Recipe with peas

Fresh pea risotto w/ mint

Ingredients: onion, butter, olive oil, risotto rice, white wine or dry vermouth, stock, fresh peas, parmesan cheese, fresh mint, pepper

Preparing: Prepare as any risotto dish. Saute the onions in butter and olive oil. Then add and slightly toast the rice (we use 1 cup rice for a 2-person meal with a little leftovers). Add a hefty amount of white wine (or dry vermouth) and let the alcohol boil off. Then start adding the hot stock in small quantities, stirring often. When you add your last installment of broth, add the peas and fresh mint. Then stir in parmesan cheese and crack a lot of black pepper in it.

Eating: Sprinkle with some fresh lemon juice. A tasty main course or side for duck breast.

Dish history: If you are not going to eat fresh peas right out of the pod, this is a nice way to present them, still crispy and paired with their companion herb. Made this for the first time a few years back with a good friend who had the habit of only eating things when they were in season and this dish made such a fresh impression.

Looking out

One of the most amazing parts of starting Longhaul Farm has been family, friends and neighbors looking out for us. A good number of people are genuinely interested in what we do, they feel bad when our broccolis are beheaded, they are psyched to share a home-grown salad and they are eager to haul rocks and dig beds with us.

Just the other day a young couple from across the river dropped by, the old-fashioned way, so they say, to see what we were up to. It was so refreshing and informative and calming to have two new neighbors take a random interest in what we were doing... not to mention they know a lot about native plants in our area and are seemingly equally obsessed with my arch nemesis, the black swallow wort, as I am.

And we received messages from a few good friends saying "sorry about those pests - have you tried coyote urine?," a neighbor down the road dropped off supplies for us to harvest with and Jason's father helped us weed after the rains we had the past few days. A community that is looking out is a very comfortable thing.

On a related-but-not-so-related note about this "looking out" concept... I think people are capable of looking out... but a corporation?!? And even worse, a bank? Scenario: Jason is up in Canada on a week-long trip in the wilderness of Restoule Lake. He's buying groceries (presumably) at the local supermarket, tries to use his <bank name> debit card to pay for it, and it gets denied. So <bank name>'s Fraud Department calls our HOME phone to check that this "activity" is approved.

Sparing many of the details of what went through my mind and the conversation that ensued... I called back this <bank name> Fraud Department and because I am not on Jason's account, couldn't approve his purchase, but as an angry partner and angry <bank name> customer, could complain. This whole fraud-prevention-thing is billed as "consumer protection," but in this case I see it as a serious inconvenience and a way for <bank name> to be sure it doesn't have to lose money on any fraudulent activity on an account. Seriously... he's in Canada! Can't we go for a vacation and have our money work for us? (No, we can't: according to the <bank name> supervisor I spoke with: he said it is the consumer's responsibility to notify <bank name> of any impending unusual activity. Relatedly, Jason's account was hacked while we lived in Argentina and <bank name> didn't pick up on it for 6 days and $2,500 later, once Jason caught it and put in a call.)

Just recently I had to call <bank name> to ask that my daily ATM withdrawal limit be increased to a reasonable level. Yes, there are "consumer protection" reasons to put a limit on this, but, digging deeper, my email request to them stated, "Dear Sir or Madam, Please increase my daily ATM withdrawal limit. I would prefer $X00. I have no idea why it is set at $Y00, other than so you, <bank name>, can keep more of my money for your own investments. Cordially, Jocelyn."

So if you haven't read our posts on moving your money into a local bank, you might consider now (or not, because I understand many people like the comfort of fraud prevention at the expense of your privacy and daily purchasing being monitored by a computer program and then flagged and sent to some employee of the <bank name> Fraud Department who is overworked now from the inane daily checks they do on their hundreds of thousands of customers and is responsible for trying to get in touch with you while you are unreachable and on your vacation and in the end you can't even buy your groceries or pay for gas). I'm getting back on the task of finding an institution I respect to put my money into... and enjoying small personal pleasures in life of real live individuals just dropping by and looking out for us.

Please excuse the rant.

