| March,
2005. Winter has found us working hard to
get the word out about CSA and our farm. Jeanne managed to
get a local paper to do a feature article in the Sunday business
section, and I have had a couple of speaking invitations from
community groups. We have set a goal of 50 members, but are
still short—18 as of 3/10/05. We’re hoping March
and April will find people thinking about gardening and fresh
veggies.
Deciding and planning to take on 50 member families and expand
to 2.5 acres has, of course, brought a number of issues to
bear heavy on my mind. Can we find a larger piece of property,
say 10-20 acres—where we can practice long crop rotation,
continue to grow our membership and incorporate animals? Can
we make that happen this winter in order to plant there in
spring? If we stay at our current location, what is the best
way to deal with the creek bottom clay that was dumped on
the new growing area and spread by bulldozer last year? How
are we going to deal with our need for cold storage, dry storage,
potable water and electricity?
In November we got wind that a newly incorporated town in
our area had applied for funding to restore and develop an
80-acre farm that had been donated by the aging landowner.
We also heard that the plans included an organic farm and
that the person slated to handle the operation of the farm
was moving away because of personal issues. Sounded like a
perfect spot for us. We jumped in the car and checked out
the land—it looked good and was in a great location!
We met with the Township Trustee in charge of the project
and found that the village was not inclined to allow a for-profit
venture on their land. I suppose that makes sense and is not
really a surprise. At that meeting, we also learned something
that is much more disturbing than our personal land acquisition
situation; we learned that none of the townships in our area
have designated any land in their village development plans
as agricultural. Will County, Illinois, is home to some of
the finest cropland soils in the world and our city planners
are paving it over at an alarming rate. I know our situation
is not unique, and urban sprawl is a lament on many people’s
lips; we will be keeping our eyes and ears open for opportunities
to express our opinion about the importance of urban farming
and local food production to our local administrators and
neighbors.
In December it looked like our landscape contacts were coming
through for us again. Jeanne was working on a project that
involved the installation of a native Illinois prairie. She
contacted Doug Short, a prairie ecologist to consult on the
project. As they worked, Jeanne told Doug of our CSA and,
wouldn’t you guess, he knew of a landowner in the neighboring
town of Frankfort who might be interested in our vegetable
adventure. The absentee landowners have 190 acres that they
are interested in preserving as organic farmland and native
prairie. With Doug’s help they have already started
prairie restoration on a 20-acre piece and plan to ultimately
restore 40 acres. The balance is farmed in corn and soybeans
and is on track for organic certification in 3 years. We met
the landowners just before Christmas, after which they headed
south for the winter. We communicated some by email and phone
and just last week, while the landowner was in town for a
few days, we had a meeting to see if we could agree on a suitable
spot for our vegetable operation. As it turned out, we came
away from the meeting with a realization that we have a lot
more work to do in order to accommodate all the parties involved,
and it is not something we will rush into. We will split our
operation between the two sites for 2005. We will grow things
that do not require immediate refrigeration or a lot of washing
at the Frankfort site while using our current Mokena location
as our home base. Share pickup and storage is more easily
handled from there.
Staying at the Mokena location for the 2005 growing season
means that we will have to deal with the creek bottom clay.
The area was fallow for five years prior to covering, and
the landowner has offered to scrape/push the top layer of
clay/soil off with a bulldozer. I am afraid of the weight
of the bulldozer and the danger of working when it is too
wet, so I think I will work with the clay instead. I just
sent a soil sample in and am waiting for results. I am thinking
of growing everything I can as transplants, inoculating with
mycorrhizae and making planting holes a little larger than
necessary, then filling with compost mixed with gypsum, and
maybe some rock powders, feeding the soil with seaweed, fish
and molasses and then being ready to foliar feed with the
same throughout the season. I am also contemplating overwintering
radish as a cover crop to open the clay soil. Any and all
comments and suggestions from those of you out there with
more experience would be greatly appreciated--write to me
in the New
Farmer Forums. Nightmares of sickly tomatoes, malformed
peppers, and insect infestations are starting to rumble through
my head.
Speaking of crops, I am excited about the giant Excel spreadsheet
I have created to help with crop planning and data collection.
I purchased a set of forms on CD but prefer my own version
for now. For each variety I have captured supplier, product
number, package size and price, quantity ordered, estimated
yield, germination rates, row feet to be planted, in-row spacing,
number of succession plantings, total number of 100’
beds per variety, number of flats needed, optimum germination
temps and (my favorite part) a planting timeline. The timeline
is broken down to weeks of the month and provides information
on what and how many seeds to be planted each week, what and
how many transplants need to go out and when the first harvest
is anticipated. My husband has a laptop computer he is not
using, and I plan to take that to the field with me to collect
actual data on site since I am terrible about transferring
data from paper onto the computer at the end of the day or
week.
Our prearranged greenhouse accommodations turned out to be
grossly inadequate, and we have moved the acquisition of a
hoop house to the very top of the wish list. But for now we
will again be starting transplants in the homes. This year
we have taken over Jeanne’s basement and are hanging
lights from the rafters and building shelves with cinder blocks
and scrap lumber. I suspect that watering with fish emulsion
will not be well received by the other members of her household,
so maybe we will stick with seaweed and compost tea.
We have taken advantage of a number of educational opportunities
this winter. We attended the Small Farm Trade Show and Conference
in Columbia, Mo.; I found a 16-week Organic Farming night
class at a local community college; and we spent four terrific
days in the Advanced Vegetable Production Workshop at Michael
Fields Ag Institute in East Troy, Wis. We met a wonderful
group of fellow new farmers and had terrific teachers—Richard
DeWilde of Harmony Valley Farm, Steve Pincus of Tipi Produce,
and Paul Ehrhardt and Kay Jensen from JenEhr Family Farm.
They were awesome. We were treated to the culinary expertise
of chef extraordinaire Julie Jasinski, who prepared three
meals a day using seasonal produce and meat supplied by the
teachers and MFAI. It was hard to come home to a nearly empty
refrigerator.
I am looking forward to getting out into the field again
and feel better equipped for the challenge than ever before.
We are developing a network of fellow farmers and like-minded
souls that gives us the courage to plow ahead. 
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