An Idea for an Organic Farm

So I made an open call to a group of my friends to see who would be interested in buying in to a sustainable farm. This is something of a dream of mine, and one I’ve talked often about, but not been able to be totally serious about until now. If the housing market holds up, I will hopefully be able to put together a grubstake to build a rather good house in the country. The catch is that I think it would be better if other families (specifically those with some young kids like mine) came along too. Quite selfishly, I want the clean living lifestyle with food security for my family without giving up the close socialisation my kids get in a city environment. While it’s still my own dream, the family is what’s important.

It struck me, after talking to one of my friends, that people just saw an idea and a price tag and didn’t really picture what I had in mind when I made my offer. Well, here it is in black and white: a concept for a self-sustaining organic farm… with high-speed internet (that’s important). I’ve been researching the technology and everything that I am going to talk about here is mature tech – not pie in the sky tech that might come out in a few years. This is stuff on the ground, now. As many of you know, a lot of our great energy-saving concepts came out of the gas crunch of the 70’s, so these things – while not going mainstream – have nonetheless seen improvement since then. Such things as methane digesters and composting toilets have come a long way. Frankly, a lot of this tech could be implemented in a low-tech low-cost way, but I rather wanted to use stuff that kept the comfort of modern living with the added bonus of being sustainable. Cost reductions are therefore possible with simplification, but only if necessary.

Also, I have been attempting to build a realistic plan by putting together possible alternative income streams other than crops. Growing Power is an inspiration in this regard, as they conceive of the working urban farm in terms of dollars per square foot and attempt to extend profit-making activities beyond simple food production. The modern organic farm concept is something of a highly diverse business venture, with chances to tap income streams all over the map. Additionally, organic farms have the odd habit of attracting cheap labour (WWOOFers et. al.) because they are a shared passion amongst we greeners. Spinoff enterprises include everything from cob and cordwood building courses (which serve to populate the property with guesthouses and outbuildings) as well as aquaponics and organic farming courses that would be a source of income outside the traditional farming model. With a good sized stand of sugarbush, spring tourism would be a possible revenue stream during the sap run. With existing contacts, a yearly Japanese maple syrup tour would be more than possible, and would represent a source of labour that incurs a negative cost: a revenue stream that creates another revenue stream.

So, I am not too concerned about the opportunities to derive profit from an organic farming operation. The issue then is to talk about what exactly the operation would work. My core theory is that of Jacobsian extension: the longer you keep stuff in your system, the more opportunities you have of making profit from it over and over again. The basis is then an attempt to create an almost closed loop system. A closed loop system is functionally impossible – sunlight is an external input that simply keeps on giving, therefore with that external energy source, there is no such thing as a closed-loop system. The key, then, is to make that sunlight input last as long as possible in your system and be a gift that keeps on giving.

LAND: Optimally, I see 100 acres of land with 30-40 acres clear and 60-70 acres in mainly maple. The clear would hopefully have only a small gradient, but the treed area could have a diverse landscape with bogs and hillocks. That’s my preference, but my ideas can be scaled to reality if need be. I would prefer it in a good growing region (6 or 7) but a high 5 will do fine. Access to local water sources preferred but not totally necessary.

HOUSE: The main expense of the operation, the house would be designed to qualify for a Passivhaus certification, meaning it would effectively pay for itself over the long run. Passivhaus design started decades ago (the inspiration came from a hyper-insulated house in Saskatchewan) and is the most strict energy-saving certification in existence. Most Passivhaus designs do not require central heating, even in the depths of a Canadian winter. They are heated primarily with human body heat and lightbulbs in the house. For additional warmth, there is radiant floor heating produced by a solar-powered geothermal heat pump. Since HVAC is almost totally eliminated, as are gas services and heaters, you actually save enough money to pay for the hyperinsulation. Passivhaus designs are being built for about $150 per square foot. Heating costs are near nil. The house would require hyperefficient appliances and solar panels, but again, these pay for themselves over the long run.

