Editor’s Note: Sean Gargamelli-McCreight is co-founder of the Benincasa Community farm in North Guilford. He will be writing a column called “Homegrown” about his work on the farm and about other farms in the area. Benincasa partners with local organizations, churches, and school groups to share about sustainable community-based food production as well as grow and deliver free, healthy organic produce to those in need. You can find out more about Benincasa Community and reach Sean by visiting www.benincasacommunity.org

At the top of the highest point on our small farm, there is a great white oak tree with a wide trunk base. With the overgrown thicket and steep incline, it’s not an easy point to reach, especially during inclement weather, and most visitors to the farm never even know it’s there. Like trekking to the Oracle in her mountaintop temple for self-discovery, the journey sometimes feels like the destination. Whenever I venture up there though, I sit in awe of its size and the way in which it seems to have birthed all of the much smaller and younger trees below it. Since our first encounter, I have affectionately called her the Grandmother Tree.

Through his brilliant record as an arborist in, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben has revealed to the laity how trees support and communicate with one another across generations and through underground mycelium networks by offering nourishment to aged, felled, and dying trees for years upon years in what he terms “Social Security.” However, here this Grandmother Tree atop our hill appears to stand strong and proud offering her protection and guidance to those who have come after and will likely, eventually outlive her.

The leaves, branches, and bark she sheds do what no human can ever adequately reproduce on his own by creating lush, loamful topsoil. This practice, which has been perfected over hundreds of thousands of years, protects landscapes and species of all kinds from the harmful effects of erosion and flooding. Through our appetite for endless efficiency and increasingly massive, less diversified global food production, we humans have effectively eliminated 70% of the world's topsoil in approximately 150 years. The numbers are startling when scientists state we have essentially 60 years of topsoil degradation left before the entire farming system collapses.

Although quite en vogue among organic farmers and researchers over the last 20 or so years, sustainable, life-affirming agriculture is not something that is new. In fact, it’s entirely possible your own family practiced some form of regenerative food production within the past three to four generations. Students in American schools now even learn about the indigenous peoples' development of the “three sisters,” a self-promoting and sustaining planting together of corn, beans, and squash. So when I hear about present-day farmers utilizing Earth-supporting, mutually beneficial growing practices, my interest is always piqued. For many these practices are discovered through years of trial and error. Many vegetable growers consider themselves sort of amateur land scientists, after all. For others, the hard-earned wisdom of best practices is passed on from generation to generation. For all, there is an openness to growth, an embodied, soulful flexibility that can be employed at other times when encountering changing conditions in our lives and communities. Let us be people who praise topsoil, who seek the wisdom of grandmothers and grandmother trees, who find a way to communicate our support to future generations.

Eternally Optimistic

On a sunny Tuesday morning, my two-year-old and I joined the eternally optimistic Susan Willis at her Bitta Blue Farm on River Road in Killingworth to harvest pole beans and talk about some of the wisdom she’s gathered while living and working over the last 50 years with zero-waste on this organic farm. Here is our conversation:

SGM: Why do you farm? How did you come to it?

SW: I think there is a certain group of people who can’t spend a lot of time indoors or sitting. There are others who like to be indoors or stationary, but I was never one of them. I had a job which required me to be at a desk inside. It was money, but it was torture! I have always been prone to be outdoors.

When I was young we had five children in the late 70s and early 80s, and I was always keen on living minimally, seeing if we could produce what a family needs. We started with chickens, like a lot of people are starting with today. And then we got goats, because my kids were little and we needed milk. We were not heavy meat eaters, and so the vegetable production came from that need. Preserving, canning, and freezing, too. None of it was to be narrow-mindedly self-sufficient, but rather in an effort to try providing for the needs of a family out of the way you live and what you do on the land. So now for the better part of 40 or 50 years, I have been growing food, raising animals, and living a life that is devoted to this model of a sustained family life.

