Popular items at Market, April

The most popular items so far at market have been our spring radish mixes and spring lettuce mix. I can't bring enough of these; I have people who remembered the radishes from last spring coming up excited to see them back again, and I've had several repeat customers tell me the lettuce is some of the best they've ever had. Can't argue with that feedback.

We're really proud of the radish mixes. They're a blend of six different heirloom radishes, all with different colors and flavors. We harvest them young, when they're sweeter and tastier. Too many folks let radishes get really big, thinking size is better, but they get woody, tough, and strong then. Young and tender is far better, in our opinion. Also, selling as mixed bundles makes them more attractive and gives folks the option to try lots of varieties and get a really colorful salad or other dish. In the mixes are:

Cherry Belle (red)
Plum Purple (purple)
Helios (yellow)
Pink Beauty (pink)
White Hailstone (white)
Sparkler White Tip (red with a white tip)

Our lettuce is the result of plenty of work, as we grow it in open beds (no greenhouse) and mix 5-6 varieties of heirloom lettuces plus spinach. One of the keys to good lettuce, for us, is harvest method. We cut and pick the leaves directly into vats of cold water, which instantly chills the leaves and arrests any decay. Even leaving lettuce out in a basket for a few minutes on a warm day can start the wilting process, and take days or weeks off the shelf life. When you harvest directly into water, you keep it absolutely fresh with a better texture. We rinse it twice and keep it cold from the moment of harvest until market (though customers should still wash it before eating). This lettuce will last weeks in the fridge if you handle it properly and has a great texture. We intentionally chose our varieties to make an attractive mix of colors and textures:


Crisp Mint
Gold Rush
Rouge d'Hiver
Royal Oakleaf
Lollo di Vino
and more

You can see all of our planned produce varieties for the year on our website. Every few weeks I'll keep highlighting different products as they come available.

Making good, quick bread at home

I received an email from a reader after posting about our quick bread-based meal, asking for the recipe. Our policy is to not reproduce recipes online that we get from cookbooks, feeling that the authors of good cookbooks have every right to expect that their intellectual property be respected by random bloggers not giving away their work for free. But I am more than happy to write about the process, and plug the book that taught us a great method.

The book is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, written by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Normally titles like that make us run screaming, as there are lots of cheap cooking gimmicks out there that subvert the reality of cooking. This is not one of them. What the authors (a scientist and a professional chef/baker) have done is figure out a great dough recipe that can be stored and used as they describe below:

A one or two week supply of dough is made in advance and stored in the refrigerator. Measuring and mixing the dough takes less than 15 minutes. Kneading, as we've said, is not necessary. Every day, cut off a hunk of dough from the storage container and briefly shape it without kneading. Allow it to rest briefly on the counter and then toss it in the oven. We don't count the rest time (20 minutes or more depending on the recipe) or baking time (usually about 30 minutes) in our five-minute-a-day calculation since you can be doing something else while that's happening.

This method turns out nice, crusty bread with a good interior that we are very, very pleased with. It's far better than bread machine results, which invariably seem to turn out squishy bread with no crust. It's still not quite as good as truly traditionally made bread, but leaps ahead of other shortcuts. We really are finding that we can quickly throw together a loaf during breakfast or before any meal and have it ready when we need it; it's become my standard lunch on Mondays when I head off for a day's work at Goatsbeard Farm and need something quick to take along.

The method works equally well for loaves, flatbreads, naans, and more, but you need the right recipe. The book is definitely a worthwhile investment; everyone we've served the bread to has raved about it. It's certainly allowed us to eat more, and better, bread than ever before, and I think the authors deserve the income for coming up with this method and recipe.

One note: we've adaped their recipe slightly to include up to 1/3 content of our locally milled Missouri wheat flour, which really adds flavor. We round out the flour content with King Arthur bread flour, which has a high gluten content to balance the low-gluten Missouri flour. This combination works very nicely.

Plastic bags at market

I thought this was interesting: the Berkeley (CA) Farmers Market is banning the use of plastic bags and packaging. According to the article, they're not the only ones working toward that goal.

