Distributing the risk, responsibilities, and knowledge-intensive labor among partners is a yet-to-be-thoroughly-tested strategy for overcoming some of the land access challenges facing farmers in the San Juan Island region.Agroecology rests upon an essential foundation of building healthy soil, through ecological cultivation of plants, insects, and food webs governed by the “Law of Return” creating a rich network of life on the farm. On Lopez, land clearing for farming, homesteading, and haying posed a threat to the island’s biological and pedologic resource base starting in the late 19th century with the arrival of European-Americans. Today, there is growing attention around restoring and revitalizing soils, forestland, and ecosystem services. Farms such as Midnight’s Farm are managing land for three purposes: healthy food production, economic viability, and soil carbon storage . Other farms are following suit, seeking to build soil and revitalize land that has been degraded especially from repeated haying. The soils on the island vary across short distances, from sandy and well-drained hilltops to heavy clay and moisture-retaining wetlands. The island geology is mostly rock, with a thin soil layer, not considered ideal for farming activities. In the words of one farmer, “we don’t have much rich farmland for row crops on Lopez, so most of us are in a constant dance to balance income-producing crops with inputs to improve the soil and, therefore, the harvest” . Farmers and ranchers are involved in a suite of soil-building practices out of necessity for maintaining productive small-scale operations year after year. These practices include compost production and application, cover cropping,vertical grow rack system bio-char production and co-composting, crop rotations, intercropping , managed rotational grazing, minimal- or no-till cultivation, and combinations of perennial and annual plantings with animals to create a diverse ecological farming system that takes less than it gives back to the ultimate life-source: the soil.
Farmers receive support, training, and information from researchers at WSU SJC Extension, SJICD, and through annual farmer to farmer workshops. Several farmers collaborated in 2015 to host a visit from the Soil Carbon Coalition’s Peter Donovan in order to sample local soils as a baseline and collect additional samples in later years to measure carbon storage, an important component of soil health. WSU researchers offer regular guidance and workshops around crop rotations and pasture management to improve island soils. Recently, WSU partnered with local farmers and the local bakery to host a Field Day on small scale grain production, part of a soil-building rotation that can enhance fertility in concert with legumes and other crops. Other WSU researchers collaborated on a successfully funded Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant proposal with five local producers to explore the use of bio-char co-composted with cattle bedding and other woody biomass materials as a soil amendment, which will be applied in experimental trial plots beginning in summer 2020 . The SJICD received a WA State Department of Ecology grant to purchase a no-till seed drill that is shared among islands, and recently used in a sequence of liming and seeding Lopez pastures with diverse seed mixes to restore grassland soil health. While the support and education provided by local agriculture and conservation organizations is essential, there is a constant need for further financial resources to extend and improve educational initiatives and technology pilots.Related to efforts of building healthy soil through crop rotations and appropriate farming decisions, farmers on Lopez are taking steps to provide their own inputs for crop production that do not need to be imported or purchased from off island.At a Department of Ecology-approved facility, the farm produces compost from forest and agricultural debris dropped off from across the island, grinding, composting, and screening materials in an aerated static pile system to create a finished product that is widely applied to local croplands.
Manure and bedding material from the farm’s cattle, pigs, and chickens are valuable feed stocks to the composting process as well. Midnight’s produces over 600 yards of compost annually, which is all applied to Lopez agricultural lands and gardens. Farms also self-compost, recycling waste products in smaller decentralized systems and supplementing with purchased composts. Animals also play a role: “Our pigs really close the loop for us on the farm,” one farmer stated, referring to food and plant scraps she was feeding to her American Guinea hogs who were in the midst of transforming it into high quality meat . More recently, due to wildfire risk mitigation efforts, the island has begun to selectively remove and burn some trees in a controlled, limited oxygen environment to create local bio-char, a potentially valuable soil amendment with implications for increased soil carbon sequestration. Current production is happening at a very small scale, but regional interest in larger-scale bio-char production abounds. Midnight’s Farm initiated a research collaboration between WSU extension, U.C. Berkeley, and five local producers from across Western Washington to address the question: can bio-char be a multi-use farm product that improves farm-based co-composted products and vegetable production, and promotes soil C sequestration? Two regionally sourced bio-chars will be applied to cattle bedding at Midnight’s Farm, and then the bio-char-bedding will be co-composted with other on-farm feed stocks to produce a bio-char-enhanced compost product. Through absorbing Nitrogen and other nutrients from the cattle bedding, the “charged” bio-char is intended to provide valuable fertilizer-like qualities to the compost, reducing the need for other amendments to cropping fields. The research hypotheses are: 1) blending bio-char into cow bedding will result in greater N retention, reducing the potential for environmental loss, 2) adding the bio-char bedding blend to compost will increase nutrient content, thereby adding value to the compost product, and that 3) compost with bio-char as a feed stock will lead to increased soil carbon, cation exchange capacity, and pH when applied to soil . The research team will measure impacts on manure handling, composting, soil quality and crop yields, following field application trials on two local farms . Data will be collected in Spring 2020 on soil profiles before amendment, and again in Fall 2020 on soils and crop yields.
