Can You Certify a Brand New Farm As Organic?

0:00Hey nerds, Farmer Jesse here. Welcome to Gross Daily or Daily Dose of Ecological Farming. In sight today, we are going to revisit episode one of this show and talk a little bit about what I've learned in the two years of doing it every day. And we got one last theme song and it's a goody submitted to us by Leah of Black Rattish Farm created by Leah Spouse. So let's do it. Who grows there? Who grows there? Who grows there? We'll What grows there? Let's do it. Alright, that was fun. Welcome in everyone and happy birthday show. You are 2 years old. This is the age where you start saying no all the time and you are constantly getting into stuff, climbing on the furniture, running, all that stuff.

1:01But also talking way more and really developing that vocabulary is going to be super fun. So anyway, like I said at the top, I am going to talk a bit about what this show has taught me over the last 2 years and what I hope for over the next 2 years provided I survived the intense amount of labor involved. So first off, without question, this is the hardest thing I have ever done. Day in and day out, it is a constant mental and physical challenge to make this show happen in a way that I could have never predicted when I started it. But like all things, I have grown used to the 250 AM wake up calls and the early lights out. I have gotten better at fast research, writing, planning, staying ahead. I think it is really important in life to do hard things. This is, can I rant about AI for a second randomly? I think so because this is kind of just how the show rolls. But yes, this is one of the reasons I find AI so frustrating. It is taking the hard out of so many things. Some things like data organization, I get. Our volunteer soccer league registrar for instance, used Claude to help make schedules this past year and I don't begrudge that. He doesn't get paid for this job and it is a huge amount of labor.

2:05However, for so many other things and in so many other ways, AI is just like taking our skill development. It is taking the hard things away like the hard things aren't the good things. Like the challenges aren't what make us stronger or more interesting or more educated or more human. Life is about the journey, not the destination, right? I don't do puzzles because I like the solution. I do puzzles because I enjoy the challenge of doing the actual puzzle. Why would I leave the fun part to the machines? And that's all life is. Farming is, this show is a constant rally of puzzles and challenges. I've learned a lot about farming through this show, through your questions, through your comments, through my own experiments, so that I have insight to share with you. The Milpa Patch is a really good example. I learned a lot these last two years experimenting with that. Chia is another good one. I got a question from Finding Ground Farm about Chia and the research just intrigued me. Now I think that will be a staple cover crop for us going forward that I will talk more about next week. And one I would probably have never bothered with without this show. I've become increasingly interested in ecology over the last two years, just stumbling upon different ways in which people have used it all over the world and repairing their lands

3:06and all the research around how it helps farms and gardens that I've just come across. And that has been a huge inspiration. I have considered splitting into another person and getting a degree, I think this is how this works. I would like to agree in ecological restoration because I'd like to engage with it more and on a bigger scale. The splitting into another person part is going to be a little bit tough admittedly. I mean, would we get shared custody of the kids? Would I even want to hang out with another me? How accurate was multiplicity? So anyway, I just want to say I appreciate all of you how much you challenge me, how much you challenge yourself. So, hopefully I'm not even vaguely perfect to this show. Is not even vaguely perfect. Mike is vaguely perfect because he makes a really mean chicken noodle soup. But otherwise, this show is as weird and human to produce as it probably is weird and human to watch. But we hope you enjoy it. What we're going to do today is revisit episode one of the show all the way back in 2024 and you're going to be like, who was this child that hosted the show? It was me. So, I hope you enjoy. I hope you enjoyed the last two years. And here is me. Believe it or not, kicking the show off with a hurricane.

