Conscious Consuming

"You are what you eat, so don't eat crap." ~Timothy

"You are what you eat" is best served by knowing what you eat, which is of course achieved by bringing awareness to how you choose your food.

Here on the farm, I particularly enjoy knowing that the produce I grow just needs to have the dust (& occasional bugs) washed off it (if even that), and there is a special sense of satisfaction knowing that I've watched these items growing and know them fairly well. I just wish I had the same luxury of confidence when purchasing produce and products.

I was recently at the National Heirloom Expo, and purchased a cheese and tomato item for lunch. Having been put in the mood for some delicious organic heirloom tomatoes after wandering the halls of produce, it was an interesting shock to take a bite and, essentially, not taste any tomato, even though I could see them...hmmmm, I thought, it could NOT possibly be the case that a food vendor here might be serving cheap commercial tomatoes a the National Heirloom Festival. Well, fooled me. It was just such a shocking contrast after seeing piles and piles of the "real deal" to bite into something at the height of the season that bore no taste resemblance to what I had been seeing...so, even at an event where the focus is on organic & heirloom, one still has to be conscious of what one is consuming.

Later that day, I was talking to some of the specialty food product vendors and had a very interesting conversation. I'll keep the product category to myself as I don't want to be rude. I talked to two individuals who identified as "makers" of a type of product. It turned out that one of the imports the finished product from Europe and bottles it here, and the other vendor buys a cheap, bulk quantity of the "base" product and mixes it with something he does produce. Now, I don't fault their business model--we all know it's a pretty tough economy and many businesses function on the margin, but I do object to their using the term "maker"--one is a bottler, and one is a mixer...neither of them made the product they claimed to be a "maker" of.

Both of the products were tasty, and they were certainly makers of something, but just not of what their banners claimed.

Ferment your Health

Our Chief Dirt Officer, Timothy, and Sandor Katz talking fermentation at the heirloom expo. (c), 2012.

As seen recently on our Facebook page, I had the distinct honor of meeting Sandor Ellix Katz at the National Heirloom Festival this week. A personal hero for his years-long adventure as a "fermentation revivalist" (or activist). His core belief is that fermentation makes food more nutritious, and eating a diet rich in fermented foods leads to better health. His recent book, "The Art of Fermentation," provides "an in-depth exploration of essential concepts and processed from around the work," including practical "how-to" information. Fascinating and engaging, I highly recommend the book.

His talk at the expo began with an explanation of fermentation as transformation by microorganisms or, with food, "controlled spoilage," and short examples of this process being used by many cultures around the world, in a controlled way, to human benefit.

The basic connection with human health is clear in his mind: the evolution of life started from bacteria, and bacteria is essential to all life & functions. Humans host bacteria in a 10:1 compared to our unique cells that make us up.

(He made a point here that American culture's obsession with killing "99.9%" of bacteria with our soaps and cleaning products is not, on the whole, beneficial.)

So, the basic message is clear--consume fermented foods of several types, regularly, everyday. His website, introduced above, is fairly comprehensive in presenting his core message and philosophy clearly and concisely.

One final point I'd found quite interesting relates to the fine laboratory control and selection large companies might bring to the process of making cultured or fermented of foods. (Use as an example a large industrial yogurt company.) Industrializing and mechanizing the process of using cultures and bacteria in making these types of products has the same effect in limiting their nutritional value and destroying their nutritional complexity as industrial food production has had on produce and food products.

In Sandor's words:

"Wild fermentation is the opposite of homogenization and uniformity, a small antidote you can undertake in your home, using the extremely localized populations of microbial cultures present there, to produce your own unique fermented foods. What you ferment with the organisms around you is a manifestation of your specific environment, and it will always be a little different. Do-it-yourself fermentation departs from the realm of the uniform commodity. Rediscover and reinterpret the vast array of fermentation techniques used by our ancestors. Build your body’s cultural ecology as you engage and honor the life forces all around you."

