Nature's surprises

Most of the rose hedge is trimmed.  Only one more 100 ft section to go.

We use rosa rugosa "sandhill" in our hedge.  They grow well without a lot of effort, spread a bit, but not as aggressively as the multiflora rose that got planted in Ohio earlier.  They bloom from late spring well into the fall, and the bees love them.  They also produce giant rose hips which we use for jelly, syrup, and other fun things.

Part of the rose hedge runs past the two Heartnut trees we planted 7 years ago.  When we bought this property there were no trees.  So we have been planting some, and allowing areas to revert to native forest (not mowing, and letting what ever happens, happen.)  The catalogue said we should see nuts in about 5 years. 9 years in I decided that they were just going to be nice ornamental but not much more.  While cleaning up the roses and the ground under the heartnuts, I found a handful of nuts.  Guess I wasn't paying attention.  Not a grand harvest, but a start.  Smiles all around.

Another smile moment happened while hauling rose trimmings to the goats.  The path runs along a perennial bed where we had added a couple of rhubarb plants last year.   The first of the plants promptly died, and the second struggled the whole summer.  I'd written both of them off, but as I walked past I noticed this where we had planted the first rhubarb.

Yep, that's the dead rhubarb sending up a new sprout.  Nature is quite amazing.

sustainability - what does it mean - part 1

So sustainability has been an obsession of mine for as long as I can remember.  I've always felt that the way we live in the world was flawed, and that there was a better way.  Bias exists.  You have been warned.

I'm taking a course to expand my understanding of sustainability-the concept.  I have my answer (flawed I'm sure, and sometimes open to discussion, but not much...) but I'm trying to learn to look from a different, more global and more scientific perspective.  The course I'm taking is free, it's on the futurelearn.com site, and it has made me think.

Here's the link https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/sustainability

I'm going to, from time to time, post thoughts, ideas, and questions about sustainability.  Hope we can generate a conversation.  The course I'm taking has people from all over the world, but I have real problems with their assumptions (not the participants, the course providers... the participants seem to be drinking the cool-aid just fine.)

So, question one - What is sustainability?

Hoping you will post an answer so we can have a conversation.

Back to the discussion about a $9.00 chicken

I read an article in the Harvard Review (my mother-in-law is an alum...not me) about the cost of eating "healthy" vs "non-healthy" food.  It was a review of research (which I haven't read yet, but will on my day off), so it was less specific on some things than I would have liked, but it did highlight some things that I have also found in my daily life.  First, the cost of eating "healthy" food is not as great as most of us think.  It is only about $1.50 per person per day more.  Second, that cost may be insignificant to most of the readers of the Harvard Review, but it is a big deal to the people at the bottom end of the income scale.  Third, the food production and distribution system is heavily subsidized to favor "non-healthy" food, so it is less expensive.

There are many things that were not addressed in the review (which may be in the research...) that I have found impact my food choices.  I've recently had the eye opening experience of living (as a family of 4) on a $9.00 an hour income.  Changed some of my assumptions about why people make the food choices they make.  For me, $1.50 per person per day is huge.  That is almost a whole week (after taxes and all the other "benefits" they take) worth of work.  Some how I can't fit an extra week in every month to pay for "healthy" food.  The cost also doesn't address the fact that "healthy" food is either more perishable, so I cant buy it once or twice a month when I shop, or only available in bulk quantities that cost a lot up front but will last me for months.  I don't have the upfront cost, so those are out.  and I cant afford to buy stuff every week.  We shop twice a month.  That's it.  We are lucky.  We have a big garden, and animals, and we have been putting food up for years.  We have the equipment and the skills to do that.  But, when jobs went south, we found that our pantry was not as well stocked as we thought, and the run-up to spring has been grim.  Most people at my wage level don't have the space, equipment, skills, or existing storage to make it.  That's why the $4.50 chicken at Walmart, or the cheap bread, or other cheap "food" is the option they choose.  It isnt because they are stupid and cant make a good choice.  It is because they only have a few $ for the days food and they chose the most BANG for the $.

What's your experience with the cost for eating well?

"but I can get it for half that at Walmart..."

I was talking with a potential customer about our chickens today.  The topic of price came up.  Our chickens weigh in at 4.5 to 5 lbs.  They are raised on organic or non-gmo feed and pasture.  Most of the feed is produced within 100 miles of where we live.  We work every day to shrink that circle.  Average time from pasture to your freezer would be at most 5 days (mostly shorter, but some of our birds are held for people living farther away.)  The cost comes to $9.00 a bird.  What you get is a naturally raised, young (10 week old) chicken.  Nothing added.  YOU CAN'T BUY THAT AT WALMART.

I welcome comments.

OWS needs a new home.

