It All Comes Back To Manure

We need all of our farmers.  I firmly believe that. Trial and error and ten years of trying to learn how to manage something  resembling a farm has taught me that no one can wave a magic wand and make a professional who can wisely manage natural resources, operate and maintain machines, fix buildings, design and construct infrastructure, supply field labor, deliver lambs at 1 AM,  fix a leaky kitchen faucet, push a teenager to get the  chores done and drive an 11 year old to hockey. We need all of our farmers because they know something about everything.

When I came back from the ACORN conference in Halifax last week, pumped full of information until it was leaking out of my pores, I called on a young farmer in my neighborhood to share the information I'd learned with him.  You see, one of the things I learned at ACORN was that this potent and highly concentrated input needs to be spread around.  It's no good just keeping it in a bag in the barn.

So we talked about soil and seeds and fertility for about an hour when this young conventional farmer said, "You know, I've been looking at it.  And it all comes back to manure". He'd just this year produced the best corn crop he'd ever had by loading up his soil with manure from his cows instead of buying in chemical fertilizer.

In 1969 an oil well blew out in the Santa Barbra Channel and flooded our beaches with crude oil.  It was an environmental disaster that created the first Earth Day. The students of the new environmental sciences, our "alternative" neighbors and people all over the world woke up and saw that we were making a mess and something had to be done about it.  Lines were drawn. The politics of the environment were born.  Many good things came of that movement but something went wrong.

Santa Barbara County is an agricultural area on the coast of California that also has fishermen and oil production. We have old cowboys from families that go back to the Spanish and Mexican land grants of the colonial era.  These families worked to manage grazing and pasture for beef and tended their lands responsibly for generations. They weren't ready for the kind of people promoting Earth Day in 1970. When the lines were drawn around the ecological movement, these "descendientes" excluded themselves and there was no effort made to include them in.  That was a mistake on both sides.

When I was 24, I volunteered to help work 350 head of range cattle on a family "brush ranch". I met a rancher  who was the descendant of people who had worked that land for 130 years. The owner had been educated at UC Berkeley.  This was not the red-neck cowboy I had imagined. And in fact I later learned that our University system had been supported by families like his so that their sons and daughters could get a first class education in their own state and bring that education back home to the farm and their communities.  It turned out that that old cowboy was the one who lost the family ranch a few years later. I know for a fact that he later died of a broken heart. I was at his memorial with his stetson, his riata, his work saddle and his family who no longer had the home their grandfathers and grandmothers built.   

The young farmer I was visiting last week was interested in the material I brought back from Halifax on soil science. We started talking about biological farming.  And we talked about an old man in our neighborhood, recently departed, who farmed naturally all his life.  Not because it was the thing to do, but because it was something he'd proven over a lifetime.  The young farmer and I talked about bringing up seaweed from the shore for mineral supplement to feed the fields.  And we talked about pellet fertilizer. The young farmer thought for a moment.  "The old man said, 'You don't need to put that "hail" on the field.  Everything you need is right here.  We never put that stuff on and we always had a good crop'."  The old  man put kelp and manure on his fields and rotated his crops.  "It all comes back to manure"        

We need our farmers. All of them. The young farmer and I have listened to and learned from "Los Viejos" - the old ones. When we lose a farmer we break the chain of generations of knowledge on the land.  And as the young farmer and I can tell you - it's a long hard row to hoe getting it back. But the old men still try to tell us, "Don't lose what we worked for. Nature is giving you everything you need right here".  
         

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

And We're Back...

Happy to say that the website is repaired and the links to the podcasts are working.
Please do visit and enjoy the pictures and the weekly podcasts from PEI.

I'm continuing to use our urban exposure in Santa Barbara to harvest more knowledge and technique in communications technology.

In the next two weeks I'll be "planting" seeds for new business based in part on what I learned from producing content for this blog. One project, based on our summer podcasts, has already become a commercial radio campaign.

But most interesting will be the opportunity to take you on podcast tours of our edible landscape at home and wanderings in Santa Barbara and Southern California.

So, now I have to get to work on all that!

Asparagus Pickles

Twilight at 10 PM...when the mosquitos come out!


When the sun goes down it's time to make asparagus pickles!


Our fresh asparagus is so good you can eat it raw. And since it's never touched by anything but rain water you can eat it right out of the garden. Lot's of people like it grilled on the BBQ with seafood or chicken and a simple oil/herb dressing before you grill is simple to do.

Steaming is good too and I like a honey mustard vinaigrette on top. Try this with chilled asparagus for a lovely summer side dish.

Don't over cook it! Steam or grill for about 6 minutes, depending on the thickness of the stalks.

I've been having a hard time keeping up with mine and some of the stalks got a bit ahead of me. Still nice and tender and good to eat, but not as attractive as they should be in the market. So I made some hot and spicy asparagus pickles. I like to make pickles because it's something I can do with a simple hot water bath canner.

I make my brine with salt, vinegar and water and then I add the flavors I want with the asparagus. This time I used a southwestern style mix of garlic, red pepper flakes, chives , fresh oregano sprigs and cilantro seeds.

If you live near a farmer's market you can probably find asparagus now. Buy enough to eat fresh and about 4 or 5 pounds to pickle. Then serve your pickles as a summer treat along with olives or fresh tomato slices or cut up in a mediteranian style salad.

Drop me a comment if you'd like the recipe.

The Worm Turns!

It was a tough morning on the farm. I got started at 8:00 AM with the tractor and trailing disc harrows on the field I plowed several days ago. By 9:30 I had a broken set of harrows and was frustrated by a broken axle shaft and missing parts buried somewhere in the field!



