Website Launched!

Please visit the new Healing Tree Farm website!

Website Update and Goals for 2010

Firstly, the website is complete, but we are still unable to upload it and unsure why.  It is likely an issue with the template I used to create the site.  I’ve had success with it in the past, but not so much this time around.  Until that issue is resolved, I’ll post to the blog.

Goals for 2010

Many have asked why we call ourselves a farm when our total acreage is less than one ac.  Simply, you can “farm” on any acreage.  Farming is the act of growing food.  And only in America, do we hide our garden beds behind our homes; mandate lawns and squawk at allowing people to raise hens for eggs, meat and fertilizer.  

Farming on smaller acreages still produces enough food to feed several families.  CSA’s with less than two acres in our area are still sustaining 15 or more share-holders and their families.  And farming within the existing ecosystem allows us to take advantage of the Oh-so-very adaptable and dependable built-in web of checks and balances established by evolution and put into play by Mother Nature.  

Working within this web strengthens our plant community and creates a firm defense against disease and infestations.  The greater biodiversity also means an increase in quality, quantity and diversity of produce for share-holders.  But the best part of living in an urban setting and calling ourselves a farm, is the the curiosity this inspires in others.  

People want to come and see the farm; they want to understand how it is possible to be a farmer on a small acreage.  They want to know how to build soil, how to grow their own food, and in many cases, how to prepare or store the produce they receive.  This makes Healing Tree, a model urban farm.

Our goals for 2010:  Increase awareness of urban farming and permaculture through workshops, classes and media/publications; Establish ourselves as a model farm in our community; Create and make public a successful formula for establishing a backyard farm using the principles of permaculture; Grow a CSA!  

Lifetime goal:  Salvage our planet, save ourselves.  

 

Website coming soon!

Hoping to have the new Healing Tree Farm website up and running this week!

FYI: Types of Agriculture

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agriculturalsystems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture.

The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society’s reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution that Mollison identified as fundamentally and systematically destroying Earth’s ecosystems.

While originating as an agro-ecological design theory, permaculture has developed a large international following. This “permaculture community” continues to expand on the original ideas, integrating a range of ideas of alternative culture, through a network of publications, permaculture gardens, intentional communities, training programs, and internet forums. In this way, permaculture has become both a design system and a culture of rewilding the human species.

 

Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms,^[1] emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs^[2] insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food.^[3]

Regarded by some as the first modern ecological farming system,^[4] biodynamic farming has much in common with other organic approaches, such as emphasizing the use of manures andcomposts and excluding of the use of artificial chemicals on soil and plants. Methods unique to the biodynamic approach include the use of fermented herbal and mineral preparations as compost additives and field sprays and the use of an astronomical sowing and planting calendar.^[5]Biodynamics originated out of the work of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the spiritual philosophyanthroposophy.

 

Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on crop rotation, green manure, compost, biological pest control, and mechanical cultivation etc… to maintain soil productivity and control pests, excluding or strictly limiting the use of synthetic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, plant growth regulators, livestock feed additives, andgenetically modified organisms.

 

Conventional Farming or Industrial agriculture is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry,fish, and crops. The methods of industrial agriculture are technoscientific, economic, and political. They includeinnovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade. These methods are widespread in developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide. Most of the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced using these methods of industrial agriculture.

Reconstructing the Forest Garden

Earlier today, I discovered an irrigation system in good working condition out back where the edge of the forest meets the remnants of a long-ago abandoned garden square.  A few onions still grow along with some perennial herbs, but mostly the bed has been lovingly attended by the pioneer knapweed.   

I mowed the area where we’ll be working for the next couple of years on rejuvenating the soil.  Knapweed signals two things:  1) This area was over-tilled and 2) the soil condition deteriorated enough to invite pioneers.  

While we appreciate the knapweed’s attempt at harnessing energy from the earth to further it’s canopy of purple flowers, it’s time now to till it up, and begin building healthy soil, layering compost-able materials over the worn earth.  And wow, what a load of work lay ahead.  If I were two people and had additional resources, I’d try to accomplish the bed in one year, but because of the size of this project, we will need to harvest first the patience grown out of previous experiences building these large beds.  In that extra year, we’ll take the time to study this particular forest’s ecology to identify that which flourishes naturally in these surroundings and to strategize for what else might thrive here. 

And hopefully, these efforts will continue to reward those who walk this earth for many years to come.

Falling over

I’ve been observing in some of the taller flowering plants a tendency to fall over just as they are blooming.  And I began to wonder whether this is a strategy for survival.  The flower is then low to the ground, at level with other flowers and bees.  And the seeds are dropped far from the base of the parent plant, where there is better chance for sunlight and survival.  Just a thought.

What we learned from an abandoned flower-bed

There’s a flower-bed in the front yard that has not been cared for since last summer or possibly longer ago.  Some are appalled and immediately offer to “weed” it for us, but I wanted to use it as an example at our workshop, so until today, it was left untouched.  

