An Interview with Doug Jones - Organic Farmer, Pittsboro, NC

Doug, how did you start growing sustainably and why is it important to you?


I was in my junior year of college in 1971 and I was hearing about a lot of people who were moving out of the urban areas and starting farms. College at that point was losing its meaning for me and that sounded like something really meaningful to do. I was in a group of kind of spiritual seeking people. We got together once a week and chanted songs from different traditions all over the world and this woman came to our group one day and said she was starting a spiritual community on her farm one hundred miles away. I went to check it out the very next week and decided right away this is what I was looking for. I had been kind of looking around and didn’t know how to make a connection. So, that summer as soon as the semester was over, I moved there and started telling my parents that I was probably going to drop out of school. They freaked out about that and convinced me to live weekends at the farm and finish my last year of college. I figured out a way that I could get by on two or three days a week of college. So, I was off and running. I was just immediately drawn to the idea of growing food. My parents had a small, part-time farm when I was a kid and I came from a rural background where all of my Uncles had Dairy farms. So, it was kind of in my blood I suppose and I knew that was what I wanted to do.


So, the community was part of the draw for you?


It was all a package deal for me. I was feeling drawn to the land, to growing my own food, to finding something meaningful, and finding community. This place offered all of that. They had gardens and their idea was just to grow food for the community and I quickly started playing around with marketing some of what we would be growing as a member of that community because I knew that we would need income. So I started trying to sell some of the vegetables we were growing and it was all trial and error. We had some books by Rodale press to guide us somewhat. There were a few experienced gardeners around that I could occasionally get some ideas from. But mostly we just put seeds in the ground and we built a tiny greenhouse. Looking back, in some ways I kind of envy the younger farmers now. They have so many resources that I didn’t have at that time. There was no such thing as Sustainable Farming programs in colleges or anything like that. There was just a network starting to form where people were trading information with each other. At that time in the 70’s all the Back to the Land movement was happening and concentrating. NOFA (National Organic Farmers Association) was organizing then in VT and NH so I went to some of their meetings in ’71 and ‘72 and pretty much ever since then I’ve gone to at least one or two farmers’ conferences every year. Those have been a critical source of information for me. It has been a combination of trial and error, some information from books, and talking shop with other growers and farmers at these conferences.

We developed a sharing, networking, work day kind of thing like the Crop Mob that is happening here. In those early years, the mid seventies, we had a gathering once every month or two and would rotate at different farms. We would work, do projects on the farm, have a big potluck, and have a meeting for an hour or two where everybody would share what they were doing at the time on their farm. It was kind of the equivalent of a modern list serve where you post different questions about a vegetable variety or a source of a particular soil amendment and others answer on the list serve. Back then we would have to get together physically to do that kind of thing. So we would meet and talk in a big circle about what we were doing on our farms, what we were needing what we had to offer, what we were looking for in the way of machinery and tools, tips and suggestions, and all that good stuff.

The predominate paradigm that we were working under at the time was driven by the predictions we held about the modern, military, industrial civilization out there that we had been all groomed to take part in was going to just crash and fall apart. And that we were the pioneers learning a way to survive and thrive on the land. So we used to sit around and talk about how it was all going to come crashing down around us.



That sounds similar to the mentality of the young sustainable farmers and food activists today.

Yeah there is definitely a theme of that happening now. And what we thought was going to happen starting in the 70’s kind of never happened. In fact, when Reagan came in (1980) it went the other direction. Everything changed and suddenly we had a lot less people applying for internships on our farm. All of the college students were getting serious about business careers and the whole idea of cooperative actions and activism in general started evaporating. It was just a really big change I saw going on. In the late 70’s there was this huge environmental movement that was peaking in a way; anti-nuclear, we had a huge anti-power line fight. There were proposed power lines and nuclear plants for our area because we were considered the backwater area were they could put these technologies that the city people didn’t want in their backyards. So we were the far away backyard where they could put all that stuff and we got very intensely active to prevent that kind of thing.

