Labor and the Cost of Food

By Farmer Richard de Wilde

Captain Jack and Rafael chillin out at lunch time!

Chef/Farmer Andrea and I work very hard to make it all happen, to set the standards for our farm and to lead the way.  But there would be a very different HVF if it were not for Kelly, Scott, Simon, Gerardo, Beatriz, Rafael and his brothers, JMC, Juan and every other person on our crew.  Our core group of employees has been the same for 5, 10, and some approaching 20 years.  Their years of experience and expertise are what make this farm “work” and they are dedicated to continuing to keep this farm going into the future because, as many of them say, “it is the best job they have ever had!”  From our perspective, they are the best work force we have ever had!

Here’s a little history for you.  Labor costs on our vegetable farm make up roughly half (50%) of gross revenue.  Hiring and managing that labor force occupies more than 50% of our time.  It takes a full year of on-the-job experience for a new crew member to learn how our farm operates.  Once they enter the second year of experience, they really start to build skills and build on their initial training investment.  Thus, we are really looking for long term crew members who will be with us for more than one or two seasons.  Over the forty plus years I have farmed, I have had many different employees.  “Interns” who work only one season for low pay and to gain experience, older Laotian Hmong people who had few other job opportunities, local high school and college students who start too late and leave just when our peak fall season starts, not very workable!  The inmates from the Vernon County jail work program were very dependable!  That is until they got out of jail and could not make it to work on time for even 5 days in a row!  We’ve also had many excellent employees that were with us for a season or two and showed great potential.  However, just when they were really becoming established on the farm, they chose to leave to pursue other opportunities and experiences. 

Our farm is very complex with about 150 crops planted over about a 25 week period.  Each crop has its own specifications and requires specific skills and expertise, which means there is a lot to learn!  We need and thrive when we have a stable, trained, dedicated and long term work force.  Unfortunately, our local community has not been able to provide that!  As part of the H2A visa process, we have to advertise our farm worker positions in great detail for several weeks in our local newspapers and on the WI job center website. We also have to post that position in newspapers in three different states as required by the United Sates Department of Labor.  This year was typical of the other years.  We only had two local young men with farming experience apply.  We hired both to start on the following Monday.  Neither showed up or even had the courtesy to call and explain!  This is not just a tractor driving job, but tractor driving is necessary.  We would never be able to staff our farm with individuals from our local or surrounding areas.  In contrast, our crew members who come to us through the H2A visa program are dependable and, in situations such as this week, exceed our expectations.  This week we had a crew of guys who finished our sweet potato harvest in two days despite working the last 3 hours in a light rain with mud building up on their boots, wet and cold.  Nonetheless, they finished the harvest with pride!  The sweet potatoes are safely stored in the greenhouse and the curing process has begun! 

This is the part of the conversation where we need to bring the Zuniga, Cervantes and Rodriguez families into the conversation!  They started working on our farm in the mid-90’s and in 1998 we were able to bring them here on H2A visas (agricultural guest worker program).  While many of the country’s vegetable workers are “undocumented,” the H2A visa program is the only legal way for farm workers to work in the U.S. aside from permanent residency.  Starting in 1998 we set out to learn the complexities of the H2A visa program so our workers could come and go legally while working here.  This allowed them to cross the border and return legally if they needed to and it has proven very important to many crew members who have gone home for the birth of a child, to attend funerals, see loved ones who may be ill, attend their children’s graduations, etc.  Unfortunately it is a very difficult and agonizing process.  We started by paying $5,000 to an agency to do the paperwork, but quickly learned that we could do it better.  Kelly and I, with help from Omar, a lawyer who works in Mexico, have been successful in bringing our present work force back each year.  It is very expensive and complicated.  We have to provide free housing, transportation to and from Mexico as well as to and from work each day, and we cover all the visa fees.  Once we put all of the expenses associated with this program together, the reality is that these workers have a cost of about $16 per hour.  This makes it very hard to compete in the wholesale market as we are trying to be competitive with other growers who may be paying $8.00 per hour, use contract labor, hire illegally, etc.  It is a challenge, but our dedicated crew totally “gets it”.  They need to be fast and efficient so we can compete and have high quality food and please our CSA members and other customers.  They are invested in making our farm “work” so they can continue to have a long term job!

2016 Crew Picture

Our current crew is the best work force we have ever had.  It is easy to show them respect because they deserve and earn it and it’s a welcome change from other jobs they have had that require a “yes, sir” to their employer.  At HVF they enjoy the opportunity to improve our processes, improve efficiency so much that we can almost compete with the other lower cost labor options.  It is a constant challenge in the whole sale market place.  In our CSA, the same efficiencies have allowed us to continue to deliver $1200-$1500 value for less than $1000 for a weekly vegetable share. 

Most of you as CSA members are in the workforce or have been in the work force.  You work hard to provide for your families.  For your health, we hope you value and purchase organic food, household and body care products.  As you make your purchases, we encourage you to not forget the people that produce these products for you! 

We are one out of only a few farms/companies who seek to change the world and strive to care for a healthy environment with healthy people as well as a healthy “respect” for those who work very hard to make sure we all have wholesome food to eat.  Will you continue to support them and others like them with your purchases or will you choose to support a system that is built on a cheap price and keeps the story of the food and its origin a mystery?

Right now there is a bill called the “Ag Jobs” bill in the House of Representatives.  This program is being proposed as a replacement for the H2A visa program and would instead be called H2C.  As currently proposed it would be a boon to employers, but not for workers.  The cost of the labor would be less for us as employers, but our employees would not benefit from the program.  We’ll keep you posted as that bill progresses. 

