FALL 2018

Good Living and Good Farming – Connecting People, Land, and Communities

SMALL FARM QUARTERLY

Feature ArticlesRotational Grazing: How often should I rotate?...........................................................Page 5

More Than a Matter of Taste......................................................................................Page 14

In Camden, a Hot Sauce is Helping Young Urban Entrepreneurs Fight Poverty.......Page 18

by Kimberley Morrill, PhD

Do you think cows have emotions? Do youthink cows feel pain? Do animals exhibit em-pathy, sympathy and compassion? Thesewere the questions asked to the attendeesof the 2018 Dairy Cattle Welfare Sympo-sium. Speakers, farmers and industry repre-sentatives from around the globe gatheredin Scottsdale, AZ May 31st – June 1st, 2018to discuss the intersection of best practicesand sustainability as it ties back to dairy cat-tle welfare.

Currently, Americans care more about ani-mal welfare than children’s education orhunger. Those are the results of the third“Causes Americans Care About” study, con-ducted by the global communications firmKetchum. Responses from 1,000 adultsfound 41% picked animal welfare as theirnumber one cause. Children’s educationranked second with 38% of respondents, fol-lowed by hunger with 33% of respondents.Why should we (dairy educators, dairy farm-ers and industry support) care or worryabout this? Because these are our con-sumers. We need to know what their con-cerns are, and how to address them. Wealso need to be honest about the day-to-daymanagement practices that occur in animalproduction.

Some of our best management practicesmight not always be “pretty” visually to aconsumer but it is what is best for the ani-mal. An example of this would be hoof trim-ming. In early July social media was abuzz

with a picture of a “cow crusher”. What washappening to this poor cow? Very simple,she was having her feet trimmed in a hooftrimming shoot - a very common and safepractice. She was being restrained andproperly taken care of. To anyone with anagricultural background, a picture of a cowin a hoof trimming shoot is just that, tosomeone in the general public, it is a scarylooking picture. We need to take the time to

explain what is occurring, in terms the gen-eral public understand – the cow is receivinga pedicure, 1800 pound animals don’t fit wellinto salon chairs, and sometimes they get alittle finicky and kick. For the safety of theanimal and the person, she is restrained.

More and more consumers only see the

dairy industry through pictures online. Man-di McLeod from New Zealand presented on“lessons learned”. Farmers (regardless ofcountry) are 1. focused on producing food ina continually changing climate in a sustain-able manner and 2. At risk of being pulleddown by the minority (ie: 1 bad egg, 1 farmerwho doesn’t care). Consumers have con-cerns, as stated above about animal wel-fare. So, how can we win the war and showconsumers that we care, and do the best totake care of our animals? Incremental im-provements over time.

1. Seek to understand, and then be under-stood2. Listen to the concerns. LISTEN. Don’t justrespond or react. Listen to understand andthen address their concern.3. Animal care programs must treat all farm-ers fairly by taking into account the land-scape in which they operate. These pro-grams need to be realistic with minimumstandards and unapologetic in accountabili-ty and consequences. As an industry weshould be raising the bar and raising ourcompliance rates, not the other way around.

At the end of the day, we, the dairy industry,are only as good as the weakest link. We allplay a role in animal welfare. Yes, we aredealing with market vulnerability and lowmilk prices, but is this an acceptable excusefor poor animal care? NO.

Page 2 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

THINKING SMALL ISN’T

ALWAYS A BAD THING!By definition, a small farm generates less than $250,000/yr in revenue.

In New York state alone, 33,000 of the 36,000 farms are small farms. Small farms make up 90% of all farms in the US; nearly 2 million!

That’s a BIG market!

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EXTENSION NEWS

Animal Welfare: Perception & Reality

Animal welfare is an important issue to consumers.

See Animal page 3

Registration Open for Online Learn to

Farm Courses

Our suite of over 20 online courses build thetechnical and business skills of farmers. Ex-pert farmers and extension educators guidestudents through the latest research-basedinformation to help improve efficiency andincrease profit on small farms. Topics rangefrom Starting at Square One to Writing aBusiness Plan to Mushroom Cultivation andGrazing Management.

Students connect with other farmers, workon farm plans, and gain practical tips withoutleaving their home. Course content can beaccessed anywhere with a high-speed inter-net connection. Courses are offered fromSeptember 2018 through April 2019.

Watch our short video about the courses:https://youtu.be/ki8-S5HA950

Most courses are six weeks long. Eachweek features an evening webinar and fol-low-up readings, videos, and activities. Stu-dents and their instructors connect throughonline forums and live chat. If you aren’table to attend the webinars in real-time, theyare always recorded for later viewing.

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• BF 120: Veggie Farming 1 – From Plan-ning to Planting

• BF 122: Berry Production • BF 130: Poultry Production • BF 138: Getting Started with Pastured Pigs• BF 152: Introduction to Maple Syrup Pro-duction

Visit http://smallfarms.cornell.edu/online-courses/ for the list of all courses and theirstarting dates.

A Retrospect on the Baskets to Pallets

Cohort Opening Gathering

On August 7 and 8, Small Farms’ own VioletStone convened the inaugural gathering ofthe new Baskets to Pallets educator cohort.In this post, Violet shares a retrospective onwho the new cohort is and the work theyplan to do over the next two years.

Last week, I was happy to find myself out ofmy office chair and seated instead in thelight-filled Loft space at the Carriage HouseCafé with 15 educators and farmers from allover the state. Most of the members of ournew Baskets to Pallets cohort hadn’t met be-fore, so we were excited to spend the morn-ing getting to know each other’s passions,interests and niches within the food system.The group then turned focus toward its mis-sion — to facilitate access to new marketchannels for farmers interested in entering“intermediate” venues such as food hubs,grocery stores, restaurants and coopera-

tives. The cohort will support farmers andproducers who are experiencing coolingtrends in direct markets such as farmersmarkets, community supported agriculture(CSA) operations and farm-stands throughproviding coaching and training on how tosuccessfully enter intermediate channels.

We launched into our work together by look-ing at big market trends such as the rapidacceleration of online grocery sales andconsumer’s growing preferences for local,fresh food. Big trends affect sales for farm-ers on the ground, and we want to stayabreast of how the food scene is changingand how we can advise farmers to take ad-vantage of new opportunities. Then, we re-flected more personally on the marketingchallenges and opportunities we were eachobserving in the regions where we work.Yes, the data tells us that local food is bigand in growing demand, but local reportsconfirm it’s challenging to get small productsto big markets and we have plenty of workahead in getting farmers ready for wholesaleand connecting them to scale-appropriatemarkets.

We rounded out our gathering by talking withbuyers from throughout the Northeast. Con-versations with staff at Headwater Food Hub,Red Tomato and Honest Weight Food Coop-erative shed some perspectives on whatbuyers do and don’t need to have successfulbusiness relationships with farmers. Strongcommunication skills came up across theboard, but not all buyers required GAPS/foodsafety certifications or had hard and fast re-quirements regarding grading/sorting/pack-aging. In summary, every buyer is uniqueand most of the success lies in finding theright producer/buyer match and building a re-

lationship. As educators serving in the Bas-kets to Pallets cohort, we hope to help farm-ers navigate potential buyers and supportsteps toward wholesale success. That mightmean supporting a producer in achievingbetter uniformity and consistency, food safe-ty standards, grading/ packaging, labeling, orwhatever steps are needed to find success inintermediate markets.

So, what’s next for the cohort? We’ll be cre-ating new educational content throughoutthe Fall in preparation for two regional Bas-kets to Pallets farmer trainings to take placeduring the winter months.

Do you have any feedback or ideas for ourgroup? We’d love to hear from you. Reach outto Project Coordinator Violet Stone atvws7@cornell.edu or visit the project website.

FarmOPS to support AgriTherapy for

Veterans pilot project

The VA Medical Canandaigua VA MedicalCenter has received an $844,000 grant fromthe Office of Rural Health to provide therapeu-tic horticulture and agricultural training to vet-erans interested in ag vocations as part ofVA’s Whole Health Initiative. The grant will ex-pand the medical center’s partnership withEquiCenter of Mendon, a nonprofit facilityserving those with disabilities, veterans andat-risk youth. The Canandaigua VA is one of10 VA medical centers across the country toget a grant. Farm OPS will continue their edu-cational support for the VA/EquiCenter pro-grams, and are in negotiations to significantlyincrease the training offerings in that part ofthe state for veterans interested in agriculture.Go to www.equicenterny.org/farm for more in-formation on the program, or contact Dean atdrk5@cornell.edu for Farm OPS details.

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 3

Cornell Small Farms Program Update

From the Editor

Many farmers are already thinking about the 2019 season even before this year haswrapped up; planning and foresight are critical to being as prepared as possible –though the rapidly changing and dynamic weather we’ve seen this season is likely tocontinue – throwing a wrench in even the best made plans.

Still, planning is essential, and the articles in this edition offer much to ponder and con-sider. We thank all the writers and contributors and wish you a restful fall season.

Steve Gabriel, Managing Editor

The Baskets to Pallets Educator Cohort

How can I get Small Farm Quarterly?

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SFQ-only subscribers receive just the 4 issues of Country Folks that contain the SFQ insert for only $5 a year.

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Country Folks SubscriptionsP.O. Box 121, Palatine Bridge, NY 13428

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Dairy farmers are all human, and have different belief systems and different opinions. Weneed to approach animal welfare and best management practices as a team sport. We can-not continue to defend the indefensible. We need to work together with each other (dairyfarmers, cooperatives, EVERYONE) to rethink the problem and challenges around animalwelfare, both from a consumer’s view-point and a farmer’s view-point) and continue to de-velop an evolving approach. We cannot become complacent, but need to be open to newideas and evolve as new management practices and technologies become available. As anindustry, we have a collective responsibility to clearly identify the issue(s) and have a voicein the solution(s).

Kimberley Morrill is a dairy management specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension NorthCountry Regional Agriculture Team

From Animal page 2

Page 4 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

SMALL FARM QUARTERLYGood Farming and Good Living

Connecting People, Land, and Communities

Small Farm Quarterly is for farmers and farm families — including spouses andchildren - who value the quality of life that smaller farms provide.OUR GOALS ARE TO:

• Celebrate the Northeast region’s smaller farms; • Inspire and inform farm families and their supporters; • Help farmers share expertise and opinions with each other; • Increase awareness of the benefits that small farms contribute to society

and the environment; • Share important research, extension, and other resources.

Small Farm Quarterly is produced by Lee Newspapers, Inc., and is distributed fourtimes a year as a special section of Country Folks. Publication dates: January 8th,April 2nd, July 2nd and October 1st, 2018.

EDITORS & CONTRIBUTORS:

• Steve Gabriel, Cornell Small Farms Program Managing Editor sfg53@cornell.edu • Anu Rangarajan, Cornell Small Farms Program Editor-in-Chief ar47@cornell.edu• Kelsie Raucher, Cornell Small Farms Program Student Intern klr235@cornell.edu• Ryan Maher, Cornell Small Farms Program Vegetables ryan.maher@cornell.edu• Rich Taber, CCE Chenango County Farm Tech/Farm Woodlot rbt44@cornell.edu• R.J. Anderson Extension Communications rj.anderson@cornell.edu• Ulf Kintzel, White Clover Sheep Farm Sheep ulf@whitecloversheepfarm.com• Petra Page-Mann, Fruition Seeds Seed Stories petra@fruitionseeds.com• John Thurgood, USDA Natural Resources Stewardship and Nature john.thurgood@vt.usda.gov

FOR SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION CONTACTTracy Johnson, Lee Newspapers, Inc., PO Box 121, Palatine Bridge, NY 13428

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SEND YOUR LETTERS AND STORIES TO:Cornell Small Farms Program

15A Plant Science Building, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853607-255-2142 •  sfg53@cornell.edu

Small Farm Quarterly is compiled by the Cornell Small Farms Program, based at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The Cornell Small Farms Program fosters

the sustainability of diverse, thriving small farms that contribute to food security, healthy rural communities, and the environment. We do this by encouraging

small farms-focused research and extension programs.

Anyone is welcome to submit articles for consideration. See our guidelines at smallfarms.cornell.edu/quarterly/writers/ and contact Steve Gabriel with inquiries. Articles should be

1,000 - 1,600 words in length with 2 - 3 high-resolution pictures.

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farming and agriculture in New York and the Northeast.

