Create Regenerative Organic Soil: How to Transition to No-Till Regenerative Organic Farming
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- čas přidán 13. 02. 2021
- In this episode Two Bear Farm shares the realities of transitioning their organic farm to a no-till regenerative organic farm in order to build healthy soil.
*** Show notes and Links ***
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Two Bear Farm website:
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I love it. No dogma, just grow food. We need as many midsized and small farms as we can get. They're the true stewards. Connected and conscientious.
Thanks Fergus! I think you're right about small and midsized farms. We also need to find people willing to be farmers. I think access to land and finding people to farm are two big challenges.
@@RegenerativeJourney Absolutely agree. Energy farming is pricing food farmers out of the market. I bought my farm in December 2020. It's not exactly functional yet, but I took 60 acres out of CRP after 6 years and it was certifiable from the first crop. I had a certified tenant handle it the first year. You have great looking beds, and beautiful produce. Thanks for the inspiration.
Appreciate what you guys are doing. Hopefully non-farmers can help to change the culture by prioritizing no-spray, local, seasonal food grown on small farms. We wouldn't need mega farms if people didn't expect super low cost produce and then throw half of it in the garbage.
I get excited any time I see someone else promoting the Regen movement. I subscribed. I bring those principles into the backyard gardens. There's enormous power in Regen! I look forward to checking out more of your videos! 🌿
This episode directed me to Farmer Jesse at No-Till Growers. I am so glad to have found this content
Keep up the good work! I loved the bloopers at the end, it had me laughing out loud. It's good to see an example of a farmer with a foot in both worlds and Doing their best. Hopefully we can inspire more people to be farmers to meet the extra demand of labor for a Regenerative farm vs conventional/organic.
Thanks Ryan. Glad you liked the video and the bloopers. Yes, we need more farmers, but given that farmers are in such short supply, we need to figure out how to get existing farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture.
Thank you for your regenerative efforts!! It all matters,
Thanks Mary!
They are the largest commercial farm you highlighted. Thank you. Look forward to seeing more.
Thanks for the comment. I hope to find more large scale regenerative farms to profile.
Mind blowing changes! Best fortune to you. Sharing info is so open source.
I love how you describe sharing these farming experiments as "open source". That's seems so spot on. Todd, the farmer in the video, thought it was important to honestly show the challenge of transitioning to regenerative farming practices. I think that kind of honesty and transparency will help others who want to do the same. Thanks for your comment!
Great channel. I just found you this week and I'm about to watch your most recent upload after starting from the first. Thanks.
Yeah Todd and Rebecca! We admire your work.. you not only produce amazing food for families, and you are always working to make things better! Always teaching! I've personally watched your work for more than 10 years now, and very grateful for all that I've learned from you along the way!
Biodegradable “plastic” seems like it could be one solution at a larger scale. If it lasts long enough through the season to keep out weeds.
Keep moving forward
It's the right direction
Great video !
Excellent work. Thank You.
Great stuff! Thanks for making
Thanks Jeremy!
Thanks for the video. I'm sure most farmers would learn a lot more from farmers who are transitioning to Regenerative Ag, through sharing their journey, challenges, coping strategies etc
Yes, sharing their first-hand experience is key. I just wish there was a way to too that in an easy to produce way to facilitate faster sharing.
Love it but as always, I could watch another 10 minutes easily! Also, I love the bloopers at the end!
Glad you liked it! I try to keep it at a length that people are willing to sit through. That's a tough one to figure out. I'm still experimenting. This is longer than most of my other videos. Thanks for watching and thanks for the comment.
I have a small farm .27 acres that I'm working to learn regenerative farming in hopes of one day doing this on more land. I'm ao disgusted when I see soil erosion. My grandmother yard was a jungle and I cleaned it to make her a garden. The soil is so rich and black. Species I hadn't seen since a child was in her soil. This showed me the importance of not having a landscaped grass over a forest area even if it's weedy to eyes there was life in there. That's my goal on my land.
Way to go Kay! I'm so excited for you. We need more folks like you doing this work. Keep it up!
Wow I loved it thanks for sharing
Glad you enjoyed it
great one, thank you
I appreciate the honesty about trying to resolve these issues.
It doesn't seem like there is a one-size-fits-all for all crops, but I like his approach.
