I was asked to give a presentation to a group called Leadership Mendocino. Every year about 30 people in our County, usually from a mix of businesses, government agencies, and non-profits, meet monthly for a full day and intensively study a particular topic. Nov. 14th 2008 was their Ag day, and my presentation followed the Ag Commissioner’s, who reviewed the County’s history and present. I didn’t want to talk about the future as if I knew what was going to happen, but I did want to highlight the vulnerabilities and tensions I saw building and suggest some alternatives to our predicament. Hence I created a storyline in which I was now the County Historian in 2020 giving a talk to the group about the past decade of change.

While the details are specific to where I live, the general lessons apply to the whole world.

Click on any image to see a higher resolution version.

For Mendocino County the key date was December 12, 2009. The trucks didn’t show up that day.
Why weren’t the trucks running? I’ll give a quick overview of what led up to the Little Death.

Let’s start with the credit market break down in 2008. What followed was a plunge in the volume and reliability of global trade. Without access to the free flow of credit, countries experienced food and fuel shortages. People began rioting.

We saw how developing countries were in profound crisis, but most of us didn’t imagine how those awful scenes would so quickly be in our own neighborhoods too.

Everyone knows the story…Pakistan devolved into anarchy and was unable to keep all of its nuclear weapons secure. Several went missing and the world didn't find out where they went until it was too late.

South-Central Asia and the Middle East were on fire.

The nuclear exchange was contained within the region, but the effects spread globally. The world’s largest oil production facilities and ports were destroyed or inaccessible. The daily flow of supertankers from the Middle East was over.

It was common knowledge at the time that crude oil was the lifeblood of our economy, but little had yet been done to reduce our dependency on oil. The modern world was suddenly without sufficient transportation fuels and totally unprepared.

The specific numbers are staggering. Only a quarter of U.S. crude oil consumption was domestically produced in 2009. The trucking system was the key part of what was called the Just in Time delivery system. Warehousing and stockpiling were no longer practiced significantly and so no buffer existed when the trucks stopped. Our Just in Time system unraveled over a period of several weeks.

J-I-T now stood for "Just Isn't There."

As the flow of goods and services slowed dramatically and then in some cases stopped moving altogether, we were subject to cascading, compounding failures in key sectors of the economy. Just a couple of examples…Without constant truck movement, spare parts and basic supplies ran short. Electricity production relied on coal, which relied on diesel.

Most dire of all was that within three days of the halt to trucking, the grocery stores were out of food.

Looking back at historical records it is clear that, while shocking, this was no surprise. Community-based organizations had been warning of this exact possibility for years.

Nowadays we have buffers and resiliency built into our systems, but that was not the case in 2009. Government hadn’t prepared, having placed its faith in the market to provide for basic goods such as food and energy. Global food stockpiles had been declining for over a decade, and in any case they were not under any government control.

Although some people had stockpiled food and essentials, most people hadn't because either they never thought this could happen or were simply distracted. It might be good to remind everyone what life was like in 2009. Most of us tended to spend our free time in front of the television or interacting with various media and communication devices. Gardening, food preservation, community meals and stuff like that wasn’t cool and exciting for the majority of people, although interest in food security had been increasing for a few years preceding the crisis.

After a week everybody became scared, and most started to feel hungry. This was so unthinkable that many also became profoundly disillusioned and angry. This was not supposed to be happening to “us.” The Five Stages of Grief were on full display.

Events began to run their natural course.

Scared, hungry people saw that some households still had food. This led to looting in some areas. A handful of police and sheriffs couldn’t protect private property from a desperate populace. In other areas looting was averted (barely) as neighbors and authorities agreed to pool private food holdings and distribute them evenly.

As the crisis deepened, a triage system was established. Food was preferentially given to those who could work, and the young.

All sorts of questions that had been ignored for decades became very important. “What about the local farms,” the people asked. “Can they feed us?”

“It’s the middle of winter,” the farmer’s replied. “We can plant potatoes and grains in the spring but they won’t be ready until summer.”

