Organic No-Till Vegetable Production with Bryan O'Hara: Part 1 of 5 | Getting Started

[@oogru52]

I love that you opened with talking about family centered because that is the most important aspect to me about hoping to be a farmer some day

[@michaelc2509]

Thank you for this video. Learning lots!

[@tomlampros7122]

Could you say more about a well aggregated soil? What is it an aggregate of?

[@dominiccarpin5651]

Do you consider this scalable to 9 acres without much labor force?

[@svetlanikolova7673]

watch " Greening the Desert " with Jeff Lawton

[@wildrangeringreen]

1 acre of truly intensive vegetable production is about all one person can handle, in my experience/observation (.5-.75 ac is more realistic, the solo-on -1-acre-guys are working themselves to death during the season (to include myself the first 4.5 years of farming on my site, before I wised up and reduced my acreage) most of the time (even folks like Mr. O'Hara and Mr. Crickmore have help during the season). I'm not talking about the people who have an acre, but only cash crop on half or less every year (and cover crop the rest), I'm talking about an actual acre of full-out production. Now a rotational system where you plow/establish your beds the first year and plant something like a combo of pulses, dry corn, and pumpkins the first year. Second year, intensively farm vegetable crops and start some perennials (like asparagus and rhubarb). Then third year plant melons, strawberries, and brambles. Then fourth year, stop annuals production and only crop the perennials; and on a 12 year cycle (.75 ac blocks), rotate back around to start the process over again... yah, you could probably do 9 acres with only a few people (maybe 3-6 people) (especially if you establish tree fruit and nut rows along the borders of each block). Do not underestimate the value of non-annual vegetable crops (we're able to move as many $6 pints of berries as we can pick, and when you're picking 2.5 pints/ linear ft in mature berries... and $2/lb for apples, but producing 50-60 tons per acre with intensive methods... it adds up) A lot of operations that are over 5 active acres (entirely being actively ran as intensive vegetable production) have 20-30 man crews during the main season. Guess it depends on your definition of "much labor force". Intensive annuals production requires a lot of hand labor, and there is a lot more that needs done than just harvesting (and the more production volume you're doing, the more there is to do).

[@dominiccarpin5651]

I've been managing a 12 acre leased property for 9 years using four wheel tractors and very limited occasional casual labor. About 9 acres in cultivation. Land rich/soil poor context in Central Virginia. Former cow pasture. Vance sandy loam. Low innate fertility. Any benefit I gained from grazing cattle long since spent. Facing the reality of a $12,000 investment in lime and poultry litter, I sold off my equipment and relinquished the farm June 15th. It was a nice run and I grew a lot of pure clean food.

[@birdsin30seconds67]

Good information but a bit boring looking at one slide photo