Organic Seed Alliance

I'd like to draw attention to an organization, the Organic Seed Alliance, not because it's new, but because they have been doing some amazing work in the last few years. And because they have a model for collaborative seed saving, education and advocacy that could easily be emulated by regions outside of the Northwest.

To give a taste of their ideology, I've copied this from their Vision Statement...

VISION: Seed is both our common cultural heritage and a living natural resource fundamental to the future sustainability of food production. Proper stewardship of our genetic resources necessitates not only its conservation, but careful management in a manner which allows seed to continually evolve with challenges of the environment, cultural practices of sustainable agriculture and the need to feed people. Through advocacy, collaborative education, advisory services, and research we work to restore and develop seed varieties for current needs while safeguarding invaluable genetic resources for future generations.

They have recently won a court challenge against the introduction of Round Up Ready Sugar Beets in the Northwest, which can be read about on their blog, seed broadcast. But most interesting to me are their publications, (which by the way have been licensed under the Creative Commons, allowing the information to be freely distributed and used, as long as no money is made by doing so). Their field guides on seed production are the most detailed, specific seed saving publications I have read, with truly good applied science and organic cropping techniques. Not only that, but they are an alliance, or collective, of organic farmers in a bio-region who organize to pool their resources, land, time and expertise to breed vegetable, herb and grain varieties that meet both the changing climate conditions, as well as the low-input techniques of organic food production.

Their model is participatory, re-engaging farmers in our once openly held seed heritage. To quote them again, on education...

In addition to this loss in genetics there has been a concurrent loss in the base of knowledge and skills necessary to properly steward and improve plant genetics in a ecologically and ethically sound manner. Farmers, once the primary seed stewards around the globe, have rapidly been removed from the seed circle - no longer participating in plant breeding or conservation. Only a few generations ago, the practices of on-farm seed saving and basic crop improvement were not only common, but necessary.

And their ethics incorporate social justice, environmental stewardship and food security through the advocacy of maintaining intellectual property in the Public Domain, and out of the hands of private or corporate ownership.

Organic Seed Alliance believes that as humans, we hold an important responsibility to steward resources in a manner that is just, equitable and recognizes the needs of current and future generations. We are working with farmers, breeders, lawyers and ethicists to develop a philosophical approach to seed development and stewardship that will include recognition of the valuable contributions of traditional agriculture and indigenous communities, promote farmer's rights to save and improve seeds, and support the long term integrity of the genetic resource of seeds. We believe this can be accomplished while recognizing and compensating for the investment of breeders, research and development.

We believe that the public good can integrate with commerce and that conservation can coexist with innovation. This approach will incorporate elements of the Open Source software movement, applications of the Precautionary Principle, and recognition of the value (social, economic, nutrient sustaining) of natural resources to future generations.

Conversation with a local farmer

by (the elusive) Beringian Fritillary

This week we helped a local farmer with his carrot harvest. He practices Integrated Pest Management, and I asked a few questions about his transition over the last 10 years, away from the high levels of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides recommended in spray programs. On the carrot crop we were harvesting, he had used a post-emergent herbicide when the carrots were about 2" high to control the grass coming up in the crop, (we had very wet cold spring and mechanical cultivation was not possible, even on his sandy loam soils). The crop had moderate grass and weed pressure, and minimal pest or disease pressure. I asked what kind of crop loss he tolerates in his Integrated Pest Management program before spraying a crop, he answered between 15%-20%, I would have expected between 5-10%. I was surprised at this level of crop loss, on a cost-based analysis. I was curious whether his rational for this kind of practice was ideological, economic or consumer driven demand. His answer was short, it was basically an economically based decision that evolved into his farm management approach over the last 10 years. He started out wholesaling carrots at 3 cents a pound (less cost), and now gets about $1-$1.50 pound at the farmers market by transitioning to a direct-sales model, growing less volume, and keeping his machinery/labor costs down. He has noticed in the last few years, a lot more younger families are demanding better quality produce, in particular local produce.

To add some background, his model of farming is viable because he has inherited land and farming machinery, and has access to low-interest loans and government funding because of his established status in the region. He has seen his share of young start-up farmers collapse under the debt load of building a farm from the ground up. He also has access to hundreds of acres of traditionally farmed land for crop rotation, which contributes to his success with IPM. He also has access to quality seed from the best European plant breeders and seed producers.

To contrast, on the home front we had a 60% crop loss (based on a 25 tonne/acre carrot yield) in our carrot crop, using our saved seed and no sprays, organic or chemical, grown in poor soil improved with composted horse manure. Our ground is very poor and run down, with little hummus or soil depth. We had a infestation of cut worms which contributed the majority of crop loss. We are still going though the science of it all, studying soil sciences and the relationship between pests and soil nutrients, to sort out the probabilities and causes. We have enough crop to get though the year, with adjustments in the pantry, and a late planting of carrots left in the ground to overwinter, and harvest in the spring.

The feeling I have about backyard/small homesteading gardens is that you can look after yourself in good times, and possibly survive the bad, but what about the times when most of these methods of growing food fail? Here's the rub: local organic and conventional farmers will profit greatly from this, in fact they are speculating on this outcome. A classic scenario that Naomi Klein, in her book Disaster Capitalism, outlines. The unofficial farming conversations that I hear going on over the last 15 years, is that they are waiting for the full impacts of climate change, and protective farming practices to bring greater profits to agro-business, survival of the fittest or the chosen. I think its an old struggle between profit, self interest and cultural tradition.

So what started out as a good news story, which it is and no malice on behalf of the farmer, but the forces that are driving his decision are market based. I would go on to say that he provides a large quantity of produce to the local food bank, and has helped us out greatly as many local farmers do. This is the hard part, it's not personal in so far as it is a social/political culture that demands market opportunity and welfare support. What I find interesting is the interplay between doing something good, and yet the temptation to profit from unequal distribution of land and resources.

So if you are a farmer/homesteader/backyard gardener, what is the food growing future you see?

Fungal diseases in the garden

With the incredible rainfall we've had here in the east, there's been ample opportunity for fungal diseases in the garden. The late blight epidemic, affecting tomato and potato crops, is an example, although blight is not technically a fungus it responds to the same cool wet conditions. Fortunately, we have no signs of blight in our nightshade crops this year, which led me to ask the question why? What did we do right? In asking this question, I also did some research on a few new (to me) fungal diseases, and what led to their introduction into our garden.

As far as late blight is concerned, I believe the two most important measures of prevention were quality, uninfected seed, and rotation. I've saved my own tomato seed for three generations, and each year I follow the method of fermenting the seed pulp before washing the seed and properly drying it for storage. The fermentation process promotes good germination, but it also destroys potential pathogens that can be harbored by the seed. Our potato seeds are put to the test by coming through a long storage period, proving that they are disease free.

