The Smell of Spring

When I imagine Spring, I think of sunshowers and wildflowers. And when I think of farm work in Spring, I think of early plantings like onions, peas, and potatoes. I don’t usually think of the smell of compost (I no longer have anything against the smell of good compost though—now that I’ve seen the amazing results of such compost the smell just reminds me of success.) But one of the most grueling—and important—tasks of Spring farming is spreading compost. So we invited our friends to help!

Shoveling compost takes a lot of strength! Pictured: (from left to right) Fletcher Horowitz, Miranda Wilcha, Monica Wentz, and Benji Helbein.

Shoveling compost takes a lot of strength!
Pictured: (from left to right) Fletcher Horowitz, Miranda Wilcha, Monica Wentz, and Benji Helbein.

Work is much more fun when you make it a party, and Spring farm days definitely make good parties! Even getting a team of 5 or so people out to shovel compost evokes feelings of community and family which we don’t get everyday in our modern, disconnected lives. So it’s very nice to get a bunch of people together to do something like this (especially if it means that just one person needs to do it for 5 times as long later on!) which is totally doable because it doesn’t take much background knowledge to shovel and spread nutrient rich dirt.

Spreading compost is not the most glamorous farm job, but it is necessary and still fun in groups.

Spreading compost is not the most glamorous farm job, but it is necessary and still fun in groups.

 

After your primary cultivation (your first tilling of the soil in the Spring) you take your compost (we get ours straight back from the dining halls we sell to) and spread it over your beds until it’s about an inch thick. For this, we dump piles of compost on the field with a wheelbarrow or cart and then use a rake (tilling rakes work especially well) to spread it evenly. After spreading, we till the beds again to mix the wonderful nutrients in with our normal topsoil.

But truly, it feels wonderful to be back outside, no matter what you’re doing on the farm, and all the more so when you can share it with friends. Here’s to hoping for a good season!

Joe Ingrao, Spring 2015 EXCEL Scholar

 

Seeds, Spring, Software, and Spreadsheets

So I posted several months ago about choosing seeds and planning fields for the 2015 season. Well, now that the season is finally starting, our plans have come a long way, and it’s funny to think how much has gone into it.

As you place specific varieties of crops onto your Garden Plan in Mother Earth Garden Planner, it generates a sheet with the number of plants, when they need to planted, and more useful data.

As you place specific varieties of crops onto your Garden Plan in Mother Earth Garden Planner, it generates a sheet with the number of plants; starting, planting and harvesting dates; and more useful data.

After we looked over what crops and varieties we wanted to grow, we had to consider what farm planning software to use to mock up LaFarm. Last year we worked with AgSquared but it wasn’t able to do everything we wanted in the most convenient way, so we switched. First, we were considering the open source Farm Data, being developed by some friends at Dickinson College, but given its relatively rough current state, we chose to go with the Mother Earth Garden Planner. Though the Mother Earth Planner is not actually made for a full sized farm and is more apt for smaller gardens, we were able to fit it to our fields, and the useful visuals as well as the printable data sheets give us the information we’ll need in the field in a good form.

With a rough idea of what we wanted and where, we made a preliminary plan with this software. After that, it was time to narrow down some details. I looked through all our saved seed and made a very extensive inventory with Microsoft Excel that I was able to cross reference with information from our Garden Planner as well as from seed catalogs about growing and pricing.

With that information, I was able to revise our Garden Plan to be much closer to what it will likely look like. This office farming has been happening concurrently with the start of our outdoor work and the purchasing of our earliest crops like leeks, potatoes, and onions, (the last of which we already have in the ground!) The Plan will be indispensable for us in knowing what else we need to get, and keeping track of what goes where and when, and having it now means not having to do extra office work when there’s too much to do outside. Even in cases when we might have to change the plan because of unforeseeable circumstances like weather or a failure in someone’s greenhouse, having a plan already makes recouping from something like that much more manageable.

-Joe Ingrao, Spring 2015 EXCEL Scholar

Famous Names and Connecting to the Earth

Here at LaFarm, we figured a good way to get closer to our land was to give our fields and plots their own names, rather than the traditional 1 2 3, or A B C. And not just any names were good enough for our fields, no we decided to make our whole farm a history lesson. Each field we have is named after a famous agriculturalist. We even chose a lot of the names for our specific fields because those fields connected to the legacies of the people they were named for. And then we also decided to name our shed Eliot Coleman and our Gazebo Jethro Tull to boot!
Eventually I’ll be going into some more detail about who each of these people are, but here’s a quick rundown of the important names we have at the farm.

Sir Albert Howard
Many see Sir Albert Howard as the father of organic agriculture. Starting his work in England in the early 1900s, he was one of the first people to begin studying the effect of new agricultural chemicals on the health of the soil-and the nutrition of our food. Any familiar with Rodale over in Emmaus should know that it was information released by Howard that first shocked Jerome Irving back in the day to start all of his projects.

Lady Eve Balfour
If Sir Albert Howard was the father of the organic movement, Lady Eve Balfour was certainly the mother and, just like most mothers, ended up doing a lot more important things than Sir Albert in this humble farmer’s opinion. Howard started things off by studying them first, but Balfour started the Soil Association in England and really got the gears turning on an international alternative agriculture movement.

Masanobu Fukuoka
Because farming, and alternative farming, isn’t just a history of white people in the western hemisphere realizing that chemical agriculture isn’t sustainable, I made sure to bring up Masanobu Fukuoka (the original Japanese name order would actually make it Fukuoka Masanobu but he’s always referred to in the westernized order so that’s how it is here,) who pioneered what he calls “do-nothing” farming, which is a Japanese parallel to permaculture that uses no tilling, no chemicals, and not even pre-prepared compost. Doing this in Japan starting in the 40s and well into the 70s and 80s, Fukuoka was able to actual have yields that rivaled those of even the most chemically intensive farms in Japan. Also make sure to check out my small review of Fukuoka’s The One Straw Revolution on LaFarm’s Bookshelf.
Since he was very much about doing the least work for the most gain, we gave his name to our field of perennials.

Rudolf Steiner
Among this man’s many, many hobbies, he found the time to develop the idea of biodynamics a more extreme level of organic agriculture which has been both praised as amazing foresight and laughed at by others as complete insanity. The only people I know who’ve actually tried it all stand by the methods though. Just because hanging a deer bladder from a tree hasn’t been endorsed by modern agribusiness doesn’t mean it doesn’t keep pests away, and just because cow skulls aren’t in everybody’s compost doesn’t mean they don’t help aerate the soil.
We  have a small field that does very, very well which we named after Steiner, because that’s kind of how biodynamics have been working.

Gary Paul Nabhan
First person on this list who’s actually still living, GPN is an amazing farmer out in the desert who emphasizes social connections and slow money for farmers in their communities. He came to speak here at Lafayette last year about the Monarch Butterfly Crisis, and found the time to make it out to look at our two humble acres. Since he’s so well known for keeping high organic matter in his soil (Seven Percent! Seven Percent! That’s astounding!!) we gave his name to a field that we’ve kept well maintained with cover crop and has more organic matter than most of our others.

Ruth Stout
Gardening in a similar tradition to Fukuoka, Ruth Stout was a proponent of “no-work gardening.” She was very actively part of the gardening scene for much of her long, 96 year life, and gets major respect from us for starting the roots of much of no-till farming in America in response to not wishing to be reliant on men to do the plowing before she could plant, or waste her own time doing what wasn’t necessary in the end.

Will Allen
The founder and leader of Growing Power, an urban agriculture group dedicated to helping feed Chicagoans with sustainably produced food, Will Allen is an important name in the local sustainable food discourse for all his great work. He focuses on equity (being a black man in an inner city, it is understandably a very salient issue for him and Growing Power), solving one problem at a time and not letting discouragement stop you, wisdom I think we could all follow. We named the closest plot to our entrance after this former professional basketball player, to remind ourselves that what we’re trying to do starts at the grassroots level, just like Allen did.

