Hi Everyone,
In this update:
1. Winter Session CSA starts in two weeks (February 3rd)
If you feel like you've fallen off the (nutritional) wagon this winter, here is your chance to get back on. Our Winter Session CSA will be a help for all of us who want to both eat better for our own health and support local farmers with our food dollars. The Session lasts six weeks. All shares are delivered to depots convenient to where you live or work on Wednesday mornings. You can sign up in minutes on our web page (www.jubileefarm.org).
All our depots for the Winter Session are the same as they were for the Fall Session that ended in December. So those of you who were in the Fall Session will pick up your produce at the same depot location. If you are new to our off-season Sessions, we will contact you to let you know about depot locations and options.
When you sign up online for a Winter Box, you will be able to check "local box" if you would like to be a true locovore—the contents of your box in this case will come from within an only slightly flexible 150 mile radius. Those who don't check "local box" will still be supporting local farms to a great extent, although we will buy from California for those who don't want to be a strict locovore. We will not be making purchases from out of our own country.
2. A tale of two winters
The allusion to Dickens' great novel (A Tale of Two Cities) may not quite be right, insofar as it's pretty hard to claim a weather pattern to be, in general, the "best" or the "worst." But we can certainly say this winter and last winter represent two distinct extremes for winters in our area, and I think we can say that for farmers in the Snoqualmie Valley, to a person we would say, relative to our farming here, this was the best, and last year was the worst.
We really paid our dues last year, with snow, cold, wind, power outages and two major floods, one of which was the largest in recorded history. We got to where we would get together and almost laugh about it—what else could happen? How could it get any worse?
The contrast of this year compared to last make this winter seem even more remarkable. We did have a cold snap in early November, and also that very frustrating and unseasonably early frost on October 12th. But beyond those two blips, it's been such an easy winter for us.
Because of this, it's exciting for us to realize how far we are this year compared to last. At this time last year we were mucking out the barn, loafing shed, and even one of the farm houses that had taken water in our historic flood. In fact, the clean-up took us right up to March when it was time to start planting! This year we have gotten a lot of our winter work done. We've pruned the grape arbors and already have a good start on the apple orchard. We also have done some major stabilizing on the two grape arbors that were damaged in last year's flooding. And we have planted the first installment of our vineyard (see below, #8). So we feel that we have such a head-start over last season, and to be honest, having the best after the worst is probably a lot easier to take than having it the other way around.
3. Beef sides available early this summer
This season we will have beef shares available shortly after Summer Solstice (June 21st). If you are interested and have not sent us an e-mail (or aren't sure you are on our list and want to be), please send us a note to jubileefarm@hotmail.com and you will get on our "2010 beef share interest" list. In June we will contact those of you on our list before we exercise other marketing options for our beef. We sell beef by the quarter, half or full cow (approximately 150, 300, and 600 pounds respectively). E-mailing to get on our list doesn't obligate you to purchase, but please let us know your interest level and what size you'd be interested in if you do choose to purchase.
I think that if I didn't show restraint here I could easily fill many pages about the benefits of purchasing locally grown, grass raised-and-finished beef. But I think by now we all know the "whys" and that most of us in our CSA are probably either buying local grass-fed beef most of the time or just not eating beef often or at all. Certainly on every level feed-lots waver somewhere between the range of being merely disgusting to that of being completely reprehensible; but that, too, is common knowledge.
One thing that isn't so commonly known is that when one decides to purchase grass-finished beef, the time of year that the animals are harvested makes a big difference. Large grass-finishers often butcher animals when they are perceived to be ready, regardless of what time of year it is. Most small growers tend to harvest in the fall, as we have always done here at Jubilee Farm. But the leading grass-finishing guru in our country has recently made a powerful argument that the very best harvest time for the meat quality of grass-finished beef is near to Summer Solstice.