“And where are the seeds going to come from? We are hay farmers, cattle ranchers and grape growers. We don’t even have the right equipment for this.”

Three months passed without relief. Clearly, household preparation wasn’t enough, and now the population was starving.

Other problems arose too. Electricity was spotty. Every bit of gasoline and diesel were needed in generators to keep pumps for water and sewer systems going, to keep the hospitals powered, and to cook food in community kitchens.

But by spring these supplies, commandeered from the tanks of gas stations, were gone.

FEMA didn’t arrive with supplies of food, fuel and medicines in the major valleys until March 2010. These were barely enough to end starvation and give tractors some fuel.

When the railroad cars arrived in May 2010 we finally had enough of the basics again. Freeways were abandoned for hauling freight. They were in disrepair from winter storms and far too expensive to maintain for the now minimal trucking system.

In addition to supplies of grain and beans (25,000 lbs per trailer load), enough seed potatoes were brought in to plant. Potatoes became our survival food for a few years. As we all know, it is hard to eat enough of them to keep the weight on! Health care providers estimate that the average person lost twenty pounds between 2009 and 2012.

Here’s another graphic from the archives. Food security organizations in the County knew that storage foods with high caloric density were essential, and had even started to import and store them in the County. The grain and bean silos established in Willits in 2009 really helped that area weather the crisis better than elsewhere. Silos were quickly built along the railroad tracks in every town.

All of us began to learn some of the basic facts about nutrition and agriculture, such as how many calories we need per day and how to eke that out of the soil.

Even with farm supplies brought in by rail car, we lacked much of the needed energy infrastructure to irrigate crops as electricity was still unreliable. Few well pumps ran off solar panels. So in most cases, yields weren’t as large as we’d hoped. It was terribly frustrating; we could see the water 30 ft down in the well but couldn’t get it out fast enough to make a difference.

Ever since the Little Death, precious tractor fuel has been limited. Much more is now done with manual labor than in the past. This was a difficult adjustment, both physically and psychologically. Some people were excited by the challenge and adapted well. On the bright side, “unemployment” is nearly non-existent and we are a fit and industrious people.

Explicit warnings of our vulnerabilities, and an alternative vision had been given by local community groups as early 2004. In August 2010, a plan for a local food economy was adopted by local governments based on the research of community activists that preceded the crisis. The food system we have today is by and large based on those plans.

The ranching community was familiar with the concept of carrying capacity, but usually called it the “stocking rate.” Good ranchers made sure not to put more cattle on a piece of land than it could handle. A local food system plan had to think about the sustainable population of humans in the County too.

Some basic facts that were used to frame the plan:
1. The County’s population in 2010 was estimated at 80,000 (down from a peak of 90,000 before the crisis).
2. Somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 acres of prime ag land remained in the county (after an initial endowment of 95,000).
3. To supply enough food to feed one person requires about one acre.

The plan also recognized that a local food system had to overcome serious capital deficits with respect to: renewable energy, equipment, infrastructure, education and worker skills, business to business relationships, and public law and policy.

In any environment it would be difficult to overcome these deficits, but the crisis was a mixed blessing. Everybody now recognized that a new system had to be built. Nearly all resources were allocated according to this need. Ideology was replaced by practicality. What people were “willing to do” changed overnight.

Now I will shift gears and contrast the food system of 2009 with what we have today. I’ll start with a review of the 2009 food system.

Here are a couple of graphs that summarize data at the national scale when the crisis hit. At that time, one calorie of food energy depended on several calories of fossil fuel energy. Basically, all parts of the system were highly dependent upon fossil fuels, long-distance supply chains, and complex financial markets.

Today’s food system has many features that improve our resiliency and security. Key attributes are:
Diverse. A complete and balanced diet can be had within the agricultural base of the County.

Local. Food produced here is consumed here, and the agricultural landscape is no longer dominated by grapes and cattle for export.

