Off Balance

If you are looking for some happy sunshine, best look past this post. I've been busy and Spring is sorta kinda happening, so life has been pretty good. So I've been coasting along -- la, la, la, la, la -- with my biggest worry being how soon can I start drinking my goat's milk.

My readers keep me on track though by sending me news articles in the mainstream media about our impending food crisis. The little signs are everywhere: disappearing bees, antibiotic resistant staph, deforestation, pesticide runoff, unusual growths linked to GMO foods. There's a groundswell of support for the local and Organic movements, but there's still so far to go.

Here's a couple of articles to zest up your day:

Bees In More Trouble

EPA officials said they are aware of problems involving pesticides and bees and the agency is "very seriously concerned."

The pesticides are not a risk to honey sold to consumers, federal officials say. And the pollen that people eat is probably safe because it is usually from remote areas where pesticides are not used, Pettis said. But the PLOS study found 121 different types of pesticides within 887 wax, pollen, bee and hive samples.

Um, yea. Probably safe. Forget that we are going to lose crops to lack of pollinators, the food the pollinators produce is toxic.

And here's some fun about antibiotics in our meat:

Save Lives, Save Animals, By Saving Antibiotics

Experts estimate that up to 70 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States are given to healthy food animals on industrial farms to grow the animals faster and compensate for often crowded, unsanitary conditions.

You know, I used to think that eating sustainably and ethically raised food was trendy or expensive or a fad. But now, I feel like we must eat this way if we are going to find our way through to correcting the balance.

From front-page politics, to our food supply, we are so out of balance. Whatever happened to moderation? To thoughtful, rational discourse? To solving problems holistically, with an eye to longevity and the future, instead of "Me, Now"? Instead of maximizing production in our food system, how about we maximize health -- human, animal, and plant?

I feel... trapped. On my very small farm, I spend all my time caring, nurturing, observing, experimenting, improving. While the world comes crashing down around me, I plant my seeds, I feed my chickens, I milk my goats. What more can I do?

From the Intertubz

Hi all, I hope you are having a good winter. Here's some fun reading to stimulate the mind during the "off season".

Genetically Modified Corn Toxicity

"For the first time in the world, we've proven that GMO are neither sufficiently healthy nor proper to be commercialized. [...] Each time, for all three GMOs, the kidneys and liver, which are the main organs that react to a chemical food poisoning, had problems," indicated Gilles-Eric Séralini, an expert member of the Commission for Biotechnology Reevaluation, created by the EU in 2008.

Organic Food Production Delivers

In 2006 a paper by Catherine Badgley found that, while yields from organic systems in temperate regions were typically 9% less than in non-organic systems, in. tropical regions, organic agriculture can increase yields by over 50%, with the possibility of more than doubling the production of some types of food. A report in 2006, by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), based on 114 studies in Africa, found that organic agriculture could increase yields by up to 116% – more than double.

Just say NO to GM Veggies

With the purchase of Seminis in 1995, Monsanto is now estimated to control between 85-90% of the U.S. nursery market (this includes pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers). By buying up the competition and lobbying the government to make saving seeds illegal, Monsanto has slowly been taking over all of the seeds.

From the Intertubes

Many of my readers (all five of you) probably read the same blogs I do about farming, food, horses, World Domination By Apple Products. But in case you don't, in case you foolishly rely on moi to provide real information about farming and food, I thought I would pass along some content that has stirred my soul.

There are many more eloquent authors than I that seem to speak directly from my brain. I wish I had the ability to pen some of these discussions, but for now I will just nod vigorously and do my best to listen.

First up is a piece by Howling Duck Ranch that discusses the conundrum of large predators going after your product. Bears in the apple trees is not really a problem I, or most of us, will face. And that part of the discussion is not what grabbed me. Here's the salient quote:

We have developed strategies for competing with all aspects of nature, from traps (mice and rodents), to fungicides, herbicides, insecticides (molds, weeds, bugs), to windbreaks and rip-raps (erosion by wind and water). We have become so conditioned to these agricultural weapons that we no longer see them as such. We certainly don’t see weevils on par with squirrels, or squirrels on par with grizzly bears. Many bear enthusiasts would not object to a farmer spraying crops to prevent weevils from destroying it but would be horrified if the same farmer shot a bear to protect his apples. However, if you were dependent upon the apple crop for your livelihood, or to keep you from starving, you wouldn’t. The privilege of a full stomach affords us the luxury of seeing these two actions as vastly different. Today, most North Americans would tell me to go buy the apples from the store and save the bear because they are no longer engaged in direct economics and can afford to be blindly unaware of the cold hard realities of what it takes to put food on their tables.

In my own baby attempts to grasp Farming, I have already hit the cognitive disconnect between people who believe food comes from grocery stores (my entire family and neighbors) and myself. When foxes took my hens, I bought a .22 rifle, hardly a supreme act of Crazy. And because the foxes show up at random times, the rifle is parked next to my back door, loaded (but with safety on). My family recoils at the sight of this wee rifle, sitting out in plain sight! The nerve! Such an act of violence! I hope, for their delicate sensibilities, I will never have to actually use the rifle to protect my hens, but I would. You see, to them, this whole farm thing is a game. If I lose my flock to predation, I can just go to the store and buy food. It's not like I am going to starve or anything. But to so many hard-working people, it IS their livelihood and they will suffer if they lose their crop.

I'm not advocating extermination of all predators. I believe in living in balance. That fox kills my chickens, yes, but he also kills mice and (hopefully) potato-eating voles. I don't actively hunt him, or trap him, and I don't shoot them on sight. He is welcome to cross my land at will. Just stay away from the chickens and we'll get along just fine.

The most salient point, however, is the comparison between bears and weevils. Opposed to the shooting of bears? Reconsider your stance on pesticides, or mono-cropped dead zones, or CAFOs.

The next literary gem is from the great Joel Salatin, polarizer and minor deity for the small, sustainable farm movement. His piece is the forward of a book I intend to buy on the legislation of Raw Milk sales. Joel certainly has a way with words, but he is dead right.

Isn't it curious that at this juncture in our culture's evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not?

In my small enterprise, I have considered what I would do with "excess" and I have few real choices. I can compost it, feed it back to the animals, but I cannot, ever, sell it. For my pasturing plan, it would be better to raise two lambs a year instead of one, because they need companionship. I cannot eat two lambs a year and I am loath to hold the lamb over in my freezer for an additional year. Unless of course, I can find a vacuum sealer that won't burn the meat sitting for so long. But let's assume I can't, that if I raise two lambs a year, I must consume or dispose of two.

There is no way I am going to sell that lamb to strangers. Who would buy it? I have a single lamb for sale, a no name operation. I've seen the ads on craigslist and I think they are crazy. No way would I buy a single animal from some stranger on craigslist. I could ask some farmer friend of mine to sell it as part of her products. That farmer might already have a customer base, and a brand. But she may not want to take the risk on the animal, who was raised outside of her quality control. I could possibly give it away or donate it to a charity, like hunters donate venison. There is less implied liability if the meat is free. I could make an arrangement with a friend who doesn't have land to raise this lamb for him and he incurs the risk and the butchering cost.

Most of these options are scary and some of them are illegal. I am all for food safety. We have the technology now to keep our food safer via refrigeration, etc. But we need a way for farmers to provide micro scale products without the legislative road blocks. Long time ago, New Hampshire had a state run, USDA inspected processing facility. I could bring my lamb there, pay my fee, and it was legal for me to sell the meat. No longer. And to see what has happened to the private butchering market, you only need to look to an enterprising pig farmer in Vermont.

I am small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but it is unlikely that even if I had amazing success at this whole farming venture, that I would ever attempt to sell any of my products. Which makes it all the more important to thank the farmers who do, who play the game, get inspected, pay the overhead, deal with the hassle, to provide real food for our tables. Thank you.

Can You Take Charge?

This morning I read another very thoughtful piece on the individual decision we all make, to support what we believe to be the best food. The author is a constant inspiration to me: her farm is incredible and she works very hard to provide for her family for much the same reasons as myself. We made a choice to "walk swiftly" away from industrialized "pharming".

Of course, this inaugural year of me being a farmer is not even close to providing enough food for us to turn our back of Big Agribiz, but it is a bumper crop of knowledge. I think I have finally become a gardener when, in mid July, I am already looking forward to next year's garden. I have learned so much from doing (it wrong), that I wish I could start over. And the nice thing about gardening is there is always next spring.

Even though we are not in a position to grow all our own food, we do make our choice with the people that can. We attend one, sometimes two farmer's markets a week. There are some things, like milk, honey, and syrup, that I will never buy in a store. All our meat for next year will come from local farmers. We will provide the majority of chickens, we will soon take delivery of a local lamb, and we take delivery of a local, apple-finished pig in the fall. Yummy. Aside from the occasional farmer's market ground or steak, we are cutting out beef entirely. I would like everyone to appreciate the boldness of that statement, coming from a Native Texan.