Joel Salatin
An expert in animal husbandry without using unsustainable practices, and well known among LaFarmers as the author of Everything I want to do is Illegal, Joel Salatin is a great farmer who is quick to point out the problems of big farming and the unnecessary obstacles facing local farmers.

Sandor Katz
Perhaps most well known for his ideas about wild fermentation, Sandor Katz is an openly gay culinary author who is well respected for his skill and innovation, and gains major props for being one of the Radical Faeries trying to shake up the establishment.

Wendell Berry
Although his Agrarian Populism is problematic in many respects (see the book Agrarian Dreams on our bookshelf for details on what I mean by that), we had to give a spot to the famous poet-farmer Wendell Berry. He’s been a voice for the alternative agriculture movement since the 1960s and 70s when he challenged USDA secretary Earl Butz in his support of big, chemical agriculture.

Karen Washington
If Will Allen is the face of urban farming in Chicago, this amazing woman is the face of urban farming in New York. She studied at the Center for Agroecology at the University of California Santa Cruz and took her skills back to the Bronx. She helped urban gardening in New York greatly with her aptly named Garden of Happiness.

Crop Rotation

It’s an ancient tradition to rotate crops, because it didn’t take modern science for farmers to realize that growing the same thing in the same place every year wasn’t working so well. It’s widely accepted now that the longer your crop rotation, or the more time between growing the same family of plants in a specific place, the more healthy and balanced your soil and plants will become. There’s also generally accepted principles of which plant families “follow” each other best. Like onions work well following potatoes, and potatoes follow brassicas, meaning that each year it’s best to plant onions where last year there were potatoes and potatoes where there were brassicas, etc.

These things aren’t ironclad rules at all, and some people still say tomatoes do best if you don’t move them, but much of the reason crop rotation is really effective is the way different plant families interact with the soil. So corn for example, guzzles nitrogen from the soil, but legumes (beans, nuts, peas, clover grasses) take nitrogen from the air and store it in the ground, so they can replenish what the corn takes (or leave a good deal for the corn to eat up.) Other plants need other micronutrients (like Phosphorus or other metals) in higher amounts so they’ll do better in other places.

And there’s the even more pivotal result of crop rotation: pest and disease control. Growing tomatoes in the same place year after year, you’re bound to get some nematodes that love not having to move to find more roots to munch. And try keeping your squash anywhere near where cucumber beetles have been, or your potatoes in a place the Colorado Potato beetle knows to look. Devastation would result! And usually, just moving something 10 or 20 feet away will actually confuse bugs enough that they don’t find their food and die off.

We have a very good 10 year rotation plan (meaning nothing will be back to the same plot until it’s been 10 years since the last time they were there.)  That’s thanks to the wonderful planning and foresight of our garden manager Sarah, with some help from Eliot Coleman’s New Organic Grower. In the book, Coleman details how to plan your crop rotation, what follows what best, and goes into a lot more detail than I have here.

And while we were going through this years crop rotation plan, we also happened to name all of the fields after famous agriculturalists. I will be writing up some information about each of our fields and why the people they’re named after are important in the coming weeks. Look forward to it!

-Joe Ingrao EXCEL Scholar Spring 2015

Setting Up for the 2015 Season

Please excuse my poor handwriting.

A farmer’s job never really stops. There are definitely sudden lurches in the amount and form of work to be done, but even in the dead of winter, the LaFarmers are still hard at work, office farming.

Office farming is the vernacular we use for the plethora of activities farmers need to do in an office to make sure everything goes right on the farm. Probably one of the most important thing farmers can do to support themselves. Definitely more important advancement than a tractor, in my opinion (and it doesn’t guzzle fossil fuel like there’s no tomorrow to boot!)

