In mid-August the Ecological Farmers of Ontario organized its first ever summer crop and livestock tour.
Board member Roger Rivest and executive director Michelle Jory served as guides to a group of 26 who visited four examples of scaled-up ecological production, co-operative marketing and value-added processing. As a new farmer able to attend on a bursary offered by EFO, I found the tour inspiring and insightful.
The tour began in Ridgetown at Zubler Farms, a 420-acre organic dairy. Rudy and Barbara Zubler covered many different aspects of their farm – crop rotation, herd health management strategies, how they raise their calves, farm labour, manure management, tillage and weed control, crop variety preferences – and their experience with a wind turbine lease.
In the barn Rudy stressed the importance and benefits of feeding a high fibre diet based on forages, which is less stressful on a ruminant’s system.
They mob raise their calves in small group pens with deep, dry bedding, and use barrel feeders with nipples, letting the calves suck as much as they want each day (often 10 to 12 litres of milk each).
While looking at some of their fields, the Zublers described their typical rotation, which begins with three years of summer-seeded alfalfa. They find that the regular cutting is their best thistle management strategy.
Depending on the year, they will take up to four cuts of hay.
The tour’s next stop was Gelro Farms, where Rock Geluk showed us a pastured pork and mixed crop operation. The Geluks cross mostly York Landrace sows with a Duroc boar, which they find yields hearty piglets that grow well. They also keep some Danish sows, which have a nice, large body. All of those old-style breeds tend to have a higher intra-muscular fat content and thus richer flavoured meat.
Fifty per cent of the corn they grow goes to the pigs, which are on pasture except for the very coldest months of the year.
They’ve been growing some different organic corn varieties from Blue River Hybrids, which impressed them. They generally aim for a population of 27,000 per acre on 30 inch centres. Geluk also enjoys the higher profit and demand for organically grown soybeans: they try their best to grow food grade soys, and then purchase feed grade beans for the pigs.
Like many people, Geluk once thought organic farming meant crops overrun with weeds. To his surprise, he found that was not true. Like the Zublers, the Geluks find that multiple-years of alfalfa at the start of their rotation helps with thistle control, and that their spelt crop grows extremely well after alfalfa.
At the end of the afternoon, 19 members of the group proceeded to Port Huron, Michigan.
The next morning the group headed to Organic Bean & Grain in Caro, Michigan – an enormous operation. With plans for my own small-scale intensive market garden, I’m not used to thinking of organic farming on this scale.
Steven Vollmar grows 1,200 acres of crops with his brother and a number of other full-time employees; everything from blue and yellow corn, to black turtle, adzuki, and pinto beans, soybeans, spelt, and soft white and red wheat.
In my mind, the biggest ticket to their success lies in the impressive value-added processing facility. With state-of-the-art equipment, including plans for an infra-red color sorter for beans, the Vollmars process their own crops, in addition to providing de-hulling and milling services for other organic farms in the area. To give a sense of their scale: for corn, they can pre-screen and separate 250 bushels per hour, and can then run 100 bushels per hour through the de-stoner and final gravity table.
The farm primarily grows food-grade crops, but it also produces seed and some feed. The Vollmars sell the majority of their soybeans to Japan (Steven Volmar mentioned that “S2020” is an old variety that continues to do well for them), and said that black beans are in top demand in the U.S. – likely due to the large Latino population there. They also sell many of their various crop screenings to local livestock, dairy, and poultry producers.
Vollmar over seeds his small grain crops with single cut red clover at 10 pounds per acre, with an air seeder and blower ahead of their tine weeder in the spring. The weeding process for beans is very intense. They employ migrant workers to hand weed their edible beans if needed, following several cultivating passes.
For all crops, they tailor the weeding regime to the weather, soil and crop conditions, and choose between a single sweep cultivator, tine weeder, single or double rotary hoes and flame weeder. At $2 per gallon for propane, considering the scope of the operation, the immaculately weeded fields can come at a price.
We proceeded on to Findlay Farm for the final site of the two-day tour. The farm is 2,100 acres, with three people farming full-time, and one part-time.
They grow spelt, soybeans, yellow corn, edible beans (white kidneys, adzukis, and black) and also snap beans on contract, which are processed, packaged and flash frozen locally.
They market some of their corn to Herbruck’s, a large-scale organic poultry (layer) operator in the area.
Like the Vollmars, the Findlays use composted or pelletized chicken manure for fertility, since it’s readily available and reasonably priced. If made into pellets, they spread it with a litter spreader and apply it at a rate of 1 to 1.25 tons per acre before both cereals and corn in their rotation.
Fiona Brower is a member of the Ecological Farmers of Ontario.
