soil and ways in which we humans can actually promote and/or accelerate the production of it ourselves is an EXTREMELY fascinating and useful topic in my opinion! Currently, it is one of those areas of knowledge that are mystical and magical to me, and anyone I find who has even half a clue what they're doing with it, I hold in very high regard! Outstanding post, not just for its content, but for its inspiration as well!

The wife and I are currently shopping for our first true homestead of any size, and one of the areas we have available to us is what used to be known as "hard scrabble"...98% rocks, with a little bit of soil mixed in between. It occurred to me that MAYBE if we bought land like this (because it is far cheaper than land with real dirt!), MAYBE we could "make our own dirt" over several large areas. But because my current level of knowledge and experience doing something like that is so miniscule, I feel a little bit chicken about committing to such a project. What do you think...could you take a hard scrabble acre and turn it into a fertile piece of land with actual dirt on it in any reasonable amount of time? (maybe like, 2 years or less?)
Thanks for your feedback!