Farming While Black

by Leah Penniman

  Bed Forming

  We thank our ancestors for the invention of the brilliant technology of raised beds, which encourage water infiltration, prevent soil compaction, support weed management, and mitigate flooding. We are honored to carry on that legacy by growing all of our crops in mounds. To create a raised bed, you first need to smother the existing vegetation, which can be accomplished with tarps, fire, or tillage, as described in chapter 4. Next you need to remove soil from the pathway and place it onto the growing area for the plants. This work can be done with a shovel or an African-style hoe. In either case it is essential to keep your back straight and bend your knees to leverage the tool. Allow the weight of the tool and the leverage points on your body to do the work, and alternate the side you work on to balance out the strain on your muscles.

  It is best to lay out the beds with a long measuring tape, placing stakes or other markers to show where the pathways should be dug. We dig pathways that are 12 inches (30 cm) wide and beds that are 44 inches (1 m) wide at the top and 48 inches (1.25 m) wide at the bottom, for a total of 5-foot (1.5 m) spacing between the centers of the beds.

  New beds can also be formed by using tractor implements. If a potential crop area is still in pasture, we begin by flipping the sod with a moldboard plow. We wait several weeks to allow the sod to break down a little, then make a few passes with our 7½-foot (2.25 m) disc harrow. This slices up the sod and allows us to plant a cover crop to further build the soil. The moldboard plow and discs are very disruptive to soil structure and are only used to break new ground. Historically, the plow is responsible for much of the devastation of our soils, causing erosion and compaction, and destroying soil life.

  Farmers at Soul Fire Farm demonstrate proper back position while using a hoe. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  Our plow and disc are International brand, and we found them in the reject pile of a neighboring farmer’s barn. Older pieces of equipment are often made of higher-quality steel and are consequently more durable. Once our cover crop has established, we mow it down with our 5-foot (1.5 m) Bush Hog brush cutter. After that we come through with a bed former to create our crop beds. Our tractor is a reliable 1997 Ford New Holland 2120, and we have been able to purchase many of its implements secondhand from other farmers in our networks.

  Tillage, or Not

  When our farm was under ½ acre (0.2 ha), we were able to do all of our tillage by hand. After digging the pathways with a shovel, we would work down the growing area with a hoe to break up clods and then use a garden fork to aerate the soil without turning it over. Standing in the pathway to prevent compaction in the bed, it’s best to step on the top of the fork to insert it completely into the soil, then use leverage to push the handle down and draw the tines up through the soil. After aerating the soil, you can create a smooth surface with a hard metal rake. Hand raking is a fine art that involves getting a smooth back-and-forth motion via long, even strokes. Some farmers like to leave a little “lip” on the beds on the downslope side to encourage water infiltration during the dry season, and a slightly raised center of the bed to shed water during the wet season.

  Cheryl DeSanctis operates a Ford New Holland tractor to shape up the beds at Soul Fire Farm.

  As our farm grew, we thought our only option was to switch over to tilling with a tractor, as the conventional farmers in our county were doing. At the end of the season, we used the bed former to toss pathway detritus into the beds and make them accessible to the tiller. We then used a 5-foot (1.5 m) rotary tiller to turn under and break up the plant debris from the season. For the final pass, we formed the beds again and applied annual cover crop or thick straw mulch. While we had short-term gains with this aggressive method of tillage, after a couple of years we developed a tiller pan, which is a layer of compaction below the soil surface. We also attributed the spread of perennial weeds, such as thistle, grasses, and yellow nut sedge, and the increase in pests, such as the leaf miner, to the use of this equipment.

  For love of the climate and soil, we are experimenting with ways to achieve no- or low-till methods once again. We use large, 24-by-100- or 50-by-100-foot (7.5-by-30- or 15-by-30-meter) silage tarps to smother weeds and encourage microorganisms to do their own “biological tillage.” The weeds germinate in the dark and, unable to find light, die off. The warm, moist environment is perfect for worms and other soil life to consume detritus and form aeration tunnels throughout the soil. After removing the tarps, we minimally disturb the soil to avoid turning up latent weed seeds. Thus, it is essential to thoroughly prep the beds before tarping. In very hot weather, silage tarps have the benefit of being able to be flipped so that the white side is exposed, lessening the heat that could kill beneficial microbes.

