Spreading Compost

On the weekend of August 9th we arranged for our garden helpers to sell our vegetables at the farmer's market in Honesdale, PA so both of us could scoot up to Cuttingsville and work on our land. Our two big projects for the weekend were to begin cutting and splitting a load of firewood that we had delivered, and to spread spent mushroom substrate (or mushroom compost) on our garden plots.

Spent Mushroom Substrate is a byproduct of commercial mushroom production. To grow mushrooms, producers make a mix of animal manure, bedding, spoiled hay, and gypsum that they allow to compost in large windrows. They then move this material into their grow rooms, sterilize it with high temperatures, and innoculate the compost with the desired mushroom species. After a certain point, it is no longer profitable to grow mushrooms on that particular batch of compost, and they move it out of their grow rooms to make room for another batch. This waste product is a valuable source of nutrients for the soil, as it is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, and many other trace minerals. It has a high organic matter content and a near neutral pH, and because it was brought to a high temperature before innoculation, it is free of weed seeds.

After doing some research, we decided that spent mushroom substrate was the most economical way to add nutrients and organic matter to our fields, which tested low in many macro and micro nutrients. Doing some math with numbers from our soil test results and information on the levels of nutrients in mushroom compost, we decided to spread 30 tons/acre of mushroom compost. With three acres plowed up, that means 90 tons of spent mushroom substrate, or 4 tractor trailer loads.


This is the last of the 4 tractor trailer loads dumping off our spent mushroom substrate by our gardens. The 4 loads were trucked from an organic mushroom producer in Pennsylvania. The compost itself was free, but we had to pay for a company to truck it to Vermont.

Spreading the pile on our fields got off to a slow start, as it took us a while to work out some kinks in the used manure spreader that we purchased. That part was challenging: it's stressful to have such a limited timeframe to do a job and run into unforeseen difficulties along the way. But fortunately, with a little tinkering from Ryan's Dad we got the spreader figured out it went smoothly the whole way through.



Loading the pile into the spreader


Spreading a load on the field. The white cloud is steam coming off the pile as it's spread. The pile was rich with microbial activity, with the temperature in the middle reaching well over 120 degrees F.

These pictures below show a field of buckwheat shortly before mowing, and then after being mowed and composted. This particular field will be planted to garlic this fall. We also plan to experiment with overwintering leeks and onions in this field, too.




And this picture below shows a field of sudangrass, planted as a cover crop. We decided to let the sudangrass grow until it is killed by the fall frosts, and we spread compost over it without mowing it.






Firewood being delivered


David adjusting chainsaw


Firewood cut and split

We weren't able to seed our fall cover crops like we planned, but fortunately David went back this past Friday with his neighbor George to disc in the compost and seed peas, oats, rye, vetch, and buckwheat in the fields. This fall we'll test the soil again to see if other amendments are needed to grow healthy vegetables. We plan to get our greenhouse up and ready by this fall, as well. We staked out the four corners in the photo below.



What a doozy of a weekend! Many, many thanks to our wonderful neighbors Dave and Allison for putting us up for weekend and helping us stay clean and well fed. What a blessing.

How did this happen?

After college we lived in northern VT, where's it's cold and dark and full of lovely people.



Then we moved to Journey's End Farm in sunny Pennsylvania, where it's also cold and dark and full of lovely people.





At Journey's End the Curtises let us start up a small CSA on their property.


(The adventure of those gardens is documented at www.journeysendcsa.blogspot.com)

Journey's End Farm is an incredible place and we learned so much from living there and growing vegetables for market there. The experience led us to feel called to grow vegetables for a living, and we decided to look for our own land all over the northeast. So this winter we wrote a business plan and started looking for properties via farmer-to-farmer land link organizations, for sale by owner listings, word of mouth, realtors, and signs by the side of the road. In March we took a weekend to travel to Vermont to look at properties, and after an unsuccessful trip we traveled south to visit our friend Tom in Rutland. On our way out from the detour to Tom's place, we spotted a "for sale" sign and pulled over to check it out.


Beautiful open field between barn and river



1820s timberframe


barn


Mill River

We had a nice impromptu tour of the land and visit with the owners. We liked the place, and it seemed like it would meet our business and personal needs. After a long discernment process, a few visits to the property, some research into the local farming community, farmers markets, co-op, Quaker meeting, etc... we realized that we felt called to make an offer on this property.

After much paperwork and phone calls, we became the owners of a Massey Ferguson 135 and the property June 23rd!

Picnicing by the river after becoming landowners. Weird.

Many thanks to the people who made this move possible: Terri and Dave, our generous loan officers who believe in lending money to young 20-somethings to start a farm (hooray!). Sandy, Kara's grandmother who also believes in loaning money to young farmers. Our agent, Julie of Equine Homes, who bent over backwards for 2 months or so. Otis. Robert. Colleen, our friend over at Fidelity. Tom, who lived in the right place at the right time. Lindsay and Scott, who introduced us to the Rutland area. Our third farmer, Ryan's dad. Not enough thanks to all our parents, our aunts and uncles, Sarina, and so many other friends and family members who have helped to provide us with the needed support to start making our dream come alive. Thank you.


Ryan and his dad figuring out how to get a plow off his trailer. A local farmer, Greg, generously lent his plow for the day.


First few plow passes


3 acres plowed up


view from a corner of the property


Mill River in June

So after plowing, Ryan's parents gave us the gift of hiring our new neighbors to run their discs over the fields. Some fields are now in summer cover crop.... And that's how this all began.