SGM: It sounds like it started as a personal and familial pursuit and then evolved into a way of supporting the family financially.

SW: Well yes, but I also grew up on a farm outside San Diego. It’s not the kind of farm people would be familiar with here, but I grew up in California and my father grew avocados, oranges, and lemons. My memories from childhood are of the whole family tending the avocado trees, learning about avocados, and harvesting them. It was at a time when a push was just beginning to ship avocados from California to the Eastern United States. So I witnessed this whole boomtime in avocado production and grew up in a culture where everything important took place outdoors.

I know it is a difficult field to break into, especially given the relationship to forced and abused labor many people face in this country. There is an ugly side to farming, from industrial farming to the many ways in which subsistence farmers have been ground down into poverty and kept from the fruits of their labor. Farming is no paradise, but I do think going forward it behooves all of us to try to do the best that we can and live simply on the planet. And, it can begin with tending your own garden!

SGM: What are your recommendations for the first things folks can begin to grow in their own yards?

SW: Everybody around here puts in their tomato, pepper, and eggplants. I would suggest getting started with lettuce, spinach, and arugula. You know, grow a salad. Bok Choy and quicker growing greens can work well in cooler weather like this. Everyone should think about what they most like to eat and prepare. You know, try those things.

Kids can be wonderful guides for parents looking to get started as well. Kids love pulling a carrot out of the ground; for them it’s a little miracle. Opening peas, looking in the little pods, pulling off beans can all be rewarding small miracles. Even I try new things each year. This year I started soybeans after my daughter’s suggestion to make my own edamame beans.

SGM: How do you farm?

SW: This is a totally organic farm, devoted to no waste.

SGM: So, how do you strive for no waste?

SW: Everything that is grown either goes to my customers, or like in the case of these coarse beans, they go to the goats and the damaged leaves go to chickens and ducks. Then all of the manure from the animals goes back into the soil to grow the vegetables.

I also make jams and pickles. So, if I have a bumper crop of zucchini, I’ll make zucchini pickles. Or, if I get too many beans, I’ll make some pickled beans. The idea is that a small farm that is devoted to using everything and recycling everything is actually efficient. It’s much more efficient than ‘big ag’ where there is a lot of waste in the growing, processing, shipping, and finally down to the consumer who might be buying more than they actually need. So, we’re working to reduce waste, but really producing efficiency is the aim.

SGM: It seems like efficiency is a measurement of success on your farm. When do you know the farm is working efficiently?

SW: Well, it’s not really something that can be calculated in man hours, or in this case woman hours. Rather than remaining overly reliant on an industrial means of production, reducing every aspect of production to its smallest form and making it hyper-efficient thus devaluing and deskilling workers, it is about working to produce food that is the most healthful, fresh, and interesting for customers.

Efficiency means using your space wisely. That is, if you don’t have room to grow corn don’t grow corn. Grow to maximize production and use space in the most concentrated way so as to reduce wasted efforts, crop and labor. A small farmer is never going to be efficient in the way that industry would demand.

I like that even though there are seasons, farming is pretty much a year-round endeavor. In the worst, coldest weather I am already planning what I’ll be doing in the coming season. I’ll write down what worked, what didn’t work, and what needs to be improved on. For instance, I am discovering there is no limit to the number of chickens you should be raising for eggs. Customers have needs after all!

SGM: What type of response do you get from your customers?

SW: On a small farm it is important to remember that you’re really devoted to educating your community of users. Part of that is educating people on how to grow their own food at their own houses, because the more people I can encourage to do some of this on their own, the better. If everyone had a “Victory Garden” then the planet would be a whole lot more sustained.

It is also educating people about various foods. I try to grow some varieties of vegetables that some people may have never seen before. I find it somewhat difficult to get people interested in eating things they may have never tasted, like some of the Asian Greens. When I am at farmer’s markets there can be a very narrow pallet of choices that consumers feel comfortable with, such as zucchini, corn, and tomatoes. So, I find having a Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) program allows me to do a bit more in educating people in trying new things even if they get stuck with some kale or bok choy and need a few hints on what to do with it!

