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Farming Software – Organic Farmer 3.0

Maintaining organic certification requires keeping complete, extensive and detailed records about all aspects of farm work, and requires keeping copies of receipts for all purchases of seeds, fertilizers, etc. Even market gardeners that do not seek organic certification must maintain extensive records to be compliant with food safety laws as codified in the FSMA. As I am an intrinsically disorganized person, I have created a relational database to facilitate keeping and maintaining the required records. The database is now on its third iteration of improvement. The beauty of the database is that it runs in the cloud on Airtable, which allows access by smartphone from the field, as well as via web browser from a laptop or desktop computer.

Annual recertification of an organic farm requires an inspection that typically takes two to three hours, with most of this time devoted to auditing farm records. During High & Dry Farm’s most recent certification inspection, Airtable allowed me to power through the audit, which was completed within one hour, with no significant issues reported.

We am now making this database system, Organic Farmer 3.0, available to farmers completely without charge. Sign up for a free Airtable account here. Once you have signed up, download a copy of the Organic Farmer 3.0 database to your Airtable account here. Detailed instructions for use of Organic Farmer 3.0 can be found here.

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Foraging

I can’t decide whether foraging food or growing food is more satisfying. Our horse pastures sprout meadow mushrooms this time of year, and this year the crop has been huuuuuuge.

A few of these will become a side-dish for steak tonight. The rest go into our dehydrator.

Agaricus campestrina

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Farming Aptitude Test

Multiple choice (chose all correct answers).

You need to remove this 100′ row of exhausted summer squash plants to plant a fall crop of radishes and salad greens. To accomplish this task you will need:

summer squash
Summer Squash
  1. A stout pair of gloves
  2. A cool cloudy day
  3. A helicopter with grappling cable
  4. Patience

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Viscaina (Biscayne) sauce

The choricero pepper is the essential ingredient of Basque (Spanish) chorizo, and of the red mother sauce of Basque cooking, salsa viscaina. The sauce can be made from fresh peppers, or dried peppers rehydrated in hot water.

Use it as a sauce for grilled fish, or baked potatoes.

Ingredients

  • 2 onions (preferably red) thinly sliced
  • 6 choricero peppers, thinly sliced
  • 1 garlic clove, smashed and diced
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 slice of dry bread
  • 2 cups of stock (vegetable, chicken, or fish stock)
  • 1 tsp salt

Procedure

  • Saute onions and garlic in olive oil until translucent.
  • Add sliced peppers and continue to saute (about 5 minutes)
  • Add stock and salt, simmer 30 minutes
  • Add bread slice and pcuree with immersion blender, blender, or food processor.

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We have been certified

No, not certified insane. Certified by the Real Organic Project.

Although High & Dry Farm has been certified organic for several years now, we, like many farmers, have been disturbed that the USDA allows organic certification of farming practices such as hydroponic farming, and raising livestock on barren lots deceptively designated as “pasture”. Certification by the Real Organic Project means that farming practices conform to what any reasonable person would identify as organic, i.e, crops grown in soil, without use of artificial chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and livestock raised under humane conditions including access to real pasture. So there is organic, and there is real organic. We are both.