About copyright: The material published in Small Farm Quarterly is not copyrighted unless otherwise noted. However, we ask that you please be sure to credit both the author and Small Farm Quarterly

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cornell Small Farms Program Update..................................Page 3

EXTENSION NEWSAnimal Welfare: Perception & Reality

by Kimberly Morrill, PhD......................................................Page 2Cooperative Extension Brings Chickens to the Classroom

by Jason Detzel...................................................................Page 9The Law of Diminishing Returns - How Farms Know When

They’ve Reached Itby Betsy Hicks...................................................................Page 16

FARM BUSINESSMain Street Farms - Improving Efficiency and Profitability

by Kat McCarthy and Dan Welch.......................................Page 8

FIELD CROPSHay you! Should I Make My Hay or Buy It?

by Rich Taber.......................................................................Page 6

FOREST, FIELD & WOODLOTChainsaw Safety, Part 5: Tree Felling

by Rich Taber...........................................................................Page 15

GRAZING MANAGEMENTRotational Grazing: How often should I rotate?

by Ulf Kintzel........................................................................Page 5

LIVESTOCK AND POULTRYMilking Cleanliness

by Miriah Reynolds............................................................Page 12More Than a Matter of Taste

by Fred Provenza ............................................................Page 14Working With Local Livestock Processors

by Jason Detzel ...............................................................Page 17

NATURE & STEWARDSHIPKids, Cows and Conservation at Vermont’s Chapman Family Farm

by Rebecca Harris.............................................................Page 11

ORCHARD MANAGEMENTTipsheet: Transitioning to Organic Management of Orchards

by Guy Ames, ATTA..........................................................Page 10

RESOURCE SPOTLIGHTBook Review: Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat

Productionby Hope Rainbow.................................................................Page 7

URBAN AGRICULTUREGrowing Urban - A Lower West Side Story

by Lynnette Wright............................................................Page 20In Camden, a Hot Sauce is Helping Young Urban Entrepreneurs

Fight Povertyby Suzanne Cope.............................................................Page 18

ABOUT OUR ADS...All advertisements in Small Farm Quarterly are managed by Lee Newspaper. Cornell’s SmallFarms Program, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and other Small Farm Quarterly sponsors andcontributors do not endorse advertisers, their products or services. We receive no revenues fromadvertisers.

To find out how your business or organization can advertise in Small Farm Quarterly, contact: TinaKrieger, Lee Newspapers, 518-673-0108 or 800-218-5586, ext. 108, tkrieger@leepub.com

SMALL FARM QUARTERLY - FALL 2018

Cornell Small Farms Programwww.smallfarms.cornell.edu607-255-9227

http://www.vsjf.org/802-318-5527

SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS:

www.nrcs.usda.gov802-865-7895

Cover photo by Elizabeth WellerFall woodshed on the farm ready for a long winter.

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 5

GRAZING MANAGEMENT

by Ulf Kintzel

Failure in grass-fed sheep enterprises is stillvery common. I hear about it often since Iam the one being asked why it failed.Among the many reasons why grass-fedsheep operation failed is the misconceptionof the frequency of pasture rotation. Whenbreeding stock I have sold is picked up frommy farm, the buyers often want to know howI do it. Some of these buyers who alreadyhave sheep are convinced they are doing ro-tational grazing. I follow up with the ques-tion, how often they rotate? Rarely do I heara number between one and five days. Al-most always do I hear about a rotationalschedule of a week and more. It then comesto those folks’ surprise when I unambiguous-ly state that this is not rotational grazing.

So, how do we define rotational grazing andwhat schedule for a pasture rotation is best?Let me start with the common misconcep-tion of rotational grazing. Some people havemore than one grazing cell. Numbers mayvary between two or three or four. Theygraze a cell down, which may take a week ortwo or even more and then they “rotate” theflock into the next pasture. The mere factthat the flock was rotated has some of thosewith whom I discuss the issue convincedthey do rotational grazing. However, the factthat the flock was moved from one pastureto another does not constitute rotationalgrazing. The growing pattern of grass de-fines it.

When grass has been grazed, it starts re-growing after a certain number of days. Atsome point, this regrowth becomes desir-able enough for sheep to be grazed again.The moment that occurs, the moment thesheep graze this regrowth, the pasture rota-tion no longer qualifies as rotational grazing.While grass grows back with differentspeeds at different times of the year andagain under different conditions, the magicnumber for re-growth is one week. Any rota-tional schedule beyond one week does notqualify as rotational grazing. That means arotational schedule should be less that oneweek. The number of days for each rotationthat successful grass farmers practice

varies between three to five days and all theway down to a twice-a-day rotation.

Let’s start with a three to five-day rotationand let’s see what happens with each pass-ing day of grazing that cell. The first day youlet the sheep into the pasture, they will se-lectively graze what tastes best. On day twothey are likely to still have plenty desirableplants to eat. On day three these plants arenow scarce or gone and less desirableplants must be grazed. They will grazethem, but intake is down. In addition, theywill start taking down the desirable plants alittle more, making it harder to leave enoughresidual – a key issue for successful grazing- in all places. Day four or five leaves onlyless desirable plants. While the sheep willnow get a little hungrier and are more willingto eat them, intake is still down. Perhapsyour grazing cell was so large, that this graz-ing pattern did not quite apply, that desirableplants lasted for three or four or even fivedays. That in turn means that undesirableplants were not eaten, and that animal pres-sure was not high enough. This would not besustainable to maintain a pasture with pre-dominantly desirable pasture species and itwill most definitely not be sustainable if youare paying a mortgage and property taxeson the land you graze.

Once a day rotation means you have exact-ly the amount of forage in the pasture thatthe sheep should have that day while stillleaving the desirable four inches of residual.Due to a higher grazing pressure, grazing isless selective. Undesirable plant species areeaten more willingly. It is a well-establishedfact. Being able to graze less desirable plantspecies is good since you utilize more ofyour pasture. Manure distribution is alsomore even. However, it is anything but easyto gage the right size of a grazing cell for justa day.

Some of you may also know rotational graz-ing under the name management-intensivegrazing, or MIG. Jim Gerrish, a well-knownadvocate for it, takes credit for havingcoined that term. Those who know him orhave listened to him will also know that he isnot getting tired of pointing out that the “in-tensive” part of MIG refers entirely to themanagement and not at all to the grazing.After having practiced rotational grazing orMIG for decades, I can assure you that themanagement is indeed intensive. It is notsimple and the wheels in your head will haveto keep turning daily for as long as you prac-tice this way of farming.

Since I had my exterior woven wire fencecompleted and have the whole farm fencedin, I have been practicing a once daily pasturerotation using my electric nettings. Prior to it,my pasture rotation was on average two to

three days. A rotation of four or five days didoccur at times. A daily rotation was not possi-ble for me because of the amount of electricnettings I would have had to erect and takedown again. The permanent exterior fencemade it possible. I can clearly see the bene-fits of a daily rotation compared to one everyseveral days. The pasture is grazed moreevenly. Undesirable plants are eaten morereadily. Manure distribution is more even. In-take is high. Residual is better managed.What is the “downside”? It requires constantand continuous thinking. There is no breakever during grazing season.

A twice-daily rotation is very stringent. It is“easy” when you are a dairy farmer. You arealready moving the herd out of the pasturein the morning for the first milking of the day.You might as well put them in fresh pastureafterwards. When producing milk, a rotationtwice a day makes perfect sense. You seethe difference in the milk tank. It is a little dif-ferent for grass-fed sheep when you pro-duce meat. You must make an extra effort torotate a second time a day. The additionalbenefit - if any - is marginal for meat produc-tion, but the extra effort is anything but mar-ginal. I have not found that extra effort ben-eficial enough to practice it. I continue doinga once daily rotation.

Research has conclusively shown that youget more production of your land when yourotate frequently. The amount of increasedproduction is significant. So, focusing onmanagement and rotating frequently has areal impact on the tonnage grown in yourpasture, on the animals you can graze peracre, and therefore on your wallet. I encour-age you to go for a two to three-day rotationand perhaps even for a daily rotation. It iswell worth it.

Ulf owns and operates White Clover SheepFarm and breeds and raises grass-fedWhite Dorper sheep and Kiko goats withoutany grain feeding and offers breeding stocksuitable for grazing. He is a native of Ger-many and lives in the U.S. since 1995. Hefarms in the Finger Lakes area in upstateNew York. His website address iswww.whitecloversheepfarm.com. He can bereached by e-mail at ulf@whitecloversheep-farm.com or by phone during “calling hour”specified on his answering machine at 585-554-3313.

Rotational Grazing: How often should I rotate?

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Page 6 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

FIELD CROPS

by Rich Taber, CCE Chenango

As the haying season winds down across the northeast, Iam left to ponder the eternal question; should I keep ontrying to make hay for my livestock every year, or buy it?Well, “the devil is in the details”, as the old saying goes.First off, I am going to state unequivocally that there is nocorrect “yes or no” answer, and your conclusions need tobe made for your own specific situation. I will however,present to you some of the challenging requirementsneeded to successfully make hay, with its concomitantlyhuge amounts of time, money, cropping needs, and ma-chinery procurement and maintenance.

I am also going to make some assumptions about thereaders who would most benefit from this discussion. 1.The very title of this publication “Small Farm Quarterly”implies a smaller agricultural business that does not gen-erate huge cash flows, such as the typical commercialdairy farm we see all over the Northeast. 2. You may bea new or beginning farmer and have decided to get live-stock on your farm, and you need to figure out how to pro-vide good quality feed for them. 3. You do not have hugeamounts of money in reserve to finance the purchase andmaintenance of all kinds of haying equipment. 4. You dohave a certain amount of land on your property that doesgrow hay crops on it, and someone will need to do thehaying. 5. You may work off the farm for a significantamount of hours, and may only have limited amounts oftime to actually make hay in a timely manner. 6. Perhapsyou do have some family help that could be used for thehaying process. 7. You have not decided yet whether tomake small square bales, or make large round or squarebales, or even wrapped baleage. 8. You will rotationallygraze your animals for between 5 and 6 months of theyear, and the forages that you need to acquire will be forthe winter, or non-grazing months, which in many parts ofthe northeast seems to last eternally, for upwards of sev-en months out of the year.

So how much hay will you need? An easy thumb rule to fol-low is that for every 100 pounds of live animal body

weight you will need about 3 pounds of dry hay per

day. So, a 1200 lb. beef cow will need 36 pounds of dryhay a day; you can extrapolate this figure for all ruminantanimals for planning purposes. Then take your grand total,and divide by 2,000 to get the number of tons that you mayneed. For planning purposes, let’s say that you have a 20-cow beef herd. Each cow weighs about 1200 pounds.Here’s the math: (12 x 3) x (20) x (a 200 day feeding sea-son) /2000 lbs. per ton = 72 tons of hay needed for the win-ter season.

Typical small square bales weigh about 35-40 poundseach. A typical 4 ft. x 4 ft. dry round bale weighs just lessthan 700 pounds. A wrapped wet bale of baleage, which

contains the same amount of nutrients as the dry roundbale, but has a lot more water in it, can weigh 1200pounds. (Always figure your livestock nutritional needs ona dry basis for calculation purposes).

Diverging from the animal requirements, we will return tothe issues of making hay. What equipment do you need tomake hay? You will need the following: I will quote prices forgood, used machinery, (not consignment auction junk ei-ther) as you probably won’t want to purchase new equip-ment; it can be absurdly expensive! If you can afford to buynew or newer equipment, more power to you! Just be care-ful about accumulating too much debt.

1. At least one good tractor. You will probably need thistractor for a myriad of other purposes on the farm, so thedebate over having a tractor is moot, unless you are a draftanimal powered farm. Generally, most people that makehay have two or three to handle all of the different opera-tions in haying.

2. An older style mower-conditioner, (commonly called ahaybine), or a more recent discbine, to mow the hay with.Haybines take considerably less horsepower to run; youcan get by with about 50 horsepower. You need about 80horsepower to run the typical 10 foot wide discbine. Expectto pay $1500-$15,000 for good used ones.

3. You will need a tedder to ted hay, soon after its mown, tospread it out, and to help it dry. Making dry hay in the north-east can be all but impossible in June, and in a year like thispast one, really impossible, where it was dryer earlier on,and then it became quite wet and rainy through August. Agood used two-row hay tedder can typically cost $1500-2000.

4. A rake to rake your hay: non-negotiable, you have to

have one of these. A decent used one can be found foraround $1500.

5. A baler to bale the hay. Will you go with small squarebales, or large round bales, or even large square bales? Ei-ther way, good used balers of any type can be $10,000more or less. I would recommend that you go with a roundbaler, as your labor requirements are much less. It neverceased to amaze me, back when I made small square balesas to how few friends I had during haying season, paid ornot, that were available to help unload hay wagons. Howev-er, on the farm I always seemed to have enormous num-bers of friends during deer season. The moral: labor can bean onerous issue in making hay.

