MANAGE YOUR ECOLOGY

Golden Plover indicates seasons changing

MANAGE YOUR ECOLOGY

HOW TO START KNF

STEP 10: ROUTINES & RITUALS

MANAGE YOUR ECOLOGY

In this series, “How to Start KNF,” you have learned the philosophy and developed the skills. Now it’s time to focus on the system. You’ve overcome a big learning curve and the difficult stages of development. Here we step into Ecological Management.

We are transitioning from building to managing a Natural Farming system. We have built a living ecological system that is efficient and sustainable. By this stage, your garden, orchard, and animal systems should be settling into a stable state.

This transition stage from building to stability typically takes 3 years. At year 5, you will notice your land has drastically changed, and by year 10, you are ready to become a “Do-Nothing Farmer,” as portrayed by Masanobu Fukuoka in his book “One Straw Revolution.”

But now, by year 1, your stability, skills, and resources mean you can expand your operation and add more and different animals. You don’t have to wait a full year, but it takes about that long to have all the inputs ready, like a good Fish Amino Acid (FAA), and to understand how the pieces of the system work in harmony.

You should be better at observation, timing, and have a regular rhythm for your chores. You should be seeing fewer pests and disease and have fewer problems in general.

Note: If you do have problems, use your advancing observation and research skills. Don’t ask, “How do I kill it?” Your inquiry should be, “Why is it here? What is this symptom telling me?” We are no longer putting Band-Aids on problems. We are guiding natural systems on our land into a state of balance.

Farming Without Constant Crisis

Most farmers spend their lives fighting problems. Natural Farming is about building a system that increasingly solves problems on its own.

I came back from a sailing trip to find a massive aphid infestation on one row of my tea field. It was so large I could see a mass of black on the tea from several hundred feet away, covering at least a square meter (yard) of tea bushes. It took me a couple of days before I had time to address the aphids.

When I marched out into the field, armed for the aphid war, I didn’t see them. I thought I had remembered the wrong row. I searched the entire tea field and couldn’t find a single aphid.

The system was so balanced that it controlled a massive infestation, the biggest I had ever seen, without intervention. I literally did nothing. Honestly, had I come home a couple of days later, I would not have even known. I didn’t even take a picture because I thought it would only get worse, not go away!

Many people begin Natural Farming expecting suggestions on fertilizing, novel ways to control pests and diseases, recipes, and schedules. The real shift happens when you stop asking what to buy, what to use. The change happens when you learn to ask, “What is the ecology telling me?”

The purpose of Natural Farming is not to become a better agricultural consumer. It is to become a better manager of living systems, one that provides abundant, nutritious food.

Natural Farming becomes easier when the ecology functions properly. This means less money spent, less labor, fewer pests and disease, and abundant harvests of tasty food.

We are working towards spending:

·        $0 on Fertilizers

·        $0 on Feed

·        $0 on Pesticides

·        $0 on Herbicides

·        $0 on Fungicides …

We want to eliminate waste and runoff and bring as little as possible into the system. These goals are possible with Korean Natural Farming. We want to create Functional Ecology on our land.

LEARNING TO READ THE SYSTEM

Observation is the Most Important Input

Order a soil test and get recommendations on which fertilizer to add, per square foot/acre, per crop, per year. Buy the right product. Follow instructions. Hope for the best. This is what modern agriculture looks like, even for those practicing organic.

To be a Natural Farmer, you have to pay attention. The farmer’s awareness is more important than any bottle or recipe, soil test, or expert. 

From a practical standpoint, you should have stopped making decisions based on fertilizer recommendations. Don’t consider NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium). That’s not to say they’re not important. They obviously are. But what the KNF system does is turn that control over to Nature. This is why KNF is hard.

You have to learn to let go!

The KNF system works because of the Soil Foundation. Plants get what they need from the soil on demand because they have a complete, balanced soil ecosystem to convert any nutrient they need into a form they can use.

We use seawater and soluble minerals to ensure they have what they need in the soil for the biology to convert it into bioavailable forms.

We observe what plants need and when as they progress through the phases of growth. Following the Nutritive Cycle, we create formulas that use FPJs (Fermented Plant Juices) as active ingredients to signal and direct growth through Biochemical Signaling Technology (BST).

We ensure that the Vital Forces, the “3 Qi”, are balanced. Everything needs the proper balance of these elements.

VITAL FORCES

• Sunlight and Heat

• Water and Moisture

• Air and Wind

Now we are becoming a part of Nature, rather than trying to force it. Controlling Nature is as impossible as preventing an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. Those who think we can control Nature are always fighting her.

But Nature does communicate with us. Healthy systems communicate continuously. We need to watch, listen, and respond, then watch the results. It is easy to direct Nature using cooperation.

Grandpa’s Three Little Bottles

My grandfather was my first Natural Farming teacher. He was the caretaker for several large estates, each several acres. He worked alone, without help, long past when his friends had retired and passed. He set up his systems so that he could care for them as a very old man.

He had orchards, vineyards, and gardens set up throughout these estates. The biggest chore was harvesting.

Grandpa kept a very close eye on everything. For all the acreage and crops he tended, he only kept three small jars in his workshop. One was an ointment for pruning. (We now know it’s better not to treat, but that was the wisdom of the time.) He used that one often.

The second one was a horticultural oil for when sucking insects were out of control. I only remember him using it once.

The other was an insecticide. I never saw him use it. The jar sat there for decades, the label turning brown with age. It was there, just in case.

He knew that if the balance of the farm were allowed to break down, it would not be a problem with a single insect. The entire system would be out of balance.

He also knew that if he ever needed to use it, he would need very little, just enough to help restore balance. But because he hated chemicals, he made sure he would never need them.

Balance looks like the aphid infestation I had in my tea field. I did nothing, and it was balanced by the system. That balance is what you are working to build.

The lesson I learned from Grandpa’s three little bottles was the importance of maintaining balance. If the system ever got out of balance, it wasn’t just one bug that would be out of control. The entire system was at risk.

Overreacting can cause big problems too. A nearby farmer I work with intervened and made everything much worse. The land had a lot of centipedes, and they come with painful, long-lasting bites.

Whenever they were working in the yard and saw a centipede, they would make sure a chicken came over and ate it. The chickens were happy to have the additional protein source, and the humans helped them find many more than they could on their own. Centipedes evolved to learn how to escape chickens. But not humans.

This method was highly successful and soon they had no more centipedes. The problem was, centipedes eat cockroaches. With the centipedes gone, the roach population exploded. The problem with that was that the roaches carried a parasite.

The parasite was a worm that grew into the chicken’s eyes. It was horrific and tragic. Their action (getting rid of biting centipedes) led to the death of most of their chickens.

Had they let the chickens eat only the centipedes they could find on their own, they likely would never have experienced the ecological imbalance that led to the loss of the chickens.

Growing Balance

I grew the balance in my tea farm in simple ways. First, was letting cover crops grow naturally. I tried to hire an expert when I started the tea to find out which cover crops to use. He wouldn’t give me an answer. He told me that as the soil improved, the cover crops would change.

I started with acidic clay that had been abused by a sugar plantation for 100 years, so I was starting with dirt that registered zero N, P, or K. And he was right. Initially, my ground cover was largely gotu kola, which I sold as an herb at the farmer’s market. I loved it.

As the dead red clay transformed into soil, the gotu kola stopped thriving, and then disappeared altogether. However, I never planted a designated cover to replace the gotu kola.

What I did was remove the ones I didn’t like (such as Mimosa pudica, also known as sensitive plant or sleeping grass—nasty thorns!) I let anything that grew close to the ground and didn’t have any negative traits, like thorns, stay, and took out everything else.

What I ended up with was a soft bedding of ʻŌlaʻa Beauty (Torenia asiatica), which has beautiful, bright purple flowers and is famous for lei-making and for a Hawaiian song.

I didn’t plant ʻŌlaʻa Beauty. I didn’t know to choose this plant. But it was there and perfectly adapted to the job.

The Natural system also included plants with very tiny flowers. These are important for feeding parasitic wasps, a powerful biological control of pests.

I saw evidence of their presence later in the corpses of yellow jackets and other pests. The parasitic wasps are small and not easily seen, but they were clearly working with the system. Having the right food, the minuscule flowers, kept them present in the ecology.

I had a lot of praying mantises and other beneficials, but I had trouble getting ladybug beetles established. There were a lot of ladybug beetles in my bamboo forest, but when I would introduce them to the tea field, they would disappear.

That is, until I introduced more flowers. Some I planted, and some, like Tropical Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica), were volunteers. It turns out that ladybug beetles, while voracious predators of sucking insects like aphids and scale, also need pollen. With flowers in place, the ladybugs stayed and thrived.

These are just some of the small actions I took to establish a Functional Ecology on my land.

I watched how insect populations would ebb and flow. I knew every summer that the termites would swarm. I didn’t know sap beetles existed until I had a swarm on my ceiling several inches deep. I saw them again the next year, not so many, and then never saw them again.

Balance will always look different, but it will always look like balance.

What follows are some checklists to help you set up your systems and establish balance. Much benefit comes from developing your own personal rhythms and routines.

WORKING WITH RHYTHM

There are daily, lunar, seasonal, and longer solar patterns. Climate and weather are never static. Conditions change, patterns shift, and ecosystems adapt.

Rather than reacting to every change, observe carefully and look for persistent patterns. Adapt your management to what you are seeing in the field. Patience and discernment are often more valuable than quick reactions.

As farmers, our job is not to fear change but to observe and patiently adapt.

Daily Rhythms of the Farm

Management should become a simple routine.

• Morning observation walks

• Log rain and weather daily, and note the state of the land (plants and soil)

• Animal checks

• Ready to harvest checks

• Fermentation monitoring (develop an annual schedule)

• Watching weather patterns: forecast day, week, season

Seasonal Rhythms and Ecological Timing

Nature operates in cycles, not fixed schedules. Some things are generally predictable. Learn to see the outliers.

I used the Kolea (Pluvialis fulva). The golden plover is a small bird that spends its summers in Alaska and its winters in Hawaii. Here’s the problem. Unlike all other seabirds, the plover cannot float. That means it must migrate 3000 miles without stopping, as it cannot rest on the water. It takes the Kolea about two days to fly, non-stop, between Hawaii and Alaska.

I had years of records of the first Kolea I sighted in the fall, and the last one I saw in the spring. This gave me a good indication of when the seasons were actually changing. I knew when we would have a late spring or an early winter by watching and recording Kolea migrations.

• Seasonal transitions

• Plant growth stages

• Temperature shifts

• Rain cycles

• Dormancy and recovery

• Timing sprays appropriately

• Adjusting management seasonally

Don’t Panic! (When NOT to Intervene)

Over-management creates weakness. Sometimes the best management is patience.

• Letting biology stabilize itself

• Avoiding unnecessary interventions

• Avoiding panic responses

• Allowing ecological succession

• Distinguishing temporary imbalances from real failures

REDUCING LABOR AND COST

Designing Systems That Reduce Work

Good systems eliminate unnecessary labor. Natural Farming should become easier over time.

• Mulching

• Groundcover

• Water retention

• Biodiversity, interplanting, companion planting, guilds

• Animal integration

• Animal composting using Inoculated Deep Litter System (IDLS)

• Let roaming animals eat weeds and bugs

• Let roaming animals spread manure, urine, and microbes

• Soil protection

• Passive fertility cycling

• Self-seeding systems

• Infrastructure that saves labor

Replacing Purchased Inputs with Ecological Functions

A healthy ecology performs work that farmers normally pay for. Ecology is the ultimate labor-saving technology.

• Nitrogen and other nutrient cycling

• Nutrient mobilization

• Moisture retention

• Pest balancing

• Weed suppression

• Carbon accumulation

• Microbial communication

Organizing Your Workflow

Chaos wastes energy.

• Storing inputs properly

• Label and log everything

• Spraying and fermentation schedules

• Tool organization

• Batch preparation

• Reducing repeated effort

• Creating repeatable systems

ECOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT

Mastery is understanding relationships, not learning recipes, formulas, and schedules.

• Think of everything as part of your systems

• Learn and understand cause and effect

• Pattern recognition

• Responding instead of reacting

• Adapting techniques to local conditions

• Adapting to changes in real time (or before)

Stability, Resilience, and Freedom

The purpose of Natural Farming is not endless work. It is to love and enjoy life.

• Reduce stress

• Reduce dependency

• Gain greater resilience

• Experience more abundance with less effort and money

• Build long-term sustainability

• Restore the relationship between people and land, starting with you and your family

Core Principles of Ecological Management

• Observe before acting.

• Discover the why, not “how to kill it”

• Correct small problems early

• Work with timing and rhythm

• Reduce intervention whenever possible

• Build systems that support themselves

• Use inputs to guide biology, not replace it or overrule it

• Functional Ecology reduces labor over time

• Management matters more than products

STEP 11 THE MASTER’S TOOLKIT

With a solid understanding of how your systems work and the skills to develop and maintain them, it is time for you to level up to advanced tools that require advanced judgment. In the next step, we look at more advanced techniques to take your Natural Farming adventure to the next level.