I swapped out the discs and went to the venerable old spring tooth harrow to finish the job. I planted timothy and clover in the buffer strip along the road and then laid out a grid for planting our new peach orchard.

What a day! The sun was shining but there was a cold wind blowing 30 - 40 mph all day long. The remnants of the storm that caused so much trouble down south is passing over Nova Scotia and producing a bitter wind that one islander said today, "would rather go through you than around you." Well put.



As the sun was going down I walked along our lane and snapped this photo of the pond that Dunn Creek fills before slipping under the road and down into Murray Harbour.
A pair of Canadian Geese are nesting on the shore and don't seem to appreciate my efforts at farming. If I get too close they honk at me and wish I would leave.

The frogs are making their racket now and looking for some action in the pools and shallows. It's time for me to be finished for the day. I have 25 holes to dig for my dear little peach trees. They're counting on me so I'd best call it a day.

Time to rest. Until next time, best wishes from Dunn Creek Farm.

What Certified Organic Means To Us

Moving to a small farm on Prince Edward Island from Southern California created the obligation Susan and I feel to be good stewards of something we're holding in trust for the future. The farm will only be ours for a few short years and then it will be passed along. So we feel it's our responsibility to care for this old homestead as a living thing. Our goal is to invest in our children and in this land - to leave this farm to the next generation with fields intact, with water sparkling clean, with top soil that is deep and rich and with woodland that is diverse and healthy.

And so, as we started our farm adventure in 2000, we decided to begin organic and stay organic. We worked with MCOG (Maritime Certified Organic Growers)to become one of about two dozen certified organic farms on the island. And we found that we had a lot of learning to do. The certifying process is a learning process and our small production hardly justifies the expense and effort at certification. But we believe in creating and supporting small, local, Organic, hand-crafted food because it nurtures the land and it nurtures our community at a time when global oil and global agriculture threatens the environment and threatens food security for us all.

Lot's of people on PEI have beautiful gardens and small farms where they grow lovely produce for themselves and for market. I've met some older folks who take great care in their gardens; carrying on traditions they've learned from their elders. I am always eager to meet these growers and visit with them about the way they work. They have a lot to teach someone as ignorant as I am. Having grown up in a completely different time and place, there is plenty I don't know about living and growing on PEI.

The older people I meet don't claim to be doing anything special. They know what's useful about the old ways. They're practical and clever about the use of modern technology. In the times their experience comes from, "sustainability" wasn't a creative or political choice or a technique to preserve the environment. It was the action of keeping body and soul together on their own land season after season, year after year.

It's not surprising then that some of the people I meet as I stand behind our produce table in Murray River or at the Farmers Market in Dundas tell me that their gardens are organic and that they always have been. There is an appreciation on PEI for the tradition of carefully grown food on healthy land with clean water.

Our neighbors in Murray Harbour North are kind and generous people who have welcomed us to their community. Some go out of their way to visit and buy our vegetables. Being certified organic and selling direct at the farm gate gives us a chance to meet and talk. In a place like this, family ties and relationships go back generations. So being the new people on the old Dunn Farm is kind of like being the new kid in school. We try to mind our manners and hope to make a good impression. We hope to be worthy of our neighbors support and confidence.

I've just been reviewing the application for certification that must be filled out each year to renew our annual organic certification. The requirements are detailed and we must document every seed we plant, create farm maps of our planting areas, document the inputs we buy, the compost we make and the crops we harvest and sell. Our farm itself is inspected and our fields graded on our success and failures.

We've been re-certified each year for the last four years but have a long way to go. Perhaps it's my California bred optimism and Susan's Wisconsin work ethic that makes us think we have something to give this community and this Province. We think that if we work hard we can bring our dreams to life in these bountiful fields. We hope to produce the kind of wealth that money alone can't buy. And we encourage our friends, visitors and neighbors to share the wealth with us in each season.

Both Susan and I have worked for the rich, the powerful and the famous. We've both come to the conclusion that the quality of life isn't found in fame or fortune. Our life on Prince Edward Island brings us back to earth and teaches us the value of living. Our neighbors aren't rich, but they are generous. We are not rich but we appreciate the values that make life on PEI so good.

We don't expect to make a lot of money growing Organic vegetables. We expect to be rich in compost, yellow beans, family and friends.

Studying The Benefits Of Low Till Farming

Just 2 weeks from now I'll be getting our fields ready for another season of planting, growing and harvesting on beautiful Prince Edward Island. I'll be working to further our plan to eliminate the need for seasonal plowing from our mixed use row crop field.

Now, I should say that our farm is really a market garden that employs just a few of our total acres in any one season. And I'll humbly add we're slowly learning the benefits of including sustainable design into our small farm operation through trial and error.

Our overall plan is to use crop rotation, cover cropping and inter-cropping to maintain soil fertility, manage weeds and limit fuel/labor inputs. We plant intensively in a small area, looking for high efficiency in our work and sustainable yields at harvest time.

The photo above was taken in May, 2007. I had fallowed the field for the past three seasons and last year I used a trailing disc harrow and S tine harrow but no plow. I used a home built tool bar mounted on the back of the tractor with a 3 point hitch to form 4 foot wide raised beds. The wide lanes between the rows were planted with white clover and rye grass, so no bare dirt remained to require weed management or risk a loss of topsoil. These lanes were mowed over the summer, feeding a nice mulch into the soil, holding moisture, moderating soil temps and providing blossoms that attracted beneficial insects.

This year, we plan to continue to use the raised beds I formed last year by rotating our crops, planting green manure crops in fallow rows and adding finished compost mulch to crop rows.

We'll also be planting a small fruit orchard with trees set out to accommodate inter-cropping and machine work in the orchard. We hope this will mean a more compact operation and higher yields with less input.

Wish me luck!