6. If you are going to make small square bales, you have tohave several decent hay wagons to bale into; these caneasily cost $2000 each for good used ones. If you are mak-ing round bales, you need a decent wagon to load and haulthem on, which can run about $4,000 (and not a ricketyflatbed wagon made from an old Model A Ford running gearwith bald tires). They’re loads of fun to be barreling downthe highway with several tons of hay on it and they blow atire or the frame falls apart! (So I’ve been told).

7. If you are making large round bales, you will need a trac-tor with a loader and a spear to handle the bales, andmaybe a three-point-hitch one as well. Hopefully said tractoris a 4-wheel drive model, as 2-wheel drive tractors notorious-ly get stuck in muddy, snowy, mucky conditions, and usuallyonly on Sundays or holidays when you have other plans. Or,you could use a “bale hugger” on your front-end loader if youneed to handle wet bales of baleage, so that the plastic doesnot get ripped. They’re usually around $2000.

8. I almost forgot about the baleage wrapper, to wrapthose wet bales in plastic. Anywhere from $5,000 to$25,000.

So, there you have it: and if you do all of the math, you maywant to be sitting down from sticker shock if you add up allof the prices needed to procure haying machinery. What arewe going to do? Shall we buy all of our hay? Decent quali-ty hay can be purchased for anywhere from $25 a roundbale, to upwards of $60 a bale for good quality baleage.Well, buying hay is a good option, but then what do we dowith all of our hay land that we have on our properties, andwe can’t afford to buy all this machinery?

Oh, the plot thickens, because not only do we need all ofthis machinery, we need to know how to maintain and repairit? Oh, you don’t like to get greasy and turn wrenches? Youcan hire a mechanic to come in and repair your machinery,

Hay You! Should I Make My Hay or Buy It?

Loading hay on the wagon.

An example of rates for custom farm work, as preparedby CCE Franklin.

Various equipment needed to complete the process.

See Hay page 7

by Hope Rainbow

In Defending Beef, author Nicolette Hahn Niman takes onno easy task: as the title suggests, this vegetarian cattlerancher seeks to exonerate beef from the many ills for whichit’s blamed, both from ecological and nutritional perspec-tives. She anticipates every argument, discussing every-thing from the role cattle play in water contamination, soilhealth, and carbon sequestration, to the 20th-Century uptickin chronic diseases often blamed on excessive meat con-sumption. Far from the contemporary knee-jerk tendency todraw black-and-white conclusions in the face of complexproblems, Niman distinguishes between resource-intensive,environmentally destructive factory farming and other grass-based ranching techniques that, as she shows, have greatpotential for environmental benefit.

The author presents her case in two sections, Cattle andBeef. In the first, she discredits popular ideas about the en-vironmental impact of cattle ranching, including a well-known and oft-cited UN report blaming meat production for18% of all greenhouse gas emissions. She advocates un-equivocally for grass-based cattle ranching, presenting it asa category quite distinct from feedlot farming. Her perspec-tive is grounded in grassland ecology and the agri-politicalissues surrounding land usage. It can be summed up in afew wordy sentences: grasslands are important, biodiverse,underappreciated carbon sinks and soil-conserving ecosys-tems that evolved in symbiosis with ruminant herbivores.Without grazing herbivores, grasslands suffer a loss of bio-diversity and slowly turn into forests. Or, put more simply:We need grass. Grass needs cows.

Returning cropland to the prairie that preceded it and graz-ing cattle or other ruminant herbivores allows for the envi-ronmental benefits of a grassland ecosystem (biodiversity,carbon sequestration, erosion prevention, water filtration –the list is impressive) while also allowing nutrition to be har-

vested from grass in the form of beef. Removing beef fromour diets would result in more grasslands being convertedinto cropland at the cost of thousands of tons of topsoil year-ly and irretrievable plant and animal habitats.

In her second section, Niman proposes that the chronic dis-eases popularly linked with excessive meat consumptionare more likely a result of increased sugar consumption, cit-ing the research of various nutrition experts as well as sta-tistical trends in the American diet over the past century.

The premise of Defending Beef is certainly ambitious, andthe resulting text is informative and, overall, well-re-searched. In covering such a broad range of arguments,however, Niman’s manifesto loses some intensity. It comesacross rather like an introductory survey course, spendingtoo few words on each topic. This book could have beenmuch longer, or divided into several separate books, eachaddressing a different aspect of the problem. Still, Niman’swriting is simple and straightforward, and as a survey courseit succeeds in introducing the concepts necessary to talkabout cattle as part of a responsible food system.

Most compellingly, Niman implores us to consider the impactof our food systems in a manner more nuanced than weusually allow, refusing to paint with the broad strokes of“good” and “bad”. Instead, she presents both advocacy andcritique of her beef industry and picks apart common ideasabout agriculture and nutrition that don’t hold up to scrutiny.This book is an excellent read for anyone, vegan or omni-vore, who is concerned about the footprint of their dietaryand agricultural decisions.

buy they don’t come for free either, typically charging be-tween $50 and $80 an hour for repairs. Your machinery willbreak down, sooner, or later. Then, you might become likewhat many of us have become, a collector of multiplepieces of older machinery; two rakes, two balers, etc. Whenstrangers drive by your place and stop and ask if you are aused machinery dealer, you will know that you have arrivedat that wonderful, if dubious, point.

Buying hay is a good option. There’s something to be saidfor having a truck show up in your driveway and you “writea check”, unload the hay, and then you’re done. You won’tbe tying up endless hours all during the summer trying toget your haying done. You may even get to go somewhereon a Sunday afternoon!

Oh, the plot thickens again. How much time does it take tomake hay? Mow on Monday, and then ted on Tuesday, andmaybe rake on Tuesday or Wednesday, and then bale onWednesday. That is, if it doesn’t rain. If you’re makingbaleage, you can generally mow on day one and bale thenext day. If it rains, and the hay gets wet, you need to goback and ted it out again, and then you are that much fur-ther behind and with a lower quality product.

Another nice thing about buying your hay is that that is that

much less land that you need to pay a mortgage, insurance,and taxes on, and pay for lime, seed, fertilizer, and the oc-casional reseeding with all of its incessant tillage needs.

However, the five thousand pound elephant is still in theroom; we have land that we want to make hay on, but wedon’t want to lose the farm over buying a whole raft of ma-chinery. We work off the farm, and don’t have enough timeto make good hay in a timely manner. Perhaps we can hiresomeone to do our hay for us. OK, that works to a point. Doyou think your neighbor dairy farmer wants to stop puttingup their own hay that they need, and come over and ditherwith your little field? Oh, they might have time for you in Au-gust rather than in June. Guess how good that hay will be?

Perhaps you can work with some amenable neighbors andyou mow your own hay, and ted it and rake it, and hire themto come in and bale it for you. Any number of potential com-binations exists. I have included a useful chart that showswhat you might expect to pay to hire someone to do thework for you, “2018 Custom Rates and Fees”, prepared byCCE of Franklin County New York.

So, how do I handle my haying needs? We have at any giventime 50 or so head of beef cattle and 100 more head of sheepon our farm. When I say “we” I mean my wife and myself, and

that’s it for help. She has two other businesses to run, so I do99% of all of the haying throughout the year. I do have a fleetof older farm equipment that I make dry hay with throughoutthe summer months. We have about 50 open acres on ourhome farm that we do rotational grazing on, and have beendoing all that we can to improve our grazing situation and toextend it as far as we can into the late fall. I fortunately haveavailable another 60 acres from several landowners near ourhome farm that we rent, inexpensively, for some grazing, butmostly make hay on about 50 acres of it.

I grew up with haying, and have been doing it in one formor another for several decades. It is in my blood, and thereis no nicer feeling than to be out in a beautiful green field,slowly tedding or raking hay on a sunny day, enjoying thesights and sounds of nature. However, haying “hangs overmy head” each and every summer to get it all done. I onlymake dry hay, and buy left over baleage from dairy farmersfor a good price, as I do not own a baleage wrapper. Whateveryone who is thinking about getting into the hay makingbusiness is that you must decide for yourself, will you haveenough of a cash flow from the business to justify all of thisexpense and labor? Would you like to go somewhere on aSunday afternoon? Think about it, and do what is right foryou and your situation. And beware of those who mockthose who do make hay, and say everyone should buy allof their hay. If everyone thought this way, then who wouldmake hay?

Rich Taber (M.S./M.S.F.) isan Educator with CornellCooperative Extension ofChenango County NewYork, and also owns a 165acre farm in Madison Coun-ty in the Hamilton/Morrisvillearea where he and his wifeWendy raise beef cattle,sheep, poultry, and enjoytheir 105 acre woodlot. Hecan be reached at 607-334-5841, ext. 21, or email:rbt44@cornell.edu.

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 7

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Hay from page 6

Book Review: Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production

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FARM BUSINESS

by Kat McCarthy, Dan Welch

At Main Street Farms, in CortlandNY, growth is the way of doingbusiness. The farm has doubled insize annually. What started as a 1-acre market garden and 10,000tilapia in an aquaponics system isnow, after six years, 30 acres onthree properties and 25,000square feet of high tunnels andgreenhouses, producing vegeta-bles for over 300 CSA members,one farmers market, area restau-rants, and wholesale customers.

Given their rapid growth, onewould never expect that farmersAllan Gandelman and BobCatBonagura didn’t begin their busi-ness with agricultural back-grounds. Allan, a high school so-cial studies teacher, left the educa-tion field for the farm field, with agoal of growing vegetables for thelocal community and children inarea schools. Shortly after startingthe business, he recruited collegeroommate BobCat from an outdoorenvironmental education field tojoin the farm. Both have a love oflearning and are passionate aboutfeeding the community and edu-cating about local food. In 2016,products from the farm made it intothe school where Allan oncetaught, fulfilling his aspirations tofeed students nutritious local veg-etables. Demonstrating their valueof community engagement, thefarmers have also served on vari-ous local agricultural and environ-mental boards, and offered class-room presentations and tours, inaddition to participating in localschool events.

Since its launch seven years ago,the farm has occupied about eightdifferent properties; 2017 markedthe first year that the farm has not

moved one or more of its sites be-tween seasons. With a long-termlease for land, Allan and BobCatnow are focusing on modifying ex-isting facilities and have leased a4,000 square foot warehouse forpost-harvest packing and cold stor-age, and a commercial kitchen forthe farm and another local business.

Shortly after the farm launched, Al-lan recognized a need to scale upproduction in order to develop asustainable operation. This needwas informed by the evaluation ofprofit and loss statements, enter-prise analysis of individual crops todetermine profitability per foot, andtime studies of labor use. With a lo-cal average household income of$30,000, Allan believed the path-way for growth was to produce andsell more volume of diverse veg-etables, not just more high-profitspecialty crops.

As a result, Allan applied to theSmall Farm Program’s Profit TeamProject to explore opportunitiesscale up the business. He elabo-rates that over time the focus hasbeen to increase production sosupply outweighs demand, in-crease CSA memberships, andcreate access to a reliable pro-cessing facility. To date, the profitteam project has helped with thisgoal by providing support to visitsix other farms to learn about sys-tems and best practices, offset at-torney fees for the land lease, andwork with an outside consultant toapply for GAP certification.

The benefits from this project werenumerous. The farm’s new pack-ing shed and GAPS certificationwould likely not have happened asquickly without the support of theproject. Within the past threeyears, Main Street Farms has also

scaled up equipment, and transi-tioned from one 47-horsepowerKubota to approximately 8 tractorsto save labor and increase efficien-cy. Additionally, the farm has in-vested in a large high efficiencycooler, land lease, and two H2A la-borers as a result of work on theprofit team project.

Allan also notes that the projecthas impacted farm management,profit and quality of life. Over thecourse of the project, Allan used aportion of a grant to visit, shadowand interview other regional, moreexperienced farmers. He was ableto see how they operate, to learntheir successes and mistakes, andby reflection, to identify inefficien-cies and possible solutions forMain Street Farms. During thesevisits, Allan also discussed howdata and financials, such as grosssales, employee pay, cash flowand debt, can inform the develop-ment of short- and long-termgoals. These insights helped formAllan’s decisions around infra-structure investments.

Additionally, by seeing how otherscreated a work-life balance, Allanlearned strategies to implement onhis own farm to support long-termquality of life improvements. Hewas inspired by one farmer whohad established a structure so thefarm family could take vacationsevery August, while others demon-strated strategies for balancing on-and off-farm work.

