 I'm Catherine Privet-Durin, and this is Little Hallowocky Farm in Opelika, Alabama. And I have been farming for 10 years, and I'm a Lee County Master Gardener. I'm also a professor of literature and have been teaching since about 20 years now. Right now I only teach online, which has made it very easy for me to do this kind of work. We realized very quickly that there was no way for us to actually compete with other farms on such a small scale, and not that we even wanted to. So I was trying to find, I suppose, a way to participate in my community that would matter. And I'm a teacher. I've been a teacher for over two decades, and I'm also a farmer. And so I thought, well, why not take this opportunity to make a teaching farm of some sort? And I suppose our purpose is dual. And one way we want our neighbors out here, some of them, you know, can be quite economically challenged. We want them to learn how to get back to growing their own food that you don't need expensive tiller equipment, and acres and acres of land to make sure that you have enough tomatoes, enough green beans, enough salad to get through the year. So that was where it began. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew that it had to be more than that. I think anyone can grow in their own backyard, whether or not it be a hay bale, or a few pots, or even something more auspicious. But what really is my driving passion is to teach people that want to know how we can get back in balance and do sustainable farming, something that's more permaculture, more ethical, healthier for us. And honestly, in the end, less work for us as well. The more that balance is struck, the less work we have to do. And I think if I can get that across, more folks will consider doing it. And then, you know, from there, less poison for the planet, right? So that's what I want to do. Okay, well, what we're doing here is permaculture as much as possible. And we're working with the space we have. And at this time, we have maybe just under an acre and a half. And so our strawberry field is here. And we're going to make sure that it is continued from now on. And you can also see we've do radishes in between because they do such a wonderful job at bringing in the pollinators. And but what else we've done over here is we've incorporated mushrooms for so that all of the mulch in between the plants are actually a living mulch. All of the space needs to be going at all times. You want to come over here and see more? These are our echinacea beds. I've heard that in this area, some of this echinacea wouldn't come back every year very well, but it actually does for us. We heavily mulch in the winter. And they are wonderful. Absolutely one of my favorite flowers that we grow. And also, they're just a wonderful pollinator period. And the chickens like it. And these are my chickens. And up here, we decided to let this just be, which is sort of one of our ethics here. I was working on getting some elderberry together. And I started them right here in this little bed. And this one didn't want to leave. But that's good because as we know, in Alabama, the shade can be kind of important in our horrible summers. Also beautiful summers. And this one provides shade for our hot house. And also the birds just love it. And it's part of our working farm, I guess, mission to work with everything. So it's a living ecology. So the birds matter, the lizards matter, the bees matter, everything matters. This is intensive care. And what I mean by that is we overwinter everything in our hot house. We have not yet taken the plastic off of. And when we bring them out, some things really struggle to come back. And especially our little lemon trees here that this one's doing pretty good. Over here, this one's not doing so well. So we put them out in full sun. And I can baby them better right here. And hopefully, some of these things will recover from the cold winter. And over here is our spearmint patch. We all know that mint will take over. But with working in permaculture, I really wanted to give them a spot where they could thrive and not fight them so much. This is where they thrive. And it's a wonderful tea. This is copper fennel. It's been on the property for about six years now. And it's become part of our landscape. I think it's beautiful. Butterflies love it. And over here, while it doesn't look like much right now, this field has been repurposed for turmeric. And we have about five different varieties of turmeric in here. They will come up like later in the summer. But over here, we have a patch of parsnips. And what we're really into is letting the land tell us what it wants to do and not fight it too difficult. You know, not make it too difficult for that land. We tried to do asparagus here. And I think one of the number one things a farmer should understand is if it's too hard, then it's not right. And so we've decided to let that situation go and find a better place for our asparagus and wait for this area to sort of let us know what will grow well here. The turmeric does wonderfully over here. But we didn't know that for years and years and tried to do corn. So it's a learning process, you know. And letting them tell you what needs to be grown, I