We like High Mowing for their exclusively organic seed collection, their positive business structure, and their ease of reading.

We like High Mowing for their exclusively organic seed collection, their positive business structure, and their ease of reading.

The two things currently on the LaFarm office farm agenda are key to any garden or farm. We are planning what we are going to grow and where. We have some saved seeds from the last few years, but we also have to look in this year’s catalogs for the rest of what we want. Our personal seed catalog of choice is High Mowing (pictured at right) but for some of the crops and varieties they don’t have, or run out of, we turn to Johnny’s Seeds.

Please excuse my poor handwriting.

I like a good old pencil and paper, but Microsoft Excel is also conducive to this sort of index.

Choosing seeds isn’t easy even on a scale like that of LaFarm. There are so many factors to take into account; disease and pest resistance, nutrition, weed resistance, soil type, tastiness, reliability, germination rate, you name it; so farmers often have to be very careful in choosing what will work best. I was tasked with taking a look at our catalogs and creating a preliminary list of varieties that would be useful (pictured at left.) This is only the basis for what will eventually be our seed order, because we to not only confirm which varieties we want, but also determine how much of each we need, and then how much we can afford.

Simultaneously to the seed selection process, we are trying to plan the layout of our fields, which is easier than it could be thanks to our 10 year crop rotation strategy for our main fields, and our several satellite fields for growing whatever crops we need. That’s another thing we start out with on pen and paper, but software helps tremendously to finalize.

Preliminary, hand written notes which will be the basis of our crop plan this year. This year we are planning on using the Mother Nature Garden Planner, but there are alternatives like Farm Data and Ag Squared.

Preliminary, hand written notes which will be the basis of our crop plan this year. To finalize with software we are planning on using the Mother Nature Garden Planner, but there are alternatives like Farm Data and Ag Squared. Many farmers also swear by the adaptability and raw power of Excel to be the only software intense enough to handle a full plan.

These efforts are only the beginning, the metaphorical seeds for our whole 2015 year, but they are important steps. And maybe it’s nice to be able to work away from the blistering sun for some of the year. Long live office farming!

-Joe Ingrao, Winter 2015 EXCEL Scholar

Summer 2014 Wrap Up

Can’t believe the summer is concluding so soon, but classes start in less than a week now, so it’s time for my last post.

Throughout the summer, I kept the blog updated with mostly what was going on at LaFarm, and didn’t go over a good deal of what I was specifically here to do when I wasn’t growing tomatoes and harvesting kale. So for my wrap up, I’ll go over what I was doing off the farm.

Way back in the first weeks of June, I met with my team of faculty advisors; Professors Cohen, Reiter, and Brandes as well as Sarah; to discuss just what I should be doing with my research. At that meeting, it was decided that the best specific thing to work toward would be answering the question “What would it take to get a Packinghouse and a Greenhouse at LaFarm?” as those are the two things we need most to get as much as we want to out of the farm.

Before I could do something as complicated as making plans for agricultural infrastructure, I had a lot of research to do. Getting resources from the Professors, Sarah, and from Tianna DuPont, the USDA extension agent for PA, I had my work cut out for me. I read a host of books, articles, and downright tomes on farming, totaling 12 sources varying in length from 10 pages to over 300, and that was just my library research. The best way to learn about farming is truly to see what others have done, how, why, and how you can change that to fit your needs, so it was also necessary for me to visit other farms with infrastructure to gather more information.

I ended up visiting 5 farms: The sprawling student farm at Delaware Valley College; the freshly moved Good Work Farm outside of Emmaus, that Sarah helped to start; the Seed Farm which raises upstarts into a position where they can start their own farm (also in Emmaus and Sarah attended there before starting Good Work Farm); Blooming Glen Farm, a profitable family business farm that’s been established for around a decade; and the educational Pennypack Farm down south near Philadelphia. All of these farms had different set ups and different recommendations, as well as different purposes set out for themselves.

