The following bits briefly describe some vital parts of our operation. Our methods are ever evolving as we adapt to this land and learn from her.

Improving the soil
We firmly believe in the message behind the oft-quoted command Don't Treat Your Soil Like Dirt. We spend a lot of time trying to understand, manage, and increase the fertility of our soil. As many a farmer will tell you, this is a process that is measured in years and decades. It means investing time and money constantly to build productivity for the future. It's fundamental to farm sustainability. As such we ensure that we always replace nutrients used in the soil, with interest, and we protect what we build through sound soil conservation practices.

Before we came to the farm, previous owners used the land to raise horses and cattle for 40 years. We're fortunate to have areas with significant deposits of topsoil, although the steep relief of the land has led to some erosion. Our upland is primarily Tupelo silt loam and the bottoms are Sullivan-Ketona complex, a "loamy alluvium derived from sedimentary rock". You can take a look at your own soil at the USDA Soil Survey. How cool!

Soil amendments
We start with testing our soils to understand deficiencies in essential macro- and micro-nutrients: thanks to Auburn and the Alabama Cooperative Extension. Cover crops like crimson clover, hairy vetch, iron and clay peas, and others build nitrogen and add organic matter to the soil. Locally sourced, composted manures are great as well, when we can get them (please call us if you're local and have manure!). Some other organic amendments we use include feather meal, turkey litter, rock phosphate, natural (non-synthetic) sulfate of potash, greensand from New Jersey, blood and bone meal, and others allowed under OMRI/US Organic Standards and consistent with our philosophy of sustainability. We have also used cottonseed meal as a locally available source of slow-release nitrogen. Organic amendments and potting mix are available from Fertrell, through regional distributors such as Country Gardens in Newnan, Georgia.

We are also beginning to use vermi-composting (worm farming) to generate worm castings (i.e., worm poo), which is among the most treasured soil amendments for increasing fertility. Worms are a farmer's favorite friends. We love to see them in the garden. The fact that fire ants are sworn enemies of worms is among the principal reasons we hate fire ants. We also compost organic material of the non-worm kind, but not in sufficient quantities to constitute a great deal of what goes into the garden. This season we're hoping to use composted leaf litter and food waste from the University of Alabama Arboretum.

Managing insects
We have been assailed by a number of the more pernicious winged & multi-legged creatures of the insect variety. Japanese beetles, Colorado potato beetles, leaf-footed bugs, flea beetles, aphids, fire ants, borers, tobacco hornworms, & others have made their unwelcome presence known in the garden. What to do? Generally speaking, we use the "hunt & squash" method as a first response, to gruesome effect in the case of hornworms. We actively look for the eggs of known suspects, and squash those. There are many tricks to interrupting life cycles of pests; we try to understand how they are able to persist & reproduce, and we intervene where we can.

We use companion planting and flowers in the garden to attract beneficial insects that prey on the "bad" ones, keeping damage in check by maintaining a diverse population of insects. We also often plant rows of crops in different locales on our farm. Sometimes bugs that attack one row may not find the other several hundred yards away, so we spread the risk around. Some plants, like marigolds, actively repel some bad (or rather, misguided) insects, so we plant them as appropriate. Of course, diversity being key to everything we do, we avoid monoculture and foster a mixed environment that supports the abundance and diversity of species. Mother nature smiles on such a system & rewards us with balance in the garden.

Not unlike international crisis situations or constant requests for dogs to be off the sofa, occasionally diplomatic talks fail & we must resort to unilateral action (although never pre-emptively). Our display of force includes the all-natural weapons of the environmentally friendly and highly selective BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) in the form of Dipel; diatomaceous earth; sprays made from solutions of soap, hot peppers, & garlic; & other all-natural sprays as needed. We use these sparingly & appropriately. We see the occasional increase of harmful insects as a symptom of a potentially larger problem with the agro-ecological system, which we try to understand and address at the fundamental level.

Varmints and critters: what's the difference?
Varmints can be distinguised from critters by the multitude of threats they pose to our garden. Identifying which animals are varmints & dealing with them appropriately is among the foremost preoccupations of the farmer. We are no different. Living as we do in a (until recently) rapidly suburbanizing area with significant changes to wildlife habitat, the luscious goodness of our farm produce has not gone unnoticed by the deer, rabbits, moles, & possums, who have come to us in search of those comestibles they formerly found at large. Our first line of defense is solar-powered, 8-foot electric fencing to keep the deer away from the choicer nibbles (strawberries & edamame are particularly toothsome). Most of our garden is unfenced, though, and we haven't had too much damage. No doubt the active hunting that goes on all around us in winter helps check their insatiable ranks. We like to think our dogs provide some deterrent as well, although they spend most of their time on the porch asleep and don't appear to harbor any ambitions in the guard-dog department. Although we have had some rabbit damage, it appears to be manageable and probably not worth our effort to counter at this point. Possums have been known to come around but their effect is, at this point, unknown. They may well be critters rather than varmints, in which case they will join foxes, bats, bobcats, great blue herons, turtles, and the many other critters we share this farm with.

