Blue Glade Farm: Our First Year
Last October, my wife and I started a permaculture farm in Maryland. This is our first annual report.
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In May 2021, after six years in Los Angeles, my wife and I sold most of our belongings, packed up the car, and moved to Maryland. After several months of intense house hunting, we finally had an offer accepted, and closed on a property in the last week of October 2021. Our new home would be an 1890s farmhouse with a barn, several outbuildings, and 12 acres of mainly pasture.
Since then, in addition to my wife’s job as a registered dietitian, my job as a biomedical R&D scientist at AstraZeneca, both of us learning to be homeowners, and my writing The Counterpoint, we've started a farm.
By applying permaculture and agroecological principles to the land, planting a diverse range of native species, both annual and perennial, minimizing to eliminating synthetic inputs and soil disturbance, and incorporating animals, our goal is to integrate our farm into the local ecological whole.
This week is our first anniversary and this newsletter is our first annual report. Like a scientific paper, results will be first followed by a discussion and our methods. Plus, plenty of pictures!
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Results
In 2022, Blue Glade Farm’s total production was 144.3 pounds (65.4 kilograms) across 17 crops.
Discussion
It was certainly an interesting first year of farming. There were some successes and many mistakes. This isn’t a plight for pity but simply an acknowledgement. Mistakes only become failures if lessons aren’t learned. And some of the lessons I learned this year include:
always (yes, always) stake and/or protect your trees
check your tire pressures multiple times a year
don’t get behind on weeding
whatever you think will protect from squirrels, double it
always (yes, always) cardboard before wood chips
plus many, many more…
But overall, I think it was a decent year. I am both satisfied and not satisfied, wishing I had been more productive but excited for the opportunity of the next season. Being a scientist, I’m semi-comfortable with ‘failure’ as it brings the prospect of iterating, tinkering, and trialing your way toward improvement. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
If I did have to ‘defend’ this year’s lack of production, it was because much of our time went into establishing perennial species. In addition to the annuals listed above, we also planted and cared for: chestnuts, paw paws, asparagus, plums, peaches, hazelnuts, blueberries, blackberries, and figs.
And wow, what one year can do:
Hazelnuts! Left is spring 2022 , right is fall 2022. This plant is part of a hedgerow that I’ve started and will continue to expand along the farm’s western edge. Eventually, these and other plants will not only produce food, but also blunt the winter winds that come from the west across the wide-open corn/soy/barley/wheat field that we border. This growth is despite a near-complete defoliation in July from Japanese beetles.
Paw paws! Left is spring, right is fall. Paw paws are North America’s largest native fruit and though relatively rare, have had a bit of a revival over the past decade. Being understory trees, I’m growing them to the east of a tree-line in one of my fields. This allows them mostly full sun but also protection by the mature trees to their west. As the paw paws age, I will continually thin, but never fully remove, the tree line.
Chestnuts! Left is spring, right is fall. They were once one of the keystone species of North America, until the chestnut blight led to one of the largest known ecocides. The ones I planted this year are full Chinese chestnuts (meaning blight resistant). I hope to expand into Chinese-American hybrids next year. While their vertical growth hasn’t been stellar (probably from the Great Chestnut Incident of 2022, a story for another time), their trunks have more than doubled in thickness.
Plums! Left is spring, right is fall. While this is a Japanese red plum (so not native), my wife and I wanted some plums and they’re what the nursery had. July’s wave of Japanese beetles also loved this plant, though it fared better than the hazelnuts, probably because they are both Japanese, meaning the plant has some defense mechanisms against those specific beetles.
Methods
Chemical Use
In 2022, we used zero fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. Yes, zero.
We did selectively treat with certain elemental compounds, all three of which are acceptable in organic agriculture. Though no blueberries or apples were harvested this year, in order to be transparent, I included chemicals used on them.
Compost
In 2022, we made several tons of compost. Maybe ~6-8 yards, in mulch terms.
By combining wood chips (free from a local tree removal company), yard waste and grass clippings (free from the yard), shredded paper, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and eggshells (free from the house) with horse manure (free from a neighbor) and/or cow and chicken manure (free from another neighbor) into big piles, we created a breeding ground for organisms that decompose organic material, eventually creating a rich, black, and nutrient-dense hummus that will be used as ‘fertilizer’ for the various garden beds, trees, and fields.