But by 1981 or so there was so much less of that activism going on and so many fewer people. I mean there was still a movement and farming going on and it gradually continued to grow, but the young people looking for that as an exciting, meaningful way of life was decreasing. We had to go out and find interns by posting on bulletin boards at the Cornell Ag School and send letters to career offices at colleges. Our intentional community reflected these changes also. A lot of the Back to the Land homesteaders (from the 70’s) decided it was impractical for them to do what they were doing and they all got jobs in town working for the NPR station, government agencies. Others got jobs at the local food co-op, or created some other kind of work that was more lucrative than trying to sell food. Everybody started to realize that farming is at the bottom of the totem pole and it was really hard to pay your bills growing food.

I lived in this intentional community that was pretty supportive of the food growing end of things so we were able to manage paying our bills barely. We lived a really poor lifestyle. Every stitch of clothing we had came from thrift stores or hand me downs. We cut and hauled all of our own fired wood. We fixed all of our own vehicles, and fixed everything else we possibly could ourselves. We were fortunate to have the land we bought really cheap in the 70’s and the barns, outbuildings and a decent house there. We could live there putting those resources to use and keep things at the survival level.

But our community fell apart in the early 80’s, people moved into town for better paying jobs or went back to college following the trends of the Reagan years. And I kind of hung in there. In about 1987 those trends started reversing and new people started joining our community again. We started getting much more serious about farming again and developing our markets more. So the 90’s were a building phase for us again. Our community grew and our farm operation grew. In the meantime the Northeast network of farms was rapidly improving and there was a really good Organic certification program in each state developing. Suddenly the Ag schools were forced to take Organic farming more seriously. We started noticing that they were starting to have meetings at places like Cornell University. So looking at that compared to the early 80’s when they were laughing at the concept of commercial organic farming. They would say organic gardening is ok for the backyard but it is impractical to try to feed the world with organic farming. That seemed to be the general consensus with Ag schools and things. By the early 90’s young, brilliant students and their new ideas about organic farming were replacing the old, stick in the mud professors. And I remember there was this group of undergrads and graduate students at Cornell that formed the Sustainable Agriculture Research Collective to do sustainable research on their own, and all kinds of things like this started happening and building in the early 90’s.



What is it about the Piedmont area of North Carolina that made you decide to farm and live here?

I moved down here in 1999 to Blue Heron Community outside of Pittsboro North Carolina. I was attracted to the dense population of Organic farms in the area. And the farming community here is very important to me. The Sustainable Farming program was already going and I was suspecting there might be some teaching opportunities for me there. So by the fall of 2000 I started to do a little teaching at the college. I had my own field trip class and starting teaching the Organic Vegetable Production class in 2001 with Tony Kleese and have been teaching that ever since. So I knew the education was important to me. In 2006 the Piedmont Bio fuels people asked me to consult for them helping get some oilseed crops going. The more I worked with them the more I appreciated their energy and really strong commitment to seeing sustainable farming rapidly blossom in this area. I knew there was land available so I started farming here at the Bio farm in 2006. We’re growing on about two and a half acres now. We are mainly a production farm but I am gradually doing more and more research, more variety trials, and more breeding work.



What are some of your favorite varieties that you have found that grow absolutely best here and thrive in this climate?

It is sort of more what grows well in this climate than what grows well on these soils around here. That is the biggest factor that I had to learn when I moved down here. I’ll talk about a few of the more popular crops here.

With tomatoes you are looking for the ability to flower and make good fruit in hot weather. I really like the orange tomato called Persimmon and a red one called Tropic. Both are very tolerant to the tomato diseases here. I did experiment with a tomato that was developed by an amateur breeding group up north called Brandy Rose and that’s pretty nice. You have to grow Cherokee Purple here. It’s got the big name and it is a really beautiful tomato. I mean when you cut one of those in half it’s just a beautiful thing. The old art historian in me is coming out. Some of the food I grow, it’s the visuals that are important to me as much as any other quality. Combining art and farming.