  Tool Care

  Tools require regular care and maintenance. At a basic level this means keeping track of tools and putting them back in an organized storage area. I recommend counting the tools that you bring out to the field and establishing a practice of leaving them in a wheelbarrow whenever they are not directly in your hands. Tools need to be stored in a dry place. Each time you are finished, hose off the soil or brush it away using a hard-bristle brush. Several times per season you will need to sharpen your tools using a metal file. Tools with moving parts also need tool oil or mineral oil applied regularly. For any moving harvest tool, such as Felcos, you need to use a food-safe oil.

  Tools need a well-organized, dry storage place for their own longevity and to ensure farmer safety. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  Tractor Tips

  A tractor is a lifetime investment, and we have come to love our 1997 Ford New Holland 2120 with New Holland 7309 loader arms. It is a compact four-wheel-drive tractor that is just the right size to navigate the tight corners on our modestly sized mountainside farm. This tractor has a wide wheel base that makes it safer on uneven ground. We have a rollover bar (ROPS: rollover protection structure) and always wear a seat belt when driving. Tractors can be extremely dangerous, causing over half of farmworker fatalities in the US. Using ROPS and a seat belt brings your chance of surviving a rollover up to 99 percent.3 In several states there are programs to help farmers pay for installation of a ROPS if the tractor does not have one.

  We installed a skid-steer quick-attach on the front loader as well as quick-attach couplings for all of the hydraulic hoses, which allows us to easily swap out attachments. For example, just recently we were moving the chickens to their winter home so we first attached the bucket loader to help us clean up brush from the new area, and then easily switched that out for the pallet forks to pull the chicken housing into place.

  Participants in the Black Latinx Farmer Immersion learn how to swap out implements on the tractor. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  Our loader is a powerful New Holland 7309. We added extension hoses from the rear hydraulic remotes so that we can use hydraulics with equipment mounted on the front loader. The essential attachments for the front include a loader bucket and pallet forks. The essential attachments for the rear include a brush cutter and bed former. It is important to size the brush cutter, and any other PTO-driven equipment, to the horsepower of the engine. (A PTO or “power take off” pulls power from a running engine and transmits it to an attached implement at a power loss around 10 percent.)

  We have a Bush Hog SQ600 that is 5 feet (1.5 m) wide. This smaller cutter works well for cutting pasture on our slopes and narrow pathways. It is also useful for chopping up green manures and crop debris at the end of the season. We also have a PTO-driven tiller, a 5-foot (1.5 m) Kuhn that we used more extensively before we shifted toward no-till methods. Our bed former is a simple model from the Buckeye Tractor Company. Most of the other tractor equipment we have bought from local farmers or the classified listings in our area.

  Something to keep in mind for those blessed with heavy clay rocky soils like ours is finding tractor equipment that is durable enough to withstand a thorough beating by the stones. One of the great things about our two-
bottom plow is that it has a trip mechanism that allows it to just pop out of place when it hits an immovable rock, rather than breaking. Other plows have similar mechanisms: for example, shear bolts or a PTO with a slip clutch. What you do not want is a rigid piece of equipment that aims to pit its strength against that of the earth—it will lose.

  Propagation

  Extending our season by harnessing the greenhouse effect allows us to enjoy our cultural crops in the environments to which we have been transplanted and to reduce the environmental footprint of our food miles. When our operation was smaller, we were able to start all of our seedlings on wooden shelves supported on vertical brackets in a large south-facing window in our home. We installed daylight fluorescent lights over each level so that they hung just above the emerging plants on an adjustable chain. While daylight fluorescent bulbs do not perform quite as well as full-spectrum bulbs, they save a lot of money. As our farm grew and the seedling flats crept onto the floor and kitchen table, we realized it was time to build a proper greenhouse.

