Had a great conversation with Andrew Gust from Michigan NRCS Jackson County office about the forms, process, etc. for the high tunnel program in Michigan yesterday morning. He was very patient, answered the questions I had, and sent me the forms that needed to be completed to enroll in the programs. The following steps are what he explained for an individual to enroll in the program:
The below links are to PDFs that requires at least Abobe Acrobat Reader. To download a free version of Abobe Reader click here
1) Visit your local Farm Service Agency (FSA) office
find the nearest office at http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/stateOffices?area=stoffice&subject=landing&topic=landing
Be sure to take your deed/proof that you can make decisions regarding the land you are farming
2) Fill out form 926 (Adjusted Gross Income Declaration) (For FSA office)
available here http://www.ma.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/airquality/CCC-926_AGI.pdf
3) Fill out form 1026 (For FSA office)
available here http://www.nj.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/documents/GRP_WRP/FormAD1026_HELWC.pdf
4) Fill out form 1200 (with appendix) (For NRCS office)
available here http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Programs/eqip/PDFs/Blank_EQIP_CCC1200.pdf
For an entity (trust, partnership, etc.) form 901 also needs to be filled out by each member of the entity. Form 902 can be filled out as well for eligibility for other FSA programs, but is not required for the EQIP program (which is administering the high tunnel program in Michigan)
Once those forms are filled out and filed with the FSA and NRCS offices a schedule of operations will be drawn up as part of the contract. This will include activites, timelines, etc. and will also include dollars allocated to this, a square foot payment rating based on a statewide average ($1.89 in MI, maximum of $4,115), and a ranking. Maps of the farm will also be drawn up in cooperation between the farmer(s) and the agency.
For Michigan the high tunnels are expected to be covered with 6-mil greenhouse-grade polyethylene, be a manufactured kit, and be constructed on existing cultivated/crop land.
Alright, so we’ve got an email back from NRCS that there is no current district conservationist in our county right now. Next steps are to figure out who we need to talk to in another county to find the paperwork, etc. to keep moving this forward. I asked the person who emailed me who could point us in the right direction and will see when we hear back. In the meantime I have printed off the Conservation Program Application paperwork. Question #2 asks if we have farm records established with the appropriate USDA Service Center Agency. “If no, you must establish them with the appropriate USDA Service Agency prior to submitting this application.” Next steps are figuring out how we do that. Hopefully we will hear soon as to how to go about this. If not we will plan to call next Monday to find the answers.
Also talked with two farmers in MI today that are going down this road. We said that we will keep each other up to date on each end so if they hear anything it will be sure to go up on here. Planning to keep moving forward to figure this out.
As you may know, the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has added hoophouses as an eligible practice under the EQIP program. 38 states had enrolled in the program, but Michigan was not one of them. But, a few weeks ago, Michigan NRCS decided that they would be a part of this program.
There have been a lot of questions flying around on listservs, blogs, websites, and phone conversations about exactly how to go about this. I will whole-heartedly admit that I have no idea. But, in an effort to figure this out and to (hopefully) save some farmers time figuring it out on their own, the MSU Student Organic Farm (SOF) is talking about how we can register the SOF with the USDA so we can better understand the process. It’s important to make it clear that we will not be applying for funds to build any hoophouses or to implement any of the conservation practices at the SOF. We would not want to use federal dollars that are available to private farms in these programs.
The main goal is to understand the process and share our experiences with it with other farmers so that it can be easier from their end. To that end we will be blogging here throughout the process as to what steps we take, how we took them, and hopefully some time/headache saving tips we learn on the way. Check back for our progress and those tips and we will see where this takes us.
I sent off an email to our NRCS and Farm Service Agency (FSA) state outreach people this morning so let’s count today, January 26, 2010, as the beginning of our application process. We will see where it takes us from here.
We spend a lot of time talking and answering questions about ordering seed. These include where to find seeds, which crops and cultivars to grow, and how much seed to order. These can all be tricky to figure out, but let’s tackle them one at a time. Today we’ll talk about where to find seeds and which crops and cultivars we grow. Tomorrow we’ll finish up crops and cultivara and talk about how much seed to order.
Where to find seeds: We order from three main seed catalogs and then fill in specialty items from a few others. Our main seed sources are Johnny’s Selected Seeds (www.johnnyseeds.com), Territorial Seed (www.territorialseed.com), and High Mowing Seeds (www.highmowingseeds.com). There are a number of good seed companies out there, but these are the ones that carry most of what we are looking for. If your mailbox hasn’t been flooded with seed catalogs in the past month just keep farming and it soon will be.