There is a new lettuce that came out a couple of years ago called Malawi that is the most intensely dark red lettuce that I’ve seen. That is really useful in a salad mix especially in the winter when the light levels are low. Red lettuces tend to get much more pale and this one really hangs in there. It is very productive and just a great lettuce. There is a Cherokee that we’re pretty excited about here that looks stupendous when it’s growing in full light conditions.

My favorite peppers are the ones that I’m breeding. I am developing my own and I’ve got some really exciting material. I feel like all I need to do is get the weird stuff out. It’s called rouging out. I’ll do a couple of more generations where I’m selecting away from types that are not what I’m looking for. I’m honing it down to a uniform, genetically reliable pepper that produces the same results every year. Some are already there and some I need to work on for a couple more generations. The Marconi is a variety that I saved my own seeds of and they have become more vigorous over time.

Sen po sai, a delicate Asian collard green, is something I am very excited about. It was something developed in Japan that I have been growing for four or five years as an open pollinated variety, gradually removing all of the off-types, making it look very uniform.



What makes farming so rewarding for you still after 38 years?

I’m just a stubborn old farmer I guess. (Laughs) Well, the realm of Sustainable/Organic farming is absolutely infinite – in the amount of research that can be done. I am trending more toward research than production. They could give us twenty times the budget that currently goes into sustainable research and it would easily all be put to good use. As far as Foundation money and Federal money there are just so many things that can be worked on to improve Sustainable/Organic farming. It kind of always made me mad that the Ag Schools would put down Organic farming, but if they weren’t funding the research to make it more feasible then they couldn’t really compare the potential of it in a valid way. All we needed was for fossil fuels to go through the roof or for problems with pesticides to keep surfacing, then the more progressive people in Ag Schools started realizing that at least some of the principles in Sustainable and Organic production need to be seriously adopted in all farming if we were to survive on this earth.

So it just started becoming more obvious to mainstream agriculture that things are going to have to change down the road and for those changes to happen we could do a lot of useful research to make it possible to be profitable in Organic farming and still feed the masses. Right now there is still this kind of dichotomy; Farmers such as myself kind of set up our marketing so it’s mostly upper-middle class people buying our produce because they’re willing to pay the price that we need to charge for the low-level of mechanization and labor intensive kind of farming that we do. This is what we call a very information-intensive kind of farming and there is a lot of extra work and effort that goes into doing things organically. You have to constantly be experimenting, constantly be adopting new methods and learning as much as you can about how to do it better, wisely, with less impact on the environment, and still make a living! You know that last little bit is the tricky part. Trying to put all of those things together is the tricky part. It is infinitely challenging and fun.

Natural Pasture Raised Thanksgiving Turkey

I will be raising some Turkeys for Thanksgiving this year in a Free Range/pasture based, rotational forage system. Sustainably, naturally, and most humanely. This is a message to simply gauge interest in who and how many may be interested in purchasing one of these amazing and delicious birds for the holidays.Though it is early in the year, I am planning now and will be starting soon building fencing, roosts, shelter and getting the baby turkey poults brooding. These turkeys will be raised long, slow, and very happily!
So, if you or anyone you know think you might be interested at all and want to support a newbie sustainable farmer...Please gimme a call 662-832-8036. Email would be great too. koziusko@gmail.com

I can give you tons more info about this project which I am very excited about!

Thanks
All my best!
Mike Slaton

Permaculture Basics

Applying Permaculture:
Building a farm & homestead from scratch on marginal land.
Susana Kaye Lein, SALAMANDER SPRINGS FARM, Berea, KY

Permaculture (a permanent culture or agriculture):
Developed in the late 1970's by Australians Bill Mollison and David Homgren, permaculture is a design system for human environments-farms, housing, business and communities-that are locally-sustained. Natural ecosystems provide a model for permaculture. Energy needs are generated, saved, wisely used and recycled within the system.

The principles of permaculture are useful to organic farmers, homesteaders, urban gardeners and local businesses. Often we tend to mimic conventional methods, making the land yield by brute force and using external energy resources and protracted, tedious labor. Permaculture teaches us to develop energy-sustaining connections between our land, resources, built environments and communities.

