Alex Ekins of Ace of Spades Farm

Hey y'all farmer Jesse here, welcome to episode 2 of the No Till Market Garden podcast. Super excited about today's episode. I got on the horn with Alex Eakins of Ace of Spades Farm in Spokane, Washington and Alex gives us a really detailed breakdown of the operation he runs there with his partner Amy, a bed prep, bed flipping and no till farming in general. Before we get into that make sure that you leave a review and subscribe to this podcast wherever you are getting it. Hopefully you are getting it wherever you usually get your podcasts. But if not you should be able to soon. Apparently these things take time. Yeah. Also check out the Patreon page. If this podcast is adding some amount of value to your life, any amount of value, or you just want me to improve the audio and buy some better equipment, consider kicking in a couple bucks a month. No pressure, but you know, it is a really quick way to be super awesome. Just saying. Alright, enough rambling for me. We got a No Till Grower 2 talk to. So let's do it. Alex Eakins of Ace of Spades Farm. Alex Eakins, welcome to the podcast man. Hey this is me here, I'm from the podcast. Yeah, so maybe we could start with you just giving us a little idea of how much land is under cultivation there at Ace of Spades and what kind of crops you all specialize in and maybe even just marketing and distribution generally speaking. Yeah, so my name is Alex Eakins. I'm the founder and co-owner of Ace of Spades Farm. I'm in partner with Amy Dolamont. She's my farm partner in life. We're located in Spokane, Washington. That's during Washington. We're up at the 47th parallel. I know some hours to below Canada. We cultivate more May and specialty produce. So we grow for steps and professional palm alike. We fell to a number of the local hotels and resorts. We also focus on selling to what I would consider fine finer dining in Spokane for smaller restaurants that focus on cater to local food. We also fell to three different grocers and those are all of us doing varying different sizes. So one to mom and pop, the other is a co-op and the other is the natural food store that's owned by the larger grocery store in the area. We grow air-lin tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumbers, beans, potatoes, radish, cornice, carrots, lettuce, kale, spinach, arugula, mustard greens, chard, micro greens, and we do a fair bit of edible flowers as well. We're known for growing produce to specific sizes and forms. So we like to say that it's about the flavor, the beauty, and the health of the vegetables that we grow. So a couple of things that are unique about our farm is that we're located only four miles from downtown Spokane. We live in a very rural area that is only four miles from the second largest city in Washington States. So we're really blessed to be able to live the rural lifestyle but also to just a gentle way from the heart of the city. So we only call today about 15,000 square feet of bed. So we have the standard 30 inch by 100 foot long bed and we have about 70 of those. So it's a quarter of an acre and we have say one acre behind a 12 foot deer fence. So we've basically just fenceed off an acre and inside of that we've cultivated a quarter of it. And so we've got one foot have between potentially a plot of 60 beds and then we have another plot that's the set of 15 beds. And so it's an extremely compact farm. We don't have large pathways because we don't use any tractors on our farm. Everything is done just by the two of us, essentially by hand with some appropriate technology. So we have a washroom pack house. We have another double sided walking cooler and we have two farmer friends, caterpillar tunnels that we grow are what we call hathrap. And so your tomatoes and eggplant peppers. Everything else is done in the field. Everything is directly did. So we only transplant the hathrap. We do not transplant any other plants on the farm and we can talk more about why we've seen that decision. But we use no synthetics, no herbicides, no pesticides, no GMO, organic, or not or otherwise. So no chemicals. We use no tractors or tillage. So the only labor on the farm. We mainly use hand tools and hand harvest. We approach everything from a lean technology approach. And that's something that I had also learned from a previous project. So we sort of apply a radical approach to farming where we believe in growing better food, not more food. We focus on an all-brech theory of mineral balancing. And we use microbiology to amplify the living soil food web. And it's an ecological approach to farming. It is the end of our fourth season. So I move back to the family land. The property is originally a micro-transfer. It is where I grew up. And then we moved back in 2014 with the intention of starting the farm. And so we kind of sum all of that up with a wind turbine term, which is deep organic farming. So we are not sort of hydrogenic farms, but we can put ourselves to be a deep organic farm. So that's kind of who we are and what we do in terms of, say, finance. We are a debt-free farm and we own profit as farmers. So we firmly do believe in building market and taking on appropriate amounts of debt. We have a lot of leverage, you know, the right kinds of investments with no return. So as to always be able to know that your farm is carrying its own way, I think that's kind of like a bootstrap approach to our farm. But it has definitely gotten us to place for like a whole year where we have all of the tools and the technology that we feel that we need. We do the amount that we did the previous year and more. And in looking in terms of always trying to find the most efficiency out of the space we currently have before we add anything else, I already know there's an additional gains to be had. And so, you know, this season we've sold close to $65,000 or $25,000 for a post-corder. And in about 20 weeks, our season went to May 15th to about now, October 15th or so. It's been a really nice fall. That's kind of where we're at. So what were you doing before 2014 then? I was a partner in the development of traction testing. It was the first certified organic verified non-GMO livestock company in North America that started in Bellingham, Washington in 2010, 2011. And so we sort of were at the forefront of re-inventing the small county mill by direct grain, directly from farmers to create a non-cooked whole grain seed primarily for chickens. So that people could have a high quality organic seed for their swath so that the quality of the egg and the quality of the bird coming off of a swath would actually be represented above the values that most people wouldn't want to be able to see their chickens with. And it also, before money right back in the pocket of