What we saw growing well inside the raised bed circled in large stones, were perennial grasses and sun-loving flowers who prefer a less acidic soil.  The flowers which prefer a lower pH like roses and rhododendrons were dying, as were the shade-loving hostas.  And the grass was doing well because the fertility of the soil had been artificially increased and accelerated their succession.  

Today, we began transplanting to the back, where a rose garden has already been established and where raspberries are growing naturally in between the thorny flowering plants.  This tells us the pH is likely hovering just below a 7 and will support a variety of fruit-bearing shrubs.  

Since we know that blueberries feed off nutrients supplied by bacteria that thrive in the rhizomes of the rhododendrons, we’ll plant blueberries nearby in the fall.  This will give us a fruitful garden bed that will attract bees and other beneficials and supply we humans with a good source of food throughout the summer and fall.  

In the former flower-bed, we’ll build a guild.  We’ll compost the grasses and rebuild the soil over the next year and in the future we’ll plant some undetermined variety of fruit-tree.  For now, I’m enjoying the fact that I once again have a little dirt beneath my fingernails, and the freedom and good health to plan for another season.

RE Story

Loraine Anderson: Tracking Titus 

By LORAINE ANDERSON
Local columnist (Record Eagle)

Harold Titus has been one of my favorite Traverse City historical characters since I read “Timber,” his 1922 novel, last year. He intrigues me for many reasons.

Part of his mystery is that he is virtually unknown today. He is “new” local history.

He was a writer in the golden age for writers before TV and radio. He had an activist heart and cared deeply about this region. He was on the local school board. He helped build up the state’s forest fire division on his unpaid time on the Michigan Conservation Commission. He was curious man, a thinker, and had the ability to transform complex issues into simple images and everyday speech.

He appealed to me on a personal level, too. His father died when he was an infant. He liked trout fishing, as did my dad. He was born the same year as my grandfather, and researching his times gave me a new window into the most influential person in my life.

I liked the book’s quirky link to the State Theatre, home of the Traverse City Film Festival, where the Lyric Theater once stood. “Hearts Aflame,” a silent movie based on “Timber,” was the first movie to play at the grandly rebuilt Lyric when it reopened in late 1923 after a devastating fire.

I liked the look and feel of “Timber”’s forest-green cover and yellowing pages. It reminded me of books I found as a kid in my grandfather’s bookcase or on vacation in a rented summer cottage up north. Titus’ vivid descriptions of the bleak, gaunt timber cutover lands captured my imagination. I liked the fact that “Timber” helped mold public opinion on the importance of reforestation.

Titus wasn’t a total stranger when I started researching local and newspaper history in late 2007. I first ran across his name in 2001 when I reviewed David Dempsey’s environmental history, “Ruin & Recovery: Michigan’s Rise as a Conservation Leader.”

As research began, I expected to hit a mother lode of information on Titus. I found only tidbits, however, until this year when I discovered James Kates’ book “Planning a Wilderness: Regeneration the Great Lakes Cutover Region.” It’s a thorough, well-written history on the conservation movements of the early 1900s. Kates devoted a whole chapter to Titus and “Timber.”

Titus’ significance today is this: His conservation activism and stewardship are part of our legacy. He provides a local role model of how to tackle important problems.

He exemplifies the importance of knowing our local history. He grew up in the timber cutover lands. That landscape, that environmental devastation, seared his mind and heart. It helped shape him, his thinking, his writing, his destiny and northern Michigan’s.

I don’t think we’ve heard the last of him.

Farmer’s as story-tellers

I’m not sure what it is about farmers, but most I’ve met are wonderful story-tellers.  Perhaps its part of the more primitive design to educate and pass along knowledge through story.  

Yesterday, I met our neighbor to the north, who owns a large cattle farm.  He pointed to the old farmhouse up the road, and said, “I was born right there in that house.”  He pointed to the rooftop of our house in the distance, “and there is where we grew corn and oats.”  Across from our house is a ravine that looks like it was once filled with water.  ”There used to be a pond there, before the developers came.  It was a beautiful spot.”  I told him we sit on the porch late at night and watch fireflies trace shapes in the shadows.  

He told me stories of the Rennie Farm, where began my love of farming and of the old barn on Roush that served as a dance-hall in the 40s.  Erick’s grandfather has mentioned it also.  What a sight it must have been then – nothing but fields and forest stretching out toward every horizon.  And then he told me what a struggle it has been farming in the last decade – that he has dipped into his own retirement just to continue because its the only thing he’s ever known and pointed to the “for sale” sign out front, “that sign wouldn’t be there otherwise.”  

He told me that Bill Rennie once saved a new calf born on a frigid winter morning, by filing his own bathtub with warm water where he placed the calf so it could recover.  So, is the heart of farmers, who have both the luxury and the obligation to witness these events.  

And I told old Jack how much I love farming, to which he grinned and replied, “There are worse things we could be.”

Planting Milkwood: Making Compost

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