Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
Living soil, teaming with life, oozing with microorganic populations. Moist, chocolate cake that holds together yet is porous from the burrows of worms and other soil creatures. Roots grow and then die and decompose, creating more porosity. The cycle continues.
Thursday we harvested Strawberry Biscotti from the hugel beds in our light dep tunnels, and I was struck by how much the ecology of the space has changed over the years. We dug the trenches in 2018, filled them with woody biomass, first larger chunks and branches, then woodchips and spent bedding from the chicken brooders. Then we layered the native soil with compost, gypsum, chicken pellets and kelp. (The German word hugel, or hugelkultur, translates to “mound culture.”)
The land we farm is not farmland. The soils are rocky with a sticky clay that might serve better for making vessels than for growing crops. It has taken years of effort, of consistency and constancy in our work to build the soil we now benefit from. Watching life grow and deepen, I am struck by what it means to foster and tend to living soil, to behold the flourishing into abundance and fecundity.
Moving down the row of plants to the rhythmic sound of clippers, blades flashing in the dawn light, I am struck by the simple joy of the cycles of farming. Scattered beneath the cannabis plants are beets and scallions that regrew from a winter veggie run, along with chickweed and other low-growing plants. The edges of the beds hold calendula, borage, yarrow and perennial grasses providing habitat for beneficial insects. Comfrey marks the ends of each bed, providing habitat and a source for mulch, making fermented plant juices for fertilizer and forage for livestock.
As we moved down into the second hoop, joking, laughing, working away, I again observed the soil surface. I noticed that there is a fine layer of worm castings scattered around the openings from their burrows, covering the soil surface with one of the most sought-after soil amendments there is. Bags of high quality worm casting sell for big dollars, yet here they are on the surface of our soil, the work already done for us.
When Lito waters in his compost tea, those worm castings will add nutrients to the plants, and the worms will continue their subterranean efforts, producing more castings which they will deposit on the surface of the soil. They will eat the detritus of plants and composted material, furthering decomposition and continuing the cycles of life that sustain us with the food and herb they produce. Worms help grow our herb as much as anything else in the cycle, and as I work I reflect on my appreciation for the busy actors that foster and build within living soil systems.
As we work, we’re all struck by the quality of the herb, harvested at perfection in all its gorgeous glory. Strawberry Biscotti is our flagship, winner of the Gold Medal at the State Fair a few years back, and we’re super excited to have her back in the lineup this year. It feels good to put our love and energy into our work and to see the results come out so stellar, a milestone on the journey, a representation of what we’re trying to accomplish in this life.
When I look at the gardens, I’m struck by how vibrant the plants are, both tended crops and the wild spaces of supporting characters. The comfrey hugels we’ve been planting the last few years are beginning to yield large volumes of high nutrient leaves that make great mulch. We’re about four years into a ten-year effort to no longer have to purchase any outside biomass for mulch, although we’re still using organic rice straw for the time being, layering it on top of the comfrey to ensure protection of the soil and water conservation.
Comfrey is a deep-rooted perennial that acts as a bioaccumulator, sucking up nutrients from the subsoil where they are often not reachable by other plants. High in potassium, its rich green leaves serve as stellar forage for animals during the dry months, make great fermented plant juice teas to feed back to other plants and work great as mulch that will add potassium as they decompose. Producing multiple cuttings during the growing season, its abundance is a signpost on the route towards increasing productivity and closing fertility loops so that we purchase less, reducing carbon footprint and making us more economically competitive.
There are moments in this life when I step back and am struck by the simple feeling of “It’s working”! In the pell mell rush of summer, this needed perspective is like a splash of cool water, a reminder that we’re on the right path, that the soil is alive and will tend to us just as we tend to it. I revel in the journey, delighted by the many cycles of life moving at different speeds and directions creating a choreographed kaleidoscope that stuns my vision and keeps me enthralled and enchanted. Forward we go, as always, much love and great success to you on your journey!
Casey O’Neill owns and runs HappyDay Farms, a small vegetable and cannabis farm north of Laytonville. He is a long time cannabis policy advocate, and was born and raised in the Bell Springs area. The preceding has been an editorial column. The Mendocino Voice has not necessarily fact-checked or copyedited this work, and it should be interpreted as the words of the author, not necessarily reflecting the opinions of The Mendocino Voice.