Honest Food

I've been reading a lot, ok too much, about our industrial food complex.  The information out there is staggering and I have been able to apply my graduate school research skills to tracking down the source studies or statistics.  I am about to leave this topic in search of more, shall we say, optimistic topics, including getting my garden growing.  But before I do, let me put together a rant.

Every day, the news is so bad.  It's depressing as hell.  The challenges we face are so overwhelming, and you can't trust the people in charge to make the correct decisions.  Our democracy is subverted by Big Companies with Big Lobbyists pushing our elected leaders to make decisions.  Last time I checked, our representatives were supposed to vote for us.  Now they vote for dollars and I don't recall voting for Monsanto to represent me.

But I digress.  It's about Bigness.  When something gets too big, it becomes non sustainable.  Whereas one cow can graze on grass and deposit her manure to fertilize and build the soil, 200,000 cows in a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feed Operation) creates a problem that didn't exist, simply because of scale:  Manure Lagoons.  What doesn't make it to the lagoons become bedding for the animals, standing up to their knees in liquid manure.  Our food is literally covered in shit and it collects into biohazard pools (who are they kidding with this "lagoon" euphemism??) which become a pollution problem.  So just by making something Big, we dishonor the animals, create pollution, lower the nutrients in the resulting meat.  All to make meat cheap.

The meat is cheap only because you look at the grocery story flyer which says: "Ground Beef: $2.69/lb".  What other items would you buy with so little information??  "TV: $500"  "Car: $8,000/tire"  Beef is beef, right?  Eggs are eggs?  Actually, no.  But let's just say that they are anyway.  What is not included in the price per pound is the subsidized No. 2 corn which is literally killing our farmlands. What is not included is the huge pollution cleanup problem which is subsidized by big AgriBusiness.  What is not included is the amount of foreign oil we use to process the food (anywhere from 14 to 87 oil calories to 1 single food calorie). What is not included is the cost to our health from the ridiculous amounts of antibiotic-resistant bacteria present on the food (70% of grocery store chicken tests positive for Salmonella or Campylobacter.  Eat up!).

Our cheap ground beef is subsidized with our future.  It's really not cheap.  It is, in fact, ridiculously expensive.

The non-bleached poultry I buy from the guy down the road, whose manure fertilized the fields and who was never fed antibiotics or other "supplements", is a freakin' bargain at $3.50/lb.  All the costs are upfront and paid directly to the farmer.

I am all about Smallness.  That "inefficient" small farmer has no waste, and actually builds soil and the environment instead of raping it.  Factor in all the hidden costs and Bigness loses.

We have to break the addiction to Bigness when it comes to agriculture.  And it is happening, all over.  People are getting educating and saying, "No more!"  During my research, I stumbled across a blog that is absolutely spot on: Honest Meat.  In particular, please read this entry on antibiotics in our food.  I was able to correlate all the statistics cited.  This blog is Honest.

So let's be honest about our food.  Have your "cheap" ground beef but be Honest about where it comes from and the ramifications of producing it.  If every food item was packaged with how many pounds of antibiotics were used, how many gallons of bio-toxic waste, how many barrels of oil were used to bring it to you, people would change.  No more hiding behind the curtain of big Agribusiness.

Honest change.

Farmer Workshop - Sustainability Rant

The wife and I attended a Farmer's Workshop on sustainable food held in Dover, New Hampshire. We stayed for three speakers and lunch and the topics where:

• Organic seeds (and why not to use Conventional Seeds)
• Raw Milk (Pros and Modern Myths)
• Heritage Poultry (And Why the World is Going to Hell)

[Subtitles are my own]

I am about as nutty as they come when the topic is sustainable food, but these three speakers (who are all local farmers, by the way) really walk the walk. The overall theme of the day is one I have been picking up subtly from a variety of sources including Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Put simply, our food supply, our food culture, is not sustainable. The average food item in American cuisine travels 1500 miles. Every food calorie requires 15 energy calories (in the form of petroleum, and all ensuing wars) to produce it. This concept was echoed across the three disparate topics.

Organic Seeds
The pharmaceutical companies have patented seeds. They've done insidious things like bred in a "terminator gene" which prevents farmers from harvesting and keeping seeds. That means that the farmer no longer owns his or her food or future. Every year, they must pay for seeds (and conveniently, the pesticide to protect it). 90% of all corn seed in this country in genetically modified. What can one small farmer do?