Looking to the future, Main StreetFarms intends to continue follow-ing the plan it has set-forth, keep-ing a focus on establishing existingenterprises before expanding intonew endeavors. “At this point, wejust need to keep following thepath that we have in front of us,”Allan notes, indicating the impor-tance in staying focused and let-ting decisions play out. Allan’s nextprofit team project would be to fo-cus on improving production andmanagement practices to maxi-mize profit. He would start by visit-ing larger growers. He notes thatlearning about business planningand technical expertise go hand inhand, as an organization scalesup.

A Partial Budget to Understand

Costs & Benefits

On a tour of another farm, Allanobserved a useful strategy to ad-dress maintaining food quality andimproving food safety, while im-proving handling efficiency. By us-ing a high efficiency cooler, thehost farm was able to cool lettuceand other greens from field withless handling. At the time, lettuceharvested at Main Street Farmswas cooled by submerging in cold

water, air dried, and then put instorage. This resulted in the pro-duce having to be handled at leasttwice from the field to box, whilepotentially reducing produce quali-ty. Additionally, cooling field grownproduce to the right temperature inthe right amount of time is key forfood safety. Using the new methodto keep lettuce cool, it could be di-rectly transferred from the field tocold storage. By adopting this ap-proach the farm was able to save4-5 hours of labor per week onhead lettuce alone. This strategyalso improved product quality andhas led to increased profitability inthe farm’s greens enterprise.

To evaluate this new option, MainStreet Farms had to analyze if thecapital investment in the coolerwould be offset by the reducedcost and increased revenue fromthe investment. For a relatively lowcapital investment like a walk-incooler, one may choose to startwith developing a partial budget(Table 1).

A partial budget looks at a potentialchange in a farm business to see ifit makes sense financially. The ad-ditional costs of the potentialchange and any reduction in in-come are on one side of the budg-et. On the other side are any in-crease in income and reducedcosts. These two columns areadded together, and if the addition-al income and reduced costs aregreater, it should result in addition-al profit for the farm. It is importantto keep in mind additional uses forthe investment, such as storingwinter vegetables for a longer peri-od of time. For longer-term invest-ments, one should allocate costsand income on an annual basis.For a more thorough analysis ofcapital investments, and for largerinvestments, it would be recom-mended to perform a net presentvalue assessment. The example inTable 1 shows how a partial budg-et could be used for buying a walk-in cooler.

Strategies for Success

Allan offers this advice to farmerswho are growing their business:

• Constantly seek new informationand learn skills to support positiveevolution. By meeting with outsideconsultants and shadowing otherfarmers, Allan was able to incorpo-rate successful strategies fromothers, while tailoring techniquesto meet Main Street Farm’s uniqueneeds. In meeting with a farm inPennsylvania, Allan discoveredthat by investing in a high efficien-cy cooler he could avoid washingheads of lettuce, reducing stafftime, making GAPS complianceeasier, and ultimately saving 30%on the production cost of the headof lettuce by reduced handling.

• Collect and use data to inform

Main Street Farms – Improving Efficiency and ProfitabilityMain Street Farms shares insights gained from their experience focusing on long-term business viability through aProfit Team project.

Main Street Farms now harvests lettuce from the field, packs it intocrates, and stores it directly in the highly efficient cooler.

Photo by Kat McCarthy

Staff at the farm harvest kale for the CSA.Photo by Zack Bolton

Table 1: Sample Partial BudgetAnalysis for Walk-in Cooler See Main Street page 9

by Jason Detzel

Last year I received a grant from the NewYork 4-H Development Program to completea poultry project with 4-H youth in the coun-ty. Naturally I chose to purchase an incuba-tor, fertile eggs, and some supplies to teacha class on hatching chickens and to show-case the process at the Ulster County Fair.

Why hatching chicks? Children grow to in-teract and understand the world though theguidance of caregivers and teachers. Hatch-ing out chickens allows us to introduce sen-sitive topics in a supportive manner to thepeople in our society who often have themost difficult time making sense of the worldaround them. Introducing these themes in

real time and as they occur in an appliedsetting gives kids the room to think aboutwhat they are doing, to question why thingsare happening, and ultimately sort throughthe information and teach others about theexperience.

As a team we can monitor the incubator dai-ly, candle the eggs for signs of life, andeventually experience a new life coming intothe world and all the responsibilities andchores that go along with nurturing them.Besides the beauty and excitement of birth,there is the other side of this project that isjust as integral. Chicks that do not hatch,chicks that are sick, different, need a littleextra help, and those that die all come withembedded lessons and understandings.

In my former life, the onewhere I didn’t look atpoop in a microscope ortalk about fistulas, I wasa special educationteacher. For about tenyears I taught, lived,laughed, and cried withstudents and their fami-lies as they made theirway through a worldlargely developed forneurotypical folks. Withthat in mind, I made thedecision to only offer thiscourse to special educa-tion classrooms in theKingston City School Dis-trict, and boy was I im-pressed.

These were not the clini-cal classrooms that Ihave seen in the past butvibrant and supportiverooms of learning wherekids could be safe, bethemselves, and work to-wards mastering theskills that will allow themto be as independent aspossible. I find that wesometimes take for grant-ed the fact that these kidsare not challenged as of-ten as their peers in theirdaily lives. So with thehelp of some truly phe-nomenal teachers andaides (and I’m not justsaying that, my time inthe classroom allowedme to witness the fair, caring, and stable re-lationships that these teams exude), we setout to both teach and learn together thoughthe chicken hatching project.

So we got down to business. With the helpof the teachers and the aides we hosted aclassroom session where we presented thedaily logs, the student responsibilities,talked about the process and the perils ofgrowing chicks out in the classroom, and be-gan introducing the complex and amazingprocess that transforms a few cells in an eggto an eating, walking, and pooping chicken.It was amazing to watch the students makethe connections between the biological de-velopment of the chicks and of themselves.Some of the students enjoyed cleaning orfilling in the logs but all of them enjoyed theirtime playing and handling the tiny birds. Thisbecame obvious on the last day of projectwhen I came to pick up the chicks to bring

them to their new farm home. After a littleover a month spent caring for and interact-ing with the chicks, the students were sad tosee them go and we had more than a fewtears as I left with the little ones in a simplecardboard box.

All of the classroom project were a successbut that does not mean that all the chickshatched. In fact, one classroom had zerochicks hatch and another lost the majority oftheir animals only days before the big day.But the purpose of this was not to hatchchicks; the purpose was to introduce lifelesson to students and to help them growand learn in a supportive environment andin this regard I know that we exceeded thisgoal.

Jason Detzel is a livestock educator withCornell Cooperative Extension of UlsterCounty

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 9

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management decisions. For example, to understandthe labor cost of a crop, Allan conducts studies wherehe times how long it takes an employee to handle (i.e.bunch, wash, etc.) a specific amount of a crop.Through these time studies, Allan understands laborcosts for each product. As a result, the farm has akeen understanding of productivity metrics and costs.This data can be applied to conduct an enterpriseanalysis, which informs costs and payback period forinvestments in equipment.

• Network with other business owners, even if they are not farmers. For the past three years,Allan has been meeting monthly with a peer advisory group of other business owners in thelocal community, where they share and discuss their own business financials and numbers.He stated that “they are very valuable meetings and we haven’t missed one month since westarted.” For example, at one of these meetings, Allan was posed with this question: Insur-ance companies send their customers a reoccurring bill, rather than stopping service for twoseasons – so why not offer a year-round CSA to encourage customer retention? As a result,Main Street Farms is now operating a subscription “pay as you go” CSA for customers thatdoesn’t end in the fall, but instead continues until the customer cancels.

This project was a collaboration of the Cornell Small Farms Program, NY Farm Viability In-stitute, and NY FarmNet, and made possible with funding from the National Institute of Foodand Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award number 2015-70017-22882.

Kat McCarthy worked with the Beginning Farmer Profit Teams as the Beginning FarmerProject Coordinator for the Cornell Small Farms Program from March 2017 through May2018. Dan Welch is the Business Planning Director at NY FarmNet and has been involvedwith the profit team project since 2015.

Information for this summary was collected in June 2017. For more information about theProfit Team Project, please visit www.tinyurl.com/ProfitTeams.

Main Street from page 9

One of the classrooms we worked with.

All of the kids loved interacting with the chicks.

Page 10 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

ORCHARD MANAGEMENT

by Guy Ames, ATTRA

Organic certification verifies that fruit is produced accordingto United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) organicstandards. See www.ams.usda.gov/nop for details of thestandards. In general, the regulations make several require-ments of certified organic fruit:

• Produced without genetic engineering, ionizing radiation,or sewage sludge• Managed in a manner that conserves natural resourcesand biodiversity• Raised per the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Sub-stances (National List)• Overseen by a USDA-authorized certifying agent

All National Organic Program regulations for crops apply totree fruits. The only regulation specifically pertaining to or-chards is 7 CFR §205.204(a)(4):

“Nonorganically produced planting stock to be used to pro-duce a perennial crop may be sold, labeled, or representedas organically produced only after the planting stock hasbeen maintained under a system of organic management fora period of no less than 1 year…”

Basic Principles

Numerous pests and diseases, coupled with the high cos-metic standards of the market, make commercial organictree fruit production difficult, especially in the East. The rela-tive permanence of an orchard provides ecological stability,including opportunities for soil conservation and soil build-ing. On the other hand, that relative permanence can allowthe build-up of some pests, diseases and weeds since croprotation is eliminated as a pest-management tool for all butthe cover crop in the aisles.

Transitioning to Organic Disease Control in Orchards

Disease-resistant cultivars should be the foundation of anorganic disease management program. However, manypopular commercial cultivars have little or no genetic resist-ance to diseases. Furthermore, only a few cultivars haveacross-the-board resistance to all the major diseases in anarea, and these cultivars are generally not well known toconsumers.

• Sulfur and copper-type fungicides/bactericides are themainstays of organic disease management; however, theyare problematic, especially in the humid East where theymust be on plant surfaces before a rain to prevent infection,but can easily be washed off by rain. • Agricultural-grade antibiotics are no longer allowed in or-ganic production for fire blight control in apples and pears.• New-generation disease management tools, like microbialantagonists of certain pathogens, are becoming available,but are also problematic, especially in the East, where dis-ease pressure is higher.• Cultural techniques for managing tree fruit diseases most-ly involve opening up the trees with pruning and training topromote rapid drying of plant surfaces after rain. Thesetechniques are generally not adequate by themselves tocontrol diseases, but can augment other approaches.• Flail mowing of prunings or removal of prunings from theorchard removes an important source of disease inoculum.

Transitioning to Organic Insect and Mite Control in

Orchards

• Several key pests, such as codling moth, plum curculio(only east of the Rockies), cherry fruit fly, and stink bugs canrender the better part of a fruit crop unsaleable if ignored.Consumers, in general, are not accepting of insect damageon, or especially in, a fruit. Because of the many pests thatattack tree fruits and the low tolerance for damage, thegrower needs to understand the life cycles of the pests andthe points at which they are vulnerable to management.• “Particle film technology” using a finely pulverized kaolinclay product, Surround™, has revolutionized organic insectmanagement in tree fruits in the past two decades, makingorganic control of stubborn pests like plum curculio possible.Surround™ controls most tree fruit pests if fruit and leaves

are adequately covered. Three problems bear mentioning:1) Surround™ does weather off with time and rain, so multi-ple appli- cations can be necessary, 2) if it doesn’t weatheroff or get washed off in a brusher/washer, residues will re-main on fruit, 3) Surround™ readily precipitates out of solu-tion in the spray tank, so the tank must be constantly agitat-ed while applying.• At least one botanical insecticide, neem, and several rela-tively new microbials—e.g., Spinosad™ and Beauvariabassiana—can be effective against particular pests.• Pheromone disruption systems for specific pests, likecodling moth and oriental fruit moth, are effective.• Conservation of habitat and food sources (e.g., certainwildflowers) encourages beneficial insects and other organ-isms and can augment insect and mite control in orchards.

Transitioning to Organic Weed Management in

Orchards

• Crop rotation is impossible in an orchard situation. Perni-cious weeds, like bermudagrass in the Almond trees inbloom. South and quackgrass in the North, are hard to con-trol organically, especially if you can’t rotate to a smothercrop. However, a thick cover crop in the aisles can keepweeds like bermudagrass from getting started and movingunder the tree canopy. Also, the aisles can be planted (androtated) to various cover crops for advantages such as pro-viding mulch material, enhancing pest control, and contribut-ing to tree nutrition.• Mulch can be part of a good weed management strategybut can also encourage pests like mice and voles. Woodchip mulches don’t harbor rodents and have performed wellin research trials.• Precision, tractor-mounted mechanical weeders that pre-vent trunk damage are effective but not in mulched trees.• Flame weeding and organic herbicides can be effectivewhere weeds are short and applications are repeated, butthe multiple applications necessary can get costly. No sys-

temic herbicides are available for organic production, mak-ing control of some weeds very difficult.

