As I’ve mentioned, my internship with Dancing Bear Farm is
part of the Rogue Farm Corps (RFC) program.
RFC provides educational internship opportunities on farms in southern Oregon for aspiring
farmers.
Interns are placed with one
farm for the season, but in addition to working (and living) on a specific
farm, interns attend farm tours, classes, gatherings, and complete an
independent project to further their knowledge about sustainable
agriculture.
Our farm tours and classes through RFC are on a variety of
neat topics. Here is a selection of some
classes and farm tours we’ve had so far.
Natural
Building & Social
Forestry
Taylor of
White Oak Farm in Williams (only about a mile away
from DBF) hosted this class.
White Oak
is a non-profit that does both organic farming and education on sustainable
living.
They have 62 acres of land, of
which about 50 is forest.
Forests
throughout Oregon
have been heavily logged using industrial practices; White Oak has been
managing their forest using social forestry techniques to improve the health of
the forest.
Such activities include
erosion control, fire safety, adding species and age diversity, and creating
wildlife habitat.
The byproducts of this
management are good building materials which can be used for natural buildings like
straw bale and cob structures.
People
from all over come to White Oak to learn how to construct natural buildings at
White Oak’s workshops.
In the organic
farm portion of the land, White Oak produces vegetable crops for market and
CSA, as well as some seed crops.
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| farm area of White Oak |
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| forest edge |
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| seedlings planted in the forest |
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| cobb oven |
Entomology & Farmscaping
Gwendolyn of OSU Extension taught us a class on farmscaping,
which is all about looking at the farm as an ecological landscape. Looking at your farm as an ecological
landscape means evaluating it from the systems level, which helps you better
understand imbalances that exist and how to re-balance the system. The class’ focus was specifically on using
farmscaping to improve beneficial insect habitat on the farm. Beneficial insects are really important
because they do things like control pests and pollinate crops. Some farmscaping methods we learned about
were including many flowering plants, growing cover crops that can serve as
habitat for beneficials, creating a beetle bank (a raised, dry bed of native
bunch grasses that is an excellent habitat for beetles), adding perennial
habitat, and adding hedgerows.
Poultry Management
We learned about producing chickens for meat at
Hensel Family Farms in Rogue River.
Shaina and Ian raise pastured meat
chickens.
The chicks arrive and spend
their initial weeks in a brooder.
Once
they are a little big larger, the chicks are moved out to pasture where they
spend the rest of their lives.
(These
pens follow the design used by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia, famous for his
appearances in documentaries such as Food Inc and Fresh.)
The chickens are slaughtered on site and then
sold mainly at local farmers markets and to restaurants.
In addition to chickens, Shaina and Ian also
raise rabbits, sheep, turkeys, pigs, and some vegetable and seed crops.
It was pretty neat to see young farmers who
had accomplished so much since starting their own farm in 2011.
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| the brooder |
Tractors
We learned about tractors from Jim, the farm manager at OSU
Extension’s 82 acre farm in Central Point.
Jim told us about all of the components of a modern tractor and things
to keep in mind when looking to purchase a tractor. He showed us the working tractors on the farm
and some basic maintenance issues for each tractor that was on site. Some people also took the tractors for a test
drive.
It has been interesting to compare the tractors I see in
southern Oregon to those in Ohio.
The tractors in southern Oregon are all
pretty tiny and often older, whereas many tractors in Ohio are suited for extremely large-scale
corn and soybean production (aka, they’re gigantic and frequently replaced with
newer modelsa).
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| testing out smoe tractors and rototillers |
Farming for Bees
I showed a couple photos from our bee class in a
previous post.
Sarah, executive director of
Bee Girl, taught out class on bees.
Bee Girl
is a non-profit based in Ashland
that focuses on honeybee conservation and education.
She told us how important bees are because
they pollinate 1/3 of the food crops that humans consume.
They also provide humans with a variety of
other benefits especially in the form of healthcare products.
Both honeybees and native bumblebees are suffering
from the effects of industrial agriculture, climate change, habitat loss, and
other human-created problems, so Sarah stressed to us how important it is for
farmers to create bee habitat, spray less pesticides (even many organic ones),
and to raise honeybees.
When we visited
some of her hives she lead us through an inspection to look at the health of
the bees and their brood.
(Here are a few bonus photos from the bee class)
