 Okay, I want to thank Sarah for Giving us the grant to do this project a Little bit of a spoiler alert a lot of it wasn't really successful, but the whole thing is meant to be a learning experience Right the education is you know last word in Sarah. So this has been an education for us So Rebecca and I were on her family land she's a fourth generation farmer were located North Kansas City about 45 minutes This is our farm Down there in the left corner. We have that's where our house is we have a barn with our packing room our certified kitchen We have a greenhouse passive solar. We have one high tunnel We have two movable chicken Coops we have a irrigation pond there with solar panels. So this is kind of some of the details We met on a CSA farm Back in 2001 Rebecca wanted to come back to her family farm and to improve it and to keep it from just becoming another lot of houses and So the CSA was really the model for us At our peak we were up around 100 close to 150 members for 31 weeks We have about Five acres five and a half that's actually able to be cultivated over about a 20-acre area that we grow on this is some of our vegetables You know, we have a diversified operation, which is really nice Model You know has Been talking diversity is always good and for us, you know We get to eat a diverse diet because we're growing all these things our CSA models participatory our members come out And they help with the harvest. We have what's called a core group. They help to manage the CSA That's the model of the farm where we met and it's just a great way to get all, you know A host of generations even from one family to come out and participate in agriculture This is our certified kitchen that we had built right after it was completed 2016 we decided to kind of diversify our farming operations and to Have a fermenting That's what that would mean. We need to grow a lot of brassicas So we wanted to look at different ways to raise the brassicas without having to do a lot of mulching We're in our it's like our second year of of fermenting Really say we have a kitchen without a stove in there It was a good model. You know, it's a low energy type of value added product You chop everything at room temperature the fermenting happens at room temperature and then you store the product back in the cooler Until you need to jar it so we already have a cooler and we only we didn't need to have a stove or heat stuff up and we're on the shelves on a at a handful of Retail outlets in Kansas City area as well as selling to our members and farmers market So our fertility plan Sure, buddy that's talking about soil. It's gonna be pretty much the same thing And and like Jeff was saying you really need commitment So we make sure we feed the soil a diverse and balanced meal We try to amend it every bed each year with some type of cover crop or we buy compost Mineral addition we now have two lane flocks of about 70 80 hens and they we fence in a yard 50 by 100 feet You know, we can leave them in an area for about two months and move them around the farm so we can Fertilize a good acre of land just with our our hens And we do like I said a lot of cover cropping, you know, we This is like our Sudan grass and cow peas or Crotal area So we have a flail mower Normally what we would do is we we'd grow it we chop it down We have what's called a spader it kind of digs that digs it in it helps It doesn't create the hard pan that like a tiller will So we call this our chewing step as we've been doing more and more Farming we're trying to do this less, you know, not use the spader just to till stuff in but to mainly use it as a way to incorporate cover crops We incorporate them. We also do a lot of hay This is compost from a company called Missouri organics Their local Kansas City company that's been growing and we're able to get truckloads of compost Sometimes we'll use, you know a dry bagged fertilizer we use for trell It's kind of handy at times if you do you want to add some fertility to a bed And it's kind of been out of the rotation or you haven't been able to time things properly And then here's our our hens. We really like it when We can raise a cover crop and Put the hens in and have them to eat the cover crop Or we run them through our high tunnel in the spring after we're done with our Extended season of the previous fall in the spring. They've been a great way to improve the fertility in the high tunnel You know, they provide a lot of phosphorus So one of the things you learn And realize what it is is that they don't really process phosphorus. So I think the phosphorus in the feed kind of Goes through them and it's where we are. That's one of the more limiting Nutrients is the phosphorus And so this has been our our results just using up our farming practices as you can see been farming for 16 years I used to be an environmental engineer. I used to do a lot of environmental Sampling and analysis and treatment system design and monitoring So around 2004, I believe it was I decided well, I should maybe plot our soil organic matter and it's been really instructive it shows that it bounced around between two and three percent for a long time and it actually kind of went down and then after 2008 it's it's been trending up and One of the things we're trying to do in promoting our CSA and promoting our Firments is to talk about that how the value that's in that and I think next door they're talking about how to quantify that value and I think that's important. So for the cover crop project the idea was rather than mulching as you saw doing on our brassicas We were able to we've been able to raise cover crops historically raise cover crops roll it down and and plant into that so we were going to Do that for cabbage cauliflower and broccoli and then we also have Tomatoes that we wanted to do so We started out in 2014 actually 2013 is when we started by Raising our crops the rye vetch we Dr. Ron Morse from Virginia Tech. He was our technical assistant