Integrating Animals into Row Crop Gardens
The history of the farm was always a place where animals and plants were rotated in the fields. The animal manure provided fertility for the plants to grow. In the last 75 years, farming has steadily moved away from that. They have created new industries providing fertility through fossil fuel based fertilizers, mined amendments and manure, blood meal and bone meal collected from confined animal feeding operations. These are trucked to the farm, spread with tractors and tilled into the soil, destroying the microbiology of the soil food web. The nutrients in the soil and our food have plummeted and diet related disease has skyrocketed.
Laughing Frog Farm is primarily interested in providing nutrient dense, organic food. They raise sheep and chickens in rotation with the plants allowing the animals to fertilize and aerate the soil. The soil at the farm is not tilled mechanically. The result is soil that has great structure, fertility and crop yields. Glen Miracle started his first organic garden in Houston’s east end in 1978 and began Laughing Frog Farm in 2001. He will discuss the methods, the research, and the results of this journey.
