Brookside Energy Farm, Willits, CA

Crucial farm infrastructure is being built this winter in order to allow farmers to hit the ground running in the spring with the planting of crops. Overturning the soil for cover crops of winter rye, fava bean, barley, vetch and clover began in early November. Seeds were sown soon afterwards and are already sprouting.

Construction of the perimeter fence is the main project at hand. Volunteers from the community have teamed with the Post Carbon Institute to finish putting steel posts in the ground, stretching and tensioning wire, and installing the gates. The project is expected to be completed by late December. The fence is six feet tall and made of various sized mesh that is intended to protect farm crops from both rabbits and deer. If six feet is not enough to keep deer out, the fence posts have been designed to allow the addition of extra wire, making the fence even more difficult to clear.

The irrigation system is also a key piece of farm infrastructure that is in the planning phase. This project will have to be completed by the end of winter in order to support spring crops. Right now the farm relies on the municipal water supply. The goal is to bring the farm to greater resource independence by drilling a well that is powered by renewable energy.

The energyfarms.net website will be reformatted in December to highlight both the Vancouver Energy Farm and the Willits Farm. Look for daily blog entries to receive reports regarding the development Brookside farm projects.

Christoffer Hansen
Brookside Energy Farm

Vancouver Energy Farm, Vancouver, BC

November provided a good example of "extreme weather" at the Vancouver energy farm. We started the month with an early frost and freeze, finished with an unseasonably early snow storm, and in the middle of it all recorded over 300mm of rainfall. We've had unexpected floods, freezes, large trees knocked down, power outages, and an unrepentant plague of geese, but are still continuing to make progress and are looking forward to the opportunities of the next growing season.

While one block of overwinter grain and biomass crops is well-established, the second larger block, damaged by geese and re-planted late in the season, is poorly covered and has likely suffered significant nutrient losses during the heavy rains. The trial plots have provided a good first-hand example of how farm design is a highly effective pest control strategy: the geese have entirely avoided the low-visibility areas near the tall sudan grass and jerusalem artichoke stalks, preferring the open areas further afield. Fortunately for us, a number of our planned 2007 energy crops - particularly miscanthus - are very tall, providing the key building blocks for a structurally diverse planting that should be intentionally inhospitable to the geese.

Our directed studies student from Denmark, Maria, is working with the Jerusalem Artichoke planting. Braving some of the rainiest days in a rainy month, Maria has harvested different samples of the crop before and after the frost to assess different yields, sugar contents and bioethanol production possibilities for the tubers. With their weights recorded, the excess tubers were sold at our final public farmer's markets.

Two prototype biogas digesters were completed by Christoffer Hansen in late October and installed in one of the farm's passively-heated polytunnels. With temperature probes wirelessly transmitting data from the envrionment inside the drums back to a datalogger in our office, we have some idea of the reaction taking place inside. Flooding of the gas holding tank and more recently, freezing of the same, have delayed any potential gas collection.

The very rainy days have also provided some opportunities for Micah and Clare, students assisting with the project, to continue to thresh and clean canola seed the time-consuming and fossil-fuel-free way: by foot. Each rainy afternoon, another few kilos of cleaned canola seed arrives on my desk, and the stored harvest pile becomes a bit smaller. It's not biodiesel just yet, but it's getting closer.

Mark Bomford
Program Coordinator, Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm