Ken and Lori take the wheel
January 23rd, 2009“Hang on Harvey, We’re headed for the rhubarb!!”
Hello to all the friends of Sol Food Farm! Our names are Ken and Lori Dawn. We are the proud new owners of this locally supported, sustainably minded, West Sonoma County ‘banana belt’ farm.
Some of you may already know us from the Occidental Farmers Market or Santa Rosa Downtown Farmer’s Market as Mudpie Farm. We enjoyed the farming and marketing of our 1/3 acre, organically ammended, Laguna Road location so much we decided to expand. Thanks to Farmer John Born for all his years ammending the soil and all his help over the year!
There are a lot of things that will stay the same about Sol Food Farm but there are a lot of things that we are very excited about changing as well. The biggest change to the Farm will be introducing Biodynamic practices. This includes incorporating animals into the circle. First order of business was to get those laying chickens out of the coop. They are let out into the field every morning and closed in for the evenings. After one day of open grazing they were waiting by the door at dawn, raising a ruckus to get let out again. We’ve also added two pigs to the mix. We are moving them every two days and they are “tractoring” the property. This is great, we havn’t had to turn the tractor key yet and the pigs LOVE the fresh miners lettuce and grub worms.
We have been busy making the most of the warm and sunny weather. Every day spent in the fields tending to the fruit and citrus trees by clearing the drop rings, pruning, composting, and soon to be mulching, shoring up the hoop house frame, getting the tractor back in running order, identifying our weeds and reseeded crops, starting compost piles, moving those pigs, laying down cover crop, weeding the beds, keeping the blackberry population under contol, hauling out the seeds for inventory, ordering new and planning this years course for soil building and planting. We will be attending the California Rare Fruit Grower’s Association’s Scion Exchange to scout out some of the new fruit trees we’ll be planting this season. By the way, if anyone has local, organically grown asparagus crowns they would like to sell, we are looking.
It’s taken a few rainy days to get us back inside, at the computer, working on updating the website and letting you all know what we’ve been up to. There have been countless brainstorming sessions where we’ve come up with some really great ideas for this years CSA. We want it to be a little different. Our CSA box will include options. If you like the straight forward $30 box you can still get it. If you want a little more flexibility in your box, you can get that too. We are putting together an all new website where we will post our weekly available produce and you will be able to visit our online “store” and place an order which more closely reflects your weekly produce needs and the farm’s harvests. The price of your box will be based on how much you put into it for the week. Customize your box. Fill it with your favorites in the amount you really need. If you have family in town, order more, if you’re pantry is full, order less. Information about the 2009 Summer Season CSA Membership will be updating on the website in the coming weeks.
One of the ideas we are tossing around is bicycle delivery of the CSA boxes in West County. It’s a good way to get a nice long bicycle ride and still be farming. In addition, if you pick up your CSA box on foot or bicycle we like to offer a $5/week discount.
We would like to test the idea of being year round. If you would like any of the winter vegetables we currently have growing and would like to get a Custom, off-season CSA box, give us a call 707-604-7120 or email at solfoodfarm@gmail.com. We currently have lettuce, bok choi, chinese cabbage, collard greens, turnips, red mustard greens, broccoli, dino kale, red russian kale and curly kale. A healthy bunch goes for $1.50/bunch (everything except lettuce and red mustard greens which are $4/lb.)
To explain a little about what our motivation for practicing biodynamics is based on, we’ve found a definition from Hugh Lovel in his book A Biodynamic Farm that encompasses quite a lot. Biodynamic agriculture is “a holistic system of agriculture that grew out of the investigations of Rudolf Steiner. It views each farm as a living individual within the living earth and universe. An ideal BD (Biodynamic) farm is a self sufficient ecosystem that produces it’s own composts, seeds, livestock replacements, etc., and operates within the larger context of the district and it’s make up, the country, the world, and the rhythms and relationships of the solar family against the starry background. A biodynamic farmer grows food for nourishment, not simply to make money, and the spiritual human requires nourishment as much as the physical. Thus the farmer seeks to produce food that supports the whole human being, including the physical, etheric, astral and egoic bodies. In the view of biodynamic agriculture the three fold human organism is composed physically of head, heart and guts, and spiritually of thought, feeling and will. Food must contain adequate materials for physical organization as well as adequate forces for spiritual activity. We may think of food as our medicine, and not simply medicine for our ills–though it may be. Above all, it is medicine for our health and evolution.” This philosophy reminds Ken of “Uncle Henry’s” farm in New Hampshire, where he grew up. It is a return to the natural cycle of renewal a farm reflects in the cycle of seasons. Everything is relevant from the fungus in the soil to the smiling Farmer’s Market customer.
Thanks to Brian and Brandon for passing the torch of Sol Food Farm, thanks to Leo, Andy and Laura for the vision, creation and execution. Thanks to the Silvestrich family and the neighbors. Sol Food Farm wouldn’t be what it is without the contribution of so many. A big thanks to the CSA members and customers, friends and fellow farmers, thank you for supporting local, sustainable agriculture. Your bellies will thank you for it!
Peace
Ken Gibson and Lori Dawn Meier