Buy and collect heirloom seeds. Seeds that produce open-pollenated, self-propagating, fertile crops. Harvest them, dry them, and grow more crops. Stop paying for our future by buying seeds from the Monsantos and DuPonts. Stop buying fertilizers that are derived from petroleum. Take control of our food.

Raw Milk
Most dairy forms keep their cows on at least 80% genetically modified corn (which is NOT a natural part of a ruminant's diet). The average lifespan of a conventional dairy cow is 42 months. 42 months, people. The average lifespan of a "sustainably" maintained dairy cow is 13 years. Do you really want to drink the milk from an animal that is so sick, it's lifespan is cut by over 75%?? Plus, raw milk is regulated by law to contain a lower bacteria count than pasteurized milk. That means you are guaranteed to have less pathogens in raw milk than in conventional milk. By law.

But let's look again at that conventional cow who is fed non-sustainable, genetically modified corn. Her milk is then bundled with 1,000 other cows and shipped, via diesel truck, to a pasteurization facility, where it is super heated to destroy contaminants. The heat also destroys valuable enzymes and vitamins. In fact, more vitamin C is destroyed by pasteurization of dairy in this country than is produced in our entire citrus crop.

Once sterilized, the milk is homogenized which destroys more proteins, all because we don't like the cream to rise to the top, which indicates age. Then a protein powder is re-added to the milk, plus things like vitamin A and D (to make up for the lack of sunshine the confinement cows are getting). Of course, they don't have to label that the milk has powder added because it's a ubiquitous practice in the industry (kinda like dunking poultry carcasses in chlorinated water). Then, the milk is shipped, again via diesel truck, to a packaging facility. Finally it is shipped, more gas and oil please, to your local store.

After ultra-pasteurization, the milk is so "dead" that it does not need to be refrigerated, but they do it anyway because we're trained not to drink "warm" milk. No one will buy milk off a shelf, but it's just as safe as the refrigerated milk using expensive energy to keep it cold. You can't make home cheese from pasteurized milk, which is fine because they want you to buy cheese as well. This living, complete food is dead.

The raw milk we buy comes from 25 cows which, in the summer, graze on 40 acres. They are fed minimal grain and dry hay to offset the rich nature of the grass. They are milked twice a day and the milk runs through sterile lines, is chilled immediately, poured into glass jars and put up for sale from the farm. Zero diesel miles. The majority of the roughage fed to the cows, including hay and haylage, is produced on the farm, without pesticides. They use diesel to run the tractors, but nothing is shipped in and oil is not used for "chemical boosters".

During that part of the presentation, the farmer took his milk and gave everyone a taste test between it and store bought vit D fortified milk. Then he took some warm milk and using only a jar for shaking, made butter in about 10 minutes. Then, he took more cream and made whipped cream in about 3 minutes. He also brought samples of his Quark (European farmer's cheese), raw yogurt, and raw Sauerkraut. This man was a food producing machine, and all used living milk as a base.

Heritage Poultry
Our modern chickens are the product of hybridization that favors cheap and ubiquitous corn. Corn which is the product of cheap and ubiquitous oil. Oil goes away, corn goes away, and those monstrous meat birds which gain a pound a week until they die at 10 weeks from a heart attack (if not harvested first) will cease to exist. They cannot exist on forage and free ranging, which is something the heritage breeds have been bred, oh for millennia, to do. The heritage breeds are slower growing, but they produce for longer. A modern production layer, if kept well fed, will produce 300 eggs a year and then die, burned out, at 18 months from reproductive problems. Her body is just a machine, and longevity is not required. A heritage breed will produce 100 eggs a year but lay consistently for 5 years and live into her teens, on little to no grain, on bugs found in your garden, in your orchard, and on table scraps.

There's 2.5 chickens for every human on this planet and 99% belong to one of 4 breeds. We have a problem. A major biodiversity problem. There are two main milking breeds of cow, and 8 species of plant provide human food (down from about 80,000). In the next 10 years, 50% of the world's rare poultry breeds will go instinct.

Once we get off our petroleum kick, how we eat will have to change because the 12 oz of meat in every meal is just not sustainable. One heritage chicken can feed you for four meals, more if you count stock and dumplings. No more eating of the breast and discarding the rest. We won't be able to afford it.

We won't be able to afford to feed any of our animals corn, nor should we. It's not any better for them than it is for us. Sustainable, pasture raised, bio-dynamic farming, which uses the naturally occurring manures and doesn't require calories from the Middle East is the only way we will be able to afford to feed all these hungry people.

It's a hell of a lot of work. But I know it starts with me.