The argument is easy to follow and quite intuitive. Spring grass (March 21st to June 21st) is the best grass of the year. It is highest in nutrients and grows faster than the cows can eat it, neither of which is true of summer grass. Summer Solstice is a decisive point in the cycle of grasses and many other perennial and annual plants, something that is emphasized in Biodynamic farming. From that time on the quality of the grass begins to diminish, as does its quantity. We see it dramatically on our farm, as after Solstice, we need to either move the animals more often, or make their pens larger.
It's not surprising that when the grass is at both its greatest quality and quantity, the cattle grow fastest. Nor is it surprising that when the cattle are growing, the most natural fat and omega-three fatty acids are at their highest. As the days begin to get shorter, the cows have to work harder to maintain their weight; they spend less time resting and more time working. They begin to draw on the reserves they have stored up during spring. In sum, the quality of the animal is highest at the peak of the growing season of their food supply, which is Summer Solstice, and goes down from there.
So this year we are making the switch. We held over the cows that we would have taken last fall, and will harvest them this year at Summer Solstice. We are also changing our calving time to late June (for many of the same reasons, except that the benefits accrue to the mother and calf rather than immediately to the consumer). This involves giving all our "moms" (the only real "cows" we have, since the rest are just bovine of various stripes—as the children from our Summer Farm School will be quick to tell you) a break this year, which ranchers hate to do. The longer the cows spend not "bred-back" the longer the time is between paydays. Thankfully for us, our cows keep doing what is very important to us during their breaks; that is, they keep producing fertilizer.
4. Farmville: Can 60 million people be wrong?
I was absolutely amazed to learn that 60 million people are dabbling vicariously in agriculture by playing "Farmville" on their computers! Do I betray myself too much if I admit publically I've never played a computer or video game? Honestly, I had no idea that 60 million people bothered to play computer games. But "Farmville"?
What I find interesting is that several years ago (2006) at the annual EF Schumacher convention, a paper was given entitled "50 Million new farmers." I've probably mentioned it before in these pages, but I hope some of you take the time to Google this (a good use of your computers) and read a very compelling article which argues that fifty million new farmers is exactly what this country needs and must get. I doubt the authors of this piece had "Farmville" in mind, and I suspect it is a coincidence, but the numbers are awfully close! If only we could get those players off the couch and out into the fields!
5. Work Share membership in 2010
Our work share program is, like many things that work on the farm (as opposed to the many more things we try that don't work), surprising us with new and serendipitous benefits, both for the farm and for the many people who have participated. I don't know how much it can expand from here, and I can foresee the day when we have to limit work shares to those who have participated in the past. But for this year, we are still looking for a few (more) good people.
If you are interested in becoming a work share participant, there is information on our web page that you can and should read. If after reading what's posted there the work share still looks like something you want to do, you should send us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com) and we will put your name on the "2010 work share interest" e-mail list. In the spring we will send out a note and application to those on the list. If you were a work share member last year, your name is automatically on the list.
6. Summer CSA membership
Last year we did not quite reach the full capacity of our CSA, although we came very close. The year before, we hit our maximum and had to close enrollment. Who knows what will happen this year.
But this we do know. All of us will choose to spend our food dollars somewhere this year. I hope we choose to vote with our food dollars again this year with a solid vote for local agriculture. To do that or to not do that is a choice we must make; not choosing is also a choice. Choosing to support local, organically or biodynamically produced food is good for you, your family, and your community. We will all vote—it can't be avoided—the only question is how we will choose to cast our ballot.
It's interesting that even in these recessionary times organic farming sales in our area have not dropped. They have not increased at the exponential rate that they have for the past decade; in fact, they have "flat-lined."
I read a report of this in a certain (unnamed) agricultural newspaper that strongly supports industrial farming techniques (and often ridicules organic farming techniques). I'm certainly not unbiased, but there did seem to me to be a little condescension and smugness in the report, as if to say, "See, the organic bubble has burst!" But what they failed to recognize is that the so-called "flat-line" is actually the goal of every genuine organic farmer. And if that is true of each individual farmer, it will be the goal of the group as a whole as well. But how is that? How is it that organic farmers are the only ones in our nation for whom not getting bigger is not the kiss of death?