Sandor, teaching the art of fermentation, © Sandor Katz 

Bird Signals

This past spring, there were a number of reports of odd bird migration patterns indicating an atypical winter and spring, and now, there are already signs that migration patterns are disrupted again, indicating the likelihood of an early, wet winter:

If so, the best weather forecaster in the West, the migratory sandhill crane, is predicting an early winter with plenty of rain and snow. (continued...)



Happy Fall!!
Come see us at the Harvest Fair!

The AARP Farmer: Musings on the seasons of life...

The balance between growth and decay is the sole principle of stability in nature and in agriculture.  And this balance is never static, never finally achieved, for it is dependent upon a cycle, which in nature, and within the limits of nature, is self-sustaining, but which in agriculture must be made continuous by purpose and by correct methods.  "This cycle is constituted of the successive and repeated processes of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay."

~Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table (p.165); last sentence a quote from Sir Albert Howard, gardening pioneer

A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar.   Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth.  We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire.

~Diane Ackerman,  A Natural History of the Senses (p. 13)

If 50 is the new 40, then why do I feel like I'm about to turn 50?

~Me

First, an apology...

Unlike my garden, I have neglected this blog for quite sometime, and I feel derelict in the "gentleman" aspect of my duties as a Gentleman Farmer.  I could blame it on all the demanding work even a small agrarian life takes during the spring, but I'll just blame Mark Zuckerberg.  We at RMH have taken to posting regularly on Facebook which I have allowed to diminish the urgency I have felt for this blog.  However, lest we allow the convenience and brevity of communicating through social media sap our ability to think in full paragraphs and thoughts, I shall persevere.

Mack Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

Close call in the garden...

Our good friend Jessica visited for the July 4th holiday, and we just escaped with a close call, for you see, Jessica has an obsession with the squash blossoms in the garden.  She seems to think they exist in large part to be stuffed with goat cheese, coated and fried to a delicate golden color.  Now, granted, she is a wonderful cook who does like to try interesting and challenging dishes, but my squash blossoms? Really?

I put squash blossoms in the same category as artichokes--flowers that are only eaten after being radically transformed by cooking and some version of stuffing, battering, frying or dipping.  (Is an artichoke leaf in the mouth anything more than an excuse to eat aioli, mayo or butter?? And don't get me started on the "delicacy" of escargot swimming in butter.)

So, I simply kept my mouth shut; because, if you were to walk into the garden today, you would be struck by how vibrant the Connecticut Field Pumpkin vines are with their profusion of bold yellow blossoms popping up throughout the plant.

Gender Blossoms

Top two are males while the bottom one is a female.

Now, if Jessica had discovered the abundance of blossoms and whipped out her recipe for some chèvre filling or a tasty batter for dipping, I would have insisted that she take only the male blossoms and leave the female blossoms to produce fruit.  Ah, yes, you may know that pumpkin blossoms are indeed "unisexual," meaning that botanically speaking, there are both male and female flowers as opposed to one type of flower that has both characteristics.  In fact, this feature is a characteristic of the plant family Cucurbitaceae (various squashes, melons, and gourds, including crops such as cucumber, pumpkins, and watermelons).

As we all recall from our biology classes (ahem), the male reproductive structures of a flower are the stamens while the female structures are the pistils, with an ovary at the base. Pollen deposited on the stigma (at the top tip of the pistil) fertilizes the flower, and the ovary swells, and...oh, you know the rest.

Natural selection determines each individual plant's structure.  In the case of our pumpkin, the male flowers shoot high through the canopy of leaves to attract pollinators with their color and nectar, most often bees for squash (this year our RMH Bees!). The female flowers are much closer to the vines, protected under the canopy of leaves and better positioned for the weight of the fruit (a pumpkin) that will develop when they are fertilized. To their advantage, the female blossoms have a sweeter nectar than the male blossoms which, of course, makes them more desirable to bees, etc.

