F.A. Farm

I was a fruit tramp (i.e. migrant worker specializing in fruit) for eight years, from 1974 to 1982. I started with cherries, usually in Washington in June, but one year I started in Lodi, California, in May. Then came the Columbia Gorge cherries - first White Salmon and then Hood River. After that came the late cherries at Flathead Lake, Montana, peach picking, pear picking and then the apple harvest. By the end of October I was done picking and took a week backpacking trip in the Pasayten Wilderness west of Loomis, Washington. I always carried winter gear and some years I used it - other years I hiked in runners and shorts. Then back to Tonasket to prune all winter (for three years) or later, off to Vail to spend the winter ski-bumming.

Now I have my own farm and orchard and I keep my trees short enough so that I can pick them with an 8-foot ladder. On the tramp, I had to use 14-footers for the pears and 20 foot extension ladders for the cherries. Most of my apple picking was on 10-foot or 12-foot ladders. Today, as I look out my office window, I can see my orchard and the ridge to the north of us. Up on the ridge to the northeast is an old single-wide trailer that is still used. Straight north is a building site and a storage unit that might as well be another trailer (in fact there was another old single-wide up there until last year when the new owners towed it away). My trees partially hide the trailer now and I am thinking of letting them grow another two feet so they will completely obscure the trailer and any building that goes up on the building site. I have been encouraging apical dominance in my pruning the last two years and the tip growth on top has been good. I was intending to shorten the tops a little this year to encourage bushiness, but now I am thinking of letting them go and getting a bigger ladder. This is problematic, as I am older and less sanguine about slamming into the ground at 32 feet per second than I was 30 years ago. There are pluses and minuses. I like to look out my window and just see green. That will probably carry the day.

Yesterday I responded to a Local Harvest forum post about getting local milk into schools. It strikes me that the whole idea of healthy food in an institutionalized setting is structurally unsound. Let's start at the paradigm level. Schools and prisons are basically warehouses for people. Schools are more about enculturating your child with his peers and acculturating him/her to the adults' culture. Enculturate = assimilating into the home culture. Acculturate = assimiliating into another culture. Most anthropologists would probably argue (anthropologists do a lot of arguing by the way) that children enculturate in school, but I view the dynamic in terms of oppressed/oppressors. Adults are the oppressors and the children learn how to manipulate them in order to "fit in." This naturally leads to the the eighth-grade phenomena of "nasty" girls and "stupid cool" boys. [And yes, I am dealing in gross generalizations here, but have you seen this in your local middle school? Of course you have.] So, the children are warehoused under the watchful eye of the oppressor adults and they learn how to get along to go along. This becomes useful in later years if and when they go to prison. So, the concept here is that we must look to the school system as a precursor to prison and one of the reasons we have the highest incarceration rate among developed nations. In prison, the guards are just bigger, meaner, and they have guns in addition to psychological intimidation techniques.

So how about the food issue? In an institution, food must be consistent and prepared in mass quantities by workers who are bored, unattentive and careless. Anytime you opt for consistency OR large quantities, you must descend to a lower level of quality. For example, last night we had garlic scapes for dinner. Some were a little hard and some were nice and soft, simply because I have different kinds of garlic in my garden and I picked them all at once. My option? Hot oil in a cast iron pan, sizzle for a bit (all the while standing right over the pan so I could catch them at the right time), and then turn off the fire and cover the pan. The steam of the scapes' own water softened them up and they were muy bueno served with just a bit of soy sauce. Could I have made such a dish for 100 people, even if I had enough scapes? Not likely. They would have come out much more bland, AND if I was employing a whole raft of minimum wage workers who don't give a rip about the peculiarities of each individual dish, they would have come out like mush. The same line of reasoning can be applied to the source of the food. Can a school cafeteria cater to the peculiarities of each vegetable and each farm source? Not likely. Thus, the food must devolve into mush-like food products. Does it even make sense, cost-wise to even buy local vegetables? Again, not likely. It really is about cost anyway, so it is quite logical to buy processed, canned and packaged food. Institutional food is just a maintenance diet then, and your job as parents is to counteract the crap fed to your child in the school cafeteria by the good breakfast and the good supper he/she gets at home. In point of fact, if your school has a Taco Bell or McDonalds nearby, their products are really not that much different from what the school cafeteria is providing.

What about Washington state and the "Local Farms - Healthy Kids" bill passed unanimously in early 2008? This was supposed to buy local produce from local farmers for school lunches and snacks. Well, it is on hold because of Governor Gregoire's budget cuts (once again, I am condemning Gov. Gregoire because she makes consistently bad choices in fiscal matters). So . . . it really is about costs isn't it? If you are going to warehouse people in schools and prisons, you want to get by as cheaply as possible.

Final point. The idea that you have to counteract the bad nutrition your child gets in school can also be extrapolated to the subjects your child is supposed to be learning. You should think about how you can counteract the crap your children get from their underpaid, undertrained and undermotivated teachers, as well as the fascist atmosphere they are subjected to each day. You might want to consider home schooling. The few families I know who have home-schooled their children have done a much better job than the public schools.

This morning I dug up some Bintjes for breakfast. Bintjes are a Dutch yellow potato that is fast growing (65 day) and high yielding. They also have a buttery taste that make German Butterballs look like German Margarineballs. My potatoes also have a "complete" taste, because of my focus on adding trace minerals to my fertilizer mix. When I boil potatoes, I start with cold, unsalted water and when they are done, they don't even need salt. The key is to add both greensand and langbeinite (sul-po-mag) to my fertilizer mix. Both are ancient seabed deposits. The greensand comes from New Jersey and the langbeinite from Utah. They both add trace minerals in addition to being a potassium source.

Trace minerals are very important. They not only allow the plants to utililze the N-P-K more effectively, they also help round out the nutritional needs of the plant, so their immune systems can fight off pests. It works the same for us humans. Since I feed my soil trace minerals in addition to N-P-K and lime, the plants I eat out of that soil transport complete nutrients to my own immune system and other bodily functions. There is a noticeable step-up in the taste of the potatoes I grow now and those I grew in the past and I am convinced a big factor is my emphasis on trace minerals.

Back in my youth, we always had a salt block out for the cows, and a red trace mineral salt block at that. Many of the old skinflint farmers in the area would only buy the white salt blocks, which were just salt and cost slightly less. Norwegian-American farmers are known for their penny-pinching and their distrust of something new. Let's see - I can spend a tiny bit more at the feed store so my cows can utilize their feed more efficiently and give more milk - OR I can keep the extra few pennies and buy another pinch of snoose and spit the extra nutrition out the window at the neighbor's dog that always runs after my truck. Uff da, what a quandry!

I sell my salad mix for $8.50 per pound. Occasionally I get someone out to the farm who is a little taken aback by the price, but then I show them what a pound looks like. A pound fits loosely into two gallon bags and provides about 8 salads - even for big eaters like Toni and I. This is just over a dollar per salad, which I find to be quite cheap. Elsewhere on the Local Harvest forum, a former chef said you could get 10 salads out of a head of iceberg lettuce. At a dollar fifty per head, that is 15 cents per salad. So, you can eat even cheaper if you buy iceberg lettuce at the supermarket. However, what is a dollar worth to you? With $3.00/gallon gas and 21 miles per gallon on your automobile, you could drive 7 miles. At $4.00 a pint, you could buy half a cup of beer at the local pub for a dollar. You could buy a pair of white cotton socks at the Ferndale truck plaza for a dollar. Or, you could eat a salad for a dollar that is healthy, tasty, attractive, and contains 12 different kinds of lettuce. Sounds pretty cheap to me.

People may have noticed how cheap red meat, pork and poultry is right now in the Pacific Northwest. Meat may also be cheap in your part of the country. There may be overriding political concerns that encourage dumping to keep the populace well fed (sort of like an American version of bread and circuses - in this case hamburgers and trash TV). It may just be that corporations make SO much money that they can afford to lower their prices dramatically and still make a profit. Another reason is that since feed prices are still high (controlled by corporations of course), costs of production continue to be well above commodity prices paid to the farmer. Since there is already plenty of meat in supermarket cases, increasing production (the old "get big or get out") will not necessarily provide a living, especially if there is no profit margin anymore due to high feed costs.

A contributing factor in the case of beef is the CWT Dairy Herd Reduction Program. CWT stands for Cooperatives Working Together and has been around since 2003. The program is funded by a 10 cent contribution per producer or cooperative on each hundredweight of milk sold. The idea is to retire dairy cows and heifers to reduce the volume of milk produced in this country, thereby increasing the price paid to the farmer. As an example, the price of Class III milk (milk used to make butter, cheese and nonfat dry milk) was down to $9.84 per hundredweight in May and has risen to $9.95 in June. The futures price is expected to rise to $14.30 per hundredweight in December. For those unfamiliar with milk pricing in hundredweights, milk weighs 8.5 pounds per gallon, so at $9.95 per hundredweight (cwt.) a gallon of milk sold for making cheese is now valued at 85 cents. The futures price in December values a comparable gallon at $1.22 - an increase of 44% over the current price! The reason for this dramatic rise is probably due to many factors, but the success of the CWT Herd Retirement Program seems significant.

CWT has conducted six herd retirements since 2003, removing 276,000 cows. The most recent was in February and removed 51,000 cows. The latest audit of participating farmers started May 20th and CWT plans to retire 103,000 cows in this go-round. This will remove about 2 billion pounds of milk per year. The upshot here is that not only is CWT increasing the number of cows removed per round, but is also stepping up the frequency of removals. Of course the Beef Associations around the country are worried, but there is really nothing they can do about it because the program is privately funded by dairymen themselves.

