Farming Stinks! (And so do I.)

Things on the farm are finally bursting from the soils and germination mixes, just as the Spring blossoms are bursting from their respective trees, shrubs and wildflower stems. Our lives have been non-stop action since we moved our little family onto the plot and I have scarcely had a moment to reflect on it all.

We’ve had our Farmer’s Market Meetings and made our commitments. Now it is time to convince our growing vegetation to fruit and prosper. We have done our best to think only positive thoughts, as we feel this will benefit and carry our little seedlings into this world. This has been more of a feat than it seems. As human beings we have evolved thinking cynically about things in the world. It is a defense mechanism. We don’t trust uncertainty or people because a lack of trust can prevent danger. I’ve done my best to go against the grain of my mental lumber. The only way to do this, really, is to adopt a “go with the flow” attitude which is exceedingly difficult when the fate of so much of your livelihood is out of your personal control. When something happens on the farm (something doesn’t germinate, something gets eaten, there is persistent rain for 200 years, one of the dogs runs through a newly seeded field to chase a wandering and unsuspecting chicken) we have to clear our minds of the newly formed obstacles and think of ways the problem will sort itself out or appreciate the way these little happenings alter the course of our journey.

We’ve made some additions to our family, our four Rhode Island Reds are now older sisters to our newest batch of day old chicks. Maybe the new babies will make them jealous and finally convince them to start laying eggs.

We have a Buff Orpington, Black Australorp, Ameraucana, and a Golden Laced Wyandotte. These little mamas along with their older sisters will be our family birds. Elliot being the cook that he is will go through a lot of eggs during the week if they are available (hopefully to make me all the ice cream and pimento cheese sandwiches I can eat.) Our chickens will live (as the Rhode Island Reds already do) in chicken tractors and be moved across our dormant “No Till” fields at certain times so that we can make the most of their nutritious, nitrogen filled poop.

Speaking of poop, that has been the main word to describe my activities this week. Whether I am cleaning poop from a coop, spreading grass fed cow poop over a field, or mucking out a goat dairy stall and loading the poop filled hay onto a truck, my life has been very poop centered. One of the most natural ways to reestablish a nutrient base to a soil is animal waste. It is a cyclic system, where plants create energy from the sun and steal the nutrients they need to thrive from the soil. Animals eat the energy and some of the nutrients from the plants and the waste material from this activity comes out the other end in a nutrient dense form. On a pasture, this cycle can be seen very readily. As the cows move across a field, eating the vegetation as they go, they are also fertilizing the land with their waste. As long as they are moved often enough (and there are many other factors that determine how often they should move) the grass stays very green and grows relatively quickly. Because we don’t want animals walking on our vegetables or browsing their fruiting bodies and vegetables, fruits, and herbs feed on nutrients differently, we bring manure in manually from these animal sources and spread them on our fields.

Each animal produces a different sort of manure due to their specific digestive systems which have evolved around the food they eat. We typically classify the manures in two different categories, Hot and Cold. A Hot manure is a manure that has a form of Nitrogen in it that is readily accessible to plants. You would not want to apply a Hot manure directly to a soil and put plants into it immediately, because the Nitrogen would be too available and would “burn” the plants. A cold manure is poop that has a form of nitrogen that is not easily accessible to the plants. It either has less of the nutrient, or it is in a form that takes time to break down. These manures can be applied directly and can begin fertilizing your plants and soil. Some Hot manures are cow and chicken, which need to be aged before applied to the field (or added to a composting system.) We got our grass fed cow poop long before we intended to apply it to our fields and our chickens forage over and deposit their goods on fields not in use. The goat poop we have been picking up, because it is cold, will be applied to fields directly where we intend on planting melons (and rabbit manure works in the same way.)

Where there is good poop to be found, you will probably find me moving it. The easiest way to get healthy, productive vegetation is to provide a nutrient rich, diverse soil. More on that later..

If I see you soon, sorry for the smell!

Oh, How to Coexist!

It’s been a very rainy few days down at the farm; everything looking like a mud soup (with the occasional vegetable medley). We got our first chickens for our own personal egg production from a friend of Skip’s who raises chickens for a living. Gifted four Rhode Island Reds just about to lay. Their bodies seem to reflect their “teenager” status; some parts seemingly full grown, some parts lanky and awkward, all parts moody with attitude. We are planning out our rotational grazing flock now, which should materialize very soon (keep your eyes peeled for beautiful, grass fed eggs at your local Market.)

We’ve had some bad luck trying to start our crops next to a thriving rodent population. Their mischievous nature has made it near impossible to evade their regular robberies of our seeds and seedlings. I’m not a huge fan of traps and death, so it has been a true test of our patience trying to use positive energy and ingenuity to secure our fort and stabilize a symbiotic relationship. I worked raising calves for a woman named Johanna Laggis on a 400 cow dairy farm in East Hardwick, Vermont a few years back who solved a similar problem in a way I find to be quite amazing.

