At Grandmother's Table

"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." 

  - Michael Pollan 

There are lots of things in the Dunn Creek Farm CSA box this week that your great grandmother would recognize. And she'd be pleased to have fresh produce picked and ready for her family. Chances are you
have a food memory about a grandmother, aunt, neighbor or someone else close to you who knew how to 

put love into every bite. It's amazing how durable those memories are and how they become part of us.

They are the opposite of the empty and forgettable calories that never fill us up.    

My Grandmother was a fine cook who came by her skills the hard way. Her mother died when she was 12 

and as the oldest girl she took over the kitchen and fed her family.  That was in 1892 on a farm in Kansas.  

As a boy, I remember her being very old in a gingham apron making boiled frosting for a birthday cake in our suburban kitchen. She talked about the food she used to love. She would become rhapsodic about shelling peas and string beans, tomatoes and corn. Every July she asked to have home made vanilla ice cream from a hand cranked freezer.

As a child of progress in the city I was raised on the convenience food served by my working mother.  

Frozen peas.  

Canned green beans.  

Frozen corn. 

Ice cream (without cream) came in a box.  

My farmer was the Jolly Green Giant. 

I could not understand why my Grandmother looked so satisfied by the memory of...vegetables. 

    

This morning I was picking the last of our shelling peas.  I popped open a shell and tasted that tender burst of

sweet green flavor.  We've been picking snow peas and digging potatoes, harvesting amazing zucchini and

fashioning these veggies into our meals with friends and neighbors this week. Simple meals made special with 

a fresh potato salad. Or greens so good guests compliment us the next day.  Simple. Clean. Satisfying. 

Memorable!

Grandmother would have put on her gingham apron and shelled the peas in the time it took me to write this.

And in just a few minutes you can create a feeling of lasting satisfaction no processed food can deliver.

It's a richer way to eat and live.  

   

Cheers!   

Shopping for Food Security - Part 1

    

The farm sleeps under a blanket of snow as we plan our seed orders.     

A Word About Seeds.
The French word for seeds is semences.  Yes indeed the French have brought our fundamental need for thriving procreation to the very ground under our feet. Earthy hmmm? Even in the garden, the French are intimate with making food and, of course, making love.

Well then, let's consider what the world would be like if only 5 percent of males were eligible to impregnate all of the women. What would be lost? In fact that is what we're facing in our food supply today. Seed diversity and the basic needs of humanity are overlapping in some interesting ways.

Organic Farmers Cover the Cost of Seed Diversity. 

Each year we're obligated by our certification process to buy organic seed whenever possible.  Ordering organic seed supports organic farmers.  But there's more to it than that. This requirement also drives the market of supply and demand to preserve non GMO and non hybridized varieties. This gives us a larger, wider and more dependable supply of clean seed to buy and plant. Organic farmers are investing in having a bank of seed genetics in the market.

Organic Seed is Harder to Find and Usually More Expensive.
One complaint from consumers of organics is that the product is more costly.  This is true in the short term.
We can prove that fresh, clean, nutritious food is more valuable. But higher seed cost is directly related to what it costs to grow, harvest and market that value. As more organic producers enter the market, prices should come down even as food value improves.

Open Pollination and Seed Saving

An open pollinated variety of plant will breed true from it's own seed. So if you plant an open pollinated variety of beans or squash or peas, you can save the seeds from this year and plant more next year.

Open pollinated plants are not owned under patent law, they don't revert to earlier strains and they are proven under specific climate and soil conditions.  When we order organic open pollinated seeds, we can grow 2 marketable crops - produce and seed - and have clean seed to plant the following year. There is natural selection in this process. Seeds that are sound and strong thrive.  Those that aren't, don't.  You should know that not all organic seed is open pollinated.  At Dunn Creek Farm we are making a business decision to open a savings account with our own seed bank.    

