Strength in Spring

Thursday was the first day of spring. Hurray for glimpses of dawn, wherever we can find them.  Day 9 of official pandemic. Lots of things in the world are bleak, AND not immediately going to get better, but I don't need to tell you that. But friend, dear ones--remember Aslan's montage of "Courage, Dear Heart(s)." 

Right now, this week planting seeds seemed like both the simplest and one of the most important things I have ever done. Here in eastern Wisconsin, where our frost date can be quite the gamble, the fact that most things can now be begun indoors (skip the squash, melons and tomatoes) was a grace. Cali helped and she's been very dutifully watering them. She did say that, "it's much better to plant seeds because then you get to watch them the whole way, otherwise you are just watching them go in the ground. I'm trying to be a better, more attentive gardener and learn from past mistakes. So here's some tips I'm incorporating if you want to plant along. Also, start SOON. I'm already encountering multiple seed sites that are selling out or partially or totally closed. 

Tip 1: Buy/swap great seeds

Here are some great options: 

https://gardentowerproject.com/product/garden-towers-container-seeds-collection/ (Great starter variety pack)

https://www.kitchengardenseeds.com/seed-index/collections/itty-bitty-veggie-garden.html (Really fun later season for small spaces and containers)

https://sustainableseedco.com/products/grannys-garden-seed-collection?variant=3719682850856 (For heirlooms) 

Tip 2: Paper towel pre-sprout

I'm trying this this year, after already having started many of my seeds but this is genius. The easiest way to kill your seeds is in those first few weeks when they dry out or mold. 

Tip 3: Sprinkle don't soak

For those first few weeks when your seeds are extra vulnerable try a squirt bottle instead of a watering can. You don't want them to get too wet and rot. 

Tip 4: Good potting mixture

There's lots of ways to go about this and it's true that vermiculite and peat are not the most ecological sources. Coconut fibers also travel a long way. However, these things are readily available at garden stores and not bad choices for beginners or quick starts. However, I'm also hoping to add this local moss product to help protect against fungal action in trial this year-- also super curious how this works out ecologically. It’s also cheaper to buy (if you don't have any available) and mix compost and topsoil with a small amount of sand. You can also plant in bags of topsoil directly. 

Tip 5: Grow lights

If starting indoors, don't skip this step. I'm trying out these.

Tip 6: Starter pots

There have been years when I have made pots out of toilet paper rolls or newspaper. While your kids are out, it could give them something to do. Perk is that you can start your seeds in bigger pots. However, the trays with the lids are convenient and do help keep good humidity. 

Tip 7: Grow up not out

There are lots of ways to accomplish vertical gardening, but when you get ready to transplant, (or you live some lucky place that is already warm enough to direct sow, growing up helps to maximize space and sometimes reduces pests, or allows for more intensive plantings.  

What are you planting? How are you growing hope?

The Book of Bob

My friend Bob Waldrop is equal parts John the Baptist and John Muir-he is a voice crying out in the wilderness. A voice for wilderness spaces and a voice against the wilderness of conglomerate agrobuisness. He is a burly guy with a bushy beard that hasn't been trimmed in decades and equally likely to say things like "ya all bon appetite ya hear" or to curse under his breath.

The Bob Waldrop

John Muir. Wilderness Warrior. Photo public domain. (Don't you think they could be related?)

When I first moved back to Oklahoma nearly ten years ago he was probably the first person and the most dedicated that I met towards the goals of living a sustainable lifestyle. If you drive by his house it is probably the first one on his street that has no grass in the front lawn (Hurray for the grassless lawn!) but is filled to the brim with edible plants including native elderberries long before front yard gardening was the in vogue thing to do. And I have been quietly watching and learning from him for quite a long time.

Bob is the one who is continually fighting for anti-mowing laws which unnecessarily prevent habitat from being made, wildflowers from being planted, or more native and drought tolerant grasses from being encouraged. While one might be inclined to write him off as an eccentric hippie, he is tremendously wise.

Founder of the, then very new Oklahoma Food Coop he has been a great voice for local farmers, producers, and artists. He understands community and he understands the need for each of us to reduce our global footprint, and for him it is very greatly relevant to his faith. A question I have been plagued with since college is, Why isn't sustainability at the forefront for ALL faith communities? And to those that have choosen to make this a front page issue in their church community, my hat to you. Bob was the first person to ever introduce me to the concept of permaculture. And it is just the kind of holistic thinking we need. To learn more about Bob's wise insights into our diminishing energy and water resources check out his blog, Bobaganda!

If you have never heard of permaculture (and don't be surprised if you haven't) it is a holistic way of thinking, designing, and integrating your environmental ideals across multiple areas of your life and your communities (physical places and personal connections). It is about gardening, energy use, homesteading, simplicity, and interconnectedness. It is about examining waste in every sense of the word. It is about making our yards and our households useful and achieving maximum potential. It is all about reducing our need for fossil fuels and stepping back a little from such a global economy.  You know the one that imports peanuts from Africa to make peanut butter in Minnesota to put labels on it in Canada before it is shipped to Arkansas to be distributed to my simple sandwich...

