Sustainable Agriculture Conference Day 2, part 2: contraptions, beehives, potato viruses, community gardens, farmers' markets, and more

(See also part one of Day 2.)

Contraptions at Work


Tom Zimmer of Calypso Farm & Ecology Center gave this talk, describing various tools, implements, techniques, and means to extend the farmer's growing season and improve the harvest. These included both old and newfangled contraptions:

• the toolshed as a tunnel through which one walks on the way to the field, with tools hanging on the walls so that you can pick them up en route to the field and hang them back up on the way out;
• the broadfork: an old tool that loosens but doesn't flip the soil, made by a local blacksmith.
• a seed-starting house with a shed roof that catches water, has glass only on the front with a 30-degree angle ideal for spring days (March; not so good for the hotter months like June), with well insulated walls. In a variation on this idea, Zimmer described Joan MacBean's greenhouse, in which the back wall was lined with jugs of water which absorbed the heat during the day and released it at night;
• the raised box bed with tubing underneath covered by fencing, gravel, papers and soil; a guy in Homer uses tables with tubing under concrete block tops and plant buckets on top of that. Another version is the snorkel stove, which has a water jacket surrounding a woodstove. The water is pumped via sump pump through tubing under the floor which warms the soil, is simple enough that if the pump burns out you can fix it yourself, and has the added benefit of allowing the grower to water with warm water;
• using wiggle wire to support plastic (no holes);
• creating a sliding door on the greenhouse;
• a power drill adapted to winding up or down the side of the greenhouse to protect from cold drafts or overheating (courtesy Mike Arnold of Kenai);
• a kickable compost bin;
• attaching sprinklers to structural members with cabling attached so there's no hose wear on the plants (courtesy a handy kit from a catalog);
• using PVC tubing and roughcut lumber to create a moveable (with eight or so people) tunnel with a straight north wall (no need for curved walls on both sides);
• the Cody Mayo caterpillar: metal tubing, plastic, and anchor at one end, and a couple of pieces of string to tie up the plastic for working;
• fencing that can be bent over and covered with plastic to make a quickie row cover;
• kelp dipping table: dunk several flats or buckets at a time in a solution of kelp fertilizer;
• make stretchers to hold or carry several flats at a time to make quick work of moving them in and out during hardening off;
• compost tea brewers: a simple bag in a bucket kept in a place where there's lots of traffic so people can reach down and give the bag a jiggle every time they walk by, or a bubbler;
• bed rake to standardize the width and height of beds;
• six-row seeder (available from Johnny's Selected Seeds, for example);
• soil blockers: these are a neat way of getting rid of plastic containers, keeps the plants healthier (in a six-pack, the shape of the individual pot narrows, thus narrowing the root ball)—the surrounding air stops the roots from growing too far but prevents the plants from getting rootbound;
• compost sifter: made with an old exercise bike, belt, and perforated drum;
• tank heater: uses passive solar gain on an old tank covered with black plastic, which heats faster than without and prevents algae;
• stepped bathtubs: catch house runoff and carries it to the garden;
• wheel hoe: use an old bicycle;
• salad mix salad washer: harvest into holey bucket #1, put bucket into larger holey bucket #2, spin with water applied: voilá! washed salad in quantity.

Top-Bar Hives

Stephen Petersen of Toklat Apiaries spoke on that smallest of livestock, the bee, and the method of beekeeping that uses a top-bar hive. This hive method's advantages are that the hive can be made cheaply from locally available materials; the only critical dimension involved is the width of the top-bar; no expensive extracting equipment is required; and the high-value comb honey harvest sells for a premium price. The disadvantages, he said, are that the comb is fragile, which makes maneuvering somewhat difficult; in Alaska special insulation and feeding arrangements for spring managment must be taken into consideration (bees arrive in April, so feeding them in that period before the flowers start blooming is important); because of the horizontal distribution of the combs, overwintering is seldom successful ("The bees starve because they don't want to run out in their socks & underwear to see if there is honey at the other end of the comb," Petersen joked.).

Petersen recommended building top-bar hives so that they are interchangeable with Langstroth hives (a 19" top-bar length). Using a hinged bottom allows for quick assessment of the colony's progress and activity, and dumps debris that accumulates on the floor of the hive. Interchangeable combs between colonies allow for splits and combinations between hives, and self-spacing frames allows the bees to travel between them. Build the hive with handles that extend past the body of the hive so that two people can carry it fore and aft. A full hive weighs about 200 pounds.

Peterson also described Warré hives, which are similar to top-bar hives but oriented vertically.

