Weekly Farm Journal
A weekly newsletter of happenings and doings at the
Broadened Horizons Organic (Teaching) Farm
at
226 Rodgers Lane
Rockwood, Tennessee
Posted each week on Sunday night (labor and farm conditions permitting)
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves."
Mohandus K. Gandhi
It has been a transformative two weeks here at the farm as we deal with a multitude of challenges. We had to put down our cherished mule, thus losing a key farm draft animal. We also had the experience of Cielo becoming debilitatingly ill, which humbled us with a gut reality check that the time & work demands of our current farm activity were beyond our ability to manage without additional help. Overlayed across these events is the unrelenting heat of what is statistically becoming the hottest Summer on record (following the coldest Winter). The end result is that we have had to conclude that our current business model is not taking root in the community, and therefore basically not working, and that we have been allowing our unbridled idealism to place us in an untenable position.
Our farm's primary mission has always been to model and teach principles of sustainability. To supplement our workshop and consultation income in the initial years of our farm start-up, we took on the additional aspect of actually growing food for sale to the general public. Acceptance of authentic, organically grown local food has been a hard sell in a community poorly educated in nutrition and health care (as opposed to the current sickness care), and plagued by high rates of obesity and diabetes. In five years of producing highly acclaimed, quality food at very affordable prices, and attempting to educate each and every customer as to the advantage of "knowing your local organic farmer," we have concluded that producing commercial food for sale to the public is not a practice we want to continue. Instead we will return to the roots of our work, the art of sustainable living at a time when climate change threatens to disrupt seasonal life as we once knew it.
In order to teach sustainability, we feel we must actually live sustainably. The more we continue to actively cater to a generally disinterested and oftentimes rude and impersonal public, the more we slip in our own attempts to slow down the farm work to a sustainable pace. What we have working for us is our current health, and a vision of restoring an ecosystem that will nurture and support our nutritional and medicinal needs. If we sacrifice our health in this process, then the vision doesn't really benefit us or others.
Some of our immediate steps being undertaken as Cielo begins to recover from exhaustion-compounded organ dis-ease, is the cessation of farm-grown food sales to the general public, a streamlining of our website content, and a new workshop configuration with attendance options that will enhance longer-distance outreach. We will continue our plant breeding work, and will continue to sell our heirloom seed, plants and bulbs to interested buyers.
As part of the website streamlining, this will be the last Farm Journal entry, and this page will be deleted within a couple of weeks. To all you gentle readers of our F.J., thank you for your past and present interest in the story of the Broadened Horizons Organic Teaching Farm.
2009 Farm Year in Review
The year ended with one last rainfall event on December 31, capping an extra wet year that saw a total of exactly 66 inches or rainfall, one of the wettest years on record. Three months, May, September, and December had rainfall in excess of nine inches. This was offset with three months that had less than three inches of rainfall, June 2.6 inches, August 2.8 inches and November at 2.12 inches.The total rainfall for 2009 was a staggering 30.76 inches more than during the exceptional drought year of 2007. This is an additional two and a half feet of water over the entire farm.
The uneven and often excess rainfall caused a significant loss in yield of numerous crops; Strawberries-95% loss, Plums-90% loss, Beans-50% loss, Watermelons-30% loss, Tomatoes-25% loss, and Corn-20% loss.The corn loss was an interesting mix of not enough rain (August) when the ears were forming, and too much rain at harvest time in late September. The excessive rainfall in September (9.58"- making it the wettest month in 2009) forced us to prepick the entire corn crop and hang it up in the barn rafters. It was the first time we had picked a dried corn crop while it was raining. The whole operation took three days. We have since learned that rain caused corn crop failure in our region was widespread.
On the upside, the rainfall kept the farm lush, and biomass production was very high. This resulted in plentiful fresh forage for our poultry flock, and an unlimited supply of garden mulch. To take advantage of this biomass growth we purchased a new self-propelled mower with the capacity to bag the cut greenery. The cut bio-material was loaded into our large gardenway cart and hauled to various growing locations. The mulch was excellent in suppressing unwanted weedy growth, and for keeping the soil from washing and, or compacting due to the heavy rainfall. By feeding the soil this constant supply of fresh green organic material, the earthworm population flourished. By the end of the growing season, the soil had markedly improved from just a year ago. It was soft and yielding underfoot, and easy to dig into using a small hand trowel.
Construction projects on the farm began to tip more toward completion of the basic footprint, which allowed us to spend more time in actual agricultural work. In March, we completed the final chicken house (G building), essentially finishing the physical layout of our integrated poultry operation. Major work was undertaken on the larger barn
which was in danger of getting away from us. The entire west wall of the barn has now been rebuilt and is in the process of being painted. Considerable structual work has been completed to the barn's interior, including the addition of cross barn trusses, additional support posts, the construction of a hay loft, a structual catwalk, and the renovation of the primary livestock stall. A portion of the farmhouse front was rebuilt, which included adding insulation and finishing it with 1" thick pine board and battens. This considerably increased the structual integrity of this wall. A new stand alone greenhouse was constructed in what is now designated as the Winter Garden, a southwest facing gentle slope on the south side of the G-house. And finally, the main greenhouse had the stonework completed on the north and west walls. The sides of the enclosed stone cistern were also raised four inches.
For the first time since taking over the farm, we had separately designated housing units and runs for raising chicks, growing out pullets, and maintaining the mature laying flock. We employed a systematic culling program, and sold 14 of the oldest birds as stewing hens. We did increase egg sales, while at the same time reducing feed costs by growing a portion of our own feed. This allowed us to double our profit margin. It was also the first year that we raised all of our replacement chicks from eggs from our laying flock. This is beneficial for two reasons; the first is a higher survival rate for mother-hen raised chicks, and secondly the most desireable genetic traits of our "naturalized" heritage breed flock are passed on to the next generation.
The bee picture was quite mixed this year. We gained a swarm from the wild, then shortly thereafter lost a swarm from another hive. That hive's remaining bees eventually died off for reasons unknown. At the onslaught of cold weather, we only had one viable hive in spite of all of our careful caretaking. Even though the surviving hive was strong throughout the summer, wet weather interfered with nectar flow and nectar gathering, and the hive produced no surplus honey for extraction. This was a significant financial loss of farm income.
Garden sales remained steady and evenly tied 2008 sales levels. Cucumber beetles were a major pest this year, wiping out the summer squash and cucumber crop. The watermelon crop however escaped beetle damage, and did well until we were forced to pick the crop early as excessive rain was causing the fruits to split open. Squash vine borers continue to be problematic, which has limited our ability to grow Winter Squash. Our most successful crop this past season was our sweet potato crop.
We continued to showcase our farm with a number of worshops, guided tours, and a well attended Fall Open House. New drive up customers noticeably declined as traffic was considerably less on our road in 2009. We think the current dismal economic situation is partly to blame.
Our farm income declined 25% from a year ago.