Done properly, the piles heat up, speeding up decomposition even more and sterilizing the manure. The highest temperate I recorded was 156F (below). It would take ~6 weeks for my piles to cool down to ambient, then I would flip them, which would aerate the pile and start the heating process again.
Fossil Fuel Use
In 2022, we used ~20 gallons of diesel fuel. This was entirely for the tractor and mainly for mowing the fields, but also for flipping the largest compost piles, hauling manure from the neighbors, and moving large and/or heavy objects.
Eventually, once we have beef cattle, I hope I can reduced the mowing ~50-75%, thereby reducing my fossil fuel use.
Electricity Use
We only have the central meter, so it is impossible to break out the farm’s usage from the house, but I would say that is was de minimis.
This is because:
I always worked between sunrise and sunset.
No cattle yet means exponentially less well pump use.
One of the first thing I did was to turn off, at the circuit breaker, all external lights, even dusk-to-dawn lights and motion-activated lights. In addition to saving energy, this reduces light pollution.
Water Use
Again, impossible to measure. While I will definitely used some well water, it was much less than I was expecting. This is partly because Maryland had decent and spread-out rainfall this year, we don’t have cattle yet, and I mulched extremely heavy with woodchips, mowed grass, or straw, but also because all the various outbuildings allowed me to construct (extremely primitive) rainwater capture systems. I was actually able to get through both August and September with only natural and captured rainfall.
Soil
Our farm has three fields. I call them: the barn field, the upper field, and the creek field. I had the soil tested in all three.
The upper field: probably the most interesting field, because while it has the most balanced nutrition, it also has the lowest soil organic matter (2.8%). This is because it has been in standard industrial agriculture production for many years. While the farmer is keeping the nutrition balanced (artificially), the combination of monocrops and soil disturbance results is the soil slowly losing carbon.
This year, I allowed the farmer to continue to crop it because 1) I had enough to handle already, 2) he asked in February when the Ukraine war had just started and food shortages were a concern, and 3) I wanted to start our relationship out on a good foot as he is my neighbor.
After he harvested his corn, it looked like this. A compacted, hardpan, grayish-brown dirt. One of my main goals over the next decade is to begin regenerating this field. I started this fall by testing out a mix of crimson clover, field peas, winter rye, and hairy vetch as a cover crop.
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The barn field: this field was pasture for the previous owner and also next to fields with standard industrial production. I’m not sure how I’m going to fix it’s potassium excess and boron deficiency, but at least it’s slightly higher in soil organic matter (3.5%). It is covered with good grass with a few natural hickory trees. This is where I planted all the chestnuts.
The creek field: this field is the crown jewel of the farm. With it’s soil organic matter coming in at 6.7%, it is a rich, black hummus covered in thick, tall grass. It also has a creek running though it. Its nutrition is balanced except for an iron excess. This is where I planted the paw paws.
Goals
Our goals for 2023:
Add additional chestnut, paw paw, hazelnut, and plum trees.
Add additional asparagus crowns.
Start persimmon, black locust, pecan, and tulip poplar trees.
Expand the western hedge row.
Improve the rainwater capture system with IBC tanks and proper piping.
Repair the springhouse into a chicken coop.
Acquire chickens and produce our first eggs.
Work with FSA on potential CREP and NRCS on potential EQIP projects.
Expand the built composting system (some are just free-standing piles).
Work with a local beekeeper to produce our first honey (in-progress!)
Thanks for reading Blue Glade Farm’s first annual report! This year was certainly an adventure and I can’t wait to see our continued growth year after year. If you’re ever in Maryland, please stop by and say hello.
Pretty awesome Pat. Love the pictures! I was inspired by your composting and for my company’s first Innovation Contest (with goals of implementing new ideas to reduce cost, create value and sustainable growth toward the company’s mission to “create a future where everyone has access to zero-carbon affordable energy”) I submitted the idea of composting on our company’s construction sites across the US and Canada. With 28 submissions to the contest, the idea won an honerable mention and won me a new Carhartt hoodie :) They tell me they have passed along the idea to our sites and I’m hopeful they will begin implementing soon!