Which crops and cultivars to plant: It’s important to remember that nearly everything grows better in a hoophouse than in the field. The key is to make sure that you plant the crops that are going to give you both the highest economic return while simultaneously allowing you good crop rotation for soil health. We know we could fill a house every summer with tomatoes, which are the highest value crop for most farmers using hoophouses, but there are going to be some challenges if we plant the same crop year-after year in the same place. There are options lilke moveable hoophouses that would allow you to do this along with some chemical applications and even grafted tomatoes but right now let’s assume you are in a non-movable tunnel. There’s a link to the crop and cultivars that we are planting under the “What We’re Planting” post a few back. Check it out there to get some ideas. These are by no means the only cultivars.
Another important thing to remember is that our crop selection determines how the space is used. It sounds simple, but choosing the right crops can be the difference between success and failure. Most impotantly we try to have a balance between the single harvest crops and the multiple harvest crops. The multiple harvest crops, like salad mix, allow us to harvest more frequently, have more to sell, and hopefully make more money for the farm. If we had to seed for every harvest we would harvest much less. But, there are some crops that make sense to grow even though they are single harvest. These, for us, include carrots, beets, radishes, and hakurei turnips for the root crops and head lettuce for the leafy crops. We just make sure we don’t plant too many of those crops as compared to the multiple harvest ones.
Later we’ll talk a bit more about crop and cultivar selection and then about how much seed to order.
Below is a picture of a recently prepped (right) and a to-be prepped (left) bed. These had carrots in them that have already been harvested out this winter and tomatoes before that. To keep a good rotation and to have more of what our customers like to buy we are going to be seeding these to baby salad mix in early February. We used the broadfork-claw-rake method for this one.
To-Be And Already Prepped Beds
The plan now is to get the other beds that have already been harvested out in the same shape as the one on the right of the picture and to keep them watered. Over the next three or four weeks we are hoping to flush out the weed seeds near the soil surface, come through quickly with a stir-up/hula hoe, and be ready to plant into a well prepped, weed-free bed the first week of February.
We’re already ahead of where we were last year at this time so here’s to keeping the New Year’s resolution of prepped and weed free beds by early February alive and kicking. Hope you’re beds are already well prepped or are on the way to being so soon.
So it’s another New Year and I’m sure a lot of us have made the resolution we make every year about the farm. We are going to get our seed orders in early, prep our beds and fields, and be sure to keep the weeds down, right? Well maybe together we can at least keep some of those resolutions on track as the days get longer and the seed catalogs keep coming in. If you’re like us, and I think most of you are, we’ve spent some evenings and a few snowy Sunday afternoons stoking the fire and flipping through all those seed catalogs with a pen or highlighter. Now that the holidays are over it’s time to get out there and get moving again. So besides looking at the seed catalogs and dreaming of warmer days, what we can be doing in the hoophouse right now in central MI (Hardiness Zone 5a)?
The biggest thing that we can be doing right now besides ordering seeds (which we’ll talk about in another post this week) is getting into the hoophouse and prepping the beds that had single harvest crops in them. Single harvest means crops that are harvested once and are done, as opposed to multiple harvests on crops like cut-and-come-again salad greens, spinach, and swiss chard. The single harvest crops would be things like carrots, head lettuce, hakurei turnips, and radishes to name a few. Right now we have three empty carrot beds, half of a turnip bed, and half of a lettuce bed. So, now is the time to get them ready to go, start watering them if they are dried out and get them ready to plant for the first week of February.
They can be prepped a number of ways. Some people like to prep them with the broadfork-three tine claw-rake method while others like to take in a tiller and do either a few beds or a lot of the house at once, depending on how many different crops they are planting and how much of the fall planting has been harvested out so far. We can also work on the fertility in these beds while we are prepping them. We use either compost or alfalfa-based pelleted fertilizer for fertility in our hoophouses.
We’re planning to be out prepping a few beds later tonight so look for some pictures in the next post that show some before, during, and after pictures. Once these beds are prepped we can be thinking about what we are going to plant in them, but more on that next time.
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- Laying out the ground posts
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- Pounding ground posts
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- End of day two
After the Burton Township Zoning Board of Appeals granted us a variance on Thursday night we’ve been busy building away on a 30 X 96ft hoophouse in Burton, MI (just outside Flint). Thanks to everyone who came to show their support at the meeting and also to the zoning board for the variance, questions, and comments. We all hope to see you out there soon.