I've been thinking about OWS a lot lately.  I'm excited that people are finally standing up and saying "the system is broken!" and demanding something change.  The changes seem to be coming pretty fast and hard right now.  All over the country the 1% and those who work for them or aspire to be them have said, "ENOUGH!" and shut down the protests.  It seems that the message must be working somewhat.  But, it also points out a weakness with OWS.  Philosophy and righteous indignation can only get you so far.  What has happened is OWS has become an annoyance.  It has caused Big Money to flex its muscle a bit, but it hasn't caused change. Annoyance may change the public stance of some people or institutions, but not the base behaviors.  The truth is, THEY have no reason to change.  We can shout all we want about how unfair the system is, but at the end of the day we support it when we turn on the light, or the TV or the generator we bought to power our protest camp. When we eat food from the grocery store we support the Big Money system.  They get their money and their power from the fact that we have ceded our responsibility for meeting our basic needs to the system.  The system doesn't have to change because without it, as things are right now, most of us would die of hunger, or cold, or sickness.  If OWS wants to change the system, they need a new home.  That home has to be in the weak points of the system, and it has to be directed at creating a new way for people to meet their basic needs outside the Big Money system.  What needs to happen is we, the 99% need to band together and start getting our food, and out power, and our clothes, and everything from sources outside the current structure.  Then the system will change, or it will die of starvation.

So, all you OWS activists and want-n-be activists, keep drumming, keep protesting, but start acting by meeting your needs from outside the system, or doing without.  Tell us what you are doing and how we can support that.  Like I've said in other posts, Occupy the Food System, or some other part of machine that supports Big Money.  Then we will win.

Occupying the Food System

I've posted about the food economy a few times and told a little about our local food co-op.  As I gear up to push Occupy into the food system, I thought it would be wise to update our progress with the co-op.  The co-op idea came out of a need to have better access to local food for consumers, and better access to local markets for producers.  Our little town has 4 grocery stores, Buehlers (a regional chain), Aldis, an IGA, and a Super Walmart.  None of these stores sell locally produced food.  Buehlers makes some effort to buy a bit of fresh produce from a regional produce auction, but that's it.  We also have 3 good farmers markets that run from May through October.  They have been growing every year.  The problem for us is two-fold. First, access to local food.  The market times don't work for many people in our community, and they are closed for 6 months.  That's a long time to do without.  Second, producers can't afford to grow because they can't access the market for half the year.  No local producer had enough product to capture a contract with one of the local groceries.  None had enough product to open a year round retail space.  Without more income and market access, the producers couldn't grow.  Without more production, they couldn't break into the local grocery market.  Catch 22.  So a group of us banded together and started a producer/consumer co-op.  We each chipped in some money ($100 for producers and $50 for consumers) to fund the start-up.  The co-op takes a % of the sales to keep the lights on and pay the rent (we hope).  Members work a few hours a month to provide the sales labor and meet other needs.  So far it is working. 

Some things we learned. 

1.  Start before August.  Winter production takes some advanced planning, and August is pretty late to start that.

2.  Don't wait.  You don't need a grant, or lots of money (Some money is helpful!!!).  This is an idea you can talk about forever, plan for, and never get off the ground because there are too many unanswerables.  Just Do It.

3.  Tell the story.  Get community members to buy into the idea.  They need to be part of it.  This isn't a traditional business.  People need to change how they think, what they do, and where they spend their money.  If they become members, buy into the idea, they will change.  That is worth more than any number of grants.

4.  You need a leader, or leaders, but you have to let all the members participate.  This only works as a co-op.  That means everyone has ownership and what they have to offer, including their ideas, is valuable.

So, GO FOR IT!!!  The food system is the easies to take back.  See what you can do in your community. 

I'll be happy to answer questions and share what we are doing and resources I know of. 

Local Food Economics - part 2

A few weeks ago I posted about Local Food Economics and the economic power of a local food system.
So, here is what we are DOING in our community to change the system.

The first thing we did is gather a group of interested people and start a Slow Food chapter.  Why?  Instant non-profit status, national support, and a platform for addressing the myriad food issues in our community. 

The second thing we did is tackle the accessibility issue.  In our community, local food is only available direct from the farm (if you can find it) or at the farmers market (we have three open from May - October).  Local food is not available for 6 months.  Hard to promote eating local, and a local food system if you have to starve half the year.  Our answer, a co-op.  When we looked at our community we found that we had a good pool of farmers market customers who would love access to local food for the whole year.  We also had a core group of local producers who had products that were not seasonal, or had greenhouses that were mostly unused in the winter.  We brought this group together and formed a producer/consumer co-op.  Each co-op member made a small investment in the form of membership.  This, combined with a great deal on a space from the local park district (who had a building that had been sitting empty for the past two years) let us start a year-round, indoor market.  The co-op members will provide the labor, keeping costs down.  It will be a single point check-out so we won't have to have all 20 producers there all the time.  That lets us have the market open more hours and lets the producers have time to do what they do best, produce.  We expect that for the first 6 months (when the local markets are traditionally closed) we will average about $2500 per week in sales.  Tiny, in the grand scope of food sales even in our small community, but that will be a boost to the local producers, allowing them to do more, and it will keep an additional $45000.00 in the community.  Game changer?  Maybe not instantly, but over time, as things grow???  I say yes. 