Second to quality seed in disease prevention, is rotation. It is best to maintain a 2-3 year rotation of crops, and whenever you are introduced to a new disease in your garden, it is important to research the alternate hosts of this disease. It can be surprising to find dissimilar crops can host the same disease, and often weeds will harbor and spread disease. Along with rotation, it is necessary to remove any plant residue (leaves, stems, roots) from the garden and properly compost the material before returning it to the soil.

These two important factors certainly contributed to our garden's blight free status, despite the prevalence of blighted potato fields no more than 5 miles from us. Healthy plants will be able to withstand certain thresholds of disease, borne in on the wind and rain, so part of the story is plain good fortune that our crops did not succumb. But keeping the plants from contact with the soil can also prevent or suppress blight. So perhaps the layer of mulch we applied to the crops in mid-June hampered the incubation process, necessary to the spread of the disease.

I always thought of carrots as a rather trouble free crop, once they are thinned and weeded, they generally take care of themselves. We've had some damage from Carrot Root Fly (or Carrot Rust Fly), but again, rotation and fall cultivation is usually enough to keep their numbers under control. This year I have been introduced to a fungal disease that affects the carrot leaves, Alternaria Leaf Blight. It affects older crops, later in the season after the rows have closed in, reducing air flow. Like other fungi, it thrives in cool wet conditions. But where did it come from, how was it introduced to our garden?

Going back to my original statement, about the importance of quality seed, I realized that my first carrot seed saving venture was flawed. I had selected quality storage carrots to grow for seed last summer, but I had not read enough information about preventing the spread of disease through seed. Alternaria is most often transmitted through infected seed. And there is a simple method of treating seed to halt it's spread to the next crop. Many types of seeds, including the Cole family, lettuce, spinach, eggplant and nightshades, as well as carrots, can be treated in a hot water bath, for a specific length of time (see the table on this link for details). I have also read about using a hot water and cider vinegar solution, though it looks as though the temperature and length of exposure is the most effective measure of killing potential pathogens.

The Alternaria leaf blight does not much damage the crop, especially at the later stages when most of the growth is complete. For the most part, it is a problem for mechanical harvesters, as the stems break off easily, leaving roots in the ground. The most damaging effect of this fungus is that is promotes the spread of damping-off in the soil. And I do believe that my last planting of carrots was cut back by damping-off. This could lead to potential problems for direct seeded crops and young seedlings in the future.

Alternaria Leaf Blight of Carrots

Cereal crops have their own biosphere of diseases, including fungi, bacteria and viruses. Most of these disease cycles can be broken by planting non-cereal crops in rotation, but some vegetable and legume crops can host cereal diseases as well. Developing resistant seed in cereal crops is an important and active area of agricultural research. Research labs around the world are constantly responding to new mutations of cereal diseases, breeding crops with genetic resistance, and making these resistant varieties available to many Third World countries whose farmers do not depend on fungicides for healthy crops.

We bought our Vicar Hulless Oat seed from a small independent seed producer, the seed is an heirloom variety, and granted, there are few options for purchasing small quantities of cereal seeds in Canada, so we hoped for the best. The description of the seed said nothing of disease resistance, and in the future, that will be a requirement in my seed purchases. Our Hard Red Spring Wheat is a modern, disease-resistant cultivar, proven in our climate, and it has withstood the variety of cereal diseases this year. The Hulless Oats, on the other hand, are peppered with Septoria or Speckled Leaf Blotch, a fungal disease. It can easily spread to other cereal crops, so our healthy crop of wheat, only 20 feet from the infected oats, has given me first-hand evidence of the necessity of disease resistant cultivars.

Septoria or Speckled Leaf Blotch on Hulless Oats

Growing small grains and seeds

We are growing some test plots of small grains and seeds in the garden this year. Mostly, these plots have taught me about the growing conditions of each crop, as well as the pests and diseases specific to each. We started with small seed packets last year, planting roughly a 3' X 3' bed of each grain or seed. The seeds saved from the first plot planted out about 500 row feet this year. Again we would be saving the seed, and would get some moderate harvests, along with enough seed to plant out a full sized crop to supply our needs for a year. That was the plan, of course, before we cemented our plans to move to the West coast next spring. It will be strange, and in some ways wonderful, to not be growing a garden next year, a sabbatical of sorts.

Back to the grains, this year we planted 200' of popcorn (I've found that it makes a nice cornmeal as well as a popping corn); 100' of sunflower (we will be lucky to harvest any seed this year, still no flowers); 300' of amaranth (good mixed with cereals, and we are going to try it as a sprouting grain for winter); 500 row feet of millet (a good rice substitute); 500' of quinoa (an excellent protein and good flavored rice substitute); poppy seed here and there (the cutworms really got to them, so I kept re-planting wherever we had the space); 500' of hulless oats; 250' dry peas; 350' baking beans.

The cutworms preferred the amaranth, quinoa and poppies over the cereals like oats, millet or popcorn, so they may deserve some protection if cutworms are a problem. The next time we grow these grains I would plant them in different soils, in a separate rotation. The cereal type grains (oats, millet, wheat) can be planted in newer ground, with few amendments, such as after turning in a cover crop. Dry peas and baking beans can be treated this way as well, although they do benefit from working a light layer of compost into the soil. The vegetable type grains (amaranth, quinoa, poppy) require fertile loose soil, with a high compost and humus content, and would benefit from the higher water retention in this class of soil as well. Popcorn and sunflower are heavy feeders and require rich composted soil as well.

Golden Amaranth. The grains seeds are the size of sesame seeds with a high protein content of 16%. I am also testing each of these grains as possible feed grains for livestock, so the high protein grains are attractive. Amaranth greens can be eaten as a cooked vegetable when young, so plant thick, and thin the plants out to about 2' spacing (livestock will love the thinnings as well). This variety can reach 6-8' high. The seeds are good cooked in porridge, added to granola, added to breads or baked goods, and can be popped as a snack, or sprouted.

Proso Millet. 12-14% protein content. Good potential for chicken feed, the seed heads are easy to harvest, and can be fed out whole, no milling or threshing required. We also enjoy cooked millet as a rice substitute, often using it in casseroles, or as a base under vegetables or curries. Highly drought tolerant, and ripens quickly in short seasons.

Red Quinoa. At least 16% protein, and a whole protein at that, with all of the amino acids our body requires. It can be tricky to grow, seems to be more susceptible to drought, rust and aphids, and does not have the hardy characteristics of it's cousin Lamb's Quarters, which seems to thrive just about anywhere. It is also a longer season grain, and light frost will burn and kill seedheads.

Vicar Hulless Oats. Easy to grow and thresh for use in the kitchen. Similar growing requirements to regular feed type oats. We chose a heirloom variety, but it is not showing high resistance to rust, so in the future we would choose a more resistant modern variety. Only a few plants are as blighted as these ones, most of the crop will mature despite the rusted leaves, but it is not good practice to allow rust to develop in our garden as it will jeopardize our wheat crop. If we were staying for another season, we would most likely have pulled up all of the rusted plants and removed them from the garden.

