Farming’s still on hold until I get life straightened out. New expenses mean more time spent on off-farm work, so I’m going to have to approach my farming goals weekend-warrior style. Plus, I’m looking after my 12 year old nephew, which takes up a lot of my free time. Lots of stuff still going on! I’ll tune back in soon.

I’m currently revisiting my farming plans and tweaking them based on my new location and new circumstances. There’s some clarification in the newsletter, which I just sent out a few days ago. More details to follow!

If you head on over to the home page, you’ll see a new design up. I simplified the organization, too. I originally created the site with the intention of adding articles and book reviews periodically, but there’s not much time for that now. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please share! Thanks!

In one of the listservs I’m signed up for, someone recently posted a link to an Ohio State University research project that strives to prove you can make $90,000 per acre with polyculture (i.e. making neighbors of fruits and vegetables). People were quick to respond that the figures shouldn’t be misinterpreted–the $90k cited in the study doesn’t account for labor costs, among other things, such as time and money spent marketing and actually selling the stuff.

There are a lot of people I’ve met, or read, who hold onto the idea that a farm can become more profitable by intensifying production on a small plot. So far, though, my personal observations and research points to the opposite conclusion. It may not be as romantic as tending to a small plot with your own two hands, but romance can get pretty expensive. Here is what I posted on the listserv:

When I visited Eliot Coleman a few years ago, he was grossing $150k from 1.5 acres. He was also quick to note that after all the staff got paid and some of the costs were accounted for, all that was left over was $20k. Also keep in mind that there are some things he doesn’t have to pay for from the farm income that most of us would, such as his land, which was practically given to him by the Nearings, or his house, which is probably funded by income from other sources (e.g. royalties) and that of his wife, and all the associated utilities (probably part of the house bill). Likewise, equipment may have been purchased through other income sources, so it’s quite possible that if you looked at true costs, he might be operating at a loss.

When I look at the previously mentioned publication, Grower to Grower (big PDF link), or other case studies like Bear Creek Farms and Groundwork Organic Farm, the pattern for profit seems to be increasing scale and selling wholesale (i.e. selling in bulk to a middleman). A CSA can also be an income stabilizer, but only if it’s a large CSA (100 members) because otherwise, the income it generates doesn’t seem to cover the additional cost of management (organizing shares, marketing, sorting, sending staff to pick-up sites, etc.). Those are just my own observations after reading about and working on a variety of farms, with the question being how a farmer can earn a full-time income from a farm. It definitely seems do-able, if you play your cards right.

Notes based on Gardening for Profit (Chapter 9) by Peter Henderson.

Hotbeds are something we don’t see a lot of, despite their simplicity and usefulness. The idea is that compost generates heat, and seeds need heat to germinate. So why not put seeds directly on the compost pile (the “hot bed”) and coax those little buggers into making their debut a little early in the season? Henderson was doing this in the 1800s, and the logic still applies today:

This is a freshly made hotbed at Singing Pig Farm. It’s about 2 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and 40 feet long. (Disclaimer: I’m terrible at judging dimensions, so give or take about 20 feet on the width and length.) It’s topped with a layer of straw to level the surface and provide additional insulation. Under the straw is a rotting pile of leaves and grass clippings, courtesy of a landscaping company that was happy to get rid of it. The temperature in the pile when it was formed was 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

Henderson’s hotbeds were a little different. He made an excavation that was 2.5′ deep, 6′ wide, and 60′ long. The lengths were bordered by wooden boards: one was 12″ tall and the other was 16″ tall so that when he rested a glass panel on top of them, it was at an angle. That way, the rain would run off and the sunlight would enter more easily. The boards were nailed to posts for support.

For the compost, he’d mix fresh horse manure with half its bulk in leaves and make a big heap. When steam began to sneak out a few days later, he’d turn it over. When it generated steam again a few days later, he transferred the material to the hotbed, filling the 2.5′ excavation. Then he’d put the sashes on until the temperature in there reached 100 degrees, after which he cracked open the sashes until it got down to 90 degrees. Finally, he added 6-8″ of soil and planted either seeds or transplants, covering them with the sashes once more.