Even though CWT Herd Reduction Programs are having a big impact on milk prices, it does not have a causal effect on the glut of pork and poultry in the supermarkets. The major problem overall still seems to be the high cost of feed. Animal feed is subject to the same middleman effect to which human food is subject. In other words, that bag of chicken feed you buy for your layers has a very low commodity cost paid to the farmer, but a lot of money made by the middleman before you pick it up at neighborhood feed & seed store. So . . .  farmers are culling their flocks and herds and the resulting glut of meat makes the prices cheap. However, culling can be done quickly, but building your herd or flock back up once the prices rise takes much more time.

I suspect the futures price of milk in December correlates well with a significant rise in all animal product prices by Christmas-time, simply because the feed grain prices show no signs of coming down (high petrol prices for production and transportation, impacts of ethanol production, export sales, etc.). If you have a freezer, you might want to stock up now. Otherwise, rethinking your lifestyle and dietary habits is appropriate. The upside to decreased meat consumption is less methanol in the atmosphere and a generally higher level of health in the general populace, so it won't be a bad thing when meat becomes a treat.

We had our first new potatoes for supper last night, June 6th! This was a week earlier than last year, when the first potato arrived on our plates on June 12th. Our Red Thumb fingerlings had just started to flower, so I thought I would "tickle out" some spuds (so as to preserve the plant). I was quite surprised at the size of some of them. Red Thumbs grow fast and big anyway, but it is only 57 days since planting. I have been putting langbeinite (sul-po-mag), as well as greensand, in my fertilizer mix for the last two years and the spuds really respond to the quick shot of potassium and probably also to the trace minerals. I also notice that my potatoes don't even need salt, which I assume is because I am feeding the soil properly. Another thing I noticed last year is that the plants haven't even used much of the "drop" or "chit" when I dig up the plants. Evidently, they start grabbing nutrients from the surrounding soil as soon as they can, eschewing the stored carbohydrates from the drop. Anyway, we had a wonderful supper as usual, with fresh salad greens, sauteed Chinese cabbage with shallots, and fagioli. Toni had a mojito with spearmint from her herb garden and I opted for some of my homemade beer. We don't make much money from the farm, but we sure eat good.

Many people don't realize what a valuable resource the Local Harvest forums are. The forums have all kinds of info on food-related issues and opportunities to reach out with new ideas. However, there are always one or two "flaming" idiots who are merely trying to score points. It is really quite cowardly to sit down and vent without actually trying to solve the problem. Some time back, I ran into one of these types who are stuck in the current business model and who was personally offensive in order to cover up his lack of understanding in method and theory. And he even has a Masters in Aerospace Engineering (!), so he should know about proper survey methodology and calculation. As they say, a little knowledge is a bad thing.

Once again, I seem to have gotten sideways with a supposed market gardener who has had difficulty finding viable seeds for a rare cantaloupe. Of course, I am still a closet academic and the idea of buying more seed and trying a larger sample size appeals to me. There are so many variables in seed saving and the impacts start right in the field, even as the plants are growing. Simply expecting every seed, or even every packet of seed, to be in the 80-100% germination range is a false assumption. This really is part of the old business model - that regulation, certification, more regulation, and even more certification will ensure that you can TRUST the product. In reality, there is a very good reason nature is so conservative and produces huge amounts of seed. Not only does surplus seed production increase percentage of viability to maturity, it also increases the genetic and chromosonal shuffling, or recombination, that provides flexibility in a changing environment. As we tumble into the brave new world of the future, we should be saving more of our own seed and acclimating the food we grow to our changing environment. In order to do this, we need to think in new paradigms. I have been ensconced in the probabilistic paradigm for the last 10 years and it helps me quite a bit.

In 2007, I started my CSA season on June 22nd. My main concern was having snap peas in the first box. In 2008, I started on June 9th. I had plenty of overwintered chard and kale, with plentiful new greens, so I was able to start two weeks earlier. My main concern in the 2008 was the long, cool spring, which I saw as an anomaly. This year, I wanted to start on June 1st, but I had to delay the first box pickup until June 10th. I had figured two years in a row of extended cool, wet spring conditions was unlikely. Wrong! Now I see long, cool springs as the new norm here in NW Washington, but we could actually be moving to more like the Northeastern climate parameters - i.e. cold winter temps and higher early summer temps. The maritime climate here usually features more "equable" temperatures because of the Pacific Ocean (the largest thermostat in the world!), but we are getting more variation in both winter and summer temps. Yesterday set a record of 89 degrees in Seattle and my thermometer in Ferndale read 94 degrees. Even I had to take a break in the afternoon and went for a refreshing motorcycle ride. [SInce I don't get any days off, I feel entirely justified in getting out the bike for an hour - especially since I rode over to Birch Bay to check on their Thursday Farmers Market.]

On another note - my spelt is headed out now. It has an interesting look to it and I am intrigued by the size of the head. It is reputed to be hard to thresh. We shall see.