"Popcorn" popcorn. Easy to grow, these plants only reach about 3' high, and produce 2-3 6" cobs. The cobs dry quickly in the ears, needing only a few weeks of extra drying time after harvest in northern climates.

But they do need protection from the European Corn Borer. I would like to try putting mesh bags over each ear, in the early stages of development, to prevent the maggot from damaging the kernels. Left as they are, with the biological controls of natural predators, they take about 10% of my crop.

St. Hubert Dry Peas. Well worth growing your own split peas if you have the room. They dry quickly in the pod, and thresh out with ease. These grain peas cook down to a delicately flavored puree, as you would expect from split peas. They can also be ground into a high protein flour. Cracked, they would make an excellent livestock feed at 22-24% protein.

The Pea Moth is the main pest of our pea crops, but they seem to prefer the higher sugar content of the shelling peas, and generally leave the dry peas alone. The dry peas are also more resistant to mildews, because they seem to mature and dry out before the long-fruiting shelling types.

Jacob's Cattle Baking Beans. A decent bush type baking bean. It's not the highest yielding type, but the beans are very good, smooth and flavorful.

Mauve-Flowered Poppy. I snuck a row of poppy seeds in with my flower and herb beds, where a cutworm fence protected them. The flowers are mostly done now, as the cosmos take over blooming. Poppy seed is easy to grow and easy to harvest and thresh, each plant produces 4-6 poppy flowers/seedheads. They dry out well within our short season, but must be watched for mildew in early autumn heavy rains. The stalks tend to fall over and could benefit from trellising or fencing.

Some grains and seeds we did not get around to trying include sesame seed, flax seed, chickpeas, soybeans and lentils. These can also be easily grown in the garden, and harvested for the pantry without the need of specialized machinery or milling.

Garden Tour

My how the garden grows! Rainbow after a thunder shower only 10 days ago...

The view from the kitchen table this morning. There's a lot of bare ground in the foreground, that's where the cutworms have done the most damage, even getting into the herb beds. I was pretty surprised to see them cut herbs like savory, dill, cilantro, parsley, fennel, anise, basil, calendula, and poppy flowers seem to be a favorite treat of theirs. I removed all of the onion seedlings from the middle bed and will transplant them back into clean ground. We are working on constructing cutworm fences around the seed beds. They can climb, but not very high on slick vertical surfaces. I'll post more on the fences when we have them constructed and tested.

Here's another angle of the herb, greens and roots beds. We lost all of the beets, turnips, chard, spinach, direct seeded lettuce/mesculun, and a few plantings of carrots and parsnips are still struggling along. I scout the mature lettuce bed regularly, they only cut of the outer leaves of the larger lettuces, revealing their presence. Thank goodness there is only one cycle of cutworms per year, and it is coming to an end in a few weeks. So we will still have time for some later plantings of carrots, beets, greens and herbs.

On the left is the first planting of carrots and parsnips, they emerged before the cutworms, and got a bit of a head start. Still, the patches show the damage they have done. To the right, is the potato patch, and they are doing great this year, just starting to flower. The Potato Beetle damage is down to a minimum this year, we are finding only about 5 adults a day, up to 20 on windy days when they blow in from potato farms. To the right of the potatoes, the mulched area, a row of cukes, zukes, and winter squash beginning to flower. And to the right of the vines, my plot of small grains and seeds: popcorn, sunflower, amaranth, millet, quinoa, poppy seed, hulless oats. The cutworms have been working their way down the grains as well, and we are just starting to weed in there, so I'm self-consciously omitting a picture of them! I plan to do a post on these small grains and seeds as they mature.

This is my wild, overgrown perennial/biennial herb bed. I underestimated the amount of room the perennials would need in their second year. I left some biennials (caraway, parsley, mullein and chicory) to go to seed in the same bed, so next year the nettle, alfalfa and comfrey will have enough room to expand.

A quarter acre plot of Hard Red Spring Wheat for bread baking, and about 1500 row feet of dry peas, to harvest for the chicken's winter feed. On the right you can just see the newly worked ground, 3/4 acre, for planting grains next year, with the market peas and beans moving into this grain plot. To the left of this picture is about 2000 sq ft of millet (not worth picturing as it is just emerging), to be harvested for chicken feed.

In the lower garden, our green beans and baking beans, as well as our dry peas and shelling peas. As well as a row of Naked Seeded Pumpkins between the peas. We got a few inches of rain this week, warm nights, and a hot sunny day today, so everything is growing by inches.

Next to them, the brassicas and ground cherries. The Flea Beetles never did make it down to the transplants, after giving my turnips and radishes a hard time. And now I can hardly find a Flea Beetle in the garden, I'm pretty sure the Soldier Beetles finished them off, their population exploded around the time the Flea Beetles' declined. The cutworms were beginning damage some of the brassicas, so we stuck small nails along side the stems to prevent them cutting the entire stem off, they still climb up and take a leaf here and there, but we scout these areas too, and dig them up.

My first promising tomato on an early ripening Latah variety. These are bare, spindly plants, but they produce plenty of fruit, and always ripen earliest. The bushier Cherry Fox and Roma tomatoes are twice the size, but just starting to produce green fruits.

Hungarian Hot Wax and Carmen Peppers just starting to flower. We spike them with nails as well, to prevent any cutworm damage. We've been babying these peppers along for nearly 4 months now, I don't think I could stand to see one of them toppled.

And our first crop of snow peas in the market garden is about a week away, they started to flower a few days ago. The succession of peas and beans stretches out to the millet and wheat crop. We spaced our successional plantings by 10 days, and in the early spring, those 10 days make a big difference, but our last two plantings are nearly identical in size. It's amazing what a little heat and rain will do!

What came first, the carton or the egg?

Mr. Fritillary asked me a pair of thought provoking questions, and my answers were all the more genuine because he asked them without context or prompting. He handed me an egg from the basket of freshly collected eggs on the kitchen counter, and asked me to describe my thoughts and feelings as I held this egg. Knowing that he must be working on an essay, I dredged for both immediate as well as the deeper responses, and began to sort through the flood of personal and specific stories and feelings that his question provoked. The weight of the egg in my hand communicated the feeling of good, nutritious food to my body. I thought of all the things I had recently made with eggs, and what I could make in the future. I thought back to the previous few months when we were without eggs, and again of the celebratory occasion of our first omelets this spring, of pudding and meringue. But my thoughts were also specific to that egg, I knew it was from one of the young pullets that had just started laying. I thought back to last summer when we incubated the eggs from our old hens, watched the chicks hatch, brooded them, and brought them through winter, into their first spring when we finally start to receive the rewards for our work and our attention. This egg also reminded me of the future potential it contains, to hatch out and ensure the continuation of our flock, and our egg production. I even started to think of the connected stories of growing and harvesting our own grain by hand last summer, and the accomplishment of providing feed for our chicken flock all winter. And even on to the manure we have been moving out of the chicken coop that will provide the fertility to grow another year's worth of food for ourselves. All these stories in one little egg. I also noticed that my feelings were centered around contentment, accomplishment, resilience, celebration, and the security of being able to put nutritious food on our table.

