The SoilMobile...Come see it for yourself!

By Andrea Yoder

     We’re moving into that point in the season that Farmer Richard likes to refer to as the “the crack between two worlds,” otherwise known as fall. Summer crops are winding down, fall crops are starting to come in and before long we’ll be harvesting the final crops for winter storage. This is also the time when Farmer Richard makes it a priority to “put the fields to bed for the winter.”  This means applying generous amounts of compost and planting cover crops. So why is this such a priority?  First of all, we don’t like to leave fields vulnerable to erosion by leaving them barren over the winter and the cover crops help keep the soil in place. The other reason cover crops and compost are high priority is because they help replenish and build the soil. The combination of cover crops and applications of compost are vital to ensuring our soils remain rich, full of biodiversity, and have bioavailable nutrients in place for next year’s crop.  Soil is nothing to take for granted…it is literally our life source, and it directly impacts our survival. So, as we set out, year after year, to grow food for you and your family, we take great care to ensure we are doing what we can to enrich and care for our soil. We admit, we’re still learning. Yes, after over 40 years of farming Richard is still learning about how to care for our soil! The bottom line is not all soil is created equally, and it’s just one more reason why it’s so important that we all understand where our food comes from, how the soil it grows in is cared for and form that connection between our food choices, our health and well-being and the environment.
     Our Harvest Party is coming up on September 25, and we’d like to introduce you to one of our friends who will be joining us for the day, Sandy Syburg. You’ll know Sandy when you see him…he’ll be the guy with a smile on his face talking about soil, compost, microbes…oh, and he’ll be standing beside a big bus with a purple cow on the back, a farm scene painted on the side, and quotes about soil written all over the outside of the bus.  Sandy is the President/Co-Founder of Purple Cow Organics, located in Wisconsin, and what I just described to you is Sandy’s SoilMobile. We have worked with Purple Cow for several years now. They make all of the potting soil we use to grow our transplants in the greenhouse and for the past two years we’ve purchased compost from them by the semi-truck load to put on our fields in the fall. We’ve invited Sandy to come to the Harvest Party with his SoilMobile, not because he’s looking to sell you potting soil or compost, but because he has a passion for soil and wants to help others learn more about how important it is for all of us…not just farmers! Sandy’s SoilMobile is actually a repurposed school bus that runs on alternative fuel. 2015 was declared the “International Year of Soils,” and Sandy had the idea to use the SoilMobile as a tool to bring attention to this important topic. Sandy toured around the Midwest in this bus with an educational mission to share this important message:  “The key to life as we know it is healthy soil, and if a nutrient is missing from soil it is not in the food we eat. Plants take nutrients from soil, and our soils are often depleted of the nutrients that plants, animals and humans need. Therefore our soil needs to be rejuvenated.”  Among Sandy’s messages: … “instead of loading soil with chemical fertilizers to make up for nutrients, microbes and organic matter lost over time, replace them organically. It can take hundreds of years to create just a small plot of healthy soil and less than two decades to destroy its usefulness. With soil under siege, everyone should be involved in learning and implementing ways to improve this vital ingredient in growing healthy plants and food.”  Sandy’s message isn’t just for farmers, he’ll talk to anyone! Urban gardeners, community gardens, basically anyone who is interested in growing healthy plants and/or eating healthy food.
     I had the opportunity to talk to Sandy last week to find out more about how he became so passionate about soil. I found out that Sandy actually has many interests and a whole hosts of projects that spin off of each other. To start off, Sandy is actually a “farm boy.”  He grew up on his grandparents’ farm. His grandmother had a 3 acre garden and grew vegetables for the five families that lived on the farm. Sandy’s job was to manage the compost pile under his grandmother’s direction. He remembers her talking passionately about “feeding the soil” and considered it criminal to let any organic residue go to waste. In fact, he remembers his grandmother seeing someone burning leaves in their yard….she did not approve. She sent her grandchildren to pick up the leaves and bring them back to their compost pile. She also referred to hauling manure as “hauling sunshine.”  Thus the concept and practice of making compost and respecting the integrity of soil was something instilled in Sandy’s mind even as a youth. Little did he know that it would become a major part of his life’s work!
     Sandy has been making compost since the mid 80’s. Over the years he’s been involved with promoting and developing the practice of composting.  In the early 90’s there were only a handful of compost facilities in Wisconsin. Over the years this picture has changed and now there are over 200 composting facilities in Wisconsin. In 1993 the DNR banned yard materials from going to the landfill. In 2005-2006, Sandy worked with the state to write new guidelines for composting. This is great because we are no longer sending usable natural products to the landfill. Instead, these residuals are being converted into usable nutrients. As Sandy says..“It’s a no-brainer! Why wouldn’t you allow nature to capture nitrogen in the air instead of having to buy it or use synthetic fertilizer.”
     As we concluded our talk, Sandy reminded me that everything is so connected. We are at the intersection of local food and an understanding about how, where and by whom it was grown. Farmers are learning more profitable and sustainable ways of farming by managing nutrients differently and returning carbon to the soil. Consumers are becoming more ecologically aware and we hope more are becoming interested in the connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our food.
     In case you haven’t noticed a theme in our newsletters recently….we’d like to encourage each of you to build and form a strong connection with the source of where your food is being grown and learn more about how it is grown. We hope to see you at the Harvest Party!