4:07That's true, actually. Literally. Enjoy. Hey nerds, Farmer Jesse here. Welcome to the first ever episode of Growers Daily. It is Monday, September 30th, 2024. And today we are going to talk about certifying a farm organically in the first year, whether or not it's possible. We're going to describe what happens when you just stop pruning tunnel tomatoes. But first, we're going to talk about Hurricane Huyne. So let's do it. All right. So it was a rough weekend in the Southern United States as Hurricane Huyne dumped massive amounts of rain and wind on areas that don't normally get much in the way of hurricane damage like Western North Carolina, Kentucky, East Tennessee, and Georgia. Places like Asheville, North Carolina are said to have received over 13 inches of rain this weekend with surrounding areas claiming even more. That's a catastrophic amount of rain.

5:08Of course, it had some devastating effects not just on the cities, but also the farmers. This storm was bad enough that it left thousands in Kentucky in my state. Without power this weekend, there was some flooding and some wind damage. And again, that's Kentucky. We are a firm eight hour drive from the nearest coast. If that helps illustrate how big this hurricane was. Now tomorrow, I plan to dedicate part of that episode to what the show is actually going to be. One thing I want from this show is to report on events like this often in real time. Maybe even get some here from some of the farmers in the middle of these events about not only what is happening, but how they are feeling about it. So because of Hurricane hit, I literally bumped describing what this show actually is to tomorrow just so that I could cover Hurricane Huyne a little bit. Now that's dedication or stupidity. I don't know. I just felt like I needed to get to this story quickly because reporting on this stuff or at least discussing it is part of what this show will be. And it's a story I think eyes and ears should be on because it's affecting a lot of people

6:11and a lot of people may need some help. I want current events that affect farmers to be a big part of this show. I want this to be the type of show that would have been helpful during COVID, the type of show that will be helpful during wildfires and floods and earthquakes and droughts. What does helpful look like? Well, feel free to let me know what you think it looks like. But to me, I guess helpful looks like perspective. Like what is it actually like to be in one of these events like a Hurricane Huyne? What should I, as a farmer, know about this particular kind of disaster? What is it like to survive it? What systems helped? What systems hurt or even failed? What could we do as farmers to fortify our farms against catastrophe so that we are safe and so that we can serve our communities at intense times of need where food can suddenly become scarce as it has for many in the flooded areas? Because storms don't hurt the farm that much, but knock out the power or make the roads to people inaccessible or less accessible. How do we prepare ourselves for that? Especially in a situation like fires where the effects could last for months.

7:14But then sometimes they do hurt the farm. We are in the weather management business for better or worse. But how do we manage and think about catastrophic weather? Now I've been through a few bad storms the last 15 years. I have been through 70 mile per hour wind gusts that absolutely flattened the caterpillar tunnel. I have housed baby pigs through three polar vortices. It was very cute, which you can, if you're watching this on YouTube, there's a couple pictures there. The temperatures during those polar vortices, which I guess is how you'd say it went from the mid 50s or around 10 degrees Celsius down to negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit, which I think is around negative 26 degrees Celsius overnight. I've also been through droughts, weeks of smoky weather from the Canadian fires last year. The worst weather experience I've had though far and away was the 2010 Nashville flooding. We weren't in Nashville. We were outside of Nashville, but we got a lot of that same rain. It was May. I was a print-as-ing at a farm north of Nashville called Bugtussel Farm.

8:14Rain started one day and didn't stop for like two days. I don't have the photos anymore from that, but you can still see the photos of Nashville to give you an idea of the extent of those floods. Many farms in the area lost a lot of top soil and a lot of crops. Because our gardens were up on the ridge top, we did not see much damage in the fields, and I definitely learned the value of not farming in a floodplain that year, for sure. Often the bottoms are where the best soil is because, well, that's where floods deposit a lot of rich silt. But obviously, they come with a lot of risks. Now with full respect and recognition that for the fact that not everyone gets a choice and where you put your gardens, when people ask me where to put their gardens, I always make it a point to tell them to avoid floodplains for any sort of annual production because of that experience, or really much of anything that could potentially get caught down there in the floodplain during a flood. That year, me and the other apprentices were staying in a sort of renovated barn at the bottom of a hill next to a creek.

