Sho farm

Everything about my experience and learnings at Sho farm. The farm is run by Sho and Shoko, two highly energetic mostly plant-based farmers with a cute family. Almost everything they eat is produced by their farm, which is exceptionally impressive.

Farming wise, they're an organic farm using no pesticides or industrial fertilisers. They're kinda no-till, but they prepare their fields by solarising the soil and cutting the weeds out with buzz-saws (karibaraiki). They then add a mix of seeds for weeds and ground cover, but I'm not sure which species are used.

I suspect their soil is not particularly fertile. There were some hardy weeds that produced sparks when I tried to cut them with a buzz-saw. Between the cutting of the cover-crop and resewing the cover-crop, there was at least 10 days where much of the soil laid bare. The routine use of solarising would, I suspect, kill off much of the bacteria and insects that had grown to enjoy it. However, their fields are amidst largely untouched bush area, which may support the rapid reintroduction of insect and small things (eg microbes, fungi, etc) as suggested by Helen Attowhe in Veganic gardening.

I am curious about whether Helen's approach to cover crops could be used to improve soil fertility and weed management without the need for periodic solarising.

I originally wrote Questions for natural farmers intending it for Sho and Shoko, but most of the questions were not relevant (ie they do not measure their yields).