Hi Everyone,
1. Were under way!
It's still winter, of course, but as far as we are concerned, spring is here! We got started early this season as we were thinking the early warm weather we had was going to hold. Unfortunately it hasn't, but it has still been not too bad, and has been relatively dry. On Sunday Wendy and I took turns plowing (she always wants to plow!) and the soil was completely ready for it; often at this time it is still pretty wet.
The usual chores are occupying us in this early part of the season - seeding, pruning fruit trees, weeding perennials, and plowing - are jobs that must be done each spring. The garlic we planted last fall came through the winter just fine, and is already eight to ten inches tall (what a difference a year can make; last year we lost a lot of garlic due to the big flood). At this point all the apple trees are pruned, the garlic has been cultivated, and all of the perennials have been weeded! We're really on our way.
2. Early Spring Session begins March 19, sign up now!
This update is coming out a bit late, but if you haven't signed up for Early Spring Session yet and want to, if you get right on it you can still get in. The best way to sign up is online (www.jubileefarm.org). If you miss the first week, you can join us at a pro-rated cost on the second week.
3. Update on Eco-APD
We've had some ups and downs on our proposal to have the Snoqualmie Valley Agricultural Production District (APD) declared an "Eco-APD." Most of you know that it's been about two years now that we've been working to try to get the farmland in our APD preserved and farmed. The proposal has gone through a number of changes as a result of input from various groups and individuals. At this time I'm leaving the "choir" and going out to visit fellow farmers who are not organic and don't all have the same enthusiasm for the proposal that my fellow, organic farmers do-or that the large, environmental community in Seattle does.
I know that I didn't really ask the "permission" of our CSA members for me to take on a project this large. That wouldn't be appropriate anyway, as in our CSA the members don't function like a board of directors. But there is a sense in which you have all given up something to free me up to tackle this project. Nobody can do everything, as I've had to nurse the proposal along, attend many meetings, write many papers and articles, and lobby farmers, regulators, and political folks, there have been things we would otherwise have done that have gone undone. Wendy has picked up a great deal of the slack. But she can't do everything either.
My feeling (and hope) is that you all see this as a part of the "community effort" of being a part of this farm. Having started the first CSA in our APD our farm has come to be pretty well known. For years I was disappointed because it seemed like nobody knew who we were; now I'm amazed to find that it seems like everyone knows who we are (or at least thinks/says they do). With this level of recognition comes the opportunity to influence policies in our APD, and I have come to feel that our commitment to local agriculture and to our community requires us to do that. "To whom much has been given, much will be required."
So I am hoping that like Wendy and now our crew, you will all also be willing to cut me and the farm a little slack if need be. I do expect to have a great season; I also expect that I will be called away from the farm. One thing that will help is that I have tendered by resignation at the college. It was hard to give up the very advantageous position I held there (whereby I could choose what I wanted to teach and when), but something had to give.
There is indication that we may be nearing a break-through on the political front. Hopefully in the next update I'll have something I can share with you all regarding that.
4. Cattle update
It's that time of year. The cows got restless last week when the weather was good. Now they've settled down. But the next time we get a couple of warm days they'll be out on pasture. It's been a good winter. They've gone through a lot of hay, but we still have a little left to start next winter off with. We're hoping to get lucky and be able to make "May hay" again this year. The cows love it, and it's great for them. But if it's too wet in May, the quality isn't as good.
We have 16 larger animals of various genders and sexual standings, 5 calves, and one borrowed bull. When you do the math on 50 pounds of "product" per day per cow, that's a lot of compost material we've gathered over the winter. The matt of manure and bedding has elevated the cows throughout the winter. They are now about three feet higher than the bottom of the floor! They were so high they could no longer get their heads low enough to eat the hay on the outside of their stanchions, so Wendy built an elevated feeding trough for them. Now IT is lower than their mat! It is definitely time for them to get out into the pasture! I wish you all could be here to see the happy day. They will really kick up their heels!
5. Confirmation Letters: if you didn't get one...
I am happy to announce that "we" (that would be the "royal" we) have sent out confirmation letters to all of you who have signed up for the Summer Session CSA (except for those of you who have signed up in the last week or so).
What that means is this: if you didn't get a confirmation letter, you either haven't signed up, or we made a mistake. If you have signed up but did not get a confirmation letter, please send us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com) and we will try to figure out why you didn't get a confirmation letter.
