The Feasibility of Non-Industrialized Food.

One of the biggest complaints against organic produce and free-range meat is that it’s too expensive and elitist for the “common man”. They say it’s just not feasible.

Naturally, I beg to differ. It’s entirely feasible and entirely plausible. Not as an alternative but as the norm.

It’s funny how far we’ve come when we’re not willing to pay for good, clean food anymore. It’s feasible for us to add a $10 text messaging option to our cell phones, on top of our $100 monthly bill. It’s feasible for us to have $50-100 of programming for our televisions. It’s feasible for us to buy our kids all kinds of toys and clothes. It’s feasible for us to drive vehicles that drink $3.00 of gasoline for 15 miles like a fat kid pounding milkshakes. It’s feasible for us to pay twice as much for a piece of clothing because of a 2 inch logo or insignia. But it’s not feasible to pay $1 more for something raised right.

And to borrow an argument of Michael Pollan, isn’t it funny that we would all aspire to drive a Honda as opposed to a Suzuki. Or we aspire to drive a BMW or Porsche with it’s superior craftsmanship and high-end engine, but we think all meat and produce is the same?

All meat is not created equal. Quick facts . . . 50 years ago, it took 8 years to raise a cow up for eating. It is now done in 14 months. Cows were created and evolved to eat grass. Now they eat processed corn mixed with steroids and hormones. Maybe it’s not the Doritos and fat asses stuck to the couch. Maybe it’s steroids that are giving us man tits and forcing little girls into puberty earlier and earlier.

It’s feasible. It’s entirely feasible.

I hate to sound negative. I really do. But I think some of this is just inevitable if I open my mouth.

It’s feasible.

Downgrade your cable or satellite package. Downgrade your gas guzzler for something that gets a few extra miles. Buy a few less outfits a month. And all of a sudden, eating naturally becomes a reality and less a privilege of the elite.

Organic Farming Reflections: Week 2.

Week One Reflections

Well you remember all of that talk about it all probably being a bit over-romanticized in my mind . . . well this week kicked my butt. My loins (which I didn’t know I had) ache. My back is tweaked. And I’m still trying to get the dirt out from under my fingernails.

As a tease to keep reading the rest of this . . . I’m a beet farmer like Dwight Schrute . . . scroll to the bottom if you just want to hear this story.
When I got there, Lynn had me help her cut up some old potatoes from last year. She planted 200 lbs the day before and I was going to help her plant the remaining potatoes (maybe a third to a half of that). Apparently, you cut up old potatoes and bury them to grow new ones. This probably seems like common sense to most of you, but to me it was revelatory. So we cut up the potatoes, being sure to leave an “eye” on each piece. This was the easy part. We then went to the back pasture and planted 3 100 foot rows. And each row had 2 furrows on it. So technically 600 feet of potatoes. Now that doesn’t sound like much. But when you consider it’s 2 football fields it gains a little more perspective. And when you consider you don’t just throw the potato on the ground and kick some dirt on it, you realize that it’s a good sized job.

You basically have to take a hoe with a longer end on it and run a deep line through the soil. Essentially creating a little ditch or canyon within the larger row. This sounded so easy and it even looked easy as I grabbed the hoe from Lynn’s hands. But after a few feet, I realized how freaking hard it was. After digging the first of 6 furrows, even with gloves on, I already had a blister on my left hand. Was dripping sweat despite it being 65 and was covered in dirt. I then dug the remaining 6 furrows. Dug a hole every 10-12 inches for a potato and buried it. Oh by the way, you bury it cut-side down. Then I had to go back with the hoe and cover every hole.

Then I got the meticulous job of clearing away weeds that had grown around the 3 rows of green onion. I quickly realized just exactly how hard it is to farm “organically”. On an industrial farm, you could just carpet bomb the row with pesticides and weed killers. Here I had to delicately scrape the weeds off the top of the soil that were surrounding every onion. Sounds easy, but you have to be careful or you chop off the top of the onion. The hoe was sharpened to a point and could have sliced down a tree had I gotten ambitious. So I couldn’t just hack away at it. I had to be slow and delicate.

I also realized just how much I loathe slow, meticulous work. If I have to be slow, discerning, and delicate I’m probably not having fun. At that time, I would have given anything to be hacking away at the dirt for the potatoes again. I think this says something about me and perhaps the larger culture in that we prefer doing things that we can see tangible results quickly. We like the sheer brute force of doing work sometimes. As opposed to the slow, steady process that seems trivial. Sorry to get pyscho-analytical but that’s what I was thinking about while I made my way down the rows.

We then moved into the beet farming section of the day. We planted 3 different types of beets: yellow, green, and purple. This was a pretty delicate process as we were transplanting them from trays into the ground. The day was overcast and it was supposed to rain during the night which is apparently the best time to transplant things for future reference. So we laid down some beets and then moved over to the cabbage. This went a little faster but not by much. We put down two rows of cabbage. They had made a little homemade contraption to dig the holes in the ground at the perfect interval and in a line that I’ll try to remember to take a picture of. It was basically a small barrel with some PVC piping that we got to pull/drag across the rows. Oh yeah . . . the tractor broke 2 days before so we to till all of these rows with a big rake. Which made for more back pain and tedious work.

All in all, it was a nice day with great weather. My back still feels like a little ninja drop kicked me. And the back of my legs ache from all the squatting and bending over. And for 3 foods that I can’t stand in cabbage, potatoes, and beets. So I’m not sure how much I’ll enjoy the “spoils” of my labor. But it did feel good to sweat and do labor and to be away from the stress of clients and computers. There is something quite freeing about breathing in fresh air with sweat dripping. It makes you feel human.

