The Method to the Madness

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Farming is like anything else: it’ll absorb as much time, energy, and money as you want to invest. The more you invest, the more success you’ll have…hopefully. Aaron and I are both school teachers, and we’ve used the past few years to figure out how to make farming fit into our lives. That fit has sometimes been a square peg in a round hole, but we’re committed to growing good food, so we persist. Part of making farming work for us means we need to strategically spread out the workload over the course of our off-season. Once spring rolls around, life becomes a whirlwind of chores, and there’s not much time to step back and take in the big picture.

The Obsession

Aaron has spent way too many hours so far this winter methodically mapping out our garden beds for the coming season. (This does not include the hours he’s spent ogling seed catalogues, by the way.) He’s applying the knowledge he’s gained through a Market Gardener Master Class facilitated by J.M. Fortier, a Permaculture Design program through Oregon State University, a C.A.S.E. certification (Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education) at Kentucky University, and the endless gardening podcasts he listens to. The man doesn’t mess around.

The Plan

The spreadsheet Aaron created to plan our crops is intricate and proactive. It includes important dates for sowing seeds, transplanting, fertilizing, cultivating, etc. He’s been going at it like a mad scientist for weeks now. Adhering to the measure-twice-cut-once philosophy, he’s hyper planning now so that we can more easily carry out the heavy lifting of farming in the spring and summer months when it’s harder to think on your toes.

The Rules

Crop planning around here follows a few rules:

1. The crops we plant in our 20 beds are scheduled in a 10 year rotation where a given crop of heavy feeders are followed by nitrogen-enhancing crops (the plant equivalent of dainty eaters—leafy greens).

2. Our crops are planted in clustered intervals so that they don’t all ripen at the same time.

3. Crops are planted as close to one another as possible in order to maximize output and eliminate space for weeds.

4. We don’t plant foods our kids refuse to eat. (Sorry, fennel.)

5. We respect the natural soil food web and therefore plant cover crops liberally. (You’re welcome, worms.)

The Application

Each season of farming teaches us something new. How best to enrich the soil through compost and natural fertilizers. Which weeds to let grow because they improve the land. Which crops people in our lives most enjoy. How to prevent the kids and dog from destroying the insect netting. There’s no end to learning when you recognize nature as your teacher. We use the winter months to harness our learned lessons from the previous growing season and apply them toward the next.

The Video

Watch the video below to hear a little bit about why we plan the beds the way we do.

Rain Water Collection

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As a student of permaculture, Aaron loves to find ways to use naturally occurring systems in our favor. I mean, who doesn’t want more free time? And fewer things breaking is a huge win! Since we have garden beds to irrigate and animals to hydrate, thoughtful rain water collection quickly became one of the more obvious systems to experiment with. The latest rain water prototype may be upgraded to a more permanent set up as it proves its usefulness and we continue to tweak our systems here at Fail Better Farms.

What does rain water collection look like on our farm?

We have four 55 gal water barrels and one 330 gal IBC tote tank set up at downspouts where needed on the property. When it rains, these guys fill up relatively quickly. It’s kind of shocking actually. For every 1” of rain and 1,000 square feet of surface, about 620 gallons can be captured. If the rain barrel is kept up slightly above the ground, we can irrigate on head pressure alone. When it’s warmer we’ll add BTI as a monthly pollinator-friendly mosquito control. (Read about how and why we use BTI here.)

Our current largest reservoir, the IBC tote tank (in photo below) is strategically located. We’re in agricultural zone 7A, meaning we should expect a few hard freezes throughout the winter. Our current solution is to keep the tank on the south-facing side of our garage, out of the biting cold north wind. Using gravity alone, this tank supplies the rain water stored for crops and/or animals.

Water destined for the crops passes through an irrigation filter, a battery-operated irrigation timer (sometimes set to irrigate 3 times a day), and some layflat hose (blue hose seen in photos) before it arrives at on/off valves at the foot of every veggie row (so that only those actively growing get the water). A row of drip tape extends from every on /off valve (right photo below) down the row so every root zone gets a slow steady leak of water. This sounds like a lot, but aside from replacing a 9V battery once a year in the timer, this system has been boiled down to two constants: rain & gravity. Thus, there are NO moving parts to break or be replaced. Win!

Pup Proofing

We’ve also had to get creative because our Great Pyrenees enjoys chewing on (ev.er.y.thing…including) the hose that runs from the tank to the fenced garden. We’ve had success by blocking the front of the tank with wooden pallets and covering the layflat hose with upcycled conveyor belt material. (See photos below.)

How can you plan your water collection system?

1. Make sure water collection is legal where you are.

2. Place your rain barrels in logical locations. If you’ll be using the water for thirsty chickens, then collect the water on your chicken coop. If the water is for your garden, make sure it’ll be flowing downhill to your beds. You know…work smarter, not harder.

3. Be creative. A well-placed gutter is well worth the time it takes to install.

Check out what it looks like:

Compost: Nature’s Magic Trick

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When you compost, you’re keeping “trash” out of a landfill, where it would have otherwise gone to die and produce a bunch of methane. You’re enriching your soil and bolstering healthy plants. Composting is like a slow motion version of that magic trick when the magician (nature) puts the cloth over the empty hat (food and yard scraps) and manages to pull out a live rabbit (finished compost). It’s pretty wild, really. You mix stuff together and sit back while nature does what she does best…improves things.

What Composting Looks Like for Us

1. We have a compost can that sits under our kitchen sink. I regularly jam stuff in here that our chickens won’t or shouldn’t eat…coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, onion peels, celery ends, and apple cores. (Fun fact: apple seeds contain cyanide. Don’t feed them to your birds.)

2. My husband Aaron uses a leaf shredder to chop up the fallen leaves in our yard. By shredding the leaves before combining everything in the pile, the compost pile will take less time to finish and be easier to flip/aerate. (Check out the compost flipping video at the bottom of this post!)

3. We combine our kitchen scraps with shredded leaves (carbon) and chicken poo (nitrogen) in a homemade compost bin made from t-posts and wire fencing, but you can find a bunch of prefabricated compost bins online.

4. Then we cover the compost pile with a tarp, which is held down with bricks. The tarp helps to keep the moisture level right where it composts best, the dampness of a wrung-out sponge.

5. We monitor the temperature of our compost heaps. (As you can see in the photo below, the ideal temperature range is between 150°F and 160°F, and we’re killin’ it at a solid 154°F!)

6. After about five weeks, we’re able to apply our finished compost to our garden beds.

How We’re Failing Better

We still throw too much away. It’s hard to avoid waste in our package-happy world. We don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but we’d argue composting is definitely a step in the right direction.

Planting Potatoes

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If potatoes are as much a staple for your family as they are for ours, you might want to consider planting some. Check out our quick tutorial on how to get the job done with worm castings, compost, drip tape, and landscape fabric.