6. Sign-up for Summer Session
Please remember that this is likely to be the year that we hit our limit of shares and have to draw the line. If you want to guarantee your place in the Summer Session, and you haven't sent in your application, this might be the time to get it done!
7. First Washington State Biodynamic Winter meeting held at Jubilee Farm
We start another season a little more aware of the BD protocols, but still feeling very much like beginners. We have already started spraying the fields and greenhouses with "BD 500" the most important preparation in the biodynamic arsenal of homeopathic soil and plant treatments.
Our state has been a little slow in gaining momentum in the Biodynamic world. But that might be changing. A few weeks ago, on a glorious spring-like day, we held the first-ever BD "Winter meeting" here at Jubilee Farm. There were more than 20 people who joined us including Barry Lia, the State BD director for the meeting. We had a wonderful day - socially, instructionally, and educationally. We also all participated in making a fruit tree preparation and applying it to over half of our apple orchard! What fun.
We were also pleased to have Barry attend our last Sno-Valley Tilth meeting and make a presentation to the group on biodynamic farming. It was extremely well received, and we are hopeful that other farms in our area will join us in our commitment to BD farming techniques. There is little doubt that BD comprises the most Sustainable of all farming practices. Nor is there much doubt that the effort (and there it is not easy) pays off in the best tasting and most nutritious produce that can be grown.
8. Calling all Work Share members
It's that time again. The weather is getting (or will get!) warmer, and many of you will be wishing you had a local, biodynamic farm to work on for four hours a week in trade for a share of its produce. Are you ever in luck! We have a work share program that, objectively speaking, is the very best in the nation-probably in the world, maybe in the universe!
If you have an interest, and if you did not participate last year in our work share program, please drop us a note at: jubileefarm@hotmail.com. (If you did a work share last year, you are already on my list and you will get the note I send out.) Later this month I will be sending some information out to everyone who has expressed interest in the work share program.
9. Mineralization: the basis of "nutrient dense produce"
It was a few years ago that we first heard the phrase "nutrient dense produce." Now we seem to find it creeping up everywhere we look. People are becoming aware that the preoccupation of "conventional agriculture with just three of the 65 "essential" minerals (i.e. NPK) has resulted in our produce having less than 50% the nutritional value that produce had 50 years ago.
Think with me for a minute about what we actually "take" when we harvest a vegetable from the field-say broccoli. Broccoli plants are pretty big. They have very large leaves. When we harvest, we take only a small part of the plant. Remember that when you see any plant, you can count on half of the "bulk" of the plant being under the ground, and half above. All of the half-of-the-plant under ground stays in the ground. And most of the "bulk" of the plant above the ground never gets harvested. It also ends up going back into the soil. What gets harvested and leaves the farm is only a very small portion of the plant. What is this comprised of?
The largest part of the broccoli head by far is water. But behind that, are minerals. It is largely minerals that are taken from the farm. How many different kinds of minerals are there? I'm not sure we really know. At this time 65 have been isolated. Each has some role to play in human nutrition-many forming the basis of enzymes and hormones that control and maintain the health of our bodies. (It was Dr. Liebig who, in the 1890s discovered that plants could grow and reproduce tolerably well on just three (NPK) of the 65 minerals, although these nutrient-deficient plants could not maintain human health.) So, what we are really "taking off the farm" is largely minerals.
If we don't replace those minerals, we lose the nutrition that could and should be available for our bodies. It is certainly true that NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) are enough for a plant to grow and reproduce (although without additional minerals even they will be susceptible to disease and pest infestations-pests are always attracted to nutritionally depleted plants). But NPK plants can't give what they don't have. The result of growing produce with the methods of "conventional agriculture" is the production of plants that are dangerously low in the minerals we need.
The solution, of course is the remineralization of the soil; you can't just take and take without putting something back. In biodynamic farming, the preparations and especially the compost (which has its own preparations included) is the source of remineralization. While a farm is growing a herd large enough to provide the fertility of the entire farm (our farm, for example, will require about 60 cows), it must remineralize using elemental minerals (rather than synthetic), mined from the ground. Once the farm has reached its optimum number of cows, the manure from the cows that eat mineral-enriched grass is enough, when composted, along with the minerals available in the air, to remineralize the soil.