Our country has a long history of “cheap” food which comes only by exploiting someone along the supply chain with “cheap” compensation. There has been a shortage of “cheap” labor because of increased border security and raids on farms and businesses to expose illegal employees.  So something like 30% of fruit and vegetable production has moved south of the border, including organic production! As we consider what we want the future of our food system to be, we can’t overlook the topic of labor.  We must consider the “real” cost of producing fruits and vegetables and compensate fairly.  Will enough consumers be willing to pay the real price of food?  This is just one of many issues that goes into each and every purchasing decision you make, and your choices do make a difference!

Manuel, Rafael, Jose Alejandro, and Alvaro Morales Peralta

As we continue to explore this topic as well as others that impact the future of our food supply, there are a few resources we’d like to recommend.  Food First just published a book entitled A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism:  Understanding the Political Economy of What We Eat, written by Eric Holt-Giménez.  We hope to receive our copy soon and will likely report more about the ideas in this book in the future.  Another book by Food First that you might be interested in reading is entitled Land Justice:  Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons in the United States.  This book is an anthology edited by Justine M. Williams and Eric Holt-Giménez.  Lastly, we recently watched a newly released documentary entitled, The Road to Ruin or the Path to Prosperity.  This movie was produced by Dr. Pedram Shojai and is currently available for free online screening.  You can find out more about this film and how to view it at Well.org.  The film takes a close look at how our individual choices as consumers can have a big impact on our world and our future.  It takes a look at some of the positive things companies and individuals are doing to point our future in a more positive direction and empowers each individual to look at their own choices and lifestyles to impact the world positively.  While this film does include a look at food systems, it goes beyond just food. 

Cover Crops 101….Keep it Covered!

By Farmer Richard

In our newsletter article two weeks ago entitled “Soil….Our Hope for a Climate Solution,” we briefly discussed the importance of using cover crops as a means of “regenerative farming” to not only build soil, but also as a means of capturing atmospheric carbon through plants and storing it in the soil.  This week we want to share more about what it means to plant cover crops on our farm and why we consider them to be an important part of our production system.  We’ve been using cover crops for over 40 years, mainly as a means of enhancing soil quality.  Only recently have we learned that cover crops are an important tool we can use to help mitigate climate change, both by reducing excessive atmospheric carbon as well as their role in making our soils more resilient to erratic weather conditions.  We know that soils with high organic matter hold water better in drought conditions and are able to drain better in times of excess moisture.  There are many benefits to including cover crops in farming systems and, from a farmer’s perspective, I can’t understand why every farmer wouldn’t want to plant them!

Cover Crop starting to grow just before winter settles in.

Leave no ground exposed for the winter!

Cover crops are crops we plant in our fields before and after our vegetable cash crops.  While we plant vegetable crops with the intention of harvesting them for sale, we seldom ever sell a cover crop.  There are other reasons why we plant cover crops.  Our farming system developed from the work of Rudolf Steiner, JI Rodale, and William Albrecht, early advocates of using cover crops in organic systems as a means of keeping the ground covered at all times. In theory, this is a basic principle of nature that allows us to use plants to capture solar energy from the sun to enrich the soil and prevent erosion.  We don’t like to have bare ground over the winter as it is very vulnerable to winter winds, etc and we don’t want to lose our precious topsoil!  Cover crops, in certain locations, also help to filter and purify water to keep our waterways clean, and enhance and encourage biodiversity of soil microorganisms that help us increase the organic matter in our soil as well as hold nutrients in place so they are available for the next vegetable crop that will go in that field.  While this all makes sense in theory, in practice it all comes down to management! 

Many of our long term crew members understand our goals with regards to planting cover crops, but in the heat of the busy late summer and fall harvest season when we need all available hands on deck to harvest, it’s easy to put planting cover crops on the back-burner

to plant another day when harvest is done.  However, our crew members understand planting cover crops is a priority and work diligently to make sure they get planted as soon as possible.  As soon as we finish harvesting a crop and are done with it for the season, we prepare the ground and plant the cover crop even if it’s just two beds out of the entire field!  Time is of the essence in the fall and our goal is to give the cover crop as many growing days as possible to get established before the temperatures drop and winter sets in.  Cover crops may also be planted into a standing vegetable crop at the time of last cultivation.  This allows us to have a soil-improving cover crop already growing in the shade of a cash crop, ready to take over as soon as the cash crop is done and any remaining portion of the plants are chopped!  We use this method in crops such as asparagus, strawberries and rhubarb.  In these scenarios, the cover crop not only enhances the soil by increasing organic matter, but the cover crop also helps to compete with weeds and forms a mulch of sorts when the cover crop plant “winter kills.” 

Japanese millet planted in between rows of strawberries.

We have two main cover crop mixes we plant.  One mix includes plants that will “winter kill.”  Even though we may get some frosty nights and cold temperatures late in the fall, the plants in this mix continue to grow, albeit slowly.  Once the ground freezes solid their growth stops.  This mix includes Japanese millet, oats, field peas, crimson clover and a few other clover varieties. The benefit to planting a cover crop that winter kills is that the plants will not grow again in the spring and we can prepare that ground early in the spring to plant vegetable crops since the cover crop residue will work into the soil very easy without a lot of green crop plant matter to get in the way. 

An Austrian Winter Peas cover crop, notice the
the white nitrogen nodules already forming on the roots this fall.

