AdAgrA 2015: Restoring the Waste Places

Breakout Session 3

Byron Smith

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Veganically Grown: Our Journey to Certified and Beyond

Father in heaven, I want to invite your Holy Spirit to be here as we share our experience.

I want to ask that we will be benefited in understanding your will.

Imagine probably everybody knows who I am, Byron Smith and my wife Janice and I'm going to share just a brief history of our farm and as it says there, the journey that we have taken in our farm to where we are, particularly as it relates to growing practices like organic and veganic.

We are Sunny Zona Family Farms and in 1996 we moved to Arizona from northern British Columbia, Canada.

We were doing some farming up there, but I was connected with a self-supporting school in Canada, Fairhaven Academy, and we bought 320 acres of bare farmland.

There was nothing there, it was so flat you could calibrate a level on it.

It was just flat land, Hadn't had anything grown on it for some years and we've started putting together our farm there and all told we've been growing for about 30 years and I think it's important because it's a family farm, that's my excuse anyway, to introduce the rest of our family.

She looks similar to in that picture even though it was taken a few years ago.

And at that point we had only 1 granddaughter.

Now we have 5 granddaughters and a grandson.

And it wouldn't be appropriate to have a farm without also putting a picture with a tractor in there, right?

We began as a conventional hydroponic growing operation back then.

We were growing hot house cucumbers and We were not growing in those beds there, but we were growing cucumbers and the series of events that happened to us led us eventually to switch to tomatoes.

We grew tomatoes starting in 2002 until currently.

But in 2003, we began transitioning to local marketing.

We believed that that was more interesting to us, I guess.

We had been doing wholesale up to that exclusively.

And we just didn't find it very fulfilling to only call up brokers, these faceless entities that even though they were nice people, you know, it's kind of a crass business that they deal with.

And so we started meeting with some local chefs and started selling to Whole Foods and that's my wife and I there in 1 of their stores and they began promoting our product.

Whole Foods is our largest customer by a long large amount and I was just looking at this picture as I was putting this slideshow together and I was looking at those prices and it was like those were the days.

We had a preferred relationship with them, that meant they gave us preferential pricing and so it was a very, very good financial arrangement for us.

It's much more competitive now and they don't sell tomatoes for that much and they don't give us the same percentage either.

But we also developed relationships with a number of high-end chefs.

These are a team of chefs from 4 Seasons resort in Scottsdale and they drove 4 hours out to the farm to meet with us and we entertained some of, including them, we entertained some of our customers on our farm with dinners and we started getting into more diverse products.

You can see here we did a we developed an heirloom cherry Medley and we started selling it to some wholesalers and it wasn't long before that idea caught on and everybody else in Mexico was doing the same thing.

We specialized for several years in heirloom tomatoes.

We did very, very well with heirloom tomatoes until 2008, I believe it was, when they got tomato mosaic virus.

The newer varieties of tomatoes are totally resistant to tomato mosaic virus and there is no way, at that point in a way, of preventing tomato mosaic virus.

Once it's there, it's basically a death sentence for that crop because the production drops remarkably and there's no treatment.

We worked with a specialist from University of Arizona and you spray milk on the plants.

If you touch them, that's how it spreads.

Well you can't grow a tomato crop without touching it right and so we we had We had to change that but we also developed about the same time as part of our effort in doing local we started doing micro greens and got to be a pretty good player in that business.

And we did a specialized heirloom lettuce mix, an amazing eating quality.

And I'm going to kind of introduce this part even though it actually in our story to organic we didn't actually do the field crops until after we had become organic but just in terms of giving the history of our farm I'm going to put that in there.

We began growing outdoor field crops in 2009 that was after we became organic that's when we bought our only tractor and in order to control weeds, we use polymulch and that's transplanting the squash plants in the field.

And there's a mature crop of, I'm going to guess, acorn squash there.

We did a lot of winter squash and pumpkins and watermelon.

We do exceptionally fine watermelon, not so much because of our growing practices, although I would like to say that that was the case.

But the climate that we live in is absolutely perfect for watermelon.