Black gold, made on-site

Since we launched our compost collective in mid-March, we collect organic matter from 10 families on our road, a deli on route 9 and a local supermarket in Peekskill. We now have 2 heaps of finished compost... about 4 cubic yards worth of black gold.

Sifting the compost

Black gold

Every week for the past 3 months we have layered our browns and greens, throwing in a little horse manure and lime here and there, and turned each pile to encourage the microorganisms to do their job. We have two more heaps that we've been working on for the past month. We sift the compost through a screen to separate out rocks, sticks and things that are not fully broken down and then apply it to our vegetable beds. Our tomato plants and asparagus seem to be starving for some nutrients, so we know they'll be happy.

Thanks to all of our neighbors who are participating!

Why we're double-digging (part II)

We are celebrating our hitting the 20-double-dug bed mark: 2,000 square feet of 24-inch-deep soft, aerated, amended soil.

Even though people still think we're crazy for doing it, we have a slow-and-steady-to-develop garden, we've got our own plans to experiment with the next few beds using newspaper sheets, organic matter, green manure crops and tap rooters, and Jason's muscles are bursting and his back is aching, we have a really, really, really good answer for "why double-dig?"

R.O.C.K.S.

No matter how much you build up your beds, there's no escaping the huge boulders we pull out just a few inches below the surface. These rocks are impenetrable barriers to plant roots, never to be dealt with unless we get into the ground.

And hopefully we will never have to dig this deep again.

Recipe with chard

Acelga (Swiss chard) pie

Ingredients: pie crust, onions, garlic, Swiss chard, bechamel sauce (butter, milk, flour, nutmeg), s+p

Preparing: Prepare and roll out any savory pie crust. Saute onions and garlic in olive oil. Add lots of chopped Swiss chard (or any other juicy green in season... spinach, bok choy, tatsoi cabbage) and cook down. Stir in bechamel sauce that has been flavored with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Pour the greens mixture into the pie crust and bake at 375 for about 45 minutes (or until crust is browned).

Eating: We top the pie with spicy tomato sauce.

Dish history: This is a classic Argentinian dish that we made so many times on the farm because they had the most booming crop of acelga.

F'er weed update

Now that I'm obsessed with this invasive plant, I figured I'd share it's official name:  

Black or Louis' Swallow Wort (Cynanchum louiseae). 

FKA: F***er weed.

Pun intended: it's in for a long-haul chemical-free, cultural, mechanical and biodynamical control battle.

Pests

We've got pests. And they come in insect and mammal form.

How many little green wormy things can you count?

Our brassicas, for now, are taking the biggest hit. The flea beetles have turned our Chinese cabbage into swiss cheese. The cabbage loopers (not really sure what they're called) have eaten away at our broccoli and cabbage leaves. And a loafy gopher has beheaded many a broccoli and collard plant.

I'm sure there's more to come.

A healthy broccoli plant

Dealing with pests in an organic way includes diverse techniques. There are still organic sprays you can purchase that will kill the pest, such as garlic barrier, rotenone copper dust, hot pepper wax or neem oil. For now, we are trying two methods: row cover and picking the pests off the plant and killing them ourselves.**

Row cover is a lightweight fabric that many organic gardeners use to prevent insects and other pests from getting to their crops. It is so light that you can put the fabric directly on your plants. The trick is to put the cover on them immediately after you transplant them out. We did not do this, which is why so many of our leaves have been victim to the flea beetle. But it's never too late to try: if we put the row cover on now we'll at least prevent more flea beetles from feasting on our future food.

Be-headed broccoli plants

As for picking the pests off ourselves... I've started inspecting all of our brassica plants daily, pulling off the little green caterpillar things and squashing them. It's kind of easy to find them: just look for eaten leaves.

Now we have to figure out what to do with the gopher we've seen lumbering across our pasture. He prefers the brassicas, too, although I have seen a few lettuce heads chopped off. We're hoping the row covers help with him. Last night we put out a radio in the garden and left it on, hoping to scare him off with noise. We plan to buy a motion detector light or noise maker to also scare him off. Otherwise, we'll have to find his gopher hole and smoke him out.