Washington State, great farmers because they were growing for, which we basically had contracts with barley and both the wheat growers, from the growers. So, you know, we supported the right organic corn. It was place-free. Yeah, that's what we were doing. And then how long that thought that took on being manufactured? I went to a company called Kaison. Kaison is a lean manufacturing training company. And so we applied lean manufacturing to special factories. And that's where I was first trained in lean manufacturing in 2012. And you know, like always in the back of my mind as a project at the farm, it was just kind of new and ever present and exciting because I had seen the results of what taking what you think is a well-fought functioning manufacturing facility and realizing just what you could take. And so, you know, we nearly dropped our inventory to nothing and our cash flow was through. And we were making actually what people wanted and not spending our time making things that they didn't want. And, you know, everything's really blew up. So I did that for five years or so. And after just feeling directly with all of these producers, animals producers, at that point in time, I just had believed all this information from them. And I had made the choice at that time to live in an off-road cabin south of Ballyanne. So I lived in a city cabin in the woods without electricity for two and a half years while running that food operation in the city. And so I had my commercial trip design, certificate, and you know, that was my task in. And previously before that, I had been running restaurants. So I had some max, you know, for my right into my space. About what local food is and why that mattered and what was coming off the grass. And, you know, so I went from purchasing local food to creating a value added directly around food products for food producers. And then, you know, just realized the access to land and my knowledge base and everything was sort of there for me to make the dump to move that to where I was from to start a vegetable farm. How did you end up in No-Till? I mean, was it a product of the lean manufacturing when you started to look at what reducing the amount of stuff you used or was that a product of the permaculture design? How did that come about? OK, so I guess what happened for me was that No-Till was always present in terms of like the LaGonia starting techniques of permaculture, like backing garbage, backing compost, making layers. The Toby Hemingway, you know, idea of how to build soil on concrete. But it never seemed practical from a farming approach. Right? It was like, well, I'm not going to go out here and lay cardboard down over a quarter of the acre. Like that just was never going to really have. And so it just kind of seemed more like a gardening technique rather than a farming technique. And so when I first moved back to the beginning, it was a really five-year, so there was traditionally a pond in the COV-48. There and traditionally in the pond would be there until June or so. And that was a part of my child that remembering the pond. When I came back, there hadn't been a pond for a long time. We were starting to make it look like a pond. So when I first cultivated the area, it included a part of this sort of lower line hash. And at that time, I had hired a guy to come over and to fill to turn back the sod. And so that property had never been filled in all of human history. And at that point in time, the tarping methodology wasn't really as pepper present as it was. A few years later than that, when Dan and Curtis Stone made a big deal of it and became clear to that. It was like a real key tool to turn you around on. And we've since used our best to turn you around. But I first killed. And what I saw as a result of filling just sort of never looked right. And so that first season, in 2014, I used a rototiller on the farm. It was a 1979 Aaron's rototiller that had been on the properties since I was-- and this was just like an old school rototiller. And it did the job. But it just-- the soil by summertime looked just looked unhappy. I don't know if you really had a describe. But it didn't look like I wanted it. It didn't look so. It wasn't like that soil that you think of. And I have a beautiful soil here on this property. It's the hardest, you loan. It's the unique kind of clay loan that goes through the thick swing throughout it. Where it's certainly spring. I guess what I'm getting at is there was a dry period. And now it's a very wet field. And so in early spring, the hardest you loan is just kind of like to just sort of sit there and hold a lot of-- and so as a result of having killed going into that second year of spring, I realized that the silling was not going to be something that's going to be beneficial to me. Or is it really possible? And so I needed to come up with a strategy that would be as good as I had had in early spring still on my farm without doing it. Because I wasn't going to be able to get out onto my land until it was drawn in. And so this is a lot of where my winter gardening technique can also come into play. Because it's really spring on our farm. And so it really came out of how do I get into the ground? How do I not create big muddy clumps and have the like function early on when there's a splash of weed that comes from having exposed soil, filled soil all went along? And so it basically just came very clear that we needed to not end using the rototoler to negotiate these costs. And so it really would have just life that lean approach of just cutting out the flag and asking yourself why. And always just looking at what you're doing and questioning yourself. Because it just didn't seem like-- I knew there was too much work, the result for what I wanted. And there had to be a battle. And you know, like, specifically, even with the terminology and all that really cracked in for me. Like I can't honestly say, it just always was the direction that I was pulled. And it always just worked better and was more efficient for me in my context. And I think that it became the most clear when we've reached that point, when the cost of all of this no-till versus still really comes to life. And there's this specific moment where you've harvested a drop and the crop is done. And you want to go back into that same spot. And that's that moment. That's the moment where all of this happened. Like the reason why it's cracked or it's the reason why. And so what do you do in that moment? What do we do with the organic matter that exists out of ground? And what do you do with the root matter that exists below ground? And how do you get from that point to the end of the point that you want? And anytime I talk about this, it's always like, what are you doing to a piece in