How we farm at Coyle organic farm.

May 2021 revised

We grow oil seeds organically to produce vegetable oil and grow spelt and rye for the production of our flour. We also have heritage chickens for eggs and a dexter cow along with cats to keep the mice in order.

Crop rotations, cover crops, minimal plowing and carefully observing the fields are the farming practices we follow. We only use only sunshine to dry our crops. I am no till planting sunflowers into crimped rye.

We are not certified organic but adhere to regenerative farm principles.

I use horses as a source of energy in the fields or for logging. I still use tractors to get a head start on some projects with a hope that horses will eventually do everything.

In the fall I plant rye with various cover crops which over winters and yields green plants in late February for the horses to eat. To cut down on the weeds and provide green manure I continually clip the field with a horse drawn sickle mower or swather. I have fall broadcast red clover in the sunflower stubble with great success as this gives the horses lots of red clover to eat which I fence off once they have trampled and eaten about half.

I use the horses to maintain the fields. The horses are fenced off with an electric fence in a large pasture.

We mill spelt flour from the spelt we grow on the farm. Spelt has a hull and must be taken off to get the seeds that we will then mill for flour. Spelt is planted in the fall and is harvested in August of the following year. We automated the flour making by adding an auger to take the milled grain to our sifter. The mill rotates at a slow speed to keep the flour temperature between 80 and 90 degrees F. Like our pressing of the oils we only press once a month to order. All bottles and bags of flour are marked with the date of pressing or milling.