PERMACULTURE DESIGN PRINCIPLES for food and shelter:

1) Design systems that mimic patterns & relationships found in natural systems.
a- Create diversity rather than segregated, forced simplicities.
b- Work creatively with plant succession and system changes.
c- Build soil UP and keep it covered.
d- Produce no waste- close the loop! Natural systems produce no waste:
One organisms by-products are another's food.

2) Provide and recycle energy & nutrient needs on the site or within the community.
a- Catch and store energy from renewable resources.
b- Develop and utilize local resources (nutrients, labor, materials, money, etc.)
c- Convert problems into opportunities & resources. "The problem is the solution."

3) Every situation is different. Apply principles, not formulas.
a- Learn from feedback. Self-regulating systems have positive energy feedback
b- Share what we learn from others.

4) Integrate rather than segregate. Rather than single product systems, develop mutually cooperative or symbiotic relationships between elements: Plants, gardens, pond, pasture, field, house, fences, forest, orchard, animals, barn, chicken house, greenhouse, etc.:
a- Make each element (plant, animals, structure, etc.) perform multiple functions.
b- Fulfill each need by several elements in the system.
c- Locate and link elements to provide efficient, beneficial interchanges of these functions.
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SOME GUIDELINES THAT HELP:

Distinguish "needs" from "wants". Save your money towards your goals.
Instead of buying from corporate chains, buy local or used, scavenge or create your own alternatives. Create a "free foods exchange" spot in your community; put out the word for materials you need.

Create community: Barter your skills and goods for those which you need. Ask for help and share what you learn. Create your own workshops or workdays.

If you don't know how to do something - research, start anyway and learn by doing.
Volunteering is a great way to learn skills.
Use permaculture principles for all aspects of life.
Plant trees and perennials first - for food, fuel, fiber and to mitigate effects of global warming.
Work is love made real. Do the work that you love.

"Do the best that you can in the place that you are...and be kind. - Scott Nearing


Susana is an amazing person and sustainable farmer using permaculture practices at her farm; Salamander Springs Farm in Berea, KY - www.localharvest.org/farms/M5606
I had the pleasure of meeting her and attending her permaculture workshops.
One was given at the annual Biodynamic conference; Long Hungry Creek Farm, Red Boiling Springs, TN. The other was at the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association's annual Sustainable Agriculture conference.

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SUGGESTED PERMACULTURE REFERENCE BOOKS:

Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay
Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, David Holmgren
Gaia's Garden: A Homescale Guide to Permaculture, Toby Hemenway
Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Waste, Joseph Jenkins.
Seed to Seed, Suzanne Ashworth.
Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, 576 pages!, Bill Mollison.
Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological Design & Practice for Temperate Climate Permaculture
Plants for a Future: Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier world, Ken Fern.


QUARTERLY "HOW-TO" PUBLICATIONS:

Permaculture Activist magazine, www.permacultureactivist.net
The Natural Farmer, Northeast Organic Farmers Association, www.nofa.org

Intro to Backyard Chickens

If you have a garden space where you would like to incorporate manure from your own chickens, saving on fossil fuel consumption, off-farm fertilizers, and inputs. While receiving a massive helping hand in weed and pest control, and adding biodiversity to your farm or garden space. Or if you are concerned where the pre-packaged meat wrapped in plastic and pink styrofoam containers is coming from and how it's "raised", and would like raise and process your own food insuring them the best life possible. Or if you just love the rich taste of fresh eggs. Then raising a few chickens may be for you. Not to mention the escape they offer from a stressful job and city life, the entertainment they'll bring to your backyard, and a healthy dose of animal companionship will make it all worth it. Raising your own flock is a simple way to begin raising livestock. They are easy to raise and relatively cheap to buy, feed, and house. Especially if you start out with a small number of laying hens for a backyard flock.

