It feels like years since I last posted. This post is a brainstorm of topics I ought to/could write about. I do so have a fondness for lists.
milking again
realizing it’s summer – I don't need three blankets and two pairs of long underwear and a sweatshirt to go to sleep
getting obsessed with draft animal power - who needs tractors, anyway?
cooking a lot – making ice cream, making kimchee; we have a joke that the hardest questions to answer at farmers' market are when people say "so, you just boil this up like spinach, right?" to which we would like to reply, why would you boil spinach? Any and all vegetables is to fry them with garlic and a little olive oil.
harvesting – 4xperweek --> routine: walks back and forth between field and wash station; the water isn’t bitter cold like it was in the fall; picking the wilted yellow cotyledons off the radishes, packing vegetables into baskets, summer squash just coming in
tomatoes plants have such a distinctive smell; harvesting kale feels like an old friend since I did it so much in the fall
making tons of cheese from our raw milk; it's sour and has a consistency similar to cottage cheese, and it's really yummy, in part due to all the cream in it
we've had too much rain and too many weeds; it's best to kill the weeds when they're just germinating, because baby plants have a much more tenuous hold on life than more mature ones
a smattering of our crops that we've been able to harvest: radishes; kale; arugula, lettuce, spinach, collards, broccoli, kohlrabi, komatsuna, pac choi, bok choi, napa, shuko, wrinkled crinkled crumpled cress, rainbow chard, dill, cilantro, summer squash, broccoli
smattering of the annual and perennial weeds – jewel weed, Canada thistle, burdock, ragweed, lamb’s quarters, fake arugula, campion, hemp nettle, golden rod, grasses, dock, dandelions, plantain, oxalis, clover, galanzoga, morning glory
in performing some tasks I find my motions echoing those of A&E doing that same task which I've watched them do countless times – like unloading the truck, waiting for the milk to filter, reaching in and grabbing bunches of greens from harvest boxes
The baby is a perfect joy and a good friend. We have many and extensive conversations now. I don't think she'll remember me, though.
Chickens are dusty little feathered velociraptors.
Selling meat at market – new thing! I'm doing markets by myself so I have to know something about the meat I'm selling; I’m learning from which parts of the animal the different cuts come from, and how they functionally differ. Which is: bone, or no bone. Steak or roast.
Strawberries. Omg. People raving about delicious food they've eaten is only interesting for so long, but fresh, good strawberries are tiny ruby bursts of delicate sweet. Too bad the slugs think so too.
Farmers tan like whoa.
Scything – twisting, swinging, satisfying
Being really intrigued by Essex farm – a sliding price scale for their CSA, they offer unlimited supply of vegetables, meat, maple syrup, they're year-round, the wife who had never farmed and is now writing a book rather than working the farm, their isolation from the internet;
I like diversity in a farming operation, and I've been thinking about models that would incorporate diversity and work – perhaps having a couple diff farms that share the sectors
Extroverted farmers? Efficiency?
Wheat. Golden. So little maintenance. None of this weeding or worrying about successions or anything. Now we just have to harvest it.
Peas. Tried to do a living trellis of oats or sunflowers – failed. They didn’t climb the oats and the sunflowers just weren’t there, so they sprawled all over the paths. Sugar snap peas; snow peas; shell peas. I can usually keep them straight, but it's confusing.
Small Farmers’ Journal – periodical dedicated to small-scale farmers, with a strong focus on people who work with horses. I read a really good article about debt, the scale of farming (big w/ debt vs small w/o) and re-thinking standards of living.
Endless cooking. Endless dishes. Particularly the milk pots.
Living a wanderer’s life; wanting to settle down like anything but not really being ready to.
I really like rotational grazing. It's a really cool concept: have a group of animals graze an area down really hard, then move them on to the next and then the next until when they're ready to come back to the first area it's all grown back. Good for the plants, the soil, the animals. Uses grass = free. The fencing and everything else, not so free, but still.
Clover needs light to germinate, so doesn't show up in dense grasses. There are different species of clover. I sort of know the differences between them. It's yummy and fixes nitrogen. And it's pretty.
66 varieties of tomatoes planted omg. Black, yellow, orange, bi-color, cherry, saladette, big ol' slicers. I can't wait.
I’m suddenly really into permaculture, in part because weeding annual plants feels like such a losing battle. I guess our perennials badly need to be weeded too, but everything is more established there and works better.