Our second mix consists of plants that can go dormant during the winter, and then resume growing again in the spring.  We plant this mix in fields that we won’t need to plant very early in the spring.  This allows us to leave the cover crop in the spring so it can grow and we can maximize its benefits.  We usually cut or chop the cover crop just before it goes to seed.  This mix consists of cereal rye, rye grass, mammoth red clover and hairy vetch.  In addition to serving as a sponge to take up available nutrients and hold them in place for next year’s crop, the rye also makes a good mulch that we cut and bale.  We take the bales off of one field and put them on another field to mulch in between beds of vegetable crops such as strawberries, tomatoes and garlic.  The clovers and vetch are able to take nitrogen from the air and fix it in the soil, which means we don’t have to apply fertilizer!  If we have excess rye grass beyond our needs for mulch, we may choose to bale some to use as feed for our cattle and goats through the winter or sometimes we just chop the crop back onto the field and work it into the soil.  This is referred to as a “green manure” crop.

Even our cold frame greenhouse gets a cover crop!

We have embraced this practice and are always looking for ways to improve the system.  Over the past few years we’ve increased the diversity of plants in our cover crop mixes.  While it is more complicated to make these mixes, we appreciate the plant diversity and the different beneficial attributes each plant brings to the mix.  We will continue to invest both time and resources into planting cover crops as the benefits of doing so far outweigh any management challenges we may juggle.  Maintaining and improving the health and resilience of our soils is crucial to our ability to continue to produce vegetables with maximum nutrient quality.  We also want to do our part to maintain clean waterways, prevent soil erosion and maximize CO₂ capture through our practices to do our part to mitigate climate change. 

As we continue our conversation about the future of our food system and what we want it to be, we feel it is important for you, the eater, to understand the growing system and practices we employ.  Not all food is created equal and it’s up to you to make an informed decision as to what type of farming practices you want your food purchases to support.  There are some conventional, chemical farmers who are trying to improve their soil quality with cover crops and are taking advantage of the assistance and incentives offered by the NRCS (Natural Resources and Conservation Services).  While this is good, it’s hard to make much positive headway when the cash crops being planted require chemical inputs that damage and degrade soil as well as cause other problems to the ecosystem and environment around them. 

We hope you too can appreciate the benefits of cover crops in an organic farming system and will choose to support local producers who prioritize integrating cover crops into their agricultural systems.  We’ll do our part, but we need the support of consumers to turn the tide and shape our food system into the future.  

Learning To Farm Better, Lessons From The Pepper Field

by Farmer Richard and Chef Andrea

When we start to see more color in the pepper field, we know we’re approaching a transition point in the season.  This usually happens towards the end of August or first part of September.  The days are getting shorter, nights are a bit more cool, and we start thinking about when the first frost might nip us. While we’re still harvesting many summer vegetables, we’re also starting to move into fall vegetables such as celeriac and winter squash.  In the midst of all the hustle and bustle, there are peppers.  They won’t take a direct frost, but we can cover them to protect them from frost damage or we can pick them really hard before the first frost and just hold them for a bit in storage.  Sometimes, after the first frost, we get lucky and have a few more weeks of warm weather which pushes any green peppers along so we can continue harvesting into the end of September or first of October!  From a culinary perspective, peppers handle the seasonal transition well.  They pair well with summer vegetables, but they also play nicely with fall and winter vegetables too.  They really do play an important part in our progression through the seasons and are a reliable mainstay in our Midwestern diets.

Our winter crew does a thorough,
top to bottom cleaning of our
greenhouses at the beginning of each year.

Peppers have a long history at Harmony Valley Farm.  Over the years we’ve grown a lot of different types, both hot and sweet.  Our pepper selection has evolved over the years, partly because of changes in what our customers want, but also as a result of changes within the seed industry and as we learn more about growing them.  In fact, peppers have taught us some very valuable farming lessons over the years.  Some years ago, we discovered what bacterial leaf spot (BLS) is and how devastating it can be when it infects your crop.  We thought we were carrying over the disease from one year to the next in our greenhouse.  We changed our greenhouse set-up protocol to include a more extensive cleaning process including sterilizing the inside of the greenhouse, benches, equipment, etc before we started planting.  We also started sterilizing all of our greenhouse flats with hopes that if the bacteria was living on any of these surfaces, we could kill it and stop the cycle.  Unfortunately, we still had the BLS and were still losing pepper crops as a result!  We still thought the disease might be being carried over in the greenhouse, so we partnered with a new grower who had just built a new greenhouse, had new flats, etc.  He agreed to grow our pepper transplants for us one year in his new house that had never seen a pepper plant.  Well, low and behold we still had the disease.  Fortunately, we were able to detect that the disease was on one specific pepper, the Gypsy pepper.  This is how we learned that the disease was seed borne, came to us on the surface of the seed and then spread throughout our pepper field.  We lost our pepper crops for at least three years while we were battling BLS.  We still employ very thorough cleaning and sterilizing procedures every year when we set up our greenhouses.  While this may not have made a difference with this disease, it is a good practice that is valuable for preventing other plant diseases so we chose to continue the practice.  We also learned about the importance of carefully selecting pepper varieties, specifically ones that have disease resistance and are tested for BLS to guarantee there is no disease present on the seed coat.  Additionally, we started sterilizing seeds that have the potential to carry seed borne disease.  This is done through a treatment involving hot water only and, while not always 100% reliable, is beneficial.

A field of young pepper plants. Notice the reflective
plastic mulch covering their raised beds!