that moment? And there's a lot of dialogue available to talk about what happened next, right? Because it's like every kind of farming then follows from that moment. You either kill or you use herbicides to kill it back or you graze animals on it. Or you just only clear the surface matter, which is what we started to do. Or say you are fit or you flail moly it or you power hair out. Right? You have all of these things available to you. But it's always just like, what's your goal? Where are you trying to get to that? And I think that that's the moment that is most interesting to me. And then probably the one that's currently towards no-fill them. Yeah, that's great. I think that's a good segue into talking very specifically about how you operate a no-till bed. So maybe we could just start in the spring. And you could tell me what a garden bed looks like before a crop goes in and then what you do to prepare it. The whole point of this is a step by step process for you to go from one place to another place from bed that you've grown in. To planting back in that bed. And so for us, we don't plant. Now some people may actually find a system like this for a very well. with transplanting because you're not trying to create that very cool, perfect, like we do to run our field. So the first thing is root crops are the perfect crops for no till because you remove the entire plant when you harvest, right? So it deals with the entire plant in the bed, in and of stuff. So root crops are sort of a category in there which is that I would hand harvest my root crop. I would remove all of the remaining residue from the bed with a rake. You take it to a compost pile. So I use a bed prep rake and a wheel nettle and I put the residue from the bed into the wheel belt and I take it from the top. And the next step is that I broadforced our bed and I use a Chinese large, hard, and broadforced to do that. And then it's one half broadforced to keep on the bed. After I broadforced the bed, I apply the amendments to our bed. So that depends upon your soil theft. And what you believe the correct recommendation is for your bed and I apply that by weight. By hand with a five gallon bucket. So the same weight goes into each bed and I just sprinkle that out by hand even when we open the bed. And then I make a single half with that same bed prep rake to lightly rake in the amendments. And then I cover that bed with one inch of compost for a magnum heat moth for a combination of compost through magnum heat moths depending upon where I'm trying to shake the bed to. And then I lightly rake down the bed with the bed prep rake one more time. And then you have a perfectly clean until amended, smooth, seed bed for you to seed or if you prefer to transplant into. So for me, root crops are butter, it's easy to eat, right? It's great to follow root crops with your baby grates because you've had this whole round of root crops. You have a whole round of carrots that you've precision needed, that you can't leave it, that you've harvested off, that you have the entire bed and you're ready to go. It's taking the year we leave free. So I love going in root crop and falling with this non-root crop. So say if it's a non-root crop. So imagine that I have a bed of a root you want in the ground. So the first step is that I would take the after harvest. I'm ready to be done with that bed. I would shake either a hand's knife, a quick cut harvester. You can use a size for what I've been filing now. This is going to be a strange thing, but it has amazing functionality so far, is a spin trimmer with a rigid metal blade. And just so we're clear, spin trimmer is just a nice way of saying weed whacker. And with any of these cutting tools, you want to cut right past the soil surface. So you're essentially attempting to germinate the life of the plant, like cutting below the ground. So you're severing the vegetative part of the plant from the root part of the plant. But you're leading the root impact in your soil. And so that's important. Because what you're doing is you're visualizing that there's a difference between the organic matter, the remaining but it's just matter above soil surface and the soil itself. So often what we as humans have seen to do is think that the only way to get rid of what the growth of the ground is to mix it with the ground. And I believe that it's far more efficient to spend your time merely removing the remaining above ground debris and taking that to your compost plant. So after you have cut all of the organic matter above the ground, I rake it. Then in the wheelbarrow, take it to the compost pile. The next step is to broadthorke. A mend. Cover with compost. Rake smooth. And there you have a clean, deep bed ready to see the transplant. And that's it. That's how we go from one bed to the net, a series of steps. One after another, always easily repeatable. And I can go into why I think that those steps are important, but those are the steps. As far as I'm concerned for what I consider to be a no-till process. And so for me that no-till process doesn't mean that you don't call today. And it doesn't mean that you have to have living matter or living ground cover in the bed during the past, because we have essentially weeds where you clean beds at feeding time. And then we have fully covered beds with plants that we want, with the duration of that they're there. And there's only a period of time where that bed is, is they fair, but covered in compost. And so for us we feel like that's the most traceful word, most efficient means of what I'll say is organic no-till or ecological no-till. That doesn't use a rototiller, doesn't use a tractor, doesn't even use a filter. The only mechanical aspect that I've added now at this point is using a spin-furner with a rigid blade on hand. Are you making all of your own compost or are you ordering that in from somewhere? Well, and so this next year we're going to have more of an emphasis on making up our own compost because of the amount of organic matter that we do take off of the bed. You know, when you clear say like a bed of baby tail or something like that, when you're you taking your two cups, maybe you managed to get a decent third cut, maybe you can focus on the quality test you can. There's quite a bit of a matter there and so currently we've fed that to our pigs. We've also used it to create some kinds of earthworks around our garden and areas where our cold air seems to kind of seem to come through and just to kind of create a bit of a visual break. So these are composting in different, our own matter in a different way. I believe that quality compost from someone who's job it is to make quality compost, that you can get a verified test back when what is in that compost is more valuable to me than