Living Off the Land with the Randles
After returning from a tour in Iraq, Patrick Randle felt an urge to do something positive. He decided to start a garden.
Though Patrick and his wife, Roxane, lived in an apartment at the time, their landlord gave them permission to till a portion of her backyard. They started with store-bought plants and found they loved eating the food they had grown themselves.
“My brother sent me a couple magazines from Baker Creek Seed Company, and that got us really going down the path toward turning our gardening hobby into a lifestyle,” Patrick says.
Gardening was not a new concept for Patrick, however. He recalls that while he was growing up, his family had a “typical” summer backyard garden. His parents impressed upon him the importance of being good stewards of creation and following scripture that praises “eating the fruits of your labor.”
Today, Patrick works on his growing farm while also serving as an estimator for O’Shea. Patrick and Roxane grow as much as they can and enjoy trying new produce each year. They plant different varieties for different purposes. Tomatoes, for example, Pink Brandywine are planted for slicing, Amish Pastes are grown for sauces, and Purple Bumblebees for dehydrating.
The couple saves all of their seeds each year; they have had some plants for more than 10 years.
“We love to tell the stories about where we got some of our seeds. In 2016, we took a road trip to Santa Fe and bought some dried Anasazi beans at the local farmers’ market. The woman we bought them from said she planted them every year, so we tried it,” Patrick recalls. “We have grown and saved them every year, and they are one of our favorite chili/soup beans.”
Patrick’s newest interest is drying and grinding peppers to make his own spices.
“Last year, we smoked jalapeños, dried them, and ground them to make chipotle powder. We dried cayenne peppers into cayenne power. They both turned out really well,” he says. “This year, we are going to try growing our own paprika peppers to make paprika powder. We are always trying something new and adding more things that we can make for ourselves.”
Patrick shares that his family’s ultimate goal is to produce what they need. If anything is left over, they share with family, neighbors, and friends.
“One of the most rewarding things in my life is to look down at a delicious meal and notice that everything is something we grew or raised,” he says.
Patrick and his wife left their small apartment plot years ago, and today, they run a thriving farm that has a bountiful produce garden, chicken coop, as well as also bee hives.
The idea to set up bee hives was sparked from learning about all of the organisms needed to make growing food possible – from using worms to increase the nutrients in the soil to observing how native pollinators make fruit by flying from plant to plant.
“After some research, I learned about the French monk Abbe Warre, who spent his life studying bees and found that a 900-year-old Japanese design worked the best for honey bees. I built some Warre hives years ago, but we have only been able to fill them recently,” Patrick says. “My friend and I catch wild bees in our woods with traps and then place the colony in the hives. Every day before work, I walk out to the chicken coop to let the birds out and then go check on the bees.”
Because Warre hives contain only a bar, the bees build a natural honey comb. This ensures there are enough bees to pollinate Patrick’s garden and also offers a small amount of honey and wax to use for candles and soap. In the future, Patrick and Roxane hope to have at least 10 hives on their property.
The key to building their farm has been to start small and grow as they learn. Growing tomatoes and peppers came from a desire to make their own salsa. Then, onions and herbs were added. Worms and bees now help keep their plants and soil healthy.
“We continue to grow as we learn and find happiness in trying new things,” Patrick says. “We want to add fruit trees and grow our own mushrooms in the next year or so. I don’t consider anything I do as work. I enjoy spending the majority of my time outside developing ecosystems and relationships that better my life and building methods to support that.”