F.A. Farm

Up here in the Fourth Corner, we get plentiful rain in the winter and sometimes we have quite a bit of water standing in the fields until late spring. Some farmers have had to wait until late June to even get out to their fields in past years (and maybe this year). We also have drought conditions in summer, so irrigation is necessary. Building up organic matter in the soil only goes so far in regulating soil moisure, so I am going to take a page from ancient agriculture and try chinampas this year. Chinampas were an intensive cultivation system used by the Aztecs on Lake Tenochtitlan. When Cortez and his men saw them in 1519, they referred to them as "floating gardens," but they were actually raised beds recovered from lake and marsh areas. Chinampas are still used in Mexico City to this day, usually for growing flowers. The typical chinampa was 15-30 feet wide and 300 feet long. They were constructed by digging trenches on the side or bringing muck and dropping it in a marked-out area. When the chinampa was finished, the Aztecs planted willow trees around the perimeter to anchor the soil. They also used an early version of soil blocks for plant starts - an aid in maximum plant survival to harvest versus direct seeding. There are three main requirements in intensive agriculture; irrigation, fertilization, and labor. The structure of the chinampas maximized soil moisture and additional water was available in the ditches/canals next to the chinampas. Fertilization was provided by the muck (similar to the Nile flooding, by the way), and human labor was plentiful for the Aztecs.

My idea is to take the chinampa idea, add some insights from the old Irish "lazy beds," and adapt them to Whatcom County. The lazy beds of pre-famine Ireland were usually four feet wide and the seed potatoes were laid on the ground. Ditches were dug on the side using the loy, or turf cutter, and the overturned sod laid on top of the potatoes. Hilling up later in the season was done by digging deeper in the ditches. I have tried growing potatoes under mulch and it worked well. I don't do this now because it is more labor intensive than row cropping using a tiller and I grow a lot of potatoes. So, combining the chinampas and the lazy beds, I am going to lay out a grid with 4 foot wide raised beds and the soil will be provided by digging an 18" wide ditch on each side. The 18" is the width of my cultivating tiller, but I could actually go 2 feet wide since there will be some "roll-down" from the raised beds. A 4 foot wide raised bed allows me to reach 2 feet in from either ditch, so that is optimal. Right now my salad mix beds are 30" wide and I can straddle them if needed. However, if I dig my ditches deep enough, I can actually stand in the ditch and weed and harvest without bending over too much. Soil moisture should not be a problem and I can actually do some ditch irrigation if needed. This will certainly be cheaper than drip irrigation and should use less water than an impact sprinkler. I will also throw the biomass from weeding, cabbage leaves, stalks, etc. into the ditch to decompose. If I am tilling the ditch and there is plentiful soil moisture, the composting process in the ditches should be speeded up. An added benefit of raised beds is to gain an extra degree in soil temperature for each inch you have above the surrounding soil, so this system could actually allow earlier planting because of dryness AND warmer soil temps.

I am looking forward to testing out this idea. The fly in the ointment is the labor requirements. I already have access to more land for this experiment, and I might pitch it to a local high school for one of their projects. I could come out and help set up the markers, show the students how to dig efficiently and let them have at it. They could grow potatoes or any number of crops. Then, next year, we could see if we could get out on the chinampas a couple of weeks earlier than normal.

Toni and I regularly eat a late supper. She works long hours as a social worker and I am always "on" with farmwork, housework, computer work, etc. I also get stronger as twilight comes on, what the Old Norse called "kveldulfur" or "evening wolf." This is nothing to sneeze at, as I am nearing 60 and being tired in the middle of the day is a common occurrence. Anyway, last night KUOW, one of the Seattle radio stations, had a replay of Michael Pollan's talk in Seattle on January 12, 2009. Since I read his last three books and Toni and I are actively involved in the same proselytizing, we made supper and ate while listening to his talk. Our menu hit several points he made in his speech (basically a recap of his latest book, In Defense of Food). There was the red wine (the French paradox), fresh Brussels sprouts and boiled potatoes (eat mostly plants), grass-fed hamburgers (stay away from corn-fed beef), homemade whole wheat bread (do for yourself), and pumpkin pie (take a cue from the Native Americans and adapt it to your needs). A wonderful repast - the conversation and background were sparkling.

