JASON’S GARDEN

The Backyard Homestead is coming of age!  40 years after the “Back to the Land” Movement took us all out onto our remote 20 acre parcel…

The newest generation to begin farming is making their wave on front lawns, in backyards across America.  It is now very hip to keep chickens in town, and the movable mini-coop (Chicken tractor) that can clean up & fertilize a garden bed is a wonderful invention being built just about anywhere!

Jason Bradford – localization spark plug & recently of my hometown – Willits, CA – has moved to Corvallis, OR –  in search of a wide & fertile valley to farm organically.  His dream is to organize Organic farming for thousands of prime farmland – revolutionize the future of our basic grain crops.  As that bigger dream unfolds, he is making a cozy home with wife – Kristin Bradford – a full time MD & very good baker of scratch German Chocolate cakes, beautiful young mother of 2 extraordinary boys, a Tai Kuan Do student, ballet dancer extraordinaire, and – well – you get it – these are not your ordinary backyard gardeners….but, wait – they are extra ordinary just as are we all, each in our own way.

So find your extra-out-of-the-ordinary time & dig a patch in your front yard, your side patio, your balcony pot of soil…plant a tomato & savor the goodness of the connection to your food.  Meanwhile, you can get inspired & informed by books such as The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan.  

I have learned something new on every page!

start seeing farmers!

START SEEING FARMERS!

Hey – I do hope we all “Start seeing Farmers” …around town, around our county, around our nation… small farmers that is – ones that grow “real food”!!!

There is an exciting new farmer movement – young people who realize that farming is sexy & that feeding people is where it is at – for survival into the next human phase.

SO-

Come on farmers – stand up & be counted!  WWOOFers, PERMACULTURISTS, TREE PLANTERS, Green Uprising Farmers all Farmers who go to Market or sell from a CSA…

Why do we need a farming revolution?  Yep, since the 1970’s (or earlier) we have been losing the ancient farm web – a structure that fed all of us for millennia.  In just a few decades, we became dependant on Big Ag.  Large farms are not feeding us in a healthy way, they are part of the corporate food complex, creating obesity & health concerns with the use of fields & choice of crops.   Too bad for everyone…  It is about Government Farm Subsidies as much as anything else.

A decade ago, an American woman’s waist, on average, was close to two inches smaller than it is today. Eighteen year olds are at least 15 pounds heavier than they were in the 1970s.   That is a bad start on adult life & habits.

One reason is federal subsidies for food production.
Check out these numbers:

• Meat/Dairy — 73.8 percent
• Grains — 13.2 percent
• Sugar/Oil/Starch/Alcohol — 10.7 percent
• Nuts/Legumes — 1.9 percent
• Vegetables/Fruits — 0.4 percent

That’s right – just 1.9 percent for nuts and legumes and 0.4 percent for fruits and vegetables. As a result, a salad often costs you more than a Big Mac.

Follow the money – & it should come as no surprise that federal subsidies for certain kinds of food will directly influence the production and subsequent consumption of that food.

As you can see in the list above, the US food subsidies are grossly skewed, creating a diet excessively high in factory-farmed meats, grains and sugars, with very little fresh fruits and vegetables or healthy fats from nuts and seeds.

The food crops currently subsidized are corn, soy, wheat and rice. What do you end up with?

A fast food diet!

It’s quite clear that the farm bill creates a negative feedback loop that maintains the status quo of the standard American diet, which is directly responsible for our current epidemic of diabetes & obesity.  By subsidizing the farming of corn and soy, the US government is actively supporting a diet that consists of these crops.  And, the food processing industry is using the bulk of these crops to either feed animals before slaughter or to be used as foodstuffs in their processed form – so what we are getting for all of our tax supported farm subsidies is a lot of high fructose corn syrup (GMO), soybean oil (GMO), and grain-fed cattle (GMO) – all of which are known contributors to obesity and chronic diseases.

