We are a CSA farm in Goshen, Indiana. Home of the The Lean Farm. WWW.CLAYBOTTOMFARM.COM WWW. The farm has twice won Edible Michiana’s Reader’s Choice award.
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Lean Book: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Farm-Minimize-Increase-Efficiency/dp/1603585923 Ben Hartman and Rachel Hershberger own and operate Clay Bottom Farm in Goshen, Indiana, where they make their living growing and selling specialty crops on less than one acre. Their food is sold locally to restaurants and cafeterias, at a farmers market, and through a community-supported-agriculture (CSA) progra
m. The Lean Farm, Ben’s first book, won the Shingo Institute’s prestigious Research and Professional Publication Award. Link to Lean Farm Book: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Farm-Minimize-Increase-Efficiency/dp/1603585923/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=2DXZY6EGVAFEH3XZHYT2
It’s tomato time, and the boys are helping me out at the farmers market. (You’ll love their monster cookies….) Two tomato-growing tips:
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—Water them just enough: if they start to crack, the fruit is telling you to water less.
—To prevent disease, prune the bottom 12”. This lets air flow around the plant.
In summer the propagation house takes on a new role—drying room for shallots, garlic, and onions. The large red bulbs are the shallots—great crop this year!
The bed on the left is an in-field compost bed. Instead of dragging spent plants out of the garden to an off-site compost, we devote one bed per season—right in the field—for compost-making. In practice, we simply pile plants on the bed, cover them with a tarp, then uncover a few weeks later (longer when it’s colder) rake smooth, and plant. The plants cook under the tarp, which keeps the moisture in. Simple but effective.
Kale harvest! One bed of kale, property cared for, will give you greens all season. A few tips for growers:
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—We transplant around April 1, this is Winterbor
—2 rows per 42” bed, about 14” apart in-row
—Harvest the larger bottom leaves, leave the middle to keep growing
—Worms? Spray with bt (we buy Organic Dipel 54% online) and spray as soon as you see ‘em.
—Spray three days in a row that first spraying to interrupt the hatching cycle.
Here is an explanation of the four-leader system that we use to grow cherry tomatoes and some other indeterminate (tall-growing) tomatoes. This is a relatively a low-labor, low-cost approach, though it requires sturdy stakes.
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1. Transplant starts 2’ apart, preferably into landscaping fabric.
2. Use at least two, but preferably four, runs of drip tape under the fabric, spaced one foot apart.
3. Place a stake at least 7’ tall between each plant. Here we used conduit, which is connected to the greenhouse cross-ties with zip ties, to add strength. Bamboo is great, too. Stakes should be sturdy, they will bear lots of weight.
4. As plants grow, use twine (we like jute), run horizontally on both sides, to sandwich the plants. We run twine about every 18” as plants grow.
5. Each time you run twine, thin the plant by pruning, allowing just four growing tips to grow about the twine. (This is different than sucker pruning, where all suckers on the entire plant are removed.) This takes just a few seconds per plant and is the only pruning needed, except for removing diseased leaves. This prune-as-you-go method saves incredible effort over the course of a season compared to other systems we’ve tried.
6. Varieties shown: Clementine, Mt. Magic, Kakao.
This is our “nerve center” where we track tasks and orders. The magnets are bicolor—green indicates an item has been picked; red means it’s washed, labeled and customer-ready. Nicole keeps track of it all and then sends invoices when all magnets are red. The goal is simplicity on the other side of complexity, as they say.
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Parts:
—magnetic white board
—bicolor indicator magnets
—whiteboard tape (for the lines)
Three tips for growing jumbo beets:
1. Transplant them. These were grown with 6” paper pot chains, with one raw seed per cell. What emerges from the seed is a cluster of 3-5 beets that grow away from each other, in a range of sizes. If you want size uniformity, use 4” paper pot chains (or standard plug flats) and thin to one beet before you transplant.
2. Use deep mulch. These were transplanted into a bed of 4” of mostly-decomposed leaves. No other fertilizer. Ours grew as a companion to tomatoes, as you see.
3. Give them time. Beets just keep getting bigger with time, and “old” beets maintain their quality. This makes them a bit unique as a vegetable; watermelon, radishes, sweet corn—so many other crops have a much narrower harvesting window. Now time for borscht!
Today’s task: staking tomatoes with local bamboo. We started by wild harvesting the bamboo from a friend’s property. We looked for dry pieces about 3/4” in diameter. Tip: cut at an angle to make them easier to push into the ground. With this system, we put a stake between each plant and thin to four growing tips between stakes—aka the “four leader” method.