  The heated greenhouse has double plastic walls, a polycarbonate south end with a wide door, forced-air propane heat, fans, and ventilation. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  Our greenhouse is a plastic hoop house that we constructed from scratch. Its skeleton is made of 10-foot-long (3 m), 1⅜-inch-diameter (3.5 cm) fence rail sections that we bent using a hoop bender and joined together with 1-inch (2.5 cm) self-tapping metal screws to attain an overall 30-foot (9 m) hoop length. We drove 1⅝-inch-diameter (4 cm) hollow fence posts into the ground at 2 feet (0.6 m) deep, taking care not to directly hit the pipe end lest they “mushroom” and be ruined. You can use a block of wood or a specialized cap to protect the pipe from your striking sledgehammer or pneumatic driver. We then inserted the bent hoops into the verticals in the ground. The supports are 4 feet (1.25 m) apart on center and reinforced at the peak with two rows of purlins. The double plastic skin is a four-year lifetime ultraviolet-resistant greenhouse poly plastic held in place using wiggle wire. We installed two layers of the plastic for insulation and use a blower to keep an air pocket between the layers. Our greenhouse has plywood on the end that does not receive sun, and clear polycarbonate panels on the south side. One side has a standard-sized door and the other side has wide doors that allow carts and seedling tables to enter and exit, as well as material deliveries from the tractor. To maintain a warm environment in the greenhouse, we installed an 80,000 BTU propane forced-air heater. There is also a thermostatically controlled active vent that opens and closes to maintain the temperature set by the farmer, and a passive louver vent that opens and closes based on the temperature. There are two hanging fans at opposite ends of the greenhouse that are on at all times to keep the air circulating. Air movement is essential to climate control and disease prevention. At the height of the season, we install a shade cloth over the exterior of the greenhouse to reduce solar gain and maintain cooler temperatures.

  We added struts to our Haygrove high tunnel for additional strength in the heavy snow and to allow us to trellis tomatoes from above. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  We also use an unheated high tunnel to extend the season in either direction. Spinach, lettuce, onions, radishes, and parsley all survive over the winter in the tunnel and provide nourishment in the early spring before the ground outside is even thawed. Our high tunnel is an 80-foot-long (24 m), 25-foot-wide (7.5 m) Haygrove that we built from a kit, and modified along the way. It utilizes simple construction that involves no wood and no carpentry. The plastic is tensioned by ropes rather than wiggle wire, which allows for the sides to be manually pulled up for ventilation in the hot months. The kit came with limited structural supports for hanging, so we added struts between the collar tie and arch. This offered structural integrity to withstand wind, rain, and snow. We also made purlins from 1⅜-inch-diameter (3.5 cm) fence rail to allow us to trellis the heavy tomato plants from above. These modifications were all put together using chain-link-fence parts from the local hardware store.

  Low tunnels are temporary structures that can be used for climate regulation and pest protection. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  In addition to the high tunnel, we also use low tunnels and mulch to achieve season extension out in the field. A low tunnel is simply a series of ½-inch (1.25 cm) electrical conduit bent into hoops the width of the bed. We push these hoops firmly into the bed at 4-foot (1.25 m) intervals in the winter and 8-foot (2.5 m) intervals in the summer. Since the hoops have a tendency to collapse toward the center of the bed, we drive two pieces of 18-inch (45 cm) rebar at a 20- to 30-degree outward angle at the end of each bed. We then install the end hoops over the rebar for extra reinforcement. Additionally, for our winter low tunnels we bunch and tie the ends of the plastic and firmly tie them to a 2-foot (0.6 m), 2- to 3-inch-diameter (5- to 7.5-cm) hardwood branch driven into the ground. Then we install 6-mil greenhouse plastic (not construction plastic) over the hoops, weighing it down with stones or long lengths of rebar on the sides and stones or stakes at the ends. For example, if we plant a healthy crop of kale in the late fall, we can install a low tunnel over it and it will be protected through the winter and resume growth in the spring. During the warm season, we can use the same hoops to support floating row cover for pest protection and climate regulation.

  Overwintering of root crops, strawberries, and greens can also be achieved with the simple use of mulch. Cover the crops with a “blanket” of 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) of straw or leaves. For extra protection you can add a layer of clear greenhouse plastic on top of the mulch, and secure it on the edges with stones, sandbags, or rebar. In the spring remove the mulch and allow the vegetables to continue growing.