Renewable. Energy inputs for agriculture, transportation and processing are based on solar, wind, hydro and other non-fossil sources.

Non-toxic. Artificial pesticides and herbicides are no longer available and we use biological controls and landscape management to dampen pest cycles.

Cyclical. Soils are improved rather than depleted through conservation tillage, smart land-cover rotation patterns, and composting of all human and animal wastes.

Adaptable. As climate changes and new farmers learn what works best, systems are in place to exchange information and perform needed research.

Buffered. The future is always uncertain. Always be prepared for trouble by storing extra of what we really need.

Today’s food system is completely different. The plan recognized the web of relationships needed for a sustainable system. Fossil fuels are nearly eliminated. Transportation distances are very short. Waste becomes the new fertilizer.

While mechanized to the extent energy availability allows, the farm of 2020 uses efficient hand tools when those suffice.

Compost today is very expensive. Farmers work very hard to create the fertility they need on site as best they can. Food scraps are highly valued and used in vermiculture systems. Human wastes are professionally handled and sold to farmers certified disease free.

Imported chemical pesticides and herbicides are also very costly. More knowledge and labor is now used, including beneficial insect plants that add a lot of color and interest to farms.

Off the farm society has changed just as dramatically. People often use solar ovens to cook, and disposable packaging is rarely seen anymore.

Because a transportation fuel crisis was the proximate cause of the crisis, people were especially keen on eliminating reliance on long-distance supply chains. Households began sourcing as much food locally as they could. In 2009 a trip to the grocery store would mean a 1500 mile diet. Today that could be more like a 150 yard diet. Bikes with trailers can now handle much local transport. Streets are quieter, and the air less polluted.

Not only have on the farm practices changed, but farms are cooperating like never before. This creates synergies at the landscape level we all benefit from.

For example, this goat dairy sows a hay crop rich in wildflowers, thereby supporting a local beekeeper. The beekeeper’s hives also service orchards and row crops in the area, ensuring good pollination and food for all of us.

We have much to be proud of now. We made it through very tough times together by mostly keeping our heads on straight and making good decisions when it really counted. But we also live with the pain of loss and regret, asking ourselves over and over, “How did we let this happen?”

What does the last 10 years teach us about the importance of leadership?

I look at this issue in two ways. First, good leaders do their best to prevent crises. This requires the ability to help people accept the reality of unsustainable tensions before they go too far. Just talking to people can establish new conversations that propagate. Only when enough people are having similar conversations are social changes possible.

Of course human history is full of one account after another of societies that failed to recognize their obvious problems before it was too late. When disaster strikes, good leaders manage their shock and the loss of normalcy. They model the proper attitude, reducing panic and heightening clear thinking.

The best crisis leaders are those that combine awareness of the problem before it arrived with a sense of direction and clarity. Because they saw what was coming, they often have a plan to deal with it as soon as the population is forced by circumstances out of denial, distraction and inaction. Since what people are willing to do changes in a crisis, wise leadership can make a lot happen for the good very quickly.

I have only been growing my own vegetables and preserving them for a few years now. The first thing I thought of was heat canning, and have spent a number of hours getting water to boil. This was not entirely satisfactory to me, however, because it just didn't seem very efficient. Heat intensive processes are inefficient at small scale, such as my kitchen! So this year I ditched the water canning and decided to try other methods.

I recommend the book Keeping Food Fresh and basically followed the guidelines there for drying, lacto fermenting and preserving in olive oil.

While you can't taste the results, here's what they look like.

These are dried veggies and I dried them with the sun. Great way to keep nutrient quality intact and very light weight for storage and transportation. Shown are onions, tomatoes, pears and peppers.

Lacto fermentation is a fascinating process. All you need is salt and chlorine free water. Here are examples of pickles, a vegetable medley including beets, and shredded zucchini.

Olive oil is a more expensive preservative. But the oil isn't lost, just borrowed while preserving and becoming a flavored oil when the vegetables are consumed. Many vegetables are sauteed briefly in vinegar before storage in oil. Shown are sweet pepper, tomatoes and a vegetable medley including carrots. Onions and garlic and herbs are often mixed into these.