the amount of time that I'm going to spend trying to make an equivalent amount of compost. And from a lean perspective, I've even gone to the point where I think they're finding bags that are manageable by a human. There's probably a more efficient route than receiving a large quantity of compost that you are then going to individually shovel, shovel folds into some type of container to then take through the bed, to then either dump or shovel back out. So if I can bring in the amount of bail or bag per week for session planting and know that there's a specific cost associated with plantings and buying the amount of bags that I need per bed and then basically precision applying that amount of compost for a second of the bed is just an easier system for me. I can take that from the truck directly to the bed and empty it across the bed. There's no additional steps in that process for me. And so the use of for me, because I'm right here in Canada, this is geographic and multi-contextual, use of spangled keep-moss for me, with the vital diets present in us from Canadian companies or rival company companies, in terms of covering my clay loamy soil that often times is very moist. I've f-friled without doing any of the brosful, any of the raking of milk, just layered on a quarter inch or a half inch of feed-moth on top of my bed and run this heater through it. And it's just enough stuff to soak up the moisture and not create that that clotting or tipping off of a wet soil. It's like the keep binds with the clay in a interesting way where it creates kind of a temporary pilt for you to be able to apply force to it without it chunking off. And so for me, it's just the consistency, the number of steps approached, and the results that I get, I buy in that media currently. I do have a different plan for that compel structure next year. Which is to make more of it. If it's more than a person, it's very precise. Nice. So, what maybe you mentioned it, but I missed it. Did you say which cedar you're using or which cedar? I use a single jang. So, single jang or JP. The standard jang. I push 8 rows. I do 6 and 8 rows for everything. So, all my baby greens are paint. The others say longer, the season greens and root crops. So, the start would be exprowed, but all of the roots radish, there is beef, or all six rows. And I push all of those lines each line. So, for me, a given week is 6th bed. So, I would do a bed of lettuce, a bed of mustard, a bed of baby kale, a bed of spinach, a bed of arugula, and then I would kind of have a combo bed, where it would be beef greens, or cat soy, or something similar, seasonal, color poll, or if they this larger demand growing in one crop, or another, you know, push 8 25 feet, or something like that, and that next hundred foot bed. And so, I use the fifth and where I use a woolen cake, that marks off every single bed that I have. So, every single bed, on both ends, is marked off with a permanent peg. And that's the most revolutionary thing I've ever done on the farm. That makes it so the bed's never moved. It makes it so that you can run a string down that edge of that bed, to block for it, to run away. So, your first line on your jang, and then every line on your jang, subsequently follows immediately after that. And so, I kind of, you know, like I was fairly mastered the single jang, to be able to produce incredibly straight lines with very proficient rule. I've been very happy with this. So, just so I understand, you have a wooden peg just pounded in at each end of your bed, and then you're tying a string and using that as a, as a leather of sorts. Yeah, so, if I'm doing like my succession planning, I start on that far left edge of the sixth bed, that has been off-graphed, no-till, like we've described. So, essentially, you have to fix perfectly clean beds, not any weed, and all six of those beds, as well as say, every single bed on the farm, is pegged off on full side. So, it's very clear, where the pads are, where the bed's off. And when I start, I take a line, and I wrap it around the one end, and I walk down to the other end, and I wrap it around the head, and then I pick up my jang, and I run the jang right down the edge of that line, and that's my first line. And then when I turn around, for baby trains, I'm running the jang, not next to the furrow, of that last line that was seated, but right on top of the furrow. So, that the edge of your wheel should be running exactly on that line of your last row, if that makes sense. So, if you're looking at the last row that you did, your wheel should be, essentially, just right up against that line, that impression in front. And you run on top of that, a little bit of a furrow, if you will. You run on top of the furrow, not next to it. And I have a great result in getting eight very nice thin rows on a 30-inch bed. I've taken them to 12. I'm just a little bit more of a fan on the eight. I think that I should do everything on six, and have like, up, even easier time doing that first set of precision meetings. I think that this whole system for me definitely does rely on precision, and the difference between precision meetings, just weaving, that I'm able to run a specific tool down every single one of those lines, every time, with the intention of getting ahead of any weave before it really even emerged. And so I'm not out there with the tool going after weave once they've been out there, with the tool creating it so that they don't exist. And that's absolutely necessary. It's not letting a single plant go to the sea on the farm. What are you doing for path management? Okay, so upon a merge of the cross, and I'm going to say a real strong coastal load, right, in the vet, I do use the Johnny's blind sign break down the vet, and ask that I do my first path on blind signs. I use a pulao, and I just threw down a path, and I pull and I take a step, and so it's kind of like this walking then down path, but really quick and efficient. And I basically just pulaoed the path, only one foot-wide path, and I just do that on the first position, leading up to that, so I figure that's about base seven or base ten, and then right before the canopy closes in again, I'm going to use a pula in your hoe, and I turn it sideways, so it's only like this one inch wide, and I drag that down every line, and then after doing that, I pull the path once more, and that's pretty much it, and then after first part, if I have a series of steps to prepare the bed for a second part, and at that point in time, I'm like pulao again. So a pulao path probably three times on a 40-day high hole. That's funny. I have the same feeling about pulaoing the paths, and I find it more efficient than the wheel hoe, which ends up being kind of an awkward use of muscles sometimes, depending