  Whether you start your seeds in your window or a greenhouse, there are a few essential supplies. First of all, it’s best to sort and store your seeds in waterproof containers in a dark, dry place with minimal temperature fluctuations. We like to plant our seeds in open 1020 flats, with the exception of cucurbits, lettuce, parsley, celery, beets, and basil, which prefer plug trays. It is necessary to have plastic or wooden labels and a permanent marker to identify what is growing in each flat along with seeding date. You can water seedlings with a watering can; this is often the most efficient solution in the winter when hoses freeze. Fill a giant trough with water in your greenhouse and dip the watering can into the trough to fill. In the warmer seasons hook up a hose to a spray wand that generates a gentle, even rain for the seedlings.

  Simple seedling tables can be built from 2-by-4 lumber and welded wire fencing. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  The best height of a worktable is just above your thumb knuckle when you are standing with your arms at your sides, hence the saying rule of thumb. For many people this height is 33 to 36 inches (84 to 90 cm), so we build our seedling tables accordingly. Consider building worktables at several heights to accommodate people with various body sizes on your team. They have a simple 2-by-4-inch (5-by-10-centimeter) wooden frame with 2-by-4-inch welded wire fence stapled on the frame to form the tabletop. We have brackets installed along the edges so that we can put galvanized steel hoops over the tables. These hoops can be skinned with greenhouse plastic or floating row cover to provide pest, rain, and wind protection when the tables are used outdoors.

  Suppliers

  When you’re sourcing equipment and supplies, it is best to find local suppliers. Talk to the farmers near you and support Black-owned businesses whenever possible. We get most of our supplies through our local farmers exchange and local stores. However, we order certain items from the suppliers listed in the resources, page 321, and have been satisfied with the quality of the products.

  Seeds

  Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

  Truelove Seeds

  Johnny’s Selected Seeds

  Fedco Seeds and Fedco Trees

  High Mowing Organic Seeds

  Seed Savers Exchange

  Sow True Seed

  Homowo African Heritag
e Seed Collection at Old Salem Museums and Gardens

  Lakeview Organic Grain

  Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

  Indigenous Seed Initiative

  Hudson Valley Seed Company

  Fruition Seeds

  Supplies

  Rain-Flo Irrigation

  Nolt’s Produce Supplies

  Griffin Greenhouse Supplies

  Carts Vermont

  Transplanting and Direct Seeding

  As soon as the dandelions bloom and the maple trees leaf out, the soil shows its readiness to receive our warm-season crops. As the climate changes, calendar dates become less reliable predictors of seasonal change than phenological events like flowers blooming and the migration of birds. When the soil is warm and the wild plants are reviving, it is time to bring out your hoe and seed container to plant your fields.

  We direct seed vegetable crops by hand rather than using a mechanical seeder. On our uneven, clay soil, it is challenging to get an even distribution of seeds mechanically. So we train our hands and our eyes to be able to determine seed spacing. At the beginning of the season, everyone takes a ruler and measures the length of one of their knuckles, fingers, the full span of their hands, and the length of their stride as a reference point for plant spacing. We carve shallow furrows into the beds using PVC pipe sections attached to a seeding rake to ensure consistently spaced and straight rows. Into this furrow, we place or scatter the seeds. We then use the hoe or a rake to gently push the elevated soil into the furrows to cover the seeds.

  Transplanting seedlings from flats into the soil requires its own careful technique. We ensure that the bed is already prepared, complete with irrigation line and straw or plastic mulch, if applicable. We then use a hose with spray nozzle to “dig” holes for the seedlings by using the water to spray a hole at the appropriate plant spacing. We like to use a siphon-mixer to add fish or seaweed emulsion (approved by the Organic Materials Review Institute, or OMRI) into the transplanting water in order to give the plants a boost to help with the transition to a new environment. Into these puddles of water and nutrients, we transplant the seedlings, pressing the soil firmly around their moist roots. Some farmers also add a beneficial bacterial drench, like Actinovate, as a root shield for cucurbits. In order to prevent the hose from dragging across other beds of crops, it’s best to insert a pitchfork, shovel, or wooden stake into the end of the bed and thread the hose through the tines so that it stays in the pathway.