Swords Into Plows

peace in the valley

2012-01-08T21:53:00.003-07:00

Been taking time off for the holidays -- more posts soon. Photo is from near Hartsel, CO.

blank spots

2011-12-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Man always kills the things he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?

-- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

the price of safety

2011-12-15T13:16:00.005-07:00

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither." -- Benjamin Franklin

In his latest book, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer, Joel Salatin explains that one of the criticisms he receives towards his pastured poultry operation is that it isn't safe for the chickens. Salatin says that allowing chickens to run around free outside, pecking at grass and scratching for bugs, is better for their well-being because allows them to "express their chickenness" -- or, as my dad would say, "do chicken stuff." Some unnamed opponent argued that pastured chickens can't possibly be as happy as factory house chickens, because the latter don't have to feel cold or rain or worry about attack from predators.

We've lost about a third of our chickens this year to predators -- hawks, foxes, and a bear. The hawk came after the chicks when they were still relatively small. Most of the chicks ran under a big rock to hide, but two or three didn't -- and of course, they were the ones who got picked off. (Although one was heroically rescued by the puppy -- a story for another time.) Let me be clear that I didn't mourn the loss of those chicks. Half-grown pullets who are not smart enough to hide under a rock when the hawk comes don't have genetics I really want to pass along in my flock. The chickens lost to the bear, in my opinion, represent inevitable circumstance. There's not a lot you can do, short of locking them up inside a concrete fortress, that will keep your chickens safe from a bear. My dogs went out and chased it off after it had claimed just one grown hen, ripping a giant hole in the side of the coop in the process, which I consider an acceptable level of loss. The fox is more complicated. It came in the early morning, when it was still dark enough that I probably should not have let the chickens out of their coop to wander around anyway. And I shot her. She was a red fox, which is considered an invasive species around here as it's pushing out the native mountain swift fox. That alone could be enough justification to shoot her on sight. But I can't help but feel we're on the edge of her territory, and had I just waited longer to let the chickens out, the conflict might not have happened, and she might have lived another year to have little fox pups somewhere else. I don't regret shooting her, but she does remind me that it's much easier to reduce predator interactions before they happen than to deal with predators that have learned your homestead is a source of easy food.

What I have right now in my backyard are a half-dozen beautiful, alert, predator-savy chickens who come to the kitchen window to beg for table scraps. While I haven't named them, I can tell each apart individually, and sometimes can even tell which egg came from which hen by subtle variations in the coloring. I like to think that nature does a better job of weeding out the least fit than I could ever hope to, biased as I am by things like pretty tail feathers or friendliness to children. I can't imagine the logic that goes through the mind of someone who argues that factory house chickens are more happy, more nutritious, or in any way better for anyone than chickens raised like mine. I really don't even buy the argument that they are "safer," since an electrical outage in a heatwave translates to thousands of dead chickens in just 45 minutes due to the malfunction of their sophisticated house ventilation system.

But happier? More content? More able to express their chickenness?

I worry for a society where people conclude living in a temperature-controlled environment with a thousand of your siblings, not having to worry about pecking and fighting because you've all had half your beak cut off, is somehow ethically superior to running around on grass dealing with all of what nature intended. Isn't that the same logic that brought us such wonderful things as the Patriot Act?

labor of love

2011-12-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

"The family is the best source of labor for the small-scale farm. ... Why? Because farming is hard work, and the rewards at the start are measured more in satisfaction and pride than in large salaries. The farm family will do the work because it is their dream. It is their canvas, and they are painting it the way they've always wanted it to look."

-- Eliot Coleman, The New Organic Grower

Artois the Goat

2011-12-09T09:25:00.003-07:00

What's more romantic than winning over your sweetheart by starting the business of your dreams -- illegal raw goats' milk cheese? Artois the Goat takes a hilariously over-dramatized look into the shady underworld of cheese in this indy fiction movie.

Watch the trailer on youtube or the full movie for free on hulu.

Monsanto's Bt corn still producing superbugs

2011-12-08T08:32:00.009-07:00

About a week ago, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report expressing concern that Monsanto's genetically modified Bt-corn was causing corn rootworms to develop Bt resistance in at least four states.

Bacillus thuringiensis is not a pesticide -- it is a bacterium that occurs naturally in the soil and attacks corn rootworms and other insects. In healthy living soil, this bacteria should be able to help control populations of insects that damage crops. As the insects develop resistance, the Bt develops toxicity, in a balanced state of continuous evolution. It ought to concern organic growers everywhere that the vast oceans of Bt-corn are creating superbugs that vastly outpace the ability of Bt to keep up. It's akin to creating mice that are resistant to coyotes and housecats.

Monsanto isolated the toxin from the Bt and inserted it into living crops, essentially making the crop itself as deadly to insects as the soil bacteria. Their New Leaf potato was the first crop to be genetically modified with Bt, back in 1995. Since then, Bt has been added to dozens of other crops, including cotton, rice, and corn, the latter of which is heavily subsidized in the US by payments from the USDA. The EPA's report notes in several places that continuous corn planting -- year after year without rotation of even one other crop -- creates the selective pressure necessary to make rootworm resistance most likely. Scientists quoted in the report recommend, at the very least, alternating Bt-corn with non-Bt corn. But this would require farmers to endure sacrifice years, where they can expect most of their corn crop to be destroyed by the superworms already present in their fields, in an effort to pursue the greater good of reducing overall rootworm resistance.

After the initial assumption that the individual farmer struggling to make payments on his combine is probably not at all interested in sacrificing a year's worth of positive cash flow, my first question is this: Where exactly could a midwestern corn farmer find non-GMO seeds in the quantities needed for thousands of acres? Over 80% of corn grown in the United States is genetically modified -- about 11% of the world's total -- and sources for open-pollinated seed continue to be threatened. Monsanto has sued hundreds of small farmers for patent infringement when pollen from their GMO crops drifted into neighboring fields, making some farmers afraid to save their own seed at all.

On the bright side, the Organic Farmers and Growers Association is fighting back. In a lawsuit initiated March 2011, this association is asking a judge to declare that pollen drift, over which farmers have very little control, cannot be considered a source of patent infringement. I hope that one day, we'll see organic farmers suing Monsanto for the damages caused when their seed escapes and contaminates heirloom, open-pollinated varieties.

all the trimmings

2011-12-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Pennsylvania Dept of Ag releases new raw milk guidelines

2011-11-30T11:43:00.005-07:00

Last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture released its new guidelines for the production and sale of raw milk. My home is one of just ten states where it is legal for farmers to sell raw, unpasteurized milk from their cows. Penn State University's Department of Animal Sciences has also released an explanation of the official guidelines.

Highlights of this document for milk producers:
-Raw milk permits begin 1 September and end 31 August, and need to be renewed each year.
-You don't need state-regulated milk bottling equipment on your own farm, if customers bring their own containers.
-Your farm's water supply must be tested. Probably something you should be doing anyway, what with all the Marcellus Shale fracking going on.
-Advertising, delivering, or exchanging raw milk is considered "selling" under the law, and doing any of these things without a permit carries a stiff penalty.
-Your Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture played a big role in making this legislation possible, so thank them!

Highlights for consumers:
-Raw milk sold by Pennsylvania permit holders is randomly tested for several different types of bacteria throughout the year. This gives you more assurance that the milk you buy is safe to drink than many other distribution programs can offer.
-Cows whose raw milk will be sold for human consumption must be tested annually for several different bovine diseases and certified healthy by a veterinarian, a requirement that pasteurized milk producers do not have to meet.
-Pennsylvania raw milk is also tested for pesticide residue, an assurance you can't get from even most organic produce.
-You can check the permit status of a PA raw milk dairy online at any time.

only important things

2011-11-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

Away from major cities and the Interstate, winter traveling in Colorado is an adventure waiting to happen. Will that mountain pass be closed due to snow or avalanche? Will it close behind us after we pass through, blocking our route home? Is 4WD enough, or do we need chains? And maybe also a hi-lift jack, a winch, and a fairy godmother?

Well, folks, this family happens to be the proud owner of a 150,000+ mileage Land Rover. And as the narrator in this episode of BBC World proclaims, "Land Rovers only do important things." I can think of few things more important than a poor man's weekend adventure. When we realized that one of the remote getaways featured in this month's Rovers North magazine was less than two hours away from us, we were sold.

Temperatures in the single digits? Wind at hurricane speed? Snow drifts and ice without a single tire track? Land Rovers were meant to go where no one has gone before. Well, at least no one in their right mind, in the last 24 hours.

We made camp near treeline beneath Kite Lake, a few miles east of Breckenridge. The older dog, quite used to winter camping, snuggled down under her thick down dog blanket and fell asleep immediately. The pup, on the other hand, couldn't seem to stop wiggling. "I don't want to be covered up. No, wait, it's freezing, let me in! No, I've changed my mind, I don't have enough room to stretch my legs. Oh, actually, it's cold again..."

Leaving our miniature farmstead for a weekend getaway is a luxury we'll enjoy while we can. We left extra food out for the cat, made the chickens stay cooped up away from predators, and of course the dogs came along. The more animals we add, the more difficult such escapes will be. But never fear, I am planning to tap all of my extended family members for a weekend of farm sitting every now and again. (So if you're reading this, start preparing your list of demands in exchange for this work.)

this is going to require my adventure pants

2011-11-25T14:47:00.002-07:00

Wall Street wants your military pension

2011-11-21T10:05:00.004-07:00

The Young Farmers Coalition recently put out a fantastic report about the barriers that keep young people from starting farms, and how these affect America's food future. With the average U.S. farmer around 70 years old, some estimate that a quarter of our nation's food producers will retire in the next ten years. Recruiting new farmers is crucial, yet these young farmers cite lack of capital and poor access to healthcare as their primary struggles in starting new enterprises.

T and I are fortunate enough that we likely won't have to worry too much about either of these things. When I deployed to Iraq a few years ago debt-free, I put my entire tax-free paycheck for a year and a half into savings, a substantial amount that will likely be the down-payment for our farmland. And next year, T will hit 20 years in service and will be able to retire at the ripe old age of 38. We will have access to affordable healthcare through the Tricare for Military Retirees program, which charges a premium of about $500 a year for the entire family. We will have a small but steady monthly income from that pension, which will ensure that we'll have enough capital flow to buy gasoline and salt and coffee while we get our farm into the black. In short, the sacrifices we've made for the Army over all these years will translate into the perfect combination of benefits for starting a farm. We've earned them.

You may already know that in this age of federal deficit, Congress has been considering cutting benefits for military retirees. (I guess the $1,200 a month we will receive after five deployments and two decades away from our families just isn't fair to all of the other taxpayers.) But you may not know that this idea, and other similarly ridiculous ones, is the brainchild of the Defense Business Board -- a closed group of highly paid, Wall-Street bred civilian corporate advisors to the Department of Defense. Today's headline article in Mother Jones magazine, "Inside the Corporate Plan to Occupy the Pentagon," says that "a report from the board argued that paying soldiers and their families for 60 years after 20 years of service was "unsustainable," adding, "The 'Military Retirement' sacred cow is increasingly unaffordable." The board called for scrapping the system in favor of a mandatory 401(k)-style account whose savings could "be invested in higher yielding equities and bonds."

Clearly, this bunch of Wall Street investors are selflessly attempting to save the government money by advising the existing military pension system be scrapped, and instead invested on Wall Street.

Right?

As to their argument that paying people for 60 more years after they serve 20 is unsustainable, I first of all disagree with their math. The youngest a person can retire after 20 years of service would be 37, and very few veterans will live to be 97 years old. But more importantly, I think that the all-volunteer force is hopelessly unsustainable without the 20-year pension. Many of our most experienced, senior leaders are soldiers who are only staying in "till I hit my 20." Changing retirement benefits to require 30 years of service -- or, as the DBB recommends, eliminating them all together in favor of a corporate-style 401(k) plan -- would cause many of our most seasoned veteran leaders to decide that sticking it out for five or ten more years just isn't worth it. Even if we instituted the wildly unpopular option of a draft, this wouldn't solve the problem. Recruiting has really never been a problem -- lots of young people in America want to join the military. Giving up four years of your life and possibly a major limb in exchange for an almost-free college education is a big attractor. The problem is retention. It takes a particular type of person to want to stay in an organization which requires extraordinary sacrifices that are simply not comparable to any civilian job, not even police or firefighters. We are already offering bonuses of $35,000 or more to try to entice leaders to stay in after eight or ten years of service.