on which wheel hoe you're using. Right. So not to just like totally get off-cans in here, but I have this whole of these kind of thing about the garden, and it's kind of like when you see the Zen monks breaking their gravel gardens, and then make the perfect impressions that you can see every little line, and it's perfect for them, right? And so the garden to me is like that. When I feed, I love the fact that the janguan leaves the impressions, the indisidial impressions in each bed. Like I just feel like it's a perfect finish, right? And I mean they have other functions, like they collect moisture, and they kind of act as interesting little mini furrows. But it's the same way when I do the paths, like I genuinely treat it, like a Zen meditation where every push forward is like one step forward, and so when I'm done with the path, and I look back, it's essentially perfect footprints, sideways, sideways in the diagonal footprints, because I take the same step every time, and especially pull out the soil, and so when I look back, it's like the venous use perfect lines on it, and each path is like perfect footprints running down it. I can't help, but you know, satisfied as you can, or doing something like that. Like it's just, it feels so good to create that kind of physical, if it's a deeply satisfied. I agree. I can completely concur on that. I think that all of this in-game sometimes idealized off, right? Like, oh, you're no-till because you think it's like a good idea, or whatever, right? And it's some kind of badge that you can wear. But I genuinely use the no-till practice that I described in that series of steps, because for me, it's the most efficient series of steps that I can engage in on my farm, on a human scale, without having to rely on large mechanization. So for me, when I look at what the total cost of stay, attractor and maintenance is and fuel and all of that, as you like, I can buy a whole bunch of compost for a really long time, right? And that I'm constantly making those infest purchases off of, I'm currently having, I'm not going to get that equipment, that's just for the majority of the time. And so to me, it financially makes sense. Logistically, it makes sense for me to do so. And then, I think, just the results that you've, you know, and you've been putting it into practice, it's just that you see your story will start to really be healthy in a way like it's constantly kind of surprises you, When I call carrots out of the ground by hand, and I don't use a digging fork to do it, and around each carrot, there's all these worms and thinking it's just amazing what you see happen to this row. I felt one thing is by leaving the roots and calf by not disturbing the rise of the sphere and just merely putting a compost layer or litter layer on top. Your next feed is germinating directly into that act of rise. It hasn't been all the parts not trying to repair itself. It's already right there. And that next trend going into follow all of those root corridors, half of the right ends going to be immediately caught by all of the fungi. So you're basically not sending yourself back by filling notes. I always kind of joke around, which is like a tractor doesn't create fertility. So I can do this other step and get a clean seed bed that actually adds fertility in the compost, in the organic matter that I'm putting one for the bed. So by creating a clean bed and adding fertility, and the other step I'm creating a seed bed, and I'm not actually adding so I'm going to reduce fertility by doing so. And so it's kind of interesting to see Harrison's bed right there in another cell. The other thing that I think about when I talk about clearing the bed from organic matter and continuing to the compost file is that when you put down a lot of fresh, live organic matter into your soil, it has to go through immobilization before it's going to be remembered or what that means is this is where your carrots here determine what. And so what it means is that all of the bacteria and fungi are going to use the available nutrients in your soil for the decomposition process of that organic matter, if you need your bed. And so all of the available nutrients are going to be held up, seeding size, the microbiology and the planting. And that's when you're putting your plants into the ground. And so unless you're actually waiting along enough times for all of that organic matter to break down, before you plant it, you're putting a plant into an immobilization. When you put a plant into an immobilization, oftentimes you're going to probably want to find more fertilizer than that because you can plant in and grow and grow healthy. And that's not an important thing because your bed is just locked out. And so when you actually clear that residue or that organic matter and then you compost it and you compost it well, then when you put that compost back on, you're not just putting that raw organic matter that means the BG compose before it's valuable to you in the bed. You're actually putting on organic matter that is composed and is available here for plants. So when we see a lot of people like turning over beds really fast with loaded fillers and things, like oftentimes I'm kind of wondering whether or not there's like a lot of soil testing going on or if they're just maybe applying fertilizer without a soil test because they just know that like putting bone meal down or blood meal down helps be composed of organic matter. But sometimes I kind of sit back and I have to be kind of wondering about that because if you're tarping afterwards you are allowing that bed to be totally decomposed out of organic matter before it stays filling back in. So this for me is a way to not have to wait for that two weeks period for that organic matter to really fully brisk down before going back in because I have such a small farm. I'm trying to basically like harvest, clear the bed, prepare the bed, and be back in that bed in 24 hours. And so you know, just being conscious of where your soil is at, how fast does it actually pose and where is your bed, you know, after the fact that it has decomposed these various crops. You know, if you're deficient in a particular thing and you put in a lot of deficient things, you're compounding the deficient heat. And so unless you're really on top of where your soil is at, by putting in that organic matter in a lot of it, you're really only just putting in what was your stacking the problem. Right, you're not addressing the problem. I mean, in this version of notes are really addresses those soil management issues, to move at the same time. And so at the end of every year, I should say at the end of every single year, we do poll large, stylish tarps, so farmer's friends, 40, 50 feet wide, back hundreds of