Going to those farms and working with as well as talking to the farmers in all those places was not only an amazing learning experience but also one of the most influential and inspiring things to see for someone who aspires to be a farmer one day. Each of the farmers I met has had their own experiences, has their own ideas, their own plans and dreams, their own way of looking at things, making them all very unique. Learning from all of them really put my ideas for my future in perspective.

And it was very helpful for this summer’s work too. In conjunction with the foundations I learned in the books I read, seeing and hearing from real farmers in our region helped me truly understand what we would need in a Packinghouse and how we would set up a Greenhouse at LaFarm. Plans are being cooked up right now, as my work rolls over into the fall. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we have enough support and a clear enough idea that we will be able to actually go to the administration and get a green light.

For now, I’ll continue refining what I have, and learning more about growing food sustainably. The point of my work after all, has been to create an environment in which more people will understand why sustainability matters, and how to be responsible in fostering it. Another of my projects for the Fall is to help write an article linking my work this summer with that vision which is lofty, realistic and necessary all at the same time.

Signing out,
-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014

The Importance of Planning

This Monday before doing anything else, Sarah led a 2 hour walk of the farm, seeing how the new crops were germinating, where we were getting weeds and where we weren’t, inspecting for pest damage, and checking which crops would be ready for harvest. This sort of farm walk is a must for small scale farmers who want to do what is needed at just the right time, instead of doing the same things on the same days every year and hoping for it all to work out.

The farm crew for today (Sarah, Jenn, and Eric) talking over and writing down everything we need to do this week.

The farm crew for today (Sarah, Jenn, and Eric) talking over and writing down everything we need to do this week.

Writing down what needs to be harvested this week really helps keep track of what we're producing.

Writing down what needs to be harvested this week really helps keep track of what we’re producing.

Going around and taking note of everything that we need to do for a week is a great time and energy saver, and allows us to get higher quality produce at the same time. For us, the employees, finally seeing the attention and work that goes into planning out the week and writing up what needs to be done on our chalk board (which we hang in an easily visible place) gives us motivation to do more. At the same time, it shows us all the things a farmer must balance on their land, thinking of what needs to be done and when.

The completed to-do list for the week. Of course, we don't hesitate checking things off, removing things altogether and of course adding things as the week goes on.

The completed to-do list for the week. Of course, we don’t hesitate checking things off, removing things altogether and of course adding things as the week goes on.

Overall, the time spent on the farm walk, which may feel less satisfying than going at 100%, 100% of the time, actually gives us more time to do what is needed, and brings us closer to the earth and the plants in both a metaphorical and literal sense. Not only do you get more of the feeling that you’re really working with the earth and your plants, but you actually understand how they work better by observing them actively rather than passively while doing some task. Some farmers do walks of their land at the end of each work day, both to review what they’ve done and plan for the next day, and at peak times in the season this may seem like a lot of extra work, but the time and crop saved is more than worth the effort.

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014

STRAW

Stacking straw in a ziggurat-like structure on top of wooden pallets

Stacking straw in a ziggurat-like structure on top of wooden pallets

So this isn’t very much like the other technique posts, but it’s closer to them than a general update. This post is about something that became very relevant to the farm this week. As you may have guessed from the title, this post is about straw.

We got a bit of a shipment of straw this week. A shipment of about 400 bales. That may seem like a lot, but apparently it’s not so much, as exampled by the shipment Prof. John Wilson was getting after ours, for 1000 bales.

Now let’s back up a bit. What is straw exactly?
Well, when most people see straw, they say hay. But there is a difference. Hay is for horses as they say, and it’s still got seed husks as opposed to straw which is made to be easier to lay down and has the seed husks removed.

The LaFarm crew stands victorious after stacking 400 bales of straw. Despite the intimidating nature of moving 400 15+ lb blocks of sharp sticks, we finished the job in only 45 minutes!