So then, I am faced with a dilemma when I go to markets. Either I choose not to make much money in an effort to encourage people to buy what I bring, or I cave in and bring what I am beginning to call “eye candy”.

SGM: What is something you’ve grown you thought would be a leap for folks but then they came back around with positive reviews?

SW: All of the Asian greens! I would prepare a meal and bring it to the market for people to try, but unless I have a license to do that, I am limited by health department requirements.

SGM: You mentioned using the animal manure to build compost and feed the vegetables, what other practices are you employing for soil health? Do you do crop rotation?

SW: Crop rotation is one of the challenges of small farming. I do try to move things around and spread them out if there are problems, but because soil can develop fungus I primarily focus on rotating beds for garlic, my main cash crop. This year I had problems with the squash vine borer and cucumber beetle, so rather than just rotating the beds for these vegetables next year I am going to plant them in widely dispersed settings, that is not a single row but in smaller beds throughout the vegetable farm.

I’m basically “no-till” at the farm. I’ve been to a few soil seminars, which are really eye-opening if you can get past all of the science! The less disturbance to the biome of the soil, the better. You just keep layering to benefit the soil. Each year you pile new organic matter, and you basically just let the creatures do the work of breaking it down and turning it over, making it into a soft bed for your planting.

In the fall, I spread a lot of cardboard over the beds and pile it with organic matter, everything from leaves to spent hay from the goats stalls, letting it sit all winter. Then in the spring I rake some of it to the side, so I have a space for planting.

I do use the black permeable fabric for weeds and to raise soil temperature in the spring. I also use a cloth row cover for the early plants to have some protection from bugs and cold.

SGM: What would you like others to know about farming in our community?

SW: Each year brings you a new set of problems as you confront them. They are not necessarily there from the get go. For instance, the way that the seasons are changing often can bring longer periods of drought and dry weather. One year, I had to let certain plants go. I couldn’t get enough water to the onions, and I lost all of my eggplant which like a nice rich and moist soil. So, this year I had to ask myself, should I even try any of those things. Climate change can also bring you uncharacteristically wet weather. You can’t necessarily predict and plan within a box based on what you faced the year before, because there is a progression of change but each year is also dramatically its own year.

SGM: If you hold your plans too tightly and plan with rigidity, you’ll end up being miserable as factors change.

SW: Right, you don’t want to be boxed in. That is why the small, manageable farm does well. If five things fail to grow one year, you have five other crops to rely on. We are not dependent on a monoculture. But, it can be tough on customers when you tell them they’re not going to get eggplant one year. Maybe that’s the year they try something new though and discover a new favorite food.

SGM: Well, I think I’ve kept you long enough from your bean harvest! Is there anything else you would like to share before I go?

SW: Everyone should come visit us for our Open Farm Day on November 18 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. We’re also hosting a garlic workshop at 11am. You can tour the farm, visit the animals, and purchase farm products for the holidays. My daughter and I can answer questions and discuss backyard farm and gardens ideas as well.

People can learn a lot about what we do and what they can do at home. Being out and working, even with perennial flowers and maintaining any type of garden, is excellent for mental well-being. I am a positive, optimistic person. Even when there are setbacks, I am quick to get over them and get going onto the next thing. I am outdoors, what more could I want? It helps me maintain the desire to keep moving. I’m 77 years old and I haven’t stopped working, but I know not everyone has my mental or even physical disposition. But, I do want others to be open to experiencing how replenishing and rewarding it is to grow things or raise animals. It is a reward to use your hands and then witness the ways life reveals itself before you!

There will be setbacks, some things will not work or grow. Make sure you take time to pay attention to what is working and then learn to take breaks. Sit next to a pond, and watch the fish. If you’re weeding a 50 foot row, stand up every once in a while and look around.