Mind, Body and Farm

Aiki Farms, located off of Shewville Road is a place that blends farming, spirituality and martial arts. Robert Burns, the owner, started the business in 2000 with a focus on organic farming and Aikido, a form of martial arts that emerged from Japan.

Though most people might not think of farming when they think of martial arts, according to Burns they developed side by side.

“Both the martial arts and the farming make you more aware of the here and now” Burns said. “When you farm, you’re in tune with nature. When you train, you’re in tune with the people you train with.”

Everyone that takes martial arts lessons with him must pay for their lessons by working in the fields.

 A former marine, Burns took up Aikido in 1980 when he was in California. He went on to teach Aikido to Marines and Navy personnel before resettling on his family’s old dairy farm in Ledyard.

Aiki Farms has a sister farm, Rancho Aiki in Todos Santos, Mexico, run by his former wife, which also combines martial arts and farming. Burns will be flying down to visit his children there later this season.

Inside the main building there is a practice room where he holds classes. These include biweekly Akido classes along with Zazen Meditation, Yoga and Iaido—sword practice. A column of Japanese swords is mounted on the wall along with an inset display of ceremonial figures.

Burns says that he principally attracts “people who are interested in farming and spirituality.” Burns, who practices Zen Buddhism, says that he has recently turned Christian. “Thirty years of strict Zen Buddhism enabled me to understand what God was all about,” he said.

Despite his conversion, he continues to practice Buddhism, which he defines as “a way,” rather than a religion. To him it’s a practice similar to how he continues farming and martial arts.

Along with students that come in for classes, Aiki farms has also been home to apprentices who lived on the property to study farming and Aikido. “Sometimes they stay a couple years, sometimes they just say for the summer,” Burns said. Currently, he has no apprentices at the farm but may get company later in the year.

Though he makes everyone he teaches work the fields, Burns is passionate about leisure also. Neither he nor anyone else on the farm will work for more than four hours in a day. “It’s a crime that anyone should work more than four hours a day,” he said. If people would stop working overtime and take shorter hours, he said, there would not be an unemployment problem.

Burns’ farm work in the winter season includes cultivating buckwheat and wheatberry in his basement below the practice room.

The produce goes to out to local restaurants and buyers such as Fiddlehead’s Market in New London as well as Ledyard’s Starr Wood Food Market.

One farm specialty is the “wheatgrass shot,” which Burns makes by running wheat grass into a machine. Out comes a dark green liquid, which he pours into a shot-sized thimble. The taste is grassy, but sweet also. He says the nutrients in the shot make it a source of energy.

“It’s like a hit of espresso,” Burns said, “but the rush lasts for four hours instead of 20 minutes.”

In the fields outside, Burns is growing clover—not for harvest, but as a way of replenishing the soil with nitrogen. It is part of his approach to biointensive agriculture, an organic farming method focused on getting the greatest possible yield for a given plot of land. Crops will include everything from tomatoes to squash and cucumbers.

Burns employs a double-digging technique to turn the soil, which is based on the methods laid out by the Irish Saint Fiacre, renowned as the patron saint of gardening and medicinal plants. He waters his fields with an Israeli drip irrigation system that uses plastic tubing. He also cultivates plants in the greenhouse that he has on the property.

After the flats—containers holding the plants inside—are harvested, Burns stacks the soil and remaining plants into piles to decompose, mixing in kelp from the beach to add nutrients. When the piles are finished decomposing, they will be a fertile spread for the crops.

“If you’ve got good soil, everything will grow,” Burns said.

The twin solar panels Burns has mounted near the driveway complement the farm’s green aesthetic. In all, he says, the solar panels cover half of his electricity expenses.

 He has an adjoining patch of land that is set aside for the Ledyard Congregational Church. Burns believes gardening is a way for people to get in touch with God.

“My mission is to make everyone in the church a farmer,” he said. “You don’t have to wait for Jesus, he’s here right now in the gardens.”