Remember the corn earworm Richard wrote about in last week’s newsletter about the challenges of growing corn?  Well, that little pest is attracted to peppers as well.  The larvae burrow into the pepper and feed on the flesh.  One of the means we’ve found to deter this pest in peppers is by changing our planting system.  We now plant our peppers on raised beds covered with a reflective plastic mulch.  The reflection helps to deter and confuse the moth that lays the eggs on the peppers.  With this system, we also use buried drip tape that helps us deliver water and nutrients as needed at different stages of growth.  While this is a more costly system, the results have been good for us and we’ve had some outstanding pepper crops over the years! 

This orange Ukraine plant is loaded with immature peppers
that will turn bright orange-red in color when fully ripe.

Ripe orange Ukraine peppers ready to be picked.

Peppers have also taught us a thing or two about saving seeds and developing varieties.  The Orange Ukraine peppers in your box this week are grown from seed we’ve been saving since the mid to late 90’s.  Richard used to work on the board of directors for the Michael Fields Institute, an organization that supports organic agriculture and research.  The director of that organization at that time visited the Ukraine, saw this pepper and liked it.  He brought some of the seed back and shared it with Ruth Zinniker, a biodynamic grower in East Troy, Wisconsin, who then shared it with Richard.  Richard has grown it ever since, being careful to always keep some of the previous year’s seed as well as saving new seed every year.  One year Ruth had a crop failure and didn’t have any seed to save for the following year, so Richard gave some seed back to her so she could keep growing it.  To our knowledge, we are the only two growers in this country who have grown this pepper!  We like this variety because it produces very heavily and the plants are pretty resistant to many diseases.  The fruit is similar to a bell pepper, except it is smaller with a pointy end instead of a blocky bottom.  When ripe, the fruit is more orange-red than a red bell pepper, but is equally as sweet if not more.  This fruit also has a thick wall which makes it a good choice for roasting! 

We save our own seed for our mini-sweet peppers.
There are usually only 4-6 seeds in each pepper!

This is not the only pepper variety we save seeds from.  It’s probably been at least 15 years or so since we started saving our own seed for mini-sweet peppers.  One of our longtime CSA members, David, was helping us out at a CSA fair in Madison in early March and he told us about this little sweet pepper from Mexico that they were selling at the Willy Street Co-Op.  He pegged it as the next hot thing in the vegetable world and encouraged us to check it out and see if we could grow it.  On his way home from Madison that day, Richard stopped at the Willy Street Co-op and bought a package.  When he got home he extracted all the seeds (which is not that many when you’re talking about this pepper) and planted them in the greenhouse.  It took several years to build up the seed stock to the point where he had enough seed to grow this pepper in volume.  In the early days, this pepper was only available out of Mexico in the winter months.  When we first started growing it, we were selling large volumes both in our region as well as shipping pallets to Colorado, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and even California!   The commercial seed company picked up on this vegetable’s success eventually and one company released seed for a variety called “Yummy.”  We bought some seed and grew it side-by-side with our mini-sweet pepper.  We thought it was pretty similar until we tasted it.  The difference in flavor was dramatic!  Our variety was by far a superior tasting pepper and we still consider it the best tasting and sweetest pepper we grow.  Despite the painstaking task of extracting just a few seeds from each pepper, we decided to continue to save our own seed and have not bought another commercially produced snack pepper seed since then.  The downside of this story, at least for us, is that the mini -sweet pepper market is now saturated since more growers are now growing the commercial varieties.  Over the past few years many of our markets have faded and we’ve had to cut back on the size of our planting.  We used to get a premium price for our mini-sweet peppers, but now that there are so many peppers on the market, the price is more volatile and can be pretty low at some points in the season.  Regardless of these changes in the marketplace, we continue to grow our original variety for our CSA members and our wholesale partners that know our pepper!

HVF pepper field circa 2012: One of the
most beautiful pepper fields in HVF history!

Yes, peppers have definitely taught us a lot over the years.  We continue to learn more lessons from this crop from year to year and it continues to be one of our favorite crops to grow.  This year has been a somewhat challenging year for our pepper field.  The plants were transplanted in the field when it was still pretty cool, but they did ok, put down roots and started to grow.  The field was looking pretty good when we had that rain event the end of July.  Unfortunately the low end of the field died out because the plants were sitting in standing water for too long.  The drainage for this field got backed up because of the silt that washed into an adjacent field and backed everything up.  Unfortunately we lost some of our hot peppers as well as some sweet peppers.  The remainder of the field is still looking good and producing well.  We have started to see some spots forming on some fruit, specifically the red Italian frying peppers.  This is not uncommon to see in a wet year and/or when peppers are fully ripe.  The pepper might look just fine when we put it in your box, but a spot could start to form after you get it.  Watch your peppers closely and if you see this starting to happen, cut the spot away and eat the remainder of the pepper as soon as possible! 

We are hoping to have several more weeks of peppers to include in your boxes, however if this cool weather continues it is highly likely the first frost will come soon.  We’re preparing to lay out remay (field blankets) to protect peppers as well as other vulnerable crops such as eggplant and basil from frost damage.   If we’re lucky, the pepper field will still be alive and well at our Fall Harvest Party coming up soon on September 24.  This is usually one of our favorite stops along the field tour as members get to pick and eat as much as you want!  Hope to see you there!

Children of all ages enjoy picking
peppers at our fall Harvest Party!

Where's the Corn??!?!

By Farmer Richard

Before and after cultivating pictures. 

