How is Organic Different

Dear friends,

I'd like to share just a piece of information on how USDA Certified Organic crops are grown differently than Non Organic.

To provide nutrients for plants to grow conventional farmers spread chemical fertilizers that are made from petroleum products. Imagine a large bag of Miracle Gro. These chemicals (Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphorus) NPK will make the plants grow fast and beautifully, but they actually destroy the millions of bacteria and fungus that are found natuarally in the soil. Overtime a conventional farmer grows dependent on chemical fertilizers as the soil become more and more depleted of good soil and soil organisms.

Sustainable Harvest Farm does no such thing. We try to take care of the soil and organisms by feeding the soil a complex mixture of dead plant material and compost. The organic matter that we add to the soil (compost) feeds the organisms which in turn create wonderful soil that has all of the nutrients that the plants need and ultimately that end up in our body. There is actually research that promotes the fact that Organic crops have more beneficial nutrients that promote our health than convential crops.

But let me share a struggle with you. We have been leasing a piece of property from a gentelman 1.5 miles down the road. In order to get the soil filled with more good stuff for next year I've been spreading this compost that we make on our farm with an old piece of equipment called a manure spreader. Don't worry, we don't put raw manure on our fields that you're crops are coming off of this year. We won't actually use this field that we're spreading compost on until 2012, but anyway. This old piece of equipment has a long history behind it that I'll have to share some other time, but it keeps breaking, and breaking, and breaking, and...........breaking. It will hold probably 1.5-2 tons of compost at a time. Its job is to throw the compost off in a 8 foot swath about 1/2 in thick and completley covers the soil with this compost. The only problem is that if one of the chains gets a tiny bit out of alignment the machine no longer does its job and you have to unload that 3-4000 lbs of compost off by hand so you can fix the part that broke. Well that's happened 4 times in the past week.

So, if you ever wonder if I always love farming....no I don't. What's the alternative?

1-buy a different manure spreader-3000 dollars

2-borrow a neighbors- maybe break his and spend 500 dollars fixing it
3-rent one-they are always rented when you need it
4-quit organic and go conventional
5-keep trying to fix it
6-start buying lottery tickets

Any advice is greatly appreciated!