We finished Lean Farm Start-up 2024, a 2-day training on how to set up a micro farm, here at Clay Bottom Farm this weekend. Thank you to everyone who came! Incredible, inspiring group of start-up growers. What a fun weekend. Our best wishes on your future micro farms! You can join the mailing list on our website to learn more and sign up for info on next year’s event.
View from the field this morning.
Garlic grows well on the south side of a building, where it’s warmer, and with plenty of mulch to hold moisture in. Here Andrew’s applying our favorite mulch—slightly decomposed leaves. By late summer, the decomposed leaves will give us a rich bed for planting.
Our new deer fence now complete. Some design details for growers:
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—We chose local black locust posts instead of pressure treated posts, to avoid chemical leaching. We stripped the posts by hand with draw knives (big winter project). 🙂
—4” diameter posts, except 6” at the corners and gates.
—Posts are about 7.5’ tall out of ground. 2-3’ deep in-ground. Cemented on where gates attach.
—Fencing is woven wire game fence, smaller holes at the bottom and larger at top. There is space at the top of the posts to add a hot wire if needed (hopefully not!).
—Baseboard is 2x8 pine, preserved with natural juniper product from Vermont Natural Coatings
—Baseboards give us a surface w**d eat against, as we aren’t spraying glyphosate (w**d killer) here.
—Gates are coated steel from a local machine shop.
First field greens! We seeded these starting in late January, now taking row covers off. We’ve found that carrots and spinach do best seeded in winter for spring harvest. Also in this plot: spring mix lettuce, baby kale, Asian greens. A key advantage in seeding early: no w**d, barely. 🙂
Just finished a 3-day workshop in Patagonia, Chile, . Thanks to for sponsoring. Here I’m with Francisco Vio, and I also presented with Pancho Gangotena from Ecuador, with 42 years of organic farming experience, and Javi from the farm team. The Patagonia is too beautiful to be spoiled by industrial farming, and Chile is lucky to have so many young enthusiastic huerteros who want to farm with nature and to farm small.
A few more photos from , in Chile’s Central Valley, where I’m visiting. I am impressed with Tamara’s outdoor trellising method for tomatoes. She uses metal posts and trellises tomatoes with thin wire, strung horizontally. The wire holds tight all season (jute twine stretches too much). The crew prunes plants heavily, as seen, below the fruit clusters. Plants start with two leaders per plant. And notice the understory crops below the tomatoes. This is a practical low-cost way to grow tomatoes outside of a greenhouse. They taste sublime.
I’m boarding a plane soon, with a final destination of the Patagonia region in Chile, where small farmers invited me for visits and workshops, with Pacho Gangotena from Ecuador. I look forward to the exchanges ahead. Here with Damien and Sam from , trip sponsors. Tremendous people.
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It’s been said that by the end of this century, if trends continue, there will be half as many farmers, and that farms will be twice as big. Here’s to another way.
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We are stoked about this new deeper furrower for the paper pot transplanter. Designed for no-till applications. It allowed us to transplant cilantro, beans, spinach, onions, and beets in this tunnel with minimal soil prep, fairly rough conditions.
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We got ours from smallfarmworks via … First the hp10, and soon I’m told will be available for other models as well.
Rather than keep compost separate, outside of the garden, we designate one bed per season as a low in-field compost heap. It’s covered with a tarp for better, faster decomposition. The organic matter will decompose in a few months. Then we’ll simply rake and plant. This is simpler than dragging plant matter out of the garden, turning it a bunch of times, then bringing it back, as compost.
Getting those first tomatoes planted, between beds of baby greens. Now we sit back and watch the show 🙂. These are variety Marnuour.
Super excited to start transplanting these tomatoes today. Our tomato seeding program:
1. Use 32-cell deep flats, one seed per cell.
2. Vermont Compost fort light.
3. No potting up, no fertilizing
4. Set in a germination chamber (old fridge with a crock pot) to 80f.
5. Once seeds pop, keep under lights or in a propagation house with nights above 55f.
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Thanks to everyone who attended our live paper pot webinar yesterday. If you’d like to see the video, sign up at the website. Happy lean farming 🙂😎.
Getting set up for Thursday’s free webinar on how we use the paper pot transplanter on our 1/3 acre farm. Love this small smart tool. Sign up info on the website. Thanks to sponsor … Hope you can join!🙂
We’re planting tomatoes (indeterminate) next week and this 21’x70’ greenhouse is all ready to go. Tomato bed prep tips for growers.
