Farm History and Growing Methods

A Brief History

In 1994, shortly after meeting for the first time, Ron & Jenn embarked on a year-long bicycle tour. As we cycled through the European countryside, we fell in love with the food-centered culture we found throughout the tight-knit communities in small countryside villages. Halfway through our trip we worked on an organic farm in France and a seed was planted in our minds of starting our own business when we returned to the States. It took three years, several moves, and countless business plans before we settled on starting an organic farm in San Luis Obispo County using the Community Supported Agriculture concept to market our produce.

While we were searching for property and learning everything we could about organic farming, we participated in a dinner club in which we gathered with five other couples once a week and cooked and enjoyed a meal together. That experience of cooking and enjoying food with a community of people as a ritual part of our culture is at the essence of the mission of Huasna Valley Farm. Through our CSA we have introduced hundreds of people to good tasting, healthy, seasonal food and stimulated their interest in cooking and enjoying food as part of their everyday routine. We have run many educational programs for schools and farm tours both to our members and other interested local groups, and introduced many children to the wonders of a farm

Guiding Philosophy

We strive to farm sustainably, to provide a balanced lifestyle and a healthy environment for our children, and to share with people the rewards of cooking and eating fresh, seasonal foods.

We believe that soil health is the most vital element to a successful farm. We feed the soil through the use of livestock rotations, covercrops and compost. We keep the primary and trace minerals in our soil in balance through regular soil tests and the addition of mined rock minerals and trace elements as needed. As much as possible, we strive to eliminate purchased inputs and generate our soil fertility in a self-sufficient manner.

We believe that plant, animal and human health is inherent in nature and that disease is the result of poor diet, stress, and/or genetics. As such, we provide adequate nutrition through a fertile soil; reduce stress by growing crops in season, irrigating carefully, and moderating climate with row covers or mulch when necessary; and select plant varieties for genetics suited to our climate and soils. We hope to begin a seed saving program and use more farm-grown organic mulch.

We believe that the rotation of plant and animal species on a piece of ground is vital to avoiding harmful levels of disease, insects, and weed seed. Diversity of crops, covercrops, and foraging animals imitates and maintains the balance of nature in which infestations of a single disease, insect, or weed are rarely seen.

How We Farm

The 2008 season marks our tenth year growing in the Huasna Valley and operating our CSA in San Luis Obispo County. It will be our sixth year running an apprenticeship program. We currently have 5 acres in vegetables, ½ acre in berries (strawberries, and blackberries), 4 acres in a mixed fruit orchard, 4 acres in grain and hay, and 3 acres in pasture housing our free ranging flock of 250 laying hens, two Jersey milk cows and a calf, and two hogs. In the past we have also raised ducks, geese, sheep, and llamas.

We are well mechanized for a small farm with a 70 hp row crop tractor and a 40 hp loader, both run with recycled vegetable oil. We rotate our primary tillage equipment just like we rotate crops, covercrops, and animals. This includes a spading machine, field chisel, and disk. Our secondary tillage and seedbed preparation is done with a shallow rototiller/bedshaper. We use a semi-permanent wide bed system on 76 inch centers.

We hand transplant as many crops as possible and direct seed the rest with tractor mounted Planet Jr. seeders, a seed drill, or hand-push seeders. Transplanted crops are started in soil blocks in a fully automated greenhouse and planted out at a young age. We cultivate with a variety of tractor mounted tools or a propane flame weeder, hand hoeing bed tops, and hand pulling any remaining large weeds prior to setting seed. Our preferred method of weed control is through long term crop and covercrop rotation strategies. On certain crops we use an organically approved cornstarch-based biodegradable "plastic" mulch along with straw and chipped wood mulch material.

Crops are irrigated primarily using drip irrigation tape, or micro sprinklers depending on the crop. Our pre-plant irrigation, pasture irrigation and spring frost protection are accomplished with aluminum sprinkler pipe. In our climate irrigation is vital to growing crops. We draw water from a shallow well and from our 20 acre-foot pond (which also provides a great place to cool off on those hot summer days). We monitor the water needs of our crops using an evapotranspiration gauge, gypsum blocks, tensiometers, and soil probe samples. Proper irrigation is vital to reducing plant stress, avoiding nutrient leaching in the soil, and developing flavors to their full potential. It is a skill that takes time to learn and is vital to successful organic farming.

Although we feed our plants by feeding the soil compost and covercrops, we do supplementally feed some crops using fish emulsion and kelp extract. Our fish emulsion comes from northern California halibut cannery wastes. Halibut are not known to uptake heavy metals, and our supplier regularly tests for the presence of heavy metals (including mercury) in our fish emulsion. Someday, we hope to make our own fish emulsion from fish we grow in our farm pond! We also make compost tea and propagate EM (essential microbes) on a regular basis to use as a foliar spray for preventative disease control or for injection into irrigation water as a soil innoculant.

We hand harvest all of our crops, clean and prep them in a covered packing barn with a filtered and purified water source, and chill them to appropriate temperatures. CSA shares are packed into Coleman ice chests and delivered to neighborhood dropsites within San Luis Obispo County. We strive to deliver produce within 48 hours of harvest to insure our members receive the freshest produce possible

All of the above is accomplished with a crew of 5-7 apprentices, several workshares (members of the farm who work four hours per week in exchange for their produce), a part-time neighbor, and Ron & Jenn. Oops! Kyle & Linnea help out too!

The Huasna Valley

Huasna Valley Farm is located in a rural area 20 minutes from the town of Arroyo Grande, 25 minutes from Pismo Beach, and 40 minutes from the larger town of San Luis Obispo, home of Cal Poly State University. Although we are only 8 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, our climate produces hot summer days (several weeks of 100+ degree daytime high temperatures) and cool nights (summer lows in the high 40’s to low 50’s). In the spring and fall we have many frosty nights in the 20’s even though it can be in the 70’s during the day. Our last and first frost dates are typically May 11 and Oct 15. Winter rains usually end in April and don’t begin again until late Nov. Our annual average rainfall is about 22 inches. We farm two soil types, a silt loam and a sand loam, which gives us versatility with our cropping system. The farm sits in a valley surrounded by oak-covered hills loaded with wildlife including deer, pig, turkey, coyote, fox, bobcat, mountain lion, bear, and wide variety of predatory and migratory birds.