And so he helped us kind of he helped us build the no-till planting aid and He gave us some advice. So that's just a flail mower where we turned off the blades You know, it's got a big heavy roller on it. We're able to roll down the cover crops So this was like step one everything looked like it's going to be perfect It rolled down really well was real good mix of rye and vetch We were really happy The vetch came back, but you know, that was fine. We didn't care too much We mowed it down did that a couple times and it kind of disappeared and But then the weed started so Bind weed was a big issue where we were doing this turns out we had a heavy vine weed problem We had some other areas where we were doing it, you know We're all in the grassland area in the middle of you know, June July Every seed of grass is going to start to come up no matter what and so in talking to dr. Morse, you know, we said you really need a stale seed bed if you're going to do this You know his work was down in Virginia Tech kind of up in the mountains and it's really a whole different soil growing season and What's favored? So all this was happening, but we figured out this is a test. We need to kind of see what we can do. So First thing we did is we took our farm throughout there and we weeded and kept track and I think it took, you know Eight hours worth of work just to do like this 40 foot stretch of two beds So, you know, we got that on the record. It's like okay hand-weeding isn't gonna work And then we tried organic herbicides. We're not certified organic, but we follow an OP And we tried two different types of basically kind of you know, citric acid Type Insecticide but all it does it just burns off the top growth. It did nothing to stop the growth So we kind of had to abandon that We tried it again. We'll talk about other attempts, but basically, you know, we can get good stands of cover crops And they're easily rolled and crimped with a flail mower The the weed pressure in June and July it was significant so our cover crops are rolled down Like the maybe the last week of May or so somewhere in there That's kind of typical from where we are We're not gonna plan our brassicas. We don't start them in the greenhouse until the first second week of June So that whole time period that rolled down is just sitting there and that's when all this weed pressure comes up I'll show you the wet times where it's hard to do and like I said the Weeding and the organic herbicides really weren't a solution So the next step was this no-till planting aid So you roll it down and the idea is you can just cut furrows in the Rolled down cover crop and then we were going to bring our transplanter through and have it spaced at that same two-foot spacing and plant So at the beginning I thought all we had this old piece of putt and laying it around From what I can tell it'll all be we'll just be able to kind of redo this Well, Dr. Moore said those coltors were way too small Once I put that toolbar on our tractor I realized it was a diamond pattern instead of a square pattern and I had bought a square clamp And so they were all sorts of you know just a farm hack complications I hooked it all up to kind of see how it might look and the colter was so big that it wasn't long enough So we had to do We did an extension to put the fertilizer shoe on and then that still wasn't good enough So then we ended up putting a Getting another piece of steel that extended the length of it so we could separate all those and so in the end we got it built and It worked well See it's a little tilty there. We got an old tractor But it would drag through and it would cut the furrow You'd have to watch about stuff kind of get snagged You know we kind of rigged that up so there'd be some things we would trim it off trim off to keep from snagging and You can kind of see there it the shovel went in there the fertilizer knife It cut a nice furrow. So if we were going to come through with transplants, we would have been able to do that So the no-till planting aid farm hacking was fine rather than buying a new one, but If we had to do it again, we'd probably go to equipment supplier and and try and fabricate it from new pieces of equipment It was really a great tool. We may use it in the future, too If there's a really wet period and we can't get in somewhere and we don't want to Do any serious tilling we could always kind of maybe drag that through to create a planting row We held a couple feet field days, too It was tough to time doing the roller crimping with our field days But we were able to to show some equipment at the same time that we were having our field days So 2015 was a seriously wet year So I don't know if you can read all this but from the from May 5th until July 20th We had 35 inches of rain over 74 days and so it was just consistent I mean it was really bad That was the year I decided I was gonna start Collecting records, so I was kind of glad I did that. It really showed this that's a year's worth of rain for us We even had a hail storm at one point through there right during strawberry season and They just Rebecca said it looks like little fairy punches on the strawberries So kind of destroyed that You know we were trying to to still do things, you know probably shouldn't have This is an example this area had been I don't think we even really had a chance to roll it down Or I might have tried rolling that down and it was just a mess so Talk to Joan is like okay this year. We're you know, we're extending the whole project and that was fine So 2015 was kind of off the books Another part of it was a cedar evaluation. We were just gonna buy a regular Grain drill, you know, it's one of those things everybody said oh you can buy on there all over the place And I went looking over and over over again, so we have like six foot beds six foot wide beds and You know I really wanted like you know get eight rows in that six foot eight nine rows and have something that's designed to to