(Insert your own flower gender jokes here...)

Of course, I am (as you would expect) fascinated by all of it.  The more I know nature, the more it confounds me.  Part of it is simply the act of asking "why" and allowing the time to explore, research and understand.  Part of it, as I have said before, is knowing the plants.  I find familiarity breeds comfort and connection.

I don't want to repeat myself, but the garden is indeed a metaphor for life, actually, so much more than a metaphor for it is life itself.  Nature happens around us as we are also part of it--part of the process, and the cycle, and the inevitable forces that shape the natural world around us.

Whatever creation story you choose to abide by, humans were late arrivals in the process. The earth and all it's processes, the flora and fauna, nature if you will, were already here.  We were a late addition to the planet, and humility demands that we understand our place in it.  We are here as participants in the processes of the natural world, and our humanity demands that we bring our awareness to understand that.

Obviously, I believe that gardening and developing a connection to the natural world facilitate this awareness.  And, I propose that there are more ways than you likely imagine to make this connection.  Do you grow things? In a yard or pots on a balcony or terrace?  When's the last time that you visited a museum of natural history or botanical garden?  There is a reason that all civilizations value and nurture such things.

We're coming for you!

Farming at Fifty...

AARP is soon to find me.  I have heard that it is inevitable.  In fact, I imagine there is a secretive agency supporting the work of AARP that tracks all "aliens" 50 and older.  (My vivid imagination runs to a "Men in Black" type of operation with Tommy Lee Jones in charge.)

So, I take a moment to acknowledge that small-scale though our gardening is relative to farming, I will be "farming over 50" in late August.  On the one hand, the idea of starting a business in my late 40's that would require I spend large blocks of time digging, cultivating, and turning compost, often in hot weather, might seem like odd timing.  On the other hand, "it's never too late" (or so we like to believe, especially when we are turning 50), but, more important, I have come to find that re-orienting my connection to the world has been an important and fascinating journey.

And, so I end with the same author as the quote at the top, a poet, farmer, author, and dedicated agrarian introduced to my by my dear husband:

The question before me, now that I

am old, is not how to be dead,

which I know from enough practice,

but how to be alive, as these worn

hills still tell, and some paintings

of Paul Cézanne, and this mere

singing wren, who thinks he's alive

forever, this instant, and may be.

~Wendell Berry from his book Given

Happy Summer!

~Timothy

On Failings and Futures–Spring hopes, eternal

It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience. It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn't a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong? Maybe nothing.

~Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts, 1981

Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

~Henry David Thoreau

There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.

~Alfred Austin

I lost some tulips. I don't mean I misplaced them; it's that they did not grow. When planting spring bulbs awhile back, I put a dozen noir tulips in a spot I thought would be perfectly complimented by their dark-hued petals. Yet, as careful as I was when I planted them (and I'm always as careful as I think I need to be in the garden), they seem to have either rotted and weren't viable to begin with. Or, perhaps something at that particular site wasn't to their liking, or the variable weather this year confused them.

First, let me say, although I don't dislike any plant, I am not a huge fan of tulips. Although they were highly coveted in Holland and traded on a "tulip exchange" (wonderful history of this in Michael Pollan's great book, Botany of Desire, I'm just not convinced they should be coveted more than other flowers in the garden. Also, as I am planting the bulbs, I am keenly aware that each one will only produce (generally) one flower, often only once.

Also, to be truly committed to tulips, one will often pull up the bulbs after blooming, and many gardeners are skeptical of using them again. Oh, and I didn't even bring up the fact that many people chill their bulbs in a refrigerator prior to planting in an effort to "force" them. Anyway, I do love looking at them, but I see them as elements to be mixed in to the garden design more than a major focus.

So, as I was saying these particular bulbs didn't grow, leaving me with a couple of bare spots in this particular garden plot that (joyfully) I get to fill with something new in the next week or so. The "death" of these bulbs got me mulling over the facts of life and death in the garden.