But hey, I'm a beneficiary of the current system, so what do I know. If T lives to be 97, the total cost to the government for his pension will be about $850,000. When you consider that a single brand-new F-22 Raptor costs $350,000,000, cutting benefits instead is clearly the way to go.

Welsummers

2011-11-20T11:16:00.001-07:00

Last spring, we bought eight day-old chicks from our local hardware store. They'd been shipped in from Who Knows Where, and even the store manager wasn't quite sure what breed they were supposed to be. They were listed as "Ameraucanas," which in many places, means that they are mutt chickens whose parentage is unknown. (Ameraucana is a recognized breed, but the standard accepts so many different varieties and colors that the name becomes a catch-all. Sort of like labeling every dog in the pound either a "lab" or a "terrier.") I think we paid $1.49 for each chick.

Now that they're grown and beautiful, I'm beginning to suspect that they may actually be Welsummers. I base this partly on their color and shape, and partly on the fact that the hens lay eggs with brown speckled shells. Our chickens are extremely docile and friendly around people, but also ferocious around mice and small predators. None of the other breed descriptions I've read quite describe our flock as well as the Welsummer does.

Of course, I really have no way of knowing what breed they might be, and couldn't sell their chicks as purebred Welsummer flock-starting stock. But I'll say that our quest to identify their breed has kindled an interest in this heritage variety from the Netherlands that I would probably have otherwise never known.

death by manure

2011-11-19T07:02:00.003-07:00

I have to admit, of all the hazards associated with concentrated manure pits found in industrial livestock operations, death was not the first to come to mind. I initially thought this graphic would belongs in the over-cautionary menagerie at Safety Graphic Fun.

Apparently, death by manure is a significant hazard. Farm workers can asphyxiate quickly from breathing in toxic gasses from sealed underground pits, or from drowning in above-ground manure lagoons. What a way to go, eh? Nationwide, about 20 people die every year from breathing in hydrogen sulfide, a gas unique to concentrated manure pits that are not exposed to the air. Two years ago, this gas claimed the lives of an entire Mennonite family, as the father attempted to unclog a manure pit pipe, and after he collapsed, his family members died trying to rescue him.

That snippet of news also made me think of how many people believe that just because something is "Amish made," it is must be high quality and environmentally sustainable. I grew up around Amish communities, and know first-hand that they are not immune to the problems of the modern world -- things like drug addiction, teen pregnancy, and dishonest business practices. I've encountered Amish families who believe that animals are property, something God has given you to take care of but not care about, and for whom this belief translates into treatment of livestock that is much harsher than I would personally find acceptable. There are, of course, many outstanding Amish and Mennonite family farms, but a label identifying the town or religious preference of its maker does not automatically denote wholesomeness.

soul mates

2011-11-18T09:14:00.001-07:00

growth-promoting implants

2011-11-17T11:35:00.006-07:00

Do I even need to explain why this is wrong?

A bulletin from the Penn State Ag Extension recommends "growth-promoting implants," complete with the preceding picture, as an answer to help family cattle farms make more money from their beef. I had to get over my initial sickening just to read their argument in favor of this procedure. It was, of course, purely economic -- implants cost just $2.74 and result in an average difference in feedlot weight gain of 56 lbs! This is an opportunity to earn more than $45 extra on every steer sent to slaughter! The potential impacts on the poor young animal's development, other than increased carcass weight, are not even mentioned. Animal welfare aside, the effect on young people of eating beef from cattle raised with these implants hasn't even been studied, as near as I can tell. Even though a Texas Tech University study found that the implants increase the levels of estrogen in the treated animals, and multiple studies have shown that excess estrogens can cause early sexual development and other problems in growing children -- I'm sure, as industry would like you to believe, that it's perfectly safe. Aren't you convinced?

If you buy beef from the grocery store in the United States, chances are good that you're consuming this stuff, since labeling isn't required. As a matter of fact, the USDA and the FDA are so convinced that it's safe, our government took the EU to the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body to argue that their ban on treated beef imports was an "unfair trade barrier." The EU argued that banning it is a basic question of food safety, and therefore permitted under trade rules. Funny how the same scientific data can be interpreted so differently on opposite sides of the pond.

What boggles my mind about the Ag Extension bulletin is that it's brought up as a solution to chronically low commodity beef prices. Farmers raising beef in Pennsylvania can expect to receive around $1.60/lb for their whole year's effort in a cow/calf operation. But a quick survey of the information available at EatWild.com shows that organic, grass-fed beef is selling direct to Pennsylvania consumers for between $6 and $10/lb. Now, I do realize that this consumer price doesn't take into account the increased cost of fencing, land, hay, and such when you're finishing your own cattle on pasture rather than selling them to a feedlot. But I would certainly think that if you knew you could get almost ten times the price selling grass-fed beef direct to the consumer, you wouldn't be tempted to consider freakish things like implanting hormones beneath the skin of your calves. Wouldn't you?

pretty boy

2011-11-16T17:38:00.002-07:00

dirt

2011-11-15T12:51:00.006-07:00

Last night we watched Dirt! The Movie for free on Hulu. The cartoon characters and message of hope made a nice change from the somewhat depressing agricultural documentaries we've been watching lately.

Two snippets I took away from this movie:

"Kids don't play in soil. They play in dirt."
One of the people interviewed in this movie has made his life's work helping kids find greener places to play. He pulls up concrete in playgrounds so they can become dirty, living places -- in other words, the kind of places where kids actually like to hang out. He says that some people were shocked, asking where children would take recess if their play area wasn't encased in a lifeless layer of "clean." (Maybe those neighborhood parents need to take a gander at Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's book which argues exposure to nature, unstructured play, and dirt is critical to childhood development?) I can't help but recall a neighborhood child who, watching us dig carrots through the fence we shared when we lived in the city, asked, "Why'd you put those carrots in the dirt?" While his innocence regarding the way plants grow was comically forgivable, honestly, I was somewhat impressed that in the age of packaged meals, he still recognized a raw carrot as food. And what's with university professors insisting that you call dirt "soil," as if changing the word somehow makes you sound more intelligent, and feel more distant from that stuff beneath your feet on which all life depends?

"There is no such thing as waste until it's wasted."
The folks interviewed about compost included people in Maine who were making a good living composting fish waste leftover from fishermen. This waste had previously been dumped into the ocean, with no one the wiser, until eventually the EPA decided to tell them they weren't allowed to do that anymore. Without a cheap place to dump their refuse, the fishermen became interested in whether it could be brought onto the shore to be composted and feed plants, "like the Indians used to do." Well, of course! For me, this story made a good illustration of just how much living, decaying stuff goes to waste, every day, all over this country and surely the world. Massive, gi-normous, mind-boggling amounts of stuff. Stuff that should be in the soil, but isn’t. Stuff that shouldn’t be killing the fish in the Gulf of Mexico, but is. Fish guts, lawn clippings, leaf litter, human waste, Smithfield lagoons of pig manure, and of course, millions of tons of artificially created nitrogen dumped indiscriminately across the great plains, all washing down into our drinking water. We have a waste problem, and we have a fertilizer problem, which is insane when Mother Nature has already created a perfectly round system where these things are not problems but complimentary solutions.

white wonderland

2011-11-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

the first hundred years

2011-11-10T06:06:00.003-07:00

"Well, my old hound has died of starvation
Him and me ate all the chickens in the pen
Well, I'm getting kinda hungry, but I won't give up yet
I think I still got one old settin' hen

They say the first hundred years are the hardest..."

heat miles

2011-11-09T09:56:00.005-07:00

A few weeks ago, Crunchy Chicken posted the 2011 Freeze Yer Buns Challenge. One of the participants, the North Park Homestead, described "heat miles" as something we should think about with the same devotion we offer to "food miles" in our efforts to locally source what we eat every day.

This year, with any luck, all of our heat will come within a mile and a half of our house.

When our 700 square foot cabin was built at the base of Pike's Peak in 1927, it had no electricity or indoor plumbing, and the woodstove was its only source of heat. Since then, it's been retrofitted with the world's tiniest bathroom, electric lights and water heater, and a small CoZy Heater, which is less of a furnace than a glorified space heater. But unlike many modern houses, this cabin was designed with the stove in mind specifically to be the sole source of warmth. It sits in the center of the house, facing into a large living room, with the doors to the bedrooms nearby. The stove insert sits partially into a wide chimney made of local pink granite rocks, mostly about 10 inches in diameter. Enough of the surface of the stove sticks out into the room for you to heat dinner or boil a teakettle on top, but enough of the stove is nestled back into the rocks to allow them to act as a heat sink. It can take us up to two days of wood burning to get the rocks warm, but once they are, they will radiate heat back into the house for another two or three days.

When we light up the stove on chilly 40°F autumn days, it quickly raises the temperature inside the cabin to 80°. Last winter, our electricity and gas were out for several days during the coldest week of the year. But even while it was -20°F outside, our stove still kept the inside of the house around 60, all by itself. Needless to say, I was sufficiently impressed. It does get chilly at night, but we let the fire die down rather than waking up in shifts to tend it. With two adults and two 60-lb dogs snuggled up under thick blankets, we couldn't much care if it gets down into the 40s while we're sleeping, and the rocks re-radiating the warmth from earlier in the evening keeps our plumbing above freezing. We could turn on the gas heater for back-up if we needed to, but we haven't yet this year, even though we've already had two mountain snowstorms.

I write about our woodstove not just to brag about how awesome it is, but hopefully to inspire some folks reading to think about alternative sources of heat. For us, like many folks who have elderly or very young family members, turning the thermostat back to 60 or 50 degrees isn't really an option. Maybe it's because I've had a prior case of hypothermia, which makes me especially susceptible to the cold. Maybe it's because we, like many soldiers, started developing arthritis in our 20's. Whatever the reason, even when I spend the majority of my days working outside, I can never seem to take off my heavy winter jackets without shivering when the temperature is much below 70°. It encourages me to think that I can keep my home at whatever temperature I want, as long as I'm willing to trek up into the woodlot and cut the renewable resource required to warm it up.

health of the economy

2011-11-08T08:24:00.001-07:00

“In America, when consumers are confident – as evidenced by increased consumer spending and borrowing – the national economy is said to be healthy. As it happens, what’s true for America isn’t true for the farmer. I don’t know how they balance checkbooks in Washington, but every time I increase spending and borrowing around our place, the household economy goes straight to hell.”

-- Peter V. Fossel, Organic Farming: Everything You Need to Know

central heat

2011-11-06T05:45:00.002-07:00

this is not my hobby

2011-11-05T06:09:00.003-06:00

"Calling people who grow food part-time "hobby farmers" is like calling people in the National Guard "hobby soldiers." Most people would never dare peg the people who might give their lives to protect their country such an aloof term. The stakes are too high. When it comes to creating food, I feel the same way. And while the accountant down the street with the two-acre dairy goat and vegetable operation hasn't quit his day job, he still is providing food for your community. He deserves a higher title than "hobby." He is a farmer, end of story. He may be other things as well, but if he is making cheese and squash, he is learning a skill and providing a product to help keep all of us alive. The soldier might die for us, but the farmer lives for us."

-- Jenna Woginrich, "This Is Not My Hobby"

Truer words. Here's to being both.

since when does bigger mean better?

2011-11-04T13:46:00.006-06:00

For the second part of my discussion on what "organic" means and why I support it, I'd like to address the myth that bigger is better. One of the most tired arguments against organic agriculture is that it might be a fine designer food for those wealthy enough to afford it, but it's just not big enough (efficient enough, cheap enough, productive enough, et cetera) to feed the whole world. Multinational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto claim that organic just can't keep up. Of course, they also claim that any method that increases the tons of crop yield per acre is sustainable because it will produce more food from less land, and therefore allow us to free up more land for forests. Or, you know, suburban housing developments and strip malls. Whoever has more money this week.

Monsanto may be the world-wide expert in getting the most corn, soy, and canola from an acre of land. (Although a Kutztown University study showed that yields of organic corn per acre were similar using organic methods, and that the organic yields were actually higher during years with poor rainfall.) But I don't think it's accurate to say that they are better at producing food.

In the United States, thanks to the last fifty or so years of Farm Bill legislation, we have a national system where low-quality corn is heavily subsidized by the federal government. This isn't the type of sweet corn you eat at your summer picnic. Most of this corn is destined to become another product -- ethanol, feed lot cattle, new forms of plastic, and of course, thousands of different types of food additives. Subsidizing corn production hasn't brought us cheaper food at the grocery store. What it has brought us is a new "food science" industry which is dedicated to increasing the proportion of grocery-store packages laden with high-fructose corn syrup and other junk devoid of actual nutrition. We are now seeing a resurgence of rickets, the 19th-century disease where children's bones fail to form properly due to Vitamin D or calcium deficiencies. Where in the past this disease was the scourge of the malnourished, it is now affecting children who are otherwise obese. Shouldn't it be a sign that something is seriously wrong with the way we produce and distribute food when children can be overweight from eating too much food, and still simultaneously suffer from malnutrition?

Globally, we humans are growing several times more grain than everyone on earth could possibly eat. In fact, one study concluded that if all the world's current conventional farmland were converted to organic, we would still produce more than enough tons of food to feed the global population, without bringing any additional land into cultivation. The problem is not, and has never been, that we don't produce enough food for everyone. The problem is that many people are too poor to buy it.

Do you remember the Green Revolution? It promised to bring new methods of cultivation, irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizer to poor regions of India and other "third-world" nations. But as India native Vandana Shiva writes eloquently in her book The Violence of the Green Revolution, that promise just didn't hold up to reality. Chemical inputs, like nitrogen artificially synthesized from the air, come in exchange for money. In her words, "It doesn't matter how much bread you can buy for a dollar, if you aren't making any dollars during the day." Thousands of farmers mortgaged their land in order to pay for their first season of input, lured by the promise of increased yield. But at the end of the growing season, the prices they earned for their crops were not enough to pay their loans. (Sound familiar? The U.S. Department of Agriculture identifies avoiding debt as one of the most important things a small farm can do to stay in business.) Many people suspect this vicious cycle of poverty and hunger is driving the startling increase in Indian farmer suicides.

By contrast, the aim of organic is to create a closed-loop system, where off-farm inputs are minimal. This means that the fertilizer you use on your crops comes from your own animal manure or vegetation compost. Ideally, it doesn't take money to buy those things -- and in fact, it reduces the money you have to pay to haul that "trash" away and store somewhere in a landfill. As a future farmer in the process of creating a business plan, this lack of initial capital is extremely attractive to me here in my wealthy nation. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development came to a similar conclusion in their 61-page report explaining why organic agriculture has a greater potential for feeding human beings in Africa than conventional methods.

Conventional farming hasn't convinced me it can grow more food. But it has shown that it's sinisterly effective at reducing the number of farmers.

the driveway

2011-11-03T09:11:00.003-06:00

Sunshine and snow are two things that rarely ever occur together back home in Pennsylvania.

the basic premise of organic

2011-11-02T09:33:00.008-06:00

Are chemicals ever acceptable? Does 'natural' mean 'safe'? Is it even possible to feed the whole world sustainably?

Digress with me a moment to draw a comparison. I teach basic land navigation -- use of a map and compass -- to junior high school kids. There is so much I want to show them, from shortcuts for accurately plotting latitude and longitude, to how to navigate past obstacles like swamps and giant rocks. But increasingly, I find myself coming back to the basics. Many of these kids start out learning, for the first time, that the arrow on a compass points north. That fact is so basic, I sometimes forget to even cover it. But soon, I find myself backtracking -- starting at the beginning. Without comprehension of the most basic concepts, the finer points are mere hubris. Lately, I find myself doing the same thing when it comes to political and ethical arguments for organic farming. I'm defending even basic choices my family makes, like taking the time and effort to sort out the recyclables from the compost.

Here's a basic question:
What is organic?

I'd like to hear your answers, but I'll start with my own. The first thing that comes into my mind when I say "organic" is the absence of chemicals. But that requires us to define chemical. I remember a high school teacher who maintained that every single substance ever known to man should be considered a chemical, to be precise, whether it was synthesized in a laboratory or naturally occurred growing out of the ground. I disagreed with this assertion in 10th grade, and I still do. A chemical, to me, is something that is deliberately synthesized by humans, and doesn't occur naturally. Natural systems have trouble breaking it down, because it's new and bacteria don't recognize it. And because it's new, its long-term effects on human health and the environment really can't possibly be known for many generations, no matter how many studies we conduct or what interest groups fund them.

In my house, we do nearly all of our cleaning with vinegar. We don't have oven cleaner, countertop cleaner, bathroom scum cleaner, or even bleach. We do this for money-saving reasons: From personal experience, the vinegar is just as effective for cleaning up all the things I used to use those other products for, and does it for less than a tenth of the price. We do this for space-saving reasons: I keep a 5-gallon jug, and a small refillable spray bottle, of vinegar in my cupboard and don't need to make space for thirty other types of cleaners. We do this for environmental reasons: vinegar is a naturally occurring substance, made from the fermentation of apples or other fruits. If I spill it outside or flush it down my drain, tiny creatures in my ecosystem know what it is and know how to break it down and recycle it. I'm concerned about the saponification of our watersheds and streams, and so I choose to use fewer chemical soap products. And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, we do this to protect our family's health.

Have you ever noticed that household products that we deem safe to use on a daily basis suddenly become off-limits once you are pregnant? Pregnant women are supposed to avoid everything from tuna fish (mercury) to oven cleaner (toxic fumes) to conventionally grown apples (pesticides.) Were I to suggest these substances were inherently dangerous, many people would scoff -- my great-grandmother used those products, and nothing ever happened to her! (You know, except that breast cancer she almost died from.) But tell the same people that they ought to feel comfortable using them while pregnant, and they pause. Hey, maybe a lady carrying a tiny being inside ought to avoid regular apples. You know, just in case. Tiny beings can only handle a tiny concentration of pesticides, and several studies have shown that the human tissue containing the highest concentration of pesticides is breastmilk.

I'm sure there's some debate as to what concentrations of various pesticides, herbicides, and poisons is considered safe. But my conclusion is, if I know it's deadly in any reasonable concentration, why would I voluntarily introduce it into my home? Doesn't my family already face enough stress that is completely outside of my control? Reducing the number of poisons we ingest is one thing that is completely within my control.

Look for a part II of this discussion coming soon. I welcome your comments.

who needs Christmas lights?

2011-11-01T08:49:00.004-06:00

...with this kind of natural icicle beauty?

when farmers go hungry

2011-10-26T10:32:00.003-06:00

“A year ago the food summit was taking place. How do you solve the problem of a billion people going hungry on a regular basis, something humanity has never suffered before? Hunger throughout human history has been localized in space and time. In some places some people starved for a short while, because of a drought, because of a flood, because of a war. But that permanently a billion people would be denied food is an achievement of a world based on capital intensive farming, control of agribusiness over agriculture, and systems of food production and food distribution designed not for human welfare, but for corporate welfare. That’s why we have hunger today. We have hunger because farmers who have to buy the seeds and the chemicals can’t afford to keep the food they’ve grown. They have to sell it immediately just to pay back the debt. And what they sell at a quarter price, they have to buy at four times the price just to eat as food. Most people who are hungry today are rural people who are producing food. Earlier hunger was an urban phenomenon. Now it is has become a problem faced by producers of food, which should tell us something is wrong with the way we are producing food.”

-- Vandana Shiva, "About Biotechnology."
Speech available for download here

you can't make me

2011-10-19T08:54:00.001-06:00

...step out into that strange white stuff.

to split a log

2011-10-12T10:08:00.003-06:00

“The first year I lived here, we cleared land and cut our firewood with hand saws. It was hard work and it took a lot of time, but we had that time and the work felt good. As winter approached, though, we realized that we had in no way cut enough wood to last us very long, and we panicked. We asked a friend who had a chainsaw to come over and cut up some of the big logs that we had lying around. These would have taken hours to saw through with the hand saw.

He came with his monster machine which fascinated and terrified us all. Our country peace was broken. The noise was deafening and overpowering. I was eating an orange and couldn’t taste it; the chainsaw demanded all my consciousness. The animals fled. We stood at a distance, fingers in ears, and watched the chainsaw rip through the wood in no time at all, leaving us a three-month supply of warmth and comfort and hot meals."

-- Country Women: A Handbook for the New Farmer

Last year, our routine of gathering firewood was simple, relaxing. In the crisp mountain air of early autumn, we’d load up the truck with dogs, chainsaw, and a few gallons of gatorade. Winding dirt roads lead us through the National Forest to the permit firewood cutting area, where for as little as $15, you could haul away dead softwoods to feed your family’s woodstove. So passed nearly every Saturday afternoon until the snows came, ambling along with the windows down, selecting only the most enticing downed logs to cut into fifteen-inch sections, and returning home with a modest stack of semi-dried wood to be split by hand in the evenings. In particular, T took pride in telling people he had to go straight home from work to split wood for the night’s fire, and meant it – our stash of stove-ready chunks rarely split more than two or three days ahead of the need.

The swing of a splitting maul sings an easy rhythm. Each time two quarters fall equally away from the head, I feel like I’ve come one swing closer to mastering an essential skill of our ancestors. The work is physical, but not difficult, and an hour or less a day isn’t enough to make the shoulders especially sore. We split on a section of stump next to the driveway, and set the pieces on the porch where the eaves shelter them from snow and water. We have two splitting stumps, actually – one for T, and one about six inches shorter for me. The half-foot difference in our height equates to almost exactly the same difference in our respective maul-swinging positions. I catch a glimpse of the cheap, lightweight axe our landlord left to us, and imagine her in her business suit, attempting to split the tiny pile of kindling she left for us when we moved in.

We were on our way into the Forest again last weekend when serendipity came calling. The fire radio crackled to life just as we pulled out onto the paved road – traffic accident on the highway. Like much of Colorado, our small town’s fire department is entirely volunteer – not even the chief is paid – and so whatever help comes or doesn’t come to the folks entrapped in their vehicles following an accident is dependent entirely on the generosity of working people who can take time out of their day to render aid. Leaving the pups waiting anxiously in the cab of the truck, we rolled out to the scene with two of our neighbors. The accident turned out to be relatively minor, and we spent much of the call directing traffic around the tow truck and chatting about good places to find firewood. It just so happened that one of our neighbors and fellow volunteer firefighters knew of someone who was trying to get rid of a large pile of wood. A land development company clearing the way for new home sites had dumped a stack of softwood logs at the edge of their property, undecided about how to dispose of them and hoping they would eventually disappear. A tall pile of unclaimed logs, just waiting to be cut up and hauled away? We were happy to help them out. In exchange for a dozen of our home-grown brown eggs, this same neighbor loaned us the use of his hydraulic log splitter.

In one afternoon, we were able to cut, split, and haul away three or four pick-up loads of split wood. We now have already stacked – on the porch, on a firewood rack, on pallets beside the house – as much wood as we put up all season last fall. It’s heartening to feel so rich in renewable heat source. But at the same time, we unintentionally robbed ourselves of one of our favorite early evening activities. In the end, we decided to come back and fill up a few more truckloads without the benefit of the splitter. That way, we managed to get ahead on the work, but also left round pieces in a pile that could still serve as source of daily meditation. Lift, swing, split. Repeat.

see what emerges

2011-09-25T20:33:00.002-06:00

Rundown neighborhoods as marginal systems

Another example of the importance of marginal systems concerns the sources of both cultural and enterprise innovation and their relationship to urban renewal. Jane Jacobs pointed out that one of the values of rundown urban neighborhoods was that they provided cheap rents in old warehouses, shops and houses, where small start-up businesses could establish themselves. She provided evidence that the elimination of these areas by urban renewal programs in the 1950s and 1960s was killing the economic life, as well as the artistic and cultural life, of American cities. There is tension between the "tidy up" mentality that wants to recyle and make full use of everything, and the mindset that values leaving things be to see what emerges. The balance is a fine one, whether we are working in the garden or planning a city.

