Adamah's Growing Practices
We see good agriculture as a partnership between farmers and the ecosystem.
The goal is to bring nutritious food to harvest in ways that support the longterm health of the land and all the species on it, including our own. There are many terms that attempt to describe this general orientation toward farming: organic, biological, ecological, sustainable, climate-friendly, regenerative. Each tries its best to capture the enormity of the meaning- to produce human sustenance while understanding the true interconnectedness of the world; to avoid shortcuts like chemicals that lead to temporary high yields but future problems or externalities for others; to work with the relationships between parts of the system rather than to isolate them into their component parts.
Indigenous peoples across the globe have developed resilient partnerships with ecosystems to maintain both human caloric intake and the health of the overall system. The practices we use on the farm are thanks to the wisdom of the Mahican people indigenous to this place; to each of our ancestors wherever they may have been rooted; to the community of organic/sustainable/regenerative farmers who are so generous with their learnings; to service providers like extension agents and nonprofits; to all the Adamahniks past and present; and to the more than human world itself that teaches us every day.
The following are the primary techniques we use on the farm:
Composting
There is no such thing as away! When a pizza crust goes into a garbage can it just ends up emitting toxic methane in a landfill. When it comes to our compost piles, it gets turned into fertilizer for our next crop of veggies! We use a composting method called thermophilic composting. That means that through proper aeration, moisture management, and balancing of carbon to nitrogen ratios we serve as hosts for powerful microbes that transform food waste. We get our compost piles up above 135 degrees to kill pathogens and make fertilizer. Join the party by contributing your food waste! Check out The Farm tab on this website for more info. After the compost is finished, we spread it on the field which feeds soil microbes and helps us grow healthy, lush veggies without expensive fertilizers that cause pollution.
Cover Cropping
We grow "green manures" whenever we can spare a moment for our soil to be out of production. We mix together the seeds of soil-building plants like rye, vetch, clover, buckwheat, peas, triticale, and phacelia. Growing cover crops and burying them in our soil works similarly to adding compost, it feeds the microbes which, in turn, increases our crop yields without buying in expensive fertilizers.
Biodiversity
We cultivate almost one hundred different plants on our farm. Many more wild plants grow themselves in the spaces we leave open. A few farm animals and lots of different wild birds, mammals, insects, and soil microbes call our farm home. We'd like to disinvite the voles and groundhogs, please, but everyone else is a lovely community member.
Having a diverse mix of crop species increases the farm's resilience because you never know what a season will bring. A wet year is good for leeks but bad for basil. A dry year is great for tomatoes but bad for celery.
Having diverse wild species increases the farm's resilience through ecosystem services. That means that a good deal of the more than human world is helpful to overall balance. Braconid wasp larvae devour caterpillars so we plant plenty of the kind of umbel shaped flowers their parents need to survive and lay eggs. Mycorrhizal fungi help plant roots reach nutrients and water they wouldn't otherwise have access to in exchange for carbon the plant leaves make through photosynthesis, so we try not to disturb their fungal hyphae as much as possible.
Crop Rotation
Moving the annual vegetable varieties around each year increases resilience by avoiding pest or disease build up and not over taxing the soil from any one nutrient.
No-Till
"Tilling" is when you disturb the soil to prepare it. There are many ways to till and they are all useful in different ways. Plowing, rototilling, and even digging are all tillage methods. Being able to clear the land to plant is a critical part of farming and tilling is the easiest way to do it. The problem is, tillage is harmful to soil microbial life and to soil structure which are the basis of healthy plants. It also releases carbon to the sky- where we have too much of it- rather than leaving it in the ground where it can be stored.
About half of our three acres of vegetables haven't been tilled in two years or more. We accomplish this lack of tillage through intensive management techniques like tarping, flail mowing, roller crimping, hand clearing, and broadforking. We find that the soil health and resilience to moisture fluctuation in our no-till plots is excellent but the management techniques don't work for every situation.
Reduced Tillage
Sometimes, we just want to get crops in the ground more quickly than our notill techniques can handle, For those moments, we pull our rototiller out. We find it particularly useful in integrating big cover crops but we minimize the number of passes we make with the tiller- doing just enough to get the job done but being as gentle as possible on the soil.
Living Pathways
Our notill plots have permanent living pathways, mostly of white clover. We have to mow the living pathways often and occasionally knock them back from creeping into the beds, but we find that it is actually less time consuming than weeding paths would be. There are huge soil health and erosion control benefits to our living pathways, plus they are beautiful!
Perennials and Agroforestry
Our farm includes about an acre of of perennial fruits, nuts, and berries as well as about fifteen acres of chestnuts. These perennial plants stay in the ground season to season, allowing their roots time to fully establish, sequester carbon, and hold our hillsides in place. We are on our way to grazing our small flerd (flock + herd) of sheep and goats in the understory of the chestnuts as soon as the trees get big enough, a practice called silvopasture.
Rotational Grazing
Our goats and sheep are fenced in (until they're not... and we have to find them down the road and fence them in again... thank you for your patience Beebe Hill Rd neighbors!) on small paddocks that rotate every few days. This allows them to eat all the plants to the ground rather than consistently grazing the tops, which is excellent for the pasture plants and helps with animal health too. We often fence the goats in along roadsides and other spots with invasive issues- they love vines like poison ivy and bittersweet and we love the way they mow them down!
