The first day of applying compost tea

We had our first delivery of organic compost tea today. Shepard Smith from Soilsmith Services brought 1000 gallons of tea and 100 gallons of organic fish fertilizer, as well as 10-15 gallons of liquid kelp. The tea is a kind of all-in-one amendment that restores nutrients to the soil. The fish fertilizer will help the crop enormously as well. The kelp aids in disease resistance. A few applications of the tea a year, at around 10-15 gallons an acre, should help restore good biology to the soil. Hopefully after a few years of tea and good crop rotation, we will have immense yields of healthy organic crops. The cost savings as compared to conventional chemicals is pretty amazing too. We are paying close to 30-35 dollars an acre for the tea, fish, and kelp. That is about half the cost of conventional fertilizer, although we will have to do several applications of tea a year.

Here is a link to Soilsmith's website. They are only about 10 minutes from us.

http://www.soilsmith.com/

We've secured some federal funding through the NRCS

We applied for federal funding through the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service). They pay farmers a financial incentive to adopt certain agricultural practices such as farming organically, conserving water through more efficient irrigation, managing pests without conventional chemicals, etc. The areas we applied for include: Organic cover crops, organic nutrient management, organic pest management, and crop residue incorporation. Organic cover crops are things like clover that you plant in the fall and allow to grow during the winter. They fix the nitrogen in the soil, meaning we use less fertilizer. We plan to grow crimson clover. Organic nutrient management is a plan that involves use of organic fertilizers. We are using organic compost tea instead of conventional fertilizer on a few hundred acres. Organic pest management is similar to the nutrient management that just means we will use organic pesticide where needed instead of conventional. And finally crops residue incorporation means we will plow less and incorporate the wheat and grass stubble into the soil instead of taking off straw. It helps the soil recover faster. The NRCS is paying us a significant amount of money to adopt these practices on about 10 percent of our acreage. We qualified for close to the maximum amount, which is why the payout is only for a small amount of acres. It's great that the government is doing things like this to help growers like us transition to organic. The funding program is called the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

Reworking, Cultivating, Replanting...

We had a bit of a setback. All of the hard red wheat we no-till planted is not doing well at all. Michael reckons that the seed was planted too deep, its been too cold, and the rows were full of water. What this means is that we have to replant about 40-50 acres of hard red wheat. In addition to the extra wheat seed required that is a LOT of time. I have been working up the main field in question for the last 3 days. I started by discing up the field. Discing is basically chopping the ground up with bowl-shaped discs turned on their side. We did that twice, let it dry, then cultivated it twice. Cultivation means dragging an implement with C-shaped tines on it that cut the soil deeper than the disc. At about 4-5 miles per hour it takes around 3 hours to go over the field once. After that we let it dry again then go over the field with the roterra. The roterra is a nifty machine that chops the dirt up with vertical rotating forks and a cylinder with slanted horizontal bars that flatten the soil out. Wheat doesn't need extremely fine and flat soil like grass seed does so we don't work the ground as much for it, but its still a lot of time. After looking at the one field that we did work up and plant weeks back during the warm spell it was clear that the hard red would do better in cultivated soil. The one field we worked up before planting is doing very well.

