Live Earth Farm Nwsltr 2007

Greetings from Farmer Tom
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Big Kubota Tractor As you know from gardening, using the right tools can make all the difference in how well we care for and manage the soil into which we plant. The heaviest and physically most demanding job on the farm is tilling, which is the general term for soil preparation. It includes working the soil, incorporating soil amendments such as lime, gypsum, rock dust, compost, green manures (cover crops), and other mechanical processes. Today, we could not accomplish these tasks without the help of our tractors – the mechanical substitutes for traditional draft animals. We have different tractors for different tasks; the larger and more powerful ones are generally used for primary cultivation, which includes deep tillage. Deep tillage involves pulling 2-3 foot long shanks of steel through the ground to aerate the soil. Ripper blades on back of Kubota Deep tillage is important to break up compacted layers without mixing the subsoil with the topsoil. It improves drainage, rooting depth, and the amount of soil nutrients for the roots, helping the process of topsoil deepening, which greatly increases the fertility of the soil. Then there’s surface tillage. For surface tillage we use a disc or spader, which only disturbs the top 4-6 inches of soil, and is ideal to achieve the right tilth for planting and sowing.

The real art of driving a tractor is in cultivating and weeding between rows of crops that are already established in the field. Here, different knives, shovels and discs are set up in such a way that they cut, remove and throw soil all at the same time, just inches away from the crop that is growing. If the timing is right regarding the moisture and development stage of both crop and weeds, we can cultivate everything mechanically with the tractor and avoid the more time consuming and arduous task of hoeing and weeding by hand. Most of the time we achieve the best results through a combination of hand and mechanical cultivation.

When you receive your share of vegetables every week, I want you to think for a moment, not just of the farm or the farmer, but about the soil. The spader attachment It is truly THE fundamental substance and source of life on Earth, and we, like all other terrestrial life forms, depend on soil directly or indirectly for our food. As a farmer, I see the importance of growing good, healthy soil as my most important task. The healthier the soil, the healthier and more nutritious the crops you receive will be. To understand this link between our existence and the quality of the soil is to understand the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. As a farmer, I constantly think of ways to coax a harvest from the soil: when to plow, which crops to plant and rotate, how to protect the soil from the weather so that the forces which put it together cannot take it apart. I strive to fit my needs into the natural systems, which have adapted to the local conditions designed by this place over a long period of time. With every group that visits the farm, I make it a habit to have everyone touch and feel the soil we stand on, to bring their attention to the fundamental substance and source of our nourishment. The disc

Slowly but steadily we are adopting a new consciousness, one based more on agrarian principles. By agrarian, I mean a mind-set of respecting our interconnectedness with the rest of nature, and honoring ways that sustain and perpetuate the commonwealth. You don’t have to get dirt under your fingernails or spend a day pulling weeds, or grow vegetables in your apartment or keep the family cow in your garage. But being more aware of where your food comes from, and of the amount of work that goes into producing it is a start.

Cultivating knives If, however, you want to take another step down that path of agrarian awareness, I am going to open the door again to the idea of Farm Work Days. So before making a life-changing decision to quit your desk job to start farming, consider instead swapping a day of working behind a desk (or whatever you do) for a day of working in the field. We have already started a process like this with the local Montessori Middle School (see next story), but due to persistent inquiries by members for the opportunity to help out on the farm, we are going to set up Work Days for this purpose (see Farm Work Days, below).
- Tom

Here is a field of green beans that has just been cultivated:
Newly cultivated field of green beans
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