Our Oklahoma permaculture site!
Produce sold primarily through
pre-order and pickup, or free delivery within reason in Ottawa or Delaware counties, Oklahoma. Some surplus is also sold at
Quapaw Food Hub or area farmers markets
For weekly or so updates, visit our Facebook page.
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Our Farming Practices
On our way to USDA Organic
It's such a small farm we can use the term Organic but aren't filed with USDA. Maybe soon. We are registered with the Oklahoma Organic program
NO chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Zero. Or inputs like mulch, animal bedding, or potting soil that have been treated with them. We grow plants with healthy soil, composts, cove crops, and in a diverse ecosystem.
We live in the garden, our daughter plays in it barefoot and eats food raw off plants, and we are your neighbors. Using poisons or abrasive materials is antithetical to our, and your, quality of life. Our practices keep our collective air and water clean.
All our purchases and practices might take more time or money than the other guy, but only because our industrialized agriculture system benefits corporations over people and land. If the **** hits the fan, we’ll be able to grow food for you much easier than someone dependent on obsolete chemicals and practices. That’s one big reason why your support is important.
NO chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Zero. Or inputs like mulch, animal bedding, or potting soil that have been treated with them. We grow plants with healthy soil, composts, cove crops, and in a diverse ecosystem.
Water & Soil Stewardship:
When it rains it pours! Farming practices that are thoughtless easily cause erosion and pollution. Rainwater is an amazing resource which shouldn’t be wasted.
Planting on contour is like appreciating the body of the land and enhancing it, rather than wishing it were different. We measure the slope and then hand-form our beds to match it. This assures that water during heavy rains finds a resting place within our garden. Erosion is decreased and water soaks in where plant roots can use it. Our gardens take both drought and floods like champs.
In other words, come 2017, we just work our 2016 beds with hand tools. This allows the soil food web to remain viable and healthy. Our seeds and plants join an established ecosystem rather than eking their way through the harsh desert alone.
We protect the billions of creatures living within each foot of soil. We interplant crops so they can swap nutrients and minerals with each other. We encourage fungi, which give nutrients to plants in exchange for carbohydrates. We keep our soils covered either with mulch or cover crops. Mostly, we do extensive composting, using our farm and kitchen wastes. If you live close enough we’ll pick up your kitchen wastes too!
Planting on contour is like appreciating the body of the land and enhancing it, rather than wishing it were different. We measure the slope and then hand-form our beds to match it. This assures that water during heavy rains finds a resting place within our garden. Erosion is decreased and water soaks in where plant roots can use it. Our gardens take both drought and floods like champs.
Ecosystem Diversity
We call our gardens ‘cultivated ecologies’
Some beds have five different crops at one time, not to mention wildflowers and herbs! We aim to have ‘understory’ plants that cover the soil, ‘overstory’ plants which grow taller, plants on the edge of the bed to keep the soil in place, and some kind of nitrogen-fixing plants that provide fertilizing nitrogen to the others. This diversity yields lots of food from small spaces, harbors different beneficial critters above and below the soil, and also confuses would-be pests.
Strawberries, asparagus, herbs, flowers, rhubarb, horseradish, you name it! Growing perennials mixed, or alongside, annual crops means that their rootzone is an oasis for soil critters when the soils for annuals are disturbed. This means a faster recovery time for the soil food web when we transition crops in our garden beds. Also,longer rooted perennials reach deep into the earth to find moisture and nutrients and through transpiration and root/leaf fall, share it with other plants.
And of course we have woody habitat areas and native plants! We grow intensively so that more land is left to the birds, butterflies, and other creatures who belong here. In 2017 we plan to expand these wild areas immensely, as well as our food forest area which mimics the structure of wild foods.
Some beds have five different crops at one time, not to mention wildflowers and herbs! We aim to have ‘understory’ plants that cover the soil, ‘overstory’ plants which grow taller, plants on the edge of the bed to keep the soil in place, and some kind of nitrogen-fixing plants that provide fertilizing nitrogen to the others. This diversity yields lots of food from small spaces, harbors different beneficial critters above and below the soil, and also confuses would-be pests.
Life on our Cultivated Ecology
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall
Predator & Prey