Farming Practices

We manage our farm with an understanding that the soil and ecosystem is the basis for the food we produce. We rely heavily on cover crops to improve soil health and reduce weed pressure. Cover crops are crops that can either fix nitrogen, produce lots of organic matter to cycle nutrients from deep in the soil back to the soil surface, provide nectar for pollinators, or cover the ground quickly to outcompete weeds. We usually try to mix multiple species together for the additive benefits. Cover crops and rotations are the basis of our farm ecosystem. When we started managing the farm in 2018 the organic matter was 1.4% which is relatively low. We are hopeful that with dedicated effort we will see that number climb over the years.

In the photo to the right you can get a sense of our crop rotations. Each year we plan to keep half of our fields in vegetable production and half in cover crops. This gives us the ability to rotate our vegetables through different fields each season to keep fertility high and to reduce weed pressure and disease. The back field (tallest grass) was planted in sorghum sudan grass, sun hemp, buckwheat, sunflowers, and cowpeas in 2018 and then red clover 2019. We will let this clover grow strong in 2020 in preparation for vegetables is 2021. The middle field was planted in oats and yellow blossom sweet clover, which flowered in 2019 providing sweet nectar to our bees and then was planted in fall vegetable crops in 2019. The field in front which is just sprouting was planted in oats and peas and was our main vegetable field in 2019.

We have around 9 hives of honey bees on our farm and we love to see the interplay of producing cover crops, vegetables and honey all together. The cover crops feed the soil, bees, and other pollinators. The soil feeds the vegetables. The flowering vegetables feed the bees and the bees help increase yields of certain vegetables. There is nothing better than lying in a bed of yellow clover while listening to the sounds of thousands of bees and thinking we did something right.

We manage pests first through cultural practices including rotation, variety selection, and netting. We complete thorough scouting to know what the problem is so that if we need to spray we do it when the pest is most vulnerable. We always select the least harmful product available and we only use materials certified by the  Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI). In 2021 we sprayed a very small percentage of our produce, and when we sprayed we used environmentally friendly products, like Bacillus thuringiensis.

For irrigation we use both drip irrigation and overhead sprinklers. We use water from our well and the Rondout Creek.

We have built permanent infrastructure to produce more winter greens in unheated tunnels. We now have a propagation greenhouse, 3 small tunnels, and 3 high tunnels for winter greens production.

Feel free to visit or contact us with any questions you have!