Hi Everyone,
1. The Federal Farm Bill: "That's just the way it is."
I reflect on the federal Farm Bill with a sense of discouragement and political impotency that is quite different from the hopefulness I see at the level of local government (see #4 below, if you want to hear good news instead of bad).
It seems inevitable that once again a (relatively) few wealthy people will become even wealthier by continuing to exploit and squander the resources of our shared earth. Imagine how different things would be if our commitment to justice was as strong as the commitment of our federal representatives to preserving both the status quo and the inviolate symbiotic relationship between congressional committees and corporate lobbyists!
The Farm Bill will pass, and the obscene practice of subsidizing corporately owned agri-business enterprises will continue. Corporations will continue to use subsidies to add more acreage (and hence more subsidies) to their “portfolios” by buying out family operated farms. Herbicides/pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and GMOs, the ABCs of corporate agriculture, will proliferate. And the corporations will remain true to their single legal obligation—to return a profit to their shareholders, with no questions asked.
All this may be, at best, discouraging, and probably, coming from an organic farmer, a sounds a little like sour grapes. I don’t mean it to be. It’s just the way it is. Fortunately, change will come. But it is, I think, unlikely to come either through visionary Congressional Committees or private citizens and/or citizen groups lobbying those Committees. Somehow I suspect that when it comes to lobbying, amateur efforts are no match for full-time, professional, corporate lobbyists!
So how will change come? As it usually does in situations like this, it will come not from the top down, but from the bottom up. The revolution that has already begun will grow to the point where its political chi will surpass that of special interests. At that point the subsidies will end, and the “ABCs” that make corporate, industrial, mega-farming possible (herbicides/pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, GMOs) will no longer be allowed.
Each one of you, by supporting a local, organic, family-owned farm, is a part of the revolution that will bring an end to the desecration of the soil and the erosion of public health that has occurred under the name of modern agriculture. Your commitment to and support of the alternative to corporate agribusiness is more important than joining letter-writing campaigns. Writing those letters would be quite meaningful, but only after a quantum number of people in America have already joined the revolution. That revolution is embodied in the simple act of saying “no” to corporate agriculture by buying food produced on local, family-operated organic farms. The “revolution” is well on its way, but we’re not there yet. So when I am enjoined to “write my congressional representatives,” I see that effort amounting to trying to “rally the troops” when the troops have yet to be recruited.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t write the letters. We should—who can say for sure when we’ve reached that quantum level that will make those letters efficacious? But my gut feeling is that when the time is right, when enough people are concerned enough about our polluted environment, the ill health of ourselves and our children, and the loss of the community provided by family farms—when that time comes we won’t need to write letters. I think the best thing we as farmers can do to bring sanity to the Farm Bill is to keep our heads close to the ground, be the best organic (biodynamic) farmers we can be, and provide people with an alternative to corporate agribusiness. And, similarly, the best thing consumers can do is to support organic agriculture by buying organic. Buying organically (and demanding of those you buy from that they provide organic products to buy) is revolutionary! There is a place for bureaucratic change, there is a place for political change; but some things can only be changed by revolution. So, thanks for joining the revolution!
2. Schedule for Canning Demonstrations
The window of opportunity to register for this year’s “canning share” is closed. But Wendy has planned a number of canning demonstrations that all of you, as members of our CSA, can participate in. We believe that the “next step” beyond eating fresh, local, organically raised food when it is available during the growing season is to learn how to preserve local organically raised food for our off-season. That’s what the “canning share” is all about. We believe and hope that this pilot project will be a successful beginning for what will become a major part of our CSA program.
Here is the schedule:
| Tuesday, July 31st, at 2:00 | Lacto-Fermentation Cabbage (and general canning Q&A with discussion on equipment and canning options) | |
| Wednesday, August 8th at 3:30 | Pickled Beans, Freezing and Drying Produce | |
| Friday, August 17th at 4:30 | Oven Pickles and Water Bath Canning Pickles | |
| Friday, August 24th at 1:00 | Pesto: How to Make, Cook with, & Freeze (a variety of Herbs) | |
| Saturday, August 25th at 1:00 | Jams (& Hopefully Chutneys) | |
| Tuesday, August 28th at 2:00 | Beets: Pickled and Pressure Cooked | |
| Friday, September 7th at 1:00 | Salsa! And Bread and Butter Pickles |
3. Jubilee Farm Yahoo Bulletin Board
Some members have taken it upon themselves to create a “Jubilee Farm Bulletin Board.” The Yahoo Groups name is JubileeFarmMembers and the Yahoo address is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JubileeFarmMembers/. You will have to do the usual sign up stuff, which is pretty minimal.
In the title of the Group it says “cooking and kids.” I suspect it will be a good source for discussion about how to use vegetables and other questions about the farm. I just signed in, but my membership is pending approval. I hope I’m accepted!
This could turn out to be a great way for members to communicate and get inside (if not always authoritative) information about the farm. I’m very pleased that Suzanna took the initiative to do this. I’ll try to keep up with the discussion, but no guarantees.