Getting knocked in the teeth by the Wort (our Brown Swiss steer. He's a jerk.)
Giving skritches to Little Guy (our little motherless red calf) because I love him, but feeling conflicted every time because I know the point is to get him to one day get on a trailer peacefully. Um. Like when that man asked if we’d sell him three lambs, and I was suddenly like – oh! Not our lambs! Don’t kill them!
Getting the sheep skins back from the tanners. They’re beautiful. I salted them when they were still wet and fleshy. Now they’re lovely. Hello, matters of life and death.
Bug bites. I don't wake up in the middle of the night scratching *too* often.
Playing the piano. My soul is woven in music.
Learning my own management style. Very important.
A friendly bull is a dead bull.
A’s attitude towards our animals – our species made an agreement of mutual care and support with their species long ago and we need to uphold our end of it; that livestock are different from pets and wild animals and oughtn't be treated as either
Being really inexperienced at driving the truck. I hate trucks. Except that they carry heavy things for long distances, which is actually pretty sweet.
Understanding why farmers don't like paperwork; I don't even want to answer emails because I'm so tired at the end of the day.
Speaking of which. Good night world.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Gardens gardens everywhere!
The Obamas are planting a vegetable garden at the White House! Way to be!
Also, I just adopted a lamb that will need to be bottle fed six times a day for the next two months. I'm going to have to love it knowing that I can't keep it and the farm probably won't either. Isn't that what life is, though, loving even though you know it's going to hurt later?
Also, I just adopted a lamb that will need to be bottle fed six times a day for the next two months. I'm going to have to love it knowing that I can't keep it and the farm probably won't either. Isn't that what life is, though, loving even though you know it's going to hurt later?
Monday, March 9, 2009
Firsts: Part 2
Sunday morning I was, once again, determined to take my day off - I needed to cook a dish for a potluck with my choir before our small concert in the evening. That coupled with the time change meant I was feeling pressed for time. But when E came in from morning chores, he commented that the sheep Josie looked like she was going into labor. Soon after, Laura started going into labor. I got a running commentary from A & E as I worked in the kitchen trying to throw something together for the potluck - Laura had first one lamb, then another, and finally A came in and said point-blank "If you want to see a lamb born, come out now because it looks like Laura's got a third coming."
I'd been not-so-secretly hoping I'd get to be there for the birth of at least one of the lambs, but with our growing herd of darlings it was looking less and less likely. So I left a pot to simmer and went outside into the warm, teasingly spring-like day. I joined A & E in the sheep house, where we quietly watched Laura in her pen, licking her two big lambs and turning in circles. Under her wide, woolly tail two water balloons were dangling - one amniotic sack for her second lamb, and the other meant a third was coming. A & E whispered this information to me; we leaned against the mangers and waited and watched.
Laura's second ewe lamb was damp and just-born; we watched her struggle to her feet, skinny legs quivering at this brand-new job. She nosed around her mother's belly the best she could, and finally found the udder. Laura nuzzled her butt and then started licking the air, mother instincts clearly kicked in but still in some distress. Finally, after about a half hour of waiting, she sat her back legs down, and E pointed out the tiny black nose and feet coming out. Then, with no fuss at all, she pushed out a third lamb, born inside a sack of its own. I had never seen anything be born before, and this small, new life was miraculous. Just as soon as I realized I had actually witnessed my first birth, E climbed into the jug and pulled the birth sack off the lamb. It was neither breathing nor moving. He cleaned out its mouth and nose, tried giving it mouth-to-mouth. The jug was cramped with ewe and lambs; E lifted it out where he could have more space.
This lamb's body was permanently prepared for birth: wet, stream-lined, boneless, front legs together and still pointed for its dive into the world. Soon after birth, a lamb ought to breath, open its eyes, struggle to its feet, and morph from a limp, wet rag into a tiny sheep, with the muscles and bones of knees and ankles and neck all working to hold their bodies in sheep shape. But not this one. It was perfectly formed, but it never breathed and never woke up. Laura never looked at it.
I did. I don't know why it died, although we had another still-born lamb later that day, again from a set of triplets. Three lambs is a lot for sheep. But after Laura and Josie carried these lambs for five months, nourishing them in their bellies and then bringing them into the world, to then lose them was such a waste.
