COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE

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HOW THEY DO IT

YOU HAVE TO BE A LONG-TIME MOTHER reader for the following observation to make any sense: One of my most persistent memories from visiting Kerry and Barbara Sullivan's community-supported garden in Kimberton, Pennsylvania, is the whitewashed wall of the Sullivans' barn shed where a half-dozen Smith & Hawken garden forks hang idly—like old coats no longer in fashion.

Let me explain. In 1979 Barb and Kerry created the MOTHER EARTH NEWS, Eco-Village Research Garden. For four years, they diligently maintained 130 double-dug beds of vegetables and flowers. Each year they created over 15 tons of premium compost. They did all this work by hand, mostly with the aid of their sturdy Bulldog garden forks.

Now those forks are retired ("The only thing we use them for is digging potatoes," Barbara admits). Gone also are the days when Kerry pronounced "Rototiller" as if it were a four-letter word instead of a four-syllable one, and when the couple feared black plastic was worse for plants than black rot.

Sound like a sellout? A headline for Biotech Chemicide Growers Weekly: "Lily-Pure Organic Gardeners Finally Face Reality"? Not at all. As explained in the main article, not only are Barb and Kerry sticking to their organic (indeed, bio-dynamic) ideals, they're on the cutting edge of an exciting new way of advancing them. But the Sullivans and MOTHER go back a good ways—so I just couldn't resist teasing them a little about the changes they've made.

Actually, the techniques the Sullivans are using to raise five acres of organic vegetables for 100 shareholders are as exciting as the community involvement behind the enterprise. They fertilize, shape, plant and weed dozens of permanent raised beds—all mechanically (using methods they learned from bio-dynamic grower Mac Mead in Spring Valley, New York). Their 1950 Farmall Super-A tractor has well-spaced front wheels for straddling the three-foot-wide growing beds. Likewise, the wheels on the scaled-down manure spreader they use (to add compost) fit those same pathway tracks. To make the beds, they attach a set of soil-busting harrows (spring like metal claws) under the tractor and a specially built bed maker behind.

The bed maker (designed by W.W. Manufacturing Co., 60 Rosenhayn Ave., Bridgeton, NJ 08302) has one large disk on each side to push dirt to the middle, adjustable boards to shape and level the soil, and two rows of small, soil-pulverizing disks (called Meeker harrows) to do the final texturizing. One or two passes with this rig and a bed is shaped and worked up for planting.

Barbara (who does most of the tractor driving) then pulls a homemade row marker down the bed. The three equally spaced wheels on her rig make three precise planting furrows. After that, a Swedish Nibex seeder is hand-pushed down each row to drop accurately spaced seeds in place (trans plants are dropped into the furrows by hand).

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