market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Market Farming
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- From: "Dori Green" <dorigreen00 AT hotmail.com>
- To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
- Subject: Re: market-farming Rocks
- Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 07:11:48 -0500
Hello!
Upstate New York reporting in, from just south of the Devonian valley at the Chemung River where the stuff scooped out of the Finger Lakes got dumped by the glaciers.
I'm just about ten miles from where David Yarrow obtained his quarry talings for his experiment using cheap or free rock powders instead of fertilizers.
I selected this land for farming because unlike nearby river-bottom rock-free silt loam fields:
a) it had never had chemicals used on it
b) it was cheap and river-bottom was super-expensive
c) if we don't learn how to farm productively on hardscrabble hilltops and we keep paving over riverbottom for shopping centers, everybody is going to be hungry, and that's an important issue to point out to "civilians" -- and it's very easy to do so from the hill-top
d) I wouldn't have to buy in rocks
Rocks do have some down-sides. There's often a snake under them. I like snakes, so for me that isn't a big problem but it sent an apprentice from New York City right up a hoe handle to balance and perch at the top squeaking. This worked out well; he dropped out of college and makes a lot of money traveling with Cirque du Soleil. And he would never have known about this hidden talent without that summer on my farm.
I'd love to use a roto-tiller. My fields and quiet-loving garden sprites won't let me. A broadfork and garden claw have to suffice. In 1999 I got all of the noise and gas consumption done at once for a two-acre field by hiring a backhoe operator to create sixteen 8'x200' raised beds. This worked out well; my farm's construction sort of forced me into bio-intensive farming and I love it. A steel rake pulls the largest rocks to the side to be pushed into retaining walls for the beds, and beds are not walked on and compacted nor dug any more than absolutely necessary so plant roots just move around the rocks beneath the surface and I can pretend they aren't even there.
This year we're building some heat sink and windbreak rock towers on the raised beds, much like they use in Italy. I think rock with good mortar might actually be able to break the wind force here.
We make bodacious compost and buy in finished compost every couple of years (by the tractor trailer load), and spread it 4" deep on the tops of the beds after removing weeds with a small DR trimmer or hand scythe. We plant right into the compost. Worms come up to draw in the compost, and they do most of our tilling.
My rocks are also sort of forcing me into expanding on the chicken tractor idea a bit -- now that I have some resident members working with me on the farm, I'm bringing in two or three baby pigs to work up new ground on portable pens. If they turn into pets, they'll join the petting zoo and have lifetime homes. If they develop nasty personalities, they'll be loved just as much all the way to the custom butcher's truck.
Our "broke to ride and drive" pony is not, so Andrew is building me a stone boat. Boy, it took a while to explain _that_ one to the city folks! I have never had a green horse run away with a properly loaded stone boat, but they've wrecked a couple of light carts on me. After the second one, I trained all my horses with stone boats. Basically, it's a sled made out of 2x4s with metal runners on the skids. It can be loaded light or heavy depending on the needs of the trainer or farmer and ability of the horse or pony. It's right at ground level (well, nearly) so rocks don't have to be picked up to be loaded onto it. I get the animal trained and get the rocks moved to their new home -- combining tasks is always A Good Thing.
One of my nonresident CSA members parks his tractor with PTO here. Can anybody here tell me where we might rent a rock picker attachment? I know of them as Bobcat-type machines and I think it's likely that a tractor attachment would cost a lot less. But if somebody doesn't have a tractor or a farm equipment renter near them, check with your local Bobcat equipment rental place and ask them about a thing called a "Rock Hound".
Dori Green
Ash Grove Community Farm & Center for Sustainable Living
Corning, NY
http://www.ic.org/agrove/index.htm
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- Re: market-farming Rocks, Dori Green, 02/20/2001
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