A & E have been through this before, and E took the utilitarian outlook - at least we wouldn't have the chore of feeding a bottle lamb, because a ewe often can't feed a third lamb; we'd take them down to the woods and leave them for the coyotes because the ground is still too frozen to dig. And keeping genetics in the flock that predispose ewes to have a third still-born lamb isn't ultimately good for the flock. But A&E know the stakes. We've talked about how farming is fundamentally stewardship of plant and animal life, and part of that is having an understanding that death is a part of life and so being able and willing to grant a clean and quick death when appropriate. More on this later.
So that lamb's was the first birth I'd ever witnessed, and also the first death. This may be connected to the fact that I then got my first speeding ticket later that day. Ca c'est la vie.
I'd been not-so-secretly hoping I'd get to be there for the birth of at least one of the lambs, but with our growing herd of darlings it was looking less and less likely. So I left a pot to simmer and went outside into the warm, teasingly spring-like day. I joined A & E in the sheep house, where we quietly watched Laura in her pen, licking her two big lambs and turning in circles. Under her wide, woolly tail two water balloons were dangling - one amniotic sack for her second lamb, and the other meant a third was coming. A & E whispered this information to me; we leaned against the mangers and waited and watched.
Laura's second ewe lamb was damp and just-born; we watched her struggle to her feet, skinny legs quivering at this brand-new job. She nosed around her mother's belly the best she could, and finally found the udder. Laura nuzzled her butt and then started licking the air, mother instincts clearly kicked in but still in some distress. Finally, after about a half hour of waiting, she sat her back legs down, and E pointed out the tiny black nose and feet coming out. Then, with no fuss at all, she pushed out a third lamb, born inside a sack of its own. I had never seen anything be born before, and this small, new life was miraculous. Just as soon as I realized I had actually witnessed my first birth, E climbed into the jug and pulled the birth sack off the lamb. It was neither breathing nor moving. He cleaned out its mouth and nose, tried giving it mouth-to-mouth. The jug was cramped with ewe and lambs; E lifted it out where he could have more space.
This lamb's body was permanently prepared for birth: wet, stream-lined, boneless, front legs together and still pointed for its dive into the world. Soon after birth, a lamb ought to breath, open its eyes, struggle to its feet, and morph from a limp, wet rag into a tiny sheep, with the muscles and bones of knees and ankles and neck all working to hold their bodies in sheep shape. But not this one. It was perfectly formed, but it never breathed and never woke up. Laura never looked at it.
I did. I don't know why it died, although we had another still-born lamb later that day, again from a set of triplets. Three lambs is a lot for sheep. But after Laura and Josie carried these lambs for five months, nourishing them in their bellies and then bringing them into the world, to then lose them was such a waste.
A & E have been through this before, and E took the utilitarian outlook - at least we wouldn't have the chore of feeding a bottle lamb, because a ewe often can't feed a third lamb; we'd take them down to the woods and leave them for the coyotes because the ground is still too frozen to dig. And keeping genetics in the flock that predispose ewes to have a third still-born lamb isn't ultimately good for the flock. But A&E know the stakes. We've talked about how farming is fundamentally stewardship of plant and animal life, and part of that is having an understanding that death is a part of life and so being able and willing to grant a clean and quick death when appropriate. More on this later.
So that lamb's was the first birth I'd ever witnessed, and also the first death. This may be connected to the fact that I then got my first speeding ticket later that day. Ca c'est la vie.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Firsts: Part 1 of 2
Part 1: Lambs! A backstory
About a month ago, our ewes started giving birth to their lambs. I had been prepping for this by reading books on sheep care and watching the sheep to learn both to tell them apart and to get a sense for what Normal sheep behavior is. Finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, one Sunday morning I was in my room, determined to take my day off and waste my time as I chose, when the murmur of "lambs!" floated up from downstairs. E had gone outside for chores and discovered two new faces in the flock. I threw on some clothes and ran outside and, sure enough, Tiffany had given birth to a little fawn ram and a little white ewe - tiny, white wool still yellow and damp with amniotic fluid, incredible. I was in awe. E carefully lifted up the lambs and led their mama into a jug (small pen). All ewes and new lambs hang out in a jug for a few days to bond, nurse, avoid getting trampled, and generally stay where we can keep an eye on them to make sure everyone is healthy.
