 I'm Robin Ostfeld and this is my husband Lou Johns and we operate Blue Heron Farm, it's in Lodi, New York. We have 10 to 12 acres of organic vegetables, strawberries and herbs. We also have two greenhouses where we grow our own transplants plus transplants for sale. We market at local farmers market, have a CSA and sell to co-ops and restaurants. Our use of cover crops on our farm are primarily for helping to maintain soil organic matter which is difficult in a continuous cropping vegetable system. And it also gives us a hedge on having to purchase a lot of fertility from compost that we have to buy. About 10, 12 years ago we started converting our fields to what you see now in the permanent bed situation. Primarily because our soils are quite heavy and what we start running into is a lot of problems with compaction. So the answer we came up with was to create permanent tire tracks to carry all the weight of our tractors and all the foot traffic that is very common in vegetable production, you just have constant traffic. And it's been very effective. The tire tracks on the farm may look like nice grass and green growth but for the most part what you're seeing is a whole host of native grasses, weeds, clovers, you see a lot of dandelion which may seem like would become a weed problem in the beds but it doesn't. One of the advantages that we're finding and we'd kind of hope for in our permanent tire tracks is they're becoming a very viable habitat for beneficial insects, spiders. A lot of people also talk about them being a haven for soil bacteria that might not be staying in a permanently cropped farm soils. Even though it may just be anecdotal evidence, our use of control sprays for insect pests has like dropped almost nothing over the last say 10 years. I think it has a fair amount to do with the amount of habitat we're creating for beneficials. Within the permanent bed system we do maintain a fairly rigorous rotation system with our cover crops and our seeded and transplanted vegetable crops using spring seeded cover crops, fall seeded cover crops, sometimes summer seeded cover crops. These are oats and field peas that were planted about mid-April. They fit into our cropping scheme because we grow a lot of late fall harvested crops and they're harvested in late October or November when it's too late to establish a rye and vetch cover crop. So they're left open over the winter. As early in the spring as possible, we get the oats and field peas on. The oats are broadcast just by hand. We put the oats in a bucket. We use other small grains that we might have around. We walk down the tire tracks and throw handfuls and directly apply them to the bed. Then the peas are drilled with our four-row Planet Junior seeder. The reason we do that is because the peas need to be drilled more deeply than the oats and the pea seed needs to be economized because it's quite expensive. So we like to plant just the four rows rather than broadcast the peas over the bed. The oats are incorporated before we drill the peas. By drilling the peas with the seed drill, we're planting them directly where the vegetable crops will be planted. So the nitrogen is right where it needs to be. The pea seed is inoculated before planting. We like to let it get at least a foot high and then we mow with the flail mower that chops it up and makes it break down more quickly. So it's incorporated more easily. Then we'll use the motivator and till it under. Normally the succession that we use because these beds would be ready to plant in July is then we would follow it with a transplanted brassica like broccoli or cabbage without any additional compost being needed. These beds have rye and hairy vetch blended together, broadcast together over the entire bed. These will get mowed generally twice, if not sometimes three times with a flail mower. And then turned under with a motivator. The mowing's for two purposes. One is it takes the vegetation and breaks it down into smaller pieces so it incorporates better. The other purpose is to arrest the vigorous growth of the rye and hairy vetch. One of the things we've found with mowing the rye and vetch is the timing and height this can be critical in allowing it to regrow and give you sort of a whole nother flush of vegetative growth, sometimes really encouraging the vetch. On the first mowing, cutting it at about six to eight inches tall, taking it down from, say, a foot to two feet. And that seems to give you really good regrowth and encourages that vetch. Right before incorporation, I try to mow as tight as I can get it cut. Again, to chop the material as fine as possible. And so the stubble isn't as much of a problem for breaking down. So this is what it's all about growing cover crops. When you get soils that look like this that are just impregnated with roots from the cover crops, just like spider webs through this thing, making habitat for earthworms. And then you have soil nodules from vetch there that is just going to feed a crop that's coming later.