Planting transitional hard red wheat

2 weeks ago we planted about 70 acres of hard red wheat. Hard red wheat has a higher protein content than soft white wheat, making it better for bread-baking. Soft white is good for pastries, tortillas, and all-purpose flour. Organic and transitional hard red wheat is also worth quite a bit more than soft white wheat. We purchased about 15,000 pounds of organic hard red wheat from a nearby farm that grows hundreds of acres of it each year. Before they acquired some hard red from North Dakota, hard red had not been grown in the valley in significant amounts in decades. The farm is called Stalford Seed Farms. They grew out the smallish amount they acquired and began to acclimatize the variety to Oregon's climate, which is important to maximize yield. Now even though we planted organic seed the crop we harvest will not be certified organic. The reason for this is the fields we are planting the wheat in are classified as "transitional." I should explain the difference between organic and transitional before I go any farther. To be certified organic a field must have had no conventional chemicals of any kind applied to it for a period of 3 years. 3 years from the date of the last chemical application that field is then eligible for organic certification. We only have 30 acres of certified organic ground this year. Most of the rest of the ground will be in first-year transition. Transitional crops are essentially farmed organically but they cannot be sold as "certified organic." This means you can't charge the kind of prices than organic crops fetch, but if you market the transitional crop right you can get a better price than you would for conventional crops.
We plant hard red wheat at a rate of about 105 pounds per acre. Since we planted 70 acres that means we already went through about 7350 pounds of seed. That's roughly a truckload. Once the weather clears up and the fields dry out a bit we plan to plant another 50-55 acres of hard red. We are hoping to harvest at least 1 ton of wheat per acre. That is a very conservative estimate when you realize that conventionally farmed white wheat can sometimes yield up to 4 tons per acre. Too bad the price of conventional soft white wheat is so low. At the current market price of $4.50 a bushel (bushel=60 pounds) soft white wheat can bring in about 450 dollars per acre. That's assuming a yield of 3 tons per acre. At the current market price hard red wheat grown transitionally can bring in about 1200-1700 dollars per acre. That's a no-brainer, right? Well, its not that simple. We are very limited on what we can put on the hard red to help it grow. Obviously all chemical fertilizers are out. So we are planning to use something called compost tea. Compost tea is exactly what it sounds like. A liquid brewed from solid compost. It is very good for the soil and the crops, and it is relatively inexpensive. We also plan to hit the hard red with either organic fish fertilizer or organic chicken manure. We'll see how that goes. Most of our hard red will be purchased by local bakeries. When I say local I mean anywhere in the valley from Portland to Eugene. Stay tuned...

Too much rain

The weather has taken a turn for the worse. We had planned to plant another 80-90 acres of hard red wheat but it started raining a ton this week. The forecast doesn't look good either, another week of rain at least. At this rate we won't be able to get back on the fields for a few weeks at least. That could make it too late to get the hard red planted early enough. Typically, you want to plant spring wheat as soon as weather allows after the freeze/wet months. We're lucky we got the 70 acres planted when we did. Hard red wheat is going to be our most valuable crop so we are somewhat anxious right now. We have several other crops that we are now considering for the remaining hard red acres if we can't get on the ground for a while. They are triticale, hull-less oats, and rye. We'll see...

The backstory...