(See my reminders that the vast majority of these two crops are also genetically modified, which in and of itself is a major health hazard that has hardly begun to play out in our lifestyle or timeline of health & genetics of future generations)

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is perhaps the most obvious example of how the farm subsidies are destroying our health, as opposed to promoting the production of food that is actually worthy of being called “food.”  I’ve done a few rants (posts) on this subject, http://anniegreenjeans.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=406

and it is all over the information field that this stuff is bad news.  I am traveling right now, and (am not in my normal zone of food selections – including homemade salad dressings, natural ice cream, carefully chosen foods – even is they are from the Grocery Outlet)…checking a few labels from my friend’s cupboards, I find that the proliferation of corn syrup is amazing!  It is truly in almost everything.  I am sure that when I was a kid – hot fudge syrup did not have corn syrup to sweeten it (of course we didn’t have it in our cupboards actually – only as an occasional treat from the dairy queen), so those recipes have been altered & I bet – are much cheaper to make without regular sugar.  Funny – to think we have come to a point where “sugar” is considered a “healthy alternative”.  Yikes!  Everyone – check those labels & refuse to buy that stuff…maybe we can get it off the shelves if we just don’t vote with our dollars.  Cheap food is not better if it kills us sooner…

Get involved with your food.  You don’t have to be an activist to make a few healthy choices at the grocery store.  Your budget can handle it.  Your kids will thank you when they don’t get diabetes.

Thanks to K Krizanovich for the fun photo that started this entire rant…

Why Planting Farms in Skyscrapers Won’t Solve Our Food Problems

Why Planting Farms in Skyscrapers Won’t Solve Our Food Problems

By Stan Cox and David Van Tassel |

Agriculture in America has become an ecological, social and nutritional disaster of sufficiently huge scale to inspire a frenzy of book-writing, filmmaking, conference-holding and project-initiating in recent years. The critiques that emerge are often right on the money, highlighting pesticide and nitrate pollution, soil erosion, the consequences of meat production in feedlots and confinement sheds, the destruction of rural communities and the poor nutritional quality of food. But the solutions being proposed have not, for the most part, been of the same scale as the problems; most would do little more than nibble at the edges of America’s long-running agricultural fiasco.

A striking example of such ill fit between problem and proposed response can be found in the November 2009 issue of Scientific American, where Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health and environmental health sciences at Columbia University, made his case for what he calls “vertical farms,” a vision he promotes through his site verticalfarm.com.

After doing a very good job of describing the terrible toll that agriculture takes on soil, water, and biodiversity across the globe, Despommier’s article lays out a proposal to replace soil-based farming with a system of producing food crops in tall urban buildings-to, he writes, “grow crops indoors, under rigorously controlled conditions, in vertical farms. Plants grown in high-rise buildings erected on now vacant city lots and in large, multistory rooftop greenhouses could produce food year-round using significantly less water, producing little waste, with less risk of infectious diseases, and no need for fossil-fueled machinery or trans¬port from distant rural farms.”

Despommier describes how one of his scenarios-which are based on the use of hydroponic or “aeroponic” methods of growing plants without soil-might work: “Let us say that each floor of a vertical farm offers four growing seasons, double the plant density, and two layers per floor-a multiplying factor of 16 (4 _ 2 _ 2). A 30-story building covering one city block could therefore produce 2,400 acres of food (30 stories _ 5 acres _ 16) a year.” By extrapolating numbers like those and assuming extraordinary leaps in technology, as well as the repeal of Murphy’s Law, he has made such a convincing case for vertical farms that, he claims, “many developers, investors, mayors and city planners have become advocates.” Time magazine has run a generally positive story on the concept. And an Australian architect is currently planning to build the first full-scale vertical farm, in China.

The idea for vertical agriculture grows out of the realization that there are not enough exposed horizontal surfaces available in most urban areas to produce the quantities of food needed to feed urban populations. Although the concept has provided opportunities for architecture students and others to create innovative, sometimes beautiful building designs, it holds little practical potential for providing food. Even if vertical farming were feasible on a large scale, it would not solve the most pressing agricultural problems; rather, it would push the dependence of food production on industrial inputs to even greater heights. It would ensure that dependence by depriving crops not only of soil but also of the most plentiful and ecologically benign energy source of all: sunlight.

Biochar

The Promise of Biochar

“char·coal” definition: a black or dark gray form of carbon, produced by heating wood or another organic substance in an enclosed space without air.

I have been putting my final charcoal from burn piles & the wood stove into my garden beds for several years, hoping this common charcoal was Biochar… it is  created in a smothered fire & yet didn’t consume like the rest of the logs, fits the description…but, how to smash & screen it into a finer powder, that sounds important!  This year I will do it better…

Ed Burton has been talking about this for years too…& of course, biodynamic gardening has  promoted it forever…time to take it more seriously…

My friend Lee thinks that this will save us when we can no longer get outside sources of fertilizers & amendments…we do live in a forest after all…

The Garden Greenhouse

The Garden Greenhouse is being Built!

So exciting, the little greenhouse is happening!