4. Our Thanks to Kathy Lambert, her staff and the KC Council
As a refreshing relief from the gloomy outlook at the level of federal politics (see my comments on the federal Farm Bill, #1 above), it has been a pleasure to witness and experience the effective response of our local political leaders—one in particular—to the issues of flooding in our valley.
Wendy and I contacted Kathy Lambert early this year. From the beginning Kathy took a deep and personal interest. She has since devoted a great deal of her time and energy and the resources of her staff to working on flooding/agricultural issues. Jeff McMorris, Kathy’s chief of staff, was raised on a small farm in eastern Washington. He too has taken a genuine and personal interest in our concerns. Grace Reamer, another of Kathy’s staff members, created a PowerPoint presentation which has been viewed by the whole Council.
The long and short of it is that last Tuesday Kathy introduced a motion to the Growth Management and Natural Resources committee that would direct Ron Sims to convene a task force which would be responsible to report back to the Counsel by February 1st of 2008 with specific recommendations regarding the creation of farm pads, the elimination of several agriculturally repressive KC codes, and with specific suggestions of ways in which flood control could be implemented to protect the Snoqualmie Valley APD. Kathy believed we would have the support of the committee, but, leaving nothing to chance, engaged herself and her staff in those behind-the-scene discussions that led to a unanimous approval of her motion.
The establishment of a task force isn’t the end of the road—it’s really only the beginning. But it is a crucially significant first step, and I want to publicly thank Kathy for her willing support and experienced guiding of the endeavor to the stage of a full task force inquiry. She has done more than I could have expected—even hoped for, and in that she has acted as an advocate for local agriculture and for local consumers.
5. Eating a Cracked Tomato
You’ve no doubt noticed that tomatoes are beginning to show up in your shares. I’d like to talk a little about tomatoes.
Each year we grow between 25 and 40 different kinds of tomatoes. We only grow heirloom, open-pollinated varieties—no hybrids! Each year we also plant at least twenty “trial” varieties. We only grow indeterminate varieties (the ones that grow all season as opposed to the “bush” varieties—except that we’re experimenting this year with a few open-pollinated varieties of bush varieties outside in the little cloches by the strawberries). The varieties we are growing this year are ones that we have found do very well for us in our climate, and have been given the “stamp of approval” by members who eat and love tomatoes.
I would be very surprised if you don’t encounter a tomato variety that you’ve never seen or eaten before. In fact, for many of you, it’s more likely that you will never have eaten any of the varieties we grow. That’s because organically grown heirloom tomatoes are rarely available in grocery stores. They have “thin skin,” and don’t ship well. But, oh the flavor!
Heirloom tomatoes have another characteristic that has kept them and their glorious flavors out of the markets. They tend to crack and/or ripen unevenly. The tomatoes you buy in the store always look perfect. And if they happen to drop on the floor, no problem—they bounce right back! But heirloom tomatoes aren’t like that.
A tomato that has cracked is anathema in a store. But what about at the farm?
Well, it just turns out that an heirloom tomato that has cracked or one that even has a bruise or “bad spot,” if it is grown by someone you know and trust, is likely to be the best tomato you’ve ever eaten.
First of all, the only tomatoes that crack are those that are vine-ripened. So when you look at that cracked tomato, beckoning you from its place among the others in our barn, remember that it, unlike any tomato in a grocery store, really did ripen on the vine. Remember too that it was grown right here, on our farm by me, Wendy, and our crew. Remember too that it never has had, or even been close to, any kind of herbicide, pesticide or any other kind of dangerous chemicals. We don’t use the “shelf-life-extenders” found in commercial outlets. The tomatoes are really clean! Remember too that heirloom varieties usually do crack. Brandywine tomatoes, for example, are consistently judged to be the best tasting tomato in existence—but they almost always crack when they are allowed to fully ripen on the vine.
Most importantly, remember that eating that cracked tomato just might result, as it has for many of our members, in experiencing the best tomato you’ve eaten in your life. You can certainly “eat around” a bruised spot. So go ahead—be daring! There’s nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.
6. Honorable Mention
Jubilee Farm was recently nominated for a very prestigious award. Each year an award is given to the top agricultural stewardship farm in the state, as judged by the organization “Farming and the Environment.” Looking at the past winners of the award we were, quite honestly, surprised that we would even be nominated—I believe there are more than five hundred organic farms in the state. We were shocked that we made the initial cut--they selected the six best nominees for a farm visit.
Well, we didn’t get the award, but it was still quite an honor to have been nominated and to have made the final cut. It’s even more of an honor to have been named first-runner-up. It’s not quite the same as getting the award, but it is extremely gratifying to be noticed on the state-wide level. We are pleased with the work of Farming and the Environment, as they are committed to improving environmental awareness in the agricultural community. We are committed to that endeavor as well.
7. The Jubilee Rescuers
A group of children sat on the porch of Jubilee Farm. Most looked down, some had their heads in their hands and someone was trying to hold back a sniffle. The kids had just asked Farmer Wendy when the strawberries would be ready, and she had told them the sad news. At least two elk, and possible more, had been eating the strawberries at night.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” asked Molly.
“I’m afraid the elk are awfully big,” said Farmer Wendy.
“Couldn’t we build a big fence to keep them out?”
“I’m afraid the elk are also very, very strong. And they really like strawberries. I just don’t think we could build a fence big enough or strong enough to hold them out.”
The children were quiet, sharing the sadness of the thought of a whole season at the farm with no strawberries.
At length, Jeremy spoke up. “I’ve got an idea! You remember a couple of years ago when the crows were eating all of the squash seed out of the field? We made scare-crows that kept them out. Why couldn’t we make ‘scare-elks’? Just because they’re big and strong, doesn’t mean they’re smart!”
“Yea,” said Molly, “we can do it!” And the others in the group chimed in their approval.
The next day for the kid’s activity, Farmer Wendy had oodles of old clothing from the thrift shop, bales of hay and dried lufta squashes that had floated from the fields and collected in the blackberry bushes during the big flood.
With grim determination everyone went to work. These had to be the biggest and scariest scare-elks ever made. In all likelihood, they were probably the only scare-elks ever made. Eventual they began to come together. The dried squashes became faces, sporting sinister, elk-threatening glares. The old clothes were stuffed in such a way that an old, sad sweatshirt now was taut with the image of bulging sinew.
When they were finished, the whole troop fell into a processional to the berry field, where the scare-elks were strategically placed. It was a frighteningly impressive sight.
That night the group gathered at sundown. It was well-known that the elk swam across the river each evening to come munch on the berries. The children all hid behind a cluster of salmon-safe trees, and just as the sun was sinking, sure enough, a group of elk began their leisurely swim across the river. It was clear they knew what they were doing as they began their stroll through the main part of the farm. But they didn’t know what was in store for them!
Everyone stayed hidden in the trees, and wondered what would happen. Would it work? Would the elk be scared and leave? Or would they just keep on eating the strawberries?
“Don’t worry everyone,” announced Jeremy, “it will work.”
Just then the herd came up the hill. In the lead was a big bull elk, and he was the first to see the sight of dozens of angry farmers in the field waiting for them. It didn’t take that bull elk two seconds to spin around, and not walk, but race, back to the river. He ran so fast, that when he got to the river, he didn’t even swim across—he jumped all the way across! The rest of the herd was right behind him, and they didn’t stop on the other side of the river. They kept right on running—through Fall City, up Falls hill, past the Falls, past Snoqualmie and all the way up to North Bend, where they belong.
They children triumphantly watched the whole drama.
Several weeks later, in the midst of their scare-elks, everyone convened for a special strawberry-eating kids' activity. Farmer Wendy praised each of them for their hard work. Jeremy reminded everyone that it was his idea. But Molly only said, “We did it,” as she reached for another juicy, sweet strawberry.
8. Farm Chatter
Last night was one of those perfect evenings. It took three full hours of preparation, but by 5:00 I was ready to turn the compost pile. We built the pile six weeks ago. I hadn’t spent much time looking at it, but I had stuck my hand in a couple of times, and each time it was too hot to leave it in. Good sign. If it could sit for several more months, we wouldn’t even need to turn it. But in the flood plane we don’t have the luxury of time. We need to have this compost ready to spread one month from now, so that we can get it down, worked in and a cover-crop planted into it by September 1st. So we’ve got to get air into the pile.
I had the back hoe ready to scoop the compost. I had the manure spreader hooked to the back of the John Deere, waiting with its conveyer belt to pulverize, shred, mutilate and otherwise break down any remaining clumps into tiny, oxygen saturated strands—the perfect food for the microbes. And I had the international cultivating tractor (all 27 horsepower!) with the spray tank on back, and the previously soaked biodynamic microbe spores mixed in the tank, ready to be added incrementally throughout the process.
Now for the most amazing part: everything worked. Don’t you just love it when that happens? I dumped steaming load after steaming load into the spreader. Wendy sprayed on the microbes. We pulled the spreader forward every now and then, and ended up with a pile about six feet high, twelve feet across, and more than a hundred feet long. Ok, mathematicians, assuming we have a perfect bell-curved pile (which we pretty much do), how many cubic yards do we have?
We finished just a little after dark. The thought that kept coming to me was that we were creating a system of sustainability, one that will continue from here on. It will be improved on, but the basic outline is here: the herd provides the manure in the winter months in the loafing shed. We compost the manure and then spread it in the late summer on ground we will plant in the spring. We plant a cover crop immediately after spreading the compost to bind it and protect from flood damage. Next year we do a shallow plow-down in the spring, spade into beds, plant and stand back! It’s not a very sophisticated plan, but it is truly sustainable. We are creating our own fertility from our own farm. This is one of the highest goals of a biodynamic farmer.
Erick and Wendy