This was probably what worked best for him, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. You can put flats right on any compost pile, as long as you have a flat, even surface. You could even throw 6″ of soil on there and plant the seeds directly. It’s definitely a good idea to cover the seedlings to retain heat and protect them from the elements:

The plastic covering here is temporary–later it’ll be used to make a hoophouse that covers the entire pile, but for now it gets the job done. The straw is optional, but it makes for a more even surface, and it helps if you need to walk on the pile to get the flats on (sinking into compost is not pleasant). A pile like this can be made quickly with a tractor bucket, or with a wheelbarrow and a shovel (if you’re feeling masochistic).

When working with hotbeds, your thermometer is your best friend. A soil thermometer is good, but a compost thermometer is even better because it records higher temperatures and can give you a better idea of what your compost is doing. Check the soil and compost temperatures daily and write them down (if you have a bad short-term memory like I do). Henderson recommends an air temperature range of 55-65 degrees F. at night, and 70-80 degrees F. during the day.

Depending on what your compost heap consists of, and how you prepped it, it might heat up fast and then cool down fast. Ideally, you want the heat to stretch out long enough so that your seedlings can thrive, rather than come and go in one big spike. If the compost itself doesn’t get hot at all, it might be spent. Try adding fresh compost to the top or, if you can, to the center. Learning more about compost will help–decomposition happens in cycles, and by controlling what you put into the compost and how you handle it, you can influence those cycles so that the right amount of heat reaches your plants at the right time. I’ve heard good things about Organic Gardener’s Composting by Steve Solomon (read this notice before clicking on the link) .

If you have any experience with hotbeds, or are going to try them this season, please share your thoughts!

Today I actually found the time to read. Gardening for Profit is buried somewhere in the moving boxes, but I did manage to bring along my copy of The Biological Farmer. I’ll finish posting notes for Gardening for Profit when I get back to Oregon, but now seems like a good time to start sharing what I’m learning from Gary Zimmer.

This author runs a sustainable agriculture consulting firm in the upper Midwest and this book was originally intended to be a primer for consultants-in-training. He also owns and operates a 500-acre organic crop and dairy farm, and manages a 240-acre livestock and crop demonstration farm. It sounds like he’s heavily influenced by Albrecht, so I’m using this book as an introduction to soil-focused agriculture.

Some of the information isn’t new to me, since I studied environmental science and ecology in school. My eyes didn’t perk up till chapter 2, when he described 6 rules essential to biological farming. By “biological” farming, he means farming to maximize productivity and profits over time by understanding and working with biological processes (whereas conventional practices focus on maximum productivity and profits ASAP, and don’t give a @#$% about biological processes). He goes a step further and describes his criteria for sustainable agriculture, which can be achieved by practicing biological agriculture properly and in the long run: zero soil loss, nutrient balance, and 25 earthworms per cubic foot of soil.

So here are the 6 basic rules essential to biological farming:

Rule #1: Test and balance your soil. Zimmer recommends testing for 10 nutrients: phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, zinc, manganese, iron, copper and boron. Nitrogen isn’t tested for, but it’s added based on the results of the soil test. If there’s a good nutrient balance (especially with calcium and sulfur) and a lot of soil life, less nitrogen is needed. You can test the soil every three or four years (right before seeding a field if you you have livestock and grow legumes), or more frequently in problem areas. If you’re growing crops or if you haven’t done soil tests in a long time, test the whole farm. One sample can represent up to ten acres.

Rule #2: Use fertilizers which are life-promoting. He provides a list of soil-friendly fertilizers, and ones you should stay away from. I’ll be relaying this info in another post, or else this will become one VERY long entry. Suffice it to say, for now, that minimally processed fertilizers are preferable.

