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By July, we try to hang up the hoes and make much use of mulch. The benefits of mulching are similar to hoeing; it controls weeds and conserves moisture. But mulch has the added asset of bringing carbon into the garden.

In June, I like to see clean rows of vegetables. The summer crops like warm soil, so we don’t mulch right away. Constantly stirring the soil releases nutrients and makes it easier for the roots to penetrate.

Once our crops are established, many won’t need any more attention until harvest. Potatoes and sweet corn are laid by, and the winter squash and sweet potatoes will just need a bit of weed pulling. Bats and other spring crops have already made and will be out soon.

So we turn our focus to tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash. Big rolls of old hay are set at various spots around the garden and a fork starts peeling off the layers. This is a dusty job.

In between the plants and in between the rows, hay is laid down at least a foot thick. Pile it on deeply is the mulching motto. Rain and footsteps will pack it down a whole lot, so mulching is not a time to be stingy.

Farmers have cut hay by mid-summer, and often have some left over from last year, which they sell cheap. Expect to pay enough to cover their expenses in making the hay. Square bales are much easier to deal with, but will be more experience.

Weeds are an issue. I try to avoid Johnson grass, but it finds its way in sometimes. We spot it’s corn-like sprouts and pull them immediately. A thick layer of hay won’t sprout, but the seeds may stay viable. An advantage we have is that we make our own hay, although I’m not adverse to using my neighbor’s old hay.

Underneath the mulch the soil stays moist. The vegetables love this, and prove accordingly. Having hay between the fruits, and soil also prevents rotten spots on the vegetables. And after a few months of hoeing, a mulched garden is a blessing.

But the real blessing is still to come. When we farm without bagged fertilizer, our fertilizer comes from the life in the soil. As the hay slowly decays it becomes incorporated into the organic matter of the soil. With compost and it’s myriad of microbes, the old hay increases next year’s fertility.

So we mulch to help our soils, besides helping our crops. It’s a beautiful sight to see nothing but vegetable plants poking up through the hay. With the mulching done and the hoes hung up, our backs feel better too.

Farms are for people. Soils, plants and animals all play their role in agriculture, but the human social aspect is at the heart of it. The farm offers a safe place to live in freedom, experience nature and develop responsibility. The welfare system which takes care of some people’s needs was not necessary in a farm economy. Farms are the real welfare.

Before I wrote the word “welfare” I had to look it up in the dictionary. It has certain negative connotations, but this is what Webster’s says; Welfare 1. The exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity, or evil, the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; well-being. 2. A blessing.

The farm has plenty of food and plenty to do. Although money is tight , the things money can buy become less interesting. For those that don’t fit into the 9 to 5 work day, try living on a farm.

We have many days with little work. Rainy spells or winter days find us making music and reading. But when the weather is right it’s “all hands on deck.” On this diversified vegetable farm, I need a lot of help all at once for planting, hoeing and harvesting the rest of the time my helpers can just do what they want.

This relaxed lifestyle suits some people. I need more responsibility, but not everyone does. We offer room and board in exchange for occasional labor. I think this is the traditional way society fosters a healthy place for everyone.

People are m ore important than money. With farms, we can take care of eachother. Even the disabled or elderly can shell beans.

The idea of a lone farmer borrowing money to buy inputs from foreign-owned corporations to farm with does not have our welfare in mind. As Macon County rushes headlong into corporate farming via Tyson’s broiler industry, we might consider the social consequences. Tyson’s is after our land, and the welfare system that follows starts with high taxes, necessitates high unemployment and doles out money and important food to people with nothing to do.

When I moved to Macon County in the early ‘70’s, I found a true welfare system here. Family farms supported the community and eachother. I’ve been involved in small-scale farming ever since, and it is much easier now. Tobacco can be replaced with vegetables. There is a huge demand for local food, and a lot of young people are willing to make it happen.

Macon County stands at a crossroad. Do we give our farming to the corporations and accept their welfare, or do we keep our farms and take care of ourselves?

The subsoiler breaks up the hard packed soil that lies beneath the surface. It’s shaft is two feet long and the shoe is two inches wide. When I decided to try to reclaim the flood damage fields, subsoiling seemed appropriate.