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—I’ve found that indeterminate (long-season/tall) tomatoes prefer rows at least 5’ apart. 3 rows in this tunnel.
—Between rows we’ve seeded baby greens (Starstruck, elegance, and kalebration mixes from Johnny’s). When these are harvested, we will cover with landscape fabric (pulling extra from the tomato rows) and use the area as a pathway.
—Tomatoes are 24” apart in-row.
—Left two rows will be trained to two leaders, up roller hooks or qliprs.
—The right row will be trained to four leaders as we use a stake and weave method. Note the conduit between each plant as stakes. This is the most efficient method I know of but not as tidy.
—Nutrition tip: I like to follow tomatoes after spinach or greens that soak up excess N. For me, this means plants are more balanced early on (not too leafy). Otherwise, these beds only receive our own leaf compost (applied before the winter greens).
It’s springtime in the greenhouse! Here are pics of our first crops, and some details for micro farmers.
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Greens in the average grocery store travel 2000 miles before reaching your plate. 2000!! Thanks to a supportive community in Indiana, almost all of these greens will sell within 1.5 miles of the farm.
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—My favorite spinach, of those we tried over the winter, is Seaside. Look how upright it grows=easy harvesting.
—Our earliest transplants are kale and cilantro and t448 onions.
—This tunnel has a heater set to 32f right now.
—We are using to control roll up curtains and a peak vent.
In our home garden we plant in blocks of about 4’x6’. Today my son and I filled up our first block with onions. Too nice to stay indoors. 😎 Here are some onion tips:
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—I like to plant 2” apart, then harvest every other onion as a baby/green onion, letting the rest grow to full size.
—Rows 9” apart
—We composted deeply, 4”, when building this bed. Then covered for the winter with a tarp.
—Normally we’d wait until April to plant, but my friendly uncle Bert from Nashville sent this packet of onion plants to us in the mail, thinned from his direct-seeded patch. Bridger variety.
—We’ve got them covered with two layers of row cover, and they’re on the south side of the house. We might throw a blanket over them if it gets very cold. I hope they’ll make it.
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Kale time! Our minimally heated greenhouse (set to 32F) puts us about two months ahead. So it’s time for April transplanting. 😊 Also transplanting onions, cilantro, and Miz America mizuna. Beautiful work environment, a perk of micro farming. Kale specs for growers:
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—Best for early harvest, for us, is winterbor.
—Transplants are 3 weeks old, grown under Mars Hydro lights, in Vermont Compost Fort Lite
—We let them settle into the greenhouse for 3 days before transplanting, to acclimate.
—We like a dibber tool to transplant—it’s cleaner.
—3 rows, plants 14” apart, the middle row will be harvested once or twice then those plants are pulled/sacrificed to leave room for the outer-row plants.
“‘Turning waste into useful channels’ should be the slogan of every farmer.” —George Washington Carver.
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Today I’m taking some over-seeded cilantro and potting it up, for sale in a few weeks as living plants for use in the kitchen. Doing the same also with basil. Who doesn’t like a bit of green in February?
My friend John Hendrickson, owner of Small Farm Works in Wisconsin, stopped in today to pick up paper pot seedlings that I started for him. He’s on his way to conference in PA—stop in at his booth and say ‘hi’! Scroll the pics to see the cool carrying tray that he built. Conferences are a great way to interact with other small farmers and see what’s cutting edge. John was the first person to bring this Japanese planting system to the US, and he’s been a valuable mentor for me.
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These seedlings—cilantro, red mizuna, spinach—are at exactly three weeks of age—the sweet spot for transplanting. Notice there are 5-6 seeds per cell. At 264 cells per tray, this an efficient ways to pack thousands of plants into small space. I grew these mostly under Mars hydro grow lights. John will drop these back off at the farm on his way home so I can plant them. 🙂
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Next month I’ll be giving a free Zoom webinar, thanks to sponsorship from on tips and tricks with paper pots, and I’ll discuss upsides and downsides. Hope you can join. See website for details.
Starting cilantro with this 2-plate gravity seeder. Cilantro is one our top four crops. Here’s our cilantro program:
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—Use 6” paper chains with 4-6 seeds per cell.
—We use split seeds of Cruiser and a 5mm plate (double filling each cell)
—Germinate cool like lettuce (we put trays in our conditioned house.
