Humble Pie Farm

HPF friends, hello! Whatta week. The photo above is the sun shining through the rain, the calm after the storm, the benefit reaping after the pain. Okay, that's a little dramatic. Here's the story.

Our neighbor's corn field is about 30 feet from our flower and veggie fields, and we have a little bit of a buffer (need a hedgerow made with various native bushes and trees) but not much because we've only been here for a few months, etc. Anyway, he's just farming the way he knows how and it's that time of the year - when you spray the young corn rows with herbicide that targets and kills all the broad leaf weeds like dandelion and lambsquarter and pretty much all of our flowers. He sprayed on a calm evening and tried to keep the boom low, and be conscious of our transitioning to organic field. Inevitably on our windy ridge, we got a little bit of spray drift, especially in the lower part of our field nearer to his.

This is what almost all the newer baby plants looked like. Little yellow spots appeared everywhere over the course of two days. At the time we didn't know that he had sprayed. Maybe he did it in the night? Anyway, as you can imagine, we were freaking out just a little! What is this disease or fungus that's spreading through our field like wildfire?! Is everything going to wilt and die? I sent out emails to the UW and UMN, and called in all my resources and connections to help us figure it out. We had visions of our fields that we're working so hard to cultivate and build soil and improve beneficial insects and native life being so far gone that we just couldn't farm them this year, such an important one. And then there's paying our mortgage.

It's hard to convey the depth of feeling, and the complexity of issues around this whole situation. It's touchy. Our neighbor farmer is doing the best he can. He's helped us and we've helped him, and we're trying to be good farm neighbors. With a very different philosophy and methods. Our little 16-acre oasis on a windy ridge is unusual in our "neighborhood" of 300 and 400 acres of conventional corn and soybeans, and dairies of varying sizes from 50 cows to 5000.

Sigh. It's complicated. There's also a possible setback to our organic certification.

What should we do? Our answer was feed the plants tons of fish emulsion frequently and plant a better buffer. Oh and send in our plant tissue to UW for an analysis of nutrient deficiencies,etc. The plant babies have perked up already. And we had a few good soakers yesterday that washed away much of the residue.

Really, we just continue doing what we're doing. Farming, using organic methods. We have no choice; we're all in on this farm dream.

We continue to try to build bridges and offer an alternative to the norm.

Today is my one-year anniversary working for MOSES (Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service). I'm an organic specialist and I answer calls from all different kinds of farmers in many different areas, and many different places along the sustainable farming spectrum. It is my privilege to talk to so many farmers, and hear their stories, joyfilled or heart-breaking. As I learn more and more about organic certification regulation and reality, I realize more and more: organic agriculture drives conventional agriculture. Conventional agriculture has changed in whatever little way it has because there are brave, innovative, hard-working farmers instilling change on their plot of land. Be it 8500 acres of corn, wheat and sunflowers on the Kansas high plains (talked to him yesterday about grain storage), or 3 acres of diversified market produce in Ohio (talked to her this morning about organic certification forms).

It is our privilege to be a little part of this community. We will continue to do the best we can.

And then there are the flowers.