First of all I had to remove rocks, fill in holes and even out the land. Driveways got graveled and rock piles were formed. We picked up sticks, and logs, and sis a bit of fence repair. The soil was hard.

It takes a lot of horsepower to pull a subsoiler two feet deep through the ground. Some of the land had lost its top soil, and much still had a covering of stones. But after criss crossing a few times the soil lifted up and I felt better. I love cracking the subsoil, penetrating as deep as I can.

What happens is that a lateral crack opens up on either side of the furrow, raising the earth up on either side of the furrow, raising the earth up a few inches, a foot or more on each side. Loose topsoil falls down there, and spaces for the air are opened up. Plants can then send their roots into places that were previously unaccessable.

Years of plowing at six to twelve inches deep create what is known as a hardpan. You don’t need a flood to have hard soil, it’s already hard at a foot deep. The garden really benefits by breaking it up deeply with the sunsoiler.

Like all tilling, the soil must be dry for the proper effect. Damp conditions would not only create clods, but the new trench would close back up and the land would not crack. Luckily we had a dry spell so I jumped on it.

After subsoiling, we spread wood ashes and rock phosphate on to help remineralize the land. Then I further leveled and tilled with the chisel plow. Tom came by and plowed with a mold board plow, and this buried rocks and brought up soil.

Compost was spread to reenliven the earth, add organic matter and for fertilizing. I chisel plowed it in with a log drag behind. Then I used a spading machine, which is a special tiller with double-jointed arms that open the soil and leave a nice seedbed.

We made rows and planted a garden. Lettuce was transplanted, and we sowed seeds of squash, beans, cucumbers, okra, herbs and flowers. It’s a late garden and could use a rain.

But not too much. Gardening in a flood plain is not recommended. Even though it maybe another 40 years, this land will be flooded again. I need to do something to be able to look at it and not feel sad. So I’m glad about the deep tillage and replanting. But in the long run I’m thinking about grass strips with permanent planting of herbs and berries, so that the top soil is not exposed like it was during the great flood of 2010.

There has been a lot of hoeing going on around here. Miles of rows have been planted, and the inevitable weeds are sprouting along with the crops. It is important to loosen up the earth next to the emerging seedlings so they can breathe.

Short chipping motions cut the soil up and a quick pull though the chipped soil shatters the small clumps. I like it a little moist so the penetration is easier, but it can’t be wet because it will form clods rather than break apart.

We want our crop to be able to send their roots wherever they want to go. That’s why I love to plow deeply, sticking the shanks in as far as I can get them in. the chisel plow can till a foot deep but does not invert the soil like a mold board plow does. This keeps the subsoil down where it belongs, but opens it up for the roots to get in.

Hoeing is just a tickling of the soil surface, like a light massage. The first time though we pull the dirt away from the little plants. We have to get all of the green out; the small grass really wants to recover the newly bared earth. Nature abhors a vacuum and tries to hide her nakedness with a green dress. We will give her one, but it will be one of our own choice.

Crops like beets grow thickly in the row and we can only hoe the sides. But most of the crops like a bit of elbow room, so we stroke the hoe between them in the row. Leaving the soil surface uneven is helpful, because the hoe goes in easier than if it’s perfectly flat. The undulations create more movement, as gravity rolls the dirt, so more weeds get disturbed. The tiny hills and valleys also allow more soil surface to have access to the air.

Air is composed of nitrogen, oxygen and small percentage of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Plants turn these into sugar, starches, carbohydrates and protein. We want the crops to have all the air they need. So after every rain, which seals and flattens the soil surface, we rough it up again.

I try to keep my back straight and shift my weight around, using both sides of my body. Alternating long and short strokes releases tension which can build up at the sky, and sitting down with the plants also break up the monotony of being a hoeing machine.

Stepping on hoed ground defeats the purpose. Every step plants weeds because it firms the soil, so then the weeds sprout, and also compacts it, hindering the air flows. Not walking in the garden is a hard lesson to learn. The word “garden” implies a place to walk, but that would on a path in a more formal flower garden. Our gardens are actually cropland and once they are hoed and fluffed up we stay off. We’re usually pretty tired by then anyway.

The produce grown along the Long Hungry creek has become priceless-we don’t sell it anymore. The invaluable, farm fresh food is now free, and the folks who eat it cover the farm’s budget. You can’t buy vegetables from us these days, you have to join the club and support the farm in some way.