SYSTEMS:

This is where things get fun. The core of the farm is the people. The farm must supply food and utilities for the families, and take care of their waste products. Let’s start from the showers, shall we? Showers, sinks, and washing machines produce greywater. Greywater is dirty water that you can’t drink, but if you use the right soaps and detergents, plants can drink it. As a matter of fact, greywater treatment is a main feature of Earthships. It even occurs right inside the house, providing plants that clean the water as well as the air. The water is then used to flush toilets (because using drinking water for that is simply stupid). The treated greywater then gets flushed and becomes blackwater… that’s water, only with poo in it. The poo water goes to a methane digester, which produces both methane (natural gas) and natural fertiliser. Part of the input to the digester must be carbon-rich, and therefore sawdust and other biomass would occasionally be put in from foresting and farming activities. In order to back up the solar power units, the methane could be used to run not only the stove (with three families, there’s enough poo for a lot of methane for cooking), but a natural-gas powered fuel cell. One of these can make sure there is always enough current in the lines. Eventually the poo water becomes spent, and ends up as natural fertiliser on the Fukuoka-style grain fields. Eventually that grain becomes bread and beer, which continues the poo and pee cycle. Pee, by the way, should be separated from the poo by diverting toilets, because it is the perfect nutrient for an algaculture bioreactor – and also can be used directly on fields if diluted. Pee is really useful.

With people eating, there comes food scraps and other organic garbage. That stuff is great, and needs to be kept in the system as long as possible. Its first stop is to the black soldier fly buckets, where oodles of little creepy-crawlies reduce everything except cellulose. They can even eat meat and cheese and other milk products, stuff worms can’t eat. This system produces several products: heat, compost tea, compost, and black soldier fly larvae. There is a use for every one of those things. Heat is useful most of the time in Canada, so we’ll leave that be. Compost tea can be diluted and applied to the land as a very potent source of soil microbes to improve soil health. The compost is moved over to the next processing stage: vermiculture. Worms actually seem to prefer black soldier fly castings to raw foods, and they can process the cellulose that black soldier flies can’t. This process has been tested and it has been proven that not only are the two processes complimentary, the vermicomposting goes faster when the compost has been preprocessed by black soldier fly. This process produces vermicompost for the fields (a compost so rich that it should be mixed with other soil before applying to the ground), and compost tea. The black soldier fly and vermiculture units leave us with a surplus of creepy-crawlies with which to feed our tilapia in the aquaponics unit.

Aquaponics has been talked about before, but for the uninitiated, it’s a system that takes the best of aquaculture and hydroponics and puts them together. There is no cycling of water out of the system: fish poo fertilises planting trays, the nitrates are transformed into nitrites by the resident bacteria, the nitrites fertilise the plants, the plants thereby purify the water. The water can be cycled indefinitely as opposed to flowing through wastefully. The only input required is food, and worms and black soldier flies provide part of that. With an algae bioreactor, tilapia can also eat algae (for which they are adapted because of filters in their gills). Tilapia are omnivores that can truly eat anything. After all, they naturally occur with hippos because they can eat hippo poo. With constantly cycling and recycling nutrients, the only thing a person has to do for an aquaponics system is plant, maintain, and harvest. The amount of food produced by a small system is staggering… and it is tried and tested tech. The aquaponics system would require a greenhouse to be able to produce all year round. Yes, even in Canada, in minus 20 degree weather. How, you ask? Well, I have a mind to incorporate rocket stoves with thermal mass as well as a potential solaroof design. All possible, all tried and tested. With the aquaponics unit would come a flock of Muscovy ducks for pest control, meat, and eggs. Duck poo is perfectly welcome in an aquaponics system, and ‘scovies are at home on the range, capable of foraging and generally taking care of themselves. If necessary, chickens could be added to the system to add heat and carbon dioxide. An odd thing, you may think, to add to a greenhouse… but if it’s near airtight and plants consume CO2 to make sugars, you need a source of CO2 in the greenhouse. The added heat of the coop (as well as the eggs and pest control services) wouldn’t hurt.

A key to the functioning of the farm, then, would be water storage. A pond would be highly useful for not only water storage but production of biomass. Duckweed, a nigh indestructible water weed, is an exceptional converter of sunlight to protein, and can multiply on still water faster than you can say photosynthesis. Opening up a nice pond with duckweed on top would allow for green forage for the tilapia that can be frozen for storage over the winter. Another aquaponics enthusiast does this for his fish, and the nutrient composition of duckweed is superb for fish feed when supplemented with other stuff like black soldier fly (which, itself, is actually superior to most commercial fish feed). Additional water tanks for runoff collection would also be useful for dry periods.