Maintaining proper levels of minerals in the soil requires constant maintenance. We get our soil tested every two years to monitor mineral levels. If we are low, we add compost or, if there isn't enough compost (while we grow our herd to the size we need), we add elemental minerals as required. This year we are mineralizing the pastures where the cows feed. This is crucial, because just as the plants can't give what they don't have, the cows can't give (in their manure) what they don't eat. So to complete the mineral rich cycle (which leads to nutrient dense foods) we must complete the loop-we must mineralize the pastures the cows graze on.
Each year we gain on achieving the levels of nutrition in our soil that we need. It doesn't happen overnight, but we are gaining, and we believe that for the sake of the health of all of us, we the farmers, you the members, and all the children, that it is well worth the expense and the effort to grow food to maximize nutrition.
10. Review of Pollen's Omnivore's Dilemma
It may seem predictable that someone who owns and manages a small, organic farm would give Michael Pollen's Omnivore's Dilemma high marks. I do. But I must admit that I didn't expect to. I had certainly heard good things about the book, but I also had heard good things about his previous book (The Botany of Desire) which, though a much shorter work, I struggled (unsuccessfully) to get through.
But I was completely taken aback with my first exposure to the Omnivore's Dilemma which happened to come not as a reading, but as a listening. I was on the campus of Bellevue Community College on the night Pollen was speaking there. Someone mentioned it to me, so I slipped into the auditorium about halfway through his presentation and heard him read a section of his book that dealt with the "industrialization" of corn. I was amazed that someone who self-identifies himself as a "journalist" has so successfully navigated the labyrinth of preferential governmental policies and corporate smokescreens to expose with unfailing clarity the ubiquity of corn in the American diet and the costs associated with our unknowing devotion.
In case you don't know anything about the Omnivore's Dilemma, it is (ostensibly) about Pollen's efforts to track down the source of three kinds of meals; one from a fast food restaurant, one based on organic produce, and one that he scavenges from an atavistic (if not almost voyeuristic) attempt at "hunting and gathering."
The first meal is from a fast-food restaurant. His research and travels lead him to and through what he calls the "industrial agricultural machine." There are still many people who are completely unaware of the nature of the dominant (97%) mode of producing food in the US. Pollen chronicles in a readable narrative but in no small detail the degradation of human health, local economies, the environment, and the plethora of "hidden" and subsidized costs of our food system. If you are one of those people who have an inkling of all this but suspect you don't know the whole story, you owe it to yourself to read at least this section of the book, in which Pollen describes the way in which most food in America is grown and processed.
If the "industrial machine" in food processing is a surprise to a certain percentage of readers, his discovery that not all "organic" farming is the same will likewise be a surprise to yet another segment of his readers. Most of us think of organic farming in terms of a small family farm, owned and operated by people who care about the environment and about producing healthy, nutritious food for their communities. When we purchase organic food from our local grocery stores, this is what we have in mind. And often the stores play to this deception, with plenty of photos of family farms and even the "stories" of family farmers.
The truth, however, as Pollen discovers and shares liberally with his readers, is that almost all of the organic produce on the shelves of grocery stores comes from three or four farms in California that average over 20,000 acres. They are high-tech, high energy-input, high carbon foot-print agri-business farms that also farm land non-organically. These farms have simply found profit in the organic boom and are "cashing in." Pollen concludes that insofar as these farms (or at least the parts of these farms that the corporate owners farm organically) do not use toxic chemicals, there is an environmental "plus." But insofar as people buy these organic products and think they are purchasing crops from small, organic, diversified farms, they are being blatantly deceived.
Fortunately, Pollen ultimately finds his way to the kind of farm that people think they are buying from when they get those "industrial organic" items from their grocery stores. They do exist, and their numbers are growing. But typically the best or only way to know what you are getting and what you are supporting when you buy "organic" is to buy directly from a farm. That, of course, is precisely what buying from a farmer's market, and to even a greater degree joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm, is all about.
I was reminded of Pollen's observations last week when I had an official "farm audit" by the Department of Agriculture. The examiner couldn't hide his amazement (and exasperation) at the fact that on 20 acres of land we grow over 80 crops (I didn't have the heart to tell him how many varieties of each crop we grow-I didn't think he could handle it!). He finally looked at me and said, "most farms grow one or two crops-how do you do it? How do you keep track of everything?" Well, as I told him, it's not easy. It is radically different from the single-crop, "efficient" approach used by huge, agri-business corporate farms. But maybe we would do well to head Pollen's suggestion that there is something wrong with our modern assessment of the word "efficient."