Like the morning fog rising up the hollow, the farm breathes a big sigh of relief. I’m retired as a salesman, and can focus full time on farming. Our members are trained to appreciate row-run vegetables with the dirt still on them, so post harvest handling, like marketing, has become a thing of the past.

I was hooked on CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) from the first, when John Root, Jr. told me about his in May of 1987. A group of people took over the financial burden of a farm in exchange for the produce. The group had meetings with pledges of money until they got enough to cover the farm’s budget. The farmer was guaranteed the same income whether the crops were bumpers or failures; members gave according to their ability and took according to their needs.

Economics were tough on a small farm during the 80′s, and here was a way out. In ’88 and ’89 we tried CSA, with limited crops and limited success. A core group of committed consumers never materialized, which is essential, and I was reluctant to let go of the marketing system I already had in place. Organic vegetables became in high demand, and our farm, as the only organic supplier in the area, was getting California prices.

So we kept on selling to health food stores and anywhere else we could find, riding the organic wave of the 90′s. The certified biodynamic produce was sorted, washed and packed before being shipped all over Tennessee, exposing thousands to the word, and taste of, biodynamics. Produce managers needed esoteric training to be able to explain it to their customers. Business was booming.

Then a national corporation bought one of the stores, which had been a major outlet for us, and it made corporate sense to ship California potatoes to Nashville in late July. They still wanted our spuds, they assured me, but when the truck left Los Angeles it needed to be full. It took the wind out of my sails to feel that our potatoes were no longer irreplaceable, and our markets were on shaky ground.

A box of garlic was turned down not because of quality or price, but because there was no room on their computer for another garlic item. Next, I received a letter requesting a 2 million dollar insurance policy (in case someone got ill eating garlic?), and was instructed to ship the produce to their Cincinnati warehouse, to then be trucked back to Nashville. My ideal of local agriculture was fading fast.

When a few folks from the city offered to help organize a CSA, we jumped on it. Now, as we wind up our fourth year, a community of 60 families around Nashville cares about the farm. I’m not concerned about how to market produce, crop failures or budget blues, and I make my decisions based on what is best for the farm as a whole. This doesn’t keep me from making wrong decisions-those sweet potatoes ought to have been dug by now. But my farm tells me how much to grow, where and when to plant and what to do. She’s a much wiser boss than the marketplace is.

I’d always felt that farmers, who tend their land organically with just the energy of cover crops, compost and animals, deserve to be well paid. Our CSA has made this admittedly biased opinion of mine possible. Our members are using their vegetable dollars to support a farm, which is ever bent on improving soil structure and fertility for long-term productivity. CSA’s offer hope for rural America, not only in a practical, financial way, but on a deeper level, too.

Most folks don’t want to be a farmer. CSA members enjoy many of the pleasures of a farm without having to own one. They can bring their family out for a picnic, see animals and gardens, and eat fresh organic food all week. They are reestablishing a connection to the land, reuniting a lost tie between the city and the country, developing a mutual trust and friendship with a farmer, and helping wealth to be created locally.

In May and June our members receive lettuce, green onions, peas, parsley, carrots, Swiss chard, beets, garlic, summer squash and new potatoes. By July we also send green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet corn and fresh herbs, like sweet basil, dill, chives and oregano. August finds a variety of melons, peppers and winter squashes in the baskets with some of the earlier crops dwindling. The wealth these crops produce is both made and spent locally.

The cool weather of autumn brings on the greens, like mustard, lettuce, kale and oriental cabbages. Many of these last through December, as does our big stash of Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternuts and garlic. Pumpkins, apples, pears and many other items make their way into the basket, along with a weekly bouquet of zinnias or sunflowers. Our members pay to keep the farm afloat, free and abundant, and are spending less money than if they bought their produce elsewhere.

Our fee is $25.00 per week, $100.00 per month, or $650.00 for the whole 30-week year. 20 of our members are only 1/2 shares, so we have 50 full shares, supporting a farm budget of about $35,000.00. We no longer sell produce to our neighbors, but instead give it away. In return we get rhubarb pies, harvesting help and other neighborly exchanges. Our members eat like we eat, the very best, in-season produce. 12 to 16 different goodies are delivered every Monday to a patio in Nashville, where the members pick up their 25-pound baskets. We try to have something new each week, and also include a newsletter.