Rule #3: Minimize pesticide and herbicide use. The need for pesticides and herbicides should decrease as nutrients come into balance and soil life becomes more active. Bacteria and fungi that can protect plants from pest and disease will thrive under the right conditions, and healthier plants are more “immune” to attacks of any kind. But if a problem does present itself, a biological farmer should try non-toxic control methods first: crop rotation, soil balancing, mechanical control (timely cultivation), and releasing natural enemies. Only use toxic chemicals if non-toxic methods fail after a few weeks, and use them as moderately as possible (e.g. banding a herbicide, spot-spraying, adding humic acid to a low pH tank mix).

Rule #4: Use a short rotation. Rotate every year or two for fewer weeds, disease and pest problems. Crop yields are higher and inputs lower than with a long rotation or with monocropping.

Rule #5: Use tillage to control soil, air, water, and the decay of organic materials. Raw organic matter (plant residues and animal manures) should be tilled into the upper layers of the soil for optimum decay into humus. Another way to add humus is to compost organic matter then add the compost to the soil. This reduces the volume of material to haul. If you do need to till deeply, don’t invert the soil. Instead, slice or uplift it. Never till soil that’s wet, and keep field traffic to a minimum to reduce compaction.

Rule #6: Feed soil life. If you feed the soil microbes, they will feed the crops. Soil life thrives on a mixture of cellulose-containing (plant matter) and nitrogen-containing (animal manures and legumes) organic matter in a ratio of two to one. Add rock phosphate or a little lime for balance. Incorporate a green manure crop (rye, red clover, Austrian field peas, alfalfa or buckwheat). After adding raw oganic matter, allow time for it to break down, or else some nutrients get “tied up” by microorganisms, becoming unavailable to plants. And, don’t overload the soil with manure or raw organic matter; it’s better to apply a lighter coat over more acres. On the other hand, composted organic matter can be applied liberally because it’s basically humus already. Once your major nutrients are balanced, consider “fine-tuning” with biological stimulants like kelp (seaweed), humic acids, enzymes, vitamins and hormones; also inoculants of beneficial bacteria, fungi, or algae.

So there you have it, folks. A simple overview for healthy soils, crops, and livestock. Hopefully the remainder of the book will flesh out this list with clear and practical details.

So I made it out to Oregon safe and sound. It was stressful and exhilarating and exhausting all at once. This was my second cross-country move, and hopefully my last.

In the middle of my trip I got one of those dreaded middle-of-the-night phone calls that my mom is in the hospital. This is a repeat of the medical emergency that I posted about in December. Less than 48 hours after arriving at my new home, I was on a plane back to the Southwest to be with my mom. In fact, I’m writing this from an airport in Phoenix while I wait for my connecting flight. I’ll post again once I return to Oregon.

I might not be posting as much over the next few weeks because I’m making a cross-country trek from New Mexico to Oregon. Here’s why:

• I came to NM from NY just over a year ago because my boyfriend was going to grad school at New Mexico State Univ. He just finished, so we have the option of relocating.
• While I love NM in more ways than one (the friendliness, the culture, the live-and-let-live attitude, the striking landscape, the low cost of living) I don’t want to spend the rest of my farming career squabbling over water rights so that more and more people can fill their swimming pools and water their lawns in the desert.
• I miss trees. And the sound of a river running. And distinct seasons. Plus I have some cozy winter coats that are going to turn into moth food if I don’t use them.
• Job prospects are not so great here for either of us. The Pacific Northwest has a lot more going on in terms of agriculture (more opportunities for me) and the three largest cities are quite close together (more opportunities for him), making it more likely that we can both pursue careers while still living together.
• Cost of living in Oregon is reasonable. We found a two-bedroom apartment in a relatively new, well-kept complex in Salem for $550 per month. Private health insurance is affordable as well.
• Returning to the East coast doesn’t attract either of us. After living out West, the “other side” seems too crowded, expensive, and rigid (versus dynamic, growing, taking shape). We feel we have a better chance of achieving our goals out here.

The runner up was Missouri. But Oregon won out, perhaps because of the diverse landscape (mountains, ocean, and desert) or Portland’s awesome food scene or the lure of the temperate rainforest up in Washington. Who knows? Oregon, here I come.

Notes based on Gardening for Profit (Chapter 7) by Peter Henderson.

