Rogue Farm Corps Farm Tours & Classes Part 1

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.

farm area of White Oak

forest edge

seedlings planted in the forest

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.

the brooder

outdoor pen

chickens nearing harvest time

laying chickens and their stylish home

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).

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)