And the REALLY COOL THING is that we didn't raise any ones taxes, or pass a spending bill, or ask for a grant, or fund this in any way that makes us dependant on or beholden to any outside group or institution.  This is local people addressing a local problem with local resources.  That's a revolution in the making.

B.A.D. is coming! OCTOBER 16th!

ARE YOU READY?

B.A.D. Blog Action Day.  A day where bloggers around the world all write about the same thing.  It is a great way to connect people and ideas.  This year the topic is FOOD.  I'll be writing!  I may do multiple posts.  So, here's the challenge.  If you eat this should be important to you.  If you blog you should get linked up and post on the day.  If you don't blog, follow along anyway (or start a blog just so you can tell your food story... its easy!)

Here's the link http://blogactionday.org/  See you there!

Sustainability and Economics – an eco-farmer’s thoughts

I get questioned about the economic viability of my little farm on a fairly regular basis. Usually the question comes in a rather dismissive form. “You can’t really hope to make a living doing that, can you?” Or, “It wouldn’t work if your wife didn’t work full time.” These questions bother me because they are hard to answer in a way that people understand. I’m going to try again. Feedback is welcome.


First, a short look at what I mean by sustainability.

In nature, everything is tied to a place (a spot of dirt or a range of travel). Everything needed for the life of the creature comes from that place. Resources are taken in, held for a while in a living creature, then they are returned to that place to be used by myriad other creatures. Individually and collectively they are expressions of that place and the resources held there. This cycle is very fractal in nature. It repeats at every level of magnification, from the microscopic creatures of the soil to the gigantic, ancient oak, to the vast herds of bison, it is the same process. They are all expressions of their place.

Resources are not lost, just tied up for a while in one creature or another. The system is infinitely sustainable without input beyond sunlight and water cycling through. This is the sustainability I am working toward on my farm. It is at the root of my obsession with all things local.



Economics and Sustainability

Natural sustainability limits growth. Places become more complex, denser in life, more diverse as more and more creatures find niches in the resource pool of a place, but they limit growth. The resource pool doesn’t really expand. So if resources are tied up in one creature they are not available for another creature. This creates equilibrium, balance. As an eco-farmer this defines the economics of my place. I can increase diversity, make better uses of the resources at hand, find more niches to fill, but I can’t push growth beyond the limits of my resource pool and I can’t upset the balance of life in my place without crashing the system.

Making a living

Unfortunately, I live in a world where another model of sustainability and economics holds sway. This model is based on unending growth. It strips resources from one place and feeds them into a growth machine somewhere else. Business expands, more tons of corn are harvested from this field, more pounds of beef are produced at this feedlot, than ever before. The measure of economic sustainability is “can you keep growing at the desired rate?” If you can’t, your operation is not viable.

This model and nature’s model are incompatible. So, what’s a poor farmer to do?

Here’s what I’m finding.

The more we move our farm toward nature’s model, meeting our basic needs from the resources here, and returning those resources back to the local pool, the less tied to the current economic system we become. If our food, water, and energy come from this place, we need very little cash to purchase it from elsewhere. We do have our deal with the devil (I mean the bank) to pay for our land. It’s a small amount, and we may reach a point where we generate enough income to pay that and our other financial needs. But, natural sustainability trumps income generation. We will push ourselves to be the best farmers we can, but we will not crash the system to make more money. If we can’t make enough farming the way we know we should, we will have to have some kind of outside income to meet the demands of our artificial economy.

Snacks - a conversation with Paul

Paul sent me an email following up on his comment about snacks. He had more to say than what he put in his comment, but he didn’t want to offend. I love the feedback. I love it when people challenge my assumptions and make me question my thinking or clarify my writing. So I’m posting Paul’s email and some of my thoughts.




Hey Alan,


thinking a lot about your recent post. I wrote a lot more than the comment I posted, but then thought it over. I don't want to seem like a detractor in the public forum. I want the discussion, because I think a lot of the ideas are important. But I don't want the discussion to be contentious. So this is my compromise.


You probably gather that I am really direct. Please, if you tire of that, let me know and I will back off or tone down.


Snacks are a mixed bag. A good snack is a great way to prevent low blood sugar. A healthy snack can actually serve to keep the calorie load down. Snacks can be very healthy and an important part of a diet. However, snack foods tend to be junk. I understand the desire for chips and crackers, but they are crap whether local or not. I think the idea of sustainable chips or crackers is doomed or flawed from the outset. We crave them in fact because of the very marketing of food products you are responding to in your sustainable farming venture.