Chickens are really an interesting bird; here are a few facts:
Folks have been raising chickens for at least 5,000 years. Charles Darwin traced chickens back tens of thousands of years to the wild red jungle fowl. This breed (Gallus Gallus) is native to Southeast Asia but is now extinct. They are much like the Brown Leghorns of today and were homebodies that liked to live and forage in one place as long as possible. In 1868 Darwin took an inventory of the worlds chicken population finding only 13 breeds. Today we have many times that number and most were developed in the 20th century. There are three basic types of chickens. Layers (for eggs), broilers (for meat), and dual purpose (for eggs and meat). There are some really amazing rare breeds that make superb dual purpose birds. One example is the Buckeye.

Chickens need housing to protect them from winds and harsh weather. 8 by 12 ft. is plenty for 30 regular sized chickens. An old tool shed, a barn corner, or other out-structure could be perfect. If these don't already exist, one can easily be put together with scrap wood or pallets. I think one of the best ideas is to build a mobile "chicken tractor" if you have, or can easily find, the resources. construction sites and grocery stores are a good place to find them. There are many examples of these types of coops online, youtube etc. Try to position your coop on a slope or hill for good drainage. Careful to insulate and heat structure for your chickens in the harsh winter if you are in a cold climate, so their combs don't freeze. In most situations in the Southeast a light or two may be all you need. They will also need a perch (an old ladder will work), nesting boxes (one nest per four hens), and litter for the coop floor. Use sawdust, shredded paper, wood shavings, wood chips, rice hulls, peanut hulls, chopped straw, soft hay, ground up corncobs, and any other soft, or other absorbent materials. Place 4 inches of litter beneath the nests and coop floor. And keep the coop very clean of any eggs, especially broken ones. Once a chicken gets a taste of fress eggs they will begin to peck open and devour their own.

Choosing the right breed is important. Do you primarily want eggs, or do you want to raise your own meat? Do you want to help preserve an endangered breed? Or do you simply want the pleasure of seeing chickens in your backyard as pets, having fun doing what they do best...eat bugs and greens, and scratch.

The American Standard of Protection contains descriptions and pictures of many breeds and varities. Another extremely helpful organization to get to know is the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy http://www.albc-usa.org/. They have done amazing work restoring populations of rare heritage breeds on the edge of extinction.

Having already talked a little about housing, the next thing chickens will need is good fencing. At least four feet high using chicken wire or poultry netting. A strip of electric wire at the very top and on the bottom outside is a good idea for keeping out predators. Trench it tight at the bottom so chickens can't escape. An easily moveable system is something to keep in mind. Chickens need to be periodically re-introduced to fresh pastures. and love being turned loose in a spent garden.

Feed the chickens forage, garden remnants, grade b produce. And each chicken will eat a two pound ration of feed per day. Use feeder troughs or hanging tube feeders. Protein supplementation is a must. Feed them cooked crawfish shells (not crayfish) for extra calcium and carrots, both also for a deep orange, rich yolk. That's my top secret tip of the day.

Husbandry Guidelines:
Keep your coops littered and dry. Keep the yard around the coop dry and free from standing water and puddles. This is a breeding ground for unwelcome pest, parasites, and disease. Again keep eggs collected and clean from the coop floor. Make sure water is clean and filled daily. Look for signs of illness, lice, and mites. Check fecal matter periodically for worms. Pay attention to their behavior. Eyes should be clear, and open...Legs should be clean and healthy, no or very little discoloration.

Market Products:
Select breeds for broilers or eggs (or dual purpose breeds for both) know them and what products you expect from them. Do you want to sell eggs and meat at your local Farmers' Market? Or do you just want to feed your family and friends? There are processing methods to consider. Like, will you do this yourself, at home? (Which is legal to do for under 100 birds in NC.) What kind of materials and set-up will you need to do this?

Services Chickens Offer:
Weed management, pest management, free fertilizer, great companions, and much more.

More to come...
All my best!



Interesting chicken facts and other info taken from Barnyard in Your Backyard.