Hot days, cool nights from the high elevation and builds a lot of sugar in the fruit.

1 of the things that was influential in our decision to become organic was right there in that picture.

We had a, I had as the farmer, A great deal of discomfort with the impact of pesticides on our family health.

And of course, even a few years back, that information has at least, maybe it's because I'm more directly connected with it, but the studies show that farmer families have like 3 times the rate, and don't quote me on that figure because I'm pulling it off the top of my head, I'd have to go back and find out what it actually is, but it's significantly higher rate of Parkinson's disease, for example, and many other diseases that are associated statistically with farmers applying pesticides.

So I was very troubled by the idea that by my vocational choice, I was going to be impacting my children, my grandchildren, and particularly my ability to enjoy them because of how it might impact my health.

And health has always been a very important thing to me.

So about the same time, we had 3 things that happened.

Secondly, we decided that we were going to start burning biomass fuel, pecan shells in particular.

And Even though we're in Arizona, we actually use more natural gas per acre than they do in southern British Columbia.

And that's because the nights are so cold because of the elevation we're at and the big temperature swings that we get as a result of that.

And so we had actually, we had actually decided to do this.

And we thought that we needed to actually pelletize the pecan shell in order to burn it.

And so we actually set up a, what's looking back on it now is kind of an interesting decision, but we invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into putting a pelleting operation together And when the recession hit in 2008, that came to an end because our source of wood fiber was no longer available.

So we had this operation and my wife suggested that we make fertilizer for plants.

Now that was happening, see my wife always has something important to say.

You know so we had this situation where the tomatoes had gotten the virus.

And that led us to really think this is really the time to explore this more carefully.

And I'd like to, I know that there's a lot of people, particularly in the farming community, that argue, it's a controversial thing about certified organic.

I'd just like to highlight, and some of the things that you can see here.

The market for certified organic produce is growing 3 times the rate.

Even during the great recession of 2008 to 2010, organic produce grew at double digits, their market share.

Well, not their market share, but their growth rate, 10% or more.

It's now a $29 billion market, and becoming organic is not as expensive as many people think.

And it's also, I think the battery died on the wireless mic, okay.

So the record keeping is difficult but it's not as onerous as many people think it is.

So when it comes to the benefit for the farmer, I'd just like to point this out here, this is from the USDA.

The wholesale price premium for organic broccoli and carrots, the price is essentially double in organic production from what it is with conventional and that makes a significant difference for the for the farmer and but 1 of the big problems that I had with becoming certified organic was my concern about this right here.

I had a great concern that if I became organic that if somehow my produce was contaminated and got into the marketplace and what my liability personally would be.

I'm really, I have a great phobia for courts and attorneys and things like that.

So I didn't really want to have anything to do with that and so that was initially my primary interest in veganic was to eliminate the foodborne illness risk.

Then as I began to research it more, I began to discover other things, but I'd like to point out that E.

The whole range of foodborne illnesses are essentially by definition fecal pathogens.

That means they are essentially exclusively associated with feces and that's primarily animal and I have to be careful because just because you're vegan it doesn't mean there's no risk.

If people are not careful with their personal hygiene you know you can still have problems but it is it is essentially a problem of manure and other animal products.

And you notice that there are 76 million cases of foodborne disease in the United States each year and it causes 325, 000 hospitalizations and 5, 000 deaths.

We decided to do that so that we would not use the animal products And my daughter in her graphic design class in college designed a logo for us, which I can't help but put up there, veganically grown.

Now, as I began to research, as I said, I discovered that there were a lot of other things hidden in the animal products that I didn't know about.

For example arsenic is mixed in the diet of about 70% of the broiler chickens.

And that actually comes out to be about 2 million pounds of arsenic is fed to the chickens.

Poultry waste, primarily chicken, is the primary source of nutrient that they put in the in the organic fertilizers if you go down to the big-box stores and you buy a container of organic fertilizer if you read the ingredients there's a pretty good chance a majority chance that that's going to be poultry derived fertilizer.