-- David Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability

uninvited guest

2011-09-20T18:37:00.001-06:00

alternative economies

2011-09-14T12:40:00.000-06:00

Anyone who listens to an early morning farm program on the radio will be aware how seldom a university expert will propose a remedy that is not for sale. What they have accomplished is the virtual substitution of credit for brains.

-- Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land

from an essay describing how the small family farm might add much to the fabric of society, but adds little to the Gross National Product

family trees

2011-06-27T14:23:00.003-06:00

Family trees are a great way to get people telling stories that you might otherwise never hear. Take the three trees in my grandmother's front yard. Blue spruce, planted lovingly by three pairs of little hands over fifty years ago.

Online search sites like ancestry.com and footnote.com bring thousands of obscure written records right into your living room. Not only does it offer helpful suggestions for documents that you might actually be looking for, it also provides a way to contact relatives whose names you may never otherwise know. Just recently, a cousin who met me when I was a toddler found my profile through my online family tree. With just an email, he put me into touch with a whole branch of my family in another state who I didn't know existed. These sites are expensive, but so very well worth it, in my opinion. Usually we wait until Christmas, when most of the relatives gather from around the nation to come back to the old homestead. That way, I can pay for just one month's access to the online records at a time when all of the kinfolks are around to ask questions, and we can all share in the data we gather together.

sun tea

2011-06-16T11:16:00.001-06:00

8 black tea bags in a gallon-sized pickle jar
1/2 cup of sugar (more or less to taste)

Leave alone in a sunny spot for 3-5 hours. Tastes slightly different than boiled-water tea, and with sugar added will only keep for a few days. So drink up.

chicken ark

2011-05-21T11:27:00.006-06:00

After much deliberation, we decided on the "chicken ark" design for a coop. It has a raised nesting area with a ramp that reaches down into the center of the pen. About six feet long is big enough for our six chickens. We had originally planned to make the entire side of the henhouse open, with one long hinge, but decided that would be too heavy. Instead, we cut a door out on each side, in opposite corners, that should allow us to access the entire interior for cleaning.

And hopefully, in a couple of weeks, eggs.

The bottom is open to allow them to scratch at the ground. We were initially worried that this would allow predators to dig underneath, but it seems that the need to dig delays them long enough to attract the attention of our dogs, who are dedicated predators of wild chicken-eaters.

porch guard

2011-05-11T11:49:00.002-06:00

oh, hello

2011-05-06T11:55:00.002-06:00

egg carton jiffy starters

2011-05-04T11:57:00.003-06:00

I'm not terribly thrilled with the results of my egg carton planter. It did give me instant, free extra sprouting space. But this morning, as I transferred the little spudlings into a bigger planter, I discovered that their roots had grown firmly attached to the soggy bottom of the egg carton. I'm not completely convinced I didn't damage them trying to get them out.

Have I mentioned that it's still snowing here? My house is slowly filling with little window boxes perched beneath every available sunny spot. This is the first year I've tried to grow any kind of green plants in this ridiculous climate. I'm debating whether to build some kind of plastic hoop house. I don't think our weather will ever be safe for things like tomatoes to be grown outside.

I'm terrible at telling plants apart, especially when small, and we don't have any craft or popsicle sticks. But we do have wooden clothespins, so I sacrificed a couple today to serve as labels.

wild green things

2011-04-25T11:51:00.000-06:00

real live bugs

2011-04-20T17:23:00.003-06:00

I can't believe how fast the chicks are growing. They're still just under two weeks old, and already have several layers of feathers growing on their wings. We decided they've outgrown their original, temporary cardboard box home.

We set them up this evening in a tupperware brooder. I'd read a couple of different accounts of people having good success with these. My only worry is that our collie mutt, a dedicated chicken-killer, will be much more interested in them now that they're down closer to her eye level.

As bedding, we use scraps from our firewood splitting spot. Basically I scrape off the top inch or two of softness from the ground. It includes pine needles, wood shavings, sandy dirt, and lots of bugs. The chicks love being able to scratch around and find actual insects to eat, the way their instincts demand. Just one of the many pleasures of raising your own chickens. :)

the good root

2011-04-14T08:16:00.002-06:00

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal;
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree;
your root is a covenant with God.
That root must be cherished with all one's might.
A feeble covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.
Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green
greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.
If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,
a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.

-- Rumi (translated by Kabir Helminski)

new chicks on the block

2011-04-08T15:31:00.008-06:00

Eight Americauna babies, hatched yesterday, now making their home in a cardboard box atop the front-loading washing machine. Bedding is pine shavings from our firewood splitting. The waterer is a coffee can, with a few holes drilled, on top of a frisbee. Works well for us.

vinegar

2011-03-21T12:23:00.002-06:00

You never seem to notice how dirty the floor is until you start to mop it. Even after sweeping, a tremendous amount of crud remains.

A little white vinegar will eat away most of it. We use vinegar for darn near everything. It breaks up the grease on the stovetop, penetrates the congealed who-knows-what on the floor under the fridge, and replaces fabric softener in the laundry.

made from scratch

2011-03-18T14:17:00.003-06:00

I'm on a mission from Dog to learn to make more meals from scratch. But that leads me to an existential question:

What exactly is 'scratch'?

(Yes, I put my question marks outside of my quotation marks. If the quotation isn't a question, I think the placement of my mark ought to specify so, even if it isn't proper grammar. I tear the tags off pillows, too.)

As an example, we love green bean casserole. My family grew green beans as a kid, and they are one of a handful of green things I can unquestionably recognize. You can buy it at the store in a pre-made box where you just add water. Sometimes you can even buy it ready-made at the deli counter. T's mother makes it the 'traditional' way -- that is, with a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. Is that 'from scratch'? It gets points, of course, because Mom made it, but take a look at the ingredients:
water, mushrooms, vegetable oil, enriched wheat flour, salt, cream, corn starch, whey powder, soy protein isolate, monosodium glutamate, tomato paste, calcium caseinate), yeast extract, spices

Mmm, our good friend MSG. Not exactly what I would call wholesome. The ingredients in the French's Fried Onions are relatively benign, by comparison:
palm oil, wheat flour, onions, soy flour, salt, dextrose

But neither of these things are 'from scratch.' You could make your own soup, and your own fried onions. But that then begs the question -- how far must you go for it to really be from scratch? If you make your own fried onions, do you have to grind the flour yourself? Grow the wheat from seed?

raiders of the lost greens

2011-03-07T13:20:00.006-07:00

I dig farmer's markets as a cultural phenomenon. But before I can hope to turn the stuff they sell into dinner, I first have to start convincing myself that it's actually food. Backwards, even inerudite, you say? Of course, but read on.

Let me confess that it wasn't but a few short years ago that I ever ventured into the 'produce' section of the grocery store. That scary, open area on the right-hand side, with all that fresh from the garden stuff? I couldn't even name anything there. And besides, there were no high, comforting walls -- anyone could just look up across the center displays and see me! And, heaven forbid, they might even walk up to me and tell me the name of this green thing I was scrutinizing, as though holding it up to the light might reveal some sort of secret bat decoder! No, the other isles, with food-like stuffs neatly labeled in cans and boxes, was much more inviting. No guessing there. If the big shiny label proclaimed it contained processed cheese food, well, then, that must certainly be what's inside.

Like many other kids raised in Generation X and beyond, I grew up preferring the flavor of artificial grape powder to actual grapes. Real grapes just weren't ... purple enough. And having spent days or weeks riding in a crate across a continent, whatever flavor they might have once have possessed had fled for the homeland long before those grapes got to me. Friends sometimes wonder why I never learned cooking from my mother. Let me tell you -- I did. But my mother, like so many others in America, cooks primarily Hamburger Helper, frozen pizzas, and chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. It's not that she can't cook wonderful meals from scratch; it's that her time is so limited, she saves those meals for a special occasion.

For me, learning how to make meals 'from scratch' had to begin with something simple, something not too terribly different in taste from the processed, MSG-laced fare that awakens nostalgia for a freezer-pop and bologna roll-up youth. (I'm told that bologna roll-ups -- a slice of Oscar Mayer with ketchup in the middle, rolled up like a tiny burrito and eaten -- are unheard of outside of Pittsburgh. Anyone in the audience care to weigh in on that? We are the home of Heinz ketchup, you know.) And so one of my first adventures was homemade Hamburger Helper. After all, how difficult can that really be? It's a bunch of noodles, some ground beef, and a spice packet. If I could figure out what was in the spice packet, I'd be set. That's really the only processed part of the whole thing. Following the advice of Chickens in the Road, with a bag of egg noodles and a jug of milk in hand, I had soon created my own meal. It was cheaper than if I'd bought a cardboard box with all the ingredients measured out ahead of time and hardly a bit more work.

But then, of course, some of those recipes require actual ... well, you know ... produce. Stroganoff in the box comes with dried mushrooms. Our military commissary doesn't generally carry dried mushrooms, and the squishy wet canned kind I didn't think would agree well with the recipe. That left only one option. Armed with dark glasses, an upturned collar, and some backup, I plunged in.

"Mushrooms are over here," said my backup, pointing towards the end of the row.

"Shh! You're diminishing the scariness. This is supposed to be like a quest into the cave of death."

"Well, I figured we'd spend less time in the cave if you knew what things are where."

"Oh?" I countered, brandishing a leafy green something. "Then what's this?"

"Kale?" he offered tentatively. "Actually I have no idea."

At that very moment, a large busty woman burst out of the stocking room to our rescue. She positively identified the green in question as something other than kale, and patiently explained to us the reasoning behind the placement of vegetables according to their humidity requirements. When we joked that we needed to carry a field guide to vegetables, she steered us over to that very thing. A think binder, complete with color photographs, had sat waiting for us in the center of the produce section the entire time. It outlined what things were called, when and where they grow, what to check for when you pick them up, and what kinds of dishes they might accompany. A holy braille for the blind and uninitiated! Why hadn't we found this earlier? (They do, of course, make an actual Field Guide to Produce, if you're so inclined.)

Since Colorado farmer's markets don't open till June, we have all winter to learn what things are called and how to cook them. Knowing what you want to eat is, of course, the first step in learning what you want to grow. I'll keep you posted.

puss in box

2011-03-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

delight to rove uncontrolled in the woods

2011-02-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

"The term "backwoodsman" itself emerged from a biased connotation. For those who still regarded England as the focal point of progress, the "backwoods" referred to the Appalachian range "behind" the eastern seaboard. On the other hand, for those who viewed the frontier as the new America, the woods served as the front line of change and the future. "Frontiersman," seemingly, was the positive counterpart.

[James Hall] found that the woodsman's delight to "rove uncontrolled in the woods," like the Indian, doomed him to the same sense of invasion of his "ancient heritage." Ultimately, it would also force the woodsman to defend himself from removal.

For the woodsman, the American pastoral was not one of cleared and tidy farms, but the wealth of the forests and its wildlife; the openness of the hills and hollows; the freedom of not seeing the smoke rise from the chimney of a neighbor; the wilderness and its natural ways that had been denied to the peasantry in Europe's conquered dominions.

"You English are very industrious," Birbeck quoted his woodsman neighbors, "but we have freedom."

-- Jeff Biggers, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland

gas sipper

2011-02-24T10:30:00.006-07:00

Who here owns a vehicle that gets upwards of 75 miles to the gallon?

A few days ago I took a basic rider course from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. (It's required, and free, for Army soldiers who wish to ride on post.) In Colorado, like many other states, completing the written and skills portion of this course waives your need to take a separate test at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I had never ridden a motorcycle in my life, and in just two days, I became now a licensed motorcyclist. Plus, if you're military, you're required to take one before you ride, and so Uncle Sam covers the bill.

