Inspiration and Crop Rotation

Last weekend Colin and I attended the annual Tilth Producers Conference in Bellingham. Tilth Producers of Washington is an organization of organic and sustainable agricultural producers. Founded in 1977, this organization represents its members in the field and marketplace, in research, education, and in the public policy arena. It’s a rare weekend once a year when all the farmers get someone else to take care of business so we can all get together and exchange ideas and encouragements. All that thinking and learning put us in the mood to think about mapping and planning next years operation here. We got out our maps from all the past years, for all three sites. We arranged them on the kitchen counter so that only the past three years were visible and then we stared at them for a while. Crop rotation is a very basic and very important part of organic farming and simply means not planting the same thing in the same place from one season to the next. Ideally, we would wait at least three years before growing carrots, for instance, on the same plot of ground.
This sort of planning was practiced by all the ancestors, but in much simpler format, as land was in more abundant supply in the past, and farmers would set out with a scheme in mind, and it usually involved moving the pastures of animals as well. So big squares or pie wedges would be laid out and crops and animals would take turns occupying these spaces in an orderly fashion. Here at our place, we started with a minimal amount of land and knowledge, and have grown and learned and changed every year since. We have at least ten plant family groups to work with each year, and according to what sells better or worse we change the amounts of each one. So even if we had started out with a masterful plan we would still be adjusting it each year. One thing that would make it so much easier would be if we just had twice as much land as necessary, and could move the whole thing to a fresh spot each time. But we do not. We have just exactly enough land to do what we do, and so we engage in an annual game of tetris-elimination-jigsaw puzzle-calculation-estimation-measurement-planning.

Our best crop rotation experienced so far is a three year plan starting with a full years cover crop of white clover, followed by onions and garlic the second year, and carrots the third. For the past few years, the amount of ground we allot for the entire allium family, garlic, leeks, scallions, and five kinds of onion, is roughly the same as the amount we want for carrots. That’s a lucky break. What makes this the best rotation is the full year of nurturing rest provided by the cover crop, and the theory that the pests that like carrots do not like onions and that they either remember or that the alliums leave enough of themselves to act as a deterrent to pests. There is an overabundance of both proven knowledge and totally made up theories regarding companion planting and crop rotation. All we can do is keep planting and keep taking notes.


What happens to me at the annual conference is that I feel a strange duality of recognizing both how much knowledge I have gained in my years of experience here, and how vast the amount of information and wisdom I have yet to learn. Some presentations are almost boring to me, baby stuff. Other workshops are introducing new ideas and equipment I’ve never imagined. When I first encounter some radical new idea, I am so impressionable, I think “oh yes that’s it. Now how can I rearrange our entire lives to fit this new model?” After some small amount of time thinking this way something happens and I get more realistic and switch over to “what can I do on a small scale test of this new radical thing.” Incorporating livestock as fertility source and pest control and extra income is one such test we are engaged in right now. Those of you who purchased our chickens, thank you. You may not have realized that in addition to best quality meat, you were supporting research and development at the Kirsop Farm. We currently bring in feather meal as our main source of nitrogen fertilizer and it is getting more expensive by the minute, so anything we can do to lessen our need of it boosts our bottom line. Actual chickens fertilizing the land is great, as is growing legume family cover crops that fix nitrogen from the air into the soil. Sounds like magic and it is. The more I learn the less difference I see between magic and science actually. It’s all just endlessly fascinating and miraculous and I am so eternally grateful to be immersed in such satisfying and stimulating work.

Tomato update – that warm room ripening idea totally worked!! We put them in all green and hard, and now they are all soft and red and I think they taste great. Maybe if I could time warp a sun kissed vine ripened fruit picked fresh in August and put it up against one of these warm roomers I could tell the difference. But, you know, there is no time warp, and it is really the middle of November and I am just thrilled to be having tomato slices on my sandwiches. I’m easy to please.