9:15And by the middle of the night, water was several inches deep in my room in the barn. And it's wild when you're watching water slowly rise because it doesn't immediately feel scary, at least for me, it didn't, because it didn't rise very quickly. The creek that was typically like a trickle of water, if anything, slowly started to grow. And then it crested the banks, but even after the water was that high and higher, it didn't yet feel like a big deal. But it just kept creeping up and up and it was actually after the rain had stopped, that the water started to rise the most, as the upstream sources dumped their water into our area and the downstream sources started to back up. At its peak, I think it came within a foot of flooding the cabin where our mentors lived, but it took hours and hours to get to that point. But when I saw how slow it moved, I just consistently talked myself out of it being a problem. It would go to one point and then I would think, okay, I can't get much higher than that, right? So I was like, okay, am I in real danger here? Reality didn't hit hard or fast for me.

10:16It was a slow trickle until it slapped me in the face. As I often say of this experience, denial is not just a river in Egypt, it can be a river just about anywhere. Ultimately, the water receded in the morning after trapping me in the upstairs of the barn where we stayed overnight. We made it through and I started to take potential situations a lot more seriously because of that flood. The next day, the creek was so high we were floating on it and kayaks through the barn where I lived and out over the field where we were growing some flowers just for fun, retrieving various tools and buckets that were floating down the stream. It is wild to float above a place that just a couple days ago you were walking through. It's terrifying to know that people were in R right now doing that over their production areas and it's even more heartbreaking knowing some folks are doing that this week over their homes. What I think I took from that experience and what I would hope sharing events like these and current events will help do is that we cannot make assumptions with nature. It's easy to get comfortable with the weather.

11:18I know because it happens to me every single day, I forget that the forces of nature are strong, unsympathetic and temperamental. Our relationship to the weather makes me think about our relationship to gravity. What I mean is that we forget this incredibly powerful force exists even though we are in a constant battle with it every single day. Mostly we get along with gravity but should we make one wrong step, gravity will sling us to the ground at 32 feet per second per second. That's why we pick up obstacles off the ground so that we don't trip. That's why we watch our step and we don't play on the stairs as I am constantly reminding my children with the weather like gravity. It's important to train ourselves to manage it and be prepared for it and be conscious of it. We have to be respectful of the weather and design our farms around the possibilities that exist in our regions, not just the typical patterns, being outliers like these. Sure, you may never have to deal with a fire or a flood or a hurricane or a derache or whatever. But chances are you will have to deal with something at some point and you may as well take a little stress off your shoulders and have that drainage already in there and ready to

12:22go. The gardens have to be well located in a simple action plan put in place. Of course, there are always going to exist just unexpected and catastrophic disasters like what we're seeing in Asheville and surrounding areas that are so devastating as to almost be inconceivable for any sort of preparation. My heart just absolutely breaks for the people going through those. As much as I hope this show helps farmers gain ideas for how to prepare their farms for the future, I also hope it helps us to be supportive of those going through the catastrophe and let those folks going through it to know that we are thinking of them and getting inspired through this podcast to support them. Of course, who knows what environmental challenges we will face going forward, but you can expect I will probably talk about them here. I genuinely hope everyone listening made it through that storm safely. You can feel free to hit us up at the forum at noteworth.com or Instagram or YouTube with your stories and thoughts. There are lots of go-fundme's out there for farmers in the area. Be on the lookout to support those.

13:23I will try to use this platform to disseminate some of those stories and any lessons folks want to share. Obviously, there is no easy way to segue out of a disaster, but we'll take a quick break and get a question from one of our Patreon members when we return. Much love to everyone going through it. BRB Today's episode is brought to you by BCS America. If you're practicing no-till or low-till farming, you know that heavy equipment is often the enemy of your soil structure. That's where BCS two-wheeled tractors come in. Built for small farms, market gardens and regenerative growers, BCS tractors give you the power to manage beds efficiently without unnecessary compaction. For the low and no-till grower, there are two attachments that change the game. The BCS power hero stirs only the top inch or two of soil to incorporate soil amendments and create a perfect seedbed without soil inversion or pulling up weed seeds. And when it's time to terminate cover crops, that flail mower shreds organic matter into a beautiful nutrient-rich mulch right on top of the bed. To find your local dealer and see the full lineup of attachments designed for the way