We have planted four different plantings of sweet corn, with the first on April 28.  With each planting we plant two different varieties of corn, each with different maturity dates so we can get two weeks of corn from each planting for a total harvest window of eight weeks!  Unfortunately, things don’t always work out as planned.  Corn needs warm soil to germinate and if you think back to April, it was a cold, wet spring.  We picked a warm day, 65°F, when the forecast was for a second warm, dry day to follow.   We planted varieties with good cold soil vigor and only planted the seeds about ½ inch deep with hopes that the sun would warm the top of the soil enough to get the seeds going.  The first 24 hours are the most important to start the germination process.  One variety germinated ok, the second variety produced very few sprouts and wasn’t enough of a crop to keep.  Well, the first planting didn’t go so well, so the second time out, still cool, we replanted part of the ground we had planted the first time and, again, planted shallow.  This time it turned dry and the seed germinated unevenly over the course of two weeks after a small rain.  Ok, well that’s better than nothing, but then we had a wet period that prevented cultivation and weeds became a problem!  Thankfully, the third planting came up nicely and we had dry weather to cultivate it, so no weeds!  We followed this one with our fourth and final planting.  We decided to make it a larger one to try to make up for the poor early ones.  Even though the first two plantings weren’t that great, we chose to fence them anyway to keep the critters out.  So then what happened?  Well, July 19^th happened and we had a severe weather event that sent water running across the middle of the field and took out the fence and much of the corn. 

After the rain, there wasn’t much left to do except clean up the fence.  We left the corn, fully exposed, for the raccoons as a sort of peace offering that they could have as much as they wanted from this field, but please stay out of the later plantings!  The last two plantings that are in a different field looked good initially, but after 8 plus inches of rain the plants started to yellow.  The excessive moisture rotted the main tap root leaving only shallow side roots, collaterals, supporting the plants!  The dry end of the field fared a little better and will produce some ears this week.  The remainder of the field is delayed and the quality of the corn is questionable as the ears haven’t filled out properly.  Nonetheless, we put up a 7-foot high fence with an electric tape running around the base of it.  The height of the fence will deter the deer and the low electric tape will keep the raccoons and other short, 4-legged creatures out of the field.  We also put up some owl and hawk decoys as well as bird scare eye balloons and reflective streamers to deter the birds.  Aside from playing some music and having a dance party, I’m not sure what else we can do!  Why have we gone to such extensive measures to protect our corn?  Well, it’s because we have a reputation amongst our local wildlife for having excellent sweet corn.  Unfortunately this is information that is passed on from generation to generation and thus, it is a never-ending, yet peaceful battle for us.

So our last field of corn is protected with all the bells and whistles to protect it from raccoons, deer, birds, and even bears!   But wait, there’s one more pest.   It’s the dreaded corn earworm!!  We monitor corn earworm presence by putting up a pheromone trap in the field to attract the corn earworm moths.   They migrate from the south and only arrive later in the season.  The female moths lay eggs on the new silk on the ears of corn and then 4-5 days later the eggs hatch and a worm emerges.  Conveniently, they are in perfect position to infiltrate the ear in their search for something to eat.  It is very difficult to combat this pest with any type of spray because you only have a small 2-day window of opportunity to kill the worm after it hatches and before it enters the ear of corn.  Once it’s in the ear, there’s nothing else that can be done.  So I use this pheromone trap to help me monitor the presence of the moths so we can try to time our spray applications with the best chance of killing the newly hatched worms.  I hadn’t found any moths up until last week when I found 12 corn earworm moths in the trap in one night!  That is the most I’ve ever caught in 40 years of using pheromone traps!  So where does that leave our last and best hope for sweet corn?  Only time will tell.

There was a time when huge flocks of bats emerging from caves in the south intercepted the moth migration and devastated their numbers.  Any moths that did make it to our region would be taken care of by our local bat populations.  Sadly, bat populations are being decimated by “white nose syndrome” brought on by a compromised immune system from eating insects that are contaminated with neonicotinoid insecticides used extensively in modern, conventional agriculture.  This leaves us facing a potentially severe earworm invasion!  We do have two organically approved insecticides that we can use, BT (bacillus thuringiensis) and Entrust.  Alejandro has been very diligent working late on Saturday night to time the application just right and try to coat the silks and infect the worms before they enter the ear.  Neither of these insecticides are systemic.  Conventional growers use systemic insecticides, such as neonicotinoids and GMO traits, that poison all parts of the corn plant thereby killing the earworm no matter where it is on the plant or in the ear.  But I don’t want that in my ear of corn!  I do not care to eat systemically poisoned corn!  Our experience is that it is impossible to kill every earworm with organic sprays.  We are doing our best, but if you find a worm on the tip of the corn in a future week, we hope you will cut off the tip and enjoy the remainder of the ear which I guarantee will be delicious.  It may be the best corn you have ever eaten and will be the best we can do for this year!

Well, battling corn critters is not the only thing we’ve been doing around the farm, so I’d like to share a few other farm and crop updates.  Overall it has been a cool summer!  Beautiful weather to work in with highs around 75°F and just a few days creeping into the 80’s, but nothing higher than that and cool nights dipping down to 50-60°F.  The eggplant has done well and the peppers look great and are ripening to orange and red.  The tomatoes, on the other hand, have been slow to ripen and the second planting may not ripen at all before we see the first fall frost!  Yes, we are close to the first fall frost which is still predicted for around September 15.  It’s been a few years since we’ve picked green tomatoes before a frost, but this just might be the year.  Don’t worry, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Fried green tomato sandwiches are delicious!

Carnival Squash still on the vine.

The sweet potatoes look very good and have set on many tubers that just need some heat to “size-up.”  The jicama also has some nice roots and could be a good crop if the moisture stays steady to avoid growth cracks!  We will likely be harvesting some of the winter squash before too long, so we’ve been working diligently to get all of the onions and shallots trimmed and put into the cooler for long term storage so we can use our greenhouses for the squash! 