Everyone gains from CSA’s. It’s a model for reinvigorating the countryside with productive and profitable, small organic farms. Members learn where their food comes from, and eat what is in season. They bear crop losses and bumpers crops along with the farmer, and become part of the farm. Rekindling this feeling of caring for the land may be more nourishing than the fresh organic vegetables they get each week.

Plowing and harrowing leaves the soil fully pulverized, soft and fluffy. Even after a rainstorm the tilthe will remain loose and mellow. If it gets hard, the organic matter is too low and there is nothing to fluff up. If the percentage of organic matter is high (4 to %%), a lack of biological activity is indicated.

The last two conditions are remedied by good quality compost. We ferment manure with bedding, soil, and garden refuse for a year, and apply it liberally on the crop land. 50 tons to the acre figures out to be about a third of an inch thick, spread over the whole field. A few years of this, along with cover crops, builds up a live soil humus with plenty of organic matter and beneficial micro organisms.

I need to walk in a field and sink down a few inches into the soft soil. Silky, velvety, satiny to the feel, the garden is like a down pillow, impressionable and responsive. Now I can start to picture a crop growing here.

The farmall tractor has shoes behind the back tires that lay off rows about 45 inches apart. After the first pass, I turn the tractor around and put one tire in the outside row, replowing it and making the next row with the other tire and shoe.

The soil must be dry enough to fall apart when a handful is squeezed and dropped, otherwise it will form clods. If soil is coming up on the tractor tire, it is probably too damp to be out there. One of the hardest jobs for a vegetable grower is simply that waiting for the ground to dry. The calendar says it’s time to plant, and the seeds are still in the house.

Instead of working moist soil and planting, we find other jobs to do. I’d much rather plant in dry soil with a few dry days ahead, so I can rake or harrow over the tops of the rows. A prolonged wet spell in the spring means lots more weeds. If the garden is unplanted, I can take care of them with a tractor. Late gardens do great here in Tennessee anyway, so I try not to rush it.

Once the rows are laid out, we drop the seed by hand and step on it. This firms it into the soft soil, insuring good seed to soil contact. The seeds absorb moisture from the soil even if it doesn’t rain, if they are compressed with the earth. I straddle the rows with the cultivators down to cover up the rows with loose soil.

In a few days I harrow over the whole field, being careful not to put the tires on top of the rows. I can follow the tracks left by the shoes behind the tires on the previous pass which covered up the rows. Sometimes it rains and I don’t get to do this, and we’ll have to get in there with the hoes sooner than if I so get to harrow.

When the crop emerges, I like to leave it alone until the second set f leaves appear. The first leaves are called seed leaves, or cotyledons. These leaves nourish the elementary, emerging plant, as the roots are not yet well formed. In a few days the true leaves appear, indicating lateral roots and a good connection to the earth. Now it’s time to aerate and check evaporation by cultivation, to again leave the soil soft and fluffy.

A harrow is the implement we use after plowing to break up clods, level the field and prepare a seedbed. There are several different kinds of harrows. Which one to use depends on the soil type, and the specific goal to be accomplished, and what you have.

The farm I bought in 1974 had a harrow in the barn, along with other sustainable agricultural implements. Horse drawn equipment fascinated me, as I grew up with tractors. This harrow was a frame of beams that looked like the letter A, with long metal spikes driven through it.

Another one of my early harrows was made of four beams chained to each other, also with spikes. This one jiggled a lot more, helping to break up the soil. Both of these implements did a fine job, and were made right on the farm, I imagine. They were simple, and the design was hundreds of years old.

A disc harrow has curved discs instead of teeth. It slices, which is handy for cornstalks and cover crop residue. We used a disc on our sandy loam soils in the Midwest when I was a kid, so I tried it here. That was a mistake, because the discs make clay clods and end up packing the clay soils on out Tennessee hilltops. I rarely pull a disc on our fields.

Then I found a section harrow, also called a spike-tooth harrow. I still use these. It’s a metal frame with iron teeth, about four or five feet square. They are often pulled in pairs. It has a handle on it so you can set the angle of the teeth. I noticed the four corner teeth were curved on top. When the handle was pushed all of the way down, the harrow rode on these curves. When it was moved from field to field it didn’t harrow the roads and pastures like the other ones.