The row cover

** After a visit to a local biodynamic farm, I have stumbled upon another long haul method for ridding your garden of pests. More on this in an upcoming post.

Recipe with Tatsoi cabbage

Pasta with Tatsoi cabbage

Ingredients: olive oil, garlic, Tatsoi cabbage (small leaves like baby spinach), zucchini (or any other vegetable you'd like), parmesan cheese, lemon, pasta

Preparing: Prepare the pasta as you normally do. To prepare the "sauce": Cook up the garlic in olive oil. (Add some white wine or herbs at this point if you'd like.) Add the Tatsoi cabbage leaves and other vegetable and saute for just 2-3 minutes. The Tatsoi will be just wilted and the other vegetable will still be crunchy and fresh.

Eating: Serve the greens over the pasta with shaved parmesan and fresh lemon juice.

Dish history: You figure out lots of ways to eat Tatsoi cabbage when you planted 200 plants of it and they are all ready for harvest within two weeks. We use it in any recipe you'd use spinach.

F***er weed

They're everywhere. And so aptly named by an 82-year-old gentleman farmer friend who recently toured our farm and has been farming in the Hudson Valley his whole life.

The roots

These weeds have the most intense root system I've ever seen, can grow without light, and apparently thrive in our acidic soil. I've seriously found the roots of these weeds at the bottom of compost piles and a plant has grown in the dark, for two feet, until it emerges on top of the pile. We find the roots everywhere in our sod when we dig beds. And now we find the plant everywhere in our vegetable beds, sprouting from roots we missed. You can't just pull them out; their roots are always so deep you have to dig them out. If you get lazy and just pull, I swear, three pop up for each one you've angrily teared away at.

What to do with these f'er weeds?

The weed

The other day we visited Glynwood Farm here in Putnam County. It is a non-profit farm whose mission is to help small- and mid-sized farmers to thrive. The farm has a long history, but its current non-profit status means that it is always willing to advise anyone on how to improve soil, raise livestock, build irrigation systems and so much more, all in the spirit of self-sufficiency. So we took a tour with the lead livestock farmer to learn about how they sustainably raise chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, cows and horses. What does livestock at Glynwood have to do with our weeds?

The livestock farmer has a nemesis as well: they are an invasive rose bush. You see them almost everywhere at Glynwood. He received a grant from the USDA to raise goats in an attempt to control this invasive weed (rather than excavate all of the land). Goats will eat anything, so he sets them out to graze in these fields of grass and the invasive rose bush. They can't take down the entire bush because the branches are actually quite thick and brambly. But they do eat the leaves and small twigs. And what he's found, and I've seen with my own eyes, is that in the fields where he set the goats out in last year, the rose bushes are much smaller and more compact than in fields where the goats have yet to graze. So after a harsh winter where everything dies back, these rose bushes grow back smaller the following spring after having been nibbled on the previous season.

It got me thinking...

We need animals. BUT, before we bite off more than we can chew, we did decide to cut back all of the f'er weeds we could see. They were starting to get little flowers, so it was almost getting too late (we don't want their seeds dropping anywhere). Maybe if we continually cut them this season, we'll start stunting their growth. Although I'd really just prefer them to cease to exist.

Recipe with rabe

Rabe and white bean soup

Ingredients: broccoli rabe (rapini), pancetta, onions, garlic, hot peppers, white wine, broth, white beans, parmesan cheese

Preparing: Cook up some pancetta. Remove from pan and cook onions, garlic and hot pepper in the rendered fat. Add white wine and boil alcohol off. Add broccoli rabe cut to your preferred size and saute until bright green. Add broth and white beans (I use chicken broth and cannellini beans that have been soaked and cooked). Simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Eating: Serve with shaved parmesan cheese and some warm, crusty bread.

Dish history: When I was growing up we used to eat "beans and escarole" soup. My dad suggested using the rabe as the green. I added the pancetta and parmesan because they just taste so good.

Home soil testing

Moving into our new territory for digging, we've noticed the soil is much richer. So we bought a home soil test kit with fantasies that maybe our previous professionally performed test was conservative in its results (this is even in spite of the fact that 2 of our 6 inch spinach plants are already bolting).

