10 miles from Baltic sea

I got a little area on my property that is currently unused.




I'd like to use it for some food production and permaculture experiments.
It's a rectangle about 60ft x 140ft in size, butts up right to the border of my land. All the cut down brush are there from clearing the border.



Unfortunately the field next to it is farmed using conventional methods - pesticides/herbicides/fertilizer.


Right between my border and the farmer's field there is a zone with some brush and trees, about 40 to 60ft wide. I'm hoping it will be at least somewhat effective at blocking the 'cides that farmer used on his grain field.
Would it be a good idea to stealth-plant a bunch of spruce trees in this area to increase the protective effect? The farmer likely would not care or notice at all.
The slope also runs away from my property, my small field being the highest point in the area, so runoff is likely to go the other way.

Would you use this area for growing food or would the proximity of the conventionally farmed grain field put you off?
There is exactly 0% chance the farmer will go organic or use it as pasture etc.

Right now there is a ton of brush/young trees up to about 3 inch diameter from the border clearing and some clearing between the large trees.
I'm thinking of using these in some way - my options are to bury them as is to make hugelbeds or make them into biochar first.
Either way they will need to dry out a couple of months first. Most of them are some sort of willow, so likely to to just send up new shoots if I bury them now or not burn too well due to the high moisture content.
Which would you do? Hugel or biochar? I'm leaning towards biochar as it's something that has caught my interest at the moment.

I want to set up some polycultures of mostly annuals, not looking to plant trees here as I have plenty of those in other areas.
Perhaps 'three sisters' as I'm very interested in landrace squash and corn at the moment.

Anyway, I'll probably start by making some conventional raised beds with my rotary plow and depending on what I decide to do with the brush go from there at the end of the season.

Warning, image heavy post coming up

I split the field in half and planted one half (that was full of goutweed rhizomes) with potatoes. Arran victory, Golden Wonder, Sarpo Mira and Mayan Twilight.
These were the winners in my last years trial of potato varieties for taste, except for Sarpo, which is sort of meh, but when everything else succumbed to blight, it was totally unaffected.  So it's a fail-safe in case of bad blight this year.
There was a bit of damage from feral pigs, but thankfully they haven't come back


Speaking of potatoes, here is another field, this one has a few hundred of plants started from tps.


There's quite a a bit of damage from Colorado beetle. At first I picked them off, but then decided to leave them be. This way I'm selecting for plants that can survive the pest pressure.
I noticed that the beetles generally prefer diploid potatoes with their smaller/thinner leaves.


The other half (full of couch grass) was delegated to my flint corn landrace.  The germination was poor,  so it's very patchy.
It has Abenaki flint, Ruby cascade red and gold, and a couple of dozen varieties from a german seedbank.
As expected, the genebank corn is probably severely inbred and very weak. Some are distorted, some are starting to tassel at foot long, some are just runts.
The fact that I'm not able to irrigate this field and this summer is extremely dry so far hasn't helped one bit.
Oh well, I guess any survivors will be tough ones.



My other corns are doing much better.

Here's sweet corn - mix of Lofthouse astronomy and a local variety called Zizma (very tasty)



And here's a mix of Lofthouse grain corn and Painted mountain. I selected the most floury kernels for this field using salt water to seperate the flinty ones.



Beautiful tassels.



Some ears are starting to silk.



At the edges of the field I planted many varieties of buttercup and other smallish maxima squashes. The germination was horrible - less than half came up.
When soil was moist it was too cold for them to germinate, and when it warmed up, it was very fast and the soil became too dry.



Some of Lofthouse buttercups. These seem to be doing best out of all I had planted.



As you can tell, I'm not doing a great job with weeding. Let's just say it's part of the selection process for more resilient plants

Here's Lofthouse wheat landrace,  (as you can tell I'm really liking the genetics from Joseph, even if not everything survives, the fact that he has a similarly short season as I do and diverse genetics in his seeds make them a great starting point for my garden.  
Sown in fall and about 60~70 % of the plants survived our last -25C winter. For now I'm just doing seed increase.

After the weather changed from unusually hot and dry to cooler and wet, the corn seems to have picked up and looks promising now

There are some nice and thick cobs showing up and the height of the plants has exploded.

Unfortunately we had a bad storm a week ago and my flour corn patch was leveled flat
It seems to recovered a bit now, but still looks pretty bad.



There were a couple corn plants already dried down so I picked the cobs off. Seems like they are either Hopi Pink or Montana Lavender.



One cob has some weird, patchy kernels. I think they might have crossed with a very speckled Italian variety that was also planted in the field.

Those are some good looking plants Never mind that the fields are not perfectly weeded... Victory comes from chosing your battles.

You ask:

Would you use this area for growing food or would the proximity of the conventionally farmed grain field put you off?

My answer is that it depends on the groundwater. If you share a high ground water table with your 'cides-heavy neighbor then that's likely a problem. Apart from that, having a good shelter belt of shrubs and trees should help a lot. Maybe try hazel and willow? They don't mind the cold and grow quickly. You mentioned some willow is already present.

Crt Jakhel wrote: If you share a high ground water table with your 'cides-heavy neighbor then that's likely a problem. Apart from that, having a good shelter belt of shrubs and trees should help a lot. Maybe try hazel and willow?

Fortunately the groundwater table is quite deep - 5 meters or so I'm not concerned about it too much.
The only issue is wind drift from spraying process, that's where the willows should help a bit. They are coming back thicker after cutting down the shrubs along property line, so next year it should be nice and thick.
I've eaten so much conventionally farmed food in my life, that in the long run it probably does not make a difference.

As a sidenote, the most heavy-handed, reckless user of roundup I know is the traditional 'grandma' from the country with a small self-sufficient homestead.
She's 80 now and has grown most of her food for as long as I remember.
I remember from my childhood how she had these tiny, very hard stinging nettles and some weird algae-like growth around her property. Turns out that areas that are extremely oversprayed can't grow anything else!

My own ideas for what I think I'd do if I were in your situation:

Try to plant a fast-growing, not edible (think ornamental, and THICK) hedge to act as a windbreak and buffer zone. Ideally, I think an evergreen hedge would be best.

I'd also think about planting sunflowers to help clear the soil. It is believed that sunflowers help to pull up soil toxins. I wouldn't eat the sunflowers or give them to any livestock. I'd just use them for helping to detox the soil and enjoy their beauty.

I think we permaculture fans might come together to brainstorm ways of giving helpful, concrete "how to" advice for living next to gick-y neighbors. I have a neighbor who sprays pesticide on his lawn. He really and truly believes he is doing the right thing.

I don't see the wisdom in chastising him, though. He has often admired my garden, so I just politely explain to him that I keep things organic. I'm hoping to SHOW him the better way of permaculture, and allowing his own mind to see that the chemicals he puts on his grass aren't doing his family any favors. (There's a "churchy" word for this---lifestyle evangelism. Just living your life the best you can, as respectfully as you can, and letting your good successes be the impetus for others to see your better way.) I've given him and his family a few of my extra crops, as a neighborly gesture for them to taste the success of going gick-free. As he begins to ask his own questions, I'll offer my advice on gardening organically. But until he shows the interest, preaching at him will fall on deaf ears and only stir up strife. As that old saying goes, we attract more flies with honey than vinegar.

I for one enjoyed your "image heavy post," LOL. I think documenting your progress is a fantastic journaling tool!!

I hope you can find that delicate balance between being a good neighbor and protecting your soil. It can be tricky.