think, is the most important part of being a permaculture farmer. These are our roses. And I am in love with roses on a farm. I've heard from other people they can't do roses because they say it's too much work. And it's really not. It's more about just letting the plant be quite a bit. We prune them once a year. And we mulch them heavily with living mulch that you will see those mushrooms later in the fall. But these bring in pollinators. And they're a wonderful tea. And they're related to the apple family, the apple blossom family. And you can do roses on a farm without a lot of work and with no pesticides at all. Or any chemical that's synthetic. And over here, this is our new septic tank. And, you know, farming is messy. And one of my feelings was if we're going to dig into the earth and put in a septic tank, I really wanted it to be a living space, too. So last year, we put in a bunch of zinnias, heritage zinnias. And this year, we're also incorporating a little dill so that this can be a living space at all times instead of just being a concrete slab. These are my potatoes. It is our first year for potatoes. And as a farmer, every year I try one new thing, you know. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay. But what I learned from one new thing is usually whether or not it will assist in a permaculture system, which we know it has to have some sort of balance and stability and diversity. So we didn't want to put our potatoes in the ground. We wanted to do something that was raised and not injure the ground in any way. They're working out so far. And behind here, we are doing haybell gardening, which is a wonderful way to add extra space, especially if you're limited. And we've got butternut squash. We have the African orange melon. We have some tomatoes. So that's a really neat way to limited space, don't dig in the earth and still have a lot of food. And behind that are garlic fields. And that particular field is a two-stage field. So garlic will grow there from October until May. And then in May, it will be lettuces and sometimes beans, but that way it's always living with the environment. These cupronons are gorgeous. They're golden. And you can see they begin over here at this archway and splay all the way down this side. And they're enamingled with natural rose here on the property. And what's really cool about it is this entire thing came out of one little stick. I just put it in the ground and it gives us about two gallons of cupronons, another vine and another archway, so that we can have enough to assist a family of five. Guess we're feeding about five people on all of their vegetable needs and three CSA members that get a basket every month. And they usually get a basket about six months for their input. And without them, we couldn't make it. And we're, like I was telling you, really working on becoming a closed loop because finances are hard for us. They're hard for a lot of people I know right now. And farming can be an expensive endeavor. And we're looking for ways to take that expense off the table a little bit, making our own compost, incorporating rabbits for their wonderful waste product, and recycling all of the things that we have on the farm as much as possible. But let's go look at what's down here. Now just this year, we are doing something new. Before we were using plastic in between our rows, we were doing rows for one thing. We were using more synthetic materials to fight weeds and things like that. This year, we are 100% trying to get away from that. And it is a process, but we're almost there. I'm using pine. I'm using hay. I'm not using straw. And the reason I'm not using straw is because I cannot find an affordable organic straw. And that is very sad. It turns out most hay around here is not sprayed because the horses eat it. Pine is a little iffy for us. So we're working against that probably by the end of the year. And that's primarily because it can make the ground acidic if we worked it in. So what we did decide to do was make more living mulch. And one of the ways we did that was we worked with northern spore. And right now we're working on a research project together to find ways to incorporate mycelium, a living mulch into our beds, into our pathways as well, into every possible space. So if you look carefully down this way, you'll see this is completely untamed area. And there's a deep pond with an old well house down there. We care about that. We have frogs, we have toads, we have all kinds of turtles. You know, Alabama has so much diverse ecology. But we have to care a little bit more about it to keep it going. And since we've been working with no synthetic chemicals for so long, we've noticed now how much is thriving here? How much the soil responds? How much the trees respond? It's a peaceful place. So, you know, we have to have a pathway. We're still working on how to do this. This is some crushed leftover rock. But nothing past here to there would have any kind of plastic material anymore, because it's really bad for the environment breaks down into your earth. And if you look very carefully, you'll see copper run across the base of these green bean plants. And the reason for that is because they were getting