In early November, I wrote a brief blog about the drastic inflation in the price of farm inputs, the collapse of commodity prices within the global grain market, and the difficulty of farmers to acquire loans for the upcoming 2008-2009 agricultural season.

Soon after, Jason Bradford interviewed Ben Gisin from Touch the Soil magazine on the radio program the Reality Report. Early in the interview Ben and Jason engaged in a clear and fruitful dialog that spoke directly to the positive feedback loop related falling commodity prices, the increasing price of farm inputs, and the reluctance of banks to administer loans.

Further commentaries within the interview included global food security, local agriculture, and current trends in the national dialog about sustainable food production.

This radio show is archived on Global Public Media and can be accessed by the link below.

Reality Report with Bradford and Gisin: http://globalpublicmedia.com/reality_report_ben_gisin_of_touch_the_soil_...

In both 2007 and 2008 the world grappled with global inflation in the price of food. Unfavorable weather, scant international grain reserves, increased consumption of meat by developing nations, increased conversion of food to biofuel, and rising farm input prices were mainly to blame for the sharp price increase (1). During this time, many people living on $2 a day were priced out of food as dramatic rises in basic foodstuffs sparked both international and domestic outrage which in some cases has led to food riots (2). In response to these dramatically inflating prices farmers planted near record amounts of wheat, corn, and soy.

You might expect that the record prices in agricultural commodities would mean a windfall for farm savings accounts. This, however, is not the case. The chance at record profit was being eroded by enormous increases in farm inputs. At planting time, about 8 months ago, the national average price of diesel #2 was 3.55 a gallon (3). Fertilizer prices were also sky high with the price of fertility doubling and tripling within a year (4). According to the International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development from January 2007 to January 2008 diammonium phosphate (DAP) prices rose from $252 per ton in January 2007 to $752; prilled urea rose from $272 to $415 per ton; and muriate of potash (MOP) rose from $172 to $352 (5).

However, by the time this season’s agricultural commodities reached the grain elevators and the market, global economic conditions had deteriorated into the current credit crisis and global recession. As a result, commodity prices have plunged and both food producers and consumers are directly in the path of the growing economic storm. As of November 6, 2008 wheat has fallen from a record of $13.495 on Feb. 27, 2008 to $5.225 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. Corn has fallen from its peak of $7.9925.5 on June 27, 2008 to $3.38 a bushel. The price of soybeans has also declined from a record $16.3675 on July 3, 2008 to close at $9.06 a bushel (6,7). Farmers have paid large amounts for inputs, but when it comes time to sell they may be out of luck. It is not a slippery slope argument to suggest that if it is significantly unprofitable to grow food due to the contrast between selling price and increasing crop inputs then farms may go out of business and/or plant less acreage. Combine reduced production with thinning global grain reserves and scarcity-based price inflation would be likely.

Now, the icing on the cake for farmers in 2008 and 2009 may be a freeze in the credit market. As many know by now, lenders are very reluctant to give out loans (8). Unfortunately, these yearly loans are something as necessary for modern farms as sun, soil, and water. As the price of inputs keep increasing against the farmer’s collateral (land, equipment, and final crop) it makes the farmer seem like a riskier loan recipient. For those who cannot get loans it will likely mean less land will be planted, and for those farmers and corporations that can secure the loans it means higher interest rates.

As the era and expectation of cheap food and fuel appears over we are facing two competing problems.
(1)How can farmers deal with cheap selling prices while paying increasing inputs? There is so much risk for these operations and their margins are continually tightening.
(2) How can starvation and malnutrition be prevented as the world’s poor are unable to absorb price inflation? Perhaps this is a problem of distribution, poverty, and/ or a fact of limited resources?