I admit I was a little intimidated. I wasn't sure if I'd even like riding, and figured taking the course would be an easy, safe way to find out. Speaking of safe, a few people -- you know, including my Dad -- kept telling me that motorcycles are unnecessarily dangerous. That's Dad Stuff, of course, reminding your progeny not to do things like run with scissors or ride around on two wheels. But the reality is that riding, like flying an airplane, has a little to do with luck and a lot more to do with skill and situational awareness. If you can "Be A Lert!" to what's happening around you, riding really has a low probably of killing you. Much lower than tangling with that two-year-old colt your cousin just dumped in your pasture. As the saying goes, the world needs more lerts.

Truthfully I've always wanted to learn to ride. I passionately despise Harleys. I'm not fond of college kids on crotch rockets. But little, old-school models like you see pictured above intrigue me. It's like a bicycle, except you can take it on the highway. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how perfectly practical it is. Like many of you, I have a day job that takes me off my homestead on a regular basis. My little truck still drinks in a whopping 17 mpg, and gas up here in the mountains is hovering near $3 a gallon. Any vehicle that can claim 50-75mpg, or more, deserves my attention for purely economic reasons.

And then there's the added bonus that it's a helluva good time.

potatoes for breakfast

2011-02-23T08:42:00.001-07:00

Who knew you could make a baked potato in the microwave?

Just turn the temperature setting down to about 1/3 of what you use usually. For mine, this is "medium low." Then cook for about six minutes for a medium-sized brown potato. (They're called "Irish potatoes" in Kenya, and never without the adjective, sort of like "French toast" here in the states.) Make sure you slice it in half or use a fork to prick holes in the skin so steam can escape. I wrap mine in a wet paper towel, because it's crazy dry up here and it keeps the skin from getting wrinkly. And that's it.

Potatoes are wicked cheap. A good change from the Ramen Noodles.

a sound investment

2011-02-22T20:29:00.001-07:00

Picked this patch up at NCOR back when I was in college. Still one of my favorite political slogans. Sadly, the National Conference on Organized Resistance seems to be no more.

new friends

2011-02-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

I knew that anti-social cat couldn't resist irresistible puppy love for long.

Spent

2011-02-19T23:37:00.003-07:00

PlaySpent.org is a poverty video game.

No, really. Imagine that you are one of the 14 million Americans who is unemployed. You lose your house and most of your savings. What will you do?

This website offers a click-through simulation, rather like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, of what it's like trying to make ends meet working a minimum wage job -- or not working at all. It's put on by the Urban Ministry of Durham, NC. Fascinating. Share it with your computer-savvy teenagers and everyone you know.

earth mother

2011-02-17T07:06:00.004-07:00

Crouched in the dirt, her sandals fill my vision. Thin, dainty straps crisscross above painted toes. She's singing softly, but her sandals have all of my attention. They belong with a fancy dress, worn for evening out in the city. They ought to be stepping out of a fancy powder blue convertible. They ought to be walking beside a gentleman who offers an ermine boa to match, and takes those sandals down to the opera house. I imagine one sandal cocked out into the air as she crosses her legs under her dress, her hair smoothed into the waves that became popular around the time of the War, when she was just out of high school; fine earrings, a hint of lipstick, like a moviestar. Such a beautiful, kind woman deserves to be taken out to all of the places where I imagine those sandals.

Instead, they step carefully among the rows of carrots and spearmint. I follow close behind. She moves my small hands from the budding vegetables to the weeds, without breaking her song for an explanation. I draw designs in the dirt with a stick, and reach up to brush the dirt from her marvelous sandals. She smooths the hair on the top of my head, smiling as she sings. When we reach the end of the row, a thorny patch of mixed berries pokes up from behind a green plastic barricade. Inside, raspberry bushes aren't quite ready for picking yet, but the strawberries are. She hands me one, and points at another that is just becoming ripe.

I put the whole thing into my mouth, chewing thoughtfully. So much juice and flavor. Tastes better than any candy treat, and has more meaning to me. I can't have strawberries all of the time, but only now, at this time of year, when they burst forth from their little green-fenced bed. And they didn't come from some far away place; they came from here. My grandmother grew them, on this patch of land behind the house her husband built, next door to the house she in which she was born.

As more years go by, it's almost painful to recall how much those days in the garden meant to me. At the time, the edible fruits of our labor wasn't important to me. I wish now that I'd spent more time learning what was planted when, and where, and how to care for it. But I will never forget the taste, and the songs I learned by osmosis, and the attention paid just to me, as we worked together in the dirt.

grow lights

2011-02-16T06:42:00.001-07:00

On the desk in the bedroom, level with an east-facing window, sits a tray of basil seeds in potting soil. I'm glaring at them as I type this, actually. You see, that's what they've done for the last five weeks -- sit. They mock me and my lack of gardening skill. It's like Eddie Izzard's Encore on Computers routine.
"I can't germinate because you've forgotten to give me something."
"What, what is it? I'll give it to you, I swear, if you'll just let me know what it is."
"Oh, no, I can't tell you."

I have a suspicion that what these seeds need most is probably sunlight. Tucked in between two mountain ridges, we only get sunlight from one direction -- east. And we only get it for about five hours on a winter day. Any one spot on the property probably only has sunlight for about thirty minutes. The dogs curse this as they get up to move from one tiny sunlit patch to another as it moves across the sky. You have to wait till 10 am for it to peek up over the northern ridge, then follow it patiently as it slinks across the canyon, before disappearing again over the southern ridge at around 3 in the afternoon. Which is why, although it might be a balmy 60 degrees down in the valley, up here my driveway is still packed with ice. I can sun myself on a rock for a short while in a T-shirt, but back inside the cabin, shaded by rocks and tall trees, the furnace must run to have any hope of coming close to that temperature.

Our fine state of Colorado legalized medical mary jane not too long ago, and as a result the countryside is spattered with little shops catering to the indoor grower. Knowing nothing about gardening save what little I recall from elementary school, I stopped by one afternoon. I own quite an impressive bookshelf on growing green things, and I've even read most of them -- it's just that most of it doesn't make sense to me. Bean sprouts can't meow or crow or nudge me when they haven't been fed or watered. They don't respond to their name, or to loud noises. In fact, plants in general often mystify me as to how they can be considered living things in the same category as ducks and termites. But I digress. Hoping for a little instruction, I let the young salesman give me his schpiel.

Unfortunately for him, it backfired. You mean to tell me that these fancy "grow lights" that start at $25 are basically the same thing as a shop light I could get from the hardware store for $6? They take the same bulbs? Blue light is better for sprouting, red light better for flowering, but you can get the effect of both if you just put a warm and a cool bulb together in a two-bulb shoplight? Who knew?

Maybe all my little basil seeds need is a little bit of light, after all.

grass in the streets

2011-02-15T11:49:00.005-07:00

"The great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy out farms, and grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country."

-- Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan,
speaking at the Democratic National Convention of 1896
as quoted in Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness

tan your hide

2011-02-14T10:16:00.003-07:00

I killed a fox a few weeks ago.

I think that killing predators is probably a reality of keeping livestock. We can debate the morality of it, but if you intend to raise animals for food or livelihood, protecting them from human and non-human invaders is just part of the package. I keep a shotgun by the door. One morning when the chickens and the dogs were all raising a ruckus, I had occasion to use it.

It took me over an hour to skin. I wanted the face -- the ears, the nose. The pieces that make it unmistakably fox. Working outside in the bitter cold, I decided that I didn't want the paws enough to spend another hour coaxing them out. But what to do with it now? The dogs showed no interest in eating it whatsoever, disturbed, perhaps, by a fellow canine. We ended up mixing some pieces of meat into a stew with other ingredients. I can't stand to waste it, even though the consensus of most of the people I've spoken with is that fox meat is for vultures, not for people, or even dogs.

Now I'm left with a very nice, thick red pelt. And I have to say, I've haven't yet figured out a method for tanning that I consider to be reliable. I'd rather experiment techniques with something less rare than a winter red fox. So for now, I've just salted it. This is the same method I used on a coyote skin about six years ago, and that skin seems to be holding up well. It has very little smell to it, and has not rotted. The only drawback to the salting is that it remains hard and brittle -- not something you'd want to make mittens out of. But for something that will probably just hang on the wall and look cool, like this fox, it's fine. Just make sure you use plenty of salt.

human-powered enterprise

2011-02-11T16:56:00.010-07:00

"What are you humming?" I asked one morning. The sun was shining across the waters of Lake Victoria, and little children were chasing their donkeys laden with water kegs up the hill to the village of Wagusu, Kenya.

Eddy, my host in the village, looked up from the watermelons. He grinned shyly. "I am writing a song to my mother," he said. We were going to see her in a neighboring village later that afternoon. "When I am finished, I will write a song to your mother. She carried you for months so that you could come work with us today."

We had many such short-yet-profound conversations over the course of my stay, and even three years later I am still drawing meaning from many of them. Eddy, an ambitious young man about my own age, had done a lot of work to get his tiny village put on the map. He'd made partnerships with Africa Home Adventure and the Kenya Voluntary Community Development Project to bring foreign volunteers, and their funding, into projects he had helped pilot. I paid around $100 a week for one of the most rewarding "vacations" I'd ever had. Only a very small portion of that went to buy things needed to host me -- some soap and cooking oil, for the eggs and cabbages we harvested in the field ourselves -- and the rest went to fund a vocational-technical program for girls.

The vo-tech program consisted of a small adobe -- that's mud, you know -- building, fancy because it had a poured concrete floor. Inside were two treadle sewing machines. The girls received training in tailoring and could come here to take turns using the machines. Some were orphans; others provided support for elderly family members. All of them were excited to have access to this simple machine, which required no electricity and gave them an opportunity to start their own businesses. To become self-sufficient.

How strikingly different our versions of self-sufficiency seem on the surface. To me, it means being able to make enough of my own food and materials that I don't need to depend on products imported from far away and produced through practices with which I don't agree. To the ten-year-old girl who unobtrusively followed me through the watermelon fields, all it meant was a chance to turn a bolt of cloth into a garment, and make a few shillings to buy eggs for her ailing grandmother. She was just learning to write her name, and could recite a few phrases in English, but she was a fiend on the sewing machine. School academics were important, but distant -- sewing skill on the treadle was critical to survival and future.

We aren't so different, really, both bored by the study of things that don't produce immediate, tangible results. It's not that theory isn't interesting, it's just that it takes a backseat when there are so many other, more pressing things competing for attention. All this girl needed was the loan of enough money to buy her first bolt of cloth -- less than $5 -- to give her the hope that she needed to consider her ability to change her own future. A micro-microloan. What do you need to feel you have a bit of control over your destiny?

ingenuity

2011-02-10T16:07:00.003-07:00

Earlier this year, I decided it was time to buy a sewing machine.

But not just any machine. I had previously inherited a small electric model, which had finally reached the point of needing to be put out of its misery. The rubber coatings on the electrical cord had all dry rotted to dust. Metal innards had corroded to a fine grainy green. In short, it looked like it had been left all alone in a swamp for a couple of decades. "Maybe you can fix it," was the advice from my grantor.

But you can't fix such problems, at least not without a significant investment in research, time, and new parts. New sewing machines, like most consumer gadgets produced since I was born in the early 1980s, aren't designed to be fixed. They aren't designed to be repaired, tinkered with, or adjusted at all, actually -- they're designed to last just long enough for the warranty to run out, so you'll have enough faith in the product to go buy another one. Anne Leonard's The Story of Stuff video cleverly illustrates this idea of "planned obsolescence."

But of course, I don't need to tell you that they don't make 'em like they used to. I just want to remind you that the antique mall, flea market, and craigslist are all better ways of finding stuff you really need, that's still in reliable working shape, than heading off down to Big Box Mart. For me, this meant eyeing up the beautiful 1927 Singer Sewer you see above, rather than plunking down even more money on an electric machine that will probably need to be replaced before my unborn kids make it to elementary school.