long stylish tarps. And we poll that over the entire farm, over everything that's not. And usually I try and have that planned out so that the first bed that I'm going to plan things into and spring of covers, and that we give myself, say, the five week, five, six, 30 beds, until you run into what was overwinked. So that regardless of how the spring is, I can at least get five feet and get that overwintered crop out before I'm into those steps. So you're getting your soil tests and where do you recommend people looking for them? Okay, so more fortunate that there's a really good extension service here, and so can through Western or Eastern, through Washington State University. Washington State University is a pretty renowned agricultural school, and so they have pretty decent extension office. So if you have a good extension office in your area, through your Ag School, at University in those regions, they usually offer pretty basic soil tests. I think I'm going to write $25, $30,000. And usually I think that that's probably going to do what's called a Baylux 3, and a Baylux 3 is going to tell you what's in your soil. It's not going to tell you what's available to say what's in your spot. And so then you can get a, what's the mention called a case, S, and a case, S, and it's going to tell you what's available to your plant at that point in time. And so sometimes you're going to need to find a different lab to do that. So Logan Lab, that's LOGAN, Logan Lab. Logan Lab has come my way as being the most long standing, professional agricultural soil testing for still with you guys. I think it's like one of the most known soil testing facilities. And so they will view a combination for you, a Baylux 3 and a case. They can also do your water, which is important because you need to know how much they have to be calcium. You have any water, so you're just going out for calcium and you need to know that. And so then you can have your water tested along with any male or a type of case. And so then from there, they are going to give you a really kind of base. They're like, we think you should be in this range here and they won't necessarily give you the information and say how to go from where you are from what language they suggest. But they will at least tell you that they think that you're following these days this curve rules. So randomness is now. The parameters that they're describing are going to, as far as I understand it, are coming from an Albra perspective on balancing soil minerals. So if you don't know about cat ion exchange capacity or how your soil colloid works or what cat ions are versus AMI, and that's a whole other conversation. But the basic of it is that you're trying to balance the minerals that are bonded to your soil particles in a specific way. And usually what that means is sort of like doing with your cat ions and not your anti-hounds. So you're doing with things like your calcium, not things like your nitrogen. And so that's sort of what I use that information for. Now there's a guy by the name of Ad. He runs a company called Heatage Simple Organic. He's located in the Seattle area. And he has what I consider to be a very amazing offer and for product, which is that you purchase the Logan Lab S through him. He sends you a sample kit that you fill with your soil samples and a crepe on below the Logan Lab. And then the results are sent to him. And he is a soil scientist, a soil professional, a soil management professional. He has his own line of soils that he makes. He has a nursery that he operates a family, and then the nursery business is for a type of time. And as far as I'm concerned, one of the better crafts on contemporary soil science that I've ever seen. across person and easily set with another individual who has a keen understanding of the all-brecht effective of soil mineral balancing. And between the two of them, they give you their recommendation back based upon what they believe to be a proper soil balance. It will then even source and mix the amendment based upon your definition of soil volume or square footage or area and be able to provide good quality inputs or organic, desired organic inputs based upon that soil depth. And so that's the service that I choose because as far as I'm concerned, being able to have a professional give you that level of consultation in regards to your mineral and then not say the physical side of a mending your soil, but the chemistry side of a mending your soil is just invaluable. If you're not testing, you're guessing. If you're guessing, you're going to get it wrong because you're not as smart as soil. And if you can save money because you don't need anything, then you say money you didn't need it. If you balance your soil correctly, you really only are going to need a lightly amend their act because the whole point of overloading the soil's whole world is sometimes a stop about is that you're basically pushing the elemental bond within your soil is the maximum homing capacity. So everything's at the end of the day in a non-moving sense, a positive and a negative charge. And the positive and a negative bond. And so things like calcium bonds do the soil colloid while things like nitrogen don't bond in a free state. And that's why say nitrogen reaches what calcium does. And so the idea being is that your soil is a fund. And so what you want to do is you want to have as many of those bond a place possible. But that means is that your soil is fully hash-based. It never holds any more minimal content, even if you want a bit to. And so that means that anytime a plant is acting for any specific type of mineral, it's available in the soil. And so the point of the balance is not just that you have the maximum amount of everything there. It's that you have specific ratios of certain minerals to other kinds of minerals because there really aren't things called efficiencies that the end of the day. There's really just imbalance. And that's too much of one thing blocks out the other thing. It's too little of one thing in your feed interferes with the ability to grab others. And so this perspective is just by some balance. The results being that your plants are healthier and a healthy plant will resist death and healthy plants that are flavor. You have higher stress rates and so you're yield is higher. And overall, the results sort of speak for themselves once you properly balanced your soil and it's a whole way. That's a really fascinating. It's one thing that I think that I've always enjoyed in our correspondences is your sort of appreciation and adherence to the science. And I find in talking to a lot of no-till people that the science often leads them in the direction of not tillage. We all know tillage is what it does to soil but also when you start