In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death.

~Sam Llewelyn

Spring is considered the time of emergence, rebirth, new birth, new life in nature, and it is a wonderful and captivating season that encompasses all of that. However, leading in to it, there is an important ritual of preparation in the garden where old, dead plants need to be removed or pruned; rotting dead leaves cleared; sprouting mushrooms and weeds cleared; soil prepared and rotted compost distributed. A very vivid transition indeed.

After the long season of winter's grip and the seeming suspended animation of dormancy, gardens must be cultivated in preparation for the spurt and progress of spring growth. I've found myself in deep, mindful reflection in the gardens recently as I've preparing for the new season.

It's an important time to consider plant losses, successes and failures from the year before. I run mental inventories of the previous harvest, reflecting back while looking ahead. I consider loss and life, bounty and scarcity, growth and diminishment--the cycle (or circle if you will) of life.

Heady stuff while pulling weeds and turning soil.

In the garden I tend to drop my thoughts here and there. To the flowers I whisper the secrets I keep and the hopes I breathe. I know they are there to eavesdrop for the angels.

~Dodinsky

It is part of the mindful experience of gardening. Great moments of insight, reflection and personal growth along side of the most mundane tasks. The holism of gardening, fully committing heart, soul, and mind to the experience can mold and change perspective. The cultivation of the soil inevitably leads to the cultivation of self.

So I do call for spring hopes, eternal and enduring, for all that occurs during this time of emergence and growth is inextricably linked to the continuity of the seasons and cycles of nature--garden and self.

I Am The Rain Maker, or, Maybe Coyote is in Charge

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger. ~Saint Basil

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. ~Rabindranath Tagore

I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness. ~Adeline Knapp

According to the Handbook of Native American Mythology, as you might expect many Native American cultures have stories that explain how the seasons came to be. For example, the Tsimshian, believed that an ongoing squabble among the Four Great Winds (North, South, East, and West) is settled after they come to an agreement that each shall have the earth for three months, making the seasons the result of the shifting required to maintain a mediated settlement.

But I think my favorites involve efforts by the animals of the earth to sort things out amongst themselves and a concerted effort to resist the will of Coyote as he tries to force his will on the others. In Northern Paiute lore, Coyote summoned a large crowd of other animals to decide how long the seasons should be, proposing that each be 10 months (and stating that he would be strong enough to survive such a long winter). Without getting any responses at all, he felt the matter was decided and left to get his pipe for a smoke to seal the deal. While gone, the other animals quickly decided Coyote's proposal would not do, and a bird from the mountains proposed three months for each season, so the other animals agreed and left before Coyote returned.

As you might expect, Greek Mythology has both a story of sisters who rule over the seasons and portions of time as well as one drawing on turmoil among the gods, including kidnapping, forced marriage and a negotiated settlement.

These sisters??

In Christianity, God appointed the times and seasons as was defined in the bible book Ecclesiastes (and a great song from the 1960's, Turn! Turn! Turn...written by Pete Segar and sung by the Byrds:

"There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven ~

A time to give birth, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.

A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to tear down, and a time to build up.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance."

Source

And so on, each culture or tradition presumably having its own mythology explaining how the seasons came to be.

It is relevant now, of course, because our area has been having such a warm, dry winter, having just finished the second driest December on record and spending the first two weeks of January with record temperatures in the 60's approaching 70 on some days and absolutely zero rain.

I've spent the last few days pruning, watering and fertilizing--partially because I felt forced by the weather and partially to take advantage of this seemingly early spring--while keeping in mind that it's actually the middle of winter (70 degree afternoon be damned!). So, in essence, I was making it rain.

Now, some of you might believe that I believe I can influence the weather (and don't think I didn't try through force of will), but I do accept that I have certain limitations. I've also read a couple of articles in some farming & agriculture papers that many farmers in the state have done some irrigation this month. So, from the plants' perspective, we are making it rain.