This is something we've long thought about; one of the most wasteful aspects of our farm is the big rolls of thin plastic bags we routinely give out to customers for their produce. It's a difficult problem, because we KNOW 98% of those are going straight to the landfill and we'll have to buy more, but they're also an important way to protect the high-quality produce people are buying from us. I don't want to lose a sale of, say, lettuce, because the customer didn't bring something to put the loose leaves in. And often you really do need to separate items or protect them somehow.

I'd love to have more customers bring their own; they can be reused over and over. We already do this for our bulk purchases at local groceries; I can use the same plastic bag for rice, beans, or spices many times in a row before it gives out. I have had a few people do just that and have profusely thanked them for it. And I definitely see a trend of more and more folks only asking for bags when they really need them (like for loose-leaf lettuce). Many of our customers seem more than willing to combine multiple items in a single bag (whether plastic or cloth). The same is true for the paper cartons we use for cherry tomatoes, edamame, and the like. I'd love to see folks bringing Tupperware or other such things to market to carry bulk items home in.

While the Berkeley experiment is interesting, you won't find me advocating for bans. I don't think it's a market's role to legislate things like that. I'd rather customers and farmers make their own decision, influenced by economics and ethics. We've considered putting a nickel surcharge on our bags, but haven't so far due to the hassle of it (we work in quarter increments currently). So far I feel like the core customer base of a farmers market is thinking about such things already; the Berkeley situation seems like a classic case of over-legislation to me. Thoughts?

Market plans, April 25

Last week's bundles of heirloom radishes were a big hit, and we'll have more this week. Also available will be spring lettuce mix, garlic & regular chives, herbs (mint & lemon balm), and more.

We may be done with goose eggs for the year, as the geese haven't laid many this week. We've gotten about 30 off each layer so far, and Toulouse are reported to lay around 35-50 annually (geese only lay in spring, not year-round like chickens). For 1st-year birds, I wouldn't be surprised if they're about done; their peak production is supposed to be years 2-5.

We've finished the overwintered bunching onions we've sold the last few weeks, and I'm not sure if the next round of onions is ready. We'll make a decision Friday as to whether/what to harvest on the onion front.

We have many more beds of radishes, onions, lettuce, beets, and more coming on, so within a few weeks the stand will really begin to grow. I suspect this week's stand will be a bit smaller, though, while the next round of plantings catches up after the past cool weather held them a bit dormant.

The kids arrive

Garlic finally kidded this evening, after leading us on since Sunday with a series of false alarms and indications that she was ready without actually taking the plunge. As it turned out, she gave us almost no warning. We'd been down nearby all day, working on rebuilding the southern half of the paddock fencing, and when we went in to make dinner around 6 she was showing no particular signs of anything changing. A little while later, Joanna was outside working in the herbs when she heard Garlic hollering, and we both charged down just in time to see kid #1 appear. #2 arrived just a few minutes later.

This is #1, who arrived kicking and ready to go. He was energetic from the first minute.

#2 took a little longer to deliver, and showed up pretty exhausted. He just lay around for a while, but is now catching up to his brother. They've both started nursing and trying to stand up, and I think by tomorrow they'll be on their feet.

Their father is a Boer buck from Goatsbeard Farm, and they very much carry the Boer genetics (the brown head, white body, and head shape are very Boer). We were mildly hoping for a doe in the mix, whom we would have kept for breeding future meat animals, but these fellows will do just fine. Both seem quite healthy so far, and Garlic has accepted both. So all seems to be well.

Now we just have an incredible time sink on our hands during a very busy part of the year. How can we not just go watch these little guys play instead of getting work done?

Chert Hollow Fast Food

Evenings come when we've been busy, and tired, and just don't have it in us to cook much. Yet our own food ethics mean there aren't many packaged foods or other purchased shortcuts to bail us out. That's when having a well-stocked kitchen, and lots of our own produce/meat/food put up, can really make a difference. Even in April, at the end of our winter supplies and before a lot of new produce is available, we can whip together a really nice meal in a very short time (in this case, less than half an hour).

Part one was simply to thaw out a quart of tomato/basil/garlic sauce we'd made many batches of last summer, and which freezes nicely. This, over basic pasta with shredded Goatsbeard cheese on top, makes a wonderfully tasty meal in minutes. We invest the time during the growing season so we don't have to buy such foods later on.