At this point, I began to wonder where this all was going, when Mr. Fritillary handed me an egg carton, and asked how it made me feel, and what it made me think. Now I could appreciate the direction this was going. I was immediately confused, in a subtle way: was this food? Doubt: Where did these eggs come from? How were they produced? How fresh are they? How far have they traveled? And then there was driving to town, supermarkets, prices, organic or omega-3, fat and cholesterol. These feelings hit me like a brick in my stomach. How long would this carton last? How many meals could I get out of it? When would I be able to get to town again? (We do not have the option around here of buying eggs from a local small farm.) Scarcity and anxiety tugged at me on one end, and on the other end over-production and waste from our own past market egg production: How big is our local market? How much do we charge? Are we covering the cost of producing the eggs? What do we do with the surplus? Are we providing the best, highest quality product, or do we have to cut corners in order to cover the costs because quality food is not valued in the local food-culture? Food is expected to be cheap, and we could not contend with the ethical compromises of producing cheap food. And worse yet, if we did compromise, producing and selling cheap food would only perpetuate the cycle because we could only afford to buy cheap food on those wages. There are quite a few stories in that egg carton. Among them, the story of our becoming primarily subsistence farmers, on a self-reliant scale, each year trying to keep our interaction with the market economy contained and under our control, so that it does not contaminate our entire lives in the way that this single egg carton demonstrated.

I have been reading recently about the concept of Resilience in the Transition Handbook over at Appropedia. Resilience is the concept I have been reaching for, without knowing what to call it, always aware that there is something stronger and more necessary than self-reliance or sustainability. Resilience describes a network, more complex than a closed-loop self-reliant principle. Out here, we are forced to be self-reliant because our neighboring "community" does not share our values, or our view of what needs to be done now, in order to ensure a future on this planet. So for the most part, we act on our own, and rely upon ourselves. This is not a model of strength, it is vulnerable and open to shocks, and at the very least, restrictive because it closes us out of the full resources of a community and a local economy. But on our little homestead island, we have moments and pieces of resilience. I will never look at an egg in the same way again.

Speaking of eggs, forget frugal for now, this is the season when we splurge! Eggs are a wonderful spring food, easily digested protein for spring work, like mucking out barns and starting on this winter's supply of firewood. I've had my eye on this Yorkshire Pudding recipe all winter, and couldn't wait to try it. You may know them as pop-overs. They can be made plain, and spread with jam, but I opted for the savory version, making what some may know as Toad in a Hole. I never grew up with any of these recipes, but they are a new found favorite. If you are awash with your hens' idea of spring fever, and have some extra eggs to spare, then these are quite a frugal delight.

Batter: 3 eggs lightly beaten, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup whole milk or light cream. The batter will be runny. You can pour this batter plain, into a greased muffin pan, filling each cup half way. Or you can add a tablespoon of sugar and fruit (dried or fresh). Or for Toad in a Hole, add half a teaspoon salt, your favorite herbs, and one small onion, diced and sauteed until beginning to brown, mix into batter. For the Toad part, make marble sized meatballs (a la breakfast sausage patties) and brown them in a frying pan, or use slices of dried or cooked sausage. Drop your choice of meat in the bottom of each greased muffin cup, and pour batter over, just to cover or half-full. Bake in moderately hot oven (375F), until fluffy and browned, about 15 minutes. Best enjoyed steaming hot!

I never was a fan of meringue pies, at least not the store bought kind. But I'm digging up all kinds of egg recipes, and gave it a try. The recipe was for a basic vanilla pudding, and press-in crumb crust. I used oat flour in place of 3/4 of the whole wheat flour, making a soft textured pie crust. And I added some dried blueberries and chopped dried apples, along with a dash of cardamom and nutmeg to the pudding (in place of the vanilla). The pie didn't last long, but my favorite part was the pudding, and I am quite happy with this oat pie crust, it held together very well. It went something like this: 1 cup oat flour, 1/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1 tablespoon lard (or softened butter), mix, then add spoon fulls of water (I tried milk too, but it made the crust too crumbly) until the mixture holds together and is slightly sticky. Press into lightly greased pan and bake 10 minutes at 350. Pour pudding (using your preference of thickener, flour, cornstarch or arrowroot) into baked pie crust. Beat egg whites, adding a teaspoon of sugar, a sprinkle at a time, until frothy. Spread evenly on pudding, bake 5 minutes at 350 until browned. Cool to room temperature before cutting.

Every 3 Seconds

Well, among today's international radio news headlines, after the news of Japan's lowest stock market level since 1983, and China's skyrocketing unemployment rate, and the Canadian Auto worker's concessions to avoid bankruptcy at GM, Barbie's 50th birthday made it as international news. It's pretty dire out there, and I think most of us are re-evaluating our plans and household economies to pull through the next few years. We are more grateful than ever that we have the ability and opportunity to grow our food and keep the pantry stocked. With our minds and hearts usually swimming with reports on the spike of world poverty and hunger, we would not normally give Barbie more than a passing thought. But a statistic caught my attention With one Barbie(R) doll sold every 3 seconds somewhere in the world, Barbie(R) remains the world's most popular doll and a powerhouse brand among girls of all ages.

I found it sadly ironic that Barbie's sales match the rate at which a child dies of poverty in our world. One child receives a toy, and one child dies for want.

"Sometimes, it breaks your heart, but you realize your guilt is only futile since you see the tear stain on her face, not your own. You look at the image you've made, and it breaks your heart again. You know that nearly half of all kids in this country are malnourished and stunted, but you, yourself remain nicely cushioned around the bones. You come from a country where people worry about getting fat, not malnutrition. So you stay. You want to help. The guilt remains, even after more than a year in this country. But the guilt soon begins to blur with responsibility. And then responsibility begins to blur with action." -quote from the photographer Wen-Yan King

It does break your heart, it breaks ours. But I love what this photographer says, guilt blurs into responsibility, and responsibility blurs into action. We try to take this responsibility into our hearts, and make decisions about the way that we live that can, we believe, make the world a better place for children to be born.

As much as the "bad news" crowds for space in our minds, we also see much talk and action around Social Responsibility. There are a lot of people working on these issues, and we are reaching out to make connections with them. Our little homestead has been a necessary step along that path, because we believe it is the strongest base from which to act. We are trying to reach a scale of subsistence that buys us back our time and resources, so that we can contribute more to resolving the devastating, heartbreaking state of our world. This is our approach, and there are as many paths and solutions, as there are beating hearts.

Sorry about the sad blog. Keep hope alive. Plant seeds. Encourage friends. Grow.