Back then when horses did all the work, there was lots of horse manure to be had. So Henderson took advantage of it and really piled it on.

At least six months before applying it, the manure was dumped in a natural depression. If there wasn’t one, they dug one out 18-24″ deep. They put up a 6′ fence around it. The wagons were pulled up next to the fence and fresh manure was tossed in, spread out evenly throughout the depression. Pigs were kept in the enclosure to break things up, and they were fed weeds and unsold vegetables from the field.

• I wonder how large this manure pit needed to be. I guess it depends on how much manure he needed, which depends on how much land he was preparing (he’d spread 50 to 100 tons per acre).
• Also, how many pigs? Two? Ten? That’s probably a function of field size and manure quantity, as well.

Henderson was a big fan of horse manure, and not just because it was plentiful. He considered it 1/3 more valuable than that of cattle and pigs, in terms of weight (i.e. 100 lbs of horse manure would work just as well as 130 lbs of cattle or pig manure). He also cites horse manure as being extra beneficial as a pulverizer on stiff soils.

He talks a little about factory waste products that he valued, such as hops from breweries, which he considered to be almost double the value of stable manure. He’d use it to fertilize, pulverize, and mulch the soil. It heats up quickly, though, so he turned it once every two weeks to avoid “fire-fang” (which sounds like an evil comic book character to me). Another factory waste product Henderson was fond of was horn and bone shavings (whale bone, to be specific - won’t find any of those shavings these days). He composted them with hot manure (one part shavings to fifteen parts manure) because it extracted the oil from the shavings. (How this oil would benefit the soil, I don’t know. Any ideas?) And finally, he mentions the use of “sugar house scum”, a mixture of blood, charcoal, and saccharine refuse–sounds like a lovely concoction, doesn’t it? I did a little research and found more details in A Muck Manual for Farmers, published in the mid-1800s:

Thirdly, Bone deprived of all its animal matter, calcined or burned bone, bone ash, sugar house refuse, or bone black. Bones are easily reduced to the state of ash by piling them up with a little light wood or fagots and firing the mass. The bones continue burning till reduced to whiteness, becoming brittle as pipe stems and very easy to grind, By this mode all animal matter is burned up. If bones are heated in closed vessels, leaving a small vent as in baking, bone black is produced containing all the earthy part of the bone mixed with the coal of the animal portion. This serves for decoloring sugar and other syrups and after having served this purpose several times by repeated burning, the spent bone black is sold to farmers and others as sugar house refuse; when mixed with the scum and other impurities arising during the clarification of sugar, it is more valuable for agriculture than simple sugar house black.

Interesting stuff. I’m so tempted to print out this book and read it but if I succumb to these urges, I’ll never finish reading a book. Ever.

Anyway, Henderson then goes on to describe his favorite concentrated manures. The front runner is pure Peruvian guano (as opposed to other types of guano?). He pounded it into a powder (I wonder how, and how fine?), sowed it at a rate of 1000-1200 lbs per acre after the ground had been plowed, harrowed it in, and planted immediately. If he couldn’t get guano, he used bone dust or flour, applied the same way as guano except at 2000 lbs per acre with similar or better results.

One interesting recommendation he made was to rotate your manures, just like you rotate your crops. I brought this up on the NewFarm.org forums and gained some insight from Steve Rogers, who runs Singing Pig Farm up in Oregon:

My thinking on the rotating the manure thing ties in with Albrecht. Back in the 1800s when Henderson was farming they didn’t have access to soil testing labs like we do. Adding the barnyard manure that Henderson spoke of using 1st builds up too much Phosphorous and Potassium while being short on Nitrogen. If you keep adding enough manure year after year to cover your Nitrogen needs then all of that P and K starts to lower your yields because too much of one nutrient causes another nutrient to tie up and become deficient.

Notice the amount he was putting one–75 tons/acre! Just to use some round ball park figure–let’s say the analysis on NPK was 1.5:1:1. 75 tons is 150,000 pounds of manure. Since the analysis is in %, 100lbs of manure yields 1 pound each of phosphorous and potassium, so he was adding 1500 lbs of each to the field–way too much. 2250 lbs of Nitrogen! Wow!