Mom and Pops'

My Dad has been making do-nuts since 1962. That makes 47 years this June. Hand-mixing up to 100 quarts a day for a nice chunk of that time, hand-cutting every do-nut for 13 years, until the Moline machine came along, offering a great deal of help. But many of the varieties he makes by hand, still to this day. Me and my four Brothers have all spent many years right there by his, and each others' side, learning and working very hard. In fact, I am the only brother not there today. Tommy, Bruce, Lundy, and Matthew all work in the family business. For about the last five years we have been living with the fear that we might have to close the doors for good. All this to say...Please support people and family businesses that are intimately involved with our food, and other basic needs. Shop at your area Farmer's Market and talk to the people who grow the food you eat. Local crafters, artisans, and artists. You will be amazed at the good people you'll meet and the stories you'll hear. And from time to time stop in at your local family owned and operated do-nut shop...You might be pleasantly surprised at the community there waiting for you.

Big business and corporate chains have been slowly killing us at the core. It's way past time we fight back...

All my best

Links To Sustainable Agriculture

Here are a few sites that get me through the day.
Enjoy!

SARE - Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
"What is Sustainable Agriculture?"

Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group

Carolina Farm Stewardship Association
lots of great info here!

Growing Small Farms
This is a site local to me but so much information.

World Wide opportunities on Organic Farms

Local Harvest
Here you'll find your local farmers' markets,
sustainable farmers you can get CSA shares from!
Organic food, Grass fed beef, and much more...

The Greenhorns
A documentary film, in progress, that explores the lives of America’s young farming community—its spirit, practices, and needs. Be sure and check out the trailer!

American Farmland Trust
Protecting farmland and the environment

The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA)
Protecting our food security by saving farms, and individuals, from unnecessary
government regulations and surveillance. Stopping NAIS (National Animal Identification System)!

LAND LINK
Beginning farmer resources; Internships, incubator farms, etc...

American Livestock Breeds Conservancy
Working to conserve Historic livestock breeds.

National Sustainable Agiculture Information Service
A wealth of info!

Polyface Farm - "The farm of many faces."
A family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market farmand informational outreach in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.
Profiled in Michael Pollan's book, 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'.

I Love Mountains
Environmental: Stopping Mountain top removal

Cricketbread
A blog on eating local, community bulding, and starting a sustainable farm here in the Chatham County area, etc....

Cropmob
A group of young agrarians coming together, offering their services to positively impact local sustainable farms in need of a helping hand. All the while learning new skills, sharing old ones, and building community.

All my best!


Technical support:
Sean Michael Hart

Food Traditions

For most of my memorable life, I have been surrounded by good food. Of course, I'm not referring to nights out at gourmet restaurants, or lobster bisque prepared by our personal chef. No I don't have any memories of anything like that. But I do have treasured memories of my Grandma, her sisters, Mothers, Fathers, Aunts, Uncles, and a lot of kids huddled up in the kitchen cooking and preparing amazing food for everone.

I'm talking about real food grown by real people, real close.
I also have very fond memories "helping" my Grandfather in his garden, when I was young. And how I have never tasted a tomato so sweet as those days. The ones he grew with so much love and dedication. Skills that his ancestors passed on to him, and I was lucky enough to pick up just a few.

Some would argue that food traditions have been lost on our generation and I would have to whole-heartedly agree. I hope now that we can seize any opportunity presented to learn about the origins, and amazing life and characteristics of food; All the way from saving seed to preparing loved dishes with our family and friends for a local potluck. These are things we can enjoy doing together instead of living a life of isolation in front of a television. Let's arm each other with these skills and do everything we can to keep our food traditions alive, all the while strengthening our bonds with each other and the land that cradles us.

I remember the old folks always tending gardens and growing delicious food. Spending hours shucking, shelling, freezing, and canning. Not to mention the cooking! Preserving, in the truest sense of the word. Trying to teach us, but we wouldn't listen. But nowadays I would rather spend the majority of the time that makes up my life doing something truly nourishing, in every way. Growing and preparing my own food, saving heirloom seeds, varieties that are rapidly being lost everyday. (Not even mentioning the seeds some families have worked so hard to preserve and pass down for many generations that have been lost, only to reappear patented and monopolized by huge corporations and agribusinesses, only to feed a montser global food system.)


Doing these things with family and friends, people I really enjoy and love, and need in my life may be the most important thing. The more time we spend together growing our own food, the less time we have to spend working some meaningless job, for some company that is sucking the life out of us. For a boss who couldn't care less.