So I was happy, delighted, ecstatic to start working my way through Bob's new ebook ipermie. For $1.99 this 399,000 (very bite-size) work of words deal that you can not beat. It is a workbook, a guidebook, a focal point,  a series of reflections about what matters in your life and how you can make your space (no matter how small) livable and productive. But more so than many, this one give tools particularly to those who are nearly space-less, the student, the elderly, the apartment dweller. And it is about developing the infrastructures around us to support sustainable communities. It is about starting to change your life, one page at a time. Begin today.

Thank you Bob for being a mentor to so many and for being a strong voice for what is right, for justice for others and for our fellow creatures. I can not wait to see how my life will change as I continue to delve deeper into the permaculture world.

Now She's One! Poem and Pumpkin Fun.

My dairy article is taking longer than I thought. I'll post that soon, but thought I needed to get in some pumpkin stuff!

Baby girl turned one just a few days ago. I get so mad when people tell me that the time passes so quickly, because I feel it everyday and, darn, I wish it would slow down! How has the best year of my life gone by so quickly? 

Our family decided that to celebrate her birthday we would be agritourists and go to a pumpkin patch. It is a new tradition that we plan to continue every year!

Where the Cows Come Home

Sometimes you get a glimpse into the rural Americana of yore. My friend Paige's small dairy is just such a place, a place worth preserving. One of the few remaining small scale dairies in the United states. At the end of a dirt road, way out in the country, behind a garage full of antique cars and a steel building, rusting a little on the edges, is a little dairy started by her grandparents thirty ago.

Here you can find Jerseys, Holsteins, and a few cows that are crosses between the two. Here, unlike most American dairies, the land has been in the family for years, the infant cows are kept on site and dine on real cow's milk, instead of formula. Here the cows get to frolic in green grass and enjoy pasture chow. Here my friend dreams about expanding her business to selling farm fresh cheese, butter, yogurt, and kefir. 

Here three little boys dart around on their bikes and chase kite strings, dragon flies, and each other when their mom comes twice a day to do the milking. Here throngs of preschoolers and homeschool children get to gather to learn a real-life lesson of where their milk comes from.

"Dog."

"Dog". My one year old daughter greets the fuzzy creature before her with the only animistic noun she knows, while her one year old buddy leans in at eye level towards another baby cow who will likely lick his face. "Mama, do baby cows come out their mama's butts?" my three year old asks, prompting a discussion about birth while he chases a chicken behind a tree.

The parlor. Down in the pit.

We look at the large tank on the outside of the dairy that pumps in feed snacks through pipes on the ceiling for the cows during their daily milkings. The thirty milking cows produce milk that goes into the 1,250 gallon tank which is drained every other day by the milk truck who takes it to the milk cooperative where it will go to Oklahoma companies to make milk, cream, ice cream, and cheese. 

We go into the parlor, the section where the cows come to get milked. The stalls are in a herring bone pattern, coming out like ribs from a central spine. The farmers show us the lower section, the pit, where they go down where the udders are at eye level. The kids are fascinated by the tubes and wires. Pipes bring water and bleach for sterilization, corn for the cows, and then other pipes take the milk out from the milk cups. Here the cows enter on both sides of the U and go into their individual stalls. Cups about the length of a hand are placed on each udder. The feed comes in and the milk goes out. And then the cows, with a tap on the foreleg, (or in our case, the kids) run down the alley on the back slope towards the pasture- where the cows come home.  

Where the cows come home

The cows weren't the only ones giving out kisses...

In a dairy daze

Dear E,

Remember the summer we got together and I left you, after two weeks, to go study about ecology and sustainable farms in Washington state with Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies? And then I went directly to a study abroad in England and the U.K. for four months? 

A favorite experience was touring a small scale organic dairy farm in Washington where they were milking around 80 head. It was obvious the animals were well cared for and well adored. The farmer's kids had named most of them. They were pastured except when they were being milked and were surrounded by the scents of clover, raspberries, and apples and all around everything was green. Their babies got to be near the mamas most of the time. It seemed like a pretty great place to be a cow, nay, a farmer. Naively at the time, like most Americans, I thought that just like the fisher price sets and the plexiglass displays at children's museums, this must be how it is at all dairies.

(Later I've learned, that in fact in the data from the last twenty years more than 50% of dairy cows in the US are in fact from Confined Animal Feeding Operations with more than 1000 head of cattle. [As of 2001. See CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding Operations by the Union of Concerned Scientists, p.22]. Ugh).

More than half of my time in England was spent in rural Suffolk county running down serene cobblestone paths with curious dairy cows peering at me over ancient stone fences.  (Until very recently CAFOs have been rejected in England. This may be changing). The other half was spent eating an inordinate amount of artisan local cheeses, some of which were made from raw milk.  A visit to Neal's Dairy Yard in Covent Garden was one of the most formative culinary experiences I had ever had. After adjusting to the pungent aromas of many fresh cheeses combined, I was astounded by so much well made floor-to-ceiling cheese, cheese that was bigger than my head.