Fast forward a few weeks, to last Monday. Our lamb count had slowly climbed to eight, and the youngsters had grown big enough to run back and forth as a group in the sheep pen, playing tag, jumping onto their mothers. They've lost that gangly, newborn look and have started to grow up and out; they're big enough that they have to go down on their front knees to be low enough to reach their mama's udder, and they're strong enough that the upward head jabs they make when nursing have got to hurt. But the mamas still dominated the flock, though, and each lamb was unique enough that telling them apart was a straightforward no-brainer. But since last Sunday, a ewe has been popping out lambs about every twelve hours, and we've been busy.
Our sheep generally don't need help with birth - we may notice that one looks uncomfortable, and when we come back half an hour later we find that ewe licking off her newborn lamb. The trouble came last week when five ewes all decided to lamb at once during an extra cold snap. One of the really dim ewes actually had a lamb in the snow, but three or four other lambs were in serious danger of freezing to death simply by being born wet into a world below 32 F. So for three days in a row A & E (and later me!) picked up the slimy lambs and hugged them in our coats to warm them up and melt the amniotic ice. We dried them off as best we could, made sure they were nursing properly, and after a few hours they were all fine and dandy.
Aside from a few problems encouraging two of the ewes to stand still for nursing, the lambs have been healthy, and they've all left the jugs to rejoin the flock. This means that watching the sheep now involves not only the mental gymnastics of remembering which sheep is which but also whose lamb is whose. And the flock is almost half lambs now - fawn, white, brown-black, black-black, black with white star on forehead, grey-fawn-white, red. They're beautiful. And that's where we were this morning.
To be continued...
About a month ago, our ewes started giving birth to their lambs. I had been prepping for this by reading books on sheep care and watching the sheep to learn both to tell them apart and to get a sense for what Normal sheep behavior is. Finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, one Sunday morning I was in my room, determined to take my day off and waste my time as I chose, when the murmur of "lambs!" floated up from downstairs. E had gone outside for chores and discovered two new faces in the flock. I threw on some clothes and ran outside and, sure enough, Tiffany had given birth to a little fawn ram and a little white ewe - tiny, white wool still yellow and damp with amniotic fluid, incredible. I was in awe. E carefully lifted up the lambs and led their mama into a jug (small pen). All ewes and new lambs hang out in a jug for a few days to bond, nurse, avoid getting trampled, and generally stay where we can keep an eye on them to make sure everyone is healthy.
Fast forward a few weeks, to last Monday. Our lamb count had slowly climbed to eight, and the youngsters had grown big enough to run back and forth as a group in the sheep pen, playing tag, jumping onto their mothers. They've lost that gangly, newborn look and have started to grow up and out; they're big enough that they have to go down on their front knees to be low enough to reach their mama's udder, and they're strong enough that the upward head jabs they make when nursing have got to hurt. But the mamas still dominated the flock, though, and each lamb was unique enough that telling them apart was a straightforward no-brainer. But since last Sunday, a ewe has been popping out lambs about every twelve hours, and we've been busy.
Our sheep generally don't need help with birth - we may notice that one looks uncomfortable, and when we come back half an hour later we find that ewe licking off her newborn lamb. The trouble came last week when five ewes all decided to lamb at once during an extra cold snap. One of the really dim ewes actually had a lamb in the snow, but three or four other lambs were in serious danger of freezing to death simply by being born wet into a world below 32 F. So for three days in a row A & E (and later me!) picked up the slimy lambs and hugged them in our coats to warm them up and melt the amniotic ice. We dried them off as best we could, made sure they were nursing properly, and after a few hours they were all fine and dandy.
Aside from a few problems encouraging two of the ewes to stand still for nursing, the lambs have been healthy, and they've all left the jugs to rejoin the flock. This means that watching the sheep now involves not only the mental gymnastics of remembering which sheep is which but also whose lamb is whose. And the flock is almost half lambs now - fawn, white, brown-black, black-black, black with white star on forehead, grey-fawn-white, red. They're beautiful. And that's where we were this morning.
To be continued...
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Day in the life of...