Our little vials of soil, water and testing powders are color coordinated: green for measuring pH, purple for Nitrogen, blue for Potassium and red for Phosphorous. The test takes $5 of your savings, a half a cup of your soil and 25 minutes of your time (5 minutes of active time). That said, it is really worth every home gardener performing a test on their soil. Land deficient in nutrients grows vegetables, fruit and flowers deficient in size, shape, color and beauty.

However, soil testing is a science. Relying on one result could lead you down an ill-advised path. For example, our test showed neutral-ish pH (neutral is 7.0; with this test it's measured against a color scale that is not exact). Our sourced-out soil test performed in a laboratory revealed a pH of 4.95. So the home gardener would benefit from performing multiple tests (which would only increase your time, not necessarily what you spend: the $5 test kit comes with 4 pH tests and 2 each of the macronutrients). And once you've got results, you can call your county's agricultural extension office (of Cornell University in New York State's case)- the two I've dealt with have staff waiting on hand to give free, friendly advice on how to improve your soil.

So... we've set our fantasies aside and accepted the fact that our soil needs some sweetening this year. And now back to double digging.

To mulch or not to mulch?

Mulch is a protective cover placed over soil to help retain moisture, suppress weeds, reduce erosion, and even provide nutrients. There are many different types of organic mulch material: lawn clippings, wood chips, pine needles, hay, straw, chopped leaves, shaved bark, sawdust, shredded newspaper, cardboard, compost or animal manure. What you apply to your plants depends on availability and the type of plant in the ground. 

Potato plant with chopped leaf mulch

We've got plenty of fallen leaves, pine needles and wood chips. We have to doctor the leaves before applying them as mulch: we run over piles of them with our lawnmower. This prevents them from matting together and actually doing more harm then good by not allowing water or sunlight to penetrate to the soil.

The type of mulch we apply depends on what fruit or vegetable we have planted. For example, pine needles, sawdust and wood chips are slightly acidic and can be applied to strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. These carbon-rich mulches also take a lot longer to break down than other mulches, so it is more practical to use them with plants that you will not pull up or that are perennials. Our vegetables, on the other hand, prefer chopped leaves or hay as mulch. It is amazing how much moisture they help retain.

That said, we've learned a few "don'ts" with mulch this year. I can hear Josephine, our Argentine farmer friend, always saying that whether to mulch or not depends on the person. Because despite all the good mulch does, it also attracts the bichos. Bugs. We've noticed our bean and Chinese cabbage seedlings have holes in some of their leaves. And some of our bean plants seem to have been nibbled to the point that they no longer exist. Our non-mulched beds do not have the same hole-y-leaf problem (but note, they are different plants).

Strawberry with pine needle mulch

I've also noticed more weeds in some of our mulched beds. I think this is for two reasons: (1) the mulch has weed seeds or weeds in it and (2) our soil is so inhospitable that even weeds can't survive unless they're planted or put there.

We've also learned not to mulch with radishes. We do have a controlled experiment with this one: the radishes that had been mulched actually try to grow in the mulch, and because it is so loose and not compact like soil, the "radish" does not get round, but rather long and skinny. The radishes that are planted and not mulched are developing as planned.

So mulching allows you to never have to use a hoe, but you might have bug problems or mulch weeds growing alongside your vegetables. If you don't mulch you might be carrying around your hoe every time you're in the garden... or you'll have to figure out a way to make weeding with friends a fun task.

Trigger finger

Although this is self-diagnosed, I think I have trigger finger. In my left pinky.

Every morning when I wake up, my least-used-finger (apart from typing "a's") aches, gets stuck in a closed position, and I need my right hand to straighten it. As the day goes on, it feels better and opens and closes almost like normal. From over-use (i.e., over-shoveling, over-forking, over-weeding, over-transplanting), I am wearing and tearing my poor pinky's tender tendon.

And it's only our first spring!

So I plan to splint it at night and while working, mostly because I can't choose the other home remedy: rest it for 4-6 weeks.

Recipe with radishes

I hope this isn't lame, but I thought I'd start posting simple ways to cook or eat a vegetable we are currently harvesting.

First on the list: Radish.

Ingredients: fresh radishes WITH greens; butter; salt and pepper.

Preparing: Select radishes with fresh greens (not wilting, browning or going bad). Wash well and remove any bad leaves. Cut the radish in half from the root to the top, being sure to leave some greens on both halves. Heat some butter in a pan and place the radishes in the hot butter; greens out of the pan and off of the butter for now. After 3-5 minutes (depending on how crispy you like your radish), add salt and pepper and move the greens into the pan. Saute for a few more minutes until greens are tender.

Eating: Eat the whole vegetable, greens and all. This method of cooking makes the sweetness of the radish come out, and it is oh-so-juicy.

Dish history: We had this several years ago for the first time at a friend's house. (Thanks, Cal.)

R.I.P., Sr. Copperhead

A perhaps more productive use of a hoe: killing copperhead snakes.

There are only three types of poisonous snakes in New York State: the timber rattlesnake, the massasauga and the copperhead. The former two have a rattle at the end of their tails. The copperhead does not. It has a medium brown body with lighter brown spots, a classic reptile pattern. These snakes are supposedly better left alone because they do not attack unless attacked themselves. In fact, they are quite sluggish and will stay still if you spot them and keep on walking.

But when you find one while raking up leaves in a part of your property that is heavily trafficked... in a pile you might very well have just picked up with your hands... and with a pet dog who doesn't know whether he's playing with or annoying a snake... your reaction is to get rid of it permanently.

So Jason took a sharpened hoe and beheaded the reptile with one quick blow. While the 2-foot-long body lay there lifeless, the head and stub of a "neck" held on to life for a few good minutes. The mouth opened and closed as if in pain or, rather, as if it wanted to take one last bite out of whatever hit him. It flopped over one way. It flopped over another. It twitched. And when it's eyes finally turned a milky color, we were positive there was no energy left in that thing. It was an intense few minutes, watching another living thing die. I felt badly, but I also now feel a tad safer. And it's a good thing we had looked up pictures of snakes to be able to identify the garter snakes from a copperhead, honestly, just one night before.

Please note: the video below is posted so that you all can witness the vitality of this snake's final moments and share in our empathy for life, not to celebrate or promote the beheading of wildlife.

What's in the ground...

Here's an update on our planting status:

Bed #1: Peas (some from Argentina), strung up and starting to flower at about 12" high. Intercropped with radishes that are ready to be harvested.
Bed#2: Chives, Argentinian leeks (transplanted in to replace the spring onions that for whatever reason didn't survive) and parsley (from Argentinian seed).
Bed #3: Potatoes, should be ready to harvest some "new" ones soon and leave the rest in the ground for main crop. When we took a peek at a plant the other day, there were only a few wee taters... not sure if it's the soil or the seed.

Bed #4: Two rows of celery and celeriac. Intercropped with lettuce in between, which is ready to eat any day. Once the lettuce is harvested we'll "hill up" the celery family so they stay blanched.
Bed #5: Brassicas: Red cabbage, Tatsoi cabbage and DiCiccio broccoli. Intercropped with leeks.
Bed #6: Transplanted about 200 basil plants and direct-sowed cilantro, chervil and borage seed. Under plastic still to protect the basil.
Bed #7: Our tomato holding bed, rich with compost and kept warm with a plastic row cover. Now contains over 350 tomato seedlings. The heirloom Brandywines and Cherokee purples will stay there, and once beds 18-20 are prepped, we'll transplant out six other varieties, including Amarillo grande and Cherry amarillo from Argentina, Fargo pear tomato, Peacevine cherry, yellow short, and Bellstar paste.
Bed #8: Half acelga (Swiss chard) and half kale (both from Argentinian seed).