Salad Mix planting

While many farmers are done planting, we still have several more weeks of plantings remaining.  Earlier this week we beat the rain to do our final planting of fall turnips and daikon radish as well as our weekly plantings which included our first planting of lettuce for fall salad mix!  In addition to harvest, planting, etc, we are working on removing trees and repairing a major drainage ditch that dumped silt and rock onto one of our fields during the weather event at the end of July.  It’s quite an undertaking, but I think we’re making progress and we’re hopeful it will keep the water contained should we have another big weather event in the future.  

We believe climate change is real, so we’re not wondering “If” it will happen again but rather we are preparing for when it happens again!  We may not see the extended warm fall we have seen for several years, but we will do our best to respond to the extremes, both hot and cold!  We hope you will be understanding as crops continue to come in.  Like it or not, we’re in this together and these are the realities of farming this year.  Despite the challenges, we are reminded every day of the bounty of food our resilient fields continue to produce.  We are truly blessed and grateful for the opportunity to share this summer bounty of vegetables with you this week.   

Attitude!

By Farmer Richard

This week we are continuing our on-going conversation about “the future of our food,” a discussion that  came to the forefront in our newsletters as a result of the buyout of Whole Foods Market by Amazon. The last article in this series was entitled, “How’s the Weather” and was published two weeks ago.  That article served as our first-hand account of our experiences with erratic weather patterns and being the person “downstream” from members of the community who are making poor choices on their land that impact others.  In our case erosion from a neighboring property washed down into our valley causing our drainage systems to back up resulting in crop losses and a big mess to clean up.  I concluded my last article with -“What’s next?  We keep talking.  Brainstorming.  We need solutions to these issues, we need changes to policy, we need to figure out the course our future will take.  We’re back to the ‘future of our food.’  I once again, encourage you to be part of these conversations so we, as a community, can proactively decide our future.  There are many things that could be done!  But, they take money, direction, leadership, ‘political will,’ regulation, incentives and education.  Firstly we need understanding, cooperation and the right attitude.”

This week I’d like to revisit that concept of “having the right attitude.”  Some years ago I had the privilege of visiting many farms in Europe over a month stay, both organic farmers and conventional farmers in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, England and France.  I learned so much and made many friends on that trip, but what struck me and made a lasting impression on me was their ATTITUDE!  The farmers had a positive acceptance of government regulations meant for the common good of the community.The consumers also had a desire to maintain and support their local, small farm economy.  The farmers were producing local food that had its own unique terroir, and within the communities the farmers were thriving and everyone was well fed.  For example, the Swiss value the small goat farms that dot the Swiss Alps, each making their own cheese to bring to the village to sell.  They, as a society, made the decision many years ago to preserve those small farms and they do so with government subsidies and regulation. 

I remember a conversation I had with a conventional hydroponic pepper and eggplant grower in Holland.  He was forced by regulation to install a recycling system for his greenhouse fertilizer solution before the water could be discharged into the canal.  He didn’t like being regulated, but all his neighbors shared the same situation and they decided to share in the investment for the technology to reverse an old practice that had led to fish death in the canals.  Because they all had to make the change, and the consumers wanted and supported the change, his attitude was that it was the “right thing to do.” Even though it cost him some money and effort, he had the support of other farmers and the consumers to do what was best for the big picture.  Plus, he acknowledged his previous practices were causing harm to the ecosystem and he too wanted to see the herons return to the canals with the fish.  It’s the right thing to do! 

In the recent Growing for Market publication (June/July 2017), there was an article written by a former vegetable grower and current student at Michigan State University pursuing a Master’s degree with a focus on organic weed control.  His name is Sam Hitchcock Tilton.  Earlier this year he, along with several other individuals from the Midwest, had the opportunity to travel to Europe to learn more about weed control methods.  However, despite all he learned about weed control, the thing that “stands out most brightly are the people that I met and the agricultural systems they are a part of....Just as the soil contains its own myriad characters and relationships, water vapor, bacteria, and worms, that all play interconnected roles to create fertility, so too I found the world of European vegetable growing to be peopled by many levels and relationships.  The entity with the biggest effect on all the others….was always the governments.  In each country the government played a large role in determining how farming is practiced.”  Sam also experienced that similar European attitude I experienced over thirty years ago!    Sam goes on to state “Whereas here we prize individual freedom and often put it before proper stewardship of our shared resources, in the European countries I visited the opposite seemed to be true—communal resources like water, soil, and the social fabric of rural communities are protected, often to the detriment of individual freedom.”

Farmer Richard standing in our field of cover crops!

Across Europe you find many examples of cultures that spend public tax dollars to preserve a food system that they deem important.  It is not about who has the most money to bid for a property or have the upper hand.  In fact, in Sam’s article he explains that renting and owning farmland in Europe is regulated by the government, so they decide who can rent land to farm.  While this may seem unfair, it actually works in the favor of both the farmer and the community as a whole.  In an example he uses in his article, Sam tells the story of a Dutch farmer he spoke with.  This farmer explained that “the Dutch government regulates long-term agricultural leases in order to encourage stability for those farmers who rent their entire farm, whereas if you are renting some fields for a few seasons it is your business…I was told that in the Netherlands his long term lease means that (he) can stay on his farm until he is 65, and that kicking him off before then would be a hard process.”  Additionally, this Dutch farmer also seemed happy when he explained to Sam how closely some farming practices are regulated.  For example, to prevent erosion and nutrient leaching no sandy fields are allowed to lie bare over the winter, they must all have a cover crop otherwise the grower is fined.  (The farmer) didn’t seem to mind this as he thought it was just good farming that protected the water and soil of his country.”

