Producer
Health & Happiness
Contact: Sal Santelli
Address: 19405 SW 280th Street Homestead, Fl, 33031-3316
Website: www.healthandhappinessfarms.com
About Us
The farm began its life in 1992 on the heels of Hurricane Andrew's taking the property--and everyone else's in Dade County--down several notches. In the midst of that uncertainty, after spending much of their lives on Long Island, Sal Santelli and his wife Theresa Correra made Homestead their permanent home. A man to whom retirement is a four-letter word, Sal, a carpenter by trade, soon turned his hand to farming. Sal's family was not even a generation removed from farming olives in Italy. It felt natural to him to continue the family legacy--with a twist--in South Florida, growing--as the immigrant populations did in Miami--mamey rather than olive.
What began as a modest five acre grove of segregated mamey and longan--the longan providing diversity at a time when such fruit was not yet ubiquitous in the Redland--expanded in the latter half of the last decade to include the neighboring avocado groves of another farmer whose land Sal had managed organically for many years. The year 2006 saw the entire farm adopt the guidelines of the US Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program, and the farm was officially certified in 2009. That year, five acres of the old avocado grove were turned over to diverse plantings of sapodilla, caimito, jakfruit, and other crops. As Laurel Wilt disease continues to pressure the farm to adapt to a changing avocado climate in Florida, the farm is innovating to stay ahead of the curve and diversify its crops still further. Plantings are expanding in the direction of turmerics, and ultra-tropical species such as guanabana and rollinia are beginning to stake their claim to different corners of the property. Health & Happiness Farms looks forward to continuing to carry the mantle that Sal's family has carried for so many years!
What began as a modest five acre grove of segregated mamey and longan--the longan providing diversity at a time when such fruit was not yet ubiquitous in the Redland--expanded in the latter half of the last decade to include the neighboring avocado groves of another farmer whose land Sal had managed organically for many years. The year 2006 saw the entire farm adopt the guidelines of the US Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program, and the farm was officially certified in 2009. That year, five acres of the old avocado grove were turned over to diverse plantings of sapodilla, caimito, jakfruit, and other crops. As Laurel Wilt disease continues to pressure the farm to adapt to a changing avocado climate in Florida, the farm is innovating to stay ahead of the curve and diversify its crops still further. Plantings are expanding in the direction of turmerics, and ultra-tropical species such as guanabana and rollinia are beginning to stake their claim to different corners of the property. Health & Happiness Farms looks forward to continuing to carry the mantle that Sal's family has carried for so many years!
Practices
Growing organically is about getting back to the basics and making due with what you have. In a sense, you could call it one of the most quintessentially American things to do, practicing daily self-reliance in the service of the inescapable crux of human existence: food, water, shelter, and loving community.
If we can rake aside the leaves and mulch from our tree rows or dig a small way down and see the life exemplified in the images above, we know we are growing in a living soil. If we can dig a small way farther and see the life of tender feeder roots fanning out into uncharted reaches of the soil, we know we are doing better still.
Weed management is achieved strictly through line-trimming, deep-mulching, and horizontal training of our trees, whereby the soil is shaded too strongly to grow aggressive weeds. Our soil is never cultivated to any depth. It is not uncommon to see a blanket of recumbent broad-leaf weeds and grasses dotting the decomposing mulch beneath our trees.
In an effort to retain critical soil moisture, enhance microbial activity, build humus, and retard the oxidization of soil minerals, the farm engages in a program of continual mulching throughout the year. All would-be tree waste is chipped and distributed beneath the trees from whence it came, and untreated chips from local timber processing are used to supplement on-site sources. All leaf litter is retained in our tree rows and redistributed as-needed. These are the principal sources of fertility on the farm.
Even avocados that have ceased being productive will ultimately increase the productivity of other trees at the farm. There is great poetry in this, every bit the equal of the physical beauty of their 40-year-old, gnarled trunks.
To help maintain the consistent and high yields that are demanded of a commercial organic operation on this fifteen-acre scale, native sources of fertility are supplemented regularly with OMRI-listed hydrolized fish emulsion, kelp meal, and custom-blended pelletized amalgams of balanced fertilizer, in strict observation of USDA National Organic Program standards.
Pests both seen and unseen are treated preventatively by attending to the health of the soil biome first and spraying (or drenching) second. Trees are intercropped on basic divisions of one or two acres to discourage the spread of non-beneficial organisms and disease. The fruits that we grow experience relatively low levels of pest and disease pressure by their nature and therefore seldom need spraying. When we do spray, we do so ahead of predictable cycles of pest pressure so that a real issue never develops.
If we can rake aside the leaves and mulch from our tree rows or dig a small way down and see the life exemplified in the images above, we know we are growing in a living soil. If we can dig a small way farther and see the life of tender feeder roots fanning out into uncharted reaches of the soil, we know we are doing better still.
Weed management is achieved strictly through line-trimming, deep-mulching, and horizontal training of our trees, whereby the soil is shaded too strongly to grow aggressive weeds. Our soil is never cultivated to any depth. It is not uncommon to see a blanket of recumbent broad-leaf weeds and grasses dotting the decomposing mulch beneath our trees.
In an effort to retain critical soil moisture, enhance microbial activity, build humus, and retard the oxidization of soil minerals, the farm engages in a program of continual mulching throughout the year. All would-be tree waste is chipped and distributed beneath the trees from whence it came, and untreated chips from local timber processing are used to supplement on-site sources. All leaf litter is retained in our tree rows and redistributed as-needed. These are the principal sources of fertility on the farm.
Even avocados that have ceased being productive will ultimately increase the productivity of other trees at the farm. There is great poetry in this, every bit the equal of the physical beauty of their 40-year-old, gnarled trunks.
To help maintain the consistent and high yields that are demanded of a commercial organic operation on this fifteen-acre scale, native sources of fertility are supplemented regularly with OMRI-listed hydrolized fish emulsion, kelp meal, and custom-blended pelletized amalgams of balanced fertilizer, in strict observation of USDA National Organic Program standards.
Pests both seen and unseen are treated preventatively by attending to the health of the soil biome first and spraying (or drenching) second. Trees are intercropped on basic divisions of one or two acres to discourage the spread of non-beneficial organisms and disease. The fruits that we grow experience relatively low levels of pest and disease pressure by their nature and therefore seldom need spraying. When we do spray, we do so ahead of predictable cycles of pest pressure so that a real issue never develops.