Bed #9: Spinach (Tyee and Bloomsdale) and lettuce (Ithaca and Blackseed). Both fully alive but not growing much (until I add the manure tea).
Bed #10: Direct seeded arugula (some seed from Argentina, the rest is Rocket), transplanted Yellow Cortland and Redwing onion and Spring rabe. The arugula needs to be thinned or we'll be eating the tiniest leaves ever. The rabe is flowering and going to seed... we'll keep one plant in to save the seed and re-plant with some Yukon gold tubers.
Bed #11: Humberto's bed: contains tomato, lettuce, radish, cucumber, broccoli, leek, jalapeno peppers.
Bed #12: 1/3 Early wonder beets, 1/3 carrots (Scarlet and Tonda), 1/3 parsnip. Transplanted some leeks with the carrots because they are good companion plants. Beets need thinning.
Bed #13: 1/3 Haricot verts, 1/3 Provider bush beans, 1/3 Jacob's cattle drying beans. Radish are intercropped on half the bed.
Bed #14: Direct seeded mixed greens: endive frisee, chickory, garden cress, bibb lettuce, Parriss cos lettuce.
Bed #15: Transplanted more brassicas: Chinese cabbage, Tatsoi cabbage and collards.
Bed #16: Skimmed and in need of double-digging! Future site for cucumbers, gherkin cucumbers and zucchini.
 Bed #17: Direct seeded zapallo (from Argentina), butternut squash, acorn squash, Cheese pumpkin and Crookneck squash.

In our herb garden: transplanted tarragon and oregano, planted some sage cuttings, seeded melissa, dill and shiso. Wild mint is growing near the cow barn. Rosemary is still too small to put outdoors.Thyme and lavender are in seed boxes.

In our perennial plots: 10 artichoke bushes, 5 horseradish roots, 3 rhubarb crowns.

Still waiting to be transplanted out: lots of kale, lots of cabbage, some broccoli and collards, cauliflower (which may never go out unless they form their "bud"), more celeriac, tons more leeks, asparagus (from seed!), more oregano. Fava beans also on deck.

Still to be planted for the fall crop: Brussels sprouts, baby bok choy, garlic, more spinach, kale and cabbage.

What we're missing for Longhaul's first year: hot peppers, fennel, rutabaga, bell peppers, eggplant, melons, kohlrabi and corn (from most-to-be-missed to least-to-be-missed, in our opinion).

Rock Hall-of-Fame Revisited

We've broken new ground. Just East of the site where the century-old vegetable garden used to be, mirroring our freshly dug and planted bed #'s 8-17, we are turfing and double-digging. The soil is much friendlier down here. But you can't have it all... the rocks are back and determined to make our joints ache. Could there be an ancient stone wall or foundation down there? The 300-lb-at-a-minimum boulders we are taking out one after another are just too close for coincidence. We've even had to leave two behemoths in the ground because they are wider than our 4 foot bed width and wouldn't even budge for 3 strong men.

Dare I say, "That's okay." Is living with rocks easier on our bodies and morale than impenetrable soil?

Healthy world: human help required

There’s something about preparing the soil for our vegetable beds that reminds me of Pizza Friday.  

On Fridays, we make pizzas and have fancy cocktails (well, martinis for me and red wine for Jocelyn).  It became a tradition on the farm in Argentina, when pangs of longing for NYC pizza and a night out would sometimes pierce our small farming community rural bliss.  So we started making our own pizza dough, thinking up toppings from the garden and local butcher, and pulling city-slicker clothes from the suitcases that had been abandoned under our bed. 

Pizza dough is simple: flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water.  But getting it just right is more difficult, more about the kneading process and getting a feel for what the right consistency of the dough should be.  Adding a pinch of flour or a few drops of water until it’s elastic.

Kneading the dough just right is what I’m thinking about with the pick-axe in my hands on Friday afternoon in our vegetable garden, double-digging another bed.  If you drove by on the road, it might just look like a guy slogging away at the rocky ground, but we’ve got a process here, a plan driven by the hopes that the soil will come out just the way we want it to.  

Just like pizza dough, it’s a pretty simple recipe and goes something like this: dig down a foot and remove the top-soil, break up the soil another foot down with a fork and mix in a good helping of manure, place the sod you removed back in the bottom of the hole for future compost, replace the top-soil and fork in lime and organic material.  Simple recipe, harder to execute in reality.  But it’s what we think is best for the future of our farm.

