Gabe Brown is a farmer in the Dakotas and farms 5,000 acres. Gabe is an All-American farmer who has done amazing work with cover crops and animals on his farm. He has created soil with his farming practices. His animals are cows, where ours are chickens and sheep. Gabe says your soil should be like 'black cottage cheese'.

Just after 7am on Monday morning, I was checking in with Jose and saw Roberto cultivating. I am not sure how much rain we have had over the weekend, but enough to make our roadways a little sticky. I walked over and crumbled some of our soil in my hand, black cottage cheese! It was in perfect condition to cultivate. Roberto knows how to judge this. With rain on the horizon coming over the hill from Napa, he took the opportunity to cultivate the beds where we had grown sweet potatoes this year one more time. We need to mix into the soil all the leaves and stems of the sweet potato plants. This allows the soil fauna to break it down and to prepare a tilth for the next crop.

Our soil fauna gobble up any crop residue allowing Roberto to make beautiful, smooth beds for the next crop in just a couple of weeks. A flat bed makes planting /cultivating weeds accurate and fast.