A conversation on ecological sustainability: Part 2

In my post A conversation on ecological sustainability, I made these statements: "I no longer believe that over-population is the dominant problem, or even the root cause of many of our ecological crises. I firmly believe there is more than enough for everyone alive right now on this earth to be nourished, clothed, housed and enabled with dignified work. This is not an utopian ideal, but an ethical principle." I am aware that overpopulation is one of those controversial hot-topics, which is why I feel it is so important to return to this issue and keep churning it.

First off, by simple mathematical equation, arriving at a concrete number for the carrying capacity of the earth, no matter how large or small, requires a calculated footprint for each human being. If we take the current available arable land on this earth as a base, in order to calculate how many human beings can live on that land mass, we need to know how much land each person requires. So which standard of living do we use? When we first began homesteading, one reason we moved into an underpopulated rural area was because we thought that we needed 100 acres to homestead on a largely self-reliant basis, and these depopulating areas held the best chances that we would be able to afford a piece of land that size. In the three years we have been on a 100 acre parcel (10 ac cleared pasture, 90 ac wooded), we have found, through practical experience and meeting the majority of our material needs, that we need a lot less land. Really, 10 acres would almost be too much. Even with wood as our sole source of heat and cooking fuel, and harvesting wood for building all of our barns, fencing and sheds, we have only begun to thin 4 to 5 acres of bush that was clear cut 20 years ago. The trees we harvest are primarily quick growing poplar and fir, and they are not large, average diameter of 6-8", and at least half of the trees we used were dry-rot because the regrowth was crowded and had not been managed. So if we were harvesting our wood out of a sustainably managed woodland, with hardwood for fuel, we need only 2-3 acres, at most. As we develop more solar hot water and solar cooking technologies, we need even less. And this sustainably forested area could also serve as a source of grazing for goats and rabbits, wildlife habitat to shelter natural beneficials in the garden, and food sources such as bramble fruits, orchards and nuts.

As for arable land for gardens, grazing, hay and grain, we first thought that we would run out of room on the 10 cleared acres. And these unamended, unimproved, tired pastures were just enough to carry one dairy cow, a horse and some pigs and poultry, so our first approach was to improve the pastures to increase the carrying capacity. The real revolution for us was to change the kinds of livestock we carry. One dairy cow provides enough milk and dairy products for a large extended family, and without a sustainable community approach to dairying in this area, this one cow was consuming most of the land resources as well as our time and energy, and even with my best effort to use up every drop of milk, in reality, we were producing too much. In switching to goats as dairy animals, and grazing animals such as rabbits and ducks instead of the grain intensive pigs and chickens, we are now able to meet our dairy, egg and meat needs (including growing the grains to raise them) on less than half the land. So as we continue to improve pastures and soil, we can grow all of our food (except coffee, tea and salt) on less than 3 acres, in Zone 4b. The carrying capacity of this zone is just about equivalent to the marginal lands surrounding deserts, we have a 3-4 month growing season, and 8-9 months dormancy, trees grow slowly and pastures do not provide more than one cut in a season. It is the same in a semi-arid climate where the growing season after the rains is only 3 months, with the dormant dry season extending throughout the rest of the year. So in a temperate zone, we could easily decrease our footprint by half or more. A large majority of the land mass of this earth is in the temperate band, if these lands are managed on a sustainable scale, using very low-tech methods and traditional fuels and foods, I would suggest that one acre is plenty to support one adult and a child. If we then continue to innovate, improve and build soils, push back the deserts, and use the types of methods Bishop's Homegrown detailed, the potential is endless.

We also thought that we would run into water issues, even here with a large snow pack and heavy precipitation, because we moved on here with a shallow, hand-drilled well. The well consists of a 2" diameter pipe drilled down to about 25 feet. The water table is usually between 10-15 feet below the surface, but it replenishes slowly because it is only ground water. We are not tapped into any water veins or the fossil water 100" below the surface that our neighbors access. We have to manage our water usage, both in the summer if we go 3-4 weeks without much rain, and in the winter when the ground water and precipitation is locked up as ice and snow. We have often thought of drilling a deeper well, or of using water catchment to meet our non-drinkable water needs. We cannot irrigate the garden on this scale, and even meeting the water needs of the dairy cow began to drain our well, especially in the winter. We mulch the garden and build up water-retaining humus in the soil, and only water tender transplants. On this level, even without rainwater catchment, we use about 10 gallons a day to meet all of our water needs, including livestock, garden, laundry, processing our canned food, etc. Our shallow well only taps the groundwater in a small diameter around it, I would guess that our water footprint, in an area with heavy precipitation to be only 10 cubic feet of ground water. Mr. Fritillary farmed on the edge of a desert, and using permaculture and water management techniques such as heavy mulch, shade houses, etc, he was able to catch enough water for 6-12 months with 5 inches of rain off of a 112 square foot roof. Most semi-arid zones receive 5-10" of rain a year, so with the appropriate rain catchment and storage techniques, water needs can easily be met on the land scale suggested above.

So now for manufactured goods, materials such as metals that require mining, electronics and technology such as solar panels and wind generators. We do our best to make either life-time purchases or buy used goods. We spend well under $1000 a year on purchases such as electronics, bicycle parts, solar panels, generators, tools, grain mills, cookware etc. And that number gets smaller each year. We could easily meet our fiber, clothing and leather needs on the footprint given above. We do not purchase things that are considered "consumables" or pure entertainment. Local theater, arts, artisan crafts and the like are sustainable ways to fulfill our desire to express and entertain one another.

Our power system is on the same micro-scale. We meet our power needs, including powering a laptop, radio, mp3 player, cell phone, household appliances (including a fan in the summer), small power tools, lights and electric fencing on 1200 Watts a month. On this scale, designing and building a power system to meet household or community power needs are easily achievable. Villages in Africa are building their own wind generators out of "scrap" and bicycle generators to power their cell phones, laptops, radios, lighting, etc. The more localized the power generation, the more efficient, because power is lost the further it is pushed down a line. Google is beginning to source renewable power to run the large server farms that provide the Internet. By locating these server farms in appropriate places where there is a consistent power source like tidal, geothermal or wind/sun, we can sustainably build up the global communication network that the Internet provides. Access to the internet can be broadcast over radio-waves, requiring only simple receivers, and data can be stored on-line at these renewably powered server farms, eliminating the need for fiber-optic lines, tele-communication satellites and power-sucking desktop computers.

Transportation is a pretty easy issue to resolve, it just takes a lot of reworking, and restructuring the way we live, but it is technologically and practically possible for us to transport ourselves and our goods without the use of fossil fuels, with low-impact mining and manufacturing. For ourselves, we use bicycles as local transportation, even through our winters, and carpool trips to town a few times a year. But we are working on an electric bicycle design, using a tandem and a trailer, powered by a compact marine wind generator to keep the battery charged. With this bicycle we can comfortably carry 100 lbs in the trailer and 50 lbs on the bike, and travel 100 miles a day at a maximum.