Okay, now to a single crux point. One of Pollan's rhetorical flourishes was to ask, "How do we change the western diet without changing western civilization?" The answer is, "We can't. Nor should we." Western civilization is one of the major problems in the world. Over the last 40 years, as a "dirty hippie," street radical, homeless ragamuffin, ski bum, circus ringmaster, medieval armor-maker, archaeologist, word processor, law school student, grad student, anthropology instructor and now sustainable farmer, there have been several constants in my worldview. One of these is that state-level societies are the real problem. Clan-based societies never really marshall enough resources to change the world in such a dramatic fashion as we have witnessed in the last 150 years. Only civilization could produce industrialism. A return to tribalism is now being identified as a key to the conflict in the Mideast and the greater Arab world. Obviously, there is a pushback against western civilization, as well as an implosion since it just doesn't work. Ancient civilizations required slaves and our modern civilizations are built upon the energy slave of petroleum products. This will not last and civilization itself seems doomed. So . . . Is this a bad thing? I didn't think so in the 60's and I don't think so now. We can hasten the demise of western civilization by not eating a western civilization diet. The idea of eating as a political act has been hammered to death over the years, but it still survives. Like tribal and clan culture, eating food (not food-like products) will survive the collapse of western civilization. Many people look for a seamless transition from our current troubles to a localized community. It's not likely, so amongst the joy of eating good food, we should keep our wits about us and try not to get hit by the debris of the crumbling western empires.

Yesterday, I drove a 75-mile round trip to a meeting and the person who set up the meeting didn't show. There were two of us who drove down and the cost in mileage, lunch and wasted time was approximately $100. Obviously, I  won't be doing business with this person in the future. The offending (in several senses of the word since this is quite a rude way of conducting business) party is the owner of a produce market in Everett and he is looking to cut his costs. He already sells produce to stores in Ferndale and Bellingham and right now his truck is traveling empty back to Everett twice a week. The idea was to provide a link in the transportation chain, so I can sell more produce in the Seattle metro area, which is approximately 100 miles south of me. The idea was quite doable, and I have been flogging multiple transport solutions for three years now, but all good ideas fail if you cannot trust someone to actually show up at a meeting they proposed. Now we both lose. There is also a larger problem exposed by this example. Now, as times are getting tougher, we need to keep our agreements. I have some ideas on how business practices have deteriorated over the years, but I still don't accept them. In other words, I understand how people overschedule, get spaced out, run late, etc. The key point is that I don't accept it. Simply put, how can I expect to get paid if you cannot be trusted to do something as simple as show up for a meeting? We all need to inculcate more business ethics into our behavior in this time of troubles. This is key to establishing greater ties of community. To steal a phrase from Gilbert Shelton, "Community will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no community."

Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel prize in 2006 for his work in developing microcredit - tiny amounts of credit available for poor villagers (mostly women) in Bangladesh. This loan program has been embraced by many other countries around the world and has helped 500 million people. Obviously, a very good solution to one of the main problems in agriculture - capital to buy seeds, hire labor, buy equipment, and just to live until harvest. In this country, we have another version of microlending that I find VERY helpful - CSA share programs. As most everyone knows by now, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share programs pay the farmer upfront so he/she can buy seeds, hire labor, buy equipment, and just live until harvest. It requires the consumer to become a shareholder, in effect a partner, in the farm. I am in my third year of a CSA program and I actually got enough early money to buy seeds this year. Last week, I spoke with a banker and a developer and I asked them their perspectives on the looming credit crunch for mainstream farmers in the US. My fear is that, with the banks frozen and not lending, many farmers will not be able to plant. Then, the bankers and the government might wake up in July or August and realize there is not enough grain to go around. After that, it is anybody's guess what the response will be. When I asked about this scenario, both the banker and developer said that banks are lending, but simply enforcing more stringent credit standards. This assuaged my fears a little bit, but I still wonder about even a 5% dip in planting acreage. True, there was a 20% greater harvest in 2008 over 2007, but it is still worrisome. When Earl Butz, Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, dropped target prices for grain and introduced the subsidy system, the federal government stopped lending farmers money and instead gave farmers a check. By convincing farmers to plant "fence row to fence row," he assured a glut in the market. Since the 70's, production has increased and prices have decreased. Last winters $15/bushel wheat was largely a speculative blip. So now we don't have a pool of fallow land in the soil bank, like in the 60's. What we have is constant upwards pressure on production, and a looming drop in production if farmers don't get capital. A recipe for disaster, as food availability is determined by a few ethically-challenged bankers. So, what to do? I suggest you run, not walk, to your nearest CSA farm and plunk down some money so the farmer can plant.

This morning I read the third installment of a special report on the problems with Chinese honey. This report was published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The first two installments were published December 30th and 31st, 2008, and track a problem with tainted honey from China that is intentionally routed through other countries before arriving in the US. American beekeepers cannot produce enough honey to meet demand and so two-thirds of the honey consumed in the US has to be imported. For years, China has been producing the lion's share of these imports, but they had a problem with bee die-off and used a potent antibiotic, chloramphenicol, to deal with it. This is illegal and unconscionable, but the tainted honey gets through anyway. There are several culprits in this fiasco and they all point fingers at everyone else. This situation calls for direct action on the part of the consumer and the direct action is? You guessed it - buy local honey. I have at least four sources of local honey right around me and I find it to be a good value in price, as well as in its medicinal/nutritional qualities. I seem to have alder allergies and spend quite a bit of downtime in early spring because I am so tired. I tried a daily spoonful of local honey last year and it seemed to help. This year I will be more rigorous in my application, so I can track the effects better. Anyway, you cannot depend on a government agency to watch out for you, so the solution is bloody obvious. Know where your food comes from. The best measure of nutritional safety is to know the first name of the farmer who grew your food.

Last night we had our first Sustainability at the Stein group night. The Frank N Stein is a local brewpub (smallest brewpub in America!) owned by Lloyd Zimmerman and located in Ferndale, Washington. They are open Wednesdays - Saturdays, starting at 5 pm. This is my regular hangout on Wednesday nights, so Lloyd and I decided to do an informal casual meeting on Wednesdays at 6 pm (approximately - this is Ferndale). Last night was our first night and there were 6 of us, including my significant other and myself. Three of the other people were backyard gardeners wanting to increase production and the other person is doing a startup business based on selling local products, featuring both crafts and agricultural produce. I also got my Fedco seed order yesterday, so I delivered the seeds to one person who had ordered cooperatively with me. The idea was to bring at least one topic to the table and let the talk flow. This worked quite well. As most of my friends know, I hate meetings and corporate mindsets, so the informal atmosphere, availability of beer and comfy chairs was conducive to good discussion. The topic I brought last night was sprouts, since I am currently flogging sprouts as a cheap, easy alternative to storebought winter greens. We usually have greens in the garden all winter up here in the rain belt, but this winter was colder than usual and my broccoli, chard, mustard mix, collards, mache, etc. are all frozen out. (I don't have a greenhouse or hoop tunnel.) For those of you who read my blogs, I did a blog on sprouts earlier on this forum. At last night's meeting, I brought several jars with sprouts in various stages of growth and the radish sprouts were the most popular. The discussion also spread to bio-charcoal, late blight in tomatoes and the local farmers market. We want to continue this informal group night into the indefinite future and I invite anyone in the area to stop by. The beer is good and also cheap by Bellingham standards. I like this concept of maximum flexibility with people just showing up but having something to contribrute. What I don't want to see is someone coming by with a product to sell and a polished pitch. I really dislike branding and other aspects of the corporate playbook. In fact, I am starting to read Naomi Klein's No Logo (2000), which is all about the rise of branding and problems created by mega-corporations who buy outsourced products, slap a brand on them and market the brand, not the product. But . . . that is fuel for another blog. 