Yes! Snacks (as we find them in the grocery store or the media) are JUNK! There is no nutritional value in Cheetos, though I still marvel at the engineering that went into them to get me to crave them. Snacks fill an emotional spot in our diet, not a survival need. That said, here at the Roost we snack a lot. Some of it is chips and crackers, but a large amount of our snacking is carrots, celery, apples, oranges, bananas, nuts, cheese, olives, etc. Part of our challenge it to find sources for or substitutes for those things that are not produced here, or are not in season, and to find seasonal sources for those things that are produced here and learn ways to store/preserve them for later use as snacks.

Another reality here at the Roost is that we start our day early. By 4:30 am the coffee pot is going, and breakfast is usually finished by 5:30. As a result, we are hungry by 9:30 or 10. It’s not lunch time. In fact, we are usually in the middle of school, writing, farm projects, or some other work. Here is where snacks fill an important nutritional niche in our lives. We need quick food that can be grabbed on the go. Crackers and cheese, crudité, fruit, chips and salsa, lunch meat, these kinds of things fill the gap. Finding or making snack food that is more nutrient dense, less burdened with artificial ingredients, and locally sustainable is our quest for this month.

When I eat crap, I want it to be very clear to myself that that food product is crap--a problem, an unjustifiable indulgence. I can't prove it, but I believe this approach has substantial epidemiological support: think of all the products that have been altered so that they are low fat or low salt. In either case, the end result for the consumer is that the low fat products make the consumer fatter, and the low salt products increase the consumers' salt intake. Is this not precisely because we take problematic food products and adjust them so that we re-categorize? This is now an acceptable choice--it is one of the good guys. So we eat it more regularly, we eat more of it. I think it is fair to interpolate relevant to the question of sustainability. We can produce and consume a certain number of junk products, but aren't we better off if we seriously limit quantity of products that are nutrition poor, made with highly refined ingredients?


That said, popcorn really works for me. If I really want or need a snack-- want the salty and want the crunch--I will pop some corn. But the fact I can't just grab makes me hesitate the perfect amount. Nuts also do it for me. Both are known to have nutritional value. I used to eat a lot more crackers and chips, and I still do once in a while. But I think simply eating less of them is the improvement.

I’d question the nutritional value of popcorn, but it is a great snack. Our problems are the time issue, and finding local sources (though we will be growing popcorn this year, so by fall that shouldn’t be a problem.) Our friends the Adlesbergers pop large quantities and bag it for use later as snacks. Haven’t gotten there yet, but we will be giving that a try.

I asked you some fairly complex questions regarding how you gage sustainability. One comment I want to make to you has to do with how I gage it: if I feel like the approach demands that I deprive myself, I conclude that that is not sustainable. I don't think we should ever deprive ourselves. The good news is that local food tastes better, so it doesn't leave me feeling deprived. There is a paradox though. I could never enjoy half the food products I eat if I didn't have exposure to people very different from myself. That exposure started with travel for me. It continues through education, travel, and technology. All of this becomes paradox because local food only means something to me because of the vocabulary afforded me through very non-local food. It in fact becomes a very important component of my approach to sustainability. I think some of the things you are seeking have to do with that kind of complexity. The resolutions are probably a hodgepodge of finding new products, learning some new cooking approaches, and as you've already indicated--preserving what you need in winter beginning in spring. I am engaging you as a part of my process of adjusting some of my habits. A huge problem for those of us urban dwellers is that we rely on labels, and generally are quite removed from production. Your point of view as a producer can really help me as I try to prioritize my choices. I am still really looking forward to your post regarding the economics we've spoken about.

I agree that sustainability can’t be built on deprivation. Giving up things to “save the world” or even to “save our selves” has never and will never work. Finding better ways to fill those needs, or other was of living that change what our needs/wants are might have a chance.

I think you are right about importing “non-local” food cooking methods, flavor combinations, and even some ingredients. That will give us a much broader pallet from which to create. Yet, the bulk of the ingredients need to be produced locally, or it can’t be sustainable. I’ll get into my version of sustainability/local/ economics/ etc. in the next post.



Thanks for the conversation. Keep pushing the buttons (just not the red one, it makes things explode.)

Local Food Friday(s) - week 3 and 4 - Eat Local 2011 January wrap-up.

We wimped out a bit the last two Fridays of the month.  We didn't have to do much searching for our local food.  Week three we had steak from our cow, mushrooms we grew, and squash soup we bottled earlier in the fall.  Week four we had spaghetti and meatballs from sauce we bottled this past summer, meatballs we made from our beef, and bread we made from local flour.  We were lacking on the salad for the last meal, but our greenhouse plants aren't ready to harvest and we didn't have two hours to drive to Wooster and back.

For the most part we were successful with our Eat Local Project for January.  One meal a week 100% local made us stretch a bit, and spurred us to find sources for some staples we don't produce ourselves.  What we found was pleasantly surprising.

What we learned

• many staples like flour, grains, potatoes, cheese, meat, eggs are available from local producers year round. 
• Oils are much more difficult to find.
• You can't do this alone.  You need a local network to help you find producers, and to support them so they can keep producing.
• There are a lot more people in our community interested in local food than we thought.
• Preparing for the long dark season starts in the early spring.  If you don't plant it, it won't be there in the winter when you need it. 
• We need to can more, have better storage options, and buy things when they are in season.
• Cooking local food (which means mostly cooking from scratch) takes more planning and more time.  Learning new processes and habits is hard.