I haven't kept track of how many people have asked me "So, what do you do on a farm during the winter?" There's not a whole lot to do, but it's beginning to pick up now that March is here. Chores, however, have been the daily constant, as follows:
Wake up at dawn. Lie in bed and admire the sunshine coming in through my east-facing window, if it's not cloudy or snowing. Think about how lucky I am to a) have an east facing window b) not have to wake up to an alarm c) have such a sweet job. C occurs to me more often when I've got legit sunshine. My morning ritual commences: this, then the elaborate chore of getting dressed in layers - I average probably about five shirts n' sweaters every day.
My commute is the best ever - I either tiptoe or amble downstairs, depending on whether I've heard the baby's voice yet. I scarf leftovers - crusty bread, last night's dinner, apples - and then lead the charge to go out. (Proper breakfast usually comes after chores.)
The trick with livestock, you see, is that they're dependent on humans for survival, and need basic tending every day. This means carrying hay bales (25-40 lb range - I only rarely try to take two at a time); filling water buckets; and Poop Management.
The trick with freezing weather is that everything's frozen. I don't think I'd understood what writers meant when characters walked over the "barren, frozen ground," but the quality of the earth changes when all its moisture freezes solid. It really feels frozen under your feet. I think all its happy inhabitants burrow down below the freeze line, have some vital channel for air flow, and hibernate. Frost heaves, too - we didn't have them growing up, but here they push all the fence posts over and bring more rocks up from the subsoil to lie in wait for spring plowing.
So for water, the stock tank has a crust of ice on it every morning, up to 3" thick, so we whack at it with a chunk of wood and scoop the ice out - mostly with a kitchen strainer, but with bare fingers too for big & awkward chunks. Once that's filling, it's time for Poop Management. When the cattle are all distracted with breakfast, we scoop out the fresh manure from the shed where they sleep. When it's really cold, it's all frozen to the ground, and we pry up the dozen or so poopsicles and cart them off to the manure pile. When it's just above freezing, everything's wet and mucky and the smells are much stronger. I just hope I don't lose a boot in it one day. I periodically sugar-coat the task in my head: call it Farm Nutrient Management and remember that it's all going on to the fields later to make the soil fertile, the fruits and vegetables big and healthy.
That all happens twice a day, and soon hand milking will get added to the list. Our first calf is due today, and we'll have fresh milk again soon. I'm off to see if it's been born yet. More on births later.
Wake up at dawn. Lie in bed and admire the sunshine coming in through my east-facing window, if it's not cloudy or snowing. Think about how lucky I am to a) have an east facing window b) not have to wake up to an alarm c) have such a sweet job. C occurs to me more often when I've got legit sunshine. My morning ritual commences: this, then the elaborate chore of getting dressed in layers - I average probably about five shirts n' sweaters every day.
My commute is the best ever - I either tiptoe or amble downstairs, depending on whether I've heard the baby's voice yet. I scarf leftovers - crusty bread, last night's dinner, apples - and then lead the charge to go out. (Proper breakfast usually comes after chores.)
The trick with livestock, you see, is that they're dependent on humans for survival, and need basic tending every day. This means carrying hay bales (25-40 lb range - I only rarely try to take two at a time); filling water buckets; and Poop Management.
The trick with freezing weather is that everything's frozen. I don't think I'd understood what writers meant when characters walked over the "barren, frozen ground," but the quality of the earth changes when all its moisture freezes solid. It really feels frozen under your feet. I think all its happy inhabitants burrow down below the freeze line, have some vital channel for air flow, and hibernate. Frost heaves, too - we didn't have them growing up, but here they push all the fence posts over and bring more rocks up from the subsoil to lie in wait for spring plowing.
So for water, the stock tank has a crust of ice on it every morning, up to 3" thick, so we whack at it with a chunk of wood and scoop the ice out - mostly with a kitchen strainer, but with bare fingers too for big & awkward chunks. Once that's filling, it's time for Poop Management. When the cattle are all distracted with breakfast, we scoop out the fresh manure from the shed where they sleep. When it's really cold, it's all frozen to the ground, and we pry up the dozen or so poopsicles and cart them off to the manure pile. When it's just above freezing, everything's wet and mucky and the smells are much stronger. I just hope I don't lose a boot in it one day. I periodically sugar-coat the task in my head: call it Farm Nutrient Management and remember that it's all going on to the fields later to make the soil fertile, the fruits and vegetables big and healthy.
That all happens twice a day, and soon hand milking will get added to the list. Our first calf is due today, and we'll have fresh milk again soon. I'm off to see if it's been born yet. More on births later.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
if only the crossword writers knew...