Organic Fertility in Orchards

• Liming should occur prior to planting and in accordancewith soil tests.• Foliar analysis coupled with soil tests will give the best in-dication of tree nutrient status.• Pre-plant cover crops are advised for both fertility andweed control.• Nutrient contribution of cover crops in the aisles betweenrows appears to be small and should not be relied uponalone for fertility. (However, cover crops have other benefi-cial impacts on soil and the orchard ecosystem, such asminimizing erosion, improving water infiltration, and provid-ing habitat for beneficial insects.)• In general, fruit trees are not heavy feeders, and theirneeds are often met by decomposing mulches, com- postapplications, and/or organic foliar feeding. In fact, too muchnitrogen can induce problems like fire blight and soft fruit.• With education and experience, most fruit growers willlearn to recognize the symptoms of nutrient problems: inad-equate growth of shoots, chlorotic color of leaves, fruit dis-orders (e.g., apple measles), etc.

Market Considerations for Organic Fruit

Demand for organic fruit is usually high, and the premium fororganically certified fruit is usually correspondingly high. Inthe West, brokers, some specializing in organic fruit, handlemost of the fruit; much of it is headed to the East where or-ganic production of tree fruits is comparatively small. In theEast, the small amount of organic fruit produced is most of-ten retailed directly by the farmer, but there is beginning tobe some distribution through food hubs.

In the East, growers will often have to educate clienteleabout why their fruit looks the way it does. Direct contactwith the end consumer is usually necessary for this educa-tion. Growers, especially in the East, should have a market-ing plan that includes value-added products like cider,sauce, jams, and jellies to provide a use for damaged andcosmetically inferior fruit.

Further Resources

ATTRA’s series on organic fruit production, including publi-cations on organic production of cherries, apples, peaches,plums, and pears. Access at www.attra.ncat.org or call 1-800-346-9140.

Peck, Gregory, Ian Merwin, et al. 2009. A Growers Guide toOrganic Apples. NYS IPM Publication No. 223. Cornell Uni-versity. Ithaca, NY. http://nysipm.cornell.edu/organic_guide/apples.pdf

WSU Tree Fruit Research & Extension Center. Organic & In-tegrated Tree Fruit Production.www.tfrec.wsu.edu/pages/organic/Organic_Production

University of California Small Farm Program. http://sfp.uc-davis.edu/

USDA Organic Regulations 7 CFR 205: www.ams.usda.gov/nop

USDA National Organic Program Handbook:www.ams.usda.gov/NOPProgramHandbook

NOP 5029 – Guidance: Seeds, Annual Seedlings and Plant-ing Stock in Organic Crop Production.USDA National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances:www.ams.usda.gov/NOPNationalList

This article was developed with support from U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service, Nation-al Organic Program

Produced by the National Center for Appropriate Technolo-gy www.ncat.org 1-800-275-6228 (1-800-ASK-NCAT)(Parent organization to the ATTRA Project,www.attra.ncat.org)

Tipsheet: Transitioning to Organic Management of Orchards

Organic Magness pears. Photo by Guy Ames, NCAT

Sooty blotch and flyspeck are serious cosmeticdisorders on apples in the East.

Photo by Robyn Metzger, NCAT

by Rebecca Harris

In 1914, Sylvestor Howe packed up hishorses, left behind his family and small brickhouse in Tunbridge, Vermont, to travel 90miles to the big city of Brattleboro. He wouldreturn weeks later with the town’s first regis-tered Holstein cows to start Holstein StockFarm. Nine of the Howe children would growup on this farm, and six would die on thesame land.

Tucked in-between rolling green hills carvedby the winding first branch of the White Riv-er, the pastures are kept small in this valley.It isn’t hard to imagine the echoed clackingof hoofs over the wooden covered bridgethat still acts as the sole access to thisfarm’s narrow green pasture. Over the yearsthe farm was passed down from one gener-ation to the next. Two years ago Tunbridge-born, military veteran, beginner farmer,Corey Chapman and his wife Ann boughtthis 200-acre organic dairy farm from MerleHowe, the last living son of the original

Howe family, to start Chapman FamilyFarms.

When Corey Chapman grew up here, therewere 25 dairy farms in town. Today only fiveorganic dairy farms are left. Increasingly,

Vermont’s idyllic agricultural lifestyle isthreatened. NRCS’s Agricultural Conserva-tion Easement Program, Agricultural LandEasements (ACEP-ALE) helps protectthreatened agricultural landscapes and theirrich history for future generations.

In partnership with the USDA-Natural Re-sources Conservation Service (NRCS) andVermont Land Trust, the Chapman’s con-served 60+ riverside acres of the farm inperpetuity with an Agricultural Land Ease-ment. In 2018, NRCS celebrates 25 years ofpartnering with passionate private landown-ers, such as the Chapman Family, to protectand prevent the development of productiveagricultural land.

Agricultural land easements help producerskeep land in agriculture or, in this case, pur-chase a farm by providing financial andtechnical assistance. As part of the ease-ment process, NRCS staff help landownerscreate a plan to conserve natural resourceson their land in perpetuity. This family ismarching forward into the future of farmingwhile also preserving the landscape’s richpast.

Speaking with the Chapman family, it’s hardnot to be moved by their passion for protect-ing their agricultural landscape and its natu-ral resources for their six children (onewhich is still on the way). Ann says, “If weare going to farm, we are going to do it rightfrom the beginning.” As beginning farmers,the Chapmans faced many challenges, in-

cluding purchasing a farm, which is an ex-pensive endeavor. They credit the ACEP-ALE for helping them pay part of their mort-gage, renovate the barn, and turn on thelights at Chapman Family Farm.

Corey spoke about the long journey to gethere. “I own a dairy farm, and this is what Idreamed about since I was a little boy play-ing in the woods here. The fact we were ableto do it without inheriting a dairy farm fromfamily is incredible.” Ann described their firstdays on the farm and how much it meant tothe community. “When we threw the lightson for the first time people pulled in from theroad. They had not seen the barn with lightson in over 20 years.” The land was aliveagain.

Unlike Corey, Ann spent the majority of herlife in cities, spending her teenage years inBoston and traveling around the world as astudent and young professional. “I’ve lived incities most of my life, in places where youhave to walk a couple of blocks to go see thegrass they planted.” She understands theimportance of maintaining working landsand raising children on a farm and explains,“I’ve seen a lot of places in the world whereyou had to go on vacation to see Mother Na-ture, where kids learn about farm animalsfrom storybooks.”

She says protecting this land means con-necting the next generation to “our rivers

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 11

NATURE & STEWARDSHIP

Kids, Cows and Conservation at Vermont’s Chapman Family Farm

The Chapman family, including their five children (with one on the way!), are passion-ate about conservation and stewardship. Ann says, “If we are going to farm, we aregoing to do it right from the beginning.”

On the Chapman farm, water quality is a focus and the family received assistance through the NRCS Environmental QualityIncentives Program (EQIP) to install practices to protect and improve soil and water health. Sixty acres of the 204-acre farm areconserved through a conservation easement with the Vermont Land Trust.

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See Kids page 12

by Miriah Reynolds

The morning sun sneaks up and over the tall peak ofthe mountains as I open up the barn door. I am greet-ed by squinting eyes and eager faces. Pepper, mySaanen doe stretches and curls her upper lip, grunt-ing in the process. She’s not a morning goat, andneeds to be motivated out of the barn. Star, my old-er milker, races out of the barn, grabs a mouthful ofalfalfa, and waits quietly at the gate. Milking twice aday I suppose is my farm girl ritual; feed, water, milk,repeat. Offer a few good scratches and maybe atreat in the methodical movements of my routine.This year my goal was to revamp my cleanliness dur-ing milking to an even higher standard. Each day Ichallenge myself on improving efficiency and obtainthe cleanest, purest milk possible. I will share my in-sight on my method of hand milking; where it beginsin the barn to the conclusion in the kitchen. Keep inmind I have small herd that I milk by hand for my ownconsumption. My goats are not a business, but apassion and hobby. Still, many of these lessons areuseful at any scale of milking.

It all begins in the barn

Clean milk starts with healthy goats and a tidy barn.

My husband will tell you that one of my favorite thingsto do around our farm is clean the barn. Yes, I’ll ad-mit that my obsession for keeping the barn odor, ma-nure, pest, and clutter free is a bit excessive. Howev-er; I believe that the barn is a major factor in ahealthy herd and cleanly milk. Proper ventilation,good lighting, and adequate bedding are very impor-tant. My goats have 24/7 access to quality hay, cleanwater, and mineral. I use pine shavings as bedding intheir stalls. Every morning the barn is ‘spot’ cleanedand allowed to air dry. In the evening fresh shavingsare added. For me, the cost of ‘spot’ cleaning daily ismore effective than cleaning once in a while and re-placing all the bedding. By doing such, I have almosteliminated any manure that may stick to the goats’udder or body.

Proper equipment

Stainless steel equipment is necessary for optimalmilk handling. It is easy to clean, sanitize, and doesnot harbor odors like plastic. Stainless steel doesn’talter the taste of milk and is very durable. I use astainless steel 5-quart milking pail, an 8 quart milkingtote (with lid), and a strainer. There are dozens of

Page 12 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

LIVESTOCK & POULTRY

and our soil.” She says, “The best way toprotect a river is to let kids swim in it. If theygrow up swimming in a river, they are goingto love that river. They are going to get an-gry when banks are eroding, they are goingto get mad when there is erosion, they willbe concerned when there is trash lodged inthe banks and when there are no fish. Forthe rest of their life, they are going to be pro-tective of that resource.”

When the Chapman’s enrolled their riversidefarmland in a state supported River CorridorEasement (an easement that allows for thepassive restoration of the channel and forreforestation) they did so with one excep-tion. Part of the conservation plan includedland set aside for Ann’s Beach, where theirfamily and others could still access, andplay, in the river.

When asked how they envision the future,Corey and Ann tell a story from the days fol-lowing Corey’s return from his third and laststint in Afghanistan. They sat down andasked each other what kind of life theywished to lead. Corey spoke with intention,“I don’t care if we are dirt poor and havenothing—this is our dream. We want towake up every morning and see our chil-dren.”

Corey then turned and pointed to a framedphoto hanging on the wall of a man in uni-form, his late best friend Steve, and says,“When it’s 31 below zero and I cannot goany longer, I remember that he was 25 whenhe died and now I’m 38. I am able to dowhatever it takes to protect this land for mychildren. However, if they watch me walkthrough the door every day and the guy fromthe state is here because the river is pollut-ed, they’re not going to want to continuefarming.” Passing on this land should be ablessing, not a burden. That means invest-ing in sustainable infrastructure such as anew manure pit or a larger bunker silo. Itmeans thinking about how your farmingpractices will impact the future of the land.

“We still complain … its human nature tocomplain, but at the end of the day we’re ex-tremely lucky. I’m lucky to be alive.”

With the help of NRCS’s ACEP-ALE, onehundred years from now, the narrow cov-ered bridge may still act as the only accessto the farm’s narrow pasture, dotted withHolstein cows. Red maples lean over ver-dant riverbanks, their roots holding back thesoil and filtering runoff. Ann’s Beach is filledwith new children playing in the river, futurefarmers and conservationists learning tolove the land.

Rebecca Harris is working for the USDANatural Resources Conservation Service inColchester, Vermont through EcoAmeri-Corps, as a Conservation Easement Stew-ardship Assistant. She earned her Bachelorof Arts degree in Environmental Studies andPolitical Science from Tulane University in2016.

For more information about NRCS’ Agricul-tural Conservation Easement Program(ACEP), which provides financial and tech-nical assistance to help conserve agricultur-al lands and wetlands and their related ben-efits, visit https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/programs/ease-ments/acep/.

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Milking CleanlinessImprove hand-milking cleanliness for small ruminants with these few simple techniques

Stainless steel milking equipment.See Milking page 13

Kids from page 11

Organic dairy cows at Chapman FamilyFarms in Tunbridge, Vermont

styles and sizes of milking equipment that will meet theneeds of most any herd size. I milk into the pail and filter intothe tote. All milking equipment is cleaned in the dishwasheron the sanitize setting. Stainless steel is corrosion resistantso pails and other equipment will last for years if taken careof properly. Having the right equipment makes the milkingprocess so much simpler and effective for a reasonable ini-tial investment.