Johanna raises some of the healthiest Jersey Calves in the state of Vermont, utilizing preventative medicine techniques and a state-of-the-art barn that gives each calf extra comfort and breathing room. This barn is well ventilated, and for that reason, she had House Sparrows come in and eat the feed from the calf bins. While this was not much of a big to do, each bird not taking much grain or water from any one bucket, the birds began to deposit the digested grains all over the place. Johanna began to worry that the poop on the buckets would make her herd sick (let alone it was a horrible chore cleaning them out incessantly) and decided to ask the birds to leave.

She went into the barn one morning and explained to the birds that they could drink as much water as they wanted and feed on the grain from the buckets as long as they did not poop where the calves were feeding. After a week or two, Johanna noticed that her respectful positive energy had cured the poop problem and while the birds continued to roost in the rafters of the barn, they did not poop where the calves ate their food or drank their water.

Now I know this sounds hard to believe, but since that day I have heard several stories similar to this one from vegetable production farms, to livestock farms. Johanna is a very scientific, sensible woman herself and I can’t imagine her believing something like this unless it had happened to her, first hand. Now here lies my real problem…

Last night I tried to employ this method. Elliot and I sat in the greenhouse and explained our situation to the rodents of the farm. I had to ask Elliot to leave when I spoke, in fear that his presence would make me laugh or not take the situation seriously. I poured my heart out to the rats, explaining that this was my soul source of income and in human terms that is unfortunately the best survival technique I’ve got. I told them I loved them and asked them, for their safety, to avoid the peanut butter traps.

The next morning we awoke to the biggest raid yet! The One trap nibbled on, another trap dismantled and covered in ants. An entire tray of Spinach gone with Pac Choy and Kohlrabi seedlings nipped down to the soil. Maybe I said the wrong things. Maybe I lacked rodent finesse! Whatever happened, I seemed to have made it worse. If anyone knows the appropriate words to use with rats or what turns them off, let me know!

For now, I will continue to try and reconnect myself to the whispers of Mother Nature; rediscover the language of Symbiosis found in many multi-species relationships. I do wish I were better at picking up languages.

My Wings are Tired

I’ve been a ramblin’ woman for the past few days and I have only recently been settled enough to make an update to our tale. Elliot and I flew to Pennsylvania for four days to visit my family. We had a big chili eating party,

watched Food Inc with my father, cooked meals and spent much of our time catching up with the stories, myths and legends that have been brewing in our absence. It is always good to go home, even when home becomes increasingly different every trip. Farmland in Lancaster County over the past few years has suffered land loss associated with suburban development. Considered one of the most fertile soils in the East, it is a tragedy to see such beautiful growing space become parking lots and tree-less deserts of identical houses angled in slightly different directions. Many of the houses themselves serve as uninhabited haunts as the poor economy has prevented many of them from being sold.

While wildlife in Atlanta never seemed to have disappeared, it was exciting to see the early signs of spring slowly fill the fields and trees of the Pennsylvania landscape. Migrating Canada Geese, Blackbirds, the occasional Robin or two, waterways full of Mergansers and Gulls, the lone Heron.. Every one seeming to bring warmer weather to the snow covered terrain. Our most exciting find had to be two Pileated Woodpeckers on a tree together moving up and down as if partaking in an ancient dance. We were able to watch the dance for several minutes before our presence made them embarrassed or bothered. I don’t blame them for taking off; most ancient things worth knowing are secrets and sometimes you aren’t meant to get the whole story.

We abruptly migrated South to Atlanta and moved into our camper/homestead. It was very refreshing that first morning waking to the sounds of chickens, songbirds, frogs, and a babbling creek. Fresh air greeted our nostrils as we stepped onto our porch followed by the wonderful smells of lightly tilled earth, aging cow manure, and the occasional blooming wildflower. Elliot has been spending the past few days working up to 12 hour shifts prepping the fields for the Spring crops and preparing seeds.

I have prepared our nest with a deep cleaning and arranged our artifacts throughout the cozy space. It feels like home now, one we can crawl back to and cook up our produce after a hard days work in the fields.

Today I went over to Farmer D Organics and gave a Backyard Chickens for Beginners Workshop that was a great success. The excitement associated with raising chickens in Atlanta these days is a wonderful representation of how many human beings are turning back to their roots. Many of the individuals in the class had chickens growing up and want to share this experience with their own growing family. Developing a healthy partnership with the animals producing your food not only ensures fresh, healthy ingredients at every meal, it makes people feel more empowered to take steps towards being more self sufficient. It’s time for us to start deciding what we should and should not eat, as opposed to trusting massive companies to have our best interests in mind.

Finally, I must mention my newest project with Rationally Creative‘s Mike Lorey and Food and Ag Fanatic Kimmy Coburn, The Atlanta Crop Mob. It is Atlanta’s very own volunteer network set to give foodie folks real hands on experiences on farms and the local Atlanta farming network lots of extra hands on large projects.

There is much to be done in Atlanta concerning the growing local foodscape and I am sure I will be a busy bee this Spring.