Learning the craft knowledge of farming involves learning its vocabulary - it's got jargon just like any other field. Some highlights -
Fairly obvious:
apple drops - apples that fell off the tree
side dress - add fertilizer to the side of a row of crops (I learned this one on a farm where they did use chemical fertilizer)
dry off a cow - not with towels! to stop milking her/milk her less and less frequently so that she stops producing milk
Less obvious:
thresh - to get grain out of its inedible packaging (removing husk & awns)
tillering - suckers on grass plants (like wheat!)
sucker - lateral shoots
haw & gee - left and right (or right and left?) when directing draft animals
stanchion - a restraining device for cows or sheep that lets them eat but doesn't let them move around; we use them for milking
maddock - like a hoe, but for moving mud around rather than skimming the top couple inches of loose soil
Shetland, Hereford, Aricana - breeds of sheep, cow, and chicken, respectively
peen - delicately hammering to put an edge on a soft metal tool
snath - the handle of a scythe
scorzonera, skirret - root vegetables that we will be growing next year
cardoons - related to artichokes; bred for their stems rather than flower buds; I didn't manage to get them on the seed order...yet
mawl - the heavy, relatively blunt tool used to split wood
creosote - n. burnt; the crusty black carbonaceous charred stuff that collects in a chimney when a fire isn't burning hot enough
polled - cattle without horns
Yay new words! Go forth and win at Scrabble!
Fairly obvious:
apple drops - apples that fell off the tree
side dress - add fertilizer to the side of a row of crops (I learned this one on a farm where they did use chemical fertilizer)
dry off a cow - not with towels! to stop milking her/milk her less and less frequently so that she stops producing milk
Less obvious:
thresh - to get grain out of its inedible packaging (removing husk & awns)
tillering - suckers on grass plants (like wheat!)
sucker - lateral shoots
haw & gee - left and right (or right and left?) when directing draft animals
stanchion - a restraining device for cows or sheep that lets them eat but doesn't let them move around; we use them for milking
maddock - like a hoe, but for moving mud around rather than skimming the top couple inches of loose soil
Shetland, Hereford, Aricana - breeds of sheep, cow, and chicken, respectively
peen - delicately hammering to put an edge on a soft metal tool
snath - the handle of a scythe
scorzonera, skirret - root vegetables that we will be growing next year
cardoons - related to artichokes; bred for their stems rather than flower buds; I didn't manage to get them on the seed order...yet
mawl - the heavy, relatively blunt tool used to split wood
creosote - n. burnt; the crusty black carbonaceous charred stuff that collects in a chimney when a fire isn't burning hot enough
polled - cattle without horns
Yay new words! Go forth and win at Scrabble!
Friday, January 16, 2009
So I think Agroecosystems Management is about the coolest thing ever. Note that I'm living pretty far removed from family and friends (both old and potential new), doing hard work in the cold for little pay, setting out to follow a career path that could leave me both poor and physically beaten, all in the name of Agroecosystems Management. Which ought to tell you something. Maybe it's that I'm crazy.
But how could you not love Agroecosystems Management? Let me be more clear: Sustainable Agroecosystems Management. Irresistable.
Being a good farmer means, in part, keeping track of the soil, water, and "biology" on the farm. It's the complexity of interactions between these that I find so seductive. Soil needs to have healthy levels of various nutrients so crops can grow; it needs a healthy soil ecosystem - a common rule of thumb holds that a billion organisms will live in a teaspoon of soil if it's managed properly; and good structure - those bacteria and fungi need oxygen and water, so the soil needs to have enough tiny spaces for those to be exchanged and absorbed. Then there's water - crops need not too much and not too little; mismanaged water can both leach valuable nutrients or just erode away the soil itself; and driving to plow or plant on wet soil squishes the structure I mentioned earlier.
Then there's the "biology" - all the different living and dead organisms and how they interact. Obviously the crops need to be healthy - they need to be planted at the right time and temperature so that they don't freeze or fail to thrive; they need to be weeded so that they get first choice of the available nutrients, water, and sunlight. They need pollinators, and those bees and flies need habitat themselves, best found at field edges or uncultivated areas.
