Saten’s notes and photos about the planning for the following season in the truck farm (Part 4)
Everything on the Ranch was a community effort. When it came to planning for the planting – we would sit down for several weeks over winter with a massive board set up in the Surdas office which mapped out every bed on the truck farm. We did this because a fundamental principle of organic farming is crop rotation between different families of vegetables so as to enhance soil fertility, decrease pest pressure, and achieve more weed control. So every bed had to have a different crop each cycle.
Kranto, and Adeha and Rätus were three of the leading lights in steering this effort. We would meet with the Magdalena kitchen menu staff and they would gauge the amount of ingredients they would need week by week over the whole year. This information would then be digested by our farm managers to see how much of the menu we could provide. It usually worked very well and harvest amounts were almost all gobbled up by Magdalena chefs. We did have a side business providing restaurants in Redmond and Bend with flowers, sprouts, and other vegetables for a while – I think it was an effort to extend goodwill.
There was one time when our best efforts did not pay off. We put in a 500 ft bed of cilantro and raised an amazing crop – only to have the chef change at Magdalena and for us to be told it was no longer needed. I took on the job of rototilling under the bed, and by the time I had finished cutting up over 2000 sq feet of this highly aromatic herb, I had engendered a decades-long revulsion for it …thankfully many trips to Mexico later in life reignited my love for it!
Above some shots showing how each bed was numbered and identified. This level of oversight, of course, also made for efficient dispatching of staff to the exact areas that needed harvesting, weeding, etc.
These notes were first published as Facebook posts in a closed group for Ranch Residents. They are being re-published in Osho News with Saten’s permission. Edited and curated by Navina. Photos: all shots in this article are by the author.
Related articles
- Dryland Farming in Oregon – Experiments and innovative ideas thanks to brilliant minds coming together in Dadu farming on the Ranch. Part 1 of Saten’s notes
- Boys (and girls) love machines! – In Part 2 of his notes, Saten reminisces on the faithful machines used for all farming chores
- The evolution of our greenhouses – Saten recollects the successful, and less successful, experiments in our farming practices in Oregon (Part 3)
- Alfa-Alfa / The Enlightenment Saga – Two chapters from Arjava’s memoir, Still… Here and Now: Growing Wings in Osho’s Garden, this time from the Oregon era
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