Here’s the map of my scooter ride out there. And the one below it is in front of the sheep pen where I park it.

Listening: Why Should The Fire Die by Nickel Creek

Organic Farming Reflections.

I imagine this will be a bit of a reoccurring stream here as I reflect on some of my experiences and thoughts from working with Lynn (that’s Lynn in the picture with her sunflowers) and Chuck at Cane Creek Farm. I hope to do my best to not over-romanticize my experiences. I have zero financial stake in the health and success of the farm. Thus far, I’ve only worked 1 day with them. I haven’t had to go through drought or a hard freeze. I don’t know what it feels like to loose a crop to either. I have never had to work weeks on end in 100+ degree heat. Yesterday was a fierce 70 degrees with a nice cool breeze. So I’ll try really, really hard not to romanticize things. And I imagine if you talk to me in a couple of months, my story might be a little different, but after the first day, I really, really, really want to be a farmer.

So here are some of my thoughts in no certain order . . .

I left the house on the Irenic Luchador and drove 36 miles out to the farm with nothing but a mild idea of what I would do and an anxiety about sweating for the first time in over an year.

This is what I did yesterday:

planted 5 blueberry trees

planted 2 fig trees

fertilized existing blueberry trees

rolled up the sides of the hoop house (like a green house), preparing it for summer

cleared chickweed, by hand, away from the goldenseal beds

hung out with Emma, one of my new BFF’s

planted 4 more kinds of berry trees which I can’t remember the name of now

saw more grubs and worms than I have in a lifetime

This is what I learned yesterday:

learned what a half-bushel size hole is

saw what 7 half-bushel size holes look like

found out that georgia clay turns to something harder than cement after you get a foot deep

learned that a half-bushel size hole means I had to go a foot deeper than the cement clay

learned all of the natural medicinal benefits of goldenseal and which universities are experimenting with it

learned about the taste and benefits of unpasteurized milk

found out that Katahadan hair sheep like to follow alpha ponies around as their leader

learned that it takes 5 years to get your herd of sheep certified as organic

how to prune blueberry trees

how they learned the history of the land from the Cherokee Indian they bought it from 20 years ago

It was so nice being outside in the fresh air, with dirt all over my jeans and under my fingernails. I learned that 2 people make the work go by faster and easier. Whether it was with talking to Chuck about the Air Force, retirement, Joel Salatin, Wendell Berry, and the benefits of goldenseal while we cleared chickweed and worked on the hoop house. Or with Lynn talking about her kids, family, grafting, canning, recipes, and unpasteurized milk while we planted new trees that wouldn’t be ready for a couple of years.

Everything seemed slower. There was no rush. We leisurely worked. And casually chatted. Lynn told me about this old man that she gets some of her fruit trees from who has been running this old nursery for the longest time. Apparently, he’s a world-famous grafter of fruit trees and is known by everyone in that field. Lynn talked about how he’s nearing the end of his life and how it’s such a waste for all of that knowledge and wisdom that will effectively disappear. When you think about this and the other men and women just like him from a couple of generations ago, it’s not hard to see why many of us are losing our sense of location and place. And in the process losing the ties to a simpler and more sustainable time. This man’s daughter left to go to school and his wife passed away. Now it’s just him living out his last days and keeping his wisdom with him. I think I could sit with this thought all day and think about the ramifications.

(Lynn & Chuck in picture at a local Farmer’s Market) I realized how much life goes on in the grass and the soil. I learned that Goldenseal grows best when it’s naturally grown in the woods. So we didn’t spend time out in a field clearing the chickweed. But under the pine trees that surrounded the “farming land”. I quickly realized that in a natural and sustainable environment, it makes sense for some things to grow in their natural environment without “industrializing” them to rows in a field. On my hands and knees under the trees with the chickweed, pine straw, and pine cones I found a whole other world of life. By clearing away the surface layer and getting back to the soil I found grubs over an inch long and as round as a dime. I saw earth worms and crickets, ants and beetles. The whole “forest” floor was crawling. Chuck taught me about the different natural medicinal benefits of goldenseal and how the Indians used it. He told me about the greater natural, medicinal movement that exists primarily in co-ops and the one to which he belongs to in North Georgia. He shared about why he wanted to start raising animals on the farm a couple of years ago so that he could reintroduce one more of the natural cycles with the sheep fertilizing the fields with their manure and by moving them from pasture to pasture. I heard the fear/frustration in his voice when we first started clearing the chickweed and the pine straw away and trying to find the goldenseal buds to no avail. He was worried that last year’s drought might have killed them. I wondered what it would feel like to me if I had invested countless hours and a hundred pound of seed only to see it go to waste. He told me about how different parts of the goldenseal (the root, the leaves, the flower) and different combinations are good for different things.

All in all, it was a good day. I’m sore all over. And I went to bed at 9:00 last night for the first time since I went to India and had jet lag over 2 years ago. As a matter of fact, it’s the first time I’ve gone to bed before 11:30 in nearly 2 years. I was exhausted. But loved every minute of it.

And if you live anywhere in North Georgia or the Atlanta area, I’d highly recommend swinging by the Cane Creek Farm and checking out some of their fine produce and flowers in the coming months. Email me if you want some more info.

Cheers.

Listening: Taking The Long Way by The Dixie Chicks