A24-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 1, 1991
Farmer Employs Natural Farming To Reap Benefits Of Soil
CONNIE LEINBACH
Berks Co. Correspondent
EARL TOWNSHIP (Berks
Co.) Not long after his fourth
friend got sick from the harsh
chemicals used to control bugs and
worms, Leonard G. Stoltzfus
decided to go natural.
“I watched a brother-in-law die
of cancer and have seen neighbors
and friends waste away (from the
disease),” said Stoltzfus, a Dou
glassville R.D.2 dairy farmer. “I
wanted to do something about it.”
He admitted that he used to feel
“half sick” for a few days after
using chemicals.
With a change in his thinking
and in his agricultural program,
Stoltzfus accomplishes without
chemicals what he did with them
five years ago while practicing
monocropping. In essence, it’s a
return to the “old fashioned” way
of farming cultivating com to
get rid of weeds once the shoots
appear, and rotating crops to con
trol weeds and pests.
But it’s a life-affirming method,
he said.
Without chemicals, there should
be 12 tons of microbial life per
acre, he said. With chemicals,
there’s only two to four tons.
Since he abandoned the harsh
chemicals that kill weeds and
earthworms, he has felt better and
has seen his earth return to the rich
ness he sought using chemicals.
Besides, even more than one
application of herbicide never got
rid of the deep rooted weeds. Only
a spike harrow can do that.
Stoltzfus will allow, however,
Stoltzfus, holding a clump of soil, shows how the struc
ture is crumbly and perfect for growing crops.
Stoltzfus, in his hay field, tells how his soil has become richer without the use of
that he does use a biological liquid,
called Restore, as a soil enhancer.
It contains microrganisms that join
the earthworms in the dark earth. It
smells sweet, like cider.
Stoltzfus’s cousin, Nevin E.
Mast, Oley R.D. 1, however, uses
no chemicals whatsoever. “The
earth wasn’t meant to have all
these chemicals put in it,” Mast
said.
His wife, Audrey, said that
when they used chemicals she
noted that the bird population was
reduced.
“Since we’ve been farming this
way we’ve seen the bam swallows
come back and gold finches,” she
said.
Both men are concerned with
how the years of constant chemi
cals will harm the earth.
“We’re among those concerned
with potential pollution from the
agricultural system,” Stoltzfus
said one warm Saturday on his
187-acre farm where he lives with
his wife, Doris.
A simple system of rotation
cropping is all that’s needed to
break the insect and disease cycle,
he said, because the weed competi
tion for each crop is different.
Deep rooted plants draw different
weeds than shallow rooted plants.
A mixture of alfalfa, clover, and
hay in the hay field yields a highly
nutritional grain without a weed
problem, he said.
Time tillage is employed to help
control weeds, which are part of
“the original curse,” said Stoltzfus.
About the time that corn shoots
in other fields are eight inches
high, Mast and Stoltzfus have just
finished planting. After that, farm
ing involves prevention.
Knowing the signs the soils
shows makes him more in tune
with the earth and its cycles.
He contends that his method is
not more work than monocropping
with chemicals.
“It’s more fun,” he said with a
smile. “It’s rewarding. It’s the way
the good Lord intended us to
farm.” Without chemicals, he said,
earthworms have returned in abun
dance, and they are the key to soil
health.
“After a rain, or early in the
morning, I see a lot of earth
worms,” he said. The more earth
worms. the healthier the soil.
Worms eat their way through
the soil, never munching on plant
roots, and deposit their castings as
they go. The castings are richer
than the soil itself, he said.
Earthworm activity aerates the
earth, making it more crumbly and
porous, thus able to retain water
better.
No fertilizers are needed, he
said, because as the earthworms
aerate the ground, nitrogen from
the air seeps in. Stoltzfus says he
started his natural program skepti
cally, and experimented without
chemicals on a 40-acre field. But
after that first season, he was so
impressed, that in two seasons he
made the switch on all his fields.