   
Seed Diversity = 600 Tomato Varieties, Not 5. 
When we shopped for tomato seed this year, we found a grower offering 600 hundred varieties of heirloom, organic tomatoes that he and his partner produce themselves.  Some had been staples in American seed catalogs a hundred years ago.  Some had been locked behind the Iron Curtain for decades.  All had been common in market gardens in a variety of regions and conditions.  Few are being commercially grown today.       

The Hazards of Limited Diversity
When you see tomatoes in the supermarket, you are seeing about 5 varieties now commonly grown for market.  They are red.  They are firm.  But they are not selected for taste or nutrition.  There are better tomatoes to be found.  But you probably can't find them in your market. And that's not all.  Now that most of the people of the world are dependent on a handful of grains, vegetables and plants for survival, it's not hard to imagine that a plant pandemic could detonate like a bomb in the global food supply.  We need a viable market to keep the alternatives on hand. And this is where today's consumer comes in.  In part two, we'll consider how the grocery shopper decides how much bio diversity there is.  

Some of our Seed Sources this year:


Hope Seeds - Organic Vegetable Seeds & Organic Garden Seeds
Vesey's Seeds

Flood Damages Quail Springs Permaculture Farm. You Can Help.

This post came to me from Quail Springs in Cuyama, California today. Please read and help in whatever way you can. 

Hello Friends of Quail Springs,

 

We wanted to share with all of you that we've just come through two days of major flooding that have altered the face of Quail Springs.  First of all, we are SO GRATEFUL THAT NO ONE WAS HURT OR LOST.  This is a huge blessing for which we are all thankful.  

 

Beginning on Friday, October 1st, we had a storm that dropped a little over 2" of rain in about an hour that caused extreme channel flooding that ripped out our lower gabion, silted up our larger swales and caused damage to about 10% of the garden. We wish that this was the extent of the damage yet mother nature had another story to share with us.

 

On Saturday, October 2nd, at about 12:30pm, a second and much more ominous thunder storm descended on our valley down from Iwihinmu (Mt. Pinos) beginning with a huge hail storm followed by torrential rains and heavy winds.  The lighting and thunder stood right over us for what seemed like a lifetime yet was just a few minutes.  In just a half an hour, over 3 inches of rain fell directly on Quail Springs and much more in the canyons that feed the main canyon. Little rivers began to flow down the secondary and tertiary canyons, and then it happened.  

 

A wall of water we could have never imagined in our wildest dreams and ruminations made its own thunder as it careened down the canyon.  This wall of water tore at trees, ripped out our largest gabions and breached the walls of our incised stream and created a rushing river that spanned at some points over 1,000 feet across the canyon.  It was a sight to behold and an event that made your heart nearly stand still.

 

There was nothing could stand up to this deluge. Even large cottonwood trees were ripped out and hurled down canyon.  Everything in its wake was destroyed.  This included our entire garden, half of our new food forest, our pond is gone, all of our water harvesting structures that fed the sweet Quail Springs waters to our entire operation, our well was badly damaged, all of our irrigation systems have been buried, much of our fencing buried or washed away, chicken tractors gone, a trailer now lives down canyon several hundred yards, our settling tanks torn apart, and many tools and countless other parts of our infrastructure are missing or buried.  Amazingly, our buildings fared rather well other than some flooding in the main barn that was quickly cleaned up.  For this we are also grateful.  

 

All in all we estimate over $40,000 in damage was done and countless hours that were accumulated into years of work.  

 

As the water receded, we were stunned and humbled to see the damage and feel in our hearts the loss that had just occurred.  Nearly six years of our work building soil and laying infrastructure was washed away in minutes. Once we realized everyone was safe, we shared tears and a bit of laughter.  We are having to remember that we are working on a 200 year plan and that these events will help us redesign and rebuild in a way that is more appropriate for the vagaries of this ancient spring canyon and the place we call home.  

 

Over the next weeks, we will be working to rebuild the water systems and preparing for the upcoming Permaculture Design Course (which is nearly full).

We will undoubtedly ask for help once we settle on a game plan and will put a call out for volunteers.  

 

We will especially need assistance financially and would appreciate any donation you might be able to make to help us with the huge task of rebuilding and remaking the systems that are the very essence of our work out here.  

Tax-deductible donations may be made by check or online. 

Checks can made out to “Quail Springs” and mailed to: Quail Springs, 35070 Highway 33, Maricopa, CA 93252. 

Online donations can be made securely via Donate Now. 

 

Thank you for any assistance you’re able to give, and for your thoughts and wishes.

These are pictures I took at Quail Springs last Spring.  You can read about my visit to this permaculture farm.
The blog post includes a podcast.

Here is my letter to the Quail Springs Community:  

Susan and I came in from the fields of our fall harvesting and read the message that Quail Springs had sustained this major setback - or should I say - adjustment to it's 200 year plan.  

We were shocked and saddened to learn that so much work could be erased in such a short time.  And we were glad to read that no one was lost or hurt in the storms. Yes we are sad as I'm sure you are too. And we are reminded ourselves of the nature of working in nature. And perhaps more seriously, the changing nature of our world.

In my visit to your farm I was taken by your vision of sustainable living and your commitment to learning from traditional ways of being in harmony with the earth.  I have often thought of you as Susan and I worked our way into farming the land we share here in Prince Edward Island, Canada this summer.  Just this week,  I thought of you as we harvested our fall crops and joined our farming neighbors for a harvest meal. I thought that we and many people like us are new pioneers.  And like the pioneers of the past we are faced with many challenges and events in nature that our "settled" friends do not realize.

Climate events all over the world this year are telling us that this is not the earth our elders knew. Things are happening that are beyond our shared experience. I believe that our role as pioneers on this new earth will require us to learn how to cope with things that no living human has ever seen.  Even as we embrace the wisdom of our elders, we must blaze the trail ahead for those who follow us into a changing and unknown world.

My hope is that even as you experience loss and disappointment, that new understanding and insight will be yours in the days and months ahead. I hope that these events will write new knowledge into the journal of Quail Springs so that your losses become a harvest of new learning and development for all the pioneers who share your journey.    

Sincerely and with hope,

John Quimby
Susan Frazier
Dunn Creek Farm                    

Organic Farming From Hell

I'm in a bit of what I call "Blog Clog" at the moment. I have too much material and not enough time to do it justice. So I'm breaking it into smaller pieces and sharing bite size morsels easier for me to produce and for you to consume.  I know the pictures take time to load on a dial up.  I hope you'll find them worth the wait and do click on them for larger views.

On April 11th, I visited Quail Springs permaculture project at the edge of the Cuyama Valley in eastern Ventura County.  I'll publish a portfolio of pictures and podcasts for you ASAP and share the good news about building sustainable community in a semi arid region.  In the meantime I've got to share some scenery from the trip and some bad news about organic farming run-amok in an out of the way corner of the county.

You Can't Get There From Here

There is no such thing as driving a straight line from the grassy foothills and coastal plain where I live to the semi arid high desert of the inland part of the county.  The road runs south and the east through coastal mountians...

    

I drove south on US Highway 101, to California 150 East to Ojai and then on to California Highway 33.

The route winds through gentrified (and eternally cosmic) Ojai and then runs north.  The road runs through tunnels blasted through solid rock (a depression era road project) into Wheeler Gorge.

I snapped these pictures on an overcast Sunday morning where coastal fog was meeting overcast skies and a Pacific Storm on the way in from the north.

The hills were in bloom with spring wildflowers and shrubs like the pale blue ceanothus.  I get a little goofy about this stuff but I've spent a lot of time on hiking trails in the mountains.

I had to stop the car several times to snap photos of our wild lupines, growing out the side of bare dirt hills and chaparral at about 2500 feet. It seems so improbable and I wanted to share this picture with my PEI friends, for whom the big friendly and colorful lupine is a summer visitor and even a sometime pest.

It's Spring and the Topsoil is in the Air!

Life is both more fragile and more committed the further east you go from here.  On the other side of the next mountain range or two you arrive in the Mojave Desert which stretches all the way to the Colorado River and beyond into Arizona.  Here in the Cuyama River Valley, years of farming, cattle grazing and irrigation in this semi arid region (figure less than 12 inches of annual rain fall) has taken their toll.  And that leads to the title of this post.  In the picture above the roadside flowers pop out of a backdrop of soil blowing in the wind. 

This is the view from the highway of land tilled for spring planting. The ground is very sandy and there is hardly any kind of organic matter in it.  Low moisture/dry air makes breaking down organic cover or natural soil building take too long for these farmers. So they essentially plant in the dust and irrigate using energy to pump water up from the fossil riverbed beneath valley floor.  Overdrafitng this water supply could eventually end all farming in the valley.

Farming here is being done on leased ground and much of the production here is now certified organic.  Lot's of those cute little "baby" carrots (which aren't really baby carrots) come from here.  And lot's of them carry the USDA organic label.

This picture really tells the whole story of Organic Farming From Hell.  The wind is blowing at about 40 mph. The top soil is literally blowing away and there is no cover visible for miles. The foreground shows tilled soil that looks sterile.  And the middle distance shows overhead irrigation using fossil energy to pump water into the wind just about an hour before at least half an inch of rain began to fall.  Now I can't say for sure that this field is certified organic, but the point is that a lot of the fields here are and they all look identical.  They may be organic but they are certainly not sustainable.  Calling conventional ag by any other name doesn't make it better for the land. 

I won't mention the name of the largest ag company that's currently leasing and farming the majority of this area.  I'm thinking they wouldn't appreciate me showing you how they operate. I'm just pointing to this real world example to let you know that organic is not the ending point it's the beginning point. We have much more work to do to make our agriculture and by extension our communities, sustainable places to live.

Starting a Garden? Look For Seeds You Can Save

Hey, I'm not a plant genetics expert and my understanding of the issues around GMO's is limited.  I just have some basic concerns about splicing genes from one species into another and hoping that the outcome isn't bad.  You know, like a giant fire breathing dinosaur ravaging Charlottetown.   That would be bad.

But seriously there are some great reasons to consider your seed sources, even if you're just planting a few tomatoes.

Angus Mellish at Vesey's once asked, "Do you what kind of beans people will be planting this year?  The same kind they planted last year."  His good natured attitude explains that we all find favorites that we plant year after year.  Garden heirlooms become popular again when people re-discover varieties that used to be popular.

A great example of this is the return of the brandywine tomato to commercial seed catalogs.


The brandywine was a commercial variety that was listed in seed catalogs in the 1880's. It came back into the garden in the 1990's, thanks in part to Seed Savers Exchange.   These humble seeds were planted every season and saved for over 100 years, then passed to the Seed Savers by an elderly gardener.  There are now many sources of this heirloom available, which brings me to where we are in our garden this year.

Part of our challenge every year is meeting the requirement to create a seed search document to prove that we have made an effort to find, purchase and plant organic seeds from approved organic sources.  This is much easier than it use to be thanks to the internet and an increase in resources in Canada.  But as you'll see, whether you're planting a garden or a few acres, buying quality seed is expensive.  Buying certified organic seed is even more expensive.  And shipping is...well...not cheap.

So now, here's where GMO, patented seeds, heirlooms and sustainability cross.  We have to select organic seeds whenever possible.  And we're also investing in seed we can plant, harvest and select for planting next year.  It's part of our plan to keep our costs down by producing our own seeds on the farm. And we hope it will be our small contribution to creating a stock of seeds that can help feed PEI into the future.

If you're interested in locating and growing certified organics, heritage and open pollinated varieties, you might want to get on the Seed Savers Exchange website and stock up on some varieties to try this summer.

If you find something you like, you can save seeds and save money.