Now we have dug & laid the paver floor, and are framing it out

…an 8×12 multi-use building on the western edge of the garden…

We have begun to clean up some repurposed windows for the West & South sides,

I have a full set of vintage patio doors & side lights to give elegance to playhouse entrance on the East side, with its “patio for having tea”. I am gong to plant climbing roses on both sides of the doors.

…the back wall is to be a solid wooden panel for hanging tools inside & hiding the handcarts outside.

Actually, it is much more imposing than I had thought.  I am not a builder, and in fact – now realize I cannot envision structures after they have become more than a door & simple walls.  It turns out the doors need “headers”, the roof requires eves, the walls have strong corner posts, all classic construction details that have somehow never come on my radar.

I helped Joel cut some wallboard – was just holding it steady, really, but have given a hand here and there in the process.

My job is more that of the designer of the overall garden space…

How to make best use of the tiny garden we urban folks have…compost piles, beds, fruit trees, nursery or greenhouse, plus a beautiful look to it all, & having fun!!!…quite the challenge!

I love the garden as it wakes up in the spring – the rose bushes look happy, their leaves all shiny & healthy, the early bulbs nod their heads in the breeze, the longer days seem to give everything beauty & hope!

Blessings of Spring to you All,

Annie

FROSTY GARDEN UPDATE

Brrrrrrrrr, I moved from Michigan to California, to warm and balmy weather – right?

Let’s talk 12 degree nights this early December week, and my garden is uptight & hunkering in – as are we all!  Glad to be a human with a warm house, flannel sheets & cuddly guy in my bed…

As for my garden beds…well, i crunch around on the frozen mulch, and take a look…they are all frosty until almost noon, then have a brief fling with the slight winter sun until the poor things get shaded again and start to cool down.  I took the covers off my fabulous straw bale beds at 11am & put their little faces to the sun, gave them a deep drink of water, left it all open until about 4pm…which was too late, really – I lost a bit of gathered warmth, should have been open from noon until 2:30 maybe…

Soil temperatures continue to please me, the soil in regular raised beds was 35degrees at 6 inches deep noted at 11am, but the inner straw bales read 55degrees!  I MUST get an air temp measurement inside the covered beds to see if the “greenhouse effect” is working…

Also – want to figure out an end cap, as the ends are poorly gathered up, and loss of warm air to a cold/warm exchange must be happening there…maybe heavy cardboard cut to fit the hoop shape, and clipped on…

Eating fresh tree collards & cabbage that is holding up rather well despite the weather…hoping for rain tomorrow, and warming temps…

How to survive in case of global cooling…how much greenhouse fabric can we realistically use?

Permaculture – hooray!!!

Permaculture – hooray!

Max & Maria the Permaculturists – visited the garden yesterday…and what a great inspiring download! He loves my metal roof, thinks I can get all the water I need for a whole dry season from it with t he right storage…and the west side of the house is perfect for one of those “water walls” made of 1500 gallon vertical rectangle storage tanks…this instead of creating a grey water system…so much cleaner and useable…although will require many expensive storage tanks…maybe we can do a combination of rainwater collection and greywater syatem…

Lots more opportunities for making this place into paradise…use pond liner instead of cardboard to lay down on top of the weeds in my walkways and open space areas…it will heat up to as much as 140 degrees and kill even the deeply rooted weeds in a few months, then we can go in and make a new garden area, waterways, whatever we want…

What else? Well – money was not object – we could create paradise right away…more realistically, we are going to take out some more trees that are keeping the sun out, make better shade areas in the right places…put the main garden areas into maximum cultivation by tending and soil cultivation, and more…

I have great confidence in Max and am excited that he wants to design this permaculture plan for me! I advise anyone who wants to get the maximum from their space to hire a specialist for advice and a consultation, even if you are intending to do the work yourselves.

Permaculture – I hope!

My lovely house needs a lot of garden work – the raised beds have little soil in them, the yard is filled with weedy grass and “stick tights” catch your shoes…

I am putting down cardboard on every place I can to kill the weeds – and since I just moved in – there are a lot of empty boxes to use…that is a good thing.

My little apple tree which has been in a pot for over a year is freaking out – and tho it is a lousy time of year to plant it - I dug a hole today – and filled it with water . Two hours later it was still half full…looks like my soil doesn’t drain….ok, lots of issues. The good news is that Max Meyers – of MELC & a famed local Permaculturist – is coming over tomorrow to take a look and give me some consultation service….can’t wait! What can be done over time to make this a food producing paradise? I will be finding out….