A Recap of what has been going on at The Funny Farm these past few months

Our goal for this year is to double our production compared to last year. We produced 1600 lbs. of fruits and vegetables last year. We record our production from June to June since that was the month we started going to our first farmers market in 2009. When we harvest for market and for Vegetable Husband this Wednesday we will surpass our total for all of last year, 4 1/2 months into our 2010 harvest year. We have much more growing now than we did at this time last year. We will be using row covers much more extensively this winter so we can keep production going all winter with a little luck. I am encouraged that we are on track to meet our goal.

We have employed several strategies to reach this rather lofty goal. I will give an overview here of what they are and I will explain in greater detail how we implemented them in future posts. I promise...really I will!

• First on the list was getting a soil test. We knew from observation of our crops that we were deficient in magnesium. We were not getting the production we thought we could get. The results of the test confirmed our suspicions. This will be the subject of our next post
• Increasing biodiversity was next. We worked on improving habitat for beneficial organisms both above ground and in the soil food web. This helped us by reducing insect and disease pressure. We did much more intercropping to take advantage of 3 dimensional space and to try to confuse potential insect pests minimize the spread of disease organisms.
• We refined our choices of crops and varieties we would grow to find better matches for our particular growing system.
• We utilized some more marginal spaces to increase our productive area utilizing methods gleaned from permaculture.

As expected the sum of all these efforts is greater than the parts if they were applied individually. We have a systems approach driven by the permaculture paradigm. Much of what we are doing now is going to provide yields in the future for us and for whomever comes along behind us. While I am fond of saying that I do not believe the future exists and that tomorrow never comes, I will not stop my efforts to prepare for a future anyway.

I could be wrong!