What I started thinking about is that while most people would accept the idea that human skill and involvement is needed to create the perfect pizza dough, most people would not automatically think the same would be true for a perfectly healthy soil -- or a perfectly healthy natural environment for that matter.  But I believe the work we are doing in the vegetable garden is helping the place be a better version of itself; more beautiful, more rich, more productive, more conducive to life, more a part of its natural eco-system.

One of the most important things we are doing by double-digging is loosening the soil so air, water and nutrients can better move through it and vegetable roots have room to grow.  The soil is largely compacted for natural reasons – thousands of years of little rain-drops hitting the ground like a herd of seven ton elephants if time was condensed (*disclaimer to this metaphor – using the unknown-as-of-then future vegetable garden as our wedding parking lot may have added to soil compaction).

So in our work we are helping to change a natural process which results in making the land more sustaining to life around it; not only ours and hopefully our neighbors, but soil micro-organisms that need soil with space and nutrients, birds that will feed off of the small life forms in the soil, bees and other insects that will feed off of and help pollinate our fruits and vegetables, rabbits and moles and squirrels and deer that will (hopefully only) stare longingly at the produce of our garden from beyond our fence, and the predators that will be drawn to stare longingly at the rabbits, moles, squirrels and deer…the list goes on and on up the chain.

On a farm, examples of this relationship between human help and a healthy natural environment are abundant.  Fruit trees need to be pruned so sun and air reaches the fruit; early fruit buds need to be thinned on each branch to protect the branch from breaking and to produce large, healthy fruit.  Fields need to be mowed every so often to protect against one dominant, fast-growing weed from squeezing out other beneficial grasses.  Vegetable beds need to be weeded and pests controlled to produce a bounty of food.  Forests need to be cleared of low-lying dead brush to prevent against fires and make space for new trees; invasive climbing vines need to be cut from trees before they kill them.  

But all of this work leads to a more important question: what does it mean that human help is required to do this?  In a natural system that we often consider to be so intricately complex and balanced that it goes beyond our full understanding and abilities of prediction, what does it mean that we have a necessary role in helping nature be it’s best, life-sustaining self?

Frost seeding follow-up

That cold winter morning seems so long ago now... when Jason woke up early to sow his green manure seeds in our pastures while the ground was still frozen and the spring thaw had yet to set in.

Nearly two months later and we are on stage two of our frost seeding experiment. Now that our red and white clover are beginning to grow, we have to mow back the older, more established grasses so that the clovers can see the sun and prosper. We hitched on a 3-bushel bagger to our two-decade-old walk-behind lawn mower, adjusted the blades so they'd take down the now 3-foot high Timothy but spare the small stuff, and let the mower take off. Mowing about an acre takes less than an hour. We'll cut again in late June, so long as the weather works in our favor.

Now we've got green to add to our compost pile and a nice pasture to admire.

Buying bulk

No, I don't mean shopping at Costco...

I'm referring to the purchase of grass-fed, sustainably-raised livestock. There are a number of local organic farms in the Hudson Valley who practice farming the way we like it and a great way to support them is to buy their product. We've reserved a whole lamb, a quarter steer and a Thanksgiving turkey; all to be ready for pick-up beginning in November 2011.

This meat is affordable, not cheap. For example, our quarter steer price per pound, hanging weight (which means prior to preparation), is $3.75/lb, bones, marrow, liver, tongue, and all the cuts you could want. A major perk is that the price for the loin is the same as the price for the chopped meat. We'll end up with about 100-150 lbs of beef this winter, to store, share and enjoy.

So I am challenging the notion of "cheap food." Why do Americans have a fascination with finding the best "deals" on the very things they put inside of their bodies? I used to, but no longer, feel comfortable with $2.99/lb meat bought at a big-box grocery store. Understanding we live in a culture such as we do, and that a pound of meat that costs less than a gallon of gas seems like the only option for someone with limited dollars who wants their protein source, I won't fault. But I do ponder the idea of buying bulk meat from a healthy farm as a group, so that the price is still right but you don't have to buy a chest freezer just to participate. This requires communication and coordination, but if you really stop to think about what you're digesting, it seems so doable.