GROWING FOOD

Alongside our regenerative work on the land, we grow vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit in collaboration with organic agricultural non-profit, R.O.A.D. for Change, using our own organic compost and fermented liquid plant fertilizers. We save seeds, rotate crops, and practice companion planting to discourage disease, attract beneficial pollinators and other insects, and to increase the health of our crops. We weed by hand rather than using mechanical control, and use natural mulches and cover crops rather than relying on toxic and persistent herbicides and synthetic fertilizers. We could not grow this food without the help of our animals. View some of our fruit, vegetables and herbs in the gallery below.

MAKING COMPOST

We make our own organic compost from raw manure mixed with organic matter cleared from the land including fallen leaves, pulled plants, and mixing with coastal amendments, such as crab and oyster shells. We also make fermented liquid plant fertilizers from mineral-rich plants that we either wild-tend or cultivate and harvest from the land such as stinging nettle, comfrey, dandelion, and horsetail. Our concentrated fertilizers are diluted and we use them to grow our vegetables and feed our fruit trees.

Compost is made from organic matter, including plants, leaves, and animal manure that has been broken down biologically (decayed) into a relatively homogenous and stable soil amendment. Making compost sequesters carbon, promotes healthy microbe growth, and creates a nutrient-rich soil environment which enables plants to feed themselves. Compost added to the land helps to aerate the soil, support it to retain more moisture, and boosts resistance to plant disease, and it is essential for growing food.

Using compost eliminates reliance on synthetic fertilizers made from industrially extracted minerals and fossil fuels. Synthetic fertilizers kill microorganisms and build up as salt in the soil, killing beneficial organisms such as earthworms, and forcing the use of more fertilizers over time. The buildup of synthetic fertilizer in the soil creates a cascade of problems, such as making the soil more acidic over time and generating unwanted plant life in water sources, including algae, which further disrupts the ecosystem. It can take many years for the chemicals in synthetic fertilizers to dissipate through the ecosystem.

We regularly donate our organic compost and fermented liquid plant fertilizers to the native pollinator project run by local non-profit, Concerned Citizens for Clean Air, a 25 mile herbicide-free pollinator corridor on the Oregon coast, and to the 40 acre Tribal Farm at the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians (CTSI).