The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson

Photo Borrowed from Author Kristin Ohlson's Website

A Book Review By Bobbie Harte

     If you’re reading this newsletter, you already know many of the benefits of organic farming. You intuit that organic practices make tastier food, encourage biodiversity, and promote clean air and water. What you may not be aware of is that soil is connected to climate change, that land mismanagement contributes to 30 percent of the carbon emissions that enter the atmosphere, or that certain farming and land use practices may even reverse global warming. Striking the perfect chord of reality and optimism, Kristin Ohlson’s 2014 book, The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet, explores just that.
     In college, I chose Botany 101 to fulfill a five-credit science requirement. I like plants and I wanted to learn more about them, but the class was a disappointment.  We covered the biology and chemistry of photosynthesis, and we grew plants in milk containers and exposed them to different kinds of light. Sadly, I don’t remember anything else. What I really wanted from that class was something like Ohlson’s book: an exploration of the complexity of the soil and its connections to all of life. The book begins with a discussion of carbon farming and goes into the science of soil and photosynthesis. Ohlson effectively presents complicated scientific ideas in a digestible way, and she seamlessly shifts from details to the big picture. With her engaging writing style, Ohlson takes us to visit scientists, farmers and ranchers from Zimbabwe to North Dakota to Western Australia, as well as urban landscape managers in New York, Portland and Boston.
     Healthy soil prevents droughts and floods, purifies water, grows healthy food and sequesters carbon.  Soil is a collection of fungi, worms, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, microarthropods, earthworms, beetles, voles and more. How many microorganisms are in a cup of healthy soil? “More than all the humans who have ever lived,” Ohlson writes.
     Working together, those living things create healthy soil. “Weirdly, we’ve all been schooled in the notion that plants are takers, removing nutrients from the soil and leaving it poorer,” Ohlson writes. “But when plants are allowed to work with their partners in the soil, they’re givers. They feed carbon exudates to the community of bacteria and fungi to keep them thrumming with life and pulling mineral nutrients from the bedrock as well as from particles of sand, silt, and clay….When the predator soil organisms eat the bacteria and fungi, all those nutrients are released near the plant. There’s always enough, unless human or some other force messes up the system.”

Mulch and cover crops can be an alternative
means to amend and protect soil integrity

     How can humans mess it up? Chemical fertilizer is one way. Scientists determined long ago that nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus are essential for plant growth, and most chemical fertilizers are a combination of the three. But scientists have discovered more and more essential nutrients, and healthy soil is not a simple recipe with a list of ingredients and instructions for their combination. Plants obtain the minerals they need through complicated interactions with soil microorganisms. “Even after tilling,” Ohlson writes, “soil microorganisms will still be in the soil, but they aren’t likely to provide these varied nutrients to the plants once the chemical fertilizers are applied. Simply put, these applications interfere with one of nature’s great partnerships. By the terms of this partnership, plants …distribute carbon sugars through their roots to the microorganisms in exchange for nutrients. Fertilizer disrupts this pay-as-you-go system.”  Putting nutrients at a plant’s roots via fertilizer means the plant doesn’t have to give up any carbon to get them, and the soil organisms can’t get enough food, says Ohlson, quoting USDA microbiologist Kristine Nichols. “Without their carbon meal, the mycorrhizal fungi can’t grow and stretch their strands of carbon through the soil. They and the other soil microorganisms can’t produce the glues that fix carbon in the soil and build the aggregates that hold water. They go dormant and given enough stress, can die. At that point, the soil is so depleted of life and structure that a farmer can’t get a decent crop without chemical fertilizers….” If the relationship that makes nutrients available to plants is absent, then farmers must add more and more fertilizer each year to maintain or increase yields, which in turn creates a new set of problems. The nutrients that the plants cannot absorb runs off into waterways, where it causes algal growth. This depletes the water’s oxygen which kills aquatic life.
     As I read this book, again and again I marveled at the interconnectedness of all living things. In 2015, Robert Waldinger gave a TED Talk about the 75-year Harvard study on human happiness. Waldinger is the fourth director of this study which began with 724 men in 1938. Using questionnaires, medical records, blood tests, brain scans, interviews and more, the study continues today with 60 of the remaining men, and has expanded to include wives and some 2,000 children of the original participants. So what has the Harvard study uncovered about the secrets to human happiness? People who are more connected to family, friends and community live longer, Waldinger says. “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.” This was also the idea that stood out to me most in Ohlson’s excellent book. The key to health is relationships, whether human or microbial. Our future depends on our ability to nurture relationships, and we need to nurture them everywhere.

Note from Farmers Richard & Andrea: Soil is one of the most important components of what we do and is an essential part of life for all of us. Even after all these years of farming we continue to learn more about soil and how to care for it…..and are continually amazed by the complexity of its system. We hope you’ll consider reading this book to gain even just a glimpse into the world of soil and continue to learn along with us. In next week’s newsletter, we’ll introduce you to Sandy Syburg. Sandy is the owner of Purple Cow Organics, the company that makes our potting soil mix for the greenhouse as well as compost for our fields. Sandy is passionate about soil, loves teaching others about it and has even created a “Soil Bus” that he uses in his efforts to spread the good word about soil. He’ll be bringing the bus to our Harvest Party on September 25! See the Harvest Party Invitation sent via email for more details.