In the milking stand

Chores start with feeding the goats individually outside thebarn. By separate feeding, I am able to monitor consumptionand have zero grain wasted. The goats can take their timemunching away while I clean the barn and fill waters. Oncein the milking stand, my girls stand peacefully chewing theircud. Brushing swift whisks over the entire body removes atremendous amount of dirt, loose hair, and debris. The milk-ing stand is set up to where I can walk completely around it,giving the opportunity to see all sides of the goats. I look ather eyes and give a loving face brushing. I make mentalnotes of her nose, rear, and attitude. It’s rewarding to do abrief evaluation of my goats and spending a few quality mo-

ments with them before milking. Star worships the attentionwhile Pepper appears unenthused.

After brushing, the udder is gently washed with a clean clothsoaked in a chlorhexidine based udder wash. Once her ud-der is clean and dry, I wash my hands. One simple trick isplacing a cloth underneath the milk pail. It works wonderful-ly because anything that may be on the milking stand doesnot stick to the bottom of the bucket, and later end up on thekitchen counter! It’s important to keep the handle of the milkpail towards the front of the goat and not by her dirty backhooves. Discard the first couple squirts and then milk nor-mally.

I filter the milk into the 8 qt. stainless steel tote and securethe lid. By filtering the milk immediately up at the barn, itdoesn’t sit with any missed debris for more than a coupleminutes. The closed milk tote is wonderful at keeping anypesky bugs or pollen from falling in. It’s important to use aclean cloth for each goat to reduce contamination betweenudders. Cloths can be washed with bleach on an as neededbasis.

The does are returned to their pad-dock, relieved and ready for the day.They migrate over to the hay and ca-sually bicker. Dust, snorts and quickglimpses of running kids ensure thatthey are happy causing havoc on thehillside. They seem content for now,and this evening the whole processwith be repeated.

In the kitchen

My adorable goat barn is quite aways from my house, so it’s a long,dusty hike down the hill with a full pailof milk. The milk tote was one of thebest investments in advancing milkhandling because now it actuallymakes it to the house and not spilledinto my boots! Once at the house, allcounters are disinfected, and theglass jars have been sanitized. Themilk is filtered a second time into half-gallon glass jars and refrigerated im-mediately. I prefer the half-gallon jarsbecause from my experience the milkcools faster. Cooling of the milk is

crucial for taste and reducing bacteria growth.

The goat milk from my little heavenly farm is so deliciousand even better when transformed into cheeses, yogurts,caramel, and other delectable creations. I am excited tokeep improving my technique and share it along the way.These simple steps can drastically reduce the amount of de-bris in milk. I invite you to evaluate your own milking routineand find simple ways of improving cleanliness. As a wiseMontana rancher once told me “Goat farming is a process,not an event!”

Miriah Reynolds graduated from Montana State Universitywith a degree in Animal Science and has the most amazingherd of dairy goats. Goats, agriculture, and sharing stories istruly her passion. She was raised on the Reynolds Barn goatdairy in Rhode Island. She loves to hear from readers; MiriahReynolds Bitterwind Ranch at iminthegoatbarn@gmail.com.

This article was also published in Goat Keeper magazine inCanada. October 2018.

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 13

www.donsdairysupplyinc.com

Star, 5 year old Toggenburg doe eagerly awaits to bemilked.

Milking my Toggenburg by hand.

Milking from page 12

Page 14 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

LIVESTOCK & POULTRY

by Fred Provenza

This excerpt is from Fred Provenza’s book Nourishment:What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nu-tritional Wisdom Chelsea Green Publishing, November2018) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Liking for foods is typically thought to be influenced bypalatability. Webster’s dictionary defines palatable as“pleasant or acceptable to the taste and hence fit to be eat-en or drunk.” Animal scientists usually explain palatability,though, as a liking influenced by a food’s flavor (odor andtaste) and texture, or the relish an animal shows when eat-ing a food. Plant scientists describe palatability as attributesof plants that alter an herbivore’s preference for consumingthem, such as physical and chemical composition and as-sociated plants.

Redefining Palatability

I had begun to ponder these questions about what influ-ences an herbivore’s food choices while observing the per-plexing behavior of the goats in St. George: Why didn’t thegoats prefer the younger more nutritious twigs of black-brush over older, woody, less nutritious blackbrush twigs?As it turned out, the goats helped me understand theiranomalous behavior.

My colleague Beth and I began with a series of trials inwhich we extracted and purified secondary compoundsfrom young twigs, mixed each purified extract individuallywith a pelleted food, and offered the “flavored” pellets togoats one laborious trial at a time. We did the trials duringfall and winter, with no sign that any of the compounds de-terred feeding by the goats. By midwinter, only one com-pound remained to be tested—a condensed tannin plentifulin the bark of new twigs. By process of elimination, we fig-ured, this tannin must be the feeding deterrent.

On the first morning of the final trial, the goats ate all of thetannin-infused pellets. We were surprised and bewildered.We had tested every compound that might have made thegoats averse to eating new blackbrush twigs, and the goatshad eaten every one. How could they be so averse to eat-ing new growth when none of the secondary compoundswe’d extracted had any effect? Not only that, but at the ratethe goats ate the tannin-containing pellets the first day, wehad only enough tannin-containing pellets left to conductone more trial. We’d spent months of hard work collectingtwigs and then extracting and purifying that condensed tan-nin. We didn’t know what to do. As we pondered the situa-tion that cold winter morning, we decided all we could dowas feed the tannin-containing pellets again the next day.

Incredibly, when we offered the pellets the following day,the goats wouldn’t touch them. On this second exposure topellets high in tannins, the goats had somehow changedtheir preference. It wasn’t a question of merely respondingto flavor. If the goats had disliked the flavor of the tannin-in-fused pellets or innately recognized the pellets as some-thing that would make them sick, they wouldn’t have eatenthem so enthusiastically on the first day. At that aha mo-ment, we realized goats didn’t innately know high-tanninpellets—or new blackbrush twigs—were bad for them.Rather, they had to learn from aversive postingestive con-sequences. In other words, it took a queasy stomach (nau-sea) to teach them not to eat foods with tannins.

To confirm that hypothesis, in a subsequent trial, we sup-plemented goats foraging on Cactus Flats with a smallamount of polyethylene glycol, a compound that binds totannins in the gut, alleviating their aversive postingestive ef-fects. Goats supplemented with polyethylene glycol don’texperience the nauseating effects of tannins in blackbrush.With the deterrent effect neutralized, those goats were freeto choose, and they preferred new to older growth twigsbased on the higher energy, protein, and mineral content ofthe new twigs.

At that time, we were also studying how lithium chloridecauses food aversions in sheep. Lithium chloride—onceused as a substitute for table salt and to treat manic depres-

sion in humans—in excess conditions a food aversion inanimals. Following the findings with blackbrush, we decid-ed to repeat the trials with lithium chloride, but on goats aswell as sheep. Sheep and goats who receive a capsule oflithium chloride acquire an aversion to any forage they atejust prior to receiving lithium chloride. Like humans, an up-set stomach doesn’t necessarily cause an aversion in goatsor sheep, but nausea does. At the dosages we were infus-ing, neither the sheep nor the goats showed any overt signsof illness. Yet, the following day they avoided the foodthey’d eaten just prior to receiving the lithium chloride.

Though conditioned taste aversion was of key importancein psychobiology, until the study with goats and blackbrush,neither we nor other scientists had a clue that secondarycompounds in plants were communicating with cells and or-gan systems in herbivore bodies, providing feedback thatchanged liking for the flavor of a particular food. Rather, wehad thought animals instinctively avoid foods that taste badand choose to eat foods that taste good. During the nextforty years, with this new understanding dawning, the re-search group I supervised carried out hundreds of studiesthat illustrated how likes and dislikes for the flavors of foodsare caused by postingestive feedback emanating fromcells, organ systems, and gut microbes.

In some studies, we worked with animals that had beenmade mildly deficient in primary compounds (energy, pro-teins, minerals, and vitamins). In our first studies, for exam-ple, we fed straw (a food with little nutritional value) tolambs deficient in energy. Some of the straw was flavoredwith apple; some with maple. On day one, lambs in onegroup were given apple-flavored straw, while lambs in theother group were given maple-flavored straw. After they atethe straw, we gave all the lambs an oral drench of water di-rectly into the gut. On day two, lambs in the group previous-ly fed apple-flavored straw were fed maple-flavored straw,while lambs fed maple-flavored straw were fed apple-fla-vored straw. After the meal of straw on day two, we gave allthe lambs an oral drench of energy. After several days ofthat protocol, the lambs were given a choice between ap-ple- or maple-flavored straw. They strongly preferred theflavored straw that had been paired with the boost of ener-gy delivered directly into the gut. Thus, one group preferredapple-flavored straw while the other group preferred maple-flavored straw.

We showed that feedback strongly influences preferencesfor flavors paired with both primary compounds and sec-ondary compounds (phenolics, terpenes, and alkaloids).We also found primary and secondary compounds interactwith one another and with cells and organs to influence thechoices animals make while foraging. The balance of pri-mary and secondary compounds relative to needs stronglyinfluences liking for flavors.

Secondary compounds set a limit on how much of any onefood an animal can eat. Thus, animals must eat a variety ofplants that contain different secondary compounds, detoxi-fied by different means in the gut and liver, in order to meetneeds for energy and protein. Cattle who forage on highmountain pastures select from a smorgasbord of plants, in-cluding larkspur, which contains toxic alkaloids. How muchlarkspur a cow will eat during a meal varies from day to day.Cattle recognize when they reach a toxic threshold andthey stop eating larkspur for the next few days. That allowstime to detoxify and eliminate those toxic alkaloids fromtheir bodies.

Infusion studies with terpenes from sagebrush also showthe sensitivity of herbivores to feedback. Terpenes givesagebrush its characteristic fragrance. Like any primary orsecondary compound, in appropriate doses, terpenes arebeneficial for health, but when the dose climbs too high,they become toxic. While elk, deer, cattle, and sheep usesagebrush as a nutritious forage in winter, terpenes limittheir intake of sagebrush in accord with the amount of ter-penes these herbivores can detoxify and eliminate fromtheir bodies. When terpenes are slowly infused into the ru-men or the bloodstream as sheep eat a meal, sheep stopeating before the amount of infused terpenes reaches atoxic level. They resume eating only after terpenes in thebody decline.

Terpenes thus affect satiation (processes that bring a mealto an end) and satiety (processes that inhibit eating be-tween meals). Lambs reduce meal size (reach satiationsooner) and increase intervals between meals (longer sati-ety) when their diets are high in terpenes. When animalscan eat a variety of different forages, which vary in kinds ofsecondary compounds, what ensues are cyclic patterns ofintake of different foods from meal to meal and day to dayas bodies regulate intake of foods with different kinds ofsecondary compounds. When animals eat small amountsof a range of plants containing secondary compounds, theyexpose cells and microbes in their bodies to a variety ofsecondary compounds beneficial for health, too.

In the early years of those studies, I was amazed that ad-ministering primary or secondary compounds directly intoan animal’s gut (or bloodstream) could markedly alter thatanimal’s liking for the flavor of a food. It was counterintuitiveto my experience of eating and to all I’d been taught abouthow taste influences preference. To further complicate mat-ters, ruminants—including cattle, sheep, goats, elk, anddeer—are walking compost heaps. They have four-cham-bered stomachs, and the rumen is a huge fermentation vatthat contains mixed plant material being digested by thou-sands of species of microbes. How could signals from pri-mary and secondary compounds not be lost in such a heapof fermentation? Over and over again, though, goats,sheep, and cattle showed us that the signals weren’t lost inthe rumen.

Fred Provenza is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecologyin the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State Uni-versity, where he directed an award-winning researchgroup that pioneered an understanding of how learning in-fluences foraging behavior and how behavior links soils andplants with herbivores and humans. Provenza is one of thefounders of BEHAVE, an international network of scientistsand land managers committed to integrating behavioralprinciples with local knowledge to enhance environmental,economic, and cultural values of rural and urban communi-ties. His latest book Nourishment: What Animals Can TeachUs About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom will bepublished in November 2018.

More Than a Matter of Taste

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 15

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FOREST, FIELD & WOODLOT

by Rich Taber, CCE Chenango

In the previous four installments of this series on chain-saw operation we have looked at some of the myriad rulesfor safe and efficient chainsaw operation. We have lookedat the protective gear that is needed by an operator, thesafety considerations with the use of the chainsaw itself,and some of the training that is available for chainsawusers. In this final installment, we will look at the actualfelling of a tree.

Safety is always of paramount concern when felling treesand the statistics bear this out, in that logging is the mosthazardous occupation in the United States. Granted,much progress has been made in recent years, with moreand more safety training and certification of loggers beingdemanded. However, many of the readers of this publica-tion will not be professional loggers and oftentimes slipthrough the cracks with little or no formal training in thesafe use of chainsaws. An important focus of this articlewill be on the use of the correct felling notches to use,which in recent years has changed dramatically.