So, since it is late in the year to plant we are planning to get things built, have the winter to prep inside the hoophouse, and be ready to put some seeds in the ground come February. Above are some pictures from our first few days of building. We are back at it Monday (if it isn’t raining) when we hope to finish the hipboards and start on the endwalls. Look for some more pictures of the Burton site and some others we are working with in and around Flint in the next few posts.
As we all work on hoophouse stuff around the country we try to really promote what others are doing and to not duplicate the work that has already been done. Check out the link below for a High Tunnels Manual from our friends at the University of Vermont Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Ted Blomgren and Tracy Frisch did a great job putting this together and including others thoughts and input. There are case studies of six successful farms using high tunnels (hoophouses) too.
It’s a great resouce that we use for both our hoophouse course in the Department of Horticulture here at MSU and in almost all of our workshops. Thanks Ted and Tracy for making this happen.
http://www.uvm.edu/sustainableagriculture/Documents/HighTunnels.pdf
It is a PDF file so you will need Adobe Reader to view it. If you don’t have that it’s available here:
Wow! It’s been a while since any posts were on here and it seems like for those of us in the North that we never really got a summer at all this year. On top of the cold temperatures we also had lots of rain, which meant late blight for the us in Michigan and across the Northeast too. Those with hoophouses really saw the additional disease control that comes with growing under cover this season.
I also found out why most of the farmer listservs go quiet in the summer. Between work at MSU and farming at home there was no time to be able to post here. We spent a good amount of this summer building hoophouses around the state and working in both Flint and Detroit. Through the work of a lot of great people Flint has really exploded. The hoophouse at Harvesting Earth Educational Farm continues to crank out produce this second year and they have also added chickens to their farm. Urban Youth Community Outreach (UCYO) is working on a farm name, but in the meantime they have built two large and two small raised beds in their hoophouse and have greens, salad mix, lettuce, and spinach all up and growing. Mr. Roger’s “Just Say No!” Program has a variance board meeting this Thursday night for their hoophouse. If everything goes well at the meeting their hoophouse should be up by the end of the month. It’s great to see all this happening in and around Flint, MI and even better to have lots of great people that keep making it happen.
I’ll be sure to take some pictures at Harvesting Earth and UCYO this Thursday and get them up here. Until next time…
I’m back from helping Marty and Michelle build the frame of their hoophouse at Birch Point Farm in Traverse City, MI and am always amazed how much the site changes on the first day of the build. This was the first one of the year and to see the site go from a flat piece of tilled ground to a hoophouse frame in a good day’s work is always a great feeling. I left my camera at home but am hoping that they will send some pictures that can go up on here next week.
Every once in a while I’m planning on taking time to answer a question that has come from one of the readers. One of the questions that came through recently had to do with shade cloth use on hoophouses in the summer in northern areas. Bonnie asked, “Do you have any opinions on using shade cloth in the summer in Michigan? I have my new family hoophouse in, and any and all advice on controlling high temps in warm weather would be greating appreciated. I have no power to the site, so exhaust fans are not an option.”
Early on we tried to use some shade cloth to lower temperatures in the summer and I have talked with some other farmers who have done it too. Everyone that I have talked with has said the same thing. It lowers temperatures but it also cuts out too much light for production, especially of summer fruiting crops like tomatoes and peppers. If we remember the light coming through the tunnel is already being decreased by the polyethylene and hoophouse infrastructure by maybe 10 to 20% we are already getting low. If we add another piece of shade cloth, even if it is only 30%, we would be decreasing our light by 40-50% from outside/available light to the inside growing area. These light levels are too low to produce high quality fruit. We also need to ask why we would be concerned about high temperatures in the summer in the house. A lot of what we know about those summer fruiting crops says that flower abortion occurs around 90F. It has been our observational experience at the MSU Student Organic Farm (not through replicated research) that if we have good levels of soil moisture that the plants do not abort their flowers at high temperatures.
So what can we do to help control some of the high temperatures in the summer. We have roll-ups sides on all the houses at the Student Farm as well as at our home farm. This definately helps with the temperatures. We also have vents in the peaks of both ends. This is not a ridge vent, although I do know of at least one farmer who has installed a ridge vent on his hoophouse. Some of the peak vents are thermostatically controlled, but not all of them. We still have 4 houses at the Student Farm that have butterfly style vents that are manually operated. Doors at each end that open wide are also a good option to help moderate high summer temperatures. See below for pictures of thermostatically (aluminum) controlled vent on a house with the roll-ups and vent closed and manually (wooden) controlled vent on a house with the roll-ups and vent open.
Thermostatically Controlled Vent
Manually Controlled Vent
Hope that is helps out Bonnie, and if there are others with questions out there please don’t hesitate to send them along.
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Adam Montri - Michigan State University