Greenjeans Farm

Greenjeans Farm and CSA becomes the NWF 113,581 Certified Wildlife Habitat

The National Wildlife Federation has announced that Greenjeans Farm & CSA located in Potter Valley is now recognized and an official Certified Wildlife Habitat site.  Greenjeans Farm attracts a variety of birds, frogs, and other wildlife, while helping to protect the local environment. 

The Wildlife Habitat certification program began in 1973 and since has certified over 110,000 habitats nationwide, including the special 100,000^th certification of the U.S. Botanic Garden’s National Garden in Washington, D.C. at the base of our nation’s Capitol. 

The majority of Certified Wildlife Habitat sites represent the personal commitment of individuals and families to provide important refuge for wildlife near their homes, but NWF has also certified more than 3100 schools and hundreds of business and community sites.  The average habitat is between  one half and one third acre, but certified sites can vary from urban balconies to thousand-acre farms.

Any habitat enthusiast can create a certified habitat and learn the rewards of gardening for wildlife.  NWF teaches the importance of environmental stewardship by providing guidelines for making landscapes more hospitable to wildlife.  In order to become certified, a property must provide the four basic elements that all wildlife need:  food, water, cover and places to raise young; and must employ sustainable practices.  Habitat restoration is critical in urban and suburban settings where commercial and residential development encroaches on natural wildlife areas, limiting the availability of resources wildlife need to survive and thrive.  In addition to providing for wildlife, certified habitats conserve our natural resources by reducing or eliminating the need for fertilizers, pesticides, and/or irrigation water, which ultimately protects the air, soil and water throughout our communities. 

Jeff Adams, owner of Greenjeans Farm sums it up:  “Seven years ago we moved to this abandoned piece of land envisioning a Farm, the soil was sog in winter and hard packed clay in summer and the only wildlife we entertained were Ticks,ants,earwigs,flies and gnats from the vineyard across the street.  By using Organic practices,  building and feeding our soil first, and using no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, we have enabled a rich and varied environment in which many birds, bees, butterflies, frogs, bats and other animals grow and flourish.  The bird that eats a couple of our plums, cherries or raspberries also eats thousand of bugs that are trying to get to the vegetable garden!  We have a couple of covey of quail that live in the blackberry bushes at the bottom of the property. And many finches and hummingbirds of all colors.  We have bats that from time to time fly into the bedroom at night if we leave the door open but they also eat something like three times their weight in bugs a night. The toads like to eat the slugs and they are very comical popping out in the strangest places!  And it is not unusual to have a brightly colored tree frog jump out of the sink overflow drain while you are brushing your teeth in the morning if you leave the bathroom window open!  They take care of everything BUT the weeds!   The real reward is when you are working in the field and you hear the wooosh wooosh  of giant wings and look up to see an eagle or a giant red tail hawk coming right at  you and then you watch it soar over your head and high into the sky and dive down to catch a fish in the pond across the street” 

Creating habitats not only helps wildlife, it can help reduce global warming, pollution and save energy costs as well.  Burning fossil fuels to heat and cool our homes and maintain our lawns releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.  Strategically located trees and other native vegetation can insulate our homes for heat, cold and wind, reducing our heating and cooling needs and thus our carbon emissions.  Wildlife friendly native plants don’t need constant maintenance from gas guzzling lawn mowers or fertilizers that require fossil fuels to manufacture and often leave  harmful chemical salt residue.  An additional benefit is that plants actually absorb carbon dioxide, helping to further reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  All of this adds up to increased areas available for wildlife and a better quality of life for all.

Habitats can also produce an added value to your home.  A beautiful, living landscape is an acctractive element to many potential home buyers looking to share their homes with Mother Nature.

The mission of the National Wildlife Federation is to inspire Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future.

From the Wikipedia Encyclopedia:

A pesticide is a substance or mixture of substances used to kill a pest.^[1] A pesticide may be a chemical substance, biological agent (such as a virus or bacteria), antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest. Pests include insects, plant pathogens, weeds, molluscs, birds, mammals, fish, nematodes (roundworms) and microbes that compete with humans for food, destroy property, spread or are a vector for disease or cause a nuisance. Although there are benefits to the use of pesticides, there are also drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other animals.

I don’t know about you, but as an organic farmer I do not list birds, mammals, fish, worms, microbes or most insects as pests.  I gladly welcome them to our farm, in fact we worry when they are not present.  That would mean that their would be no good bugs and birds to eat the bad bugs, no worms to enrich the soil, no fish or frogs to eat the flies and misquitoes.  I have yet to feel the rife competition for food, and there is very little property destruction caused by those nasty little microbes.  If pests include mammals as it does in that definition, does that not mean humans too?  Oh great, lets kill each other so we don’t compete with ourselves for food!  AND lets get those little suckers while they are young! 

I have just read an article in the Seattle P.I., regarding a study of the levels of pesticides in the system of 21 children in Mercer Island Washington.

“The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study published online in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets," said Lu, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.”

Nuff said?  You would think!  “Well chalk one up for the cause!”, I thought to myself,  “Yet another study with the same findings”.  I then went on to read the comments.  Some 40+ comments!  Some stating the article was a “non-story”, not unlike global warming.  Some of the comments stated that Organic food is just too expensive, and is not an alternative since the yields are so low.  There was a lot of talk about washing and peeling being a viable cure to the situation. 

Hmmm….. If organic yields are so low, why is there always a time each year that even after the 20 CSA bushel baskets have been filled some 30 times over the course of the season, I fall in a heap on the kitchen floor and declare if I see one more basket of fruit or vegetables that need to be processed I’ll go into a coma.  And I don’t know about you, but I haven’t peeled a vegetable for over 20 years, conventionally or organically grown! There are vitamins, fiber and most importantly flavor in that skin!  Peeling a vegetable would be like eating a boneless skinless Chicken breast from a chicken that was grown in a cage and fed antibiotics all of its life, what’s the point? (but that’s another story).   Most of all as a farmer I enjoy watching the quail walking across the yards, and the crazy Killdeer that lay eggs in the vegetable garden and then act like they are having a heart attack if you come near their nest.  I love the beautiful colored spiders that take residence in the rose garden.  And I even love the toad families that hide in the rocks and come out at night to eat those nasty little slugs. There’s something exciting about going out before light and feeling having the bat that eats it’s weight in insects each day whiz over your head.  Call me crazy, but I think it’s sweet that my husband has named the tree frog that sneaks in through the open window and visits the overflow drain of our bathroom sink from time to time.  Sure, sometimes there’s a worm in a tomato or an ear of corn.  And a pesky little earwig or two hiding in the cabbage, but you know?  They wash right off, and they haven’t been treated with “pesticides spawned the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II”, so it really doesn’t matter if you eat them anyway!