And in there is arsenic and very likely, not for sure, but very likely and arsenic is certainly very deleterious and there are other in all forms of animal products there are higher levels of heavy metals.

It's just inherent as you move up the food chain toxins are going to be accumulated, there's no way around that.

And you can see they're often frequent contaminants and fertilizers.

If I told you some of the information that I have uncovered, and not from conspiracy type sources, we're talking about the only places I go are essentially peer-reviewed science and The there are loopholes there are loopholes in the in the systems out there that enable heavy metals to get into the food chain very readily it really is a much more problem than people are aware of it.

I want to focus even though it's certainly not the only thing, I want to focus a lot on this part right here.

70 percent of all the antibiotics used in the United States are fed to animals primarily in the concentrated animal feeding operations, the CAFOs, and that's where most of your meat and dairy come from.

This particular study there was a groundbreaking study from the University of Minnesota in 2005 and what they did is they said you know we're feeding the, we're feeding the antibiotics to these animals and where does it go from there?

So University of Minnesota did this study and they took the manure that was being spread on the fields and they they actually grew products, in this case it was cabbage and green onions and corn, and then they measured or tested the corn, cabbage and green onions to see whether there was actually any antibiotic being taken up by the plant.

So even though you think you are buying a beautiful healthy piece of fresh produce that should be good for you, hidden inside of there without your knowledge of it is very likely to be antibiotics.

Now I want to I want to point out 2 particular problems with that.

Stephen Meyer

Weed Management

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that you've given us the opportunity to work with you in the Garden.

What a fantastic world and universe you have created, even after 6, 000 years of sin.

And we are dealing this afternoon with some of the challenges that we have in the garden, so we just pray that your wisdom will be here with us, that each person will feel they have gotten something that they can use in their gardens.

Okay, weed control is 1 of my favorite topics, and of course, You know, you read through the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, you find out that the challenges that we have, you get that idea when God was talking to Adam and Eve right there after they had sinned.

The challenges that we have are for us to overcome.

And in that overcoming, it is recreating us into what we need to be, right?

So those problems are some real blessings, see, as part of the curse that is for man's and woman's sake, yeah.

And so weed control is a challenge, but we're told that When we see difficulties, we should use our God-given ability to overcome those difficulties.

It's not that it's not work, but we become masters of it because we, you know, use our minds.

So that's sort of the mindset that we want to have as we, as we go into this.

And then I'm sure, you know, each 1 of you represents some specific questions and weed problems.

This woman here is already smiling, so you get the idea.

Okay, here's factors that affect weed problems.

Soil imbalances, you know, you can see certain weeds like broom grass that tell you that it's poor soil.

My brother was pointing that out in the gardening class.

Broom grass in West Virginia, you know you can just see it growing on the hillside, you know that's poor acid soil.

1 time I was cruising along the freeway in northwestern Florida and I looked over here on the field over there and it was just red with sorrel, that was wild sorrel that was going to seed and it puts up these little spikes, red and so I just knew that's an acid soil over there.

And so certain soil conditions can encourage certain weeds So it's good.

Balance your soil with a cation exchange capacity type soil test, and that will maybe lessen your weed pressure.

But from my experience, I'm still working on getting my soil perfectly balanced.

Then, of course, the other thing is the amount of weed seeds in your soil.

So, you want to, you know, not let your weeds go to seed because you're going to be dealing with that for the next 7 years or something like that.

And that's where the thing on the bottom there, which I'll show in the next slide, tarps really helps with that.

Being careful, but you know, just careful cultivation is worth the extra work.

And maybe when you're rounding up organic matter, being careful about how many weed seeds it has in it.

Of course there's some parts of my garden have so many weed seeds in them already that a few more weed seeds you know won't make a whole lot of difference.

Then a really big thing is rotation okay which is a practice you know of changing the crop from year to year.

Don't just plant cotton, cotton, cotton or whatever.

But or don't just go corn, beans, corn, soybeans, but really have a rotation 34567 years.

And especially if you can have it in sod and then you break it out of sod.