I here refer to my oft-quoted hero, Wendell Berry, and to the distinction he makes that you've seen many times in our newsletters—that the standard of the industrial farmer (conventional organic—there are, unfortunately, "organic industrial" farmers out there) is always "more, more, more," while the standard of the true organic farmer is "this much, but not more." When industrial farmers say with satisfaction that organic sales have flat-lined, they have actually paid us a compliment. That's what we're trying to do, achieve "this much, but not more." The observation is only the slam it is meant to be if one presupposes the values of industrial agriculture and imposes them on the organic farmer. It is, after all, they who shudder if their sales and production ever flat-line, not the organic community.
7. Crops and animals: Finding the balance in Biodynamic Farming
We are continuing to work toward finding a balance for our farm between animals and crops. Growing a herd of cattle presents an interesting dilemma under any circumstances. We started with just three cows, and in our second year had only added two calves. That meant that during our second winter we still over-wintered three cows and two calves. This year we had 19 calves. Each of those calves also has, of course, a mother (cow), and most have older brothers (steers) or sisters (heifers). You can see that the farther down the path of exponential growth we go, we soon get to the place where we have to put on the brakes!
This is that time for us. And this fact was made even more urgent by getting another 14 animals from Wendy's family last summer. We really have a barn-full now, and we're feeling the pinch and expense of feeding and providing a clean place for them to live all winter. Ideally, we should provide all the bedding they need from our farm. But this year, we weren't completely prepared to do that. We will probably have enough hay from our farm to feed them through the winter, but we clearly can't handle as much growth next year as we had this year.
On the plus side, and we don't yet really know how big a plus this will be in total volume, we are getting a loafing-shed-full of compost material—at least twice as much as last year. That's fantastic, and we are very, very happy about the prospects of all that extra compost—we'll have no problem finding a home for that! But two big questions remain: will we be able to put up enough hay next summer for the following winter? Will we have enough grass to keep the animals going through the end of summer and early fall? The BD standards are high.
So the culmination of this process of finding our sustainable size, the season that we knew was coming, is now here. In addition to the two "herd size" questions posed above, there is another "size" question that looms relative to crops: how many acres will we be able to compost with the compost we make over the summer from the manure and bedding the cows generate this winter? The guideline offered by Biodynamic practitioners is 10 tons per acre, every third year, although some recommend more—up to 20 tons per acre one year in three. Since we are farming between ten and fifteen acres, we need to compost one-third of our land each year. This would require a minimum of 50 tons of finished compost per year to maintain what we are doing. In a way that sounds staggering—100,000 pounds of finished compost per year from our herd! And recognizing that the finished weight of compost is only a little over half of what one starts with, we really need to build 200,000 pounds worth of compost piles! I'm not doubtful that we can do it, but it is certainly no small undertaking!
I can't say for sure that by the end of this season we'll have answers to all our questions about crop and animal capacity. But this is the time we've been waiting for, and we will certainly learn a lot as the year unfolds.
8. A vineyard is born: Jubilee Biodynamic Winery
One of the things we've been able to do during this very benign winter is transplant out our first 500 wine grape vines. When we got the cuttings in the spring it was very late to be trying to get them to root, especially without the "rooting" agents, all of which are effective but not something an organic (much less biodynamic) farmer would want to use. But we planted anyway, and a couple of weeks ago started digging the starts up. Not as many rooted as we had wished, but the ones that had rooted looked good.
In all we planted 8 different varieties of grapes. If you're hoping for a great merlot or cabernet, well, it probably won't be from here. But we do have a reasonable expectation that our Pinot Noir, along with the Riesling-types of grapes we've planted (and a good French white), will do well. It will be a couple more years before we get our first grapes, but, we're on our way!
Our best to you all,
Erick and Wendy