Treadle machines aren't just a thing of beauty. They're extremely durable, easy to work on, easy to repair, and it's surprisingly easy to find -- or fabricate -- spare parts. Singer makes a strong effort for many, many of their modern parts to be interchangeable with all models of singer machines. That means that the bobbin for a sewer made in, say, 1918, is exactly the same bobbin you can find on the shelf of Big Box Mart designed to fit a modern electric machine. I read a craigslist post recently where a woman selling hers (for an exorbitant amount of money, as an "antique") noted that you can't sew on it any longer because you can no longer buy a belt for it. What utter nonsense! First of all, if you desire, you can still buy treadle belts. But when I bought mine, it didn't come with a belt, and I didn't bother to order one. I took out an old pair of leather boot laces and slapped them on, with a little bit of fiddle rosin to make them slip less. Done.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad back when I was driving my very first truck across the country alone. My air conditioner compressor exploded for no good reason one day in the mountains. I couldn't afford a new one, and really just wanted to get off the mountain and get home before I went looking for a used one. I'd called him to say how frustrated I was that Dodge didn't make this model of truck without an air conditioner. I figured I could just walk into the local NAPA, slap the short belt on that would skip the air conditioner's pulley, and be on my way, but no. "Well," came the reply, "Have you got a pair of pantyhose?" Of course. Why hadn't I thought of that? If the auto parts store didn't sell a belt of the length I needed, I could fabricate one on my own.

It's this kind of ingenuity that I fear is rapidly being lost. It worries me not just on a nostalgia level -- though I do believe everyone ought to be as self-sufficient as possible, just because -- but also on a security level. My soldiers can't fabricate parts they need and don't have. They wouldn't even know where to begin. They have a difficult enough time trying to maintain the equipment they're supposed to know how to repair. The throw-it-away-and-get-another mentality that has so thoroughly permeated our entire society has far, far-reaching consequences.

the little one

2011-02-08T23:26:00.003-07:00

So tall at just 7 months; this little pup's going to grow up to be a big dog.

Operation Recovery

2011-02-07T01:51:00.002-07:00

Operation Recovery is the latest political action hosted by Iraq Veterans Against the War. What it demands is simple: that troops suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress, Traumatic Brain Injury, or Military Sexual Trauma not be forced to deploy again. We are in our tenth year of war, folks, and some people -- including my partner -- are facing their fifth tour.

All soldiers have an inherent sense that the mission comes first, and that their personal problems should wait. This is something they must overcome internally before they can seek help. Once a soldier has made that difficult decision, they should not be blocked by their commanders. They should not be forced to deploy again. They should not be turned away from seeking mental health services. We should be proactively seeking out veterans who may need a hand up to keep them on their feet. Instead, we are turning away those who voluntarily seek help. What do you think is happening to all those who can't speak out?

The epidemic of soldier and recently discharged veteran suicides is no real mystery to me. People argue that the military has changed, that it's not as bad as it used to be, and that the soldiers who complain are just "malingerers" -- people who feign ailments or purposely injure themselves to avoid duty. Let me say that if this is the improvement, I'd hate to see how it used to be. Take these examples:

*Jeff Hanks, denied treatment over and over again. He finally went AWOL on the day he was supposed to return to Afghanistan, and was committed to a mental health institution. Only the inpatient commitment was enough to stop his unit from arresting him and forcing him to return overseas, and he is still currently facing AWOL charges.

*SPC Kirkland, a soldier who was sent home from Iraq because he was believed to be suicidal, then ridiculed by his Rear Detachment chain of command and left alone in the barracks, where he killed himself.

*Suzanne Swift, a soldier who was sexually assaulted by members of her unit the first time she went to Iraq. Rather than go after the perpetrators or offer services to her, her unit demanded she deploy to Iraq a second time with the same individuals. When she refused, she was charged with desertion.

These are just a few published examples. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, more that we may never know about. Despite what the military Public Affairs Office puts out about taking mental health more seriously, the truth is that soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines are still routinely denied care and punished for speaking out. But as these examples show, some courageous veterans are refusing to be silenced. Please show them your support.

What you can do:

*Educate yourself and your community about the problems of veteran suicide, and the lack of care we are receiving from the military. You might start by reading some of the articles or watching videos linked from the Operation Recovery webpage.

*Print the free flyers and post them on your college campuses, military bases, Veteran's Affairs buildings, or any place where young people congregate, to let returning veterans know they are not alone. Post them at your natural foods store, yoga class, or farmer's market to draw attention to the issue for veterans and non-veterans alike.

*Host a traveling "Operation Exposure" art show.

*Request a veteran speak to your college class, book club, church, or other group. Connectting with your local veterans groups is a great way to find speakers, as well as determining what needs are most great in your particular region.

*Sign the Pledge of Support. I don't personally like putting my name on the internet as a petition signatory, but I know that lots of other people view it as a symbolic act.

*Host a film screening that will generate discussion about veterans and traumatic stress. I have heard good things about Stop-Loss and The Ground Truth, but I haven't yet personally seen either.

*Write to your Congressional representative and tell them to make mental health care for returning veterans a priority. Demand that they investigate access to care for current servicemembers.

*Donate. Lots of people don't like to give money, and that's ok -- the above options might be better suited to you. But if you support the cause and don't have the time, energy, or gumption to do any of those things, donating can be a way to help. Donated money allows us to bring traveling art exhibitions around the country. Donated money also allows us to provide travel scholarships to veteran's retreats, so that we can get to know each other. For some veterans isolated in their own communities, these trips that are fully funded by strangers are their only chance to interact with other veterans and can be tremendously healing.

the great lard experiement: take 1

2011-02-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

So the lard didn't turn out exactly like we hoped.

If you notice, it's a rather dark color. It smells pig-ish, almost like bacon grease. We used it to fry up some leftover chicken giblets, but decided that we're going to call this batch "needs improvement" and use the rest as dog food gravy. In small amounts, of course.

The pig fat was free from the grocery store, about two pounds of trimmings that they would have otherwise thrown away. We've also decided that, in the future, we're going to make 5 or 6 lbs of starting material the requirement, since it takes so long to make. It seems that one pound yields roughly one pint of lard.

We started by cutting the fat into 1" cubes. Then we put them in a dutch oven, with a small amount of water in the bottom, and put the whole thing in the oven at 300 degrees. Kept it there for about... oh... five hours, until the cracklins were mostly small and hard. They turned out delicious, by the way.

The diagnosis of my mentor-in-all-things-old-timey, based on what I described over the phone, is that we cooked it at too high a temperature for too long. He says it has to be done more slowly, at a lower temperature, and that will help eliminate the dark color and pig taste. He also described to me a lard press. I'd never heard of it, but apparently it's a device you can use to squish the last bit of lard out of hot cracklins. Has anybody ever used (or even seen) one?

Well, since all the ingredients (except the electricity for the stove) were free, I'm sure we'll be trying it again. Maybe next time we'll try it in a doubler-boiler pot on top of the woodstove.

queen of the castle

2011-02-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

dual military

2011-02-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

The Army owns both T and I. He works full-time active duty, and I work "half-time" National Guard. I say half-time because it seems there's always work at the unit to do. Three or even five day drills aren't uncommon, in addition to special work days during the month. Not to mention all of the unpaid time, because when you're a leader, your soldiers belong to you all of the time, not just when you're drilling. All that said, though, I still prefer the National Guard. I can walk up to my unit and say, hey, I need to move to Colorado, and they'll find a way to get me transferred. I can say, 'Hey, I've got a wedding to go to that weekend, can I possibly work a different one?' and every once in awhile they'll agree. And I don't need to spend five weeks at JRTC for no apparent reason.

Yes, I know, it's pre-deployment train-up. My unit went through seven (yes, seven!) months of that ourselves on our way to Iraq, before they re-structured National Guard deployments to be shorter. But the reality is, he's not doing a whole lot down there besides sitting around with no cell service practicing being miserable. Meanwhile, there's an empty plate at my dinner table.

People often ask me if it's difficult to be a dual-military couple. The first answer is yes, of course. When we both need to be on duty, finding someone to take care of the animals is a real challenge -- especially when most of our friends are also military, and likely will be away the same times we are. (Luckily we don't have children yet, and are planning to wait on that until T gets out a year from now and can be a stay-at-home dad.) We're constantly getting socks and TA-50 gear mixed up. But it's also tremendously rewarding. We can bitch about work to each other and not have to translate from acronymese. We share a deep emotional commitment to service. And perhaps most importantly, as we're both combat veterans, neither of us is bothered by the other's demons that come in the night.

view from my front porch

2011-02-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

If you're jealous, remember that it's -20°F.

the central problem of progress

2011-02-03T13:21:00.007-07:00

"To wrest greater quantities of food from a wheat field, you need to breed varieties that give the greatest yield, that is, the greatest number of bushel per acre. To be successful, your breeding program requires a large and diverse gene pool, which gives you lots of choices. But when you finally come up with the most bountiful wheat, all the farmers plant it. The progeny of the favored variety overwhelms the wheat gene pool, forcing landraces and ancient types, and even useful related weeds, to disappear. Therefore, when you need to breed a new variety -- because the favored one has become stressed by bad weather or a killer disease -- there is less diversity remaining in the gene pool on which to base your search for a solution.

Repeat that scenario many times, and soon, so little diversity remains that breeding better wheat is almost impossible. It's like deliberate, programmed forgetting. Apply it to the glory of Greece and Rome, and you get the Dark Ages. Apply it to agriculture and you get famine, migrations of hungry people searching for food, and
inevitably, war."

-- Susan Dworkin, The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist's Struggle to Preserve the World Harvest

I share this because it's one of the most succinct explanations of the need for biodiversity I've ever read. There is a direct relationship between security and a people's ability to feed themselves. You wouldn't think this needs to be explained, but so many people ignore or choose not to believe it's true.

This book tells a fascinating story about a variety of wheat rust that nearly decimated all the world's wheat crops. It began as a mutation of an existing wheat rust in Uganda, and because so much of the world's current wheat supply is genetically similar, it spread frighteningly fast. The story follows a scientist who made "gene banks" part of his life's work, believing in the power of biodiversity. That's all well and good, and I think barrels of seed from every known variety stored in a secret underground vault are probably a good idea. But if we think this can be an insurance policy against loss of biodiversity, we're sadly mistaken.

Seeds kept in a vault are vulnerable to rot, pests, and fire. But more importantly, they aren't growing. They aren't making the tiny adaptations to changes in drought patterns or pests that living, reproducing creatures can make. If you vault away a traditional wheat seed today and pull it out a hundred years from now, it may not be able to deal with the increased level of salinity, or the new armyworm, or a multitude of other pests we haven't even dreamed of yet, that have all been living and reproducing and interacting with the real world in the meantime. One of the most critical aspects of food security -- and by extension, peace in general -- is small farmers tending genetically diverse crops.

Monsanto and the other big seed companies seem to honestly believe in what they are doing. They believe that they can feed more people on the planet by growing more wheat on one acre. They believe they're helping the environment by helping to prevent more acres of forest from being cleared to serve as agricultural fields. I think there is probably a place for high-yield, hybrid varieties in a world food system, if only to feed the massive quantities of standardized ingredient requirements for things like military MREs and Chips-A-Hoy cookies. But those who think monoculture on its current hegemonic scale is truly the solution to world hunger are deluding themselves.

Any cursory student of international relations can tell you that the problem of world hunger isn't that there's a shortage of food -- some figures say we currently produce more than twice as much food as all the people on earth could possibly eat -- but that poor folks can't afford to buy it. Take a look at your own community if you're not convinced. Are the people who come to the food pantries and soup kitchens folks who couldn't find adequate calories in the grocery store? Of course not. There's plenty of food to go around, if you've got enough cash. And the rock-bottom prices of cereal grain commodities that are driving farmers off their land don't affect the much prices of Hamburger Helper at Safeway.

It's the same story the world over. And as Vandana Shiva said, when the very farmers who grow the food are having difficulty feeding their families as they sell their crops to pay off their loans, it ought to be a sign something is seriously out of whack with our food system.

What do you think? Is it possible to feed the world with organic crops? In the long term, can we afford not to?

miracle of wood heat

2011-02-02T10:57:00.003-07:00

I don't know that I've ever been in cold like this.

