Turning New Ground

by Dennis Fisher and Joe Fisher

 

As we've done for the past four years, Fisher Farm packed up and moved to Common Ground for three days this fall. It was a good fair for us, our best ever, in spite of a slow and wet start. Our annual gathering of the clans is a high point in the farming year, even more so because we can share it with so many people who, sadly, don't get to farm for a living.

One thing that adds to the enjoyment of the fair is the fairground itself. Four years ago Mofga's Common Ground site was a burned out farm with sand soil and a sparse covering of weeds. Now, young trees are flourishing, flowers bloom everywhere, farm buildings rise, and fair goers march in blessed contentedness from one fascinating destination to the next. One gets the sense, looking around our temporary home, that small farming in Maine is a going concern.

The purpose of Mofga and Common Ground, as much as anything, is to serve as a year round resource for small farmers and gardeners. The success of the fair is obvious. But what about this other mission? I can only speak from experience about how much influence the existence of this site has had on my daily farming practices.

Several years ago I happened to be on hand when Jack Kertesz and Mark Fulford were in the first stages of work on Mofga's demonstration orchard. Those of you who have attended the fair over the past few years have probably seen the result: Jack's magnificent SARE grant garden beds planted between the rows of young fruit trees. But at the time it had just been tilled into an acre or so of blowy orange dust by a mule team.

We were going to plant a cover crop of winter wheat, which would be harvested the following year. This would protect the soil and also result in some loaves of bread somewhere in the future. We could have hooked a grain drill or spinner to the tractor and seeded that way, but instead we resorted to an old technology, the broadcast seeder. This device is a bag full of grain with a shoulder strap, and a little plastic spinner on the bottom with a hand crank. The idea was to walk over the field in lines about fifteen feet apart, turning the crank while grain flies in a cloud around you.

The soil was deep and power dry and light as powder. We made our traverses with an arched back, high stepping run, sending up clouds of orange dust. The grain went everywhere; in our shoes, in our pockets, in our mouths, and on the ground. Afterward we rolled the field with a homemade roller to press down the grains and firm the seedbed.

So this fall, when I needed to seed an acre of newly turned sod to rye, I had already had some experience to fall back on. For me, an acre is a lot of ground. I usually sow cover crop by hand broadcasting and use a rake to cover the seed. This works well on small plots, but is too time consuming for big plantings. By now I had my own seeder, so sowing the grain only took twenty minutes or so.

I could have just left the seed exposed on the surface, and maybe sown extra to allow for poorer germination. The problem is the flock of wild turkeys that live in my field. They love grain above all things. Forty mature turkeys coming in a long black line is a sight to strike fear in the heart of any farmer. So the grain had to be protected somehow, at the very least by pressing the seed into the rough soil.

The answer was a technique I learned that same day at Common Ground. Jack made a roller out of some oversized pieces of PVC pipe, one big one to act as a roller and a small one inside it as a bearing. A rope went through both pipes to haul it with. In the deep soft soil the thing slewed back and forth like a pendulum but it did the job.

I had some big pipe cutoffs under the barn and I put together a roller in about five minutes. It weighs fifty or sixty pounds and for being so quickly and cheaply made it works well. We eventually worked out a technique where one person would haul the roller across the field, with another following behind. At the field's edge, the roller was flipped lengthwise by the second person for the next parallel pass. We seeded and rolled an acre in about an hour and a half, which wouldn't be bad time for a small tractor, counting trips to the implement yard to switch tools.

We did all of this yesterday. Today it is raining, swelling the grain for germination. Soon we will have rye, and next year, vegetables and flowers.

 

The Belfast Farmers'Market will be open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 9-1, at Reny's Plaza until October 28. Look for us indoors at the Belfast Agway, Saturdays 10-1 through Christmas.