Maintaining these healthy ecosystems means that a few crop pests - fungal, bacterial - will live in the soil. The trouble with spraying chemical fungicides and insecticides is that they often kill off more than the desired species, and removing species from an ecosystem, even a soil ecosystem, shifts and weakens it. There are several ways of dealing with crop pests while avoiding chemical sprays. You can rotate where you plant your crops so that they're not in the same place year after year. You can study how the pest affects the plant, and avoid the pest - if they only attack older plants, keep planting young ones and ignore or pull out the ones that have succumbed. If it only attacks in late summer, plant earlier in the summer and then stop harvesting. If the damage isn't too severe, you can decide to live with it. But above all: diversify - plant lots of different crops, so that you won't lose the year's work to that one pesky fungus.
So that's the boiled down and simplified version of agroecosystems management. What I love about all of this is that each piece interacts with every other piece, and if you can understand how it all fits together and be smart about management, you can build a glorious whole of a farm that produces amazing food and nurtures life. That's the theory, and the dream. I'll keep you posted on how the reality turns out.
But how could you not love Agroecosystems Management? Let me be more clear: Sustainable Agroecosystems Management. Irresistable.
Being a good farmer means, in part, keeping track of the soil, water, and "biology" on the farm. It's the complexity of interactions between these that I find so seductive. Soil needs to have healthy levels of various nutrients so crops can grow; it needs a healthy soil ecosystem - a common rule of thumb holds that a billion organisms will live in a teaspoon of soil if it's managed properly; and good structure - those bacteria and fungi need oxygen and water, so the soil needs to have enough tiny spaces for those to be exchanged and absorbed. Then there's water - crops need not too much and not too little; mismanaged water can both leach valuable nutrients or just erode away the soil itself; and driving to plow or plant on wet soil squishes the structure I mentioned earlier.
Then there's the "biology" - all the different living and dead organisms and how they interact. Obviously the crops need to be healthy - they need to be planted at the right time and temperature so that they don't freeze or fail to thrive; they need to be weeded so that they get first choice of the available nutrients, water, and sunlight. They need pollinators, and those bees and flies need habitat themselves, best found at field edges or uncultivated areas.
Maintaining these healthy ecosystems means that a few crop pests - fungal, bacterial - will live in the soil. The trouble with spraying chemical fungicides and insecticides is that they often kill off more than the desired species, and removing species from an ecosystem, even a soil ecosystem, shifts and weakens it. There are several ways of dealing with crop pests while avoiding chemical sprays. You can rotate where you plant your crops so that they're not in the same place year after year. You can study how the pest affects the plant, and avoid the pest - if they only attack older plants, keep planting young ones and ignore or pull out the ones that have succumbed. If it only attacks in late summer, plant earlier in the summer and then stop harvesting. If the damage isn't too severe, you can decide to live with it. But above all: diversify - plant lots of different crops, so that you won't lose the year's work to that one pesky fungus.
So that's the boiled down and simplified version of agroecosystems management. What I love about all of this is that each piece interacts with every other piece, and if you can understand how it all fits together and be smart about management, you can build a glorious whole of a farm that produces amazing food and nurtures life. That's the theory, and the dream. I'll keep you posted on how the reality turns out.
Why friends, they may think it's a movement, and that's what it is
I am well aware that the local-sustainable food movement is still somewhat of a fringe endeavor, with ties to the hippie culture of the 60’s but with its own character and values. It’s not about free love or gourmet food or violent demonstrations or (at least as far as I’m concerned) smoking a lot of pot, although each of those are close cousins. It grows more from the desire to strengthen both natural and human communities, and comes with a strong bias against the parts of the current establishment that have undermined these.
