A Response to Another Blog

On the Cincy Locavore listserv I spotted this question:

Hey Everyone,

I put a post on our blog today about buying local over organic when you have to choose. I thought folks on this list might be interested, and I wonder if people agree with my current assessment.

Here is the link.

Any comments - here or on the blog - would be great!

Thanks,

Gavin DeVore Leonard

And here is my answer:

I prefer local over Organic and I am one of those growers who is not certified Organic but grows that way. But by no means are all the local growers growing Organically, even if they say they are. My farm was certified organic by OEFFA for over 6 years back before the USDA took over. I learned an awful lot about organic farm management and Organic growing during that time and find it to be vitally important to keep growing that way. But I also know that before I went through the process of transitioning to Organic and Organic Certification I would tell my customers when asked, "Yes we grow Organically" because I really thought how I was growing was Organic. I was dead wrong. I found out that Organic really doesn't have much to do with avoiding pesticides and fertilizers. As a matter of fact both are used on well managed Organic farms certified or not. What I did fond out is Organic is all about soil management and it is this facet of Organic farm management that puts us apart from the conventional farmers. I also learned that it takes around 7 to 15 years to get one's soils healthy after decades of abuse from conventional salt based fertilizers and pesticides, not the 3 year transition period used by the USDA (which is an arbitrary number that was used by many pre USDA Organic certifiers that would allow some recovery by the soils but not keep farmers waiting so long to get certified that it would make any economical sense to 99% of them).


Most people, including many farmers, believe that Organic farming is all about avoiding certain inputs (pesticides and fertilizers and hormones for livestock). They simply do not understand the processes that must happen to make one's farm truly Organic and thus see no problem with using a bit of RoundUp on "really bad" weeds or some sort of chemical and very toxic insecticide like Sevin dust because they think without it they will lose their crop(s). My point is that a lot of the farmers/growers at farmers markets who are not certified Organic are also not growing Organically, even though they say they are and may believe they really are (as I used to as well until I found out I was anything but Organic at the time) so do not fool yourselves into thinking that all local farm are organic farms. Yes there are those of us who really are Organic and no longer feel the need to have papers that say we are and I do know a few farmers who have never gone through Organic cert. but are indeed deeply Organic in how they grow (generally because they worked on a certified Organic farm for a few years before going out on their own or because they are the type of person who loves to do research and have taken the time to learn what Organic farm management entails). But I find from talking to farmers at markets that most are at best quasi Organic, especially the livestock people who rarely feed Organic feed and thus are feeding GMO's to their stock (which in my mind is NOT Organic and for me is a deal breaker).

But all that said I would rather support quasi Organic farms and conventional farms that are local to me than buying Organic from who knows where

That's my 2¢

Not the Best June

I really need to post here more often but I seem to be doing most of my farm writing and photo posting over at Facebook.

A lot has been going on bad weather. Too much rain but I think that has stopped for now. This month we have had well over 10 inches of rain and it caused us to bring in the garlic early in order to keep the entire crop from rotting in the soil. Some was so wet and muddy when it came out of the ground that we washed it with water, something they say never to do but I figured they are already soaking wet what will a bit more water do other than remove the soil? So far this seems to be a good thing but we won't know for sure for another 4 weeks or so when the curing process is finished. I will say the garlic is huge and the 90% that did not rot away seems to be of high quality. probably due to the fact we applied fertilizer this year so they were well fed garlics.

Broken equipment (the 14 hp BCS does not want to work reliably but Eugene keeps nursing it and can get it to work for up to an hour at a time). He jury rigged a new air filter and changed the gas that seemed to work for a couple of days. I do wonder if the machine got damaged in the flash flood we had earlier in the month that filled the basement of the barn with 2 feet of water(where the BCS and a lot of other equiment lives). Actually I wonder if the gas got water in it. He has mentioned that there was dirty gas in a fuel line. On the plus side we have not had many days in June when the soil could be tilled safely so the tiller being out of service has not been a huge issue

Betty has been Hell on various farm related things like the roses on the watering cans, bagged apples on the two youngest apple trees. Eugene spent hours fashioning bags than putting them over very young pommes in order to keep pests and diseases off of them so that we will have big perfect apples without spraying a lot of toxic chemicals several times a week through the growing season. Betty has found that bagged apples on the tree are a great thing to jump up and grab and take down. the other morning she managed to get 8 or 9 off the tree and that get her repremanded big time and since that morning she has left the apples alone. Now she is into wrestling with Nate in the aisle ways between garden beds (which is a no no but she tests this rule out many times a day and always gets yelled at. I will say she quits after the first "Betty, NO! Out of the garden"). She also likes to go after rodents in overgrown beds, which is not too bad but it does mean she is in the garden which is against the rules around here.

Oh and did I mention the heat? Pretty much all of June has been 10 degrees above normal for around here and very very humid to boot. It's like it is August. This has made it hard to work when it is not raining and it has set up the stage for bad fungal diseases, most of which love hot humid conditions. the good news here is we bought and used a product called Root Shield and it seems to be working as I have seen very little evidence of disease on any crops that have been treated. I did find a cucumber covered in white mold a couple of weeks ago but once that was removed no more problems in the early cukes. And the tomatoes are showing no signs of any diseases (knock wood). Usually by this point the leaves are getting blighted and we know that the plants will likely produce but will die before the first frost. It looks like this year that will not be the case all because we treated their soil that we start the seeds in with the stuff. Time will tell, but I do know late blight has been seen in our county and so far we have zero signs of any disease on the maters (or peppers and eggplant which were also treated but usually they do not have blight issues).

There are 5 more days left in the month and it looks like they will be less humid, cooler and very little rain-Yay!

Rainy Template and farm

It's been raining a lot so I changed my template to reflect that fact.

We have had over 10 inches of rain since the beginning of June. I know June is our wettest month but this is ridiculous.

Betty's Emergency has Ended

The Betty Emergency has ended, today her stitches came out.

She has been allowed complete run of the farm since Friday and she seems hail and hearty.

The E collar was a godsend. That kept her away from her stitches and allowed her to heal. But sadly the Ecollar did not last very long. By tuesday it had gotten broken some how be ause we were allowing Betty to run around in the fenced back yard and while i was not watching she ripped the thing apart. but it was nothing strips of duct tape could not fix. So for two more days she sported the latest in e collar/duct tape fashion before ripping the thing apart again. Since the vet people said she could get her stitches out as early as Friday and she was not bothering them we left it off and we had one happy pup on our hands. Freedom to run and no stupid lampshade thing on her that kept getting in the way of everything.

All in all she was a good patient. Much better than I expected. We did have to stay with her pretty much all the time while she was wearing the e collar or she would do things like rip up carpeting but we live a life where that can be done. And it was hard Friday and Saturday after the emergency surgery. We could not easily stay with her on Friday and get all the stuff done that must be done to prepare for the farmers market. So the solution was to put her on a chain near where i was washing produce in the morning. Early afternoon is always nap time so we could leave her be for 2 hours but than late afternoon both Eugene and I had to get things bagged and bunched and Betty did not want to be alone so we took her to the store which she really disliked.

Saturday was worse because we both went to the market. We had considered one of us staying home but decided we both should go. So we went and got through a cold and windy market. came home and found Betty had chewed up a part of one of the carpets. Bad dog! But we were able to stay with her pretty much all the time for the rest of the time she had to wear the e collar and once that came off she quit being so needy and destructive.

We are very appreciative to all the people who have contributed to the "Betty Fund". This idea came up on Face Book conversation about the Betty Emergency, via Rose Campbell-Blake who commented that people should donate towards paying off Betty's emergency surgery. And what do you know, this has happened and the Betty Fund was born. Betty (and Eugene and me) have way cool friends.

I wish I could say the same about the vet we used. we have not been able to talk to her since the emergency surgery despite having been in there twice. We will not be returning there.

Tilling a Bed

A short video of 1/2 of a bed being tilled. Cameo by Betty

Bye Bye AdSense

Today I got rid of the AdSense advertising on my blog. I feel better for doing so. What a waste of space as i had an incredibly low click through rate and that is how money is generated to the blog owner. people click on the AdSense Ads. I did earn $100 over a 4 year period, so I can't say it's a ripoff, it's not Google will cut you a check if you get enough people to click on the ads but I feel I am probably in the majority of people who do not make much if any money from this sort of thing.

So Bye Bye AdSense

Betty's Emergency

On April 26th we did what both Bob Barker and Drew Carey ask us to do at the end of every episode of The Price is Right-Please spay and neuter your pets. Yes Betty went in to get her ovaries taken out of her body, otherwise known as being spayed.

She came through the surgery A-OK but things started going down hill. We were not issued an E-collar at the time and of course Betty being betty got obsessive about licking her stitches. than she got loose and ran about 1/16 of a mile about 3 days after the surgery and I believe the final straw was Saturday when we were away from home most of the day. She got out of control and destroyed a Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog (she does not know that we have an extra-Ha!), along with chewing on a calendar from 2 year ago and my camera bag (which she did very little damage too other than cosmetic). It was quite the display of anger and frustration. This activity (which I am sure involved running around and other banned activity) I believe popped all the interior stitches, holding the muscle walls together and a bright red wad of fatty tissue started to appear Sunday morning.

Oh no! This is not what you want to see along a suture line. this is something that needs to be dealt with ASAP. And since it was a Sunday we had to take her the Dayton Emergency Vet Clinic. that was an experience i do not want to repeat. that place is depressing as the only people who go there have a life of death situation and not everyone survives these situations. we were lucky, Betty got into surgery as soon as we got there and we got her back by 6pm in much better shape. And with an E-collar



But now we have to make sure she does not do this again which means keeping her quiet and still. She is still in bad enough shape that she does want to sleep a lot but she now feels a lot better and thinks she should be able to run where she wants and do other things that will pop out the stitches again, such as lick the sutures (which she cannot now that she is sporting the latest in E-collar fashion).

Now for the next 2 weeks we have to be with her to make sure she is not hurting herself. She does have separation anxiety which is made much worse by the strangeness and pain of the spay job and that translates into hyperactivity (i.e going ballistic) which can translate into popping out the sutures again. And that translate in a heap of trouble for her.

So this means I have to miss my Niece Carrie graduating from her Masters program at IU this coming Friday and probably I will have to skip market and make Eugene go alone so Betty has company and doesn't hurt herself again.

About the only half way good thing that happened through all this was the fact I had canceled a FSI pot lick dinner due to bad weather (which got really bad around 5pm through midnight-lots of rain and some wind-not conducive to an out door event). We were in no shape to hold a social event. hell, we weren't even home at 6pm when I told people to come over as we were in Dayton picking her up.

Hopefully things will get better from here on

Freezing Asparagus

It's asparagus season here at the farm and this is the first year that our first 6 beds are producing 100%. And boy are they producing! We are cutting a lot more than we can sell (that will likely change this week as the Oxford farmers market will resume being held weekly instead of monthly. Between that, the store and the Farm Share Initiative I am sure in the coming weeks we will unload pretty much everything we harvest. But that has noty been the case the past 3 days. this means we are building up an aging supply of asparagus so instead of selling stalks I feel are too old I decided it is high time to put up some asparagus for the winter today and that is what I did with around 10 pounds of green and purple asparagus.

below are pictures of what I did.



Asparagus all ready to be blanched. What I have done is trimmed the ends to remove any tough fibrous parts and even things up. If the stalks are too long to fit in the pot of boiling water (which means they will not fit into the freezer bag) I cut the stalk in half.

Asparagus blanching in boiling water for 1 minute

After blanching the asparagus goes straight into very cold water. Ice water best, but a couple of changes of cold tap water will work. What you are doing is shocking the asparagus, getting as much heat as possible out of the stalks and stopping the cooking process.

I get as much excess water off the spears by using a salad spinner

Than they are packed into freezer bags (do not use "Storage Bags", they do not work to prevent freezer burn but freezer bags are pretty good) and almost ready to go into the freezer. I still have to open up a corner of the bag and suck all the air out so they are close to vacuumed pack. this step is important as it cuts down on freezer burn a lot. To do this, open the bag a bit, insert a straw and suck as much air out as you can than close the bag and put into the deep freeze.

Russia says GMO Harmful to Mammals

Russia says genetically modified foods are harmful

Tag cloud: food problem, Health, Russia, Commentary, World, food

16.04.2010, 17:26

Russia has started the annual Days of Defence against Environmental Hazards from the 15th of April to the 5th of June with the announcement of sensational results of an independent work of research. Scientists have proved that Genetically Modified Organisms are harmful for mammals. The researchers discovered that animals that eat GM foodstuffs lose their ability to reproduce. Campbell hamsters that have a fast reproduction rate were fed for two years with ordinary soya beans, which are widely used in agriculture and those contain different percentages of GM organisms. Another group of hamsters, the control group, was fed with pure soya, which was found with great difficulty in Serbia because 95 percent of soya in the world is transgenic.

Concerning the experiment carried out jointly by the National Association for Gene Security and the Institute of Ecological and Evolutional Problems, Dr. Alexei Surov has this to say. “We selected several groups of hamsters, kept them in pairs in cells and gave them ordinary food as always,” says Alexei Surov. “We did not add anything for one group but the other was fed with soya that contained no GM components, while the third group with some content of Genetically Modified Organisms and the fourth one with increased amount of GMO. We monitored their behavior and how they gain weight and when they give birth to their cubs. Originally, everything went smoothly. However, we noticed quite a serious effect when we selected new pairs from their cubs and continued to feed them as before. These pairs’ growth rate was slower and reached their sexual maturity slowly. When we got some of their cubs we formed the new pairs of the third generation. We failed to get cubs from these pairs, which were fed with GM foodstuffs. It was proved that these pairs lost their ability to give birth to their cubs,” Dr. Alexei Surov said.

Another surprise was discovered by scientists in hamsters of the third generation. Hair grew in the mouth of the animals that took part in the experiment. It’s unclear why this happened. The researchers cannot understand why a programme of destruction is launched when animals take GMO foodstuffs. They say that this can be neutralized only by stopping to eat these foods. Consequently, scientists suggest imposing a ban on the use of GM foods until they are tested for their bio-security. The results of Russian scientists coincide with those of their colleagues from France and Austria. For one, when scientist proved that GM maize was harmful for mammals, France banned immediately its production and sale. The scientists who carried out the experiment say that it’s too early to make far-reaching conclusions about the health hazards of the GMO. They insist that there is a need to carry out comprehensive research. They suggest implementing the project, “Safety Gene Technology” at the innovation centre, “Skolkovo” which is being set up near Moscow.

Tying Off Drip Tape Ends

Another Video lesson. This time how to tie off the end of a drip tape section so the water doesn't all run out the end. I did this video because of a discussion on the Market Farming Email list about this and not one person had this suggestion. This is what we have done for well over a decade and it works well and does not cost anything.

Laying drip tape and irrigation By Hand, 5 Videos

Here is a series of short videos I shot today that show how we at Boulder Belt get 4 beds ready for a hoop house. perhaps I should have broken this into 5 different posts, but that ain't happening.

Enjoy

Asparagus Sighting

This morning while doing the morning walk about the garden I found an asparagus spear poking above the mulch. Looking around I found a couple more spears above the mulch and many more just emerging from the soil. We don't have enough for tonight's dinner but I will bet by this time next week we should have enough to sell to justify opening the store for the 2010 season. And it looks like the Farm Share members will get asparagus in their very first share, which was totally unexpected. This is several weeks early. This also means we will have asparagus for the last winter farmers market (or is it the first spring farmers market?) April 24th in beautiful Uptown Oxford, OH