Superior Broadcast Network

Sun Farm

Gardening under the sun and living the good life

Living on the south shore of Lake Superior Chris LaForge and Amy Wilson devote themselves to gardening because it produces wholesome food and makes them happy.

Last weekend was busy for gardeners across the northwoods. Just south of Lake Superior in Bayfield County, Chris LaForge and Amy Wilson mulched the garlic, planted peppers, and prepared compost. Some difficult soil and shorter growing season makes northwoods gardening a challenge, but LaForge and Wilson have adopted some innovative techniques for an abundant harvest, and maybe just as importantly, more joy. When LaForge isn’t gardening he installs solar systems for Great Northern Solar. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network visits Sun Farm near Port Wing, Wisconsin to talk about gardening.

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Living the Good Life Under the Sun and in the Garden

Living on the south shore of Lake Superior Chris LaForge and Amy Wilson devote themselves to gardening because it produces wholesome food and makes them happy.

It’s late Friday afternoon, sunny, and the dragon flies are buzzing around the garden eatin’ mosquitoes. Both Chris LaForge and Amy Wilson are planting. The garden is surrounded by a tall fence to keep the deer out. Inside there are rows and rows of beds raised above the ground with 2x10 hemlock boards filled with rich soil, flowers, and emerging vegetables.

It’s called French intensive gardening. The technique yields the greatest amount of produce for the least amount of space.

LaForge and Wilson set out the tomatoes several weeks ago, shielding the tomatoes from early frost under black plastic hoops and sheets of white plastic.

“This is the cheapest, minimalist greenhouse in the world. They let us grow things at least a month early. It’s just incredible compared to everything else. We’ll be eating ripe tomatoes at the end of July. Then we’ll get Bell peppers, thick orange or red Bell peppers in August. It’s totally… I mean next to Lake Superior its totally whacko. Right off the deep end.”

LaForge and Wilson say it takes lots of work getting the beds ready in this clay soil. But once the beds are dug and prepared with compost annual upkeep is easy.

“What you do is put in a lot of effort at first. It’s like making your own salsa. It’s a lot of work harvesting those peppers and tomatoes and cutting’em. That’s why I’ve got a cusinart. You know another French appliance. It just dices, slices, chops and rototills for you in the kitchen really fast. All that work, but then you’ve got salsa all year. About six years ago we made enough salsa for the whole year. And then we thought that’s what we want to do with everything.”

So now they grow their own basil for pesto. They grow their own potatoes, carrots, garlic, onions, almost all the vegetables they eat.

After Amy Wilson plants some peppers, she reaches into another raised bed to harvest a thin, viney green plant. She tosses the plants into a wheel barrow.

“It’s called Hairy Vetch and it’s a plant that I use for a green manure. I usually plant it after I pull up the garlic. If it’s green I use it. It’s called green manure because you dig the plants back into the soil the worms consume it.”

The plant is extremely rich in nitrogen which is what you get from commercial fossil fuel fertilizer.

Amy Wilson is an energetic organic gardener. She’s also very conscious of the end of cheap oil. They’ve lived on this land since the nineteen eighties, but neighbors still wonder about Sun Farm.

“People have asked me what do you do out there?”

“And I was so taken off guard I just couldn’t even answer him. And I was going to say there’s some hard labor, you know we work hard, but I just didn’t know what to say and the question came up in my mind about three weeks later and I thought we’re trying to live without fossil fuels.”

Amy Wilson is conscious of the end of cheap oil. She says, after all, almost all of the food we get from the supermarket is made from cheap oil.

Wilson recommends a book for organic gardening.

Oh, Eliot Coleman, I learned so much from him and his book “Four Season Harvest.” I didn’t know this but he was a neighbor of Helen and Scott Nearing. He learned from the Nearings. And he said you should always keep gardening pleasurable.”

The Nearing’s are the great grandparents of the back to the land movement.

“There’s just nothing like having your own food, just a few steps out your door. That is quintessential good living.”

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network

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