14:24you farm, head to BCSAmerica.com. That's BCSAmerica.com. Today's episode is also brought to you by Rimmel Greenhouses. Whether you're growing tomatoes for market, flowers in the spring are vegetables for your family, growing in a high tunnel protected from the weather provides the right environment for harvest you can count on. Rimmel Greenhouses are strong, durable and easy to assemble, offering the quality you need to grow productively year round. The team of experts at Rimmel Greenhouse Systems will be your trusted partners to ensure you get exceptional value from your greenhouse or high tunnel investment. Visit Rimmel.com today to get growing. Alright, back to the show. Okay, so like I said, I'm going to talk tomorrow a bit more about what this show is actually going to be, but with just about every show I plan to tackle your farming questions as best I can, with priority given to Patreon members at patreon.com slash no-till growers, but that doesn't mean I won't get to your YouTube or Instagram questions. It just means I will definitely get to the Patreon questions. Today's question comes from Rob and they ask, how are you able to change farms on the

15:25fly and maintain organic certification? This is a great question. Because like many areas of organic certification, it's not always super clear and you hear things like how it takes three years to certify a farm and all that, but that's not strictly true. Speaking solely from my experience with my specific certifier who is the KDA Kentucky Department of Agriculture, with emphasis on the fact that I do not know about other certifiers requirements, here's how one would at least theoretically certify a plot of land in the first year. And I do speak from experience here because we now have certified our farm the first year on a new property two different times and I too was surprised it was possible. So there are two important things to consider. First and perhaps most obvious, the previous landowner or land user cannot have used chemicals on the production area. If they use them on the fence row or the driveway, that's actually fine as long as there's a buffer between that area and your production area.

16:26Like technically I could certify one field and spray the bejesus out of another as long as they are separated by a buffer zone and the equipment is clean between uses and they do not use the same harvest equipment, et cetera. One thing that helps with this is to recognize that what you're certifying is not an entire farm, but a piece of land on that farm. Simply put, the previous landowner cannot have used prohibited substances like chemical fertilizers, pesticides, et cetera, in the desired production area for the last three years. So that's the first requirement. And then the second requirement for certifying a farm in the first year is that you have to get that previous landowner to sign what's called a previous land use affidavit, sometimes called a prior land used affidavit. Basically a document that says, I promise I did not use any prohibited substances on the land intended for crop production under penalty of law. Or literally it says, I, Jesse Prince of Dad jokes, affirm that the parcels or parcels of land described below were farmed and or ranched by me or were under my management and control

17:26during the following dates, yada yada, and put the dates. And the affidavit goes on to say during the previous 36 months, I affirm that to the best of my knowledge, there were no herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fungicide treated seed, inoculated seeds, synthetic fertilizers, or other prohibited materials applied to this land. Basically I didn't use anything. So that previous landowner and or user would sign that and then you would fill out your organic application and do your audit and at least in theory, tada, you're certified in year one. Now I will say it is not clear to me that a certifier has to take this document and accept it. I kind of don't think they do. If the land was farmed for veggies and the previous landowner was like, oh yeah, no inputs totally. The certifier may do one of those straight mouth emojis and then turn you down. A yard or a field that was just grazed is not going to put up as many red flags as land that was far actively farmed unless the previous landowner has really good records or were themselves certified organic. Now could you run into a situation where someone didn't use any chemicals but is unwilling