"Efficient," our grammarians will tell us, is a word in need of an object. That is to say, "efficient" simply means the expeditious attainment of some purpose or goal. On large, corporate farms (whether organic or not organic) when the word "efficient" is used it seems to always be used in relation to the goal of making more money. Of course farmers have to make money. But couldn't one have other goals whose attainment (or not) could be a standard for "efficiency"?
Most small organic farms have as a goal farming "sustainably." This means many things: keeping energy inputs as low as possible (not just as low as is "economical"); growing as large of a diversity of crops as possible to preserve soil fertility and avoid the need for pesticides (even though it's easier and, in the short run, more profitable to grow one or two crops); using cover crops after each cash crop to enhance soil quality (an expense that large farms rarely accept)'; growing one's own fertilizer by growing compost crops and/or animals for manure (even though, again, it is cheaper and easier to buy fertilizer by the bag!).
Pollen's book is, I believe, accurate, informative, and very readable. It also makes the strong case that we "vote" with our food dollars, and that the best vote is to support local, organic, diversified, small-family farms whenever and as much as we can.
11. Once again: it's fruits and vegetables, unprocessed, please
How many times have we heard it before? - and how many times will we hear it again? The other day I was driving and heard a report about another study (this time on vitamins) that concluded that taking vitamins in most cases (there are exceptions) doesn't do much good if any to your health and it may even be harmful.
What should we do? As you might guess, we are told to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, hold the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, synthetic fertilizers, shelf-extending chemicals, fruit ripening chemicals, etc. (OK, I admit it, I added everything after the "pesticides" in the sentence above-but I'm sure they intended them too!)
So many of us are looking for the quick fix, for the "shortcut" to getting healthier (along with smarter, stronger, in better shape, wealthier, and lots of other things). It turns out that here the common sense intuition has been once again confirmed: the best way for your body to ingest the vitamins and minerals it needs is not in the form of a pill, but in the form of fresh, whole, unadulterated food. The theme for the Acres Conference of organic farmers Wendy and I attended in Kentucky this year was "food as medicine."
It's true-food is the best medicine that exists. But it has to be fresh and grown with care and attention (and maybe even love) rather than with toxic chemicals! The study may have been a bit superfluous?
12. A great home for sale for the gardener-lots of good karma!
This isn't something I like to do-put an "advertisement" in our newsletter. It probably won't happen in another ten years. But most of us have only a small number of people who they put into the "life-long friend" category, and when one of them asks... well, how could I say no?
Paul and Kathy Campbell have been friends since long before any of my kids were born. Paul worked here on our farm, has always been supportive, and been a constant source of encouragement and good advice. I have often said that there are only two people I know who I believe to have a genuinely "green thumb"; Paul is one of them. (No, I'm not the other!) And he's been much more to me than just a farming friend.
Paul and his wife Kathy are moving to Kentucky. Selfishly, I'm sad to see them go. But it is the best thing for them, and I wish them well. They are selling their home, a place they have put a great deal of energy into. I've had opportunity to help out on some of the work there myself, and I can tell you the garden is phenomenal. If you are looking, or know someone who is, please contact Paul. Below, in his own words is a description of his "farmlet."
Paul is selling the farm! Paul's Cottage Garden is a 1.6 acre farm where we have grown pesticide free vegetables, fruit and flowers for the past 25 years. We have an established clientele who love our produce. Our family home is a 1500 square foot rambler recently updated. It also has a mud room, bonus room and oversized garage not included in the square footage. The property has a charming gazebo where we market the produce, an updated chicken coop, a new propagation/storage building and a 600 square foot passive solar cold frame/greenhouse.
We are located just off Avondale a mile south of the Woodinville/Duvall Rd. The Metro bus line is two blocks away and it is less than an hour by bus to downtown Seattle. The Woodinville Library is a half mile away. Although we have loved living on our little farm, we are motivated to sell and be near our children and grandchild in Lexington, Kentucky.
We are harvesting salad, the garlic is almost a foot high, and we have started the tomatoes. We will teach you how to garden organically and have a bounty of crops ready for you to harvest. Our clientele is pleading for us not to sell and I am doing everything possible to sell to someone who wants to continue serving this community with healthy produce. I am a realtor but will not list the property unless I cannot find a person passionate about caring for the land. We are offering the property for $519,000.00.
Paul Campbell - 425-788-3656