fine even if they don't feel fine. That problems can be solved, and if you just look a little closer, there’s a lot of really good stuff going on. And I'm sure you could make allusions to that politically (but also there's a lot of bad stuff going on and we're all freaking out). For those of you listening I hope you enjoyed the funky fresh sounds of my c***y little podcasting mic. And for everyone else, thanks for reading/following/sharing, etc. Thank you to everyone who commented on my note about feeling so behind this season, you all made me feel seen and a little less alone in this. I appreciate ya. Right, I’m done. I'm going to my paying job. Okay. Bye. M Find me on Instagram (https://instagram.com/xan6ua), The Dots (https://the-dots.com/users/magda-nawrocka-weekes-1014419) and my Website (https://xandua.com/). To support my work, please consider buying me a Coffee (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/xandua). If you missed the last update, read it here: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit xandua.substack.com (https://xandua.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   30 Apr 2025

   Ep.24- Budgeting in the Apocalypse

   My partner and I were out celebrating a friend’s birthday, and of course, collapse came up. Something about us having 5 years tops left on democracy. And Zach, my partner, made a joke about our budgeting. That really it won’t matter if we spend a little over the budget on food, if in a few years’ time society as we know it will fall. Which honestly, vibes. Welcome to Scrap Farm, the newsletter/podcast where I document starting a farm in the midst of all this *gestures wildly*. I would like to point out, as I have before (https://xandua.substack.com/p/nettles-and-apocalypses), that living through an ‘apocalypse’ is not new, not by any stretch of the imagination. Indigenous people and those under the rule of colonialism, especially those who were enslaved or have undergone genocide, have within their lifetimes experienced many apocalyptic events. The political situation being what it is, with the looming tariffs and pro-Palestinian voices being spirited away, with the deportation of legal residents and absolute buffoonery that is dismantling the government piece by piece, it can seem a little apocalyptic. And that’s without Climate Change, which is very much here, heating up and getting stronger by the second. For many people, we must remember this is not their first apocalypse (hell, it’s not even mine, looking at you, COVID). But anyway, it begs the question, what is the point of budgeting at this time? I say this as someone on a pretty solid budget as we start our own business. As someone who spent most of her adult life on a strict budget, or a the very least a bit skint. But I really can’t muster up the reserves to follow our budget to the letter this time. Some of this is because I feel more resourced than I ever have. Supported by friends and family, doing a job that I know will be useful (the farming, the waitressing less so), I even have skills I didn’t have a few years ago. And more importantly, I know that there are people out there working on providing mutual aid, support, edible, financial or otherwise. I know this because I have been one of them, both giving and receiving. In tending and being tended, I have tested the tensile strength of the web around me, and like a trampoline, I had a little bounce. Which brings me back to the budget. I have plunged more savings than I have ever had in my life (which took me years to accrue) into a business. A farm business. In a crumbling economy. And right now we are just spending money; irrigation, seeds, compost. Thousands of dollars were spent like that. A truck ffs! But knowing this is part of the process is somewhat comforting. We budgeted to be able to do this without loans or grants in the first year. And since those are being actively dismantled (the advisor from the local government office quite literally shrugged when we asked him about grant likelihood going forward), it’s a good thing we planned for it. This is not to say that we’re better than any farmer who gets a sweet FSA loan or grant, but more that we hadn’t counted on them. Now the rug pull doesn’t seem so drastic (though it really really is! Trump is f*****g over farmers on every count). My partner and I are also being pragmatic. We both have part-time jobs to support us while we start this endeavour. Hence, the strict budget. It is interesting to see what the minimum amount of hours one can work is, while still paying all bills and having time to dedicate one’s heart and soul to a living, breathing farm. In this, we are lucky not to have too many expenses, medical or practical (or children, for that matter). Through this, I can see the farm slowly transforming into something. Something very f*****g tangible. Into rows of fresh slung earth. Into places for seedlings. Each bundle of green is a fresh and vibrant hope for a month’s time. Even my new job has brought me into contact with plenty of people and new information to learn. It’s been cool to leave my