1 http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/newsroom/wfp17...
2 http://www.energybulletin.net/node/42563
3 http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_dist_a_epd2d_ptc_cpgal_m.htm
4 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-05/i-wfp052308.php
5 http://www.roxboro-courier.com/newsnowstories/ts031208-1.htm
6 http://bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/cfutures.html
7 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aox4ZwDlWkvQ&refer=w...
8 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aox4ZwDlWkvQ&refer=w...

It is perhaps the greatest indication that the "free" market (or at least our U.S. early 21st century version of it) is a failure when those who work very hard to feed other people can't cover their own basic expenses. I bring this up after reading this article from Grist:

Dispatches from the Fields: The trouble with small-scale farming
Can sustainable farming provide a sustainable living?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/24/133720/582

One item I disagree with is the notion in the article that farming isn't "highly skilled." That really depends. Some jobs are mundane, but overall I have found that advanced management skills and sublimely honed knowledge sets are needed to farm well. Where does the idea that farming is "unskilled" come from?

One hypothesis I have is that the cheap availability of fertilizer inputs masks the actual difficulty of caring for the soil properly and making compost that works.

A second hypothesis is that farming is associated with rural, poor and foreign minorities with low SAT scores.

I would like to get paid to grow food for other people and am going to ask the members of my farm to do so next year. As the article suggests, most farmers don't make it on the food value alone. This is true in my case as well. My wife has a nice salary and I am her "kept man" so to speak.

What the article doesn't delve into is the changing economic environment. In a collapsing economic situation I'd expect more people to grow their own food. And with few high quality fertilizers and fuels available over the long term farming will require greater knowledge, much of which has been lost to the general population.

It has been months since I've posted a blog. This is the busy time of year on the farm, but I came across something I'd like to share.

I have been bothered by the talk of cellulosic ethanol without a clear discussion of the effect such removal of celluosic biomass would have on soils. Soils are alive with microbes that feed off of cellulose (and lignins). Furthermore, macro and micro nutrients are contained in plant stalks and their removal could lead to a soil nutrient deficit that would need to be replaced by importing fertilizer.

So it was great to see the article posted below published by the Washington State University news service. This article made me think about our soil practices at Brookside Farm.

Are our compost practices sufficient to replace the carbon burnt by veggie cultivation? Brookside Farm's soil began with 6% organic matter, built up over the years by a perennial grass sod that goes through an annual dry season in the summer. Dry summers mean that soil microbial activity is low when the temperatures are warm, permitting a large build up of dead organic matter. Theoretically, we can grow highly productive winter and summer compost crops that produce more biomass than the removed sod, but it isn't easy to keep track of how well this is going. There's the risk of growing too many veggies and relying on the stock of rich soil to last a while, rather than growing compost crops, which don't yield high value food each year. Short term gain vs. long term stewardship. Articles like this remind me to be very careful with the soil!

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/542626/
Released: Tue 15-Jul-2008, 08:00 ET

In the rush to develop renewable fuels from plants, converting crop residues into cellulosic ethanol would seem to be a slam dunk.

However, that might not be such a good idea for farmers growing crops without irrigation in regions receiving less than 25 inches of precipitation annually, says Ann Kennedy, a USDA-Agricultural Research Service soil scientist and adjunct professor of crop and soil sciences at Washington State University.

“With cultivation, organic matter tends to decline in most places around the world,” she said. “In the more than 100 years that we have been cultivating soils in the Palouse,”—the wheat growing region of Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and Northeast Oregon—“we have lost about half of the original organic matter.”

Ideally, according to Kennedy, soils in the Palouse should have about 3.5 percent organic content. In most farm fields, she said, it is now closer to 2 percent.

She said organic matter provides nutrients crops need, helps the soil hold water and contributes to the formation of soil clods that help prevent wind erosion. The percentage of organic matter in a given soil varies naturally from region to region, depending on climate, soil disturbance, moisture and vegetation. Generally speaking, more moisture leads to more vegetation, which is the feedstock for the microbes that break down residue into organic matter.

“A lot of people think residue is part of organic matter,” Kennedy said, “but that is not correct. Organic matter is well-decomposed plant material and microbes. It is black and rich and gives soil its dark color.”