The goal is to bring nutritious food to harvest in ways that support the longterm health of the land and all the species on it, including our own. There are many terms that attempt to describe this general orientation toward farming: organic, biological, ecological, sustainable, climate-friendly, regenerative. Each tries its best to capture the enormity of the meaning- to produce human sustenance while understanding the true interconnectedness of the world; to avoid shortcuts like chemicals that lead to temporary high yields but future problems or externalities for others; to work with the relationships between parts of the system rather than to isolate them into their component parts.
Indigenous peoples across the globe have developed resilient partnerships with ecosystems to maintain both human caloric intake and the health of the overall system. The practices we use on the farm are thanks to the wisdom of the Mahican people indigenous to this place; to each of our ancestors wherever they may have been rooted; to the community of organic/sustainable/regenerative farmers who are so generous with their learnings; to service providers like extension agents and nonprofits; to all the Adamahniks past and present; and to the more than human world itself that teaches us every day.
The following are the primary techniques we use on the farm:
Composting
There is no such thing as away! When a pizza crust goes into a garbage can it just ends up emitting toxic methane in a landfill. When it comes to our compost piles, it gets turned into fertilizer for our next crop of veggies! We use a composting method called thermophilic composting. That means that through proper aeration, moisture management, and balancing of carbon to nitrogen ratios we serve as hosts for powerful microbes that transform food waste. We get our compost piles up above 135 degrees to kill pathogens and make fertilizer. Join the party by contributing your food waste! Check out The Farm tab on this website for more info. After the compost is finished, we spread it on the field which feeds soil microbes and helps us grow healthy, lush veggies without expensive fertilizers that cause pollution.
Cover Cropping
We grow "green manures" whenever we can spare a moment for our soil to be out of production. We mix together the seeds of soil-building plants like rye, vetch, clover, buckwheat, peas, triticale, and phacelia. Growing cover crops and burying them in our soil works similarly to adding compost, it feeds the microbes which, in turn, increases our crop yields without buying in expensive fertilizers.
Biodiversity
We cultivate almost one hundred different plants on our farm. Many more wild plants grow themselves in the spaces we leave open. A few farm animals and lots of different wild birds, mammals, insects, and soil microbes call our farm home. We'd like to disinvite the voles and groundhogs, please, but everyone else is a lovely community member.
Having a diverse mix of crop species increases the farm's resilience because you never know what a season will bring. A wet year is good for leeks but bad for basil. A dry year is great for tomatoes but bad for celery.
Having diverse wild species increases the farm's resilience through ecosystem services. That means that a good deal of the more than human world is helpful to overall balance. Braconid wasp larvae devour caterpillars so we plant plenty of the kind of umbel shaped flowers their parents need to survive and lay eggs. Mycorrhizal fungi help plant roots reach nutrients and water they wouldn't otherwise have access to in exchange for carbon the plant leaves make through photosynthesis, so we try not to disturb their fungal hyphae as much as possible.
Crop Rotation
Moving the annual vegetable varieties around each year increases resilience by avoiding pest or disease build up and not over taxing the soil from any one nutrient.
No-Till
"Tilling" is when you disturb the soil to prepare it. There are many ways to till and they are all useful in different ways. Plowing, rototilling, and even digging are all tillage methods. Being able to clear the land to plant is a critical part of farming and tilling is the easiest way to do it. The problem is, tillage is harmful to soil microbial life and to soil structure which are the basis of healthy plants. It also releases carbon to the sky- where we have too much of it- rather than leaving it in the ground where it can be stored.
About half of our three acres of vegetables haven't been tilled in two years or more. We accomplish this lack of tillage through intensive management techniques like tarping, flail mowing, roller crimping, hand clearing, and broadforking. We find that the soil health and resilience to moisture fluctuation in our no-till plots is excellent but the management techniques don't work for every situation.
Reduced Tillage
Sometimes, we just want to get crops in the ground more quickly than our notill techniques can handle, For those moments, we pull our rototiller out. We find it particularly useful in integrating big cover crops but we minimize the number of passes we make with the tiller- doing just enough to get the job done but being as gentle as possible on the soil.
Living Pathways
Our notill plots have permanent living pathways, mostly of white clover. We have to mow the living pathways often and occasionally knock them back from creeping into the beds, but we find that it is actually less time consuming than weeding paths would be. There are huge soil health and erosion control benefits to our living pathways, plus they are beautiful!
Perennials and Agroforestry
Our farm includes about an acre of of perennial fruits, nuts, and berries as well as about fifteen acres of chestnuts. These perennial plants stay in the ground season to season, allowing their roots time to fully establish, sequester carbon, and hold our hillsides in place. We are on our way to grazing our small flerd (flock + herd) of sheep and goats in the understory of the chestnuts as soon as the trees get big enough, a practice called silvopasture.
Rotational Grazing
Our goats and sheep are fenced in (until they're not... and we have to find them down the road and fence them in again... thank you for your patience Beebe Hill Rd neighbors!) on small paddocks that rotate every few days. This allows them to eat all the plants to the ground rather than consistently grazing the tops, which is excellent for the pasture plants and helps with animal health too. We often fence the goats in along roadsides and other spots with invasive issues- they love vines like poison ivy and bittersweet and we love the way they mow them down!