Organic Alternatives for Late Blight Management


Jeff Smeenk talked about late blight, Phytophthora infestans, which grows on potatoes extremely rapidly and likes a cool moist environment. Late blight is a water mold, and is transferred by contact through tomatoes and eggplants and other members of the Solanacea family. Updraft from burning can also spread the spores. It is killed by winter cold and hot composting, but not cold composting, and once it starts, it can't be held back. There has been some preventative success at controlling it through compost tea, hydrogen dioxide, kelp, and Biodynamic Preparation No. 508. The best method is through not getting it in the first place: prevent its arrival by making sure you use certified clean seed. Field rotation and maximizing the air flow between plants and rows (four to five feet) so that the wind and air circulation helps keep the foliage dry are good methods. Some potato varieties (Kennebec, Elba, Onaway, Rosa, Sebago) show a little resistance to late blight.

Community Supported Gardening


Darren Snyder gave a presentation on community gardening, encompassing both share gardening and community gardening in the concept. The former is well-known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where a gardener's or farmer's harvest is shared for payment to the grower. The CSA is built around the concept of the share: the economic share and the appreciation for local food, in which community building is equally as important as food security.

Community gardening can also be built around the concept of communal gardening and community building, or it can simply be a collection of small plots at a particular location.

The important features are:

• the appreciation for local food: local effort, better flavor, freshness;
• building a local food community: Slow Food (the Ark of Taste), sustainability or reslience groups, permaculture and other gardening interest or related efforts such as reskilling and transition towns, permacouture;
• youth involvement and education: this is recruitment and training of both customers and workforce, and bridges the community and individual involvement in community supported gardening;
• community involvement: people pulling together for a common cause they care about; 
• individual involvement: the family, the community of interest, a matter of geography

Juneau has 120 plots, but they are 12 miles outside of Juneau. The CSG is working on developing gardening area closer in. They've been holding a harvest fair with games, music, and contests, and have strong community support. This involves a lot of organization and work: getting authorization from the municipal government, expert advice from agencies and local growers, friendly agreements and supplier demonstrations, land use contracts, liability insurance, bylaws and articles of incorporation, working out tax payment, determining garden rules, getting support by developing relationships and using a lot of creativity (the Barter, Beg, and Bargain method).

Things to think about include:

• Who owns the land and who is using it? 

1. If it's private, there may be limits on the participation such as the Glory Hole Food Pantry and the Gruening Park Residential Neighborhood.
2. If it's neighborhood land, publicly owned property with maybe a few limits, those constraints may be different, and not necessarily less onerous. An example of a neighborhood-owned community garden is the Star Hill garden.
3. If it's school-owned, then the public factor becomes important, as well as the consideration that there are children inolved. Examples inlcude Dzantikiheeni Middle School, Riverbend Elementary, Angoon Elementary. Privately held schools are another issue.
4. Communitywide property might be privately or publicly owned land. The official community gardens of Juneau are in this vein: Douglas Community Garden; Juneau Community Garden, and the Yakutat Community Garden.

• Garden management

1. Will there be a single garden manager? (private lands and some schools might work best with this model) This creates a heavy work load; takes a lot of time, but you have one person to go to.
2. Is a board of managers preferable? What should the board management duties be? It's important to be specific, and have your duties written down. For example: president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary, publicity/membership coordinator, events coordinator, database coordinator, at-large manager/alternate.

Community building starts even before the beds and plots get built: test the soil. A high lead content meant it had to be hauled away so a work party was held. Volunteers came and built up the beds. A high tunnel was made from a carport. WWOOFers (Worldwide Workers On Organic Farms) came to help, too.

Food Initiatives at UAF

Carol Lewis gave an overview of food initiatives at UAF, going over different programs, publicity events, and research projects relating to improving food security in Alaska. The initiatives included Farm to Table, a summer celebration to highlight local foods using new and established Alaska food products; 20% Real Food by 2020, a student-driven drive to improve the amount of local food purchases by UAF Dining Food Services that includes a database of purchases, purchase tracking by food miles, and workshops for producers; Food Day, sponsored by UAF Dining Services, SNRAS & AFES, School of Ocean Sciences, CES, the College of Liberal Arts, the Culinary Arts Program, the Office of Sustainability, ASUAF, and others; ethnobotany, sustainable agriculture, high latitude range management, and similar courses available through the College of Liberal Arts Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Studies Programs and the College of Rural & Community Development; and miscellaneous other events, on-campus food production, and so forth in addition to UAF's regular research and teaching programs.