We do not usually "boast" of these facts about our life because we are typically met with a combination of pity and aversion. But we live this way, and are comfortable, nourished, healthy, happy, fulfilled, we have friends and a great marriage, so as far as standard of living, I think we are very well-off. We work hard, but we are not breaking our backs. We live within restrictions, but we are not stagnated by poverty. We are not Luddites by far, and use the latest innovations in technology when they improve our quality of life without harming another's. These are ethical choices, at heart, but they are also practical solutions. It has been a kind of experiment for us to live this way, and because of what we both have learned, we also have a high sense of security and confidence that we are able not only to survive, but to thrive and contribute to our community under incredibly adverse conditions, including the climate disasters to come. I looked into the definition of pragmatism, because I know that I am no longer an idealist, since we have been living by and redefining the ideals that we only held in theory when we lived in an urban environment. By the definition below, I believe, if these kinds of labels really matter, that my approach to this issue has been entirely pragmatic.

"The goal of pragmatist theorizing is not to solve abstract philosophical problems but to attain knowledge of a concrete, social reality and to focus on the problems of actual experience. This knowledge and experience will then direct political action and social change: theory and practice are interrelated. Based on this experiential and practical foundation, pragmatists hold, among other things, that there is a plurality of values and meanings, that human action can better the human condition, and that there is a relationality between the experiencing subject and the experienced object."

So to re-state our belief that overpopulation is not the problem, to us, it is not a question of whether the solutions are out there, the question is whether those of us who have been used to a higher material standard of living are willing to make these changes before it really is too late.

In doing a basic google search for concrete numbers on the arable land available on earth, I found this page:

Surface Area of the EarthEarth has a surface area of 196,940,400 square miles, slightly less than a perfect ball with a diameter of 7913.5 miles (which is the mean diameter of the Earth - see "Prove it" under 103).

The surface area of the seven continents and all the islands of the world is about 57 million miles, while the total area of the six habitable continents (Antarctica excluded) is around 52 million square miles.

Including Antarctica , over one fifth of the globe's land mass is under water (oceans, lakes, rivers, etc.) or ice. This leaves about 45 million square miles of exposed land.

The human population on earth has crossed six billion. If we distribute all the exposed land evenly among all mankind, 133 people would have to share one square mile. What that means is that every single person on Earth, man woman and child would have close to five acres of land for his or her use. More precisely, each person would get 209,000 square feet of land, or a square plot of land 457 feet on each side.

Not all this land can be used beneficially however. A significant portion of the Earth's exposed land is unhabitable or cannot be used for any agricultural purpose. Large portions lie in the far north. Large portions are extremely arid. Large portions are very mountainous. In sum, only about one fourth of all the land on earth, or somewhat more than 12 million square miles, is arable.

Today, over half of the arable land in the world is in fact not under cultivation. Bringing the unused land into service in many cases would require huge investments of money and effort, and would do considerable damage to the environment. For example, only about 28% of the arable land on the African continent is used for growing crops. Immense tracts of forests or jungles would have to be cleared to bring the rest of the arable land on that continent to productive use.

Thus, only about one eighth of each imaginary plot of land distributed to each person is land which is under cultivation. In effect, each person has a piece of land about 26,000 square feet (a square 161 feet on each side or just a bit more than ½ an acre) at his or her disposal on which to grow all that he or she needs.

I believe that this is possible, and if our earth were being tended on an ecologically sustainable scale, we would be building soil and increasing the amount of arable land. By this I do not mean huge agro-tracts of monocrops, because these farms contribute to the loss of soil and arable land. I am starting to digress into another branch of this issue, so I will save the rest of this discussion for the next blog.

Wiping the slate clean

So 2008's harvest is now removed from the sidebar, and I've posted it here for posterity. May the new growing season be more bountiful than the last.

Vegetables Harvested 2008
Beets 36.5 lb
Broad Beans 6.5 lb
Broccoli heads 1.5lb
Brussels Sprouts 2.5 lb
Cabbage 9 lb
Carrots 400 lb
Cauliflower 5 lb
Cucumber (slicing) 42 lb
Cucumber (pickling) 70.25 lb
Fennel bulbs 3 lb
Fresh Greens: unlimited (mesculun salad, spinach, chard, kale, fresh herbs). Roughly 4 lbs/ wk for 4 months
Green Beans 103.75 lb
Leek 3 lb
Onion 133.5 lb
Peas (shelled) 34 lb
Potatoes 661 lb
Pumpkin 154 lb
Squash 193 lb
Sweet Potato 52.5 lb
Tomatoes 183.5 lb
Turnip 43.5 lb
Watermelon just one 3 lb
Zucchini 35 lb

Staples 2008
Eggs 12 a day average
Butter 2 lb a week average
Whole milk 2 liters a day
Fresh cheese 3 lb a week average (plus whey for chickens)
Beef 100 lb
Chicken 44 lb
Bread wheat 300 lb
Rye for kitchen 30 lb
Split Peas 6 lb
Baking Beans 6.5 lb
Popcorn 3.75 lb
Pumpkin Seed 2 lb
Poppy Seed .5 lb
Rye 450 lb for feed
Oats 2000 lb for feed
Wheat 1000 lb for feed
Hay 250 bales clover and timothy
Mangles 200 lb
6 Cords Firewood

Wild Fruit 2008
Apples 650 lb
Blueberries 22 lb
Chokecherries 8 lb
Pin Cherries 6 lb

Herbs and Teas 2008
Alfalfa 200 g dried
Catnip 130 g dried
Comfrey 32 g dried
Mint 45 g dried
Mullein 20 g dried
Oregano 125 g dried
Red Clover 160 g dried
Sage 40 g dried
Scullcap 85 g dried
Thyme 40 g dried

Saved Seed 2008
Andover Parsnip: 55g
Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry: packet
Batchelor's Buttons: packet
Bloomsdale Spinach: 10g
Calendula: 20g
Carmen Sweet Pepper: packet
Cherry Fox Tomato: packet
Corriander: 20g
Dill: packet
Garden Sweet Cucumber: 10g
Giant Russian Sunflower: 60g
Green Windsor Broad Bean: 70g
Hulless Oats: 175g
Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper: packet
Jacob's Cattle Baking Bean: 600g
Latah Tomato: packet
Mauve Flowering Poppy Seed: 20g
Mesculun Lettuce Mix: packet
Naked Seeded Pumpkin: 90g
Pickles Cucumber: 10g
Popcorn: 275g
Potatoes (5 varities): 100 lbs
Proso Millet: 130g
Provider Green Bean: 500g
Roma Tomato: packet
Sage: packet of tiny seeds
Scarlet Nantes Carrot: 20g
St. Hubert Dry Peas: 150g
Sugar Baby Watermelon: 5g
Thompson Shelling Peas: 540g
Thyme: packet of tiny seeds
Toma Verde Tomatillo: packet
Wild Carraway: 10g
Yellow Plumb Tomato: packet

