Hoss seeder puts first seeds in the ground

It is that time of year where seeds go in and start a new life cycle. This year we have grand plans if adding more veggie crops for animal food as well as fermented goodies for sale. so much so that we decided it was time to look into some faster method of getting sees in the ground quickly and accurately.

I remember as young boy working in my fathers huge garden. He came to the same conclusion (or maybe he just liked gadgets) and bought an automatic seeder. It was one that is still sold today in fact....the kind made from plastic and aluminum, with a red hopper in between front and back wheels. We would put seeds in the hopper and push the little gadget along merrily planting long rows. I also remember it being a tad finicky. Wasting seeds, hard to control, inaccurate depth, in short useful but problematic.

Do when i faced the same need, and not ready to spend the money on a tractor implement, research was in order. I quickly discovered that there are few options available. Basically three contenders... The one my dad had,a fancy improvement on this made overseas, and this weird little contraption from a company called Hoss. I choose the latter for a variety of reasons.

Price: Hoss is mid priced at a few hundred. I like mid priced solutions, finding they usually offer the best value.

Versatility: Hoss does the transformer thing to become seeder, cultivar, plow, or trencher.

Rugged: Hoss is much more sturdy. Heavy metal and wood frame built to last

convenience: you can empty the bucket without turning the while tool upside down. You can adjust depth and seed plate easily,

Performance: reviews were glowing about spacing and depth accuracy, germination rates, etc.

So... We have one now and i have to say that i am fully impressed.this is a perfect midrange tool. It is easy to use, rugged, effective, accurate, and built to last.

So far we have planted one whole area in beets and cabbage.what used to take hours of preparing, planting, covering, shaping... Took all of 10 minutes. Incredibly easy! This thing is ready to drive and push on two large front wheels, cuts an accurate depth, drops a single seed at accurate spacing, covers it and packs it tight with a broad spiked wheel that also drives the mechanism quite well.

I am very happy with the purchase. This well enable us to greatly increase production of veggies without requiring the investment of a tractor tool and the compaction if good soil under tractor tires. It is a perfect size for our current needs.

Here is link to the device: http://hosstools.com/products-page/seeder-4/seeder-garden-hoss/
I give it  an overall glowing review.

New face on the delivery route today

Today is another first for little sprouts! Today marks the first time we run two routes simultaneously. Part of today will be handled by our family as normal, but the other part of the route belongs to christian, one of our new interns!

Christian will concentrate more in the talent area this week, so if you see a new face bringing your farm fresh delivery, take a moment to say hi !

Driest first quarter on record brings best growing season

Shocking headlines! Medford had just completed the driest first quarter every on record! Who knew? We have been rejoicing here about the best grass in our pasture in the 7 years we have been here! Spots in our pasture are lush green growing paradices of growth.... And without any irrigation! Just how is this possible?

First let me say... Or pastures are... Well... Poor. We have struggled to grow anything meaningful for as long as we have been here. any decent growth is unusual, let alone during the driest first quarter ever.

Yet, visit or land and you can see plainly the areas of beautiful green growth. In fact, it is plain to see that you can see why. The areas of growth exactly follow where the animals concentrated last session. Every coop location or track is now outlined in lush growth. You can follow how we pulled the coops across last season. You can see the coop outline where they sat. You can see the corners where the horses spent time. Growth this season is a drawing of the activities of last session.

The trick is stress and relax, with animals between crop production. Instead of raising animals on concrete our tiny pens and cages like factory farms do, move those animals to the land, properly managed, and crop yields explode. instead of paying for fertilizer, farmers can make money for increasing land fertility.

The problem with modern agriculture, as i have stated before, is this crazy notion that there can be a successful single production farm. It can't be done. Nature exists, thrives even, on variety. Symbiosis of variety is inherent in natural processes everywhere. This is the secret.

The second problem with land fertility is the other crazy notion that herds must be limited to prevent overgrazing. That notion is itself a misunderstanding of nature and a path to failure. Keeping land from being stressed prevents improvement. Land slowly degrades if kept resting under minimal animal loading. land needs more animals, not fewer, to improve.

Also, fertilizing is not the same as herding. Fertilizing is only one of many aspects of the benefits of herding. By itself fertilizing does not build fertility!

Herding is the answer, nature holds the key. Farmers need to stop fighting nature, stop trying to change and control things, and instead just manage the natural processes and duplicate nature.

Nature works, if you let it work.

Underneath the gmo debate

I ran across an article posted in southern oregon online that exemplies the problem underneath to arguments in the gmo debate. The link to the full article is below. What caught my eye in a reasonably well done peice is the closing statement:

" Regardless of the type of agriculture or the location, there are limits to how long any land can remain productive, applying imported fertilizers, or utilizing GMOs, only provides, at best, a temporary halt to the land’s transition to non-productive “wasteland”, and to desertification."

The argument being made here is this - that soil depletion is a given in any style of agriculture so as long as humans use land to grow food, we are killing the planet. Therefore even though gmo crops are bad, we have to do what we can to produce food in a dying world.

All I can say is WOW. I feel so sad for a seemingly knowledgeable author who understands so little and lives with such a fatalist view. On the contrary I can assure you that proper agriculture practices not only stop desertification and depletion, but reverse it! In short.... growing food creates fertile soil when done right.

The problem though, is that anyone educated on modern agriculture assumes that feeding man is the great evil that is killing the world. Science is necessary to come up with ways to lesson the damage. First chemical fertilizers, next genetic alterations. But this itself is the lie. If these beleivers in science would just look to true nature based agriculture, they would see that its not about how little damage we cause, it can be about how much fertility we can add per year. Creating topsoil, increasing fertility, by properly growing food in harmony with nature is the answer. Not only are gmo crops dangerous, they are totally unnecessary!

We have proven this on our own land. I will be posting about this in the days to come in more detail. For now let me share that we have finally found the secrets to fertility, and it is in producing food, not limiting that production. Literally the more food produced, the better the soil, when done right. Amazing! Nature is designed to support an ever increasing population! All we have to do is learn how nature works, and work in harmony.

What are these great mysterious secrets? We will discuss in more detail in coming days, but the root lies in following nature. If you'd like to see for yourself, come on out to the farm and look at what we are doing so far. Look at the growth and fertility brought on by last years food production. One year, one season, and the evidence is dramatic. Producing food increases the ability to produce food!

Here's the article I am referring to:

"Monsanto Protecion Act signed by president" http://feedly.com/k/10jYXuu

Two days of Duck Eggs lost

It seems we have lost at least a couple days of duck eggs to the new pasture management process.  There are so many small details in this sort of thing, and so many chances for things to go wrong!

This time, we had an unexpected rain. This produced mud overnight that didnt do well with 150 ducks in a small area. their little webbed feet are just perfect for flattening land... and that they did! No more holes! the down side is they laid eggs all over in the mud and water. These eggs, of course, cant be sold.

I think we will be ok yet for delivering orders. The production went up dramatically with the light in the duck pen in march, then back down when we moved them to pasture, but was recovering when this happened. I wont know for sure till friday rolls around and we do a count, but lets hope there are enough to go around!

The birds are now moved to the other pasture, the one with taller grass to keep these little ladies up out of the mud in the next rain.  Hopefully this is a one time thing.