I was there reading all the pastoral poets and these romantics and later American transcendentalists seemed a marvelous contrast to the greasy cogs of the industrial revolution. I returned further enamored with the rural lifestyle. And had our relationship not already been in motion, I certainly may have become an organic farmer.

How did you ever convince me to return? You, after all, abhor gardening. Nor do you like mucking around in manure. Grow it, nay; eat it, yeah. Certainly your love of food has been important.

(Unlike our kids), you remain the most appreciative and wonderful person to cook for. My heart to you for that darling. You love fine tastes, you know good food, and, one more thing, you love great cheese.

Hannah
 **********
Dear Hannah, 

How well I remember. That time was a lot tougher than I let on. I really was a little worried you wouldn't come back. But of course you came back-after all, I'm very charming ;) .

I don't abhor gardening, but being the slave labor for my parents' garden ruined it for me. Wait- it's not like I don't help. Who built your garden beds and garden fence? [A combined effort!] Who trims and removes trees for you? [About that...]

But I do love seeing how happy your garden makes you. I've never seen someone so excited about basil or potatoes. 

I do love cheese. It's interesting comparing different methods of production and how good and how different cheese from real milk tastes. I must visit these English farms with you. Of course, my ideals of great cheese comes from my travels in France. I would love to compare those cheeses I know and love with the British counterparts...I imagine the French cheeses are somewhat stronger smelling and more pretentious.

Love, 
Evan
 

Creating a "Farm City": A responsive book review

Recently, kind of by accident, I had the pleasure of discovering and meeting Novella Carpenter.  I was so impressed with her book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

and can't wait to visit and revisit her new book The Essential Urban Farmer. I was impressed at her poetry and honesty about the realities of raising and butchering animals. And the whole thing combined with my reading of Green Metropolis had me wishing for a Utopia in which city dwellers can only have yards if they will relegate and utilize them for something with ecological usefulness: habitat, water purification, food sources for local organisms, or food production by themselves or their green thumb neighbors. [Update: For a good laugh, go here to see what God might think of your yard] Everyone else must live in hip urban apartments...One can wish.

Meat shortages: The year of the rabbit, or go fish?

On the other side of adorable baby farm animals is usually someone's dinner.

Several places are discussing this week some grim prospects for farmers, animals, and food prices for next year. This year is considered to be the worst drought since the 1930s in much of the mid-west. The grain that was intended to be primarily livestock feed lies stunted, barren, and crisped. Extreme losses for farmers and the inability to get grain is leading to the beginning of a mass and premature slaughtering of animals to peak in early 2013. Prices are expected to soar 14% and there will undoubtedly be increases in global food insecurity.( See the articles in The Guardian and Grist). So, how to respond to such news?

Go to the Fair!

"Go to the fair...you will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams." E.B. White Charlotte's Web

For most of the two days before my son's kindergarten class went to the fair he reminded me, "I am not going to school. I am not going to the fair. There will be a lot of animals there. They stink. Bad. I do not want to smell them."

Geesh. Just what every environmental educatin' nature lovin' mother wants to hear.

Well he went. And after getting to hold the flailing baby chickens that peered out inquisitively from his hands, he was, of course, totally smitten with their fluffiness.

Remember the chickens, in the study?

E,

This week I’m thinking about eggs and urban farm animals. Remember when I hatched chickens--in our study? Of course you do. Well, it seemed like a good idea... The local extension agency (bless them!) provides educators with incubators and eggs from one of those mega chicken conglomerates, they which shall not be named (see any resemblance to Lord Voldemort?). 

There was me with fifteen eggs and an incubator exuberantly ready to do what I had always wanted but never gotten to do. We plugged it in and dutifully added water for 21 days. Every day I anxiously checked the window. Were they turning alright? Would they have enough moisture? Would any live or would I have to break it to my children and all their friends that I was in fact a mass chicken killer? (Stop chuckling).  

The first day of cracks I sat immovably for hours. (I was equally transfixed only  at the New Orleans aquarium watching a father seahorse, belly heaving, wondering if I was about to witness birth). Birth is a crazy, slow and exhausting process. Slowly a beak; an eye; a pulse through a hole; a wing. Then, wonder of wonders, twelve little damp feathered peeping (and pooping) hatchlings.

Cheaper Nuggets: A series about fun and frugal farm food

By Hannah Harder

This begins the swashbuckling tales about one eco-mom's shortcomings and successes in getting her family to eat and learn about sustainable local sourced food. 

Cheaper nuggets!

The plethora of sustainable food choices that has grown in Oklahoma in just a few short years is increasingly delicious. Admittedly, in my attempts to eat well and in line with my convictions I have been known to way overspend on groceries, particularly because I am much more prone to drooling over recipes rather than dabbling with receipt books. I have also too frequently bought into the lies that sustainable food is usually extra expensive and inconvenient.

However, quite by accident, when adding up the ingredients I used for my first post, I was astonished when it came out to be cheaper than a fast food restaurant!