Balancing Act: How Frog Tune Organics Integrates Livestock and Crops
When John Bitter and his spouse Amy began Frog Tune Organics on 5 acres in 2011, a imaginative and prescient of find out how to fastidiously scale-up the farm was lengthy within the works. They each had a number of years’ expertise working with farms within the space, and every knew close by markets nicely sufficient to know that they had alternatives to develop. Wanting forward, that they had additionally spoken with the proprietor of neighboring land about leasing further acreage sooner or later.
Quick-forward 12 years, and Frog Tune Organics is a 62-acre operation with about 30 full-time workers and 20-40 acres in manufacturing at anybody time. Situated lower than a 2 hour’s drive from a number of markets, Frog Tune offers natural merchandise year-round to 4 farmers markets and wholesale accounts in Gainesville, Orlando, St. Augustine, and Tampa, and thru an online-order, customizable-box CSA program.
At this stage, John is proud of the scale of the operation, and centered on enhancements to the general farm. “Now we’re simply making an attempt to fill within the effectivity of what we’re doing. We don’t actually wish to get rather a lot larger however we wish to get extra environment friendly and extra worthwhile, with the ability to do extra with much less sources, primarily,” he stated.
Frog Tune is a extremely diversified farm producing greens, herbs, flowers, orchard crops, pork and poultry merchandise, and legumes. For John, balancing the livestock and crop enterprises is vital. “One thing to consider is how all this scales,” he stated. From his perspective, scaling “must match the fertility, the planting, and the advertising and marketing…and if a kind of is approach out of whack, the enterprise would possibly fail.” So whereas Frog Tune may produce much more pork and eggs, protecting a system that’s balanced, the place the quantity of livestock matches the crop methods, is John’s beneficial technique. “Individuals are somehow, like ‘I’m going to be a pig farmer or a hen farmer’, nicely, that’s 1/eighth of what you do, or 1/twelfth of what you do, and also you base the remaining on what grows very well in your space and what sources you have already got out there quite than making an attempt to herald an excessive amount of of the sources that may find yourself driving you out of enterprise. If you happen to rely an excessive amount of on different sources, ultimately, when the costs of these sources change, your small business mannequin must change, very quickly, or else you gained’t keep in enterprise.”
Why combine livestock with crop manufacturing?
Talking about why John and Amy determined to incorporate animals from the onset, John says, “The first purpose we combine livestock is to show a legal responsibility right into a useful resource.” For Frog Tune, which means pigs are introduced into candy potato fields following harvests to assist clear up
‘seconds’ and bits left behind that may in any other case harbor pests. Within the heat of the southeastern area the place Frog Tune is positioned, a candy potato weevil thrives. The extremely cell bug can smash inventories and crops in fields. Non-organic controls embody herbicide purposes to candy potato fields following harvests, or soil fumigants. As an natural farm, Frog Tune needed to discover different strategies. “We determined pigs had been the easiest way to plow over the land with out utilizing numerous diesel. So the pigs will take candy potato scraps and switch it into one thing that’s a really high-value product: natural bacon. Higher than natural, it’s really pasture-raised and on natural pasture!”
One other liability-turned-to-resource will be seen within the orchards. Chickens are ranged underneath established (2 years previous or extra) stone fruit bushes after fruiting. As they scratch and peck across the bushes, they successfully cut back plum curculio, millipedes, cutworms and different lepidoptera pests. To benefit from the advantages of the chickens’ manure, feed is concentrated across the base of fruit bushes to maximise the time they spend scratching weeds and abandoning manure.
Cowl crops and livestock integration
On farms with built-in methods of crops and livestock, cowl crops can present invaluable forages. At Frog Tune, cowl crops are planted year-round, and nearly at all times embody a multi-species combine. From November to February, winter rye, coker oats, and wheat are planted. Buckwheat, 4 kinds of millet, and sorghum-Sudan grass go in from March to October. And from April by August, John vegetation Sunn Hemp as a stand-alone. All of those crops, along with sure money crops just like the candy potatoes, are ultimately grazed by animals.
Sunn Hemp is planted as a stand-alone cowl crop in a pear orchard. “This might be an excellent time to graze it down by pigs, when you wanted to. Sunn Hemp is sort of our backup plan for pig grazing. We attempt to have sufficient millet and sorghum and buckwheat after the candy potato crop, and if we fail at any time, then we now have acres and acres of the Sunn Hemp that will be a good forage for them.” John recommends grazing sunn hemp solely till about 20 inches tall. At about waist-high, it turns into too robust, excessive in a specific acid, and the pigs “simply gained’t eat it,” he says. Additionally of observe: for grazing pigs on this space, the fence could be positioned to exclude the pigs from the pear bushes.