You can tell the food-hippies first by their diets (the number of approaches is actually a little ridiculous) – raw, fermented, local, seasonal, vegetarian, vegan, grass-fed only, grown or baked or even caught and killed yourself, total avoidance of processed food, food rescued from a dumpster or even trash can. You can also tell them by their steel water bottles or Ball jars (plastic leaches into food and water and it doesn’t biodegrade); by their satchels that they knitted themselves or made from recycled trash or that a peasant in the third world got a fair wage to make. Everybody owns at least one of those brightly colored handkerchiefs with the black or white paisley design, and they’re tied around a thick mop of dreadlocks or stuffed into pockets and substitute for disposable tissues. A crowd of food hippies will have a higher density of small tattoos and face piercings than most, although not usually to the extremes of bikers or punks. Dyed hair is pretty rare – styled haircuts scarce from their expense, their stylishness, and impracticality – you try to weed with bangs in your eyes. Somebody is always willing to pull out a guitar, and bangos, fiddles, and pennywhistles are not far behind – although it seems that men are usually the instrumentalists, while women only sing. We wear quilted vests and chunky knitted hats somebody – us or our friends – knitted for us; second-hand clothing, scarves woven in the third world, Carhartt’s. We all know about Micheal Pollen, Alice Waters, Barbara Kingsolver, as well as Joel Salatin, Wendell Berry, and Eliot Coleman – dig further and people will know Rudolf Steiner, Wes Jackson, David Schumacher. We are predominantly Caucasian, with a small but healthy rainbow of other descents.
We are earnest. Trusting. We try to be friendly as a rule, if not outgoing. It doesn’t take much probing for someone to admit to finding beauty in leaves, seeds, trees, animals, landscapes, rich soil, handcrafted anything. We’re trying to live by our ideals and have decided that certain sacrifices of personal comfort, convenience, and familiarity are worth it (deciding to Consume Less Stuff makes shopping a completely different activity, let me tell you).
I’ve also found that this ethos often comes off as holier-than-thou, which drives everyone else around crazy – when this is on purpose, it’s frustrating, but when it’s not, it’s troublesome. Yes, I think that humans need to change their consumption habits – not just with food, but also with buildings, transportation, Stuff Accumulation – but I struggle a lot with how to bring that about. Yelling at whoever is around is a tried and true method of Not Helping, but I’m still looking for a productive alternative that works for me. I recognize the parallels with religious conversion – the True Believer wants to bring everybody into The Faith, a whole new way of living and being – and we’ve seen how alienating that can be as well.
You can tell the food-hippies first by their diets (the number of approaches is actually a little ridiculous) – raw, fermented, local, seasonal, vegetarian, vegan, grass-fed only, grown or baked or even caught and killed yourself, total avoidance of processed food, food rescued from a dumpster or even trash can. You can also tell them by their steel water bottles or Ball jars (plastic leaches into food and water and it doesn’t biodegrade); by their satchels that they knitted themselves or made from recycled trash or that a peasant in the third world got a fair wage to make. Everybody owns at least one of those brightly colored handkerchiefs with the black or white paisley design, and they’re tied around a thick mop of dreadlocks or stuffed into pockets and substitute for disposable tissues. A crowd of food hippies will have a higher density of small tattoos and face piercings than most, although not usually to the extremes of bikers or punks. Dyed hair is pretty rare – styled haircuts scarce from their expense, their stylishness, and impracticality – you try to weed with bangs in your eyes. Somebody is always willing to pull out a guitar, and bangos, fiddles, and pennywhistles are not far behind – although it seems that men are usually the instrumentalists, while women only sing. We wear quilted vests and chunky knitted hats somebody – us or our friends – knitted for us; second-hand clothing, scarves woven in the third world, Carhartt’s. We all know about Micheal Pollen, Alice Waters, Barbara Kingsolver, as well as Joel Salatin, Wendell Berry, and Eliot Coleman – dig further and people will know Rudolf Steiner, Wes Jackson, David Schumacher. We are predominantly Caucasian, with a small but healthy rainbow of other descents.
We are earnest. Trusting. We try to be friendly as a rule, if not outgoing. It doesn’t take much probing for someone to admit to finding beauty in leaves, seeds, trees, animals, landscapes, rich soil, handcrafted anything. We’re trying to live by our ideals and have decided that certain sacrifices of personal comfort, convenience, and familiarity are worth it (deciding to Consume Less Stuff makes shopping a completely different activity, let me tell you).
I’ve also found that this ethos often comes off as holier-than-thou, which drives everyone else around crazy – when this is on purpose, it’s frustrating, but when it’s not, it’s troublesome. Yes, I think that humans need to change their consumption habits – not just with food, but also with buildings, transportation, Stuff Accumulation – but I struggle a lot with how to bring that about. Yelling at whoever is around is a tried and true method of Not Helping, but I’m still looking for a productive alternative that works for me. I recognize the parallels with religious conversion – the True Believer wants to bring everybody into The Faith, a whole new way of living and being – and we’ve seen how alienating that can be as well.
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