The weeds that grow in your garden many times don't grow in a hay field where it's just kept mowed and it's a solid stand of grass.

It suppresses the pigweeds and the lamb's quarters and that kind of thing.

So when you break it out of sod, then you have many times many less weeds.

There can be other weeds in there, perennial weeds, sometimes like thistles in Colorado or something.

But that really can break the life cycle of those weeds.

But in many of our gardens, we don't have that luxury.

We're just very intensively growing a garden.

But there we're rotating and there's where you have this thing of alternating hard to weed crops Like carrots beets and so forth because they're slow germinating small little things that grow slowly The weeds just get ahead of them, and you try to pick them out of the weeds.

You alternate those with what we call cleaning crops or easy to keep weed free crops like potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes.

Those are ones in my garden that function that way because you can keep them well cultivated and then they grow up and shade out the weeds.

I mean sweet potatoes if you get them right, you know, they're just solid sea of leaves and in general you don't have a lot of things that will come up to except in Alabama sometimes certain kinds of nut grass would come up through but you can count on it.

You can look there in my garden in Alabama when I used to work at Uchi Pines.

Here you could see where I grew the sweet potatoes last year.

The next year, you go out there, just the sun's coming up, and it just shined.

And an area that had been tilled maybe a month before, and it hadn't had anything planted, or maybe it had something planted, but hadn't been cultivated for a few weeks.

And here are all these pigweeds and they turn toward the sun and the bottom of their leaves is red so that wherever the sweet potatoes weren't is just would tend to look red, but you could see where the sweet potatoes were is much cleaner.

And so then that's a good place to plant your carrots, see, because you have a lot less weeds to pick out by hand.

And of course I'm going to, you guys know I'm going to inevitably tell you about flame weeding which will help you with doing your carrots too.

So that's going to be, that's going to be a good share of the talk.

But I assume that's why some of you came here.

And then of course having a rest year in part of your garden, you can put it into a perennial green manure like alfalfa or clover, maybe red clover or something like that.

It does give you that climax stand and you can just keep it mowed for maybe from the fall of the sixth year.

And I'll show you how to do between the row living mulch where you plant the seeds while the crop of the sixth year is growing, let's say.

You sprinkle your seeds in there, so without any extra work, or very little extra work, you have planted your green manure.

Then it grows over the winter into the seventh year, the spring of the seventh year.

It comes up in the summer of that seventh year.

You just keep it mowed and that'll, you know, suppress all those annual weeds that want to come up and make seeds and so forth.

And of course, if it's a legume, it's fixing nitrogen and building organic matter in the roots and the tops and what you keep mowing off and then it grows over the winter of the seventh year and then you till it under and let it grow up in the spring of the eighth year And then you till it under and let it grow up in the spring of the eighth year.

And then you till it under, of course, in good time to where it'll break down before you need to plant your crop.

You get a good seedbed preparation, maybe a month before you're going to plant your crop and or 2 weeks if you have the right kind of equipment and so that green manure has been growing there for basically a year and a half plus.

Okay so you really built the organic matter, the nitrogen and if you have a relatively good okay soil, I can guarantee you if you did that, you can plant just about any nitrogen demanding crop like corn, cabbage, or whatever, and it's got the nitrogen it needs to just grow the crop.

You know, you could take a picture of it and use it in a chemical fertilizer advertisement.

Plus organic matter and weed suppression.

So that's a very good technique in the process you're, you know, resting your land, which is God's plan for sort of restocking the organic matter and the nutrients and all that good stuff.

So that's a very good, you know, these are intelligence tools that you're using.

See, it doesn't really take any more work, it's just planning, using your brains instead of just, you know, busting your knuckles on it, okay?

And here's another 1 that we've learned about from a man up in Canada, John Martin Fortier, and his book is back here.

I recommend if you're looking at Market Gardening, it's a very good, good book.

And, and also he's a good friend of mine.

I've never met him but he put my flame readers in his book.

He has 1 of my flame readers and he says more positive things about flame readers than I could even bring myself to say.