put grain seed in the ground and Just could not find anything anywhere used that size so we Decided to do was to buy some vegetable cedars and so these are for Coal, you know planet jr. Vegetable cedars bought a new toolbar Hook that up The idea was well, we'll do like two passes and that'll be our cover crops So what we also do and normally we've always done in the past is to use a broad cast cedar and then Come through with a harrow. We would mix our cover crops ahead of time and Noculate the legumes and then add the grain mix it up and then just spread it all together Just one thing is an aside, you know Talking about sticking with game plans Jeff was and improving we have a saying on our farm Which is from a dr. Deming who was a quality engineer? Improved constantly and forever, so we're always doing that and was at a conference PFI conference and they're talking about with cover crops having a more Diverse mix, you know if you have up to eight see different Seeds you may actually be able to plant and have stuff to even come up in a grout in a drought just the That diversity creates this communication that we still haven't learned about that makes the whole grow better So we like doing a mix of cover crop seeds, you know, it's pretty much legume and grain harrow it in so with the grass seed or with the the vegetable cedars at first I Was looking at putting just an individual like that's vetch seed in one a hopper and then something else in the other Then I'd have to calibrate them all because the vegetable planters don't say you know vetch seed And in the end I decided to mix them so we could just okay everything's at hole 32 and that's a good mix for all this Now that's a little crooked, but you can see we've pulled it across and You know we'd get decent I kind of wanted a little few more rows And stuff grew Halfway decent and then later I went and decided to shift them all the one side and go up and back because they were kind of going on top of each other they weren't quite staggered the way I want and With cover crops, you know It's difficult to sometimes get them in at the same time that you've kind of stale seed vetted So that was one of the big things that we need to work on more and more So this is a Sudan grass and cow peas We did a couple as part of the study was to compare these two seeding methods and You know weigh the cover crop and see which works better So broadcast seeding versus the coal So in June That was more with a spring cover crop, I believe would have been like oats and peas the The cedar did better 13% But then the the one that was done in the summer We actually better with the broadcast and I think the reason for that is because Part of the broadcast seeding is a harrowing To put the seeds into the ground so depending on your timing of when you were able to get in there and cultivate that kind of last harrow I think helped with Keeping the weed pressure down So we haven't used the coal anymore, but we got a new full-time farmer Somebody's worked with us before and so we may go back to to try and use the tractor to do more of our seeding because a Consistent cover crop is is one of the things that We try to work with like last year it didn't rain at all And if we didn't maybe had better seed to soil contact somehow we might have had better germination of our cover crops There's just some more pictures of the cover crops So This was one where it worked. Well, you can see that's cow peas and in sedan grass. So It's something to still consider you may have other pieces of equipment that you can seed your cover crops with on your farm So like I said conclusions you can use a vegetable cedar I would blend seeds and just have one Seed hole or whatever your equipment uses Um, I couldn't quite get everything evenly spaced and then the harrowing Isn't necessarily a bad thing to do So then in 2016 We tried it again And you can see what came up was mainly vetch, you know, we seeded this in the fall Of 2015 and for some reason we've had this happen before the ride Doesn't come up that well, but the vetch does But we still worked with it and rolled stuff down Um That's the flail mower. We are able to get that as part of the project. It's really nice to have a it's a a good quality alamo And we had some of the same problems with bind weeds So we just kind of abandoned that these are the same conclusions as the other one And then we just still had a lot of rain issues So one of the other things we were trying are No till for tomatoes So with our csa we raised tomatoes and then We like to have a second planting just because the first one kind of Dyes off and doesn't do as well. So we always hit we have some hunt, uh, summer Heat set tomatoes that we use Bellarosa is the variety They're a caged tomato also a determinant So we don't have to do all the stringing you can Raise them plant them put a cage around it and you know necessarily forget them But if they're they take less care and they're more like a grocery store type tomato But if you leave them on the vine long enough um and let them ripen You know using organic growing methods and improving your soil. They do have some some good flavor and texture so the um So that whole area had uh ryan vetch and um So we rolled rolled stuff down and On one bed for the tomatoes and then the other one we um Tilled the cover cropped in like we would normally do We tried to do that ahead of time and let it rest And then we came through and we planted our tomatoes everything's at two foot spacing I think somewhere in here. I say I think we had Close to 50 tomatoes per row um And so the one on the left we we get a lot of hay we're able to get hay from um Other farmland that rebecca's farm owns or family owns Hey mulch and then on the right We did I believe somewhere in there at some point do a little bit of extra mulching But that's the rolled down cover crops So you can see that the mulch ones on the left They're a little more robust than the ones on the right And