There are a couple distinct ways of approaching one’s small farm business. One approach is to buy all the snazzy equipment right away and assume it will eventually pay for itself in saved labor. Of course this doesn’t always pan out. Some examples of such luxurious small farm tools include new tractors and tillers, snazzy flail mowers and finger weeder implements, paperpot seeders for the fields (look it up, they’re trending on small farms), the vacuum seeder for the propagation house (also fun to google), and the greens harvester to cut salad without bending over (yet again, mr. internet will answer your questions), etc. to infinity and beyond. I don’t know if you know this about us, but we are not those kind of farmers. We are proudly scrappy, making sure a new tool is beyond well-earned before making an investment. After digging over 5,000 feet of potatoes in our first seven years, we decided we’d earned a potato digger. (Could’ve made that minor purchase a couple of years sooner to save the ol backaroo!) After 9 years on a tractor from the 60s and saving up our parsnip pennies, we figured we were due for a tractor with 4WD and some legit horse power. Mighty helpful when driving around in soggy springs! Twelve years in, we deemed ourselves worthy of a grown-up propagation house for our plant babies rather than two hilariously cramped, gardener sized start houses. Until we know for sure a farm addition is really, definitely going to improve efficiency and financially payoff, we hold off. So out we go to the fields to transplant by hand, knowing it’s the right move, at least for us.

Here’s part 2 of our Farm Foes series. This week it’s diseases and critters!DISEASES:

1. Downy Mildew – Wondering why the onions are so small this year? Blame the mildew, which killed their leaves before the onions had a change to swell up. Luckily small is still yummy. It also our afflicts our Russian kales in the late summer and fall.

2. Sclerotinia – A fungus that affects the roots and stems of lettuce-family seed crops, including sunflowers. We lost a couple lettuce crops to the fungus this year.

3. Late Blight – We haven’t seen any this year, thank goodness, but when it does rear its head you can say goodbye to all the tomatoes. We’ve only had a couple years when it’s been a major problem. Growing under tunnels and greenhouses generally keep the tomatoes dry and fungus-free.
4. Powdery Mildew – Not a serious disease, but a life-shortener of chard, zucchini and cucumbers. Good riddance. Who wants to pick those plants for months on end anyway.

5. I can’t think of any more economically significant diseases, which is pretty great!

OTHER CRITTERS:

1. Birds! – We love em, but they’d completely annihilate many of our seed crops without bird netting. Finches are the worst for small seeded things (brassicas, cosmos, spinach), and blackbirds for larger seeds (sunflowers, corn).

2. Slugs – We all know what slugs do. I think 20% of our farm budget went to Sluggo during that endless wet spring of 2022. Unfortunately, our ecological management practices like cover cropping and maintaining undisturbed perennial zones also create ample slug habitat.

3. Voles – Come fall, these critters get audacious and develop a particular taste for carrots, beets and radishes.

4. Deer – They can’t do too much damage on the vegetables, but can wreak havoc overnight on our little fruit trees if we leave the gate open.

5. Coyotes – We’ve lost a chicken or two or thirteen to these wily beasts.

It’s breathtaking: the naturally occurring biodiversity that magically appears to stake its claim on one’s organic field. Dozens of weed species, insect pests, and countess bacterial, viral and fungal diseases. Not to mention the vertebrates, which can’t be underestimated. These species put the ‘work’ in farming and keep us permanently on our toes. Here’s the first in a two-part series on the top tier nemeses that make their way into our daily farm lives. This week: Weeds! Next week: Diseases and Beyond!!! It’s a whimsical balance between letting all these scrappy cohabitants have their lunch and allowing us to make some cash.

WEEDS:
1. Hairy nightshade – Our most prolific and aggressive summer weed. Fast growing with a
strong root system, forming hundreds of small green berries packed with seeds.
2. Lambs quarter – A nutrient rich relative of spinach and quinoa, it’s our fastest growing weed and a producer of thousands of minuscule seeds per plant.
3. Canada Thistle – Our most existentially threatening weed. Thistle forms aggressive horizontal roots systems that are aggravated and spread from digging and tillage. In a pasture it may be managed by repeatedly mowing, but in annually worked vegetable fields there are no real organically-certified suppression methods. We tried tarping, digging, burning and an organic herbicide, which it all laughed off. Thus, we had to take one of our fields out of organic certification (and production) for the three years to spray a patch. It blows in every year from neighbors’ fields, and without a well-funded, county-wide management the problem with continue to worsen.
4. Field Bindweed – While this isn’t widespread on the farm, it has cropped up in a few locations and is spreading like wildfire. Like, thistle it forms spreading roots systems that we can’t figure out how to kill with organic methods. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to pull out two new beds of strawberries, because it has spread aggressively under the black plastic. We’ll put this area into pasture for a few years and mow it like crazy in an effort to wear this plant out.
5. Chickweed – Our most serious cool-season weed, but not a huge nuisance. Once the fall crops mature, we let chickweed run rampant, as it doesn’t compete with the crops at that point and acts as a makeshift cover crop. It can be a pain though during our super long, wet springs.

Wondering what kind of fancy tractor implements we use on this little organic farm? I know you are. The curiosity has likely been eating away at you all year, so apologies for not getting around to the subject sooner. While most small farms rely heavily on hand labor for harvesting, weeding, trellising, etc. having a tractor is pretty nice for moving dirt around without throwing your back out. Very small farms, generally under a couple acres, often rely on 2-wheel tractors like a BCS or other model, for tilling, plowing or harrowing small areas. We also use a 2-wheel tiller for getting inside tight spaces like greenhouses and tunnels, but mainly we use our 45 HP Branson tractor for tillage type of work.

The main implements for the Branson tractor are as follows:

Flail Mower – Chops up cover crops and cash crops into small pieces for quick breakdown into the soil.

Brush Hog – Faster and coarser than the flail. Good for mowing large areas of grass.

Chisel Plow – 2’ deep, 18” shanks that break up compaction and help aerate subsoil.

Rototiller – Used shallowly to incorporate weeds, cover crop, or vegetable residue into the soil. Also the final step in bed preparation to create a nice soil texture for seeding.

Cone Spreader – Spreads fertilizer (lime, feather meal, dolapril, etc.) evenly over a 30 ft width. Holds 400lbs of fertilizer per load.

Middle Buster – A big shovel like tool that is dragged to create trenches for potato planting. Also doubles as a potato harvester!

We also have a 15HP electric cultivating tractor that we drive over young crops to weed between rows. Gotta plant in straight, parallel rows for it to work!

We’re always geeking out on new tools to possibly add to the arsenal, but equipment is expensive and usually doesn’t pay off unless it’s a great fit for your farm system. We’re eyeing a Power Harrow for 2024, which is like a fancy rototiller, but creates less soil disturbance and compaction.