It's almost as if Coyote or one of the sisters is asserting themselves and forcing the season. Now, THAT would be a fun way to experience the seasons; however, I believe it's some combination of climatic forces that pushed the jet stream north.

Looks like there is some rain in the forecast for next week, but with such dry conditions for the past two months (and a dreadfully low snow pack), it seems unlikely we will be able to make it up over the next couple of months.

It will be nice to be able to stop irrigating. One of the joys of a winter garden for me is that it is typically pretty self-sufficient. And, I do really love harvesting some of the greens that have been slowly progressing during the cold months. (I find them to be very hearty and flavorful.)

So, here's to a hopefully wet February and March!

~Timothy

Gathering The Holidays

Last time out, we were gathering greens from around the property for a holiday display (pine, bay, Toyon, aka Christmas Berry). Today we've gathered some bunches of another native, mistletoe. It's interesting that it came to represent kissing (berries were plucked from a hanging bough, each allowing one kiss), given that it is a "hemi-parasitic" plant. (Hemi-parasitic means it is half parasitic, attaching itself to tree branches, oak here, but sill able to do photosynthesis.)

Mistletoe is the common name for obligate hemi-parasitic plants in several families in the order Santalales. The plants in question grow attached to and within the branches of a tree or shrub.

There is quite a bit of history and lore attached to the plant around the holidays.

Happy Mistletoe and Happy Holidays!

~Timothy

Let's Talk Turkey!

We've mentioned our resident rafter of wild turkeys here a number of times. (Yes, "rafter" is a term for a group of turkeys.) Given the time of year and the fact that I saw a fascinating documentary about the bird, I'm inspired to spotlight them again.

Last night I watched "My Life as a Turkey," an episode of the PBS program "Nature," based on naturalist Joe Hutto's true story chronicling his remarkable and moving experience of raising a group of wild turkey hatchlings to adulthood.

He was seeking to understand the science of imprinting which "refers to a critical period of time early in an animal’s life when it forms attachments and develops a concept of its own identity." In essence, Hutto became mother to a brood of turkeys.

The Wild Turkey is quite an interesting bird and fairly different from the domestic turkey you might have "visiting" this Thanksgiving.

(Apologies to my vegan and vegetarian friends if there is anything in the following that suggests a turkey is anything but a wonderful example of native wildlife or a delightful pet...for your additional enjoyment, here is some information on the Wild Tofurkey and a delightful source of inspiration for a vegetarian Thanksgiving!)

NPR's A Vegetarian Thanksgiving story

A Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner (vegatarians welcome!)

OK, now that they are distracted I'm just going to say it, the turkey you will...um..."share" Thanksgiving with next week isn't much at all like its wild relative and very different from those eaten in early America. (There isn't actually certain evidence that turkeys were consumed at the "first" Thanksgiving; however, when the holiday was formalized as an official American holiday in the mid-1800's, turkey was definitely consumed at holiday meals.)

Domesticated turkeys are the over-bread, in-bread, "couch potato" cousin of the more agile and elegant Wild Turkey. Whereas the wild bird can run (quickly in bursts) fly for short periods (at the freeway speed limit if required), and can live for about 4 years, the domestic turkey is absurdly bulked-up, front heavy, barely able to move, incapable of flying, and lucky to live more than 6 months. The domestic bird has also lost all of the beautiful brown and gold coloring that helps camouflage its wild relative, leaving it with a mostly white plume. (More info. & source)

So, if you are prone to...um...invite a turkey to Thanksgiving and like to know from where your...um..."guests" are procured, I hope you found this interesting reading. (Are the vegans back yet??)

One last thing...

Mr. Audubon himself had quite a bit to say in his field notes about the Wild Turkey, along with a beautiful drawing of the bird (as he is of course well-known for producing).