—Transplant young at 3-4 weeks
—2 chains gives us four rows per 42” x 75’ bed (we designed all beds to fit 2 6” paper chains) or 6 rows in the bigger greenhouse beds (see final photo from April)
—harvest with a greens harvester and wash like lettuce
—we seed about monthly for a continuous harvest most of the year
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See my book The Lean Micro Farm for lots more details. If you’ve read it, please review it on Amazon. It helps others find the book. Get 35% off the book at the website. Thank you. 🙂
I control the temperature in the propagation house with these wireless Inkbirds. They’re great. They monitor the temperature and tell the louvre, heater, and fan when to turn on and off, at a low cost. Generally the heater is at 55f, louvre opens at 85 and fan at 87. I can see temperature trends and adjust temps from the no-frills app. I installed these a month ago and have had no issues. Note that I mount the controls high to avoid water, and I also use bubble covers for waterproofing connections. The temperature probes all sit inside an Ambient Weather Solar Radiation Shield so they give a more accurate reading of the air temperature.
We did our annual clean out of our propagation house today, getting ready for spring. This greenhouse is attached to our barn-house. Here are some design specs on the structure:
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—total width: 10’
—total length: 24”
—height floor to ceiling against the house wall (high side on north): 9.5’
—height floor to ceiling on the lower (south) side: 7.5’
—bench height: 38”
—bench surface width: 36” (this allows three 12” trays)
—walkway in middle: about 3.5’
—fan in upper rear corner: 28”
—louver in opposite rear corner: 36”
—I control the fan, louvre, and heater with 3 Inkbird thermostats, an arrangement that I will show in an upcoming post
—benches are made from 2x4 lumber with 5/8 aluminum extrusions (leftover wiggle wire channel) under the legs
—bench tops are fixed steel from a local supplier
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It’s ready to go!😎
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I’m offering a free webinar on March 7 on paoerpots. See website to sign up.
340 Hackett Road
Goshen, IN
46528
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A micro farm in July. Some details about our farm: … —Almost all of our food sells within 1.5 miles of the farm; we’re at the edge of Goshen, Indiana. —The growing space occupies 1/3-acre. —In an effort to simplify, we use just 7 field tools. —Our CSA (a subscription program) uses no packaging—we just harvest, load a van, and drop food into coolers that customers set out on their porches. (We place greens into Tupperware containers that customers supply.) —We are far from perfect but we apply the lean system to cut out waste (still plenty on our farm!) as our core approach to growth. Check out our website for more… … #claybottomfarm #leanfarming #simpleisbest #kaizenfarm #indianagrown #hyperlocal #microfarm
Lovely day for transplanting. Plants are in decomposable hemp paper chains. Crop is Rubygo multi-cut head lettuce, for salad mix. @japan_agritrading @nitten_paperpot_japan #lovelyday #hemp #paperpot #paperpottransplanter #leanfarming
A view inside our 21’x70’ greenhouse this morning. We grow baby greens between tomatoes—these will be covered with landscape fabric in a few weeks, post-harvest, giving tomatoes room to grow. … Our Lean Market Growing Masterclass is 35% off this month only (just a few days left). I show you step by step how we prepared new ground, built greenhouses and a processing room, and how we acquired our first customers. Hope you can join the Masterclass. See bio for info. #leanfarming #tomatoes🍅
My first stop in Chile is to the incredible, productive, and peaceful El Borde @elborde_chile, in the Central Valley, tucked in among organic vineyards. I’ve long admired this micro farm. On less than 1/2 acre, Tamara Bogolasky and crew operate a diversified CSA where they deliver directly to customer’s homes. I profiled Tamara in my book Lean Micro Farm because I think she is a real leader and sets an example: bigger isn’t always better. #microfarming #chile #marketgardening #leanfarming
Getting a jump on spring planting by paper potting plants (cilantro), already 3 weeks old. The advantages with the method: perfect germination, we are ahead of the weeds, and great spacing. Disadvantages compared to direct seeding: takes a bit longer, the cost of the paper chain, and the need to tend seedlings. … I hope you can join me March 7 at 4-5:30pm EST for a free webinar on how we utilize paper pots, and their pros and cons. Sign up at our website site. #claybottomfarm #leanfarming #microfarm #springgarden @nitten_paperpot_japan
Some crops we seed as soon possible in the spring/winter. Today we seeded carrots, spinach, and the “elegance” greens mix from Johnny’s. One advantage (especially with carrots) is that, in the cold, there are fewer weeds to compete against. These will go under two layers of row cover almost until harvest. Farming the edges of the season is critical for micro farming. #microfarming
At Clay Bottom Farm, we sell almost all of our food with 1.5 miles of the farm, using just 1/3 acre. We’ve created a Masterclass showing how it’s done. Join us in October—for 35% off and a free copy of The Lean Micro Farm. Thanks to everyone who’s signed up already.