eaten, and we don't use pesticide. So we incorporated copper tape, and hopefully that's going to give these wonderful plants a chance to kind of pull through. And it's hot in here. So get ready. We got this high tunnel on a grant from the state of Alabama. And it has been wonderful. And at first, what we did with this area and this property was we tilled it. We tilled it heavily. We didn't know any other way. But I was noticing that the quality of the earth and we do soil tests every year, the quality of the earth was going way down and there was hummus was not great, there weren't any worms. And so we've decided 100% no more telling. I like to tell people it's no till just a little dig, because you got to make a hole somewhere. We wanted to utilize as much space in here as possible. And so instead of a bunch of lines, we decided to go up in this teepee shape for our cucumbers. And because we don't want to waste any space at all, being a very small farm, we've incorporated salads in the interior that these wonderful plants will shade, which is necessary and 95 degree heat. The same for here. This area has not been tilled in a year. And as you can see, it's kind of thriving. This area is now going to be a permanent bed. And we fixed it in a way that you can reach over. I've actually measured that and not walk in because that can compact our soil, which also means that we're going to have to have permanent pathways. You'll notice we have a lot of cardboard down. It's a lot better for the earth and plastic. And those pathways will all be inoculated with mushrooms for our micro irrigation is not yet out for the year, because we want to wait to see where the plants are going to all be living permanently. What's really cool about our water, it's well water. So there's no chlorine involved in that or any other runoffs or anything like that. It's important if you have well water to also get your water tested every year. I think that's a misstep when we're doing our soil. Water needs to be tested as well. See what you got going on. Also, because we're trying to create a living ecology that is balanced and we don't want to waste space either. We're making sure that we interplant quite a bit. And companion plants are also just wonderful. But here we have nasturtiums. And they're a great look natural pesticide right there. They're going to keep a lot of things off the plants. And here we have calendula. And what's wonderful about that is you got two things with that. You have the pollinators coming in like gangbusters. But you also have a tea source. And it's wonderful and sad and things over here. It's a little early to see. But we've incorporated sage and they will be popping up in between all of these plants. And over there are marigolds. So what's important about that is just keeping the ground living. You know when you go look at a forest floor, everything is working together. There's so much life. It's created this beautifully balanced ecology. But when we tell and we create these hard spaces where we expect the plant to thrive just as well. It tells us the answers now when we incorporate it all together and try to mimic and get back to that natural I think sacred balance. It does more for us and we do less work. And that's sort of the key. Less work. More food. Right. And over here we did not want to do pipes. We didn't want to do anything that would injure the lands. There's a gorgeous pond down there. It's not on our property. But when you're doing this kind of work you need to care about the surrounding property. And that pond does matter to our community. So we just dug a trench and let it do what it needs to do. You know the important thing is that I don't want to be too perfect on this farm because the second I try to be too perfect everything is going to fall. I'm trying to kind of work with the plants and with the landscape in a way that's not invasive and in a way that I feel like is healthier for the land itself. Well we think this is a tea olive. It absolutely has covered in bees in the summer. And when we had to make our high tunnel they wanted to cut it down. And we fought for it. We promised to keep it at a certain height. We promised to take good care of it. And she just flourished. And you know a good friend of mine named Jamie Oates told me that it's important to remember in the South things aren't the same as they are in other places. Sometimes we need a little shade. And honestly this high tunnel would burn up so much without a little shade. She's not tall enough to be a threat. So we left her there. As sustainable farmers we really care about saving our own seed as much as possible. That's a lost art and it will help with food security. And I want to teach some of my neighbors to do this kind of work. Doesn't take that much work. It just takes a little care. And you know some dedication. But it will also save a lot of money every year. So all of these are safety. And that makes some of them heritage. Which we really love. And you'll see we have fans going. They're critical. Over here as well. And they're on solar panels. And we really didn't want to incorporate any electricity down here if we could possibly keep it away from our farm and garden. But we