 Additionally, in Europe governments pay incentives to new farmers and organic farmers and insist they have a farming degree and gain appropriate experience.  They encourage education and support their up and coming farmers by setting them up for success.  On the flip side, the consumers are also willing to support their local farmers.  It’s not just about the farmers’ attitudes, the consumers are an important piece of this puzzle as well.

When we consider the attitudes I experienced as did Sam, it is clear that we have a very different attitude in this country!  For several years there has been an “incentive” from USDA to pay farmers to have a buffer strip between field and waterways.  The purpose of the buffer strip is to prevent erosion and filter out much of the fertilizer and chemicals running off of conventional corn and soybean fields so they do not pollute our waterways. What a great idea!  Farmers can be paid extra to plant that buffer to pollinator, bird and wildlife habitat!  Another great idea!  But very few, only the “do the right thing” farmers, are taking advantage of this incentive. 

Portion of our tool room,
organized with Dutch influence.

As I discussed in a previous article, the prevailing attitude in this country is more self-centered and often lacks consideration for the impact personal choices will have on shared resources and the greater community.  Attitude, culture, money and politics, they all go together.  I admire the European cultures.  When I visited my Dutch relatives, I loved their appreciation of good, local food and their attention to details.  Every tool was hung in its place, every outbuilding, even old thatched roof sheds had not one missing pane of glass in the whole country!  They are civilized and take pride in their work as well as their community.  Certainly they have similar challenges to ours, there are pressures from multi-nationals, etc, but they are a democracy and the majority has managed to hold on to their culture.  On the other hand, we have little culture to “hang-on” to!  I would not call Velveeta and Spam a cultural agricultural heritage we should defend!  Unfortunately any cultural heritage that we had, the self-sufficient homesteads that tamed the prairies, and then lost to the “dust bowl,” are gone.  The work ethic of the farm families, the community “threshing bees,” the cooperation among neighboring farmers, mostly gone! 

But there are some positive examples of attitude in this country as well.  Take our neighboring state of Minnesota as an example.  They have made it a regulation to put in buffer strips with cash incentives for farmers.  Despite the fact that the major farm organization who also sells ag chemicals and has massive lobbyists says, “You cannot tell us how to farm ‘our’ land,” Minnesota seems to have decided it’s “the right thing to do” and made it a law.

The USDA has a program called SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education) that is part of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.  The purpose of this program is to help advance farming systems that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities by providing education grants as well as conducting research and conducting outreach designed to improve agricultural systems.  In their recent Summer 2017 newsletter they featured several different grant recipients that have gone on to produce positive results in their community. In one example, a grant was used to help connect Michigan beef producers, local processors, distributors, and retailers in the Traverse City area in order to meet the Traverse city’s goal to source 20% of their food within a 100-mile radius by 2020.  As a result of this funding, beef producers have been trained in pasture-based grazing systems for raising beef cattle and they are seeing positive results in both the quality of the products they are producing as well as improving their land and quality of life.”

Our Red Angus Cattle enjoying time grazing in their paddock!

The further we go in these discussions, the complexity of our tangled food system and our understanding of it starts to unravel.  The individual attitudes of farmers, consumers, politicians, biotech advocates, etc are shaping our food system now and into the future.  In my next article, I’d like to explore more of the issues pertaining to this concept of “Feeding the World.”  I”ll share some of my own thoughts as well as those posed by Food First, a non-profit organization that researches, defends and develops policy related to food issues including food justice, food sovereignty , and food democracy.  In one of their recent newsletters they posed this question:  “Can we feed the world without destroying it?”  In closing, I continue to encourage you to consider your place in shaping our food system for the future and welcome your thoughts and input into this conversation.  

"How's the Weather?"

by Farmer Richard

This is a continuation of our series of newsletters on the subject of “the future of our food” as we discuss what kind of food system we want going into the future.  This week I’d like to discuss a topic that’s always on our minds, but even more so over the past week….WEATHER.

Weather has been with us forever!  In my case I only have 60 years of weather memory.  Starting on the South Dakota plains, with winter blizzards when we went to the neighbors’ house a mile away with Smoky and Barney pulling the bob sled for a Saturday night taco and card game evening.  A night when only a team of horses could have made the trip.  And then there was the ice storm of ’59 when a heavy buildup of ice snapped off power poles for miles.  We were without electricity for two weeks.  My brother Dennis, my Mom and I milked our cows by hand while Dad was off helping the electric linemen put in new poles.  I know something about weather, I’ve farmed around weather for most of a lifetime.  Sometimes it is too wet and sometimes too dry.  We have learned to farm around it.  We watch weather forecasts day and night and plan accordingly!  We make the absolute most of dry days to keep planting schedules and do our weed control.

Early spring onion field on raised beds

Twenty five years ago we converted to farming with a system of raised beds so excess moisture immediately drains to the wheel tracks and off the fields.  We watched the water run during rain storms so we could observe how it moved and then made ditches and berms to protect fields and drain off excess water.  We built high organic matter in the soil that allows it to be more resilient, absorbing  water and at the same time draining well so it can be worked very soon after a rain.  When it was dry, we irrigated.  We learned to use a variety of different irrigation methods including buried drip irrigation lines to efficiently deliver water and nutrients to plant roots without watering the soil surface and germinating new weeds. 

Last year we built a new dike to help prevent rising waters.

