HISTORY LESSONS.
This winter I've been trying to catch up on some reading and lately the theme has seemed to lead to a simple conclusion: you aren't just what you eat, you are, unequivocally, what everyone eats.I'm currently reading Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time," on The Great American Dust Bowl. This is a period of our history when the government pushed Native Americans (masters of husbandry, those guys) off their land and encouraged farmers to move West. Millions of acres were soon plowed on what was traditionally, and naturally, perennial prairie grass. Wheat was planted heavily throughout the late 1920's with the blessing of the government, a booming economy and good weather. Then, suddenly as if by punishment, the economy crumpled and the rains stopped... for nearly 10 years.
Far too many parallels can be drawn between how we were treating the land and the economy in the 20's vs. now––i.e. roaring 20's/Great Depression/Dustbowl vs. Roaring 2000's/Great Recession/Great Drought––and that might not seem so scary if I weren't a farmer now. In a situation like the Dust Bowl, it simply does not matter how one treats the land if everyone around them is plowing it up like idiots (sound familiar?). And we can now throw pesticides, herbicides and fungicides into the mix and arrive at not only the possibility of a brutal air assault, but a lasting and effective attack on our ground water, our local wildlife and our health.Last week, in fact, the New York Times had an article about that very subject, how at least one community in California could no longer drink its water for the poisons it contained from the runoff of a nearby commercial dairy (somehow tainting ground water is legal?). I know a natural farm whose spring––which they rely on entirely for their drinking water––was recently compromised when the neighbors decided to plant their wonderful pastures up the hill to corn, an act which requires loads of herbicide. Herbicide will seep into the soil, then the ground water, then build up in our bodies if we consume it. When we eat anything commercially farmed, we have to acknowledge there is a family somewhere who can't drink their own water because of it. And increasingly, a country that can't either."At present," writes Wendell Berry in a recent piece for the Atlantic, "80 percent of our farmable acreage is planted in annual crops, only 20 percent having the beneficent coverage of perennials. This, by the standard of any healthy ecosystem, is absurdly disproportionate." If we as a culture continue to depend on big agriculture for our food, all food will suffer, because all farmers will suffer. Everyone loses. We need proper husbandry and land practices, absolutely, but we farmers can only do so much. If our neighbors are still getting subsidies and the corn and soybeans are still flying off the shelves (and freezers), they will continue to plant them with gusto. And if mother nature decides she wants to cut the rain for a while (seen any terrifying droughts around lately?), then we might not see a trickle down effect, the effects might just roll over us like dirt in the Dust Bowl. All of us.- Jesse.
BOOK REVIEW: THE DIRTY LIFE.
We read a great deal of books then spend a subsequent great deal of time talking about them, but just recently realized we often neglect to really mention them on the blog. With the fall approaching, bringing with it shorter and shorter days, the farmer is typically left to their own devices; left to find ways to somehow farm in the dark. And what better way to do so than with a good book? In the spirit of that, and of what will probably be an literature-rich winter for us, we've decided to occasionally post a book review (or really, a recommendation) when a book moves us. The title which most recently inspired this action was Kristin Kimball's "The Dirty Life," a story not all too different from our own, with a resolution not all too different from what we want for ourselves: a sustainable farm, family and life.
In the beginning of the book she introduces herself from this farm, while her husband cooks for her––something she refers to as "a farmer's expression of intimacy,"––already deep into this lifestyle. What makes the book special is that it's the story of how it happened, how this city dweller found herself becoming a farmer. It revolves around her first year on their upstate farm, occasionally meandering in and out of her past and future, finding its stride not solely in great stories, but in observations about the farm through city eyes. Needless to say, Hannah and I, having recently come from big cities ourselves with no real inclination as to what even happens on a farm before we arrived on one, often relate so well to the story it's obnoxious: this women has, in many ways, written our book.
But we admit we were compelled to recommend "The Dirty Life" because it is so close to our story, and because it's a love story anyone would enjoy. It's a book about farming, but prefers to simply converse with you, the reader, rationally, honestly, and often humorously about what she was going through not just as a neophyte farmer, but as an unsuspecting victim of the most underrated addictions: physical labor. We definitely enjoyed it as farmers, but agree we would have enjoyed it no matter our profession.
For us, one thing we really appreciated––and I'll end with this––is how poignant in many ways it was to what we've been going through this year: "All we could do was keep trying. We were making it up as we went along. I remember feeling a kind of reverse nostalgia then, a longing for the future, when the canon would be established, when we would know what to expect and be equipped to handle it." And how.
- Jesse.
FAIL.
"It's baffling to me that something beyond your control can make you feel like a failure. But welcome to the life of a farmer."-Courtney Lowery CowgillA couple weeks ago Hannah and I received a wonderful book in the mail from our friend Pam in New York...a gift to young farmers, about young farmers. The book is called "Greenhorns: the next generation of American farmers," a compilation of essays by young farmers whose experiences are eerily similar to our own.
The drought has been hard on us, which I know we've let on a little in our blogs, but not fully. Hannah and I want nothing more than to give our shareholders heaping baskets of food to the point in which they are refusing veggies. We want to have so much food leftover the local food pantry and even our compost pile are getting their own large shares! Yet, week after week, we've been struggling to get enough food picked to even satisfy our small CSA.This is our fault and it's not, but that doesn't mean we don't feel all the guilt. 100% of it. We started our tomatoes the very day we got to Danville in March, and got them in the ground as soon as we could and yet, they are still not ready, two weeks into July, seven weeks into our deliveries. But it's hard not to feel like that's our fault. All of the cucurbits––cucumbers, squash and zucchini––are suffering and appear to be slowing their growth. Many of our lettuce attempts have failed. Our herbs got hit hard over the high heat. The peppers haven't had one rain that didn't come from a watering can. Our first two bean plantings have not had good germination or been productive (yesterday was literally planting number five). Things have been stressful, even if we have almost no control over them.
That's where the book comes in. It's helped us to be realistic, that things are not always going to go our way or be under our control, but that we will learn from what mistakes we make, and learn to accept and adjust to nature's whims. In the essay I quoted at the beginning of this post, the farmer, Courtney, writes "No matter how much control our business model gives us, we are still farmers and farming is mostly an exercise in managing chaos––an attempt to control the uncontrollable. No method or scale marketing strategy can change that." This book has helped keep things in perspective, to divide what we are doing wrong and what we can realistically consider nature's hand.The drought continues, and we're actively fighting it. We're gaining confidence to stop feeling so guilty and keep working hard at it. We're increasingly feeling better about the rest of the season, it's just the right now that is hard. If the drought is not going to let up, we're just going to ignore it, and learn where we can. Next year, we'll be able to get tomatoes started several weeks earlier, getting them in the ground in time to benefit from the spring soaking. We'll plant more, of everything. And when the weather doesn't go our way, we'll accept it, adjust and make the most of the things we can control. Nature is not one of them.- Jesse.
FERMENTATION LOVE.
Recently, Jesse received a package in the mail and I haven’t seen him since. Just kidding (...kind of). The Art of Fermentation is Sandor Katz’s newest book, and Jesse is a little bit obsessed. Sandor is becoming our go-to fermentation guru, also the author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. I have been informed that we will be having lots of bubbling crocks and pickling concoctions crowding our kitchen this year as Jesse tries some of Sandor’s recipes. The first experiment is underway: fermented radishes and ginger. We will let you know how it turns out!- Hannah.