In the Pantry 2008
Applesauce 32 Quarts
Garden Tomato Sauce 12 Pints
Spicy Tomato Sauce 3 Quarts, 14 Half pints
Garlic and Pepper Tomato Sauce 15 Pints
Just Tomato Sauce 10 Half Pints
Tomato Apple Chutney 14 Pints
Apple Mint Butter 9 Pints
Beef Stock 15 Quarts
Beef 31 Quarts, 30 Pints
Chicken Stock 22 Quarts
Chicken 28 Pints, 5 Half pints
Bread and Butter Pickles 8 Quarts
Shelled Peas 3 Quarts, 25 Pints
Green Beans 41 Quarts, 10 Pints
Dried Apple Rings 2.5 lb
Dried Fruit Leather 3.75 lb
Dried Blueberries 2.5 lb
Dried Tomatoes .5 lb

The value of quality: thriving on winter feeds

The next four months, December through March, bring our harshest temperatures and stinging wind. The average overnight temperature for January and February of 2008 was -10C, but we usually get a week-long cold snap or two, dropping to -30C overnight. And we also get a good January rain, melting the top 3 or 4 feet of snow accumulation. Winter can be harsh, and it can be a hardship to survive, but with preparation, including food storage and sheltered buildings, winter can also be a welcomed time of quiet, rest and reflection. It is a counterpoint to the almost frantic pace of a short summer.

Winter can be difficult for our animals as well, after all, chickens were originally jungle-fowl, and goats and horses were originally desert dwellers. Breeding can encourage hardy characteristics like fat coverage, thick fur or down, and high-metabolism, but encouraging these characteristics to develop requires a higher quality of feed. And even hardy animals need a well-sheltered spot in order to thrive. We have designed the barns to shelter the animals from the prevailing wind, as well as taking advantage of the warming winter sun. The hay and grain is stored in the north-west end of the barn to insulate from the wind, and the animals are on the south-east, allowing direct sunlight to warm the pens at first light, dawn being the coldest time of the night. Along with this, the goats and chickens have a low-roofed and well bedded box, inside their pens, in which to sleep. This keeps draughts off of them at night, and takes advantage of the body heat they produce, radiating it back to them.

From here, their ability to thrive is dependent on a high quality diet. Animals, like us, can only eat so much bulk in a day. North American children, who survive mostly on junk-food, have become malnourished, a term we usually only connect with starving children in Sudan and elsewhere. Likewise, if offered only low-quality feed, an animal will become malnourished, fail to thrive, and if still required to produce eggs or milk, will either quit, or do so at the cost of their lifespan.

A quality diet consists of adequate protein, rich in minerals and vitamins, and contains a source of fat as well. Most of us can tell the difference between poor and high quality foods when looking at the raw materials. Whether it is carrots, green beans or hay and grain, common senses can tell us a lot about the quality of a food: color, taste, smell, texture, crispness, etc. Green leafy hay that smells like a summer pasture is obviously better than stalky bleached dusty "hay". The green hay will not only be more appetizing, but will contain all of the essential ingredients of quality feed. A good quality wheat kernel can be distinguished from a poor one by a plump large size, golden color, and a sticky gluten center when chewed between the teeth. Those who purchase their feed, rarely have the opportunity to choose, but rather must rely upon the feed mill to make those choices. In a good grain growing season, the grain market for human consumption can become flooded, and often, high quality grains can overflow to the feed mills. But in not-so-good or even average years, all of the high-quality grains will be used for human consumption, and the leftover, low-protein, low-quality grains trickle down to the feed mills, sometimes at a high price because of a lack of supply due to failed crops.

This situation describes a portion of our motivation to grow our own grains, along with strong concerns regarding food security and the environmental and ecological costs of industrial farming and transportation of the crops. We rented a tractor to cultivate the two acres for our grain in the fall of 2007. But we planted and harvested it by hand. Most of the grain was seeded by broadcasting, but we planted a quarter-acre with a garden seeder to compare yields and coverage between these two methods. Mr. Fritillary harrowed the broadcast seed under with our horse, Pilgrim. The grains eventually started to ripen by late August. I will write more about our grain growing and harvesting, it was a difficult season for grains, with so much rain, we were both lucky and worked hard to bring in a crop at all this year.

We harvested using a combination of techniques, but mostly we harvested with a scythe. In this way, we harvested grain, straw and weeds together. These grain fields being organic, and turned from pasture the year before, the predominance of weeds were vetch and red clover, both valuable high-protein legumes. Too many of these "weeds" make it impossible for a harvester to move through the field and thresh the grain properly, but they presented no problems for our scythes, and they dried out in a matter of hours under a hot sun. The scythed wheat is stored loose in the barn, off the ground, and is almost entirely dust free.

The cured vetch and red clover add food value to the bundles of grain we feed to the chickens, they eat the greens as readily as the grain, and the mixture of greens helps to balance the calcium/phosphorous content of their feed and provides much needed Vitamin A, which can be seen by the deep yellow of their egg yolks. The chickens make quick work of the grain, served in bundles with a box underneath to catch fallen grains and heads. When they have cleaned off all of the heads, the remaining straw is put down as bedding or nesting material, and turned into compost for the garden. The wheat we grew this year is of a higher quality than I can buy from the local bulk store, or the local organic grain mill, which means that it is above 14% protein, perhaps up to 16% protein. Typical feed wheat is between 10-12%. Our high-quality grains mean that we do not need any protein supplements like soya meal (which causes thyroid problems) or linseed meal (which usually contains rancid oil residue).

These are our young pullets, hatched out this summer, from our Isa Brown hens (a common industrial laying hen from a Rhode Island Red crossed with Rhode Island White) and a Plymouth Barred Rock rooster. There are four distinct colorings: black barred, white with grey bars, white with red wing coloring, and red with white feather tips.

The oats are fed mostly to the horse, who eats them straw, chaff and all, and the goats who nibble off the grain heads, leaving the coarse straw behind. Feeding the oats with the chaff or hulls pretty much eliminates the chances of colic in either the horse or the goats. These oats are about 12% protein, but they also contain more sugars and oils than the wheat, which are necessary for the goats who are producing kids as well as keeping warm.

The winter rye was ready to harvest in early August. We planted only 1/4 acre of rye, so we harvested it with a hand sickle, and stuffed it into feed bags, stacked in the barn. The straw of rye is a high quality bedding, it was used to thatch roofs and make horse collars, etc. meaning that it does not readily break down or absorb moisture. We use the straw to bed down the goats, a foot of this underneath them makes for incredible insulation, and they can nest down into it on cold nights.

The goats also make quick work of picking off the rye heads, their nimble mouths find each and every one, leaving behind the valuable straw. Rye is similar to wheat in protein content.

Another feed crop we grew this summer: mangles or fodder beets. They grow just like beets, but much bigger, and higher in sugars and fiber. The green tops were greedily gobbled down by the goats after harvesting the roots. And the roots are stored in our cold room with the carrots and other root crops. The mangles contain some protein, but are primarily a source of energy or sugars, as well as a treat that definitely gets their appetite and digestion working.