Thermometer on the porch is reading -19°F. It only goes down to -30, which we might hit after nightfall. The windchill was supposed to be -40. I have about two days' worth of wood stacked on the porch. Inside the cabin, the woodstove is keeping the livingroom at about a cheery 60°. Not too bad, considering that the gas is out in our whole town. Our tiny furnace is hardly more than an oversized space heater. Never enough to heat the house by itself, it could still take the chill off and bring us up about five more degrees. I still have fuel for the kerosene heater, which I haven't lit yet, as well. Maybe I'll make some bread in the electric oven to get a little more heat that way, too.

The dogs are so much like little children, the older one copying me and the puppy copying T. The older dog will come inside when she's cold; she's made it a point to be outside doing her business for as few seconds as possible. The younger one, just like T, doesn't seem to notice how cold she is. She just wants to be where I am. She'll come out and frolic in the snow with me, steal sticks from my kindling pile, and generally ignore the temperature until all of a sudden she's really cold. Have to keep an eye on her. I wonder about getting them dog sweaters. Stupid as a fashion statement, they'd be practical if ever I wanted -- or needed -- to bring them on a hike with me in weather like this.

We have a new cat, the first cat I've owned since childhood. He's quite antisocial. Spending most of his days hiding under the couch, he comes out occasionally to bother the dogs and eat pieces of plastic. If he keeps attacking the puppy unprovoked, he's going to find himself locked outside with the cold and the foxes to fend for himself.

Work is canceled due to weather, as are most of my volunteer hobbies. The fire department is on standby, expecting to shelter residents affected by the extreme cold and lack of utilities. But so far, we haven't had any takers. Everyone up here on the mountain seems pretty self-sufficient. I wonder at what sort of panic might ensue if the folks down in Colorado Springs lost the utility umbilical cord to their furnaces in weather like this. Meanwhile, tendrils of woodsmoke curl up from my neighbors' stovepipes. An excuse to stay home, tend the fire, make cocoa, and catch up on reading isn't really so bad.

light upon a mantel

2011-02-01T21:23:00.001-07:00

snow

2011-01-31T21:22:00.001-07:00

Low tonight is below zero, with the windchill predicted to be -35°. All of the animals are coming inside.

sharpening saw chain

2011-01-29T16:39:00.002-07:00

I noticed one day while cutting firewood that our hand-me-down McCullough chain saw, never particularly efficient to begin with, was acting particularly sluggish. "When's the last time you sharpened this chain?" I asked T.

"You can sharpen chainsaw chain?"

It was forehead-slapping moment. "You've never sharpened your chain before? What do you do when it gets dull?"

"Buy a new one? It's only a few dollars."

I'd have to forgive him for his ignorance. It wasn't exactly that he was too lazy, but rather that he honestly didn't know that saw chains were sharpenable. Still, I pressed the point. You don't go buy a new pocketknife every time it gets dull, even though it's only a few dollars, now do you? Since I figured that there are probably quite a few folks at home who probably didn't know about saw chain sharpening, either, I thought I'd write a little bit of instruction about it.

What you need:
- a round file, in the proper diameter for your saw
- a flat file; most any will do
- a depth gauge
- a vise is helpful, but not necessary

It's quite fast and easy to do. The most difficult part, in fact, might be figuring out what tools you need and finding a place to buy them. I'll walk you through that first. Your saw's operating manual should specify what diameter of round file your chain requires. Most Stihl and Husquevarna saws use a 7/32 file, but our McCullough needs 5/32. If you don't have your operating manual handy, you can search for your saw's make and model on the internet to download one. Some companies will even mail one to you, along with fun safety graphics. Here's a picture from my saw's .pdf manual:

Where can I find such a file, you might ask? We bought ours from our local hardware store. Some of the bigger chain stores might have them, or you can order them online. Or, if you're the kind of person who needs an excuse for random adventure, just drive down the road till you see a STIHL sign on somebody's workshop, barn, or storefront and ask them where to get one.

Any place that sells small round saw files probably also sells depth gauges. You'll only need one every third or fourth time you use the round file. The purpose of the depth gauge is to check the height of the raker -- the front part of your saw's tooth -- against the height of the actual cutting tooth. This difference in height is critical, because it controls how much wood the teeth chew off every time they pass through your log.

If you have a vise, set your saw's bar in it to hold the chain still while you sharpen. Take off the chain brake so you can spin the chain. It's wise to wear gloves so you don't nick your hands, although I usually don't bother. I marked the first tooth I sharpened with a blue sharpie. Use the round file to push from the inside, short edge of the cutting tooth to the outside. Pull the chain towards you to advance to the next tooth. Sharpen all the teeth on one side of the bar first, and then do the teeth on the other side. Our saw, which has been used for years without a single sharpening, still only needed about eight minutes of filing to bring it back to good-as-new.

About every third or fourth time you sharpen the teeth with the round file, you'll need to check the depth of the rakers. Set the depth gauge over your bar so that the high part is on the tall cutting edge of a chain tooth, and the raker is lined up with the groove. If the top of the raker sticks up over the top of the gauge, use the flat file to shorten it.

One of my favorite tools is the stump vise, pictured in orange. I discovered it while working as a sawyer for a wildland fire crew in North Carolina. The stump vise is designed to be small and light enough to ride around in your rucksack on the trail. When you need to sharpen your saw, you just pound the teeth into any nearby piece of stump or downed log, and it will hold your chainsaw bar still for you while you sharpen. It's been my experience that a saw chain benefits from a sharpening after about four hours of continuous use. If you're cutting all day on a fire or trail-maintenance crew, you can make two or three passes with the round file over each tooth while you're waiting for the saw to cool before you refill the gas tank. Enabling your saw to work harder makes you and your crew less fatigued.

While you're at it, run that flat file across the blade of your ax or maul, too. It's remarkably similar to sharpening a knife. Would anyone reading this like a more detailed explanation of how to do those things, too?

oh uncle sam, please protect us from the stoopid

2011-01-28T10:17:00.003-07:00

"When you really dig down, you find that the average farmer cannot possibly contend with an agency that has more power than it has common sense. "

-- Serenity Acres Now, "Is the Food Really That Unsafe?"

The linked blog post speaks about the USDA and Food Safety bills. He also notes that on an average farm, the farm itself contributes only 13% to the total household income. Makes me think of "hobby farm" in a whole new light.

yes, it's the same stuff, folks

2011-01-28T08:52:00.002-07:00

Chemical fertilizer = bomb substrate. Now, in the name of anti-terrorism, they're working on formulating a form of nitrogen that's not so explosive. Wonder what the new trick will do to the fish when it runs off into the water supply?

"The blasts at the World Trade Center in 1993, Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995 and on rush-hour London buses and trains in 2005 all contained ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which is manufactured in bulk as an explosive by the U.S. and other countries."

-- Scientific American "A Fertilizer Good for Only Growing Things, Not Destroying Them: New nonexplosive fertilizer could eliminate a deadly weapon from terrorists' arsenals."

nobody ever said they were dumb

2011-01-27T10:40:00.004-07:00

Found this guy just inside the no-hunting area. He certainly knows the location of the boundary.

Rendering

2011-01-27T10:17:00.002-07:00

I've been reading about the benefits, in flavor and possibly also in health, of good old fashioned animal lard. I had a conversation with the butcher at our local Safeway store about it. He let me know that, while Safeway doesn't carry lard as a commercial product, the butcher shop throws away dozens of pounds of fat trimmings every day that I could have for free. Score.

Later this afternoon, I'll be trudging down the mountain with a clean 5-gallon pail in order to collect whatever's been held back for me. I'm excited. I'm so excited I'd leave right now, were it not for the fact that the Land Rover has again been spewing parts and fluid into the air, and T has taken my old reliable truck into town for work. That he works during the week and I work mostly on the weekends is almost as depressing as the idea that we might be deployed on opposite timescales. We each owe the Army just a little over a year, you see. He's scheduled to deploy this June and come back in 2012. I'm scheduled to leave in 2012, just about the time he's coming back. Sure, stop loss is supposed to be over and they can't deploy me when I have only three months left on my contract, right? Yeah. Let me know how that one works out for you.

I try not to think about the immediate future, actually. What keeps me motivated is seeing that little farm we don't own yet shimmering on the horizon, just waiting for the moment the military monster will let us out of its clutches. And in the meantime, I'll be doing things like learning to render fat. I must confess that "rendering" is a word I'm used to in the context of photography and Adobe digital editing. We're relying primarily on notes from a Foxfire book and YouTube videos for instruction. Hey, when it's free, you've got plenty of incentive to let yourself experiment.

There's a big dead Ponderosa Pine just next to our house, and our firewood stack is nearly empty. With any luck, it'll come down in the next few days. I'm a little nervous, as this will be the first big tree I've dropped so dangerously close to a structure. But we've got a plan of attack I'm satisfied with. Stay tuned.

a single 1940 apple

2011-01-26T12:53:00.006-07:00

"While industrial agriculture has made tremendous strides in coaxing macronutrients -- calories -- from the land, it is becoming increasingly clear that these gains in food quantity have come at a cost to its quality. This probably shouldn't surprise us. Our food system has long devoted its energies to increasing yields and selling foods as cheaply as possible. It would be too much to hope those goals could be achieved sacrificing at least some of the nutritional quality of our food. As mentioned earlier, USDA figures show a decrease in the nutrient content of the 43 crops it has tracked since the 1950s. In one recent analysis, Vitamin C declined by 20%, iron by 15%, riboflavin by 38%, calcium by 16%. Government figures from England tell a similar story. Declines since the 50's of 10% or more in levels of iron, zinc, calcium, and selenium across a range of food crops. To put this in more concrete terms, you now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940 apple, and you have to eat several more slices of bread to get your recommended daily allowance of zinc than you would have a century ago. These examples come from a recent report called Still No Free Lunch written by Brian Halweil, a researcher for World Watch, and published by The Organic Center, a research institute established by the organic food industry."

-- Michael Pollen, In Defense of Food

my future business partners

2011-01-26T11:53:00.001-07:00

Someday I will walk out the back door of my cabin. I'll check to make sure the melting snow is draining off the roof, and not catching moisture under the eaves. There will be a chicken perched on my kitchen windowsill. And up the hill a little ways, a shaggy brown head as long as my arm will poke her nose out from behind a maple tree.

Her thick winter coat will leave clumps of hair wherever she scratches. Unkempt, perhaps, but clean. She'll nudge me, watching with her curious eyes, wondering what work we might have planned. Behind the corrugated tin wall of a loafing shed, her half-sister will regard us through one sleepy eye. She looks up only when I call to her, unwilling to disturb her doze unless absolutely necessary.

They'll be small for a team, maybe only fifteen and a half hands, with wide, smooth backs. I'll bring them into the lower level of our hillside barn. From above, we'll throw down hay when the sun goes down. For now, they stand quietly while I gather up gear. Shiny black working harnesses line one wall of a former box stall, each one lovingly cared for with saddle soap and neatsfoot oil and brasso on the fittings. I'll warm up their bits in my hands, and begin draping them in all the finery of a working trade. Come girls, let's get to work.

We'll walk out together into the woodlot, with a chainsaw, an axe, and a pouch full of felling wedges. Maybe someday I'll cut a tree or two with a crosscut saw, for fun or for demonstration, but today we have real work to do and but a few hours of daylight to do it in. We pick the ugliest trees, those crowding better-formed neighbors for sunlight or water. I find a hole in which to drop one. Then another. A peavy to help me roll the butt logs onto a length of chain, and then it's up to the girls.

Step, Big Mama. Step. One step at a time, till the chain draws tight. Draft-powered winch brings the logs up to the trail. We'll lift the heavy ends just off the ground, hanging from an arch that the horses can pull behind them like a small cart. And then it's away we go. Down the hill, past the cabin, past the barn. Right up to our own, cranky old sawmill, where we'll saw boards. A little draft power to help lift the heavy logs up onto the table. And then back for another. Good girls. I couldn't do this without you.

There's money in logging, to be sure, though surely not much. The demand for horse loggers, near as I can tell, greatly exceeds the supply. And we'll go out, someday, to someone else's farm, who will want their logs skidded up onto a truck to go to a mill and market. But we'll start on our own land, in our own woodlot, cutting our own trees to make our own boards. And maybe, just maybe, all that wood will be finished into fine furniture. A value-added product.