Don't be afraid to refuse to eat bad, processed food that was grown who knows where, from genetically engineered seed, drowning in toxic chemicals and preservatives, and shipped across the world. We can do much better.

A good look at the big picture tells me we had better make the decision to take control of our own food security and independence before it really is too late.

I wish I could go back in time and learn everything I could from the people before me. The essentials like growing, dressing game, storing, preserving, seed saving, Environmental stewardship, and connection with a place. Thinking about it now, It wasn't that I was lucky to pick up on a few of these things. Maybe that's just how things were, and should be again. So, I'll continue on this path that leads me in and out of friends' kitchens and up and down garden rows. With any luck I will continue to be surrounded by good food, family and friends. And who knows? Maybe one day I'll come across one of my Grandfather's tomatoes again, in my garden.

Pest Management Basics

Simple strategies to control pests in a sustainable farming system:

"Controlling pests and disease organically means much more than simply changing the types of sprays and dusts you use. Organic gardeners strive to develop a balanced system where problems are regulated naturally and where there is little or no need to use even the safest organic sprays to control pest problems."


The majority of plant life will be strong and healthy by simply growing them in healthy soil and a suitable location. By growing plants within their natural conditions they will magically thrive. There are usually greater problems with pests in monocropping situations, where only one type of tree or plant is grown in a concentrated area, than there are in a diverse cropping scheme. Many pests and diseases can be prevented by site selection alone.

Healthy soil is a must. It should have a good tilth for the roots to flourish by finding and accessing the nutrients the plant needs. And of course a healthy pH is key. This affects the availability of certain nutrients to the plant affecting it's overall vigor and pest resistance. What is the natural soil pH, and what are the plants' needs? You can have your soil tested by your local Cooperative Extension Service. Use the results as a guideline. Soil pH can easily be improved by incorporating compost, mineral fertilizers, mulch, lime, and soil amendments as needed. Help the soil balance by growing green manure crops, adding organic matter each season.

Opt for transplanting over direct seeding whenever possible. Choose the healthiest transplant when selecting for your garden. This will make all the difference. You can usually tell a strong transplant by a few details: Choose straight, strong looking plants with bushy, compact growth, and green healthy leaves, making sure the plant is not too big for it's pot and that root formation is not too compacted or tightly spiraled.

Companion plant and have as diverse a garden as possible, avoiding monocultures. Mix strong smelling herbs like rosemary and basil in with your crops, and flowers like merigolds. These will confuse and deter many pests...and disease. This is one reason tomatoes do so well with basil. Basil repels pests like tomato hornworms.

Providing an environment for beneficial insects will be immeasurably helpful! This includes birds too. Help create a enjoyable habitat for them; birdhouses etc. Letting a small percentage of your crops flower helps this process greatly, plants like arugula and radish.

Rotating crops takes away pests' previous home and you get a fresh start with that plot each season. Knowing plant families and their relatives is very helpful. For example, you want to keep Solinaceous crops moving. Don't plant tomatoes where you had the peppers the season before because they are in the same family and will attract the same pests. Another example is the mustards and cabbage family, Brassicaceae or Cruciferae. This includes broccoli, cauliflower, turnip, mustard, radish, horseradish, rapeseed, cress, and watercress. A three year rotation is a good rule of thumb.

Develop a keen eye for scouting. Keeping an eye on plants when they are very young puts you ahead of the game when it comes to weed control. And, excellent record keeping helps you to know what pests to expect and when to expect them. You'll know exactly what to do next time, and will have a good jump on any problems.

Avoid handling plants when they are wet. Moisture provides the perfect magnet for mold, disease, etc...

(Right now I sound like the plant guy on HGTV reading this back to myself...)


