Jean-Paul Courtens is most famous for being the founder and owner of Roxbury Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley. He operated Roxbury Farm with his farming partner Jody Bolluyt from 1990 through about 2015, when he started work with the Hudson Valley Farm Hub to create and then to run a professional farmer training program, where he is now the Associate Director for Farm Training.
Roxbury Farm is a 245-acre integrated farming operation, with a hundred acres dedicated to vegetable production for a thousand-member CSA. Jean-Paul shares the details of Roxbury’s green manure rotation, and the details how they use unique crops, careful scheduling, and a summer-fallow period to clean the fields of weeds and pathogens, allowing for more efficient field operations. We also discuss the details of the semi-permanent bed system that complements the soil building cover cropping program.
Jean-Paul’s success as a farmer and his distinctive leadership builds upon the recognition of his skills as a teacher and mentor on organic practices, land stewardship, whole farm planning, and farm business development, and we discuss how he brings this to bear in the ProFarmer training program at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub.
Jean-Paul also shares some of the techniques used at Roxbury Farm to train employees and establish expectations, as well as to help people avoid mistakes and misunderstandings.
Roxbury Farm is a 245-acre integrated farming operation, with a hundred acres dedicated to vegetable production for a thousand-member CSA. Jean-Paul shares the details of Roxbury’s green manure rotation, and the details how they use unique crops, careful scheduling, and a summer-fallow period to clean the fields of weeds and pathogens, allowing for more efficient field operations. We also discuss the details of the semi-permanent bed system that complements the soil building cover cropping program.
Jean-Paul’s success as a farmer and his distinctive leadership builds upon the recognition of his skills as a teacher and mentor on organic practices, land stewardship, whole farm planning, and farm business development, and we discuss how he brings this to bear in the ProFarmer training program at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub.
Jean-Paul also shares some of the techniques used at Roxbury Farm to train employees and establish expectations, as well as to help people avoid mistakes and misunderstandings.
Sponsors
Vermont Compost Company: Founded by organic crop growing professionals committed to meeting the need for high-quality composts and compost-based, living soil mixes for certified organic plant production.
BCS America: BCS two-wheel tractors are versatile, maneuverable in tight spaces, light-weight for less compaction, and easy to maintain and repair on farm. Gear-driven and built to last for decades of dependable service on your farm or market garden.
Small Farm Central: Providers of Member Assembler CSA management software. Member Assembler has the flexibility to serve the needs of the myriad of farmers’ business models as well as serving non-traditional local food subscriptions like meat, fish, dairy, and fruit CSAs and CSFs.
BCS America: BCS two-wheel tractors are versatile, maneuverable in tight spaces, light-weight for less compaction, and easy to maintain and repair on farm. Gear-driven and built to last for decades of dependable service on your farm or market garden.
Small Farm Central: Providers of Member Assembler CSA management software. Member Assembler has the flexibility to serve the needs of the myriad of farmers’ business models as well as serving non-traditional local food subscriptions like meat, fish, dairy, and fruit CSAs and CSFs.
Quotes from the Show
The approach that we have taken with the curriculum is that the amount of information and the amount of knowledge and skill that our farmers need to have when they complete this program is not that different from the amount of knowledge and skill level that a medical doctor has.
If you look at it from enterprise to enterprise in the sense of like crop enterprises, we are a tiny farm. It's just that we are putting all these small crops enterprises together that form together a pretty large farm.
Our philosophy's always been like if I have clean ground, I have fertile ground.
You try things out and you fail and you succeed sometimes. For every successful cover crop that I've grown,
there's probably a few other ones that didn't work out as well.
Having the resources available here to do the documentation is a huge change compared to working at Roxbury where we were really in the trenches and ultimately we had to make a living from every activity we did every day and so this is a luxury.
There's no way that anyone can manage as diversified a farm as Roxbury by telling everybody every day what to do.
If you look at it from enterprise to enterprise in the sense of like crop enterprises, we are a tiny farm. It's just that we are putting all these small crops enterprises together that form together a pretty large farm.
Our philosophy's always been like if I have clean ground, I have fertile ground.
You try things out and you fail and you succeed sometimes. For every successful cover crop that I've grown,
there's probably a few other ones that didn't work out as well.
Having the resources available here to do the documentation is a huge change compared to working at Roxbury where we were really in the trenches and ultimately we had to make a living from every activity we did every day and so this is a luxury.
There's no way that anyone can manage as diversified a farm as Roxbury by telling everybody every day what to do.
Show Links
Jean-Paul referenced Green Manuring: Principles and Practice by Adrian Pieters; this link is a free PDF version on soilandhealth.org.
Roxbury Farm has posted their operations manuals online for many years. An amazing resource.
Jean-Paul is the Associate Director of Farm Training at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub’s ProFarmer training program.
Roxbury Farm has posted their operations manuals online for many years. An amazing resource.
Jean-Paul is the Associate Director of Farm Training at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub’s ProFarmer training program.
Transcript
The transcript for this episode is brought to you by Earth Tools, offering the most complete selection of walk-behind farming equipment and high-quality garden tools in North America; and by Growing for Market, where you can get 20% off your subscription with the code “podcast” at checkout.
