[TheUWfarm] Awesome Oly field trip

Greetings!

This past saturday (feb 6) twelve of us UW Farmers went to Olympia for our first offical farm field trip. It ended up being super fun and really really informative. Firstly I wanted to thank all of you who came for your energy and excitment. I think we represented as the beautiful place it is...  a place full of interested, inquisitive and knowledge thirsty students! It was great fun traveling, touring, lunching, learning, and discussing with all of you, so THANK YOU! Secondly, I wanted to share the highlights of the trip with all who couldn't make it to spread some of that knowledge around. 

Our first stop was the Evergreen State College Organic Farm. They have about 4 acres and it was beautiful. Most of their land is devoted to their class, Practice of Sustainable Agriculture (PSA), but they also have a permaculture garden, community garden plots, and space for professors and graduate students to do experiments. The farm is run by students in the PSA program, two part time farm managers, one part time compost coordinator, and one part time student in a work-study program. They get most of their funding from the profits they make selling eggs and produce at a CSA and in student cafes, and on campus farmers markets. On their land they have...

•  A compost creation facility with worm bins, wind rows, and separate PSA run piles contained in cylindrical wire containers. They get food scraps from on campus housing and wood chips from the campus arborist. They have big incubators where they first process and heat their compost, before they put it in windrows. This is a much larger operation then ours with a lot more fancy equipment and mechanization (they need tractors to turn and move their compost). But, the applicable take home lesson for compost echoed some of the stuff we had heard from Will Allen earlier in the week.
•  The need to aerate compost in windrows. We can do this by running a pipe with holes drilled in it under the piles with a fan blowing air through it. Wood chips are also good in all types of compost piles to allow for aeration and to prevent piles from becoming anaerobic 
• The need to mix carbon matter into worm bins so the worms have a safe haven from Nitrogen and food scraps, i.e. leaves, soil, and/or completed compost 
• The need to compost food scraps and other carbon material (wood chips, cardboard, and leaves) together for a little while before putting in windrows. 
• A biofuel processing center. They get oil from the dinning halls and then uses the fuel for their tractors, rototillers, etc.
• A Tractor/rototiller shed
• A tool shed with loads of farm and construction tools
• A meeting house with kitchen and offices. 
• Chickens and ducks: They have about 80 chickens and ten or so ducks. The chickens and ducks roam around free, mostly in the orchard eating slugs and other pests, keeping parasites from forming around the base of their trees, scratching and turning the soil up, and fertilizing with their poop. It seems like a great symbiotic system, and one especially suited with the orchard. I don't think we could do this, but a big old chicken tractor could accomplish the same thing. 
• Chicken/duck coop: Their coop has optional feed dispensers for nutrients, oyster shells for calcium would be particularly useful for us . They're regular feed they had been mixing with water and fermenting but they had stopped that since they were having trouble with mites due to all the moisture, but this could be something we look into during the summer! The coop was a big room, with a straw covered floor, laying boxes and roosting perches. The chickens lay during the day and sleep on their perches at night. The ducks lay at night and sleep on the ground under the perches.
• Orchard: 4 rows mostly apples but also pears and plums along the outside. 
• Beds under cover crop: mostly vetch and rye mix
• Raspberries: four varieties, two summer crops and two biennials... yum!
• Hoop house: This is where they grow their winter crops and their hot summer varieties, melons, peppers, eggplant, etc. 
• Greenhouse: for starts and a special area with grow lights for hot plants like tomatoes. 
• Composting Toilet
• Outdoor refrigerator
• Outdoor processing sink and table, for goods to be sold in csa, etc.

We were really lucky to get such a thorough tour... two hours! They have a wonderful operation and even though it is not urban agriculture, there is so much to learn from them that we can adapt to our future site! 

Our next stop was GRUB. GRUB stands for Garden-Raised Bounty. GRUB is an awesome organization that empowers youth. They hire on local high school aged students to lead work, tours, and leadership workshops. At GRUB they get good work and cooperative skills, as well as a lot of agroecological knowledge. It was so impressive to see all of these teenagers being so confident and competent as they lead us around, explained to us what they did, and showed us how to work. The youth crew also goes to low income homes and sets up small kitchen garden style raised beds and with trellises. They also give classes and workshops on growing food. The organization grows food to sell in a CSA. They have quite a bit of land 1-2 acres(?), most of it is under a beautiful cover crop. They also have a hoop house that they call the Hilton. Right now the Hilton is planted with tons of lettuce and micro greens and it was a sight to behold! One thing that was really great and is something I think we could do is handicapped accessible beds. These are raised up with cinder blocks to about hip-height and allow for those who use wheelchairs or walkers, to garden without having to bend over! 

Anyway I know that was a bit of an information overload, but I wanted to share all that we had seen and learned. This was the first of many field trips that the farm will be taking so I hope you all can make it to some in the future!

GROW FOOD!

Nina