For February we will continue Local Food Fridays.  We hope to build a more comprehensive network of producers and get it posted on the blog for others to use.  We will be having at least one local food event.  And we are going to take on snacks.  We are snackers.  We eat 6 or 8 times a day (little bits, not huge meals...)  Finding local, healthy alternatives to crackers and chips is the challenge for Feb.  HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED.

Building a local food system

It has been surprising to me how much local food is available, even at this time of year when food should be at it's most difficult to find.  That, all by it's self gives me hope.  BUT, it is not easy to find.  These micro-producers don't advertise.  Word of mouth is the only way to find them.  That's OK for me.  I'm finding what we need, and the information pool is growing. 

This morning I flipped on the news while the coffee was brewing (no, it's not local... it is fair trade, and I'm looking for a better local source, but I'll not give up my coffee).  The big news of the morning was Steve Jobs leaving Apple again.  Everyone thinks the company will tank again until he comes back.  My first thought was, "What a fragile company!"  Then, as my brain tends to do, my thoughts wandered into the fragility of the food system I was creating.  You see, the difference between a small (micro) farmer/food producer and a company like Apple is that even though Apple has been dependant on the inspiration and leadership of Mr. Jobs, the company will continue to exist, function, and possibly even thrive without him, while a small/micro food producer/farm usually will not survive the loss of the farmer/producer.  Often they wont even survive a year of bad weather, credit problems, sickness, etc.  Local food systems built on small producers need redundancy.  To keep all those redundant producers going requires more customers.  And then I stopped thinking...

Later in the morning (around 6:00 am) I turned on the computer to check out my virtual world.  One of the posts that popped up was about the "Transformative Power of Social Media Marketing in the Foodshed".  Eleanor made me think about my role as a producer, a consumer, and an activist in the local food movement.  It's the activist part that I shy away from.  Activist implies (in my mind at least) confronting institutions or regulations.  I have a more Akido like approach to life, bending, swaying, going around.  So, I may rant about regulations or corporations, but I rarely confront them head on.  I feel kind of guilty about that.  But, maybe this is the solution.  If I actively work on building and promoting a local food system, then I'm being and activist, and being nonconfrontational at the same time.  It is good for me and mine.  It is good for the community.  It doesn't attract too much attention from the regulators, and it makes a difference here. 

So, besides blogging (which is a very personal thing) I want to build a local producer e-network (like Local Harvest except MUCH smaller.)  ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA HOW AN E- LUDDITE LIKE ME GOES ABOUT THAT KIND OF PROJECT?

I'm also going to get more involved in local food efforts in my community.  To start, I'll be attending a screening of FRESH tonight with a group of local producers, chefs, and concerned citizens.  More on that tomorrow.

How are you being active in building a local food system?

Local Food Friday - Week 2

Friday we had fun with some of the food we found at the Local Roots Market last week.  We decided to make pasta from the spelt flour.  The flour was produced by Stutzman Farms and Grain Mill.

We added our eggs

gave it a whirl

kneaded it a bit

let it rest and then rolled it

We had fun making shapes.

We roasted some vegies from our Local Roots trip last week, as well as some of our garlic and herbs.

Cracked open a bottle of sparkling hard cider we made a couple of months ago

and had a great dinner.

We had pasta sauce and meatballs we had made in advance.  The only things that weren't local for this meal were the oil for the pasta and roasted vegies, and the salt.  The kids liked the pasta even though spelt flour gave it a different taste.  They didn't like the blue potatoes.  We also did a road trip to a local cheese plant.  More on that later.

What local food did you eat this past week?

Why?

The other day a friend asked me that question.  After reading about our Eat Local 2011 project she called me up and ask "Why?  Why are you starting a new CRAZY project?  Can't you just enjoy your life, and maybe finish some things (like painting your house, saving your old barn, mowing your grass, making more fudge, etc)?  Why this project? Why now?  I liked your blog so much better when you wrote about your kids, your goats, Mouse Wars, gardening, remodeling, etc.  This Soapbox stuff is no fun to read."

Why?  For me there are two main reasons, security and health.  There are lots of "green" or "save the world" reasons that could be listed, but they don't motivate me to do more than talk, write, and dabble.  This project is being done for purely selfish reasons. 

Security

We are highly dependent on a very fragile, over-stretched food system.  We have no control, no real choice, no real voice in the system.  And the system is crumbling.  Soil has been killed, diversity has been lost, and the whole thing has been propped up with oil (another fragile system...)  As I see food prices rising every day and more breakdowns in the production and delivery systems, I feel less than secure.  In fact, I'm afraid for myself and my family.  The only solution is to reclaim responsibility for our own food.  The way to do that is by creating a local food system.  That can't be done by talking or writing.  It can only be done by active commitment. We produce what we can, we get the rest from others in our community.  That supports them and provides security for each of us.  When the system crashes or crumbles, we will be OK.

Health

Fresh, natural, whole foods in season are vital to good health.  The food being produced in our industrial food system, even with all the "nutrients" added to the final product, don't promote health.  The whole system is focused on producing more, cheaper food.  There is no thought given to health except as a marketing tool.  Being part of a local fresh natural food system is an important step toward being responsible for our own health. 

I guess that under my two reasons there is a third, more important reason.  That is responsibility.  I am responsible for what I do in the world.  The only thing I can really change is what I do.  So, this project is about taking responsibility for the food aspect of my life.  I'm dragging my family along on this one, and blogging about it to encourage you. 

That's why we are doing this project now.

(the other projects, paint, barns, etc will continue and will get some blog time too...  As for Mouse Wars, it's rather like the Korean War.  It hasn't really ended, we skirmish back and forth across the DMZ every day.  There are minor losses on both sides, but it doesn't often make the news.)

Eat Local 2011

The past few weeks we have had some interesting conversations around the table. Many of them have been spurred by ideas and anecdotes from Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Most often, when we weren’t laughing along with the story, the conversation ran along the “we’ve done that” and “when we did that this is what happened…” The rest of the time we talked about the nature of our food, where it comes from, what cool things Barbara’s family did that we want to try, etc. At the end of CC and I reading and discussing the book we found ourselves with a wistful, empty feeling. We had done most, if not all of the local living adventures described in the book (except the trip to Italy, which is on the MUST DO list.) We talk about the importance of local food, write about it, read about it, and dabble in it. But we always backslide. The month long project ends, or we get busy, or… any of a thousand things. So, we find ourselves creeping closer, but never really fully committing.

 

So, as they say, “talk is cheap, (it’s time for us to) shut-up and dance.”

 

This week we are launching our Eat Local 2011 project. We are going to spend the year building the habit of eating local food.
I know, January is a pretty stupid time to start such a project. There is nothing growing locally. We are setting ourselves up for failure even before we start. But, we have given some thought to this. We are giving ourselves three months to put the pieces together.

 

Here’s our plan:
January

• Local Food Fridays – Our main meal on Friday will be 100% local. We will use this as an opportunity to push our awareness of what is available in the long dark season, and to build connections with local producers.
• Explore where our food comes from.
• Find sources for staples.
• Plan the new and expanded garden so that we can meet more of our food needs.

February

• Filling the gaps – What things can we not possibly get locally? What can we do without? What is the best source for those things we can’t do without?
• Snacks – Local alternatives to the processed chips, crackers, etc. that we love.
• Start the garden.
• Continue Local Food Fridays

March

• Planting, Planting, Planting
• Explore food storage options so we will be ready for the production season
• Find local cheese, and learn to make cream cheese, soft cheeses, feta, etc.
• Find processer for chickens, rabbits, etc. (Or convince the family that we can and should do our own…)
• Continue Local Food Fridays

April

• Take the plunge, 100% local.
• Continue Local Food Fridays Posts to highlight what is in season here and how we are dealing with it.

Beyond that, we will see what happens.

 

This week I will be adding a page explaining the project. I’ll include a button you can get to link back to the project information. I’ll also include a link to anyone who wants to dance with us.

Some thoughts from Jamie Oliver about food, health, and our future.

John, over at Will Bike For Food clued me in to this great vid on TED.com.  It's AWESOME! 
I'll let Jamie speak for himself.

Enjoy!

Gaps in my thinking

Several of the books I've read recently have made me think about my plans for local sustainability in a new light.  The books pointed out some assumptions in my planning that will leave big gaps in the systems.

My goal has been to develop a way of living that meets all of our basic needs from local resources in a sustainable way.  Those basic needs are food, water, and energy.

Here are just a few of the gaps

Food production

• my system uses unheated hoop houses to extend the growing season throughout the year.  These hoop houses are covered with PLASTIC.  The functional life of the plastic is maybe 5 years.  It's not local, renewable, sustainable, nor is it something I can reasonably learn to make my self. 
• seeds - many of the seeds I have been using are hybrids.  I can't save seeds from what they produce and expect any kind of  good results.
• poultry -none of the hens I have now get broody.  If I want to increase my flock from local stock I have to incubate the eggs my self. 
• Fencing - All my fence is plastic (made in Germany I think...). Functional life maybe 5 years.
• Food storage - We use the freezer (see energy) and we can a lot.  But all our canning uses flats to seal the jars.  I don't keep that many on hand.  I don't know how to make them.  None of the jars we use now will work without them.

Energy

• All my energy plans (solar, wind, micro-hydro, steam, etc) require storage.  The generation systems are fairly long lived and mostly repairable (except solar which is a mystery to me...) but the batteries don't last long, are made from non-renewables, and are highly toxic.
• Even my wood heat and possible power generation is presently resting on the back of my gas powered chainsaws.  They don't work all that well without gas...

Water

• Most of my current water system travels through or is stored in PLASTIC.
• Most of my water system plans involve some sort of electric powered pump with a battery as part of the system.

The list goes on and on.  I don't intend to be a Luddite, but I do need to address some of these gaps.  Another gap I noticed was the information gap.  If the world changes even a little bit information will be hard to find.  So much is available on the net right now, but crash the grid and it is all inaccessible.  Building a library with the information needed to maintain and create the systems needed to meet your basic needs is important too. 

Medical information, supplies, and skills were another gap pointed out in my reading that I haven't even begun to think about.

What are the gaps in your systems?
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Doors and other lost bits of technology

We, like much of the country, have had an early taste of deep winter.  Our day time highs have been at or below the "normal" lows for this time of year.  Staying warm has been on every one's mind.  For us part of staying warm in the winter involves keeping the doors closed.  I'm not talking about the outside doors (though with two active kids and their new dogs that is sometimes a challenge...)  Our house is blessed with doors on every room.  I mean EVERY room, even the tiny hallway that is almost wall to wall doors.  We bought this house knowing we had to to a whole house remodel.  We had sketched out some grand plans even before we closed.  Fortunately, we had sense enough to not borrow extra money and do it all at once.  We are 6 years in to it and still have three rooms to go (and the stairs, and the porch, and...)  BUT, living in the space has given us a chance to learn and to rethink.  Doors, for example, were initially on the removal list (not all of them, we do need some privacy..., but most)  Our 1890's house had doors closing off every room.  They got in the way, and made a mess of the traffic flow and the conversation.  You couldn't see the TV from the kitchen.  Etc.  But, after living in our collection of small rooms (most 12 x 12 or smaller) and heating with wood, we have discovered the reason for all the doors.  They close spaces off, separating them for different uses, different temperatures, different seasons, or even different times of day.  Originally our house had three chimneys.  These were strategically located in different, closeable parts of the house.  They served different purposes in daily life.  Being able to close those rooms and leave them cold (or cooler)makes it much easier to heat with wood.  Removing those doors and opening up the space would make this impossible.  Now, when it is cold out we close down parts of the house (especially on the northwest side of the house) and all snuggle around the wood stove where it is warm.  It is cosy and we enjoy being together.  If you want more space/separation there are other rooms.  They are quite and cooler.  You can take your book and a quilt and disappeared into the silence. If it is too cold you can lay in a second fire (of course that is an invitation for company)

Some other bits around here we are trying to revive are the cistern (we have a 5' x 5 'x 20' stone cistern by the back porch with water 16 feet deep in it.  Just needs a pump, a filter, and someone brave enough to crawl down in there and check things out...), and the summer kitchen.  Both of these will make life on our small sustainably oriented farm work better.

Weird how we go forward by stepping back...

Responding to some comments

I've enjoyed the comments that have been left on my last several posts.  They have made me think.  I've responded to some on the post, but a couple needed more attention.

PioneerPreppy and CrazyLegobrothers both asked if space wasn't part of my sustainability problem.  Can I be sustainable on 5 acres?  If I can't then the outlook for the global population is truly grim.  That is a question I'm still trying to answer. 

So, to the PioneerPreppy, I've been working with a human range of about 20 square miles.  I certainly don't need that much space devoted to feeding myself, but IF I can draw my resources from that area I know I can return them (I can walk 20 miles in a day...)  and I know I will feel the impact of any mistake in 'management'.  I've no science to back this up, just knowledge of how far I can travel, and how much land I can really get to know.  Certainly more than one human can live in that range.  How that works is a question for the future.

CrazyLegobrothers, I run into a problem with grain.  The 4 of us use about 2 lbs of wheat per day as bread, pasta, crackers, etc.  Where I live good conventional farmers produce a bit more than 50 bushels of wheat per acre.  Organic produces come in at about 90% of that.  Neither one is sustainable.  Neither builds, or even maintains soil or fertility without importing lots of resources.  (that doesn't even touch the energy required to produce and harvest monocrops on a large scale...)  My family would need about 12 bushels of wheat (and some rice, oats, and corn) to continue living as we do.  I suspect, due to inefficiencies of small scale production, weed pressure, etc, that I'd need about 1/2 acre of small grains each year.  I could easily fit that into my 5 acres, but it would take my pasture production from being a soil building process to being a soil maintaining process.  On a 5 year rotation (4 in perennial pasture, one in grain) I would lose all the humus I had built.  Break even isn't a good plan for long term sustainability.  No margin for bad years.  I will get into more detail about this aspect of soil building in my next post.  That doesn't account for the energy needs to till the field multiple times each year, manage the weeds, harvest, etc.