Now that we have arrived in the woods to fell trees, whatare some of the precautions that we should take? First,you might consider having someone else nearby so that ifanything bad occurs, that second person can summonhelp. The presence of a good first aid kit with a blood clot-ting sponge and trauma kit is imperative to have nearby aswell, as well as a fully charged cell phone on your person.

We need to look at the tree that we are going to fell, andmake sure that there are no “widow makers” in or near

that tree; widow makers are dead branches high overheadthat can easily come crashing down on you. If they arepresent, go on to another tree! You also don’t want a treeto be near any power lines, houses, or other buildings. Ifthe tree in question is near buildings, perhaps it would bemore prudent to hire an experienced arborist or tree sur-geon, rather than “your buddy from work” who happens toown a chainsaw. (Try explaining to your neighbor whythere is a tree on top of their house or vehicle that you or“your buddy” just dropped it onto; there will be red facesand lots of liability all around!). You also need to clear anybrushy stems in your felling area that might get tangled upand trip you, or catch on your clothes and impede your es-cape when the tree begins to fall.

You will need to have a clear escape route to move towhen the tree begins to fall, at about a 45-degree angle tothe tree away from the felling direction. You do not want tobe moving away from the falling tree in a straight line inthe direction that it is falling; trees have been known tokickback off the stump and kill and injure people. Thisbrings us to the crux of this article, the felling notches tobe used.

One of the included illustrations shows the long used, butnow obsolete conventional felling notch, which should bereplaced with open-faced notches. Many publications still

show this obsolete and unsafe notch, and is used by manypeople in practice, even in this modern era of new andbetter information available such as from “The Game ofLogging”. What is wrong with this notch? The problem isthat this notch oftentimes allows the tree to hang up on thenotch when it falls to the ground, resulting in the tree stillin the air and incompletely fallen.

The open face felling notch is part of the method known asdirectional felling, and was promulgated by the world-renowned Soren Ericson, who brought much of thesenewer and more efficient felling methods to North Americafrom Europe. These methods have been adopted by theforest products industry all over. The open face notch hasnow replaced the conventional notch, and the illustrationsshow the gist of the details. Directional felling allows youto control exactly where the tree will fall, but does take abit of training and experience to become competent in itsmethods.

The safe felling of a tree using an open face notch con-sists of making three precise and strategic cuts; the topcut, the plunge cut, and the back or felling cut. Fellingwedges can then be used during the final cut to assist thetree in beginning to fall. Once the tree starts to fall, youmove away from the tree at the aforementioned 45-degreeangle as shown in the image. This technique is very safeonce learned, but takes some dedicated practice to get itright.

What do we do if the tree hangs up, and doesn’t make itto the ground? This is where a logging winch mounted toa tractor comes in handy; and is much safer than just put-ting a chain around the tree and pulling it down with a trac-tor or other vehicle. The cable on the winch allows you toget a good safe distance away from the tree for when itdoes fall. Oh, by the way, the only people who never gettrees hung up are those who never fell trees the right way.

Chainsaw Safety, Part 5: Tree Felling

Directional felling, which uses a “plunge” cut andwedges to better control the safe felling of a tree.

The safety zone once the tree starts to fall (B) is 45degrees on either side from the direction of the fall (A)

The “old” and more dangerous method of felling. See Chainsaw page 16

Page 16 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

by Betsy Hicks, South Central New York Dairy& Field Crops

Today’s economy has every producer strug-gling to find ways to increase cash flow. We fillstalls, add a few more cows, keep plentifulheifers in the pipeline, and estimate our pro-jected inventory of first calf heifers due to calveand add it to the count of cows in our milkingstring. Banks, profit teams, nutritionists, own-ers, veterinarians, managers – everyone looksat these numbers. Adding more cows lets usextrapolate out numbers of projections of whatmilk could look like and potentially positivelyimpact cash flow. We know feed costs, weknow how long it takes us to milk extra cows;we put numbers to things to define what theseextra cows can do to our bottom line.

But at what point does putting an extra cow inthe barn starts to yield negative results? Yes,milk per stall may look great, but what strain orstress has it put on the entire system? Withfresh cow groups, or close-up dry groups, weknow exactly how many cows we can put in thegroup before we start seeing metabolic issues. With heifers,though, are we able to define exactly what those negativesare? And what about the added strain on the human ele-ment? If you have narrow alley ways, slippery floors in thesummertime and more cows in a group than before, whatdoes that do for the efficiency of the worker? How about theworker’s state of mind while trying to sift through that groupof cows?

When we overcrowd the system, yes, we’re trying to be asproductive as possible – filling the barn to capacity will pret-ty much always yield more cash flow than a barn that’s halffull. Pushing the limits leads us to the law of diminishing re-turns – we put another cow in the group, but instead of the

average of the group being 80 lbs./cow, now it’s 78 or 77.Still positive, being that we added more milk, but not quite ashigh as we were before. We overcrowd that fresh cow groupand blow up with ketosis and DA’s – that’s the point of neg-ative returns, not a fun or profitable place to be.

So, let’s think about these points in our system and how wecan relate it back to results. Yes, we need to cash flow, butmore animals aren’t always the answer. I challenge you tolook at each point in your system and identify where you arepast the point of getting a positive return. If we were making$24 conventional milk again, I have a feeling that a lot oftransition heifer barns would be going up to correct a hugeovercrowding issue in our replacement program. Again,though, more animals isn’t always the answer. To relievecrowding, we can either put animals in a bigger space, or wecan remove animals from the space. New barns aren’t in thecards that dairy producers are holding right now, so remov-ing animals from the space is the next best answer. Do youknow how many heifers you need to maintain your herd sizeor maintain growth for expansion? Odds are, with the resultsin reproductive efficiency that I see on many herds today, wedon’t need to keep a 1:1 ratio of heifers to cows – probably80% of the cow herd is realistic, even with a herd in expan-sion mode.

If you only keep 80% though, that means someheifers have to leave! I challenge herds all thetime – what are the criteria for deciding if thatheifer gets to stay? This needs to be decidedBEFORE the calf hits the ground. Many times,I’ve seen half beef breeds running around inheifer pens because the producer decided touse beef semen as a way to either get a prob-lem cow pregnant or to convince themselvesthat they don’t want to keep the genetics fromthe cow, and they didn’t sell the calf afterwards.In either scenario, the producer needs to makea management decision AHEAD OF TIME.Every herd has a bottom third of cows. This is agood place to start making decisions about whoto keep.

What happens when we start maximizing oursystem instead of overtaxing our system? Wehave less milk to have to feed – or the capacityto feed more milk to fewer calves and maximizegrowth. Letting a few calves leave the farm im-mediately may open up opportunities to startingweighing heifers at specific time points to revealgaps in performance that can be addressed. We

have less crowded heifer pens – or healthier calves that don’thave underlying respiratory disease and have reached pu-berty faster. We have heifers that reach the milking stringmore quickly – or heifers of the proper size calving in thatstart to pay you back sooner. With the milking string, we havecows calving in that have no metabolic issues and reach con-sistently high peak milks. We have time to not just trim cowsthat need attention, but do maintenance trims on the wholeherd. We have ample bedding in stalls and cleaner pens forcows to spend their day in. From the human aspect, takingcare of healthy cows and calves is far less stressful than car-ing for the poor performers in the group.

Making these management decisions doesn’t happenovernight, and can be overwhelming. Having the conversa-tion with your nutritionist, veterinarian and/or extension edu-cator is a great place to start.

Implementing your strategy will be hard, but knowing thattaking a proactive approach to managing herd size will onlybenefit your dairy in the years to come.

Betsy Hicks is a dairy specialist with the Cornell CooperativeExtension South Central New York Dairy & Field Crops team.

EXTENSION NEWS

The Law of Diminishing Returns – How Farms Know When They’ve Reached It

The author with a dairy farmer.

Image source: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/law-of-diminishing-returns/

In conclusion, I strongly suggest that anyone who uses achainsaw to attend a Game of Logging session; they areheld frequently and all over the Northeast. Fell away, butbe safe!

Rich Taber (M.S./M.S.F.) is an Educator with Cornell Co-operative Extension of Chenango County New York, andalso owns a 165 acre farm in Madison County in theHamilton/Morrisville area where he and his wife Wendyraise beef cattle, sheep, poultry, and enjoy their 105 acrewoodlot. He can be reached at 607-334-5841, ext. 21, oremail: rbt44@cornell.edu.

Information about the “Game of Logging” can be found attheir website, or the NY State Center for Agriculture Med-icine and Health:

• www.gameoflogging.com• www.nycamh.org/programs/gameoflogging

Chainsaw from page 1

by Jason Detzel

It is true that there are fewer processorstoday than there used to be. And on topof that, there are a lot more regulationsthat cost money to implement. Theprocessors themselves are reporting tous that there is barely enough businessto keep them afloat because there arevery few folks processing in the spring-time.

While you can’t count on more proces-sors opening up in a given area, you can- and should - develop relationships witha few of them. The general consensus isthat anything within about four hours canbe considered local.

What follows are some general tips that Ihave acquired for when it’s time toprocess your animals.

1. Make your appointments at least sixmonths in advance for large animals.Most ranchers and farmers will routinelymake all of their appointments a year in advance for theirentire season and if you call a couple of months out youwill most certainly be put on the waiting list.

2. If you do find yourself in a bind, there is a map of slaugh-terhouses in New York available at: http://smallfarms.cor-nell.edu/resources/livestock/slaughterhouse-map/

With a few phone calls you can usually find someone toprocess your animal in some of the less populated areas ofthe state, although this will certainly require a longer trip.

3. Communicate with your processor! Every facility hastheir own cut sheet and a certain way that they do things.Before you fill out your cut sheet, sit down and think aboutwhat you or your customers are going to want as far ascuts go. Do you want to sell one-pound or two-pound pack-ages of hamburger, do you want your steaks cut in one-inch or two-inch widths, and are you going to keep and

package your organ meats?

You need to know this before you go in to fill out your cutsheet. And don’t be afraid to ask questions. These guysare the experts, and if they are not willing to give you a lit-tle of their time to get things right for the customer, thenmaybe the partnership is not a good fit.

4. Talk to other farmers in the area. Ask them what theyliked and possibly didn’t like about certain processors.Most farmers are more than happy to share their opinionand tend to be very loyal to the processors that they feeldo a good job.

5. Shop around. Most processors have websites that listtheir kill fee and price per pound for processing. Each fa-cility does this differently and even though one place isless expensive it does not mean they are the best choice.

6. The USDA makes the rules for retail cuts and each ani-mal is a little different. A simplified version of these regula-tions is that cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs must be inspect-ed at a USDA slaughterhouse to be sold at retail. Poultrycan be processed and sold on-farm or at farmers marketsas long as you are doing the work and are processing lessthan 1,000 birds per year. Poultry can be sold to stores and

restaurants if they are butchered undera 5-A license. The different types of 5-Alicenses are complicated so review thebooklet or talk to your local 5-A proces-sor about your options for selling yourfinished poultry in retail establishments.

7. Custom slaughterhouses are notUSDA certified. These facilities are mostoften used to process deer and wildgame in season. They can and often doprocess livestock but these cuts cannotbe sold as retail and will often have a“not for sale” stamp on the packaging.You can sell half, whole or quarter ani-mals this way.

8. For a product such as bacon to besmoked it often has be shipped offsite toa different facility. The process of smok-ing is also governed by USDA rules andregulations and many slaughterhousesdo not have the space to devote to this.This means it will take longer to getyour cuts back if the pieces need to besent out to another facility.

9. Talk to your butcher about less than ideal animals. Thereare times, especially with cattle, where the animal maylook finished and ready from the outside but when theyprocess the carcass, they find the meat to be less than ide-al. Selling tough steaks is not easy, so instruct the proces-sor that if the steaks are not up to muster he should grindthem for burger or make stew meat. Granted you will nothave the premium steaks to sell but you will not have tosell marginal steaks either.

10. Moving animals to processing is going to be the mosttraumatic thing they ever experience. From loading to rid-ing in an enclosed box behind a moving vehicle, these areboth unnatural and terrifying for the animals. There is norationalizing this with the stock but you can make your loadin easier by prepping in the days prior to putting them intrailer. Put the trailer in the field and put treats in it to en-tice them to walk in. If that is not possible then use treatsand low-stress handling to catch, sort, and push throughthe handling facilities in preparation for the load out.