I got a new world atlas recently and I took a look at agricultural patterns around the world. I was especially struck by the shifting cultivation mode in the equatorial areas of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The complementary mode of production alongside shifting cultivation (or horticulture) was herding (or pastoralism). This is most clearly seen in Africa where the Sahara butts up against tropical forests. From an anthropological perspective, shifting cultivation is characterized by leaving some fields fallow and moving the cultivation around, oftentimes by slash and burn production methods. It is most effective in areas of low human population densities. Herding is also most effective for low human population densities, since it requires more land. However it can fit in alongside shifting cultivation, where it is useful in arid areas not suited to cultivation. In other words, most of Africa is doomed. The indigenous cultures are locked into a small population farming mode when their human populations are booming. The current border wars are exacerbating a problem that is already critical and the AIDS epidemic adds yet a third layer on top of the toxic mix of population pressure and ethnic violence.

Intensive cultivation requires more labor (especially if terracing and irrigation is used) and soil amendments to restore soil fertility, but it can feed larger rural populations. So . . . is the answer for Africa to transition into high labor, high fertilizer input intensive cultivation? Clearly, the American model of petrol-intensive industrial farming with tractors and chemical fertilizers has failed, all the hype about the Green Revolution notwithstanding. Can some of the methods that US sustainable farmers are using be applied to the equatorial belt and specifically to Africa? Are there actually NGO's on the ground in Africa that are concentrating on wise use of human labor to be more productive? The genus Homo arose in Africa around 2 million years ago and this was a real revolution, unlike the phony revolution based on petroleum, high capital costs and proprietary seeds. I suspect there are indigenous sustainable solutions that could be implemented right now in Africa and other parts of the world, some prompted by what sustainable farmers are doing in the US, but mostly prompted by indigenous people. Traditionally, anthropologists and aid workers have not listened very closely to what indigenous people have to say. Perhaps this is changing by the weight of necessity.

In your desire to eat healthy on a budget, don't forget the sprouts. Right now, I have alfalfa, mung, radish and aduki sprouts going in quart jars. I use a canning ring and a piece of nylon window screen trimmed to fit inside the ring. You can use the actual lid for a template and draw a circle, then cut out the screen. It fits good. I soak the seeds overnight, pour off the water and rinse twice a day. I set them on a towel on top of the refrigerator. I eat the radish and alfalfa sprouts raw and steam the mung, lentil, aduki and even pea sprouts. You can do soy sprouts and onion sprouts too. Your local co-op has all kinds of sprouting seeds and lentils can be had anywhere. Sprouts are cheap, even if you have to pay a lot for the seeds, since you get so many pounds of sprouts from a single pound of seeds. Don't buy too much at the store the first time, as they go a long way. I usually cover the bottom of the jar by way of measuring. You will be amazed at how fast they grow and how much they increase. Even though we have fresh vegetables year-round on the farm, I still have to have my sprouts in the winter.

