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We are veiy grateful for the
65 volunteers who came to Waterpenny Farm over the course of the weekend and last week to help us remove more than 50,000 pounds of herbicide-contaminated hay that we had used to mulch our fields.
The hay was heavy, moldy and hard to work with, yet people stuck with the job, and many came for several mulchlifting sessions. Volunteers ranged from children to many over age 70, and everywhere in between. Volunteers contributed about 150 hours to this colossal effort, and our own crew on the form, along with extra labor we hired with help from community donations, worked about 250 hours.
As I write this on Saturday morning, 16 of the 18 fields that were mulched are unmulched (When you read this, the mulch will all be removed!). The healing process of our land is already beginning. The next step is to pull out the 12,000 contaminated vegetable plants by the roots and remove them from our fields.
We also commend Kenner Love, our local extension agent, for helping us to quickly diagnose our problem and then understand its implications. Although his expertise isn’t in vegetables, he has contacted and quickly connected us to experts who are. He brought a state expert to our form last week to confirm that it was, in fact, the hay. It is because of the quick and thorough work on his part that we were able to recognize and act quickly to contain the damage that the herbicide-tainted hay has caused. Kenner is a great asset in our county, and is a true friend of farmers.
At Waterpenny Farm, we use ecological growing methods - no pesticides, no synthetic fertilizers, as well as soil and water conservation methods and habitat preservation to produce healthful, good-tasting vegetables. All of our form inputs (other than hay, which we naively assumed was just grass) are certified organic, though we haven’t chosen to become certified.
Unfortunately, we were unaware until about two weeks ago of the fact that hay is a crop that is routinely sprayed with a variety of pesticides, including herbicides. We are acutely aware of this now, and will, of course, only use mulch hay that is grown within our own standard of growing from now on.
We’ve learned a lot in the past two weeks, including about herbicides. The chemical sprayed on the hayfields we got this mulch from was called '
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