Two brown Suffolk mares. That's all I want.

revoking corporate personhood

2011-01-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is landmark.

The article gives an entertaining description of how we ever ended up with "The Total Weirdness of Corporate Personhood" in the first place.

Vermont Legislature Introduces Bill to Revoke Corporate Personhood

car ride

2011-01-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

combat boots to cowboy boots

2011-01-24T10:33:00.003-07:00

Ok, I admit, I'm no expert at coming up with clever titles. Rifles into Radishes? Bullets into Beanstalks? But hey, at least I can claim legitimacy for "Swords into Plows" from two verses in a book that's thousands of years old and nobody ever actually reads.

Combat Boots to Cowboy Boots may not have the most graceful moniker, but the program offers support for veterans needing an agriculture education. I found it through this article, which says:

"The program is an example of a new crop of nonprofits, college programs and a new office inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture that are all trying to ease a transition into the agricultural industry for young veterans."

Apparently, similar programs are popping up all over the country.

If we don't have one in my hometown, I'm so going to start one.

The University of Nebraska's splash page for this program offers a quote which sums up my own philosophy on food security well:

“You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.”
- Norman Borlaug

National Western Stock Show

2011-01-23T23:32:00.007-07:00

This was the last weekend for the National Western Stock Show. Chose this weekend mainly because it featured the Draft Horse and Mule performances. I continue to be inspired by these magnificent animals. As we watched the Feed Team race and the Ladies' Cart class, I couldn't help but envision a team of my own. Not just a team, but a whole farm -- a crew of children to take to the shows, who could stand on ladders to groom; an antique sulky cart restored to all of its former glory; three matched teams of Suffolks, or perhaps Shires with their soft feathered pasterns. Nothing short of heaven. We talked animatedly about possibilities for logging, wedding carriages, hay rides, and animal-powered plows. Somewhere in the middle of the dreaming it surfaced that neither of us had much experience in driving. Leave it to reality to come in and burst a bubble.

In all reality, though, what is now is just a shadow of what things can be as possibilities. The farm, at this moment, is but a small homestead with a few animals who are teaching us a great deal about caring for small stock, but not doing very much to earn their own keep. But the farm of the future can be anything we dream it, and each day brings us closer to making that dream a living, breathing, snorting reality. What should be the focus? Sure, we'll begin by clearing a little land, building a cabin or fixing up an old farm house, and putting a few chickens and goats out in the yard. But really, what should we raise? What will make us distinct, earn us our own keep, and fill us with joy into old age?

Finding something that interests us is quite easy. The difficult part is narrowing it down to something to which we we can fully dedicate ourselves. As we passed rows of Buckeye hens and tiny bantam roosters with proportionately sized crows, we really want all of them. Every new creature we pass is a form of inspiration. What about shaggy Scottish Highland cattle, like the youngster you see here catching a quick snooze? They're still rare, but popular enough to have plenty of folks with whom to commiserate. But does that mean too many competitors? Figuring out the business aspects of running a small farm that can adequately support itself might just be the most daunting of all.

I expected to spend a little bit of hard-earned cash at the show, but what we mostly saw was a lot of glitter and gold that didn't appeal to us in the least. Barrel racers might need buckles the size of a Number 5 shoe and pink sequined blouses with matching saddle blankets, but our simple tastes weren't served by many of the booths. Cattle barons from all over the country come here to do business you know. All types of business.

Across the back of the stadium where the sheepdog trials took place, CSA farmers from throughout Colorado spread their mid-winter offerings. We sampled the creamed honey and rubbed our fingers in the lotion testers, but our quest was specific: Apple Butter.

You see, earlier this year, we visited Connecticut to attend an old friend's wedding. (And to sleep in the park in New Haven... but that's a different story.) Part of the pre-nuptial festivities involved a visit to a local pick-your-own apple farm. My partner has quite the fancy for apple butter, which is as much a reminder of grandmother and home to him as it is an alien substance to me. We sorted through dozens of varieties to find the perfect Mason jar to bring home. But, as it turns out, apple butter has an evil side. Who knew that the Transportation Security Administration considered it a harborer of terrorism? It was confiscated at the airport as a dangerous substance. Colorado apple farms being conspicuously rare, we've had to go without.

Our pleas were answered when Grant Family Farms pulled us aside to offer us... apples. For free. And as it turns out, they're actually our very own local CSA. Who knew? What magical things serendipity can teach us.

high-altitude bread

2011-01-22T14:12:00.003-07:00

Created this using Jenna's simple recipe for plain bread. It's outlined, in story-tale form, in her book Made from Scratch.

Just wanted everyone to know that, here at about 7,500 ft, the recipe turned out just fine and didn't require any adjustments for altitude or relative humidity.

environmental security

2011-01-21T13:58:00.004-07:00

The U.N. University for Peace offers a Master's program in Environmental Security which fascinates me. I've found no U.S. master's program that comes close to considering the same subject material. Visions of spending a year in Costa Rica, talking with students from all over the world about the problems that face all of us, keep me from focusing on the things I have at hand to do right now. Just the course titles enchant me: NRD-6075 - Forestry, Forests and Poverty; NRD-6050 - Agriculture, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development; and GPB-6060 Gender and Human Rights.

The premise of the whole program is that mismanaged environmental resources are often the root causes of conflict. Take Darfur, for a modern example -- Sudanese factions have never particularly liked each other, but they weren't killing each other before there was drought and famine. Of course, it's never really quite that simple, but it's hard to deny that scarcities of basic necessities like drinking water exacerbate tensions.

Who else is thinking up solutions for these big-picture conflicts?

periodic instability

2011-01-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

"When consumers in rich Western nations turn their attention to the failings inthe food system, blame is generally divided, blame is generally divided between food companies, which, we're certain, put profits before all else, and governemtn regulators, who are outmaneuvered or corrupted by that profit-driven power. Yet although this conventional economic narrative does explain some of our food problems, it misses and often obscures those problems' true origins. Today's food crisis is fundamentally economic, but not in the familiar sense that food companies operate for financial gain or that consumers shop for the best price. Rather, the crisis is economic in the sense that our food system can only truly be understood as an economic system, one that, like all economic systems, has winners and losers, suffers periodic and occasionally profound instability, and is plagued by the same inherent and irreducible gap between what we demand and what is actually supplied."

-- Paul Roberts, The End of Food

Of course, they also kill people

2011-01-20T14:17:00.007-07:00

“The Green Revolution was never about feeding people. It was really about finding a new deployment for weapons of mass destruction that had no use after the wars. Pesticides that were used to kill people were now used to kill insects. But of course, they would also kill people, as in the big leak of the Union Carbide bhopal gas disaster. Three thousand people dead in one night, 30,000 dead since then, and millions who die daily on farms. This combination of violence, of the tools themselves being tools of warfare, is part of the reason I started to look closely at agriculture. But to develop alternatives, in practical ways, not just scientific, intellectual ways, became an imperative to eat free, breathe free, stay free.”

-- Vandana Shiva

This quote is from an excellent 30 minute speech given by Vandana Shiva at a UU Church in San Francisco. Through the miracle of modern technology and the generosity of folks who don't believe in copyrighting ideas, you can download the entire speech and listen for free.

I think that most folks, at least within the activist community, are already aware that our good friend Monsanto is responsible for bringing us the pleasures of Agent Orange and DDT, in addition to handy household Round-Up. But everywhere I turn, I find more and more connections between the tools of warfare and those used, ostensibly at least, to create life in the form of food. If anyone out there knows of any existing books or research on this topic, I'd greatly appreciate if you pointed me towards it. Because, while little snippets appear everywhere, nowhere have I seen this phenomenon unified under one single heading. It's almost enough to make me want to write a master's thesis.

chicken on the roof

2011-01-20T13:11:00.004-07:00

practical theory

2011-01-19T13:43:00.002-07:00

"In theory, there should be no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is."
-- Yogi Berra

I've always been intrigued by where stuff comes from and how it gets to us, but making a bookshelf from a tree inspired me to be a lot more vocal about it. After all, this is process is probably the most basic reason why the forestry industry exists in the first place. Your job, as a forester, is to grow trees that can become wood that can become furniture. It's a "value-added" process. But somewhere along the way, we became fragmented. The loggers who actually do the dangerous work of bringing those tall trees down to the ground as logs are somehow lower class, uneducated. It's your job, as the diploma-bedecked forester, to teach them the errors of their ways when necessary. And as a forester, it's also your job to keep your nose within your own lane. You don't worry about market conditions or sustainable consumer appetites. All you worry about, even when you talk about so-called "sustainable" forestry, is making sure the plot of ground you're responsible for puts out the same amount of quality wood as it did when you inherited it.

Doesn't that seem awfully short-sighted for a profession whose rotation plans often need to span into the hundreds of years?

And why are basic skills, like chainsaw felling, skidding, loading, and temporary road construction, relegated to optional classes like "Timber Harvesting Lab," rather than the centerpiece of the curriculum? What good does it do to come up with lengthy growth-ring histories and advanced statistical analysis of soil chemistry if you have no idea what applications that data may have to actual people, who are interested in utilizing actual trees?

How and why did our university agriculture education system -- the very system that spawned the land-grants that formed many of these universities in the first place -- get so far away from actually growing food and timber? When did it, like the media and government Farm Bills, become so married to the corporate model of production? Is there any place where traditional skills are still being passed from one generation to the next?

story of a bookshelf

2011-01-19T12:23:00.009-07:00

See this bookshelf?

Picture it as a tree.

A gentle old ash, growing near the edge of a University football stadium parking lot, who spent nearly a century watching young people play. One day, lightning strikes, breaking one if its thick upper limbs. In the rounded stub that remains of its once mighty arm, birds nest, squirrels play, and rainstorm fury funnels through into the heartwood. Not tornadoes nor student drivers could bring down this old tree, but rot is a real threat. The decision is made, and the tree is painted for removal.

Enter the young forestry student. I was granted the privilege of taking down this tree because I was enrolled in an optional timber harvesting class. I felled it, with my borrowed Stihl 360 chainsaw and my much-respected instructor as my swamper and lookout. We loaded it onto a truck, brought it back to the portable sawmill to cut into rough-hewn boards, which were then dried. Stacking the kiln, one on one with a mentor like an old-time apprentice, is one of my fondest college memories. Busy hands free tongues to speak. We discussed why the moisture content of boards intended for use as studs, used outside the vapor barrier of a house as structural support, needs to be different than boards intended for use as fine furniture inside a house. We discussed how the decline of square dancing popularity has left the young people of my generation with few outlets to interact with potential mates in a wholesome and supervised way. This was the kind of knowledge I wanted from college, and I didn't realize at the time that colleges are rarely in the business of dispensing useful knowledge. I learned a trade, and I learned to soak up the wisdom of elders whenever they are willing to dispense it.

From the kiln the boards go to the jointer, where they are straightened, and the edges made perfectly 90 degrees from each other. This step, I learned, is skipped in most commercial wood processing facilities. They place their boards directly into the planer, a different machine which smooths each side, but does nothing to ensure their squareness. As my teacher said, "If they went in as crooked boards, they'll come out crooked, too." After the planer, my boards could be ripped into the sizes I actually wanted for my shelf. Making the boards, in fact -- the steps changing the wood from a log into the pieces I could screw together -- was the most difficult and time-consuming step in the whole process. When you go down to the hardware store and buy hardwood boards, you've already paid someone to do the majority of the work for you.

I graduated that semester, said my goodbyes, and trucked the finished boards home. The stain was the only part of the process that I didn't see the creation of myself. Piece by piece, it took shape, until the final bookcase you see in the first picture stood proudly in my living room. I didn't see the seed fall to the ground and grow into a young sapling. I didn't see the lightning that doomed that old grandparent to its day with the teeth of my chainsaw. But the pieces of the process that are influenced by humans, I got to trace, from forest to furniture.

That's the story of my bookshelf.

Who's coming with me?

2011-01-18T12:07:00.000-07:00