um over time You know, we didn't do a lot of weeding on the ones on the right We did some just to keep them away from the plants But the idea was to try and have it be a minimal care system And you can see that the ones that were um in the Cover crop that was turned under did better They they had nice fruit set and so here's the data. So with the hay mulch We had almost three times the amount of um Tomatoes that we're able to harvest So the rolled print crops, you know, they helped keep the weeds down during the early growth stage everything kind of got established pretty well but the stated and hay mulch beds gave us three times a yield and you know Thought with us is that maybe in a more mature no-till system That you might get better nutrient uptake But we feel that by by spading in, you know, all that vetch and Everything and kind of getting more of a mixing of the nutrients We're able to get more nutrients released and that's part of the reason why we got um a higher yield And so here's some costs that were associated with the Project so the no-till planting aid You know doing kind of the farm hack and the likes cost us about 1,100 bucks um Imagine if you did it um from scratch It might be you know closer to $2,000 And then we got a used flail mower And then we had to uh, we had about $4,000 figured in for the cedar and I thought I'd be able to find a used grain drill But we couldn't So that's what that took and that was all brand new equipment and um Yeah, I think that Got plenty of time here for questions then That's pretty much it So who has some questions the question is how much horsepower it took to pull the no-till planting aid So that tractor that we were using that's rebecca's um Grandfather's tractor It's a farm all 504 and it has about 45 horse it uh So, you know at least probably 20 horsepower per per colter and um fertilizer shoe Because it did you know you could definitely feel some drag on it, but I don't know what the limits were The question was what we use a um A sweep to maybe undercut all the mulch and um No, we hadn't really thought about that. I think the idea of The the rolling down is that everything's kind of all attached and So we we didn't really look at that. We've been using sweeps More and more on the farm to reduce our tillage Like we'll have our chickens run through an area and there'll be next to nothing there But you can't quite plant So we will um try and use a sweep just to break up the first inch. So it's kind of more of a shallow tillage And then I don't know if I have a picture of it here. Oh, there it is So we have a Alice. This was another field day um In alice chalmers g tractor. It's a 1948 model tractor And there was another serra project a long time ago ron colsa down in new york he um Electrified it. So we have um 48 volts on that tractor. It's basically a golf cart Size engine And we use that all the time You can see those are that's a cultivator on it right now the the g is belly mounted implement. So you can see what's going on One of the other things we do a lot with it is we use discs on this a lot So we have a toolbar that goes right out to the edge of where the wheels are And they're discs and so we'll drive along and we'll basically make a raised bed And we know we have a lot of heavy soils. We have less soil, but then Clay and glacial till not far underneath So when we get those heavy rains if we don't have our beds shaped um All that water will just smear everything over but if the beds are shaped well water will at least run down The gutters and stay in the gutters and we'll have some nice fluffy soil on top So we are like I said, we're we're moving as much as we can towards a more reduced tillage And mainly using uh our tillage to incorporate cover crop Yeah We had moved it to different areas. Yeah, you know the one year With all the the water Some of the areas we were trying we weren't even able to um do that with but um Yeah, we have friends in canda city other farmers that do no till and and they have a lot of a lot of luck, um But they've actually gone to hogs right now to kind of go across their land because they have a perennial weed pressure So no till does have that issue But if you're able to build up, you know more of the uh micro risal fungi in the soil That may be a lot of the benefit to to really doing as little disturbance as possible What was the planting death? depth in the cedar with the those earthways um They pretty much just have this like Shoe that hangs down and we didn't really adjust it too much as long as it would kind of Cut an opening and then be able to drop the seed down the chute And then it has a little follower that that covers it up so Yeah, you know, it probably wasn't much more than an inch to an inch and a half You know because it's a vegetable cedar. So you're really not Going too deep coal planet jr. Yeah Yeah, you know, we've kind of seen too that um, you know, those they're not no till seeder They don't really drill seed and so They may act different if we If you were doing an area that had been spaded not too long ago, you know, so it depended on the the The soil condition what had previously happened Question was what is our cropping system? So, yeah, we had 150 members csa at this time two full-time apprentices and Sometimes we'd have other farm help too and so we were farming close to Five acres and with that every year we would try and Like when the broccoli came out of production in the spring make sure we put down cover crops of a summer cover crop And then right now we scaled back. So We're only growing about two to two and a half acres and In 2017 we took what we call sabbatical year. We cut our csa in half It's only every other week so we could concentrate on our fermenting business our business model The idea is to get back to the point. We're making the same amount of income Half of it's the csa and then half of it is the the ferments And we spend a lot of 2017 Trying to stale seed bed a lot of our