There are some great resources for all of the regulationsdealing with processing in the state. Here is a link to theResource Guide to Direct Marketing Livestock and Poultryin the state:

• http://smallfarms.cornell.edu/resource-guide-to-direct-marketing-livestock-and-poultry. The marketing guide is aninvaluable resource for all things livestock and has an ex-tensive section on slaughter and marketing regulations.This is the last stage in producing animal products. Insome cases you have spent years tending to these ani-mals so you absolutely must ensure that the product com-ing out the processor is the best it can be.

Jason Detzel is Livestock Educator with Cornell Coopera-tive Extension of Ulster County.

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 17

LIVESTOCK & POULTRY

The Small Farms Program maintains a map of available livestock processors in New York.

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Working With Local Livestock Processors

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61 acres Farmland and Pastureland currently in Hay.$98,900 Troupsburg NY, Steuben Co.

Call Dan Heisey 607-661-0029

55 acres Amish Farm with House, Barn and Fenced Pasture$159,900 Solon NY, Cortland Co.

Call Matt Klink 315-406-5470

113 acres Farmland with40 acres currently in Hay$169,900 Harpursville NY, Broome Co.

Call Norm Niggli 607-237-1949

153 acres Tillable Farmland and Pastureland with House$284,900 Howard NY, Steuben Co.

Call Dan Heisey 607-661-0029

42 acres Tillable Farmland with Farmhouse and Barns$289,900 Sandy Creek NY, Oswego Co.

Call Matt Klink 315-406-5470

152 acres Pastureland with House and Stocked Pond$299,900 Ischua NY, Cattaraugus Co.

Call Travis Thurston 585-386-9413

115 acres Tillable Farmland with House, Barns, Apple Orchard$309,900 Avoca NY, Steuben Co.

Call Dan Heisey 607-661-0029

205 acres Tillable Farmland with Fertile Silt Loam Soils$369,900 Moravia NY, Cayuga Co.

Call Brian Jackson 607-280-1058

NY FARMS & FARMLAND

Page 18 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

by Suzanne Cope

Last fall, a half-dozen teenagers from the Southern NewJersey city of Camden brought hot peppers they’d grownin an urban garden to a rented industrial kitchen. Donninglatex gloves, they de-seeded and chopped the chilies be-fore adding them to vinegar and salt. A few days later, theyprocessed and bottled the resulting product into their ownbrand of hot sauce, Kapow!

The group is part of a teen-focused entrepreneurial pro-gram called Eco Interns, offered by the Camden-areaCenter for Environmental Transformation (CFET). Themission of this nonprofit is to create a sustainable, healthysource of fresh fruit and vegetables—through communitygardens and a farmers’ market—for an underserved urbancommunity, while offering job training and education witha focus on meeting environmental challenges.

The interns do everything from picking and preparing thepeppers to processing and selling their hyper-local, all-natural hot sauce. And they’re paid a competitive hourlywage to do so. In the early stages of the annual summerprogram, about a dozen interns work in one of the organi-zation’s urban gardens, cook nutritious food, and run astand at a weekly summer farmers’ market. The gardenhas both raised and in-ground beds, a greenhouse, a bee-hive, and a fruit orchard, all tended primarily by theteenagers.

In a neighborhood where jobs—particularly for young peo-ple—are hard to come by, participants say they appreciatethe program and the training it provides. “I was very grate-ful to have this experience,” one teenager reflected in awriting activity at the end of the summer. “I learned a lot ofthings that I plan on carrying with me for the rest of my life.”

The inaugural cohort of teenagers conceived of Kapow!three seasons ago from the ground—or garden—up,working with a designer and small-business consultant toget the product into the hands of customers. During thefirst year of this entrepreneurial enrichment program,which takes place after the summer Eco-Intern programhas ended, they made and sold a little more than 100 bot-tles; in 2017, that number rose to 450.

Bottles of Kapow! are mostly sold at CFET events, andthrough people and organizations that reach out to thegroup directly. Recently a representative of Subaru cameacross Kapow! at a CFET event and ordered a few dozenbottles to use as corporate giveaways. All of the proceedsare invested back into the program, where they help pay

for additions like the recent beehives that CFET has ac-quired for its gardens.

Participants learn much more than how to produce acondiment; they gain experience with every aspect of de-veloping and building a small business. The initiative pro-vides not just diverse job training but also nutritional edu-cation and a source of fresh, locally grown produce in aregion labeled a food desert for its lack of access to freshfood. CFET grew out of an effort by parishioners at thenearby Sacred Heart Church, who were so moved by vol-unteer work they had performed in New Orleans after Hur-ricane Katrina that they sought to create similar change intheir own backyard.

The entrepreneurship program that developed Kapow! be-gan with the help of a grant from New Jersey’s Office of

Faith-Based Initiativesas a way to extendCFET’s efforts. As theprogram grows in sizeand popularity, commu-nity groups say local nu-trition and food securityis improving and areayouth are better pre-pared for higher-payingjobs and further school-ing—opportunities thatlong felt out of reach inthis community.

In addition to makingKapow!, CFET managesurban garden spacesaround Camden that in-clude community gar-dens, fruits orchard, anda plant nursery, and of-fers gardening programsto younger children(called Garden SEEDS).

“Our first mission is respect for the environment,” saysTeresa Niedda, CFET’s program director, of the group’sgoals. “But we are also concerned with food issues: theavailability of fresh, local food for the youth workers andthe local community. Also, of course, we’re committed toyouth development—giving Camden youth a safe placethey can go to learn about the environment, health, andjob training, among other things.”

Meeting a Need in Camden

The decade-old CFET is located in the city’s WaterfrontSouth neighborhood, a mix of residential and industrial ar-eas where shipbuilding was once the biggest industry.Throughout Camden, more than a third of the almost75,000 residents live in poverty, compared to the UnitedStates’ 12.7 percent average poverty rate.

And whereas 14 percent of Americans nationally receivefederal nutrition assistance programs, 65 percent of Cam-den County residents are eligible, and studies have shownthat there are many food-insecure families in the city whodon’t qualify for or receive SNAP. In response to the wide-spread food insecurity and the limited job opportunitiesavailable for young people, CFET chose to focus onteenagers.

Participants have the ability to work their way up from aneco intern to a senior farmer, at which point they can takepart in community food justice discussions, lead work-shops, speak at Earth Day events, and collaborate withhigh schools and colleges that now come to Camden forservice learning and to learn about food justice issues.

In addition to benefitting participants, the program servesthe local community. The farm offers growing space and agreen oasis for the urban neighborhood. The weekly farmstand the teenagers run provides one of the few sourcesof fresh produce in the area and the kids are allowed tobring home any excess from the week.

Rutgers researcher Kate Cairns studied the effect of the

URBAN AGRICULTURE

In Camden, a Hot Sauce is Helping Young Urban Entrepreneurs Fight PovertyA teen-focused entrepreneurial program in Southern NJ offers job training and education

Youth working at the farmers market.

Youth working to pack hot sauce. Photos courtesy of CFET

See Camden page 19

program on its participants and found that the added in-come and fresh food home have both made noticeabledifferences in their lives. It has also taught them skillsthat will affect their ability to provide for themselvesthroughout their lives. “Now I don’t have to worry about[accessing fresh food] because I can do it myself if it evergot serious,” one participant in the study was quoted assaying.

Cairns’s research also highlights the lack of opportunityfor teenagers in Camden. In her article, she shared partic-ipants’ stories of being encouraged to sell drugs instead ofworking at CFET.

She says one youth told her that a student had been ap-proached by a man who asked, “Why you doin’ this for $9an hour?” While waving a stack of cash, he continued, “Doyou know how fast I can make this much money?” Cairns

notes how appreciative theparticipants are to be partof a program that providesoptions beyond thoseneighborhood pressures.

While CFET doesn’t yethave a system for trackingyouth who have finished

the program, Niedda saysit’s clear that interest isgrowing. They no longerhave to advertise for sum-mer workers, and as manyas 35 people applied thissummer through word-of-mouth alone. Interest in thelocally grown produce hasincreased as well. “When Ifirst started, the youth justweren’t into the healthyfood,” she says with alaugh. “Last year’s groupfought over taking the extrafood home. It was amaz-ing.”

In 2013, Niedda notes, onlythree Camden high schoolgraduates who took theSATs were considered col-lege-ready. But things arechanging. “[Last year’s]senior farmer and assistantfarmer are both in college,”she says, while another for-mer participant is majoringin botany thanks to hiswork at CFET.

The success of Kapow! hasled students to expandtheir offerings. Last fall,they created Midas TouchHoney, made from lastsummer’s newly productivehives. Working with a pro-bono designer, they cameup with a branding concept:a queen who turns every-thing she touches into gold-en honey. This is a fittingmetaphor for their own ex-periences: As a result ofthe program, they see theirfutures looking brighter. Asone teenage participantsays, “I know I could sus-tain myself because Ilearned so much fromhere.”

Reprinted from CIVIL EATS,and excellent online resourcefor agriculture and food sys-tem articles. Originally postedon: July 24, 2018 Visithttp://civileats.com/

October 1, 2018 SMALL FARM QUARTERLY Page 19

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Camden from page 18

Page 20 SMALL  FARM  QUARTERLY October 1, 2018

URBAN AGRICULTURE

by Lynnette Wright

A Perfect Blend Prior to their partnership, CarrieNader had been working the landsince 2014. When she was grow-ing up, she loved helping hergrandfather tend his large garden.When she moved to the LowerWest Side region, she bought sev-eral city lots at reduced prices tostart her urban farm.

Alex Wadsworth started workingfor the operation in 2016, lendinghis knowledge of horticulture tech-niques, which helped improve theproductivity of the farm. Previously,he attended culinary school, whichinspired him to learn more abouthow the food he was cooking wasgrown. In this pursuit, he learnedabout World Wide Opportunitieson Organic Farms (WWOOF) and

travelled to Maine to work onfarms. After returning to Buffalo,Wadsworth learned about Nader’soperation, and began working withher.

In 2016, the partners focused onimproving the infrastructure of thefarm, which is completely fenced inand utilizes solar power. Naderand Wadsworth worked with theErie County Soil and Water Con-servation Service District and localUSDA Natural Resource Conser-vation Service (NRCS) to get fi-nancial assistance for a high tun-nel. High tunnels protect plantsfrom severe weather and allowfarmers to extend their growingseasons-earlier in the spring andlater into the fall.

Westside Tilth Farm is now grow-ing over 400 tomato plants in thehigh tunnel with hopes of produc-ing more than 200 pounds of toma-toes a week.

Better Beds Another infrastructure improve-ment they have made is to in-crease their number of growingbeds. They have planted 120 bedsthis year, with a wide variety ofvegetables, greens, herbs and alli-ums. The beds are placed on a ge-otextile barrier, which allows waterto flow through, but not soil. Con-cerned with possible contaminants

in the city soil, they brought inmore than 600 yards of soil andcompost to place on top of the ge-otextile barrier.

Improvements with Microloans To further enhance their operation,Nader and Wadsworth applied fora microloan from USDA Farm Serv-ice Agency (FSA). This low-inter-est loan allowed them to build awash station for produce, installmore beds, purchase four smallportable high tunnels and place amushroom grow house, theirnewest venture.

“None of this would have beenpossible without the loan fromFarm Service Agency,” Nader said.“The wash area alone cuts ourwork time down significantly.”

The wash area includes a drainedconcrete pad, a 150-gallon bubblewasher and a retro-fitted washingmachine to spin the greens dry,with a shade cloth overhead. Fromhere their greens go to a walk-incooler to maintain the freshness oftheir veggies.

Produce from Westside Tilth Farmis sold three ways – to local restau-rants, through Community Sup-ported Agriculture (CSA) and afarmer’s market they hold two daysa week on the farm.

The markets are on Tuesday andFriday evenings, and this year, theywill also be making and selling piz-za at the Friday market.

“I really enjoy letting our con-sumers in the gates to see thefarm and how we grow the foodthey’re buying,” Wadsworth said.“We’re trying to make Friday a verysocial event, we want a line out thedoor to get in and buy vegetables.”

In the future they’d like to addmore social events, such as farmdinners or farm tours.

“It’s a lot of work,” Wadsworth said.“You have to put everything intothe farm to make it successful. It’sa sacrifice, but it’s worth it. We lovewhat we do.”

Lynnette Wright is a New York FSAPublic Affairs and Outreach Special-ist. Contact her at 315-477-6309 orLynnette.wright@ny.usda.gov

For more information about USDAprograms and services, contactyour local USDA service center. Tofind your local service center, visitfarmers.gov.

Growing Urban—A Lower West Side StoryTwo farmers are committed to providing the Buffalo, NY community with a variety of produce.

Mushroom production on thefarm.

Carrie and Alex with rows of abundant vegetables.