So I just, some days I just love him and other days I, he's sent me too many orders.

Here is when you're done with a crop in a certain area of your garden, okay, your early crops and you're so busy canning and freezing, it's easy to leave that, you know, part of your garden, it just grows up in weeds, see, the early peas or carrot bed or whatever you just it just grows up in weeds it was looking pretty nice at some point you had it all weeded but then as you're harvesting it that you didn't even notice those weeds are growing around the edges and before you know it it just made a whole bunch of seeds We have 1 weed in West Virginia called shaggy soldier that it just grows so fast.

We call it wild buckwheat there in West Virginia.

So you just put this tarp over the beds wherever that part is.

So you wouldn't necessarily have 1 tarp that's this big.

You could cut it up and you can get them from Jonathan Dysinger, okay.

And also you can get them locally from like southern states.

They call them silage tarps for putting over pit silos and they're usually white on 1 side and black on the other.

If you're concerned about it overheating your soil put the white side up if you but usually put the white side down and and it just encourages it's nice and moist and it breaks down those weeds so it's much easier than to till in whatever crop residues and weeds.

It's just like very mellow, and so it's a good way to kind of keep it there, all ready to till up whenever you're ready for your next crop.

And actually I've used tarps, not this particular kind of tarp, just a regular tarp, which I wouldn't recommend because they tend to break down in the sun and then they disintegrate into your soil, okay.

But I have spread that over areas that were just blackberries and we have ironweed and stickweed in West Virginia and I was just going in there and whack that with the weed whacker or the machete, Just whack it down.

I was gonna plant raspberries in that area But you know all these perennial weeds if you plant raspberries in there you have black bit wild blackberries growing in your raspberries Pretty soon you just till the whole thing under so so I just put this tarp over there for a good part of the of the summer Okay, or?

The year before I was gonna plant my raspberries either.

I was gonna plant them in the fall or in the spring.

So I put it in the summer, just put it over there and after you need to do it for a month or 2 during the active growing time, preferably in the springtime when the blackberries and so forth have been saving up their energy over the winter and now they need to get more energy so they put up their leaves.

Well, if you put the tarp over and they can't get any more energy then their roots will die but any time of the year when you have a month or 2 of warm growing season time and you don't let them get any light they'll give out except some weeds are very tough so you know, you'll learn what you need to do to your weeds and your climate.

Anyway, I put it over this for a month or 2 and boy, you take it off there and everything's dead and it's just a whole bunch of organic matter and you just, you know, plant your, till your strip there and plant your raspberries and it's just taking care of it all those perennial weeds gone.

I mean there might be some weed seeds in there stickweed and ironweed but it really is a good way to cycle a wild you know West Virginia corner of your garden or new area into perennial berries and fruits.

Breakout Session 2

Mark Heisey

Seed Saving

Well, I begin with a photo of the harvest of our pumpkins.

If you're not familiar with them, they are the best pie pumpkins you can have.

You can eat them raw, you can cook them just as a mess and make custards and pies out of them.

If you look on the internet, it would be N-E-C-K, neck pumpkin, known as the best.

The Amish Mennonite communities keep the seed going.

And they're normally about 8 to 15 pounds.

The reason that it's a record holder probably of some sort.

I had gotten some seeds in Pennsylvania and 1 of my friends was visiting the farm 1 day.

He said, you've been up in your pumpkin patch.

He said, you need to go up there and take a look because to him it was the largest he had ever seen as well.

So if I was saving seed for next year, would I save it from this 1?

I'd probably save for several for the reason of genetics, but you want to save seed of things that you like to eat and that do very well.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Veganically Grown: Our Journey to Certified and Beyond

58m

Weed Management

1h

Seed Saving

56m

GMO’s: Where are They Not?

58m

Successful Marketing, Planning for Profitability

1h 43m

Basics for True Education

51m

Methods Without Madness

59m

09. Jeremiah: Jeremiah’s Yoke

43m

It’s Time- Q & A

10m

It’s Time

41m

Real Missionaries

41m

The Truest Charity

39m

Sound Doctrine