Now what did he go to next??? Pure peruvian seabird guano–the seabird guano I have used in the past is High Nitrogen. So the guano is giving him the nitrogen he needs without the huge P and K.

So I believe he was rotating the manure, based on empirical observations in his fields, to yield a balanced healthy soil that fit the specs that Albrecht laid down 100 years later.

Henderson had the solution for the problem that Albrecht would later describe.

So he really did walk the talk, didn’t he? Quite a farmer.

Next: Henderson on cold frames.

Notes based on Gardening for Profit (Chapter 6) by Peter Henderson.

Henderson describes the soils he works with. His general guideline is to look for a dark-colored loam soil (neither sandy nor clayey) that’s at least 12″ deep, preferably with a yellowish sandy loam underneath (good for drainage). Soils to look for, in order of preference:

1. alluvial saline deposit - usually within a mile from the tide mark; dark heavy loam containing decomposing shells; 10-30″ deep; overlaying subsoil of yellow sandy loam

2. lighter soil, both in color and specific gravity - 8-15″ deep; similar subsoil to above

3. still lighter soil, in color and specific gravity - sand predominates over loam; subsoil is pure sand; good for melons, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, radishes, and tomatoes; not good for onions, cabbages, celery

4. clayey loam - 10″ deep; over thick stratum of stiff bluish clay; found on highest points; not good for early vegetables; favorable for a late crop like celery

Note to self: Look further into soil classification. I’m having trouble visualizing these distinctions because I’ve never closely analyzed soils.

He emphasizes the importance of drainage, describing horse-shoe tiles, rubble drains, and flat stone drains. I’d never heard of these. The tile drains are about 3′ deep and 15-25′ apart. The tiles rest on hemlock board (to prevent sagging) and are covered by a piece of sod (grass side down) at the joinings to prevent soil from getting in. I was wondering if people still used these drains, so I did a little research and found a page which answered my question:

Horizontal subsurface drainage involves the removal of water from below the surface. The field drains can either be open ditches, or more commonly a network of pipes installed horizontally below the ground surface. These pipes used to be manufactured of clay tiles, with the water entering the pipes through the leaky joints (thus the term tile drains). In 1968 flexible corrugated plastic drainage pipe was introduced and this product is now widely used around the world. In spite of the different material used, the term tile drains is still in common use.

At the first farm I worked for in NY, plastic pipes were used to drain water from the top of the hill to the bottom so that the runoff wouldn’t soak the surface of the pasture in between. There was no map showing where they were, so finding and fixing them was a pain. I’m still wondering…in what pattern are these drains supposed to be arranged? How does water get in without letting soil in to clog the way? If a drain breaks, how do you determine where it broke so you can fix it efficiently? And, the magic question: how much does installing a drainage system cost? Is it economical? The above page made it seem like it’s expensive and high-maintenance.

Next, Henderson describes how he breaks new ground, presuming it’s in sod.

1. Being in September, October or November (near NYC).

2. Install drains if necessary.

3. Spread horse manure 2-3″ thick.

4. Plow the sod under, laying it as flat as possible by plowing shallow.

5. Flatten down the furrows by running over with the back of a harrow. This seals up the crevices between the furrows, which hastens decomposition.

6. Cross plow and thoroughly harrow once the sod has rotted, either in the autumn or spring.

• what does it mean to cross plow?
• how do you know if the sod has rotted sufficiently?
• why avoid doing this in the summer?

7. Spread rough stable manure, as much as possible.

• what’s the difference between “rough stable manure” and the manure recommended in the previous step?

8. Plow again, followed by subsoiler.

9. Crop with potatoes, corn or late cabbages in the first season, as the ground is rarely adequately prepared for anything else.

Note to self: Since Albrecht contends that sod contributes a significant amount of SOM, I’ve been thinking a lot about rotations that alternate livestock and pasture with vegetables (e.g. 3 years pasture/livestock, 2 years veggies). Anyone have experience with or know of an existing system like this? Any research being done?

Next: Henderson on Manures