Begun farming in 2016, after moving from Georgia

Understood how difficult farming is, as have seen other farmers working hard, every day. Our family earnings from farming were not expected to be close to what we were earning.

Soil was known to be very depleted

Soil testing confirmed soil depletion and lack of SOM

Soil at the farm is sandy silt clay loam

To improve soil, we believed tree biomass, in various traditional ways like biochar, hügelkultur, logs and wood chips would work very well 

Initial SOM was less than 1%

In just 2 years hugel bed SOM rose to 10.5%

In 2017 approached SCADB to share the plans for coming years

Still remember, Mark Kirby at the chair and another group of farmers sharing their plans for organic farm in Montgomery

Unfortunately, they couldn’t continue farming after a few years

Knew about couple other farming operations that intended to farm organic, didn’t continue to farm after a few years

We practiced no till for 8 years, gained good bit of knowledge from it

We gathered biomass in 2017

With SADC’s involvement, established NJ DEP waste recycling permit to use biomass from trees to use for agriculture purposes

By 2020, gathered biomass had been purposed, part of it had broken down, good bit of it was used to make hugel bed by home, part of it was wood chipped

In 2020, SADC considered a pilot project for hügelkultur and biochar

Farm benefited tremendously from wood logs as it allowed habitat for beneficial insects

Wood logs and wood chips helped us to harvest mushrooms and improve mycelium in the soil

No synthetics, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers have been used in 10 years

Early this month we received notice from SCADB, 

I request the committee to let us present the information, for we have worked very hard to improve the soil at our farm, every bit of our resource has been spent to improve the soil and grow good food for the community.