The "Perfect" Fall Garden

I recently read a letter sent to one of my gardening magazines (yes, yes, I understanding the implication of having subscriptions to "gardening magazines") presenting a couple's dilemma regarding how to maintain their flower garden at this time of year. (The vegetable garden, of course, having been cultivated with planting for fall/winter produce.)

One half of the couple wanted to clean and trim so the garden looked "tidy," while the other wanted to leave the plants a bit longer so they would be more natural. I definitely agree with the "natural" approach.

Plants have a mission--to grow and produce to ensure perpetuation for the next season and/or next generation. Who am I to argue?

I like to let plants set and distribute seeds (even if they are just distributed to birds and squirrels), including the delightful (and tasty!) rose hips of our many rose bushes. And bulbs, tubers, corms need the energy produced by their leaves to prepare and store energy for the long winter and spring emergence. (As just two examples.)

So, I say it is fine to be a little rough around the edges when making a transition... from Autumn to Winter.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

~Timothy

ABUNDANCE OF HUNGER

This being the harvest time of year, culminating with Thanksgiving, it is of course very natural to think of the cornucopia of fruits and vegetables that have or are being collected from the gardens and farms in the area. As I reported in my previous post, though the weather was atypical most of the year, there were still many wonderful crops to gather.

It has also been a particularly great autumn for the fall garden, and it’s clear there will be a nice supply of cold-weather vegetables for months.
For me, it’s also a great time to reflect on those who can’t celebrate abundance at this or any time of year.

Nearly 17% of people in America experience hunger, or food insecurity, including 23% of all children in the country without enough to eat.

According to the Redwood Empire Food Bank, in Sonoma County, 78,000 people face the threat of hunger every month:

• 34,000 are children


• 11,300 are seniors


• 13,500 are working families


• The median monthly household income of food recipients is $930

And they continue: “children make up the largest group of those at risk of hunger in our community. There are 9,762 children living in poverty in Sonoma County according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. Seniors living on fixed incomes represent another large segment of the population the REFB serves. For 61.4% of our senior clients, Social Security is their primary source of income.”

It is a common reaction to be astonished that so many people go hungry in a country with such abundance—but people can’t eat a reaction.

I recall vividly the times in my life that I have worried where my next meal would be coming from and had to make limited dollars stretch. In fact, growing up our family was briefly on welfare and food stamps, and, looking back, it is clear that our single mother had to get creative in how she was going to get food on the table. (Ask me about the joys of “green spaghetti”—a truly fun & entertaining experience for us kids, but a creative attempt to combine cheap bags of pasta, powered pesto and cooking oil to feed 8 hungry kids.) But I’ve never had the thought that I would not be eating for an extended period of time or that I would have to regularly skip a number of meals.

Try not eating for a day and see how you feel.

You may get a sense where this is going and already feel that, as bad as the situation may be, you just couldn’t possibly face yet another appeal to make a donation. And, if you simply can’t give cash, food, or time, I understand and that’s OK. However, if you can give, I’m asking you to take the time to give as much or as little as you can.

You would be AMAZED how well food banks can use donated dollars—it is truly spectacularly efficient.

A donation of just $25 helps food banks provide 100 meals, so a child could eat for a month, or a family of 4 could eat for over a week. Alternatively, you could drop a food donation in a food barrel or volunteer 4 hours to help a food bank or other organization pack food boxes. In the last month, I downloaded $25 of music from iTunes, drank $25 in diet Coke, and spent that much the last time I put gas in my car.

The Redwood Empire Food Bank has the most amazing set-up allowing you to shop online for a large variety of food items at their wholesale cost. You literally can choose and calculate any amount of a donation.

If a family came to your door and told you their kids had not eaten for 2 days, asking if you could spare anything, wouldn’t you give them a box of pasta or cereal? Well, now you can do that virtually through the link below.

You can really count on your donation making a difference.

Feeding America fights hunger nationwide:

Happy Abundant Harvest!

~Timothy