still have to negotiate a few things. So that being stated these were affordable. And we keep them in here all year. Okay well when we had to do our septic system. We needed to do some field lines. And we didn't want to hurt too many trees. And so one of the things we did was we went ahead and just pulled it down this nice long line which actually belongs to us all the way down. To help feed the trees. And since we don't use any chemicals in our home we're not that worried about the runoff. But we also needed to get hardwood mulch for this project. And when we did I looked at this huge pile of hardwood mulch which I got from a local lumber yard. And it's not been sprayed or treated. And we wanted to do something with the rest of it. And I started to think. And that's when the idea of mushrooms came to me. This is oak hardwood mulch. And we called northern spore. This is before we found out about our little farm down the way that's still working on things. To become a fungi farm. And I think they're doing pretty good too. But we went ahead and inoculated all of this logs you see here in the shady wood line with shiitake. I believe there's 32 logs down there. As an extra food source because we had to cut a little lumber to get this in. And we wanted to not have any waste products. But that's not all we did. We ended up with a lot of spore. So one of the other things we've done is taken this hardwood mulch surrounded about five different trees in our property. And inoculated that with mushroom spore as well. And the mushroom spore we used everything from almanut garakas to well shiitake, red wine cap which by the way grows really wonderful in the sun. Is that it works with the root system. It doesn't damage the tree. A living tree is going to be very happy about that surrounding area. And it kind of keeps it nice and moist. And just becomes more life and more food. The reason we love our yuccas because it has something that sounds like sapononoids in it. It's a soap making compound. And most people think you actually have to kill the tree to get the root where it has the most of those compounds. But you do not. We take the leaves we put them in boiling water and then let them sit and then do the work of scraping the exterior, the green off of that and letting it work for a little while too. And it makes a wonderful natural syrup. And also the fibers can make rope. But it is blooming which it only does every two years. So that will be really nice. Well these are dwarf peach trees which are more appropriate for our space. We get I suppose about three gallons of the most delicious peaches you've ever had out of this. And that will definitely take care of a family of four or five for a couple of you know nice peach cobblers. And we love it because it doesn't get too tall. These particular trees are seven years old. And I did plant them incorrectly when they were first to hear on the property. But mistakes are where you learn everything. And they are trying to recover from that. We use absolutely nothing on them. Whatever fruit survives, survives. And we still get all of those buckets every year. But for a smaller family and limited space, the dwarf peach tree is where it's at. Zach is my son and he's been helping me farm for a year since the pandemic began. And he's done the work in here. Yeah I'm Zach Privet, cat's son. And I've been staying here for the last year learning how to grow and becoming more interested in growing. And honestly I wasn't really that interested in growing or farming until I quarantined and actually got out here saw it every day and started doing it myself. So we're underneath the fig trees here. Stay nice and shady. So we have these hay bales with golden oyster inoculate. And underneath the hay bales we have hardwood chips with almond agaricus. So we're still waiting on them to fruit. It's our first experimentation with them. But hopefully it's fruitful. I think the most important thing to think about when you're first starting some kind of farming project. Of course small scale is what I do so I couldn't advise to anything else. Would be ask yourself what number one brings you the most pleasure. Whether it be a certain flower you remember from your childhood or even if it's a lettuce that always has brought you pleasure. And number two what do you use the most of that can grow well in your area. And then from there honestly I would turn to the Lee County Master Gardeners or whatever county you are residing in. Because we have a lot of knowledge and we can talk to you about what cultivars and what you know species of things will grow in your space. But for instance if you don't have a lot of space that is across the ground you can always go up. Little ideas like that can really make the difference to a first time farmer. What we want is for someone to succeed at something. And so the second big piece of advice would be you're going to mess up. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to learn from those mistakes. And they're critical to learning what does well for you. What does well for your land. And what does well for your zone. But start small. Two or three things that really matter to you. And go have fun making mistakes and making food.