18:30to sign said affidavit? Certainly a possibility and obviously you can't force anyone to sign something they don't want to. If that's the case though or if there were prohibited substances used, you would start on the three year transition process. I would love to hear from certifiers or other organic farmers on what their experience has been with these. We've done it twice now and both times the people selling us the property were more than happy to oblige because they were happy to be selling their property and were like, yeah, we'll sign whatever you need to make that happen. And they're not likely to lie because it is a legally binding affidavit. Let's say they don't sign or they did use chemicals within the last three years while transitioning to organic is not such a bad thing. I mean, it could be a good thing. It could be at least a good angle from which to advertise. From a marketing standpoint, you could have three years of advertising or farm as cleaning up a piece of land and transitioning it away from chemicals into organic food. I feel like you could get pretty creative with the marketing in terms of saying something like clean food, clean land or growing food and saving soil or no spray, healthy produce,

19:34saving the soil. Honestly, the words no spray are pretty powerful in the farmers market world. Anyway, I don't know, but you could have a lot of fun with it. Soccer genius, you'll hunt croif once said that every disadvantage has its advantage. So there's your first soccer reference of many to come, I'm sure. But I think that's applicable sometimes. Something that seems like a negative thing can just as easily be turned into a positive thing. Alright, it's Monday. I like alliteration. So, next up, after the break, you're messy Monday. Today's episode is brought to you by Good Agriculture. If the season is picking up and the pile of receipts is starting to grow, you're not alone. Good Agriculture handles farm bookkeeping so you can stay ahead of the mess before it piles up. They keep your books organized each month, help you understand what's coming in and what's going out and show you where your farm stands so you can make better business decisions throughout the season. If you're behind, it'll help get everything caught up. They also help farmers find funding and stay ahead of grant deadlines. You run the farm, they help the business. Learn more at goodagriculture.com slash info. That's goodagriculture.com slash info.

20:35Alright, back to the show. Alright, so on Mondays, I'll offer a big farming mistake I made. Well until I run out of mistakes I've made farming. I'm just kidding, that's not actually a thing. Anyway, so yeah, Mondays will be the time to reflect on mistakes I've made or things I've done that have not gone to plan. In fact, this idea came from a Patreon member, so shout out to Carol Linger, who said they love the episodes we've done about failed experiments. Said those are very helpful and insightful and that maybe I can talk more in detail about challenges and failures. No problem, Carol. Plenty of fodder there. So today for your messy Monday, I want to talk about how I completely stopped pruning our high tunnel tomatoes in July of this summer and then what happened. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see what this looks like and I'll also share a photo to the NoTill growers Instagram feed. But basically, if you were to walk into my tunnel right now, you would pretty much run straight into a tomato plant. From the outside, you can see tomato plants pushing against the tunnel plastic.

21:35It's a bit of a jungle. What happened is that I ran out of time and energy in the middle of the summer to keep up with, well, most things. Hannah and I decided to try and go at alone this season without an employee because you know that was a good idea, which to be fair, it made sense in the moment and I will no doubt talk about that at some point soon. And anyway, it turns out that I'm not 27 anymore, which first weird, but it was a brutal summer. In terms of triage, I was just like, I can't keep up with pruning these tomatoes anymore. Let's just let them go and see what happens. And here's what I learned through that experience. Although harvest is a much bigger pain and disease is certainly a concern and the plants are not exactly mining the space that I originally designated for them. They have continued to produce the entire latter half of the season. The yield is down slightly from the summer, but that's pretty typical because so too is the sunlight down and I don't have good enough data to compare these harvest to last year's harvest, which my poor data is a messy Monday topic on its own for the future.

22:37So although I wouldn't recommend not pruning as a strategy, I will say that if you need to focus on getting your fall garden established and need to eliminate something from your to-do list in order to make that happen, going with a little jungle pruning in your tunnel may be a possibility. I basically just cut the plants back and keep them out of my way, sort of think bushwhacking through a dense jungle. And then I harvest. If you do not have a strong, well-supported tunnel, these plants are also significantly heavier this way, so the weight could become an issue. And I've only done this for cherries. So who knows what would happen with slicers. I don't think I will do this again on purpose, but I know that if I'm all alone or just really behind, it's at least an option. So this is not a recommendation, more of a last resort, survival sort of tactic. It's similar to what happens in the fields, I guess, because I don't prune those tomatoes that I just put out in the fields, but the field tomatoes don't grow nearly as long or as tall, so it rarely is an issue. Anyway, I think that's it for Growers Daily today.