What you see above is a reasonably brief discussion of some pretty nifty thoughts for just the central systems of the organic farm. A woodlot makes a great deal more activities possible, especially if it is maple. With a big enough woodlot, the income from sustainable forestry would also supplement the bottom line, and the use of a pyrolizer for heating in the greenhouse would produce not only heat but biochar – useful in making terra preta. On top of those things, an open expanse of clover would allow for beekeeping, a couple possible dairy cows, goats, you name it. That’s just gravy, as all the necessary calories are already being produced in the systems I’ve just talked about. Excess produce can be sold through the middle of winter. A little bit of cottage industry, and secondary products are also possible. Add in WWOOFers and farm vacationers, as well as weekend courses, the place can become quite an earning proposition.

So, that’s the basic idea. Any questions?

Compost Tea Brewer

Back to basics!

Check out a great post here on how to make a compost tea brewer for cheap!

Why do such a thing?

Because!

Ahh, cool stuff.

Phase three: the Lawn

The lawn is something I have never truly understood. For some reason, fully grown men (typically men, I don't often see women infatuated with their lawns) spend untold hours fertilising, mowing, aerating, and preening their lawns to a brilliant, lush green. I don't get it. It's just work. I would rather plant bamboo, or hay or something.

Still, if people want to have a lawn on their own land on their own time, more power to them. There's just one problem. People use too much fertiliser. Not all of it goes into the ground, and a lot washes out storm drains into bodies of water. There, it creates algae blooms. Sadly, these are not particularly good for their environment: they grow, metabolise all the CO2 in the water, then choke on their own oxygen. When the algae die, aerobic bacteria come in to eat up the stuff that remains - absorbing all the oxygen in the area in the process. This can create huge, lifeless sections of water known as dead zones. It's wasteful, harmful, and it's all for the purpose of an ornamental crop that does nothing much other than suck up municipal water supplies in Calgary's semi-arid climate. There has to be a better way than fertiliser to make a lawn lush and green. What's more, there has to be some other kind(s) of ground cover that would be equally pleasant and less labour and water intensive.

Now, as I've said, I'm not against people having their own lawns. Even though I find them an utter waste of time and effort, people should have the freedom to cultivate their lawns to their hearts' content. Just one catch: no chemical fertilizer

Luckily, phase two of the "ground up" project provided us a couple things we can carry into this phase: compost tea and vermicompost. Phase three is a landscaping company that purchases and applies these products to the nutrient-hungry lawns of the subdivision. Thanks to this source of ready natural fertiliser, the lawns of the subdivision do not have to go wanting, and will find themselves as lush if not lusher than the heady days of phosphorous and chemical runoff.

But there's more to this service than meets the eye. First of all, it wants to take your lawn clippings. Second of all, if you're keen for a little experimentation, they might grow some varied cover crops on your lawn other than grass for all sorts of economic uses - anything from barley to sunflowers - and they'll take care of it for you. Any number of things can be grown with the amount of lawn area that a full subdivision has, and whether the landscapers want to harvest barley for a brewery or sell sunflower seeds, they will be able to populate your lawn with something nice. They'll even take care of it, harvest the crops, make a little cash on the side, and do it all without you having to pay them.

Let's examine the ideas I had above: a brewery or a sunflower seed operation. Breweries are wonderlands where humans and nature have the potential of living and working together in harmony. Beer is produced from malted barley by yeast. The by-products are: CO2, dead yeast, spent grain, and beer... delicious beer. Through the miracle of phase 1, we already know where the off-gassed CO2 will go: into the algae bioreactor. The dead yeast and spent grain can go any number of places, including the Black Soldier Fly composter from phase 2, or a biochar pyrolizer. More on that later. Of course, the beer can be consumed locally or exported. With sunflowers, the natural product is sunflower seeds, but at harvest, there is an awful lot of biomass left over. This is especially true if the seeds are de-shelled and sold as baking goods or snacks. This is also a great candidate for reduction to biochar.