responsibilities at the door. So no. I’m not stressed about my budget. Yet food is getting more expensive. And that’s as someone growing it. So then I flip to the nihilistic side of it all, if we are all hurtling towards doom, I really don’t care if I spend an extra few dollars having a drink out with a friend. Or if I purchase ingredients to celebrate Beltane. Or if I buy a ticket for a bluegrass night ($10 at the local Queer bar). As my friend Billy always said in his wonderful Edinburgh accent, “Money’s for spending.” So I’m bringing that vibe to life. Responsibly, of course, I shan’t be partying to excess. But I certainly won’t begrudge myself the margins of error in a budget. And I will be buying the seeds/compost/equipment we need to make this farm viable. And hell, if it all does collapse, having irrigation and a tunnel are going to be worth their weight in gold, honestly. Farm Updates We’re really in it now, boys! Our landlord has tilled both blocks for us, which means we are moments from planting (well, a week or so). You may be asking how we plan to be no-till/no-dig while being excited about tilling. But this was it, the first and final till on the farm. From there came the laborious task of shaping all the beds. 2.5’ bed tops and 1.5’ paths. We made 12 of them in one very hot day. The process involves smashing dirt with a rake in the path area and dragging it onto the area that will be our beds. We will be doing a permanent raised bed system, meaning we will plant into the same spot over and over, year after year. We will build fertility into these beds and not disturb the soil more than necessary. This will help reduce weed pressure (over time), maintain soil structure and give us somewhere to focus on to make the best growing conditions possible. Our next step after bed shaping has been to add compost to the tops of the beds. This too was an endeavour. Our beds are a good 400’ from the compost pile. One wheelbarrow at a time, my partner and I brought out enough compost to cover each bed in an estimated 2” of compost. After that, we broadforked each bed, which is a way of aerating the soil and reducing the compaction brought about by the tractor driving over the area. We borrowed the Broadfork from the local tool library, and I am truly enamoured with the lending economy in this area. In the greenhouse, we have some wonderful-looking Salanova lettuce that is a week or so from being able to be planted. We also have some good-looking chard and kale. We have been having an absolute mare of getting our pepper and tomato seeds to start, but the daily temperature has been fluctuating quite a bit. We are now heating the trays from below with handy heating mats, and I hope this will do the trick for germination. This is one of the moments where a germ-chamber would have been useful, but we have limited space and were trying to limit expenses (I say this after my diatribe about the necessity of spending money). So this is a lesson for next year. Buy what you need for the tomatoes! They are worth it. Don’t wait them out. Our next few tasks on the farm are going to be big ones. They are coinciding (unfortunately) with graduation here in Ann Arbor. This means that our paying jobs need more attention than the farm, so balance has been critical. In the next week we will be putting up a 8’ deer fence around the perimeter of the growing area (as the area has been described as a ‘deer highway’ lol) and we will be digging a 300’ long 4’ deep trench to burry a pipe that connects the well with our growing area for irrigation. And then we will be PLANTING. It feels to me, who at this point on other farms already had a lot in the ground, that we are ‘behind’, but I remind myself that we started later and there is plenty of summer left to go. The work we put in now will last several years, and that too is a cheering thought. Oh, we might also be getting a hoop house. More on that soon. Anyways, I’m working on documenting all our work into a video for YouTube, but that requires a moment’s respite. One of those (a moment and also a video) is coming next week (hopefully). Until then, see you on the flip side. M Find me on Instagram (https://instagram.com/xan6ua), The Dots (https://the-dots.com/users/magda-nawrocka-weekes-1014419) and my Website (https://xandua.com/). To support my work, please consider buying me a Coffee (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/xandua). If you missed the last update, read it here: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit xandua.substack.com (https://xandua.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   7 Apr 2025

   Ep.23- Solidarity Economy and Calling your damn senators