Our fall garden this year. Here is the simple seeding plan that I used: ... Seed on the “10s” (zone 5b): —carrots July 10 —turnips and cilantro Aug. 10 —greens (lettuce, baby kale, baby Asian greens) August 10 and weekly through the end of Oct. —Spinach Sept. 10 (or when it’s cold enough to wear a jacket 3 days in a row) ... Join my Lean Market Growing Masterclass, on sale through October. Learn how to farm smaller, simpler, and smarter, without burning yourself out. The lean system applied to a micro farm. Hope you can join me! #leanfarming #notillfarming #notillgrowing #leanmicrofarm #growinggreens #fallgarden
Here are some before/after clips of fall lettuce. The tool is a paper pot transplanter, from Japan: @nitten_paperpot_japan. Thanks @tieratlove for helping us get these crops in the ground. 🌞 A few tips for growers: … —For a fall crop, start seeds in transplant trays weekly July 10-Aug. 10 (zone 5b). Transplant out at 2-3 weeks. —Germinate cool, under a light in a conditioned room in your house. Or in a fridge set to 68f (with an Inkbird external thermostat). —6” paper pots work great, with four rows per 42” bed or 3 rows per 30” bed. —Our beds are all a standard 42”x75’, to accommodate exactly 2 paper chains with no waste. 😊 —We grow “multileaf” varieties that can be cut into salad mix. For us, Intercut yields best. … #leanmicrofarm #leanfarming #paperpottransplanter #notill #notillgardening #deepmulch #composting
I covered a finished bed of cilantro in my previous post and here a new bed of cilantro goes in (different location). See a full sized bed of cilantro on the left here. These are 6” paper pot chains with 4-6 seeds per cell. #cilantro
Multigenerational weeding.
A post about how we cut greens, and relax. … Our Lean Market Growing Masterclass is 25% off through March, our biggest sale. …The tool: quick cut greens harvester from @farmersfriendllc (long handle version is a prototype) #marketgardening #leanfarming #spring #springgreenhouse #babygreens #salad #springgarden
The Lean Market Growing Masterclass is 25% off now through the end of October. Be active, be healthy, and grow food. Join students from around the world learning how to farm smarter and smaller. Click on the link in bio for more information. ... This is a summer view of Clay Bottom Farm, Goshen, IN, host of the Masterclass. #leanfarming #leanfarm #marketgardening #marketgrowing #growingformarket #organicfarming #october #nodig #notill #notillfarming #smallfarm #urbanfarm #leanproduction #globalsmallfarming
A productive farm need not be huge. Here’s a drone’s-eye view of our farm from this summer. Four years ago, a few years after I wrote The Lean Farm, we moved into town and set up this smaller farm, inside the city limits of Goshen, IN. We shrank our production space from less than 1 acre to less than ½ acre and we got rid of a wagonload of tools. Nearly all of our food now sells within 1 ½ miles of the farm. After 15 years of farming, we enjoy a smaller footprint and being closer to our customers—and being small helps us improve faster and stay focused. The website (link in bio) is newly updated with videos and growing info, and today is the start of our 1-month 25% off sale for the Lean Market Growing Masterclass course. Hope you can join. Happy October! #leanfarming #leanfarm #marketgardening #marketgrowing #growingformarket #organicfarming #october #nodig #notill #notillfarming #smallfarm #urbanfarm #leanproduction
To mark the Autumnal equinox, we pulled down the shade cloth. Some tips for growers about shading a greenhouse: … —Shading helps cool tunnels and prevents sun scald issues on fruits like peppers —In Zone 5b, we shaded this year from mid-July through the equinox. Mostly tomatoes in here. —50% shade cloth from Noltz’s produce supplies —To pull on and off the shade cloth, we tied tennis balls to ropes and threw the balls over. Wheee! The balls/ropes are then tied to greenhouse posts or whatever’s convenient. —We shaded even though this greenhouse has a peak vent. —Note we used a shade cloth that only covered about 50%—just the top to keep out mid-day sun. This lets some direct sunlight in in the mornings and evenings. Shading crops is always a balancing act between keeping crops cool while not depriving them of light they need to grow sturdy and to ward off diseases. … Annual fall sale! In October The Lean Market Growing Masterclass is 25% off. Also new free videos and info on the website. Happy fall!
Yoder's Upick Strawberry Patch
S 15th Street