I'm in the middle of making the switch to regenerative farming and there is no one-size- fits -all for crops but nature can grow more nutritious food than we can with synthetic inputs. We can't depend on chemical's that are killing us and the wildlife. I just sprayed fields yesterday and there are dead hawks everywhere from eating the field mice . I can't be apart of destroying our planet any longer
I like your video. Keep up the good woirk.
Such a nice video
Have you ever think of trying biochar or jadam ;
Also I think cover crops it's difficult to your content
This is great thank you!
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it.
This is exactly what should happen (and only will happen with smaller farms)! We're trying to do it. Learning aloud the way. Really wish I could spend a week or two with a real old time (before chemicals and mechanization) farmer. The knowledge they possessed. Learned over generations of farmers.
A true Christian preacher, Lester Roloff, agreed, but I believe that generation have all passed away unfortunately.
Hopefully some of the knowledge has not been lost.
Ask for God's wisdom and knowledge.
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings isto search out a matter.
Keep searching for answers.
For me this is very much where I am at too. I want no till but want to sow root crops and bean. I don't know how to do that other than making a good seed bed that has been clean for years from other non crop plants. If anyone has ideas please tag me and I will follow or read advice.
Much appreciated!
Glad to hear you appreciate the video. Thanks for watching!
ORGANIC FARMING 👍👍👍
I want to start a new farm here in Texas I had a farm in California Sacramento areas I learned from that experience. But I want to do my farm differently this time. All natural all organic no till regeneration farming practices. Start small and grow from there. So I’m going to watch and learn from what you are doing and make less mistakes this time around
Hi Jessie. You should check out these guys. They have a farm in California and recently started another in Texas. instagram.com/sowaheart/
All good. I believe the answer is to give everyone their own plot of land to grow their own. As soon as you scale up you get problems
Weeds are trying to fix and cover soil. If your soil is healthy and covered and not pushing the weeds to grow, you will have little weeds. when the soil life is happy, less weeds.
I'd love to meet them in person, my husband and I travel to Kalispell, MT a couple times a year to visit family. It would be so nice to learn more about how they do their farming and get some more insight. I love local farmers and want to learn as much as I can about it asides from in the CZcams world lol
Hi Anna. Your best bet for meeting Todd and Rebecca, or anyone else working on the farm, is to go to the local farmers markets in the area. Two Bear farm usually has a booth at the Kalispell, Columbia Falls, and Whitefish farmers markets every week during the growing season.. So you have three chances to meet them. Good luck. They're really great people.
Propane torch weeding?
I feel animals are needed to solve lots of those problems,,, but your on the right path as far as I can see.... keep up the good work
Maybe lease it to someone that has cattle or sheep. They can graze through it to get hooves on the soil. It’s not all year -just for a part of the season . Rotationally graze them through
Chickens would also be good to follow behind
It would be good to know what the best farming strategy from among these examples was found to be. 😊
I'd encourage you to ask Todd directly. You can find his website and social media links in the show notes. Thanks for watching and for the great question.
Check out Han Kyu Cho’s natural farming technique using indigenous micro-organisms for no-till organic regen farming.
Thanks for the recommendation Adam. And thanks for watching.
A city slicker question, instead of using plastic and control weeds, would hay or other organic cover be used?
Yes, that is an option and one that this farm is exploring. I didn't cover it in the video. It's challenging to implement at larger scale but this farmer is looking at ways to reduce and hopefully eliminate the use of plastic mulch.
It can be used but it takes a ton to smother weeds with hay. So not easy to scale up.
How do you grow brassicas out in the open like that without having spray for cabbage moths and worms?
You will have to contact Todd and Rebecca at Two Bear Farm directly. They are the owners and operators. Here's a link to their website: twobearfarm.com/.
Wonder if they could use animals to clear those weeds and add fertilizer to the ground?
They are experimenting with a lot of different things so maybe at some point they'll try. When I visited they were trying to convince a local rancher to mob graze some pastures on their farm but couldn't find anyone interested.
Potatoes: only got a small holding, potatoes just a minority part of the produce. No till; last years composted straw compost spread and lay the seed potatoes on the surface. Cover with fresh straw. Rest of the growing season keep adding straw - the more the folage grows, the more straw. Come harvest, remove the straw and pick up the potatoes.
How far this can be scaled up is dependant how much work you want to put in.
Grüß Di :) gut erklärt! Thx.. ;)
Hast du schon mal das Wasserstoffreiche Wasser von einem Wasserionisator jemals getestet?
Dieses Getränk ist echt richtig gut! 🌱
und wusstest du das:
Great contact! Where is this farm located?
The farm is in Whitefish, Montana. Thanks for watching Daniel!
Question, how are these farms irrigated or watered?
Hi L.L. You know I don't recall. We didn't discuss irrigation during my visit but I vaguely remember there being irrigation pipes shattered throughout the farm and I think drip irrigation was the main form used. Not certain though. Why do you ask?
@@RegenerativeJourney Well, out here in the west you cant just plant things and it grows, you have to water it. When we first moved into the country, we spent big bucks getting drip lines to all the fruit and nut trees as well as the gardens...but then soon found out that the pocket gofers loved to eat the plastic...I think they had a drip hose addiction! We were constantly fixing leaks and replacing the hoses, so finally we bought water tanks, put them on the back of the truck and watered that way. I know with bigger farms they probably use metal hoses, but our property was spread and there were lots of trees we had to maneuver around. Watering our place and keeping things alive was a nightmare. It is easier now that they are bigger after 12 years, and they are on their own. The pocket gofers would eat the roots of things garden too, so we finally bought a bunch of kitty pools to plant things in and haven't had a problem with the critters eating the roots of things in the garden cause they cant climb up the sides of the plastic (or get their little teeth around it to eat it cause it is flat hahahahaa)
I want to be a small farmer homesteader.
I went to college for environmental studies and felt like i got a useless degree with my job. I feel pulled to do land management and soil regeneration. However I’m just a working momma trapped in the city.
I feel you Liz. If there are any farms near you, they're likely looking for volunteers to help on the farm. Maybe a local CSA? Aside from working on a farm there may be advocacy work you can do to spread the word about Regenerative Agriculture. Check out www.kisstheground.com. Good luck!
Looks like a soil biology issue with all the fat hen, a higher f:b ratio required to fix that
Where he talks about needing to remove weeds but not wanting to disrupt water retention or cause erosion. Isn't simply burning the organic matter under a light be of dry straw a good way to do that? It would also provide any an all pot ash needs through the year... And if fearing the loss of all acidity in soil a small amount of pine chips scattered throughout after or in late stage burn should balance that out
Or is my thought track totally of base?
Good questions Sam. Not sure I can answer them because I'm not the farmer, just the guy who created a video about him. I do know they are experimenting with adding compost and other organic material sourced from the grass clippings from their farm. The challenge is getting enough compost or other organic material to cover the entire farm. You can try contacting the farm directly from the links in the show notes or find them on Instagram. Thanks for watching and good luck tracking down an answer.
Add your voice to the global movement to save soil from extinction #conciousplanet #savesoil
Naive question here....what are the negative affect of 'weeds'? Meaning, what would happen if you just plant among the weeds?
When your plants are small the weeds choke them out whereas if you keep the weeds back from your plants until they get bigger, then the plant will keep the weeds away by itself. The weeds make a wonderful cover crop and they keep the soil from drying out which translates to much less need for watering.
Any weeds that I do pull out are composted and used to re- fertilize my garden or to make compost tea to fertilize.
People say “look at all the weeds”, I just laugh and say “oh…that’s my fertilizer…I grow my own”.
.
@@ATinyPillow that makes so much sense to me. Thanks
The main thing is just that seedlings can’t easily grow if there are weeds because the weeds shade them out. Weeds are fine once the plant is taller than the weeds but it’s always a problem at planting time. Plus weeds tend to grow much faster than the crops.
I watched this twice because I thought I missed the part about how they succeeded in achieving regenerative organic methods of farming. Didn't see it the second time through either. I have struggled down this path for 10 years and still have no means to achieving this dream. When you find some answers please post them!
I was thinking to take this route of regenerative agriculture along with traditional way. Is it possible to achieve decent yields with organic homemade fertilizers etc? Or I'm going towards the dead end path and will ultimately have to return back to traditional ways?
“By the sweat of thy brow shall the earth produce your food”
.
If you want to improve the soil better and more productive, please use our vietnamese coco peat, looking forward to cooperating with you.