The LaFarm crew stands victorious after stacking 400 bales of straw. Despite the intimidating nature of moving 400 15+ lb blocks of sharp sticks, we finished the job in only 45 minutes!

So what are we going to do with 400 blocks of straw? Mulch! Mulching 6-8 inches of straw around a growing plant or on paths between plants is a great way to stop weeds (as long as you go ahead and weed or mow the area beforehand.) And around the time when student labor is getting harder to come by as summer break is nearing its end, having this protection against weeds is very necessary for our farm.

Straw is a really great mulch because it also adds a good deal of organic matter to the soil if you till it in at the beginning of next season, unlike plastic mulches. We’re really going to enjoy using it here at the farm, though it was hard work getting stacked up.

Straw could easily be the answer to your weed problem wherever you are, although you might need less than 400 bales (or maybe you need hundreds more!) But if you’re handling it, try to wear gloves and long sleeves, as it can be very irritating on the skin. It usually comes in large blocks called bales tied with 2 lengths of twine. When you have it where you want it, cut the twine and just flake it out underneath your plants or around your pathways until its layered 6-8 inches down.

And if a length of twine comes off before you get the bale where you need, don’t panic! You can take the twine that fell, cut it, and cross-tie it around the other piece, by taking it around the narrower edge and tying it to the other piece on each end.

Sarah looks out contentedly upon the farm and our new straw mountain.

Sarah looks out contentedly upon the farm and our new straw mountain.

Good luck with your weeds!

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014

My First Market

I worked our second week of market today, my first time on the selling end of a farm stand. Being there with an experienced farmer and farm marketeer, Sarah, was a wonderful chance to learn the ropes of direct marketing to customers in a situation where my income didn’t depend on my performance, which isn’t the case for most farmers standing behind their tables. That’s another reason I’m so glad for this continuing opportunity to learn what it’s like to really be a producer, without the risk of losing my livelihood if I fail.

And it went very well! We sold out of tomatoes within twenty minutes (we promise to bring more next week,) sold out of zucchini, and sold the majority of everything else we brought. Harvesting in the morning, setting up the stand, being engaged with customers for the market and then tearing everything down was hard work, but all farm work is hard work that’s more than worth the effort.

Here’s some pictures I was able to take between customers:

It was very nice to be able to hand someone a bag full of potatoes I had picked only hours ago, to physically see the food we’ve created get sent into it’s next step in the food loop. That satisfying feeling is well worth the time.

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014

Weed Thatching

Weed thatching. Notice the roots are always exposed to the sun.

Weed thatching. Notice the roots are always exposed to the sun.

Small scale farms are diverse. With a large number of plots growing different things, with certain things taking priority at certain times, you can look away from a plot for a week only to come back with weeds almost a foot high. Or, maybe you left the plot that way because you intend on using those weeds for good. How can weeds be used for good you ask? Well besides being good for compost, you can also use tall weeds as a form of mulch specifically to prevent more weed growth, which will also add more organic matter to your soil in the long run. It’s called weed thatching.

Wherever you have some bad weeds, between 1 and 2 feet tall, you can try this nifty trick. All you have to do is physically grab and pull out large handfuls of weeds and then lay them down over the pathway or row you’d like to cover. You always want the roots of one handful to be on top of the above ground portion of the previously laid handful (see the picture), and it’s best to do this on hotter, sunnier days so the sun will kill the weeds through root exposure. It’s best to lay them on pretty thick, and you may have to do this twice to completely shade out the weeds, but it’s worth it if your crop can afford the bit of weed exposure and you are sick of weeding it.

It’s easier to do on days when the soil isn’t too dry, just because it’s easier to pull the weeds then, but if you’re going to thatch weeds on purpose, make sure to keep a close eye and not let any weeds go to seed, That would be disastrous. If any weeds that you do pull are mature and might be close to seeding, don’t thatch with them or compost them, dispose of them away from where the wind could pull their seed into any plot.

Good luck with your beds gardeners!

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014