Biochar has some benefits that are not only agricultural. Besides being able to combine it with vermicompost for an organic one-two punch that will invigorate your lawn, a pyrolizer makes its own fuel, and a continuously-run pyrolizer does not need any input except biological matter. The combustible gases released in the pyrolization process - after having been started by some form of outside combustion such as propane - continue to power the unit until it is turned off again. This means the pyrolizer is a free heater. In wintertime, this byproduct would be a boon to any number of pocket industries - including the brewery itself for roasting malted grain. Finally, the process of biochar pyrolization produces sequestered carbon, which can be eligible for carbon credits. This will make even your lawn clippings a reasonably lucrative product, and make leftover biomass from beer making and sunflower cultivation positive energy inputs that can stay in the economy for just that much longer.

In this phase, we take care of garden waste, eliminate polluting chemical fertilizers, some people help a brewery make beer, some people help a company produce sunflower seeds, and both companies send their biomass to a pyrolizer to produce biochar that can be fed back into phase 2 or exported as well as being redeemed for carbon sequestration credits. What's more, there's beer, sunflower seeds, and heat left over as by-products, and all three can go back into the economy after consumption in the coming phases.

Phase Two: Food Waste

Taking the focus back down to the subdivision level, what might be possible to achieve once an algae biodiesel plant has been set up. The central location in the subdivision where the plant and gas station can be set up would also be the site of several other pocket industries. In most of the next developmental phases, these industries are waste management related. This development can happen either within or outside of the waste management concept I've already talked about. The reason for this is simple: throwing away garbage creates no revenue. Processing it creates revenue. We are simply foolish to let the opportunity to generate revenue get buried in a landfill instead of exploiting it. It also happens to be more environmentally friendly. Funny that, eh? Both making money and saving the environment! I love it.

Right, the first waste stream to begin work on is the one it seems most people don't have any time for: organics. Food waste. A two-tier system would be highly useful in this phase. Black Soldier Fly (BSF) could compost the organics received first, and vermiculture could be used in the second tier. I've already talked a lot about BSF and vermicomposting is a reasonably well-worn technique. One thing to note: the two systems are complimentary. BSF digest food very rapidly, on the order of kilograms a day. Worms are slower to digest whole foods. When the worms process BSF waste, however, they process it much faster. What's more, items high in cellulose, which BSF find hard to digest, are easily digested by worms. BSF reduce the total volume of waste by 10 or 20 times each day so long as there is adequate surface area. Worms can then take those castings and turn them into superb humus. In the process, the byproduct of loads of BSF larvae and worms are produced, along with compost tea and vermicompost. These things are eminently marketable.

In the case of the worms and BSF larvae, the nutritional profile of the little beasties just happens to be rather good for fish feed. This, with a little algae residue left over from the biodiesel, would combine into a protein-and -fat rich fish pellet if properly processed. BSF and worms also produce chitin, which is oddly enough a useful flocculant in helping algae settle out of solutions. If the BSF and vermiculture operation was paired with a fish feed company that also harvested chitin, it could feed back into the algae biodiesel processor to increase efficiency in algae recovery! The system would then feed back into upsteam products as well as take leftover algal biomass (typically equal to the weight of oil extracted) and put it into a nutritious dry fish feed.

The nice thing about this arrangement is that all the byproducts of the biodiesel process are now spoken for (except the trace glycol, but I have heard of systems that feed the glycol back into the process). We are now handling food waste - which could be collected on a daily basis, feeding in from restaurants as well as homes - and producing a nutritious dry fish feed for profit. We also have leftover vermicompost and compost tea to sell into the next phase of the program.

Compost Tea

While compost tea seems to be generally regarded terra incognita, some people are hard at work thinking of ways to make it better. One of them, I'm proud to say, is my dear government of Alberta.

Compost Tea

There are commercial brewers available:

Earth Tea Brewer

Entire websites set up about the stuff:

composttea.com

And even the Pennsylvania government is in on the action:

Pennsylvanian Compost Tea.

I'm new to the whole compost tea thing, but I suppose if it's produced as a biproduct of vermiculture systems and black soldier fly digestion, it's something that any system incorporating those technologies would have to take into account.