   Hello and welcome to Scrap Farm, the newsletter/podcast where I document starting an agroecological farm in Michigan. If you’re new here or are not sure if this is something you would be interested in, then here’s a rundown of some things I have talked about over the past year or so: * The UK VISA process and our unsuccessful attempt to move to the UK (https://xandua.substack.com/p/ep19-decisions-decisions) * The death of a mentor (https://xandua.substack.com/p/ep22-on-lineage) * Burnout and coopratition (https://xandua.substack.com/p/ep4-coopetition) (cooperation + competition) * Petro-masculinity (https://xandua.substack.com/p/petro-masculinity-lemon-balm) * Settler colonialism (https://xandua.substack.com/p/mullen-and-settler-colonialism) And so much more. All wrapped up in the package of small scale vegetable farming, seed keeping and climate collapse. Sounds like a laugh-a-minute, doesn’t it? No, but actually, it’s not all doom and gloom, despite my best intentions (and the attentions of global oligarchy). I promise it’s more fun than all that. We have carrots! Also, speaking of sound, it has come to my attention that my recordings have been, for some unknown reason, at double speed sometimes. Lightening-fast renditions of reading this out. Thank you to the people who pointed this out; it takes all your ears to pick up on weird technical things. I am now endeavouring to record on a real microphone. Not just my phone. Thanks too to my partner for letting me borrow his. More housekeeping: I have been mulling over how best to organise this. If you have been with me for a while (you brave soul), you might remember that I had future farm updates and current farm updates as my partner and I managed a farm and planned for a farm and tried to move countries. The fantastic news is that the Future Farm has become the Present Farm. The Farm! So, I’m going to be reordering my updates/episodes to account for this. I’m thinking I will begin by yapping about my personal life and the crumbling economy and then will give updates about the farm as it happens. I’m working on once a fortnight for the updates. At this time of year, I have plenty of time, but later, I will be swamped with part-time work and running a farm in the middle of the season. I wanted to build in the leeway I might need now. Basically what I’m doing now. Ok, so. Personal life updates: I have been very brave this week (said only partially sarcastically) and called both senators and my local rep about the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants by the US (https://5calls.org/issue/venezuelan-alien-enemies-act-tren-de-aragua/). Trump invoked wartime powers in peacetime to unlawfully detain and deport 261 Venezuelan citizens for no damn reasons. I used a script from 5 Calls, and my heart beat so fast, which is kinda embarrassing, but I’m going to keep calling. Apparently every call counts as 2000 people who care about an issue and is one way to get your elected officials to maybe do something. Also, my partner pointed out that it’s very interesting that Gen-Z and laaate millennials (like myself) are so afraid of phone calls but that’s what politicians actually pay attention to. What a convenient way to ignore the younger generation. And before anyone gets on me, this is not the only thing you can do to stop the polycrisis. It’s certainly not the only thing I’m doing. Yes, we need a complete overhaul of how we live, but I can still poke at those currently in power while working to improve the local system and resisting in less structured ways. I also believe this issue is more prescient than ever after the spiriting away and detainment of Mahmoud Khalil earlier this month and the arrest of PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk earlier this week. If anyone can be rounded up and threatened with deportation, either for their protesting a genocide or for their Tatoos (as was the case for some of the Venezuelans (https://5calls.org/issue/venezuelan-alien-enemies-act-tren-de-aragua/)), this gives the current government the power to get rid of opponents and ‘threats’ however they see fit. The precedent has already been set. So I’m bothering local officials and finding other ways to resist. Ah yes, you read this for farming. But booiii are immigration and farming linked! I keep coming back to this article from January, which states that Central Valley Farmworkers are afraid to turn up for work because of deportation threats (https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/central-valley-farmworkers-scared-to-show-up-to-work-over-deportation-fear/). The violence exacted on the people who feed us is unparalleled. And if you think this isn’t going to have a knock-on effect, with tariffs and whatever the hell else they cook up in that stupid white house, then think again. Agriculturally, this is going to be an interesting year. On the Farm So, anyways, with that in mind, my partner and I started a small farm this month. It’s a weird state to be in because we have been preparing for this for four years. We’ve trained as apprentices for two of those years and for the last two, we were managing someone else’s farm to get in that day-to-day managing experience (and a steady paycheck). And now we’re here! On Wednesday, the 26th of March, we signed a lease. We’ll be on roughly 2 acres of land with a building, electricity and water (though that might get tricky; more to follow). Just to get to the lease signing was at least a month's worth of work. We viewed two properties and had numerous