News From the Farm
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Sustainable Agriculture Through the course of many meetings and discussions with other farmers I have become alarmed at how the principles of sustainable agriculture have been eroded. This includes multinational agri-chemical corporations claiming to be leaders in sustainable agriculture, large organic farms that rely on exploited seasonal labor, and small part-time market garden operations that each year operate at negative 20+%. Lisa and I feel strongly that the only sound sustainable agricultural model is an equilateral triangle with ecologic sustainability, social sustainability, and economic sustainability at each point of the triangle. Each three need to be equal and balanced so as to keep the sides and angles of the triangle the same and produce a truly sustainable system. If one of the three aspects of the model fall out of balance the system inherently loses it sustainability. Ecologic sustainability involves crop rotations, soil conservation, biological pest control, compost, etc. It however also involves finding new ways to do things better in the least disruptive manner. Some people describe organic agriculture as utilizing the wisdom of the past and the good science of tomorrow. Social sustainability involves sound labor practices, fair wages, and making the operation socially sustainable for the farm family. Economic sustainability involves living wages, and the capital to improve the other two aspects of sustainability. A farm that operates in the hole year after year can not be sustainable if it is relying on a private subsidy from other income. This situation in the end is just as unsustainable as subsidies from the federal government for large grain farms, which sustainable farmers have long bemoaned. The holistic model also recognizes that sustainability is a path to improvement and involves being self-critical about how a farm measures up to the three aspects of sustainability. An example: A farm that is economically sustainable can build the capital to make investments into energy efficiency and renewable energy. Working toward economic sustainability the farm can further reduce its ecologic footprint and its social footprint. While the ecologic improvements are clear, the social improvements might be less evident. In our local community such a project would reduce the need for coal fired electricity which has enormous social impacts in the communities to our south. The project would also allow the farm to guard itself against future increases in energy prices, which lowers the operating cost of the farm and makes the operation more attractive to subsequent generations. This project however cannot be undertaken if the farm operation itself is not economically sustainable. In practice such a model can prove invaluable to recapturing the visions of the earliest pioneers of sustainable agriculture. |
| CSA Newsletter March 2008 Hello CSA members, we wanted to take the opportunity to send out an update to let you know about what is happening on the farm as we prepare for the upcoming season. Preseason email update also allows us to work the bugs out of our email lists so that things work well during the season. First off, we have switched our email from the earthlink address to sippelfamilyfarm@brightchoice.net. There are limited choices for internet service in our neck of the woods and while our trusty dial up service has served us gallantly we needed to upgrade our service to manage the website and keep up with member communications. Please change us in your address book so that we can make a smooth transition. We will be sending another email from the new address to help you make the switch. The next big news from the farm is that Lisa has resigned from her teaching job to work on the farm full time (not that she didn’t before) and be a stay at home mom for Charlie. While the decision ended up being quite complex and took most of December to work out the details, we are happy with this step toward a sustainable family farm. As far as the CSA season, we are doing well to keep up with greenhouse work and planting. We also are working hard to get the machinery ready so that we can get in the fields when the weather permits. As some of you have inquired the “blizzard” and below seasonal temperatures have slowed growth in the greenhouse. We even had to dig a calf out of a snow drift that had gotten stuck overnight during the storm. As we approach the “official” start of spring, we hope that we begin having seasonally appropriate weather conditions. We will keep you posted as the season gets closer, please remember that food doesn’t grow overnight. We like to say that we will start having salad stuff 30 days after the last hard freeze. We look forward to seeing all our “old” members as well as meeting and getting to know new members. |
| Sippel Family Farm CSA April 2008 Newsletter Hello to all of our CSA members for the 2008 season! Spring has crept up on us so quickly! Charlie is nearly 14 months old, the seed starting greenhouse is bursting at it’s seams, the cows are drooling over the greening grass, everything is wet, wet, wet, and Ben is playing with all of his new toys! It won’t be long before you begin seeing us again with the bounty (can we call spring crops bounty?) of fresh food you have been waiting all winter for! We feel pretty good about how the season is progressing so far. Ben is ahead in the tillage of some fields and we even have some direct seeded crops (radish, salad turnips, and various greens) that have already germinated in the outside fields. We also have several plants ready for transplant during the next dry weather window. The greenhouses are full of Tomatoes, Green onions, and Carrots for your table. We can attribute the early entrance to our fields to 5 years (at this farm) of sustainable farming techniques that have improved the tilth of our soils. Healthy agricultural soils function as a living organism with components of biology, chemistry and physical processes. The combination of natural fertilizers, cover cropping, the addition of compost, and eliminating the use of environmentally disrupting chemicals has led to a burst of life in the soil. The earthworm tracks we see after a rain in the soil are quite staggering. This year we purchased a precision vacuum seeder. This will be used for all crops that require direct seeding into the bare soil. Many of these crops in the past were seeded using a small belt seeder, which wasted seed and required many hours of thinning. Other crops were seeded with a push seeder which was extremely difficult, time consuming, and wasteful. This new seeder has the ability to put 1 seed (even a raw carrot or lettuce seed) at a specified measurement, meaning that we can direct seed 1 beet per inch, this will enable us to use far less seed, and have more uniform sized vegetables. We also replaced our plastic mulch layer with one that can make a slightly raised bed, this will protect our plants from flooding ( which we have had 2 times since we moved here) and also will keep them well hydrated and less weedy. We hope that you are all doing well and are enjoying the moments of spring-like weather we have received lately! I can’t help but think how funny it is that in the spring when it hits 60 degrees we put on t-shirts and in the fall we grab a sweater! We will be seeing you all soon! We will contact you as soon as we know when the first delivery will be. Reminder: Balance Payments are due by April 30, please contact us if you are unsure of what your remaining balance is. If you received this email, you are signed up and ready to go for the 2008 season! Thanks! |
| Sippel Family Farm CSA- May Newsletter Time for another update… Field work on the farm continues to progress during the dry periods. Something people often don’t realize is that there are narrow ranges of soil moisture in which it is appropriate to work with various implements. If the soil gets too wet it dries out and it will be hard as concrete (hardly the environment for healthy plants to grow, or for working in the soil.) Too dry… and it will break down the structure that we organic farmers work so hard to foster. Getting the appropriate job done at the right time is one of a farmer’s most important jobs. When it is too wet, it is time to work on other jobs around the farm like fixing, cleaning, and there is always greenhouse work which is weather dependant. During the last rain event, I found it somewhat ironic that I was working on the irrigation system. However when irrigation is needed it is hardly the time to find out if everything is working properly. When things dry out properly on the farm everything else stops and we all swing into motion to get the next field task accomplished. If we have done our “wet time” work well things should go over without a hitch (a subtle pun). Along with all the veggie planting we have been able to plant a new 10 acre hay/ pasture field for our cattle. It will serve to help grow healthy beef and provide us the compost materials to also grow great vegetables. It is interesting how an organic farm works like a big interconnected system. We were able to borrow a pasture drill seeder from our county Soil and Water Conservation District to plant the field, its great to see that community sharing in rural America is not dead. As many of you are probably wondering, “When are we going to start getting food?”, that really depends on mother nature. We have been able to hit all our scheduled plants on time, but things just didn’t seem to growing very fast. So I did a little research in my field records and April’s temperatures. Well according to my planting times with average conditions we should have 3-4 crops coming in season this week. The soil temperatures are still below normal and are slowing the growth in the fields. Things are progressing however and we will continue to keep posted over the next couple weeks and let you know just as soon as we can start delivering. We are hoping to start within the next week or so, but please wait for us to contact you about the first official pick-up date! |