We are very good farmers and have consistently raised good to excellent crops through a variety of weather variations that we considered “normal.”  But over the past ten years, that has changed for the worst!  For example, lets look at the history of the Bad Axe River watershed we live and farm in.  Human beings have lived and survived here for 10,000 years, but farmed for only the last 1,500 years.  European settlers have farmed here for less than 200 years.  The Bad Axe River would periodically flood over its banks and damage the rich valley farmland.  So starting in the 50’s a series of dams were built on the North and South forks of the Bad Axe River to hold excess water and prevent flooding.  The dam that is 5 miles above our farm is the Runge Hollow Dam.  It successfully ended flood events until 2007 when we had what was called a “100 year flood,” with an unprecedented 18 inches of rainfall in 24 hours that overflowed the dam and flooded our valley crops. We survived life and limb and came through economically with the help of many friends and customers.  Then it happened again ten months later.  We had another “100 year flood.”  We survived again and went on to have several good years, got out of debt, and then had another “100 year flood” last fall, September 2016.  We really needed a good year to recover from the losses of that last event, but here we go again just 10 months later! 

A fallen tree on our landlord's storage shed!

 Is our climate changing?  Absolutely!!  We have experienced four “100 year” weather events in less than 10 years!  The overall average temperature has risen a few degrees, ie “global warming” has brought us some late, warm falls and some earlier springs which were welcomed by us.  However, those few degrees in the ocean leads to melting the polar ice caps and may not be welcomed by coastal dwellers in the future.  But what we are struggling with now is the extreme, more intense storm events and weather patterns!  What does that look like for us? 

Cleaning up fallen trees & branches
on field roads Thursday morning

Good, healthy soil can absorb up to one inch of rain in an hour with minimal run-off.  We have recently witnessed three inches of steady rain over a six hour period with minimal problems.  But our recent four inches of rain that fell in less than an hour followed by another four inches just six hours later caused huge problems!  Eight inches of rain on every square foot of field at a rate of two or more inches per hour is “intense.”  Our raised beds with five rows of crop, lost the outside two rows!  The water could not drain away fast enough and fields looked like a “lake” for a time because our valley drainage systems were overwhelmed with the huge amounts of water and debris running from the surrounding woods and hillsides.  When I wrote last week’s newsletter about making choices and considering your impact downstream, I had no idea what we were in for before last week was over. In last week’s newsletter I wrote “Sometimes we are the person being impacted downstream and other times we are the one with the ability to impact what’s happening downstream.  Yes our choices do matter and the farming practices you choose to support can make a significant impact on our local health and environment as well as the health and environment downstream.  At the end of the day, we are all a community and we all have choices.”  Unfortunately, last week we were the downstream recipients who paid for the poor choices and irresponsible actions of a farmer on the ridge above us who chose to clear steep hillsides so he could plant corn.  

Farmer Richard making use of his bulldozer to
clean silt and debris off a field.

When the rains came, there was significant erosion off those hillsides that washed down into one of the dry wash ditches that is supposed to direct water from the hillsides and carry it to the river.  The rocks, silt, soil and sand that washed off the ridge top came down fast with the momentum of the water driving it.  It clogged up the dry wash and came close to taking out our neighbor’s solar panels and house basement.  The debris covered Newton road with silt, soil and debris that was one foot deep.  Because the water and debris didn’t follow the intended path, it spilled over the road and onto one of the fields we farm covering half of a field of small beets intended for fall harvest.  In other places, the erosion and volume of water running off the hillsides took out our five fences that contain our animals and cross our small creek.  After the first 4 inches of rain, our crew put back fences to contain the pigs, working well until after dark only to do it all over again in the morning.  There were numerous trees that fell and broke off throughout the valley as a result of the high winds including a large one on our neighbor’s property that took down a power line.  Wednesday evening Juan, Andrea and I got two generators in place and running so we could generate our own power to run the essentials until power was restored 24 hours later.  We kept greenhouses inflated so they were rigid enough to withstand the high winds of the second storm that came through in the middle of the night.  We were also able to keep our coolers and ice machines running as well as the water pump so we could continue to wash and pack vegetables on Thursday as we tried to fill our wholesale orders and prepare to pack CSA boxes on Friday.  Did we say intense and violent storms? 

The goats really like the fallen trees!

In the days that have followed, we have had six skillful young men working full-time replacing fences, cutting downed trees, clearing silt from river crossings and fields. We lost many hundreds of trees, snapped off from tornado like winds.  We can salvage some firewood and maybe hopefully sell some wood products to help contribute towards the cost to clean all this up!  The wind driven rain and the hail the storm brought with it has shredded the leaves on many crops, leaving them vulnerable for leaf disease.  The water-logged soils  have already led to some plants dying.  Brassicas in particular (kale, collards, broccoli, etc) do not like “wet feet,” meaning their root system cannot stand in water for extended periods of time.  We’ve seen many of these sensitive plants wilt, die and add to our losses.  In our past experience we find that waterlogged plants and crops that go through wet, humid days may look fine, but the shelf life may be shorter and they may suddenly start to rot or break down.  So, please be patient, observant and understanding.  Please do your part to store your vegetables properly, keep your eye on them and eat them in a timely manner so you don’t lose them.  We will never intentionally pack a poor quality vegetable, but what may look fine when it goes in the box may not look fine when you take it out or go to use it several days later. 

Replacing fencing panels washed out by the swift current.

What’s next?  We keep talking.  Brainstorming.  We need solutions to these issues, we need changes to policy, we need to figure out the course our future will take.  We’re back to the “future of our food.”  I, once again, encourage you to be part of these conversations so we, as a community, can proactively decide our future.  There are many things that could be done!  But, they take money, direction, leadership, “political will,” regulation, incentives and education.  Firstly, we need understanding, cooperation and the right attitude.