This first post is to familiarize you with our farm and what has led up to this decision to transition from conventional farming to organic farming. My father, Mike Robinson, moved to Philomath from Pincher Creek Alberta at a young age. His family ran cheviot sheep for years before deciding to cultivate their small fields. After growing wheat and grass seed for years he moved to Washington and began working in the timber industry. He knew that he wanted to get back into farming, so he took his family back to Oregon to work for one of the largest farms in the valley, Vennell Farms. Vennell Farms is directly adjacent to the south side of what was then Allen & Allen farms, close family friends of my father and his father for many years. My dad used to work for Fred Allen as a teenager. Fred was still running his farm with his son Steve and daughter Linda, but they needed some extra help. They offered my dad a job managing their farm, so he moved onto the farm in the mid-90s. Mike helped make the operation more efficient and the farm became more profitable during his tenure as manager. At that time the farm encompassed around 770 acres at the home place, with about another 600-700 acres of leased ground located nearby in various chunks. The bulk of the acreage was in grass seed, the most widely grown crop in the Willamette Valley. They also grew wheat and oats as rotational crops, but never in large acreages at any one time. Those unfamiliar with the farming industry may wonder why grow mostly grass seed? Well, the Willamette Valley has the perfect climate for growing all types of grass seed. Willamette Valley grass seed is used all over the world for lawns, golf courses, and pastures. The price of grass seed, while never astronomical, was high enough to afford most growers a decent living. After managing the farm for almost a decade, Mike knew that some big changes had to happen to make the farm truly efficient and profitable. One major addition that was badly needed was a seed cleaning facility. For decades Fred and his family had been driving full seed trucks directly from the fields to a seed cleaning warehouse in Tangent. Tangent is about 15 miles as the crow flies from Corvallis. The amount of time and money required to truck all the seed to Tangent was enormous, not to mention the cost of the cleaning itself. As Fred was getting older, (he's now 90), and Steve and Linda were getting close to retirement age, my dad knew that if the farm was to keep going, he should purchase it from the Allens. Mike bought the farm in 2005 with my stepmom Kathie. They renamed it A2R Farms. Allen 2 Robinson. Clever, eh? (farm humor...) Mike got a loan from OSU Federal Credit Union for the property, as well as a loan for putting in the new seed cleaning facility. The seed cleaning warehouse became operational in the fall of 2005. We now clean around 2-3 million pounds of seed per year. That includes several other nearby farms' crop that we handle. When Mike purchased the farm the price of grass seed was strong, so the plan was to keep going as usual. Grass, grass, and more grass. Its not that difficult to farm conventional grass seed, especially with modern fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. The farm was spending almost 200,000 dollars a year on chemicals at that time. Unfortunately, that first year was a total disaster in the valley. There was a massive plague of voles, the largest in over 70 years. The voles destroyed over half the grass crop. With an already tight margin imposed by the terms of the loan, the farm started off its new ownership era in a major hole. The next few years were record good years. So the farm looked like it might be able to dig out of the hole, but then grass seed prices began to take a nosedive. This is right around the beginning of the US economic recession. Far fewer homes were being built, so grass seed was not moving. Warehouses were stuffed to the rafters with 1 and sometimes 2 or 3 year old crop. One thing I should mention here is that because grass seed is not traded as a commodity the grower is essentially at the mercy of the seed brokers to get rid of their seed. Conversely wheat, a commodity, can be sold very quickly. Meaning farmers get paid faster for wheat and oats than they do for grass. We need to wait until the seed company calls up and says they want to take a few lots of grass seed, then wait up to 30-60 days AFTER it ships to actually get a check. With conventional wheat we just truck it up to Portland and get paid within 3 days. As a result of the poor grass seed prices and the few missed payments to the bank, OSU Federal decided to initiate foreclosure. They gave us one choice, sign a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, essentially turn over the farm to them, lock, stock, and barrel, or face immediate foreclosure. As a carrot they said they would wipe the slate completely clean, basically we would have zero-debt if we signed. We agonized over the decision for months, finally deciding NOT to sign, but to hire an attorney and file for chapter 12 bankruptcy protection. All of this was happening during harvest, which we managed to pay for with a generous loan from a family member, as the bank had cancelled our operating line of credit. As part of the chapter 12 case, we had to come up with a new way of farming that would be more profitable. Well, what could be more profitable? What could we possibly grow that would make us enough money to both pay back our creditors AND cover all of our operating costs? During our research into this we met several like-minded farmers, one of whom was the owner of a very large farm 10 miles east of us. She told us that there was a huge demand for locally grown organic beans, grains, and seeds. Furthermore, she said that her farm was transitioning hundreds of their 9000 acres over to organic, and that they already had over 150 certified organic acres. She also told us about a group called the Southern Willamette Valley Bean & Grain Project. A group of growers and buyers interested in developing the local food market. This was definitely the right person to meet. Through the people we met at the Bean & Grain Project we were able to come up with a list of crops that we could easily grow on our land, using the machinery we already had, that was in high demand for a premium price. Perfect! Just what we needed. We had always dreamed of growing food, I think most farmers do, but the grass seed way of thinking was just too dominant. Farmers are an inherently conservative group when it comes to their crops. Now, our hand had been forced, but it couldn't have been a better time. As a result of our dire financial situation, we had adopted a whole new way of thinking. The final decision in the months-long chapter 12 case finally came down on March 8th, 2010. After many hours of testimony by both sides over several different hearings, the judge ruled in our favor! We were given a period of 8 years to pay back the loans. The new crops we are growing are hard red wheat, brown flax, pinto beans, garbanzo beans, and sunflowers. Well that's the story so far. In subsequent posts I'll get into more detail about what we are planting and when, and who is buying them and for what price.