beds. So We had some areas we left them open and then we'd go through with Like a sweep cultivator And and try and knock down the weeds just as they were we're starting And then depending on the time of year. So our spring will plant Like either oats or barley with With field peas in the summer It tends to be sorghum sedan grass with crotal area or cow peas and then in Overwintering we do the rye vetch, but then sometimes we also do oats and peas near the end of summer To have a cover crop that we can maybe turn in before winter so One thing we do Just because we're vegetable farmers and you really need kind of a prepared bed in the spring to plant in Then we'll do a certain amount of cover cropping in the fall and then Turn that under kind of as late as we can maybe the first week of october Or spring and or fall cover cropping and so to actually be Won't have anything planted in it over the summer or over the winter But then all that free stalling makes it like a perfect soil to plant in in the spring If we got to see beets and carrots or do different things so And as you can see our our organic matter has gone up so we feel that It shows that it's a it's a productive system as far as the soil And I'd say we try and turn it under Right before winter so biological activity starts, but a lot of that biomass is still in there so that it Gets released a little bit more in the spring and summer That's pretty much an average Yeah, so, you know, it's it's a little inexact but It was just something we're Kind of a good faith effort to demonstrate that our soil organic matter is going up So it's whatever samples we take in a year. We have two different fields if you went back to like the first picture So the fields on the left over here is what we call our home field They they tend to be drier in the spring and then we we call this our the pond field So we've gotten to the point where we're going back and forth now with soil samples and so That's kind of what the data is is just whatever we had for that year well, um you know, we're growing for our ferments and for the csa and Because I had one thing that I'd like to try a little bit different with the cover crops is um A more diverse mix, you know, it'll still be like a grain in a legume But maybe we'll do four types of of seeds or five and I'm kind of looking in more into that so Maybe we'll do the crotal area and the cow peas along with Sorghum sandgrass and find some other warm season grain that might work and have like four or five different seeds that we're planting at a time and um Just keep trying different things and with the chickens, you know I said we we've gone more and more to as much reduced tillage as we can the chickens have really helped because they Basically do a lot of tilling and so we can get in there and just shape beds and maybe just till the top inch So the more we can do that the better Sun hemp Yeah Yeah, yeah, it's nice it grows really well, you know Hot and dry as long as you can get it to germinate The question is whether we sell at market so, um We sell our ferments at market our vegetables we only grow enough vegetables for our csa based on what we know our membership is So if we have a good year, they might get more of something We can also have excess we have what's called a bulk list. So we're we have a small farm central anybody familiar with that It's an online system that's kind of made for csa farms So we use that system people can sign up online. They can keep Track of their own account So you're not like trying to keep track or double entering information that people send you And then they also have a place where you can kind of sell online So if we have extra lettuce we can just put that up and send out an email It's like if you want extra lettuce Buy it online and we'll deliver it to your csa distribution and then there's an Organic farmers market in can city called the brookside farmers market And so we go there every other week to sell the ferments So we're 45 minutes from kind of downtown kansas city Which is really a really good distance for us being a participatory csa you know The family is going to come out to do their work requirement farm work You know, it's a little drive in the country. They're not driving two hours. So You know, we're lucky that we're peri urban as they say We have um the farms one pickup site. We have two locations in the city That we drop off at we have what we call a core group that manages the csa and then um Most of the core group members are distribution captains and So if there's a distribution site, there's like five people that instead of coming out to the farm to work They will rotate and go to the distribution site and we'll go drop off crates They set it all up They break it down to make sure everything works well. And then when we come back the next week we take the empty crates and deliver the the fresh produce so it's nice for us we um Can just drive into town then you you know work in other errands and stuff and with the ferments it'll allow us to Maybe do some drop-offs there. So it helps make it efficient for us to to drive in Um, it's been pretty good. We're normally 75 percent or more We are renewals going on right now and We only opened it up to the Last year's members to start with And we have a hundred we're going for a hundred members this year. And I think rebecca said we're up to You know 65 or so already So I think we'll be on track for that and Since we went to every other week people have actually liked that it's helped us as farmers We've got this whole extra week where we can kind of concentrate on farming more We've worked it out. So the harvesting isn't that big of an issue We have a Wednesday drop off as our first for the week and a monday is the last for that distribution week So there's a handful of days in there that we can kind of plan stuff. We have a 12 by 24 inch cooler that we built as part of our fermenting project So that helps too. We can store a lot of stuff