Kennedy, who researches the composition of cereal crop residues and the amount of residue needed to maintain soil quality, said that the tillage system used to prepare the soil for planting has a big effect on the conversion of residue to soil organic matter. In no-till (direct seed) or one-pass tillage systems, she said, at least a ton of residue per acre per year is needed to build soil organic matter over time. In these minimum tillage systems, the intact and slowly decomposing roots also add to organic matter. She found that the percentage of organic matter in no-till research plots at the Palouse Conservation Field Station increased from 1.9 percent to 3.6 percent over the course of 20 years.

In fields with multiple tillage passes, on the other hand, organic matter may not increase even if all the crop residue is left in the field.

Kennedy thinks multiple tillage may mix the soil and residue too well, in essence over-feeding the microbes. The microbes will consume the incorporated residue too quickly and release most of it into the air as carbon dioxide.

“It is like going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant every day and eating too much,” she said “You cannot adequately metabolize all the food you ate. Cultivated soil is like a ‘pig out’ for microbes.”

For the long-term health of the soil, leaving residue on the soil surface works best.

“It will tend to stay around longer, and the microbes will slowly invade it and convert it into organic matter with less lost as carbon dioxide,” said Kennedy.
And about proposals to bale off crop residue for production of biofuels?

“You could remove the extra residue,” she said, “but it still provides surface cover and will eventually become organic matter; this residue layer is especially important if you rotate with low-residue crops legumes and canola.”

If residue were harvested, she said, soil fertility would drop and farmers would have to find other ways to increase the amount of organic matter in their soils.

“We need to constantly replenish organic matter—so removing valuable residue, especially in areas with low rainfall, may not be the best practice.”

It is somewhat amusing to see the Wall Street Journal cover
this topic.  After all, they are the
paper of Wall Street, which I imagine has a “look down the nose” attitude about
the people who grow food for a living, especially small-scale farmers who don’t
use giant machines or buy inputs from Fortune 500 companies.   Perhaps I need to get over a prejudice?

Check out what this reporter did…and on page A1 to boot:

Green Acres II:
When Neighbors
Become Farmers

Suburban
Arugula Is
Organic and Fresh, but
About That Manure...

By KELLY K. SPORS
April 22, 2008; Page A1

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882472974233235.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

Not bad!  The people
doing this work are good looking, young, suburbanites.  Probably makes it more palatable to the
readers because they can relate to them. 

The music on the video included at the web site, however, is
kinda hill-billyish.  I enjoy banjos and
blue grass myself, but don’t know any farmers of the generation depicted who
listen to it regularly.  If more young
farmers are needed, it might be better to associate them with rock stars
instead. 

I appreciated the coverage of the SPIN farming method:  http://www.spinfarming.com/

It is great that there is now a marketed entry path to
farming in urban/suburban areas.  I would
like to point out where SPIN differs from what we are advocating in the Energy
Farm Program.  The article explains:

Start-up costs for a
one-eighth-acre farm run about $5,500, says Ms. Christensen of Spin-Farming.
That includes a walk-in cooler to wash and store fresh produce, a rotary tiller
and a farm-stand display. Annual operating expenses, including seeds and
farmers-market stall fees, can add about $2,000. Such a farm can generate
$10,000 to $20,000 in annual sales, she says. That's "an entry point into
farming to see if they have a talent for it," Ms. Christensen says.
"Those that do will eventually be able to expand and increase that income
level quite substantially."

Where we differ is in the use of hand tools instead of
rototillers, and passive cooling techniques instead of walk-in coolers
requiring electricity.  Also, we would
probably be more circumspect about the inputs of manure and other fertilizers
and ask farmers to work on green manure cover cropping and compost making on
site instead.  This is all about the need
to “get off the sauce” of oil, and fossil fuels in general.  Good hand tools are incredibly efficient at
the scale needed for home-scale veggies (http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1509
).

