Way of life for Logan Co. duo

BY LEE JONES

BELLEFONTAINE — For one Logan County cou­ple, organic veg­etable farm­ing is not just an activ­ity or even an occu­pa­tion, but a lifestyle.

Andy Rein­hart and Jan Daw­son have been rais­ing organic pro­duce at their Belle­fontaine home for 20 years. The farm is called Jandy’s, the fusion of their names sig­ni­fy­ing the fusion of their passions.

The story of Jandy’s begins with Andy mov­ing to the prop­erty, which is shel­tered by woods, to “play Thoreau” in 1984. He mar­ried Jan Daw­son in the win­ter four years later, and began the gar­den that summer.

What began as a chem­i­cal free flower gar­den intended to sell dec­o­ra­tive dried flow­ers soon became the large organic gar­den that would become the couple’s livelihood.

“I had never gar­dened with chem­i­cals before,” Rein­hart said, but he was only work­ing half-organically at that point. He had never built up the soil, which is crit­i­cal to true organic pro­duce pro­duc­tion, and quickly began the work of restor­ing nutri­ents to his plot of earth.

The land had not been well tended prior to the couple’s arrival.

“There used to be horse rodeos here,” Rein­hart said, “It was not a well taken-care-of piece of soil.”

Soon the cou­ple were mak­ing con­tacts through organic asso­ci­a­tions, and the rest is history.

The farm pro­duces three main crops: veg­eta­bles, onions and gar­lic, and flowers.

Dur­ing the grow­ing sea­son, Andy and Jan plant let­tuce weekly in a rota­tion to max­i­mize the amount of pro­duce they can take to mar­ket. Mon­days begin with a new let­tuce plant­ing in mini soil blocks, which stay that way for two weeks. Then the plants are trans­ferred to new soil blocks that are a cou­ple inches deep for one more week.

At the begin­ning of each week, a new gen­er­a­tion of let­tuce or cab­bage starts its own cycles. Soon enough the stag­gered crops are ready for har­vest and sale.

Daw­son is very par­tic­u­lar about the vari­eties of let­tuce and cab­bage she plants.

“I won’t grow But­ter­crunch in the sum­mer,” she said, “But Trop­i­cana is a good green loose-leaf for me.”

She also likes to grow Red Sails let­tuce but prefers to stay away from deep-colored vari­eties like Red Fire. She said they get too bit­ter for her taste because their dark color draws in excess sunlight.

Reinhart’s pas­sion is gar­lic. The main barn is burst­ing with the stuff; it is hang­ing in bun­dles from the wooden rafters, and sev­eral tables are loaded to excess with bulbs, all expertly cleaned so the resid­ual dirt does not impede the dry­ing process.

“We had about 500 pounds of gar­lic,” Daw­son said, “It was a hot harvest.”

She said the root sys­tems were so tight on most of

the crop that Rein­hart had to loosen them in the soil with a potato fork, with Daw­son fol­low­ing and gin­gerly remov­ing them from their holes.

After sav­ing some of the crop back for seed, the batch will be ready to go to market.

Rein­hart is very pos­i­tive about organic farm­ing. He said any­one can do it.

“If you have an acre of land and plenty of energy, you can turn it into a money-making oper­a­tion,” he said.

The cou­ple make their liv­ing off their farm, and the oper­a­tion appears to be a big under­tak­ing for just two peo­ple. There are a few hoop­houses full of toma­toes, baby gin­ger and egg­plant, among others.

Near the edge of their prop­erty are the clas­sic rows of veg­eta­bles. A row and a half of onions were show­ing dur­ing an OSU Exten­sion Service-sponsored open house July 29, along with raised beds for bok choy and cab­bage. The tour was part of the 2012 Ohio Sus­tain­able Farm Tour and Work­shop Series.

Almost one third of the Jandy’s farm is devoted to flow­ers in all pos­si­ble hues, includ­ing tall stalks of sun­flow­ers. Daw­son takes bou­quets to mar­ket and is always wowed by people’s will­ing­ness to pay for the bun­dles, although they are quick to hag­gle over food items.

“You could get rich on dried flow­ers,” Daw­son said, smil­ing. But she main­tains a rea­son­able price for the blooms anyway.

Next to the flow­ers is a good stand of corn, the tas­sels wav­ing in the breeze.

Rein­hart and Daw­son are exper­i­ment­ing with a new crop: mush­rooms. They had tried in the past with vary­ing degrees of suc­cess, but now they are seri­ous. Behind one of their build­ings are more than a dozen oak logs lean­ing against wire strung between two trees. These logs con­tain shi­itake plugs.

The project began with soak­ing these fresh-cut logs in water, drilling holes at inter­vals into the wood and ham­mer­ing in mush­room plugs. After seal­ing them off with beeswax to pre­vent other fungi from invad­ing, the logs were soaked again and set up for growth.

In the fall, the caps will grow and may be another crop for market.

Daw­son was unsure about the suc­cess of their cur­rent baby gin­ger crop. She and Rein­hart had prop­erly pre-sprouted them, dug deep rows, and packed them with com­post. But Daw­son said the atmos­phere in Ohio just is not con­ducive to the crop, which grows best in trop­i­cal climates.

Daw­son talked exten­sively about organic pes­ti­cide tech­niques, some of which she uses and some she thinks are less rooted in reality.

“We have used ben­e­fi­cial nema­todes,” she said, “I’m a real believer in those.”

These micro­scopic worms can be pur­chased and put in gar­den soil. The nema­todes live off insect pests and not plant material.

Essen­tially, organic gar­den­ing and nema­todes are a match made in heaven.

Jandy’s also uses diatoma­ceous earth as a pes­ti­cide, which is safe for humans and ani­mals to eat but sticks in insect exoskele­tons and kills them.

There other meth­ods, such as pur­chas­ing pest-devouring insects, like lady­bugs or even pray­ing man­tis, and adding them to a closed garden’s ecosystem.

But as any gar­dener knows, lit­tle winged pests are not the only destruc­tive force. Deer present a large prob­lem at Jandy’s as well.

But Rein­hart has a non-chemical solu­tion for the deer issue as well: ash.

Deer go crazy for Jandy’s edamame and beet tops, so Rein­hart spreads ash on those plants which turns to lye once it comes in con­tact with the animal’s saliva.

One of the hall­marks of organic farm­ing is crop rota­tion, but it is not such a big deal at the smaller-scale Jandy’s. But it does come into play.

“I give the ground time to do things,” Rein­hart said. Veg­eta­bles get planted in the same ground the onions were in the year before, while a dif­fer­ent sec­tion of the farm lies fal­low every other year so nutri­ents can be replenished.

But even the fal­low land, plen­ti­fully car­peted with clover to replace the all-important nitro­gen, looks fruitful.

That is just one of the hall­marks of a healthy, organic garden.

Lee Jones writes for the

Sid­ney Daily News.

See Organic/page 2

Posted by Rachel Lloyd on Sep 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.