Yields are about the same, he
said, as is crop quality. Overall
herd health of his 80 head of Hols
teins has improved, he said, and his
milk yields arc average but,
then, he’s not trying to be the top
producer.
“Our soil tests have showed and
crop yields prove we’re not taking
a licking,” he said. “I’m excited
about what I’m seeing in the soil.”
A test of the soil inventory done by
The Pennsylvania State University
lab showed Stoltzfus doesn’t need
to add anything to the soil.
‘They said I could grow 150
bushels of com per acre,” he said.
“Last year, we had the best com
crop around.” Costs of this method
of fanning are not more expensive,
he said. The costs of the chemicals
actually exceed the extra labor cost
needed to cultivate once the crops
are planted, he said.
“But you don’t go into it (natural
farming) with (money) in mind;
you do it for the environment,” he
said.
Stoltzfus didn’t take any formal
training in this method of farming.
He learned what to do by reading
some materials and by talking to
other farmers.
CONNIE LEINBACH
Berks Co. Correspondent
there was covering the Berks
County Court of Common
Pleas.
Connie Leinbach lives in
Douglass Township, near
Boyertown. She divides her
time between freelance writ
ing and caring for her three
children, ages 11, 3 and 1.
Before that, she worked
for seven years as a reporter
for the “Reading Eagle-
Times.” Her last assignment
Leonard G. Stoltzfus, Douglassvilie R.D. 2,, talks at his
Earl Township farm about how he changed his fanning
methods from heavy use of herbicides and pesticides to
natural methods.
A transition period is needed to
make a complete switch from
using chemical herbicides, fertiliz
ers, and pesticides, he said.
Though the switch can be com
pleted in several growing seasons,
it takes years longer for all of the
chemicals to break down and
disappear.
Stoltzfus illustrated his points
about soil structure with a band of
newly cut hay. He indicated a lum
py mass of soil, which he said was
worm castings, around the base of
a shorn plant. Pulling it up, he
broke it apart and pointed out the
tunnel through it, proving that
earthworms were indeed doing
what they are supposed to be
doing.
He broke it apart, the brown soil
crumbling easily through his fin
gers. Before, using chemicals, the
soil was harder, and stuck together
in layers, he said.
He raised the clump to his nose.
“It smells sweet,” he said. With
chemicals, it smelled putrid. “If I’d
put fertilizers on this earth now,
the earthworms would all be
dead,” he said.
Stoltzfus relates a story that
reinforces his belief in what he is
doing.
He rents a field nearby that had
been farmed for more than 20
years with heavy use of chemicals.
“You’d think after using chemi
cals that long there would be less
weed pressure,” he said. “But the
As a cub reporter, Connie
was “baptized into journal
ism by covering the Pen
nsylvania Farm Show for
three years,” she said.
She was bom and reared
in Berks County.
weeds were overwhelming.” Gra
dually, he said, he is switching this
field to natural methods.
Stoltzfus realizes that what he
and his cousin are doing is a drop
in the bucket, since all of the far
mers around him continue to use
chemicals.
But he is concerned about the
ground water around here and he
worries that the same thing is hap
pening here as has happened in the
Midwest, where farming with
chemicals is intense.
There, he said, occurs the high
est per capita instance of cancer.
“And farmers are the main
offenders (of ground water pollu
tion),” he said.
Still, he insists, it doesn’t take a
lot of effort for a farmer to change
his way of thinking about how he
makes his living.
“The biggest adjustment we
have to make is right under our
hats,” Stoltzfus said. “You have to
watch the weeds, know what’s
happening, think ahead.” There’s a
spiritual aspect to his methods.
Man may discover that trying to
control the environment with arti
ficial methods may eventually be
harmful, he said. Stoltzfus has
made a slide presentation which he
has used to talk about his natural
methods to the Young Farmers
Association in Kutztown.
Farmers interested in learning to
farm without chemicals can call
Stoltzfus at (215) 689-5540.