The Wall Street Journal does have some great reporters.  Good going Kelly!  Too bad the editorial pages of the WSJ are
full of garbage about energy and climate issues. 

Last year we developed a toolset that allowed us to clear an
abandoned baseball field of perennial sod and convert it into a vegetable
producing mini-farm. This petrol-free toolset included a low-wheel cultivator made by Glaser
and a two-foot wide broadfork. It is quite likely that we used these tools
in a more rigorous way then they were intended, (opening new land instead of
working pre-established vegetable beds), yet the tools withstood hours of work
with only a handful of needed repairs. After last year’s experience we consider the combination of the broadfork and the low-wheel cultivator to be an appropriate
toolset for small-scale vegetable cultivation because they efficiently use manual
labor in place of fossil fuel powered equipment to prepare vegetable beds.

This blog will revisit our method for preparing vegetable beds
in light of the fact that we are no longer fighting against tough perennial sod,
and instead, we are removing our over-winter cover crops.

Step 1: Removing Cover Crop

We use a sharp scythe to cut the cover crop off as low to
the ground as possible. Once the crop has fallen we rake up the remains and
cart it off as a nitrogen input to our compost piles. In the earliest part of spring,
we are careful to remove only the cover-crop from the vegetable beds that we immediately
plan to prepare for transplant or direct seeding. This allows the other areas
of cover crop to continue growing as much as possible in the increased
temperatures and daylight hours of spring.

Jason Using Sharp Scythe to Clear Cover Crop

Cover Crop Cut Close to the Ground With Scythe

Step 2: Breaking Ground

After the cover crop has been removed we are left with the
gentle stubble of annual cereals and legumes. We have noticed that the loam soil is
quite soft and easy to work with, and we attribute this to the fact the area we are working was established last year. A prime consideration at this stage of bed preparation
is soil moisture. We want to be careful not to work the soil too wet or we will
remove an unnecessary amount of soil as we cut through the stubble of the annual
cover crops.

Low Wheel Cultivator Cutting Into Soil

Step 3: Loosening the Bed

After the stubble of the previous crop has been broken free
from the soil, the next step is to broadfork the soil. The broadfork is two
feet wide and includes five tines that sink into the soil about ten inches. It
is amazing how much easier it is to broadfork the soil this season than it was
last year. We have changed the width of our beds this year from 5-foot wide beds to
4-foot wide beds. This change has put us into some areas of soil that is
similar to last year when we had to combat the sod. Pushing the broadfork into
the previously worked sections versus the reclaimed sod sections really shows
what one-years-worth of work accomplished for reducing compaction and improving
aeration. Again we want to be aware of soil moisture, so that we do not smear
wet soil together in the prying and lifting action of the broadfork.

Chris Sinking Broadfork into and Prying Down

Step 4: Cross-cut the sod and rake

After the bed has been forked, there are entire clumps that
have been lifted and are uneven. We use the low-wheel cultivator with a 3-tine cultivator attachment to
cross cut the bed and thereby remove the clumps. By the time we are finished with
cross cutting we have up to five inches of loose soil on the surface which
makes a good seedbed. It is also easy to transplant into the newly cross
cut bed. If we intend to seed the bed we rake the surface smooth and make sure
there is no trash that could interfere with the drill-seeder.

Jason Cross-Cutting Bed with Three-Tine Cultivator

We like this toolset because it clears an area of grass or
cover crop and produces a vegetable bed that is suitable for
direct seeding or transplant. In this method the soil remains loose and aerated
up to ten inches and it does not entail the soil disruption of double digging
or rototilling. By making sure to compost the soil and debris that is removed from
the area in which you intend to make a bed, you make a good step toward sustainable
soil management in which no soil is lost and on-site nutrients are cycled back
into the beds in the form of compost.

If you are curious you can click here to check out and contrast our
bed preparation method from last year.