discussions with the landowners of each. We went backwards and forwards with drafts and amendments, we enlisted the help of the MSU extension. We talked and talked. In between my relocation back to the States, we also registered a business. Got an Employee Identification number, opened a business bank account, and registered for government grant funding (if that’s even still a thing (https://annarborobserver.com/target-farmers/)) in that order. We set up QuickBooks, moved into our new flat, both got part-time jobs, and I’ve made a website which has now launched. We also got an email, an Instagram, various quotes on compost deliveries, and feedback on licencing and insurance. Oh, and we’ve been announcing our return to all our friends here, which has felt wonderful if a little overwhelming. All this to say it has been a very busy 2 weeks. And we bought a truck! And silage tarps! An $700 worth of seeds. Since signing the lease, our first order from Johnny’s Seeds has arrived. It was a good chunk of our budget on tools and tiny pellets of life. And now it sits in the center of our farm office, ready for action. We have also collected soil samples from the field that we will be turning into permanent raised beds. We took 6 samples from a cross-section going about 8 inches down. We then mixed up the samples and are sending a bag of dirt (about 2 cups) to Logan Labs in Ohio for a full analysis of the soil and it’s possible deficiencies. Thankfully, our training at Boradfork Farm, VA (thanks, Dan and Janet) prepared us to interpret the results and my degree in biochemistry might be put to use for once. Once we have the soil test results, I might share a little more about what we’ll be doing to build healthy soil. We also met a Nathan, the Soil Sceintist from Spurt Compost, out in our field in the middle of a deluge. He dug up what can only be described as a brick of clay from the low wet spots where we plan to make our beds. We are going to have to put in some serious work in that section to ensure proper drainage, fertility and to reduce compaction. Last Friday was also a busy day. We managed to attend a session at the Building Our Solidarity Economy Conference (https://sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/12978) held by UofM. At the session I got to hear about the efforts of The Rent is Too Damn High Coalition (https://mirentistoodamnhigh.com/) in organising rental strikes and direct action for renters. About the Miami Nation of Indiana (https://www.miaminationhonorfund.org/) and their voluntary land tax to help steward their land, language and people, along with the complexities that arise from receiving instead of giving. I also heard from Jamila Martin of the Movement Voter Project (https://movement.vote/) about strategic ballots to get involved in non-election years, specifically those to provide leave for childbirth. The session I attended was closed by the phenomenal Sherina Rodriguez-Sharpe and Chace Morris from the Tetra (https://alliedmedia.org/projects/the-tetra), a digital underground railroad, whose poem I am still thinking about a week later. This is the second event in as many weeks that I’ve attended in an effort to engage with the resources and networking available in this area. The first was a wonderful workshop on Seeding Dialogues (https://blogs.lib.umich.edu/seed-library-stories/rethinking-progress-reflections-storytelling-ethics-and-power), presented by V Shin of the "Borderless Seed Stories" project and UofM Seed Library Initiatives and my friend Caylen Cole-Hazel. I hope to attend the next one too, on the 4th of April. All this to say, I have been busy. We have, as of me writing this, started our first trays of chard, kale and green onions. The coming rain has us wondering when we will be able to break ground, but in the meantime, there are plenty of other things to keep us occupied. We’re scouring Facebook marketplace (boo) for people selling catterpillar tunnels but I think we are going to settle on building one ourselves. Which is pretty in-depth. When not at our paying jobs or testing soil, we have been having calls with extension agents and people from the FSA about licences, safety, insurance and more. We have applied to two farmers’ markets and have been accepted by one. We are preparing for a farm and garden showcase in a couple of weekends’ time. Oh, and we’re reconnecting with friends while we’re at it. No big deal. It has been hectic and wonderful to be back. It feels real and unreal and wild all at once. What a time to start. Thanks for your patience in between these updates. See y’all later. M Find me on Instagram (https://instagram.com/xan6ua), The Dots (https://the-dots.com/users/magda-nawrocka-weekes-1014419) and my Website (https://xandua.com/). To support my work, please consider buying me a Coffee (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/xandua). If you missed the last update, read it here: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit xandua.substack.com (https://xandua.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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