Sometimes we just use a drag, which can be a log or a heavy piece of metal. It’s good for cloddy soil, which happens if the soil is plowed when it’s too wet.

Another use of the harrow is to drag it over the field a few days after planting. Before the potatoes, corn, beans or squash emerge, many little weeds are germinating. These are taken care of by harrowing the surface, but do not disturb what we’ve planted. This simple procedure saves time hoeing in between the plants in the rows.

I bought a rotary hoe at an auction last winter, and have recently tried it out. it has discs with teeth that rotate as it is pulled. They say it can be pulled over the field even after the corn is up a few inches tall. I’m going to try this, but very carefully.

Plowing and harrowing leaves the ground the way I like it. Bigger clods below and only fine soil on the surface. Rototilling leaves the soil fine too deeply, and our heavy rains then pack it. Harrowed land breaks up easier after a rain. In a small garden, a rake does the job of a harrow. The less we work the soil, the better, as long as it is pulverized and loose.

Farmers gamble. I’ve known that one day the Long hungry would rise up into our lower garden. For 14 years we have been blessed. No, I wasn’t surprised, or even sad, when four feet of water rushed over the carrots and peas.

It was beautiful, with class three rapids, waves jumping several feet, and the powerful roar. It was simply awesome. The cave filled up to the second shelves, and I thought of all the times the floor was full of lettuce, cucumbers and green beans.

We feel grateful and lucky. No one was hurt, and it is only the beginning of May. In another week I would have had another acre planted that would have been destroyed. All of my seeds are safe and dry in the cabin.

But the garden is gone. It was composted and fluffed up, ready to plant. Now it has deep gullies and lots of gravel. I just keep wondering what to do.

Besides a half-acre of early vegetables, the little apple and pear grafts took a beating. I think the apples will survive, but the pears are gone. It’s interesting how the water moved through the field.

Some places are dug out deep enough to bury a car. Past the cave, Mark found a beautiful arrowhead. It’s been a long time since some of this earth has been exposed.

New blackberry and blueberry plantings suffered losses. There are rocks everywhere. The fence is down and will have to be removed. I don’t feel too confident in gardening here again. The next time you see the garden behind the barn on the T.V. show, picture it as a raging river.

On the big farm we lost a lot of creek bank and trees. The swimming hole which raised a few generations of kids is long gone. But there are new ones in other places, and we will find them.

The potatoes and onions are fine, just beat down a bit. I’ll probably raise a little less corn and plant the garden on the hill where it was going to go. Roads are wiped out, and it’ll take some work before I can get a tractors to the fields.

We are all a little shell-shocked. But life goes on. The CSA will have to do without carrots and peas, but the folks are from Nashville and will certainly understand. I’m sorry for all the destruction that’s happening there.

Farming is risky business. You win some and lose some. This bottom and has yielded well, and now she is gone. But we will keep planting and rolling those laughing bones.

Plowing is one of nature’s mysteries. I plow to fluff up the soil in the springs, but plowing destroys soil structure. This irony is hard to explain but easy to experience. I’ll try to explain my experience. Over the winter the ground gets packed down. A cover crop of crimson clover and turnips, or rye and watch, or wheat and peas, helps to alleviate the affect of heavy rainfall. But it needs to be turned under so we can plant garden crops. The root growth of the cover crop is what actually builds soil structure, not the plowing it in. a grass and clover sad is the best cover crop, and is best plowed in the fall with a moldboard plow. The mystery is moderation. Like many things in life, tillage is necessary but too much is detrimental. I want to pulverize the soil just to the extent that what’s growing there dies and decays, but still leaves the soil structure, created by the cover crop roots, intact. I started farming with my dad’s equipment, a plow and a disc. After plowing I disced the field. It still had clods. So I disced again and it looked a little better. Another few passes with the disc and the ground was powder. I thought this was good soil structure. Then it rained. The clay powder and water formed a big brick the size of my garden. I was starting to learn something. I’d seen the same phenomenon after rototilling; a fine seed bed turned into cement after a hard rain. An old timer gave me the clue.