The research underway is based on prior work from local bio-char researcher Kai Hoffman-Krull and others, who have worked with universities in Washington and Montana over the past five years investigating on-farm bio-char soil amendments. They have found through field trials on nearby Waldron Island, WA, that in addition to improving soil C storage, locally produced bio-chars have potential to “significantly improve soil fertility and crop productivity in organic farming systems on sandy soils” . However, there remains controversy around the impacts of bio-char in disparate contexts, evidenced by several meta-analyses pointing out varied outcomes based on pyrolysis and feed stock conditions,mobile vertical grow racks and differential effects of in temperate vs. tropical soils .Pending outcomes of the local study on Lopez and across Western Washington, best practices for creating a locally sourced “complete” soil amendment could be scaled regionally, minimizing “external inputs” on a growing number of small-scale organic farms. The goal of minimizing external inputs extends from farmers to others in the food supply chain, including island bakers of Barn Owl Bakery. Rather than purchase bulk inputs like sugar and wheat for their baked goods, Sage and Nathan are actively pursuing the local cultivation of grains and sugar beets to create their own 100% organic island grown products– sprouted Lopez wheat locally milled into flour for wild leavened breads, fruit scones, flat breads, and weekly specialties incorporating other island grown ingredients. Their work is also supported by local researchers from WSU Extension and a Western SARE grant to understand the impact of seeding rate and fertilizer application on the agricultural performance and baking quality of land race wheat. The goal of local input sourcing is also local waste management and reuse of waste as inputs into other ecological processes. Outputs from some farms become inputs for others, in a cost-minimizing closed-loop cycle for those involved.Transitioning food systems to agroecological practices will not be possible without investing in the “re-skilling” of an agroecological workforce.
Lopez has a series of educational offerings in place to reach a variety of audiences from K-12 students to beginning and current. At the farmer-to-farmer level, Lopez farmers engage in regular meet ups and events, including the monthly farmer coffee. On the second Wednesday of each month, Lopez farmers gather at the Lopez Grange for an hour of information and resource sharing. Organized in 2019 by Faith Van de Putte, the forum is a meeting of the minds and transactional space for connecting problems with solutions, questions with answers. Where do people get good, affordable organic chicken feed? Who has straw for goat bedding? How do you get rid of persistent weeds like thistle and morning glory? Do deer get into the grain fields through the electric fence? How can we arrange for annual small animal vet clinics to provide appropriate care for our sheep, goats, and pigs? Disease and pest identification and management topics swirl around room, some finding mostly empathy, and others finding a speedier resolution. At a September 2019 coffee, several farmers shared positive results from experimenting with a new Organic Materials Review Institute -approved herbicide called “Weed Slayer,” said to be effective against the pernicious thistles. Underlying these informational exchanges is the challenge of continuing to run the iconic, diversified small farms of Lopez, lauded as beacons of sustainable agriculture and agritourism, yet requiring countless hours of hard work, determination and passion. Lopez farmers recognize that they cannot “go it alone” on their small farms and rely on the support of other farmers as well as researchers from WSU Extension. Two county extension agents were present at a recent coffee gathering to generate a list of future workshop and clinic topics to offer for farmers, as well as to gauge interest in collaborating on planned future research experiments, grants, and educational demonstrations. In addition to educating each other, Lopez farmers educate aspiring farmers primarily through the Lopez Community Land Trust Sustainable Agriculture internship program. Each year on average five interns live and work on one of the islands six main educational farms, learning from the farmer how to seed, transplant, weed, water, and regeneratively farm diverse vegetable varieties and care for animals such as chickens, sheep, pigs, and cows. These interns select several readings and a documentary to discuss with other interns under supervision from Land Trust staff. Interns complement the practical and hands-on skills of farming with bigger picture reflection and dialogue about ideal vs. real food systems, connecting the production element to all the other moving parts of the system. According to the internship program director, the three biggest takeaways for participants are 1) importance of good local food, 2) basic life skills and 3) the experience of living in community. It is an “empowering experience;” however, it is not a formal or comprehensive beginning farmer training program and has thus far not led to the transition of farmland from an aging farmer to a former agricultural intern. There are additional opportunities for young farmer mentor ship through a Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development grant where more experienced farmers receive funds to support and mentor younger farmers as they begin their own operations. This is geared towards new farmers who have already taken steps to start up operations on Lopez or other islands. All farmers, new and old, have a recurring opportunity to learn more about evolving farm practices at the annual San Juan Agriculture Summit , which rotates between Lopez, San Juan, and Orcas Island, and is held in February each year. The Ag Summit began nine years ago at the impetus of the Agricultural Resource Committee and now WSU Extension has taken on the primary organizing role. Topics presented are wide ranging, from soil health to business and marketing to climate change, and feature speakers from all over the Western United States. The Ag Summit is a social as well as educational event, bringing farmers together for dining, dancing, and community building. On Lopez Island, farm to school programming is run through the Lopez Island Farm Education program. It began as a collaboration between LCLT, the Lopez Island School District, Lopez Island Education Foundation, the Family Resource Center, S & S Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the SJI Conservation District, WSU SJC Extension and the Heller Family.