Wendy,  I love the forest garden aspect of permaculture.  There are a lot of great ideas and great potential in following a permaculture philosophy.  But I haven't seen anyone in a temperate climate doing it without some big plowed field somewhere out on the fringes where they get their grain.  You can't grow that much annual monocrop and be sustainable.  As for the jungle being manipulated, I agree.  Every creature manipulates their environment to enhance their own survival.  Most do this passively, by eating selectively, spreading seeds, etc.  Some, beavers for example, do this actively.  It is all a kind of 'agriculture'.  That is what gives me hope in my quest for a non-destructive method of food production and of living.

Soil

A friend recently told me that my blog was getting a bit didactic. (He really said I should stop trying to bludgeon people into changing and go back to describing what I’m doing. People will follow. ) He’s probably right. But, I’ve hit a place in my thinking and doing where I’m stuck. I can keep doing what I know, probably even get better at it, but it will never fix the fundamental problem with the system. Not even at the level of my little farm and my little family. Sustainability will continue to elude me. So, I’ll be continuing my didactic posts for a while, using them to explore my own thinking and maybe illuminate some possible next steps.

There is a kind of magic in being a farmer. You choose a bit of ground, prepare it, plant a seed, and like magic, a new plant grows. You do your best to provide everything the plant will need and to protect it from harsh conditions and invaders. But what happens underground as the seed grows into a plant and the plant grows to maturity is a bit of black box magic. Yes, we know what happens. The seed sprouts. The roots spread out through the soil and the plant reaches for the sky. The plant draws what it needs from the soil, and through photosynthesis, turns the chemical bits into the sugars and proteins it needs to grow. But beyond that, most of us don’t really know what happens. We know to make sure there is plenty of NPK, and water, and that the temperature is right before we plant. We know that weeds compete and bugs destroy, and that it is our job to prevent these things from harming our chosen plants. But we, except for a few farmers with advanced degrees in chemistry, botany, and microbiology, don’t know how the magic really happens in that black box we call soil. Without knowing what is happening we can’t really predict what effect our actions have. There are four main players in this magic, the soil, the plants, the animals, and us. Understanding the role each plays in a sustainable system will help us develop a more sustainable form of agriculture.

First the soil –

Here’s what I, a farmer without advanced degrees in chemistry, botany, biology, microbiology, or anything relevant, have been able to glean about what’s happening in the soil.

Soil is not DIRT. It is a complex, living, little understood poly-organism. From a farmer point of view, soil is primarily a storage facility for plant nutrients. That’s the part I’ve been trying to understand, how soil works as a fertility storage/production/ exchange medium.

Soil has three components, chemical, organic, and microbial. All of these parts have to be working in balance to produce plants and replenish the soil in a sustainable way.

First the chemistry has to be right. From a plants (famers) p.o.v. soil is a mega warehouse of the building blocks of life. These building blocks are either held in the soil for plants to use, or are snatched by the plants as they flow through the soil matrix. From a sustainability standpoint, holding the components of life within the soil matrix for future use is key. This happens through chemistry. There are two basic chemical components involved in this process, colloids and cations. Colloids have a negative charge, and cations have a positive charge. Colloids are mostly clay particles or humus (a stable organic particle… more on that later.) Cations are mineral ions that have acquired a positive electrical charge. These mineral ions – calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, sulfur, copper, zinc, etc., are bound to negative sites on the colloid. That holds them in the soil. (If they are not bound to a colloid they are in solution and wash through the soil matrix quickly.) Each mineral ion fills a percentage of the sites on the colloid. This is the base saturation for that mineral. The nutrient holding capacity of a soil is determined by the number of colloids in that particular soil type. The base saturation determines soil fertility. The ratio of various mineral ions on the colloid determines how what nutrients are available for the plants to use. If the balance is wrong, particularly the balance between calcium and magnesium (these two combined need to occupy about 80% of the sited on the colloid, with calcium occupying 60 to 70% and magnesium occupying 10 to 20 %) the other mineral ions become bound too tightly to the colloid and are not available to the plant.

Humus is the other major colloid in the soil. Humus is an organic particle created by the decomposition of ligneous organic matter. Lignin is the fibrous part of mature plants. It is mostly carbon. It is broken down slowly in the soil by soil microbes. Humus does not include undigested plant remains, woody bits, etc. It also doesn’t include green vegetative material. This material is very low in lignin and will be completely digested by soil microbes rather than turned into humus. Soil microbes live in the humus. The less humus in the soil, the fewer soil microbes. Without humus and the microbes all the nutrients required by the plants would have to be added yearly as soluble fertilizer and the soil would become hard, compacted and prone to erosion.

When humus is exposed to the air it oxidizes rapidly. The nitrogen turns into nitrogen gas and the carbon oxides into carbon dioxide gas. This destroys the humus colloid, releasing the remaining minerals to be washed away. Loss of humus means loss of soil structure, loss of nutrients, loss of microbes and the ability to process organic matter, loss of water holding capacity, more compaction, and more erosion.

A sustainable method of agriculture would have to create chemically balanced soil and build humus. Otherwise we are just mining the soil and quickly becoming dependent on fertility imported from elsewhere.