Hi Minh. I'm not the farmer in the video. I just created the video. You can find a link to the farm's website in the show notes. Try contacting them directly. Good luck!
What is Vietnamese coco peat...is that same as a block of coco peat where you add water and it expand, if not the same then what is the difference? Thanks.
Search about 'pqnk' trchnique developed by a Pakistani agro engineer it'll solve all of your problems
But here's an other problem there's way less material available in English
Get some animals to help control the weeds; geese, pigs, goats, sheep, ....
The idea behind no till is not only that you are not running a tillage pass, but mainly that it disrupts and exposes the biological activities in the soil (eventually completely eliminating it) and exposes it to the sun which causes evaporation and sterilization of that biological activity as well as erosion and inability to absorb water. Exposed and turned over soil are the main issues that are being solved by no till. Raised beds don’t solve these issues. Crop land without a cover crop don’t solve these issues. The idea of smothering everything completely eliminating any type of cover doesn’t solve these issues. Get cover crops roll them over smashing them to the ground killing them before you plant. why is there always this incessant idea that nothing can be growing around and between the individual plants you are growing. Mono crop situations lead to there own sets of issues. Also growing potatoes in a traditional way as a small farmer is a waste of space...grow vertically with potato boxes. You can grow more potatoes in a dozen potato boxes on your porch than you could on an acre of land.
Thanks for your comments Brett! You raise very good points. The farm profiled in this video is very much in the early phases of figuring out how to transition from a heavily tilled organic operation to a no/minimal till organic operation and they're experimenting with how best to do that. Feel free to reach out to them if you think there's some insight you can offer. They seem very open to ideas. :)
But this is farm is not a real farm, grow a bit here and a bit here and some over there......hm, all is in experimental stages, and in all it is a college farm ......You get credit for a try but in real world the try thing will not bring $$$ or profits, just back braking work, we did all this farming from year 1200 ad to 1900 ad, thanks to machines and oil product and poisons- like neuron subs to kill it all, we move on in to huge farms that there is no way in hell that your methods would hold on,- who will do the work? OK so like USA Army,for free.Please look at bare food commodity prices at the dealers....yes....its shit, so there is no $ if You do not go huge.I do want better food, I want soil to go back- we killing it now, all that pesticides and over load fertilizer goes to our water supply grounds, its all true. Best way would be to go back to forest-multi spectrum farming, well, You would have to grow and look after 100 different plants not just grow corn or wheat, more work, but if one crop gets bad, you can get $ for others, and we need to end the price manipulations and the fucking middle man.TH
Thanks for your comment. Sorry if I gave the impression that this isn't a real farm. They've been successfully farming for nearly 15 years as a certified organic farm and have a large CSA, sell at their local farmers market, and at local grocery stores, and recently started a local farmers cooperative store. So financially speaking they seem to be doing well. The video is just showing how they're now trying to transition their organic farm to a regenerative organic farm. As you noted, they are still experimenting. We wanted to be honest about that fact so that others could see the experiments they were running. I think the good farmers are always experimenting. And I agree, diversity is very important.
I appreciate your patience and gracious responses to the comments. :-)
I will listen to these arguments, but tilling does have some purpose:
Genesis 3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
What is the purpose mentioned here? To make god happy?
This is not a great example of regenerative farming
While I GREATLY RESPECT the effort being put by your farm I'd have to point out something wrong with your logic..
How can you grow NUTRIENT-DENSE POTATOES (or any other food) if you're TILLING the soil?
It's the microbes (esp mycorrhizal fungi) that feed those potatoes nutrients and tilling just killed most of them.
There are methods to grow potatoes without tilling, Ruth Stouts method being one of them.
To be brutally honest, your soil doesn't look healthy, that's probably one reason you're having such great weed pressure.
As someone else said, THE WEEDS ARE THERE TO HEAL THE SOIL. If it's healthy with higher fungi ratio, you won't have to deal with so much weed pressure.
Again, I highly respect your work so far but I'm sure you'll do leaps and bounds better if you understand soil and the natural system better.
I suggest you look up Brown's Regenerative Farm. They're doing a 5000 acre so some of their practices may benefit you.
He's trying to convert to healthier practices yet he has no problem with plastic being buried!!!