High Tunnels in Practice

Lisa Becklund tells Soil Conservation Technician Amanda Zarek and District Conservationist Nicholas Jones how many pounds of greens she was able to harvest last week. In her existing high tunnel she is growing broccoli rabe, mizuna, red chard, Fort Hook chard, a few varieties of lettuce, arugula, spinach bok choy, red choy, cilantro, and Russian red kale.

As a certified organic producer with few options, Lisa Becklund says her egg laying chickens are a good solution to abating pest problems. She says once the crop season is over she puts her chickens in the high tunnel for about three days and the birds eliminate any bugs that may have snuck in.


Lisa Becklund laid her coat over the edge of the back of her Chevy truck parked at the end of the structure she aimed to finish on her own December 7, 2010. While the temperature outside was barely breaking 30 degrees by 9:30 a.m., the work she’d already done warmed her up enough to make her shed a layer. The ribbing of the seasonal high tunnel went up over the weekend in about 3 ½ hours with the help of five friends. Becklund was ready to finish construction by placing the door of her moveable structure. For Becklund it has been a long process to become a small scale farmer. It started with a love of food being born and raised in the restaurant business, moved to a career as a chef, grew to an interest in buying from farmers markets and visiting the farmers she met there.

She said, “I liked the ultimate control they had over the food and how it was raised and for the animals, what kind of life they had. I didn’t realize, before then, that I had that kind of control, that I had a choice.” That is when Becklund chose to buy a few chickens, a couple of sheep and two milk goats just to see if she would like being a farmer.

Seven years later, Becklund has abandoned the resturaunt business and is involved in a community supported agriculture group. Her operation is called Living Kitchen and is a 65 acre farm just outside of Depew, Okla. She has 60 sheep, 20 goats and 250 chickens. She provides food for the families of 20 members on a subscription basis. The families pay upfront and, as the season continues, Becklund provides $30-45 dollars worth of food she produces every two weeks.

She realizes the families take a financial risk when they trust her to grow their food but it provides her the motivation to make sure the guaranteed customer base is there for her the next year by delivering what she promises. She says the benefit of community supported agriculture is that she knows how much to plant, how much to harvest and she doesn’t take home any of the produce. She says her subscribers have become like family to her.

Becklund started selling produce with one small table at a farmer’s market, now she has a double booth. She said she felt confident in her ability to move to the subscription farming model because she made it through last year. Last year was her biggest year but also her hardest, she said. Starting with the rain in August, she said, “(The struggles) happened one right after the next. It was a really great learning experience but I thought I was going to lose my mind. I actually got through it in the black so I felt like, I have arrived. I get it now.”

When she heard through Cherry Street Farmer’s Market Association that an NRCS cut off deadline to sign up for seasonal high tunnels through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program Organic Initiative was the next day, she dropped everything and gathered all the information she would need to sign up for the practice. The practice is targeted at producers who are transitioning to organic or already are certified organic producers, which Becklund is. Becklund was aware of the great benefits of using seasonal high tunnels because she already uses one to improve the quality of her produce.

Even though everything outside in December looks bleak, there are, as Becklund says, 960 square feet of good nutrition growing in her high tunnel. She has six rows of greens of diverse variety. She says winter is the easiest time to grow and these structures extend her growing season. She is currently growing cool season vegetables that do better in the winter months anyway, but the plants like the 20 degree higher temperature difference the high tunnel provides.

The hardest but most important part, she says, is squaring the structure. She said, “I use a very, very expensive six row seeder, I can’t use the seeder if the inside is not square. The stability (the squaring provides) is crucial to withstand the winds in Oklahoma, we have pulled poles out and it has taken us eight hours sometimes just to square the thing, now we can square it out in 15 minutes. We couldn’t believe it, we were like, what? It’s square? Let’s check it again.”

For her operation this year, her goal is to provide the families with 75% of their nutritional needs. An added high tunnel could help her provide a wider variety of produce to better reach that goal. This time of year each subscriber receives several pounds of greens, cuts of lamb, yogurt and some form of goat cheese, two dozen eggs and goats milk. With the food, Becklund also provides recipes to the families, which she says is her added benefit that gives her a bit of an edge. She says drop-off days are her favorite days, “I am so proud, I actually get to see the fruits of my labor right there. They bring their kids, it’s just really exciting and really kind of cool to see that they are really interested in food.“

Several months out of the summer Becklund has some help from college interns, but for the most part she runs the operation by herself. She said she only produces for 20 subscribers because she needs to keep the operation sustainable by just one person. High tunnel structures provide her a way to rotate her crops to keep vital nutrients in the soil, but are also easy enough that she is able to do most of the work setting it up, alone. As she pounded the stakes to secure the door she said she was struggling with whether to put the plastic over the ribbing because it was an excellent day for it. She said that part is a three person job, mainly because of the somewhat constant 5-10 mph wind in Oklahoma.

Pest management is one challenge any certified organic producer faces. There are only a couple of chemicals producers can use to control pests. She says that she has been really lucky over the years and has not experienced a pest problem. She manages pests by turning her chickens loose in the structure when the crop season has ended. She said, “They scratch up and get every known little bug out of there in about three days.”

She said it should be written somewhere that if someone builds a high tunnel in Oklahoma it is best to orient it east/west rather than north/south otherwise the wind will rip it out of the ground. This kind of suggestion is important feedback because the high tunnel practice under the Organic EQIP program is part of a three year study to verify if high tunnels are effective in reducing pesticide use, keeping vital nutrients in the soil, and extending the growing season.

Into the second year of the study, Becklund is among the first to finish building the structure under the program. With only 18 structures in planning and $1.5 million funding the program, there is still a lot of room for certified organic producers or producers transitioning to organic to be a part of the program. The next sign-up deadline is March 4, 2011, to be considered for funding in 2011. Becklund endorses the practice wholeheartedly, she said, “I love these high tunnels, they are fantastic. It is a really great solution to farming in Oklahoma.”