looking into how soil functions then tillage seems like the last thing you'd want to do. It's really tough. And I think that there's just a moment and that we're okay. When you really look back at the history of agriculture, human beings engage in agriculture and it's like this really small little blip in. The more borps flowers invented in the 18th century. So that was just a couple of hundred years ago. So about 9,000 years of agriculture, more of essentially all no-till. I think some of the highest forms of technology were like a stick that you would poke in the ground and you would draw seeds in and then you would cover at least the rest. And so most of the time we just had no tool to break open the ground. We didn't have big sheets of polymer to life slap. It would fill off the vegetation. Those were like the whole year. We didn't have the things. The ones like the mobile flowers invented, it just seemed like all this coil had been all. And to a certain extent, it's not wrong. It totally did recreatibility for humans and feed themselves. But you see obviously with the mass jail problem with that, if it dust ball and you get a dead ball, it's next to the cell, that's not going to be sustainable. So the alternatives that arose to kill it were chemical in those pills. So sometimes when I say no-till, I'm around the rain guys to look at them like what are you talking about? That means that you're pulling the life off state on everything. So the whole new version of no-till until say whatever we're talking about came about, in the past 20 years, this permaculture is 1982, Elliott Coleman's inventing it to filter in 2000. It's only in the past five years are being really become prominent. We're talking like brand new territory here in terms of agricultural interaction soil. It is brand new. It's like you got chemical no-till in 1950. No-till farming, the book No-till farming was written in 1973, but was totally chemical no-till. So killing is just what you do. Not like you rarely stop the question. It's kind of like just well-sharming. And I think that what's so interesting is about the lean perspective or when you read 10 Harman's book, you list out the things that are waste on the farm, the actions that are waste on the farm. And I would say that all of those things on that list is what someone would respond to. They would say that those were what's farming what? Weeding is farming. Like killing is farming. But at the end of the day, those are the things that you should even spend your time doing in the past. The Edward Faulkner wrote the plowman fall in 1943. And here's some quote. No-one has ever advanced to scientific reasons for plow-aids. There is simply no need for plowing in the first instance. And most of the operations that customarily follow are entirely unnecessary. The land had not first been plow-aids. There's nothing wrong with our soil except our interference. And it can be said with considerable truth that the use of the plow has actually destroyed the production of our soil. You know the 1940s. Right? So, you know, to me it's just like the word in this momentum. And honestly, only this year did I ever really find the whole oil is down to that distinction of that there's crop residue above ground and that there's roots in the soil and that the goal is to not brew with the soil. Right? Like if somebody asked you to go move along and you went out and you just filled it, I just picked it up and I said, "What do you do it?" Right? You'd be like, "Oh, well, I'm turning in all of the grass into the yard so that there won't be grass anymore." Right? Like it would seem foolish. You're like, "No, you need to cut that, cut it that, cut it that, cut it that, cut it that, that's the ground." So it's kind of just coming to a realization that there is a different way and you know, at the end of the day, like there's so much use here and once you have a series of steps to do, you don't have to reinvent it anymore. You know, like it took a long time just for me to know, like do I, do I put the amendment down first or do I frog for it? Like one reason why I put the amendment down past the frog for it, that way some of that amendment actually falls down the grass. It's a little bit deeper into the right. Right? So that because I am not a deeply missing in, you know, like my health and my outfell, or whatever it is, it's just a little bit. And that was just sort of like, OK, this makes sense to put this step of work back in. So it's always being refined. And I think that at this point in time, what needs to be developed is the no-till tool. So that you actually have a device that runs down the bed that's 30 inches wide, and that's right past the oil surface. It's not just lightly splashing like a quarter of an inch below. Like I can imagine like a modified artist star, you know, one of those like walk behind baby green cutters. It would just remove the organic matter from the surface and collect it for a very convenient thing. Because then after that all that you're doing is just applying a fallen on a compost on top. And you have a perfectly clean desk that you can transplant or proceed directly into. And it's because no one farms this way that's at the pool. Right? Like I've thought about just giving a second crystal officer that I can kind of brutal with. Or if you don't just slide it onto the dispensable or with a rigid blade, so there's not a bunch of splatter. Now I can just kind of cut some one side to another and just kind of just barely lightly stand across the surface of the soil like doing so. And that's the best tool that I've come up with so far because it could be perfectly on it. I was doing this by -- I got a little pulled as really single plant by hand. And I know that that's not -- that has to be some level of clearing the bed. And I think this has to be the end of the day. Why people don't have to be able to see it, but it's more work. But when I looked at how many times I would run the road until I was back and forth down the bed and then like break up the debris on the surface and try and re-sform it. And I think that it's a good idea to get all that stuff at the end of the day. I realize it might seem like more work, be having all of these plants by hand right at this soil surface. But I honestly ask if I'm really kind to myself, it's just a perception, I think. I mean, it feels like a brand new style of farming in a very ridiculous way because yeah, it had to be the only style of farming before. But it's more about production now and not just us sustenance. But yeah, the tools are going to start coming along and then the access to the information is coming along. I know there are a couple books going to come out here soon that could have a lot of potential. And I think yeah, I mean, it's