A few more helpful facts and a brief review:

Lady bugs control aphids in your organic garden.
Inspect plants for weeds and pests.
Mold on plants can be defeated by a particular companion fungus.
Scouting - Being on the ground and looking, check under leaves and row covers.
Biological sprays like BT are an absolute last resort.
Crop rotation - each growin season alternate plant families in each plot.
Allow a small percentage of crops to flower, in order to create habitat for beneficial insects.
Create diversity - varietal differences, crop rotation.
Promote earthworm populaton in soil.
Promote healthy soil microbial activity, and PH levels, by introducing plenty of organic matter
Use organic mulch - incorporating 2-3 weeks after maturity, depending on crop and weather.
Using drip irrigation targets water flow beneath plants, wet plants are more subject to mold/desease
In a dry year we have less disease and lower weed pressure
Wet seasons may cause just the opposite.
Opt for transplanting instead of direct seeding when possible.
a) Much more mature and durable plants will be stronger to protect themselves against pests, weeds, and weather conditions.


Text studied, 'The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control'

The Plan

The basic motivation for starting a blog in a world seemingly full of them, is propelled simply by the desire to share information, I guess. Information about oneself, and unique experiences we can convey commonly to the curious. Since I am a student again, after about a six year hiatus from that scene, many uncommon adventures and discoveries will no doubt take place here, and already have. Not simply because I am a student again, but because I am enrolled in a college program and live within a community both very unique and fascinating in and of themselves.


The college is located in small town, rural North Carolina. I would not hesitate to describe this place as sustainably focused. A vibrant community-centered place, that is home to artists, supporters of dreams, writers, fixers of problems, food preparers, sustainable energy enthusiusts, musicians, farmers, and real good, everyday folk. Everybody comes together to make this an amazing and supportive community, whatever the endeavor. I am in the Sustainable Agriculture program here. We have a Land Lab on campus which is approximately 1 and 1/2 acres in size (photos will eventually be posted). This is home to a very diverse menu of delicious, organically grown vegetables, fruits and herbs, bee hives, a Community Supported Agriculture program, and 14 friendl egg-laying hens. The chickens are incorporated into the crop rotation scheme, offering up their manure for fertilizer, as well as their weed/pest management skills. Much more on them later...


The college itself is also home to a Biofuels program, and very soon will house a Green buildings program and a Local foods based Culinary curriculum! I would really like to participate in all of them, and maybe one day I will. But, for now I am farm focused. The students in the Sus. Ag. program get to take a variety of classes, like Sustainable Livestock Management, Sring and Fall Crop Production, Plant and Soil Sciences, Agricultuaral Marketing (which of course, shows us newbie farmers how to help feed a community, while actually make money doing what we love), and Intro to Sustainable Agriculture, which among many other things, teaches us that there are other responsibilities we should accept, those of the social, political, and environmental kind. You will definately hear more on this later...


Now that we have a few facts out of the way. I would like to relay one of my distinct purposes for this blog. I remember thinking last semester (which was my first), "Wow, there is sooo much info here and it really needs to be out there for everyone to know and to share." And already, in the first two weeks of 2009, I have had many questions, from at least a dozen friends and family. All about this "mysterious" life I am living, which I have quickly grown to love. And of course, many more about simple, organic gardening/farming practices, and all aspects of life surrounding. Things like why conventional agriculture so bad and Organic so good, garden design, plant groupings, seasonality of produce, composting, soil building, preserving foods, and possibly my most favorite topic: Cooking! Recipes and how to prepare certain foods, and how these things affect and build community. Things I love to discuss and learn about, even though I am still kinda green myself. And I can tell that these concerns are more than just wanting to grown our own food. I think we are really starting to see, and react to, the disconnect with our food that agribusiness and the global food system have left us with. And how unhealthy our relationship to food has become. I would really like to share, and learn, as much as I can about all things related, in this forum. So, at the swinging gate of a fresh semester, filled with all the hope and anticipation the prospect of a new season can bring...I am looking forward...




Books read and/or frequently referred to last semester:

The Fateful Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture
The New Organic Grower. by Elliot Coleman
Building Soils for Better Crops
Barnyard In Your Backyard
The Self-Sufficiency Handbook. by Alan and Gill Bridgewater
The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. by Sandor Ellix Katz
The Art of The Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry



Much more to come...