If you are like me, you have storage potatoes that are starting to sprout and you are already eating potatoes at least once a day. Don't get me wrong; I never met a potato I didn't like, but I have so much left over! How to store more for later use? What I am doing now is experimenting with dried potatoes. Here's what I do. I peel the potatoes, slice as thin as possible, blanch for 5 minutes (and I am not talking about a character from a Tennessee Williams play here) and plunge in cold water for 5 minutes. I then let them drain and dry them in my electric dryer for 4 hours at 135 degrees. Depending on how thin I cut them, the slices are quite "snappy" or thick and not dry enough. However, the crisp ones can be bagged up and the thicker ones eaten right away. They are quite delicious and go like hotcakes at the local brewpub in Ferndale where I hang out on Wednesday nights. These dried potatoes do not have any oil, so are quite healthful. They have natural vegetable salts in them and I like them without added salt. However, it is easy to put them in a bag with a pinch of salt and just shake them up. Voila - natural dried chips! Okay, now for the bad news. 5 pounds of potatoes produces about 3 pounds of peeled potatoes and this produces 1 pound of dried potatoes. The labor involved is about an hour. So . . . 5 pounds at $1.50 per pound and an hour of labor at $10 per hour and an extra 10% for overhead (stove gas, electricity) comes to $19.25 per pound of dried chips. Certainly not a value-added product for commercial production, but they do taste good.

Last night I made some parsnip puree and we had it on a spiffed-up version of macaroni and cheese. It was incredibly filling. First I took some of my frozen leek stems and boiled them for an hour with a handful of sage and a little bit of dried peppers. When I harvest leeks, I cut off each plant where the leaves spread. This leaves a long shaft which I then cut into the white base for eating right now, and a long green stem which I cut into 5-6 inch pieces, put into a bag and freeze for later. When I want to make soupstock, I just pull the frozen leek stems out and boil them with whatever herb I feel like using (in this case it was sage). It is easy to put them through a strainer and mash them a bit with a wooden spoon. Then you have a wonderful, rich vegetable broth.

After the broth was ready, I  boiled about a pound of trimmed, washed, diced parsnips in 1 1/2 cups of the broth for about 20 minutes, until the parsips were soft. I then strained them into a blender, keeping the liquid back. The reason for reserving the liquid is so you can add only as much liquid as you need to make the puree the right consistency. In this case I used all of the liquid. I also put 1/4 cup evaporated milk and 2 tablespoons butter into the blender. The butter is probably overkill with the evaporated milk. You can also use cream or even milk for this recipe. Also salt to taste, but go easy on it, as there is plenty of salt in the butter. The overall yield was 2 cups and I kept 1 cup for the pasta. We made a cheese sauce (go to Joy of Cooking or any other cookbook for this) and poured that over the pasta and added the parsnip puree. It was quite sweet, which always amazes me. After a freeze, parsnips taste like candy. Even my carrots, which I also leave in the ground over the winter are incredibly sweet. And don't get me started on beets!

Personally, I prefer parsnips as a main ingredient in vegetable soup, but the puree over pasta was dynamite! We made a whole pound of penne for supper and two of us can usually polish it off, but the dish was so rich we had to freeze half for later. Now I will have to think of something for the rest of the parsnip puree. Perhaps on toast, with a side dish of potatoes. Oh, by the way, we also had sauteed kale and onions as a side dish for supper with the pasta, and the color contrasts were quite nice. I have some Tuscan kale that is still in good shape after our below freezing temps and it too tastes quite sweet. I like winter vegetables.

Today I juiced the last of my cider apples. I had left a couple of boxes out in the living room since October, so I could do cider whenever we wanted some fresh. They were a little wrinkly, but still good. I should mention that we keep our house at 58-62 degrees on the thermostat, so there are plenty of cold corners, even in the living room. Anyway, there were more solids and the flavor was more intense, but it was a little flat, too. I attribute this to the mix of Goldens and Jonagolds, which were what I have plenty of in the fall. We have planted some sharper cider apples, like Kingston Black, but the trees are still too young to produce much. I tried something new this time, which was to keep the solids I strained out and reduce them down in a double boiler. The mixture tastes quite "apply" even though it is not very sweet. However, I like the basic apple flavor, even without the usual sweetness or tartness you get when you pull one off a tree. This is another reason we have a medlar tree. Medlars are a medieval fruit that tastes sort of halfway between a cooked apple and a cooked pear. We make jam with them and also did a medlar custard pie for Christmas. I like pumpkin pie much better and I prefer a mild, bland medlar jam.