kind of cool to sit on this sort of precipice of the paradigm shift from the tillage paradigm to possibly the non-tillage paradigm, the biological paradigm. Absolutely. I mean, I am constantly amazed to think that this style of farming is new. Sometimes when we're like, yeah, farming was invented in 2013. I feel like that. I feel like the tools and how I don't know what happens over the past five and years with the amount of information available on the internet, especially within the agricultural sphere to just be. I feel like farmers used to hold their cards really close to their chest. How do you got to cut off what variety do you have? Now it's creating open stores. We have a joke where we're like, it does a problem that we're facing. We just wait and let the internet solve it for us. It's like, you know, in a matter of like four or five months, if you pay attention, you'll be like, oh, there's an answer. Like, I just can't. And you can quickly apply it. And, you know, it's fascinating to me because I definitely see the potential of small scale operations like this really being the viable model. You know, it's an absolutely amazing knowledge product. And we've called off such a small square footage. It's offered you this way. You know, we harvest about 250, 300 pounds a day, and we go week. You know, a hundred pounds of room props. And you know, and season with the tomatoes, at least 500 pounds of tomatoes a week. And we market them in really specific ways. And so, you can now add a value, just incredible amount of value out of a small space. And I know my inefficient. Here's incredible. The things that you can not use chemicals, not use fossil fuel, have a rodion, not have lead, and have your farm be a quarter of an eighth. And how to generate more revenue in, I mean, their I say profit. And most large scale farming operations that, you know, exist on the, say, the individual ownership of home. I mean, to me, it's wet. It's wet. There's no other way. I think that's a good place to turn to our sort of closing ceremony here. We'll do a little rapid fire questions and then I'll let you go. We, all right, who's your favorite farmer or farm right now? Oh, well, favorite farm right now is this obviously never seen. I mean, like, what are you going to say? Like, you know, the, the dude crushes it. And, you know, going into tools with elements and all of that, he's like, I don't know what farmer's going for more grain, but I want to do those tools. I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah. Yeah, it's the silly. You know, and again, how, like, I think that the most amazing things are the ones that people just would easily accept is, like, if you're looking outside or and you were like, oh, look at this farm. You like that you think that it's amazing. You would be like, well, yeah, isn't this how everyone finds? Like, why wouldn't you find like, right? You know, there would just be like, yeah, no doubt. You know, oh, oh, you don't sell and you just like, you know, transplants, you know, and you clear the crop residue, and what else are you doing? I'm talking to you about, like, those moments of truth, you know, like, I don't know. When you, when you see, like, the photographs, you're all, you know, just like, just God, like, here I mean, you are. You know, baby green, God. And when anybody would look at that, they would just be like, well, yeah, I mean, this makes total sense. Like, you've got the tools, you know, like, you know, and I, that's true. I think that just kind of from those types of people is certainly motivation for us. What's your favorite farming book? I would have to say the good life from the nearing was probably the most fundamental farming book that I ever read before I was farming. You know, I think that there's some amazing wisdom in there. And I didn't even know that Elyse Pullman had bought a cover given the land from Scott Neyling, which was where his farm was in, you know, I didn't know that until much later. And I think that that was amazing because at the time, Elyse Pullman, you know, I mean, you see Godfather. So any Elyse Pullman book, obviously. The Griswald book, the farm financing Griswald book, organic farm finance. I don't know if it was a Griswald. You know what the end of the line now? Oh, yeah, yeah. I think that in terms of laying out like the perception that every crop is independent and every crop has its own cost and you need to be analyzing every crop, and that every other crop in order to know what's profitable and what's not possible. I think this is one of those really eye-opening things in farming. What's your best advice for a young farmer? No, a broccoli is before you start to farm. I see a lot of people who are trying to bring a lot of farmers to be farmers. I just think that if you don't like garden or eat food, start eating food and start, I think, like, you really need to be deeply embedded in understanding of what food is, the history of food, what soil, what food is. is do you have you seen these plants grow two, three, four times before because you know if you just go out there and you start a farm and you don't even know what it's made of plants is supposed to look like as I think it is. You know, do a little self-industinous first. That's my definition of this. I guess the next thing is if you're actually going to build a farm, build a farm first before you think it is the most self-credits and work a job or work on a farm while you build your plant. So make sure that you have everything in place before you start to try and grow plants because growing plants is a full-time job. You know, it's not building a farm while you're trying to grow plants. So you've never grown before. Well, man, we're going to have to do this again, Alex. Yes, please, please. Always, always a pleasure to ramble on things that I feel I know. Well, nice, man. Well, thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. All right, if you liked Alex, make sure to follow he and Amy on places like Instagram, all the relevant links will be in the show notes. Also check out the Patreon page for this show. Also also follow me @RoughJFJesse on Twitter and Instagram. Feel free to email me some content suggestions at [email protected]. Make sure to subscribe to it wherever you're getting it, the podcast that is. If you can, you should be able to shortly. Let me know if you have issues. And I will send you off with our no-till fact of the day brought to you by the Worm Farmers Handbook by Rhonda Sherman. There are over 9,000 species of worms ranging from half inch to 22 feet long. Yeah, feet. You know, I'm just saying this is another good reason not to till. That thing would be a mess to get out of the tines. Anyway, all right, letter you all. Thanks for listening. Bye.