Market Farming

["Dori Green" <dorigreen00 AT hotmail.com>]

Just about everything I plant in my six acres of cultivated soil is done 
with companions.

Everything is hand-harvested and most work is done with hand tools -- maybe 
a couple of passes with a cultivator and a John Deere B early in the season.

I'm heavily into mulch and compost, agroforestry and permaculture and edible 
landscaping.

Basil and carrots grow happily in the ground story around the espaliered 
tomatoes, sunflowers support pole beans and attract bug-eating birds to the 
corn, a moat of pumpkins and other squash around the perimeter of the 
two-acre corn field keep the deer and raccoons away.

Flowers are scattered throughout the garden to attract bees.  All of the 
construction for the permanent raised beds and two new 2-acre fields is now 
completed, so the bee guys will be bringing in 24 hives in early June.

This year's income tax refund (about $500) is funding a rigid-plastic 
greenhouse on the south end of the barn for winter use as a sun room for the 
goats and poultry (and heat sink), with a section partitioned off by 
electric net fence for my late-winter use.  Stock tank with immersible 
heater is the humidity source.  I'm planning to try allowing goats and 
chickens on the ground story with flats in a second-story loft arrangement 
accessible to me via latched trap doors.

But the greenhouse is only an experiment and theory at this point.  The 
garden construction was new last year.

My gardening method does require some more shoe leather expenditure by the 
farmer.  But it's said that the very best fertilizer is the footprint of the 
farmer.  It works for me, maybe because I'm not relying on my farm to 
provide my major income.

Dori Green
Ash Grove Community Farm
Corning, NY


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