HERVE DE GRACE, Md. — For Tommy Shireman, farming means more than growing food for profit.
He sees it as a spiritual practice.
“Farming is truly a calling for me,” Shireman said at a Future Harvest-sponsored field day he hosted at Third Way Farm, which he owns and operates with his wife, Michelle.
He pointed to the biblical warning in Genesis that humans must care for the Earth.
“That’s why I do this,” he told a crowd of about 15 on a sunny, hot July 11 afternoon.
Tommy Shireman explains the trellis hoophouse tomato production system on July 11, 2024 at Third Way Farm.
Growing up as a typical suburban kid in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, playing soccer and sailing on the beach, Shireman says becoming a farmer wasn’t an obvious choice.
“Me and my friends were into hip-hop music and modifying cars. It was the opposite of farming and ‘country,'” he said.
His family was in the automotive industry, so that was the career he most expected to pursue.
“But I felt like God was leading me in a different direction,” Shireman said.
His involvement with agriculture came through his various pastoral experiences, including mentoring youth and mission trips around the world.
It was while on a jungle farm in Malaysia that the epiphany struck him: if he combined farming with mentoring, it would all work.
As a result, he now owns a 67-acre vegetable, fruit and livestock farm and is committed to caring for the land as well as providing work and learning opportunities for young trainees.
The name Third Way Farm comes from the path of nonviolence shown and taught by Jesus, Shireman said.
A possible “third way” to resist violence under oppressive regimes goes beyond the two most common ways that have shaped human history – responding with violence or doing nothing – and instead finds creative alternatives, he said.
Shireman pointed to industrial agriculture as a cause of harm to soil, water, air and communities.
“There’s a lot of violence going on in our agricultural system,” he said.
Shireman sees his farming methods, particularly his approach to soil building through no-till farming and minimal chemical use, as positive options.
“This is more about guidance than management,” Shireman said. “We do as little as we can to allow the soil and nature to function to its full potential.”
As guests learned throughout the field day, there’s still a lot of work that goes into running a farm.
As he led us through the farm’s vegetable and orchard patches, Shireman talked about his no-till strategy and how it has evolved over the 10 years he’s been farming.
Tommy Shireman explains no-till bed preparation at Third Way Farms to participants on a tour hosted by Future Harvest – The Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture on July 11, 2024.
“The tarps are our cultivators.”
Shireman said when he first started in 2014, he used a tiller attached to the back of a tractor to prepare his vegetable patch.
But within a few years, he noticed his crops were growing worse, a trend he attributes to tillage.
The big challenge, he said, was that it was “really rain-dependent.” “You couldn’t do anything until it rained.”
As he learned more about how tillage destroys soil structure, he began switching to no-till farming.
Shireman first tried to prepare the seedbeds using a “sheet mulching” method, which involves covering the soil with layers of materials such as cardboard or newspaper.
“It worked out well, but it was really hard work,” he said.
Instead, laying black tarps over newly harvested seedbeds became the primary method of preparing the soil for the next planting.
Tommy Shireman of Third Way Farms shows how he uses landscape fabric to suppress weeds in his onion fields on July 11, 2024.
By 2019 the farm had switched completely to no-till farming.
The black tarp absorbs heat and helps kill weeds without causing too much harm to the soil’s microbiome, Shireman said.
“The tarps are our tillers,” he said.
Tarps have their limitations — for example, in early spring when temperatures are still cool and weeds can survive underneath them — so Shireman must rely on light tillage using a BCS walk-behind tractor equipped with a power harrow.
The harrow uses horizontally rotating tines to till the soil to a depth of 4 to 5 inches, creating what he calls “minimal cultivation.” The machine is designed to leave the soil layers undisturbed, keeping the structure largely intact.
The flail mower attachment is another important piece of equipment on the farm, used to mow the seedbeds after harvesting vegetables and before laying down the tarpaulin. This mower chops the plants into small pieces so they can decompose quickly in the soil.
The underside of the tarps is white and is sometimes used to reflect sunlight to keep crops cool in the summer, a method Shireman said he has found particularly well suited to growing carrots.
Drip irrigation tapes deliver water to the vegetables and fruits from the farm’s wells. With limited water supplies, he uses a “pulse irrigation system” to water the crops more frequently for shorter periods of time.
For example, he showed a patch of summer squash being watered twice a day for eight to 10 minutes each time, which he believes is just as effective as the traditional method of watering deeply over a long period of time.
“It’s important to find ways to manage crops using less water,” he said.
Healthy soil structure in a no-till cropping system is one of the keys to water management.
“It’s not a panacea,” Shireman said of the no-till system, “but if you use it well, it can make your life better.”
Other topics Shireman covered during the three-hour tour included on-farm compost production using intercropping, cover crops and manure-eating earthworm colonies, as well as the farm’s livestock operations, which include a small herd of Red Devon beef cattle that are fattened on pasture, hundreds of free-range egg-laying hens and pigs that forage in the woods.
This Red Devon cow, photographed at Third Way Farm on July 11, 2024, is being fattened on a neighbor’s pasture where they are allowed to graze for free. Normally, they aren’t given hay during the grazing season, but a misunderstanding led to the pasture being mowed earlier this summer.
In addition to the variety of fruits and vegetables grown on the farm, flowers play a major role in attracting beneficial insects, making them a popular choice for customers and CSA members.
Shireman praised Michelle for growing a variety of flowers that complement the edible crops.
“We believe the more flowers on the farm, the better,” he said.
Shireman believes in increasing biodiversity and perennial crops wherever possible, and the farm is planted with a variety of fruit trees and many types of berries.
“Berries are probably one of the most profitable businesses we do,” he said.
Field day participants included several experienced farmers and several new and aspiring farmers.
Ravi Mattaparthi and his wife, Krishna, came from New Freedom, Pennsylvania, and bought a small farm two years ago.
Mataparthi said they grow produce for their own consumption but have plans to expand their two-acre plot and start selling.
Jana Sprinkle of Sprinkleberry Farm and Education Center in Bowie participated as a self-described new farmer.
“I want to soak up knowledge,” she said.
Tommy Shireman shows off a handful of worm compost produced at Third Way Farm on July 11, 2024. Shireman said the amount contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth.