In the interest of education and entertainment, I’ll be starting to write a monthly submission to this webpage. My name is Alyson Chisholm and I’m an organic farmer. Okay, so this isn’t AA but the admission has somewhat the same effect on people who aren’t organic farmers: “oh, how nice…” – a real conversation stopper and source of amazement to those who’ve just met you and thought you looked like a normal person!
I’ve been farming organically for the past seven years and before that, got a degree in agriculture (animal science and it wasn’t organic) and have worked for quite a few farmers (dairy, sheep, beef, organic vegetables) on the way. I don’t come from a farming background and hadn’t really thought much about agriculture at all until I’d started studying it as a prerequisite to vet college. Well, I never did go to vet college but finished my degree, worked on a few farms, travelled a bit and next thing you know, I’m farming!
Its hard to be an organic farmer and not be an activist. I find myself constantly explaining issues to customers, non-farming friends and family in order for them to better understand my life or else to encourage them to buy my stuff. Visitors to farmer’s market stalls want to know what it means to be organic or why organic produce is more expensive (probably the two most asked questions). Its hard to sum answers up in 500 words or less but after identifying that look in peoples’ eyes as a fight or flight response, I’ve been getting better at it.
So education is part of the life of an organic farmer, especially the organic farmer who markets directly to consumers. The issues are wide ranging and complex. There’s more to organic farming than just not using chemical sprays and there’s many different approaches and philosophies behind “organics”. For example, I find it hard to consider the certified organic lettuce, grown 1000 miles away on a 400 acre farm sold at Save-On Foods, “organic”. But that’s just me. Everyone has to make their own minds up on what they choose to support and how they live their lives and spend their dollars.
My philosophy is “small is good”, “be small and stand tall”, “if you can’t stay small then stay home” – you get the picture. Okay, to small add “diverse” and expand that to operations that support and supplement one another. It’s a Permaculture thing – sustainable systems are made up of elements that each have their own functions and require their own inputs but then interact with other elements in the system so all needs are met and all products utilized. So for example, chickens need: food, shelter, chicken society, water, range and they provide: meat, eggs, compostables (feathers, manure, guts, blood), land clearing and entertainment. A sustainable system including chickens will be one which provides what they need and consumes what they produce. In its purest form, you have a system which requires no outside inputs, manufactures all its own inputs within the system and takes care of us humans. Of course this is all a work in progress on our farm.
To continue this introduction, I’ll describe our farm. Visit the website www.gvofc.hub.org to see a description of our cooperatively-owned farm. I raise salad greens and basil on ¾ acre of land, a flock of 330 laying hens, a small dairy goat herd and I manage 15 acres of hayland. John has 10 acres of vegetables, a small orchard and small plots of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries (probably about an acre total berries). We each run our own operation but share equipment, markets, labour and bounce ideas and problems - okay and the occasional clod of earth - off each other on a regular basis. My operation is small enough that I can run everything myself and, other than very busy times like haying, don’t require any hired help. Fortunately I’m very good at living on next to no income and the co-op rents are low enough that I think I can continue farming for the foreseeable future.
Here it is the beginning of March and I’ve already managed to get my plot of land tilled and planted with a green manure. I went over the ¾ acre with a tractor and set of discs to break up the soil and incorporate some of the cover crop/weeds on the surface. The discs are actually better at opening up the soil to speed the drying process than combining in plant material. So once I felt the soil was dry enough not to clump up, I rotovated and did a much better job of incorporating organic material which will then decay and help build the soil. Rotovators are like big rototillers: tines spin around and smash up the lumps in the soil, burying anything on the surface. It is a rather violent tool and you need to use it with care so that you don’t destroy the soil structure.
I planted field peas which will grow – I hope – and start fixing nitrogen once the soil warms up a bit. Once they are at their early flowering stage, they will have the most amount of biomass with the least loss of nitrogen (decreases with age) and they should be tilled in. During their growing I’ll be harvesting the tender, sweet tips to add to my salad mix. Okay, and maybe I’ll chow down on a few of them myself and, I guess I could feed some to the goats and of course the chickens would love them as well! So the peas provide nutrients and humus to the soil, feed people and animals and will hopefully bring in a bit of cash once salad season starts.
I’m working on a range rotation between chickens and goats this season. I’m hoping to help control goat parasites this way: let the goats graze in one area and chickens in another, then remove chickens, let grow back a while and send in the goats. Once the goats leave and chickens move back in, the birds can peck away at goat droppings – chickens do love animal droppings – and eat parasite eggs, cysts or whatever lifecycle stage exists at that time. I doubt it will eliminate the need for chemical wormers, at least in the first few years, but perhaps with time and diligence it may make a difference.
Last week I started my first salad vegetables: Bull’s Blood beets, Bright Lights chard, Revolution, Tango and Red Salad Bowl lettuces and the hideously expensive but eminently satisfying: Red Nagoya, Red Peacock and White Peacock flowering kales. A total of 40 trays of 128 plugs are now sprouting little seedlings and my challenge over the next four weeks is to not forget about them on one of those days when the temperature in the coldframe can reach 60 degrees Celsius if no one remembers to open it! Yes, this has happened before and its an experience not to be repeated.
I’ll be away from the farm for five days at the end of March and am currently preparing for my absence: training the wonderful young man who will be caring for my animals and getting everything lined up to make his job as easy as possible. The goats will start kidding, hopefully, once I get back but just in case, he has reams of instruction and a kidding kit ready to go. Otherwise he has detailed instructions on feeding, cleaning, egg collecting and egg selling and last I talked to him, has managed to remember all the names of the goats plus bond with Nessie so that she won’t butt him again.
In my next instalment some of the goats will have kidded and you’ll get some stories there, plus I’ll be transplanting salad crops and recovering from my five days in an off-farm world. Stay tuned.....