Brookside Farm has accomplished an initial goal of getting
our veggies to young children and into a local institution! North Coast
Opportunities pre-school has agreed to purchase two shares from the CSA at
Brookside Farm. The kitchen staff is looking forward to utilizing fresh farm
produce and cooking according to the harvest season. It is exciting to see that there is demand
for our produce and the goods of a Relocalized food system.

View of North Coast Opportunities Preschool

To meet the demands of the CSA, we set to work preparing our
first beds in order to transplant spinach and lettuce and to direct seed
onions, beets, carrots, lettuce, and parsnips. We removed cover crops with a
scythe, broke the soil with the low-wheel cultivator, loosened the soil with
the broadfork, and cross cut a final time with the low-wheel cultivator in
order to ready vegetable beds. The following is the sowing dates and area for
the crops that we direct seeded.

Direct Seeding Beets by Hand

According to our planting schedule, March was slated to be one
of the most active months in the greenhouse. Lettuce, cabbage, chard, spinach,
kale, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and tomatillo were on the list of a
scheduled 1600 starts. Unfortunately, we had poor germination on many of the
starts that were seeded early in the month (kale, spinach, and cabbage). We
monitored the Max-Min thermometer in the greenhouse and were noticing overnight
lows in the 30 and daily highs in the 70’s. After considering what might have
led to the poor germination and we finally concluded that the average soil temperatures
and nighttime temperatures were too cold. We utilized the warming temperatures
toward the middle of March to catch-up on the plants that did not do so well
earlier in the month and continued to sow starts to remain on pace with our
greenhouse schedule. By the second week of the month we had sown our peppers
and tomatoes in David Drell’s greenhouse. David used electric heating mats to
secure sufficiently warm germination temperatures, and by the end of the month
we had excellent stands of little peppers and tomatoes awaiting transplant from
their seed-flats into four-inch pots. It was amazing to see the difference
between plants started with the heated soil mats and those that fended for
themselves in the early part of March.

Tomatoes and Peppers in Four-Inch Pots

This month we also began a relationship with a local welder
to make adjustments to our low-wheel cultivator and the broadfork. Last year we
had a terrible time shearing off
the bolt that connected the stirrup hoe implement to the low-wheel
cultivator. Kevin, at KLR welding, suggested that he weld a small plate near
the back of where the stirrup hoe connects to the frame. By adding the plate
excess and needless motion has been eliminated, the implement base remains
rigid, and we have significantly reduced the threat of shearing the bolt. We
are also asking Kevin to weld reinforced tines onto the broadfork. This should
make the tines sturdier and less apt to bend and break off as they did last
year.

Glaser Hoe with Metal Block to Limit Excess Movement

Broadfork with Reinforced Tines

I saw this today, had a morbid laugh, then got pensive.

(cartoonists web site: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/cartoons.aspx#cararch)

A couple of years ago, biofuels were hot. There were the promoters touting "green" fuels, getting off "foreign oil" and helping "American farmers." A perfect set of environmental, geopolitical and populist allies created a basket of incentives to boost corn-based ethanol production.

A few of us were decrying this as bad policy. The net energy of ethanol was around break even, so it couldn't be climate neutral or help with oil dependency. The rise in food prices would impact the poor around the world, causing much pain and unrest that could destabilize nations. And American farmers would go through another painful boom-bust cycle rather than transition to a sustainable agriculture system that is realistic about energy constraints.

Other issues are exposed by this fiasco. Why is it that so many people ARE dependent on cheap, often imported grains (especially in Africa)? Some have ridiculed the local food movement for potentially depriving farmers in the developing world of their markets in the wealthy nations. But if these developing nations are ones who can't feed themselves, shouldn't we ask if it might be better for them to focus on food self-sufficiency rather than production for export? Especially if our energy and financial policies can cut them off from our food so blithely.

Take a look at not only corn in the fuel tank, but coffee, tea, coconuts, palm oil, cane sugar, papayas, bananas, out of season vegetables, etc. All these tropical products may be produced in places dependent upon trade for money that is used to buy imported staples such as grains. What if they decided to relocalize instead? Would they be better off?