“Plow, and then lightly harrow, but don’t over work the soil”. I threw the disc and tiller away, and got a chisel plow and harrow. My dad’s land was a sandy loan where the disc and tiller aren’t destructive like they are on a clay loam. I learned a little tillage goes a long way. The soil has a life of its own, and when we run over it with equipment and through it with iron, this life suffers. We need to plow gently, slowly, and as little as possible. And we must take care to reinvest in the soil biology. Time is on our side. After I mow the cover crop, I run the chisel plow, also called a re breaker, length wise through the field. The shanks are a foot up ant and dig in about a foot deep. This tillage disturbs the cover crop, but certainly doesn’t kill it. My next chore is spreading compost, which has the life in it. Microbes in the compost feed on the decaying organic matter from the cover crop and in the soil. Then I’m back over the field with the chisel plow, but this time I go crosswise, so now the soil is cut two ways and the cover crop gives up trying to re grow. At this point I have a desire to go over the soil several times, completely pulverizing it and making a fine seed bed. But I have learned not to do this, because I want a garden and not a cement sidewalk. I will be cultivating the soil during summer, and this subsequent tillage will remove grass clumps and clods while the garden crop is growing. It doesn’t need to be done all at once before planting. The third and final pass with the chisel plow happens in a week or two, with a section harrow chained behind. The ground still looks rough afterward, but the cover crop is gone, the compost is incorporated, and it’s ready to make rows and plant. The finer the seed bed, the more of a crust will form, so I try to keep it rough. The life in the soil will soften it up in a way the tractor and tillage equipment can never do. We do make finer seed beds for crops with, tine seeds, such as carrots, lettuce and beets. But these crops get extra compost and much more intensive hoeing and tending. We are constantly breaking up the crust around them. Nature teaches us give and take, moderation, and tender loving care. We have to plow and loosen the soil, but not so much as to lose the precious structure that holds it together. Life in the soil gives us good tilthe, that nice crumbly structure. We can learn nature’s mysterious ways, I just wish sometimes that it didn’t take so long.

April is the month of planting the spring garden. Onions go in first, and then potatoes. These are the two crops that the king’s deer don’t eat, so we don’t have to plant them inside the deer fence. All other vegetables and fruits can be destroyed if unprotected.

Once the ground loses its winter chill, the rest of the early garden goes in. we sow head lettuce’s in long rows now for transplanting into beds in about a month. This years varieties include Avenue, Nevada, Magenta, Mottistone and Michelle, which are all Batavian or Summer Crisp lettuces. Crispins and Summertime are iceberg types, and Red Sails and Tropicana are Grand Rapid varieties. Buttercrunch is Bibb type lettuce and Winter Destiny and Jericho are Romaines.

French Breakfast is a long radish, and we are trying s new one called Purple Plum. For an experiment, I mixed radish and lettuce seed together, thinking I’ll pull the radish in a month and let the lettuce grow out.

We grow a lot of Parsley. Forest Green and Italian Giant are the curly and flat leaf varieties, respectively. French Swiss Chard is our favorite, chard, although we are getting colorful with Ruby Red and Golden Sunrise.

The leeks are King Richard and the celery is Utah Tall. Arugula is a pungent herb, Sorrel a lemon-flavored leaf, and chives are like tiny green onions. Valerian and Chamomile are medicinal herbs sprouting in a cold frame.

I like the old timey carrots and beets. Scarlet Nantes is a sweet carrot, and Danver’s Half long gets a little bigger. Both require a lot of hand work.

Detroit Dark Red is the standard beet, but we are also growing three other ones. Chioggia is a pretty, Italian heirloom with alternating red and white concentric circles when sliced crosswise. Crosby beets are flatter, their diameter is larger than their height. For a golden beet we are trying Touchstone. We plant the beets in a 5 inch wide row, and then thin out the baby beet, first.

The pea patch has Oregon Snow Peas, and two English shell peas. One is Little Marvel, and the other is Freezonia. We don’t have much luck with peas, I think mice and voles eat the seed and the stand is poor.

All of the summer vegetables will have to wait. A frost is still possible in early May, and they are not hardy. But all of the spring garden plants can take frost and thrive in cooler weather. The rest of April is for composting and plowing the soil so we will be ready to plant in May.