We feed the two of them 3-4 lbs a day, chopped and lightly cooked with a tablespoon of molasses. Served warm this way, around 10 am, it provides energy in the morning after a cold night. We do not serve them the mangles first thing in the morning because the goat's ability to produce body heat comes from the digestion of fibers (ie. hay), not sugars. Goats can easily get a chill by eating concentrates (ie. grain or fodder/roots) on an empty stomach. So we give them a chance to get a good belly full of fresh leafy hay in the morning before the mangles and molasses. Pilgrim likes a bite of this too. The molasses also works as a preventive for Ketosis, a metabolic disorder of pregnant or recently kidded goats in which they do not have enough metabolized energy to cover the demands placed on their body. This is just a general definition, for more specific information about ketosis, please read about it from a credible book or website.

Here they are nose-first in the mangles, notice how Penelope's tail (the one in the front) is held straight up, showing her pleasure and appetite. You can also see in the picture the bulges they are growing, late in their pregnancy. Juniper, the little one, is growing well. She especially needs a high-quality diet since she is not only producing a kid or two, but is still growing to full maturity. She is coming along well, both of them have put on thick downy coats, are bright-eyed and have a ready appetite, and have laid down some condition, which they will need to draw upon in the first month of lactation.

Molasses mouth, licking off every last drop.

A Goat's Economy

This is what we get these days. We no longer get showers. When it rains, it really rains. Twice we have gotten a wheelbarrow of water in 24 hours, at least 5 inches of rain, only ten days apart. The Climate Change models for our area are proving true. I am not sure how much this would be, if it were snow instead of rain! But the forecast both times predicted 1/2 to 1 inch of rain, not 5 inches, which is I think, the result of funding cuts to local weather stations.

This kind of rain keeps me pretty close to the house, and I have been reading up on goats. Our goat-tending neighbor down the road dropped off his goat library, five titles in all, touching on all issues related to goat care and farming. One book in particular has caught my interest, Goat Husbandry by David Mackenzie. In the first few chapters he details the reasons why goats have never fit well with industrialized farming. Goats have always been the cornerstone of subsistence farming, especially those pushed to marginal farmland. I was amazed to read our story echoed in his pages, a story centuries old, of subsistence farmers who tried to raise a family milk cow on marginal land, as a way to try and feed the family as well as raise a supplemental income. More often than not, the needs of the cow would push them into debt, and the needs of milk on the table and cream for income, would deprive the calf of the only protein rich food available, stunting the calf, and further jeprodizing the family's ability to get out of debt.

So I am exploring what it means to be a subsistence farmer, and how subsistence farming works within a community. Our ideals of farming have changed dramatically since we began our adventure. We used to think of our ideal farmstock as consisting of cows, pigs and chickens, with heavy draft horse breeds providing for the extensive amount of grain cultivation and hay necessary to maintain the stock. These animals in particular fit well into industrial or market economies. We are now transitioning to goats, sheep, rabbits and ducks, using only standard horse breeds or possibly draft ponies for the relatively small grain and cultivation needs. Goats, rabbits and ducks (with the exception of sheep), have never fit well into the traditional market farm economy, but are relics of a still older, and perhaps more stable, subsistence farm economy.

Viva la Kraut!

Thanks to Paul at A posse ad esse, I was encouraged to try my hand at making saurkraut. I have been a reader of Weston Price material, and know that fermented food is great for health, I am a fan of yogurt, but like Paul, had never incorporated saurkraut in my diet. But I did put in a few cabbages this spring with the intention of trying a batch.

Like the apple cider vinegar, turning cabbages to saurkraut is really quite simple. I used the ratio I have seen in many blogs and books: 5lbs shreaded cabbage to 3 Tbsp salt. I had 7lbs of cabbage, cored, and sliced as thin as I could with a large knife. The cabbage is Early Jersey Wakefield, it's a summer cabbage dating back to the 1700's, and it is one of the only open pollinated varieties I can find up here in Canada. The heads will not store over the winter unless they are fermented.I tossed it with the salt, mixing it well, and packed it into a gallon jar, tamping it down with my fist until the juice started to run and fill most of the air pockets between the shreaded cabbage. Then to seal the cabbage from the air, and to keep it below the brine, a clean plastic bag filled with brine sits atop. Thanks Paul, for sharing that great tip!
It's alive! Within 24 hours my batch of saurkraut started bubbling and fermenting. I set it next to the fermenting apple juice, behind the stove. I'm not sure if the same micro-critters colonize the briny cabbage, but it's caught the fermentation fever. So now all I do is remove and rinse the bag once every week, and wait about 4 weeks for the taste test.

A bit slow on the Slow Food scene

We just watched the closing discussion from the 2008 panel at the Slow Food Nation Conference in August. The panel consists of some of the greatest activists and writers in the good local food and social justice movement: Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser and Carlo Petrini.

We are a bit slow on the uptake, six weeks after the conference, but our own slow food season has come first.

If you haven't seen this yet, it is well worth watching.

http://fora.tv/2008/08/30/Slow_Food_Nation_Closing_1_of_2
http://fora.tv/2008/08/30/Slow_Food_Nation_Closing_2_of_2

World Food Day

Celebrate Food Sovereignty, and learn more about La Via Campesina's International Peasant Movement.

"The food crisis is the most dramatic link in the chain of crises generated by the neo-liberal economic system – the climate crisis, the energy crisis, the financial crisis, the biodiversity crisis, etc.. It is time for a change of direction, starting with agriculture itself."

The Hunger Project

We have recently been reading about the work The Hunger Project does around the world. They provide a sustainable framework that does so much more than fight poverty. Simply fighting poverty with aid leads to a continual struggle, and invites corruption, inefficiency and creates an industry around Poverty. The Hunger Project seeks to place a foundation upon which families and communities can feed and sustain themselves. We in the West need to give more than aid, we need to restructure our values. Please read their vision...



Our Vision

The vision of a world free from hunger does not look like our present reality minus the problem of hunger.

Our vision of the future is not based on everyone achieving a Western-style, high-consumption lifestyle, which is environmentally unsustainable even for the one billion people who now live it. Nor does it permit one-sixth of the human family to continue to live in abject poverty.
The Hunger Project is committed to transcending this polarity — to creating a future that rejects the inevitability of hunger and recognizes the limitations of a consumerist society.

Achieving the sustainable end of hunger means nothing less than creating a new future for all humanity, a future where

• every day, every person has enough of the right food to be healthy and productive;
  
• babies are born healthy and strong, and girl babies are prized as much as boy babies;
• children stay alive, so parents can have smaller families;
  
• women and girls are full partners in society;
  
• people have control over their own lives and destinies, and all individuals have a chance to contribute;
• the values of honoring human beings and nature flourish.