The selection of which cowl crops to plant for grazing facilities round three questions for John. One, will the animals eat it, and at what stage is finest to start out grazing? Two, how a lot does it value to determine, in each time and bills, particularly provided that the price of cowl crop seeds can fluctuate from yr to yr? And three, how does the crop slot in with the rotation? The reply to that third query, for Frog Tune, has particular implications for legume cowl crops. Since one in all Frog Tune’s money crops is legumes, they want a minimum of 3 years within the rotations with out legumes with the intention to keep away from build up ailments like white rot. Sunn Hemp appears to be a distant sufficient relative that it stays within the cover-crop combine at Frog Tune, and doesn’t contribute to buildup of ailments affecting legume money crops
The change to on-farm breeding
For years at Frog Tune, piglets had been bought off-farm, however after a while, John determined it was finest to breed their very own pigs on-farm. “After being in enterprise for some years,” he explains, “typically the piglets aren’t there if you want them to be there, in your cycle.” Since starting on-farm breeding with Purple Wattle Hogs, the animals are bred and out there at occasions that go well with the farm, and the animals “stayed in good well being and stayed productive.”
To keep up wholesome genetics, just a few sires from totally different strains are introduced in to stay on web site. Just a few sows cycle by the “Honeymoon Suite” to breed with them, after which are launched to farrowing pens, that are “good spots on the farm…mainly giving the sow the perfect of what there may be in that second of the yr,” with loads of shade and high quality forage. Inside 7-14 days, the piglets have begun to graze the forage and are studying the cycles and methods of Frog Tune.
“Sure animals will be just about hooked on grain,” John defined. “They gained’t go forage for themselves, they’ll simply anticipate when the grain comes, then they get actually nasty to need to battle out their siblings or bunkmates for that grain. In our system, we’re in search of the pigs who simply wish to go plow up any a part of their block, go discover their very own candy potatoes, and there’s actually no approach {that a} bully pig can dominate that system: they’ve all received lots to eat, they’re stress-free, and by the point they get to the tip of the block, there’s a brand new block ready for them.”
Diversifications in infrastructure for livestock
Two of a very powerful items of infrastructure for livestock at Frog Tune are electrical fencing and animal housing. Coaching staff so that every understands how electrical energy flows by a complete fencing system has been key to with the ability to troubleshoot issues within the discipline rapidly with out slowing different elements of the operation down. And to maintain a cautious eye on the electrical methods, John recommends having one one that is chargeable for checking methods a minimum of as soon as a day. At Frog Tune, handlers test the methods twice a day. Electrical fencing is vital to the paddock methods on the farm, usually arrange as block-paddocks which might be fractions of an extended, rectangle-shaped discipline. The animals transfer throughout the sphere into a brand new paddock each 5-7 days.
For livestock housing, one essential adaptation has to do with the clay soils on the farm: John has moved away from something with wheels, similar to hen homes on trailers, as a result of clay will get into tire seals, ruins them, and the seals must be changed typically. New housing buildings are custom-built utilizing 2-inch metallic tubing, in a design that may be picked up with a front-end loader and simply moved with a tractor.
Dangers of elevating animals and crops collectively
Understanding the dangers of elevating livestock is easy, however it’s of the utmost significance. John explains, “How do you develop greens and lift animals on the similar time? This can be a actually essential half to speak about. That is the place the farm can go actually mistaken when you don’t acknowledge your dangers. However the dangers are easy: you don’t wish to get manure within the product in any approach doable!” 
The plans for coping with this straightforward danger are taken significantly. In an effort to know the place the dangers lie, the farm identifies the place manure is touring, from paddocks to packing shed or plantings. These “Essential Management Factors” (CCP’s) are a part of the farm’s HACCP plan (Hazard Evaluation and Essential Management Level Programs plan), which suggests they’re “recognized, verified, and validated” so all of them get met. With animals shifting across the farm typically, John begins occupied with the place the manure will go the second he begins designing the structure of fields.
Meaning occupied with the movement of water. “I’d say, begin there, as a farmer,” he suggests, “you’ll want to take a look at ‘Which approach does each drop movement?’ Because it comes out of the sky and hits your farm. Then you’ll want to know the place your paddocks are, the place you’re going to lift your crops, and what sort of crops you’ll elevate (low or excessive danger).” Having workers skilled in protected dealing with and protocols for visiting anyplace on the farm with manure or getting into packing areas can also be a crucial a part of managing the CCP’s and dangers of manure.
Advantages you possibly can see: soil fertility
Regardless of the dangers, workload, and infrastructure wants, having pigs and chickens is an integral a part of what makes Frog Tune profitable. When requested about the advantages of the 12+ years of crop-livestock integration on the farm, John spoke about one key indicator of soil well being: the well being of the duvet crops. Within the first few years, some fields barely sustained a canopy crop. Different fields with extra clay had massive incongruencies in progress over the world and in how water moved by them (areas with poor drainage and enormous puddles). Now these similar fields produce uniform, lush patches of canopy crops, and as John displays on a decade-plus of integration, he says, matter-of-factly, “yearly sure blocks are getting higher.”