23:39If you want to support and grow this little seed of a show, join us over at patreon.com slash no till growers, I will shout out every new Patreon member who signs up in the month of October and continue on with my normal Patreon shoutouts and a moment. A couple other ways to support this show is to simply share it with friends. Let people know you're pumped about it or completely appalled or however you feel, no presses bad press, right? Also you can snag a copy of the Living Swole Handbook over at no till growers dot com or a hat, hats. You're watching on YouTube, you can see the ones behind me or, excitingly, Dan Breesbaw, host of the seed farmer podcast is coming out with a new book called the seed farmer next month and you can pre-order it through no till growers dot com to support our work. I'll have Dan on here soon to chat about seeds and the book and all those things because honestly I will take any and all excuse to chat with Dan and I will soon need the fodder. I'm sure. Each shout out to Willie Breeding for the theme music you can listen to his tunes on Spotify. He'll love that I said that and you should because they're amazing.

24:41With that in mind, maybe we should feature some farmer music on here from time to time. I think that would be pretty cool. Maybe those transitions between segments could be farmers and not just whatever I find on epidemic sound where we get our music. I'm not sure how to do that exactly at this moment but that would be rad. In fact, any ideas or questions or concerns or listener feedback or soccer facts, let me know. The ideal way to do that is through patreon.com slash no till growers at the forum at no till growers dot com through our Instagram at no till growers. But also if you're watching this here on YouTube, there's a comment section I hear. Living it up with something fun like feedback or ideas. Otherwise much love to our friends going through the floods and listeners be on the look out for ways to support them. I will see you all back here tomorrow bright and after noon. All right, I hope you enjoyed this anniversary episode.

25:42I hope this show has been fun for you for the last two years and that it will continue to be fun for the next two. It is not always a guarantee to be honest, but you can help keep it going by kicking in a little bit because no till growers is a nonprofit 501c3. So those donations are tax deductible and greatly appreciated simultaneously. Please make sure to like and subscribe and or follow wherever you're getting this podcast. That's a super easy way to help us out as well. Enormous thank you to all of our show sponsors. And if you'd ever like to sponsor this show, you can reach out to farmer Michelle at no till worse dot com. Big thank you to Michelle. Big thank you to the no till growers board of directors, huge shouts to Willie breeding for the theme music Mike Hilbert for the production, helping editing and my wife Hannah for absolutely everything in the world. Also shout out to epidemic sound for the background music that you can hear. Can you tell in that first episode that I edited it and not Mike? I think that's probably evident. Anyway, pick up a hat or copy of my book, the living soul handbook at no till growers dot com to support this work. Big big thank you to everyone over at patreon.com slash no till growers where at a certain level or if you just bump up from one level to another or you sign up in the last day of September,

26:47you get a shout out on the show. So big shout outs today to Tanner our new earthworm. Thanks Tanner. As you will remember from this week's story, K is going into labor. The midwife is on her way. Case partner John is pinned beneath the cherry tree that he was cutting up for firewood in the woods. And so that is how this birth story is going to start after the first contraction subside K steps to the door of the cabin and listens for the chainsaw. Nothing she doesn't hear it. So she yells out John, I think it's starting. I think I'm going into labor and John hears this, but there is nothing he can do. He can't reach a saw to cut himself loose. He's fully stuck. So he calls back to K and she hears him. I'm stuck. She also hears the first of many thunder claps. But that is for tomorrow. Happy anniversary show everyone. Thank you for watching for both years so far. We will start year three tomorrow. That sounds like a good plan. Thanks for watching and or listening. We'll see you then. Bye.