Snakes pose a unique threat to our chicken eggs: we have captured a number of chicken snakes and they have all been rusticated to Tannehill State Park about a mile distant. We maintain a no-kill policy for snakes, since they are rodenticidally active, and because we believe it's a nigh-unforgiveable sin to harm a snake. Speaking of, mice occasionally get into our feed or soil amendments. For this we have retained the services of Salvador, a piebald cat, as part of our strategy for Integrated Pest Management. It must be admitted that his efforts to date have not earned him much praise, but we stand behind him. Also in the IPM category, we'll soon be building bat houses to support their settlement and encourage their predilection for mosquito-chomping around the place and tasking guinea fowl with removing ticks and other unwanted creepy crawlies. Some birds, while normally firmly situated in the "critter" column, may occasionally cross the Rubicon to become "varmints". While we discourage them from doing so, they have been known to threaten chickens, purloin blueberries and figs, & generally cast a shadow on the corn. We have not experimented with scarecrows, bits of shiny foil, or netting to keep them at bay. These measures may be required at some future date.

We also must occasionally deal with "own-goals" from our dogs and pig, who like to root, lie down in freshly tilled earth, eat feather meal, kill chickens, or otherwise act at cross-purposes to the farming enterprise. We accept these as natural costs of doing business, and we allow them in exchange for the camraderie and moral support they provide.

Pollinators
Pollination is important for many crops, and essential for some. While wind can do some of the work, we must enlist the ingenuity and steadfast determination of pollinating insects to do the heavy lifting. We are getting our first beehives this year to help us. The fact that we grow a wide variety of flowers all season helps to attract butterflies, bees, and other pollinators to the garden. We intercrop so that they know where to find the vegetables in bloom.

Crop rotation/cover cropping
Rotating crops is an age-old practice used to maintain soil fertility by growing a series of crops (succession plantings) that do not deplete the soil of nutrients (since different crops use up soil nutrients differently). For example, potatoes follow corn, corn follows brassicas, brassicas follow peas, peas follow tomatoes, beans follow root crops, and so on. We are still working out a system for our farm, and there are no hard and fast rules to apply here.

Leguminous cover crops will actually fix nitrogen from the atmosphere back into the soil, through a marvelous process involving microbes associated with roots. We use these so-called 'green manures' to add nutrients and organic matter back to the soil. We use a variety of cover crops, including pink eye purple hull peas, cowpeas, Austrian winter peas, hairy vetch, cereal rye, and crimson clover. Cover crops can outcompete and therefore keep down weeds as well.

Transplanting
We start many of our seeds in seed trays using commercially available organic potting mix or a home-made recipe. We have a small (8' x 24') greenhouse designed to catch the mid- to late-winter sunlight. After the frost date in April, we'll set out many many baby plants that are not frost tolerant.

Mulching
Mulching conserves water; keeps down weeds that compete with our crops for nutrients, water, and sunlight; and eventually breaks down into rich organic matter that adds to soil tilth. We use wood chips (thanks to the powerline trimmers who came by last year and left a dump-truck full), leaf litter, and other organic material. We don't use plastic mulch.

Irrigation & water use
We use drip irrigation & some overhead sprinklers when drip lines are not practical to water our crops when they need it; in recent years we've seen great and increasing variability in in rainfall, meaning we don't always have water where and when we need it. Some of our irrigation water is supplied by a well nearby. We water all of our seedlings and some herbs with harvested rainwater when we can (see Joe's SSAWG presentation on rainwater harvesting here). We're trying to do more rainwater harvesting on the farm, especially to water the greenhouse and the animals. This season we will be using our pond and creek water from Fancy Creek - a deepwater, year-round stream that flows through undeveloped land before eventually becoming Mill Creek downstream in Tannehill State Park - for our lower fields, the greens patch, and the blueberries and fruit trees. We carefully conserve water as a precious resource. Consummate engineers, beavers provide ponds in the creek that make for clear pools from which we extract water.

Tree fruits
Tree fruits are a long term project. We have several figs, an American persimmon, two Asian pears, four European pears, several sweet and sour cherries, and 10 heirloom Southern apple trees, making use of our north-facing slope. We now have over 100 blueberry bushes, 2-4 years old.

We are Certified Naturally Grown as of the 2009 season.