Part two were a couple very easy flatbreads. Joanna has been using a special bread dough recipe lately that can be mixed ahead of time and stored in larger quantities in the fridge. Any time we want bread, she can just pull a chunk off and do a quick bake of almost anything. In this case, she rolled out a few handfuls into flatbreads, threw some basic ingredients on top, and baked at high temperature for a few minutes each. In the time it took to boil the pasta and heat the sauce, we had a second course of delicious flatbreads:

Above, flatbread topped with some pasta sauce, shredded Goatsbeard cheese, and fresh chives from the garden.

Above, an even more elemental flatbread with olive oil, chopped chives, and Goatsbeard feta. This minimalist treatment really let the cheese, oil, and chives stand out.

So in about twenty minutes from thought process to fork, we had this excellent meal for basically the cost of putting some work in ahead of time to be ready, and some good cheese. Things like putting up pasta sauce, keeping dough starter on hand, and growing fresh ingredients are work, but they pay off when they save you the money of the manufactured version, the time of doing all that before dinner, and the incomparable quality of even a fast meal made from scratch.

Thoughts on raw milk, Part II

This two-part post on raw milk (Part I here) was prompted by a recent article on The Ethicurean, discussing an upcoming raw milk symposium and requesting users to take part in a Raw Milk User Survey. I posted a long comment which brought together many of my thoughts on the raw milk issue, about which I've been planning to write for some time. An adapted version of the comment appears below, and addresses one of my core complaints about the entire raw food debate.

We keep dairy goats for ourselves, and I also work part-time at a nearby goat dairy. We do not drink the milk raw, though I believe it is clean. We use it mostly to make yogurt and various cheeses, which we like better than straight milk in any form. Many other consumers who might not drink raw milk can use it to make completely safe yogurt or dairy products, and I suspect many people who do drink raw milk also make dairy products.

It drives me absolutely crazy that nowhere in the discussions/arguments about raw milk does anyone seem to realize or care that drinking it is only one way to use raw milk. Even if you think it’s dangerous, making most cheeses and yogurts raises the milk past the safe pasteuerization temperature, rendering it safe. Heck, ban drinking raw milk if you want, but allow the sale of the product for use in the kitchen.

To me, selling raw milk is no different than selling raw meat. It’s potentially dangerous if produced or handled improperly, but perfectly safe if (a) from a clean source and/or (b) is prepared in normal ways. Just look at the meat lobby’s insistence on safe cooking methods as a solution to contamination. I think eating rare steak is crazy, but we’re not forbidden from doing that (even in restaurants), and sales of raw meat are happily labelled with all sorts of government warnings about cooking the meat fully to temperature. Apparently the government is comfortable selling dangerous raw meat to consumers with a warning label and letting them take their own chances, why not milk? What’s so inherently terrible about letting me buy raw milk to make into yogurt or cheese, which is as safe as cooking the meat thoroughly?

Moreover, given that USDA regs allow the butchering and sale of poultry on-farm with no inspections, it is apparently safe for consumers to buy raw chicken from an unlicensed farm to take home and cook/eat as they see fit, but it’s terribly dangerous to milk an animal and take THAT product home and drink/prepare it as they see fit. The production, handling, storage, and transport needs of raw chicken are no more or less than for raw milk, so what’s the problem?

Raw milk is an ingredient just like meat, and our policies should account for customers’ abilities to make rational choices about the preparation of that ingredient as they are allowed to do for meat and almost any other ingredient. Allowing small farms to sell raw milk direct to willing customers does not in any way create a food safety hazard beyond the customer's home. I'd love to see some stats on the per capita illness rate among raw milk users as compared to, say, potato salad or deviled egg eaters at summer picnics. How much of the total food-related illnesses in the US come from the product itself versus the method of preperation?

Food safety regulations rightly exist when the customer is too far removed from the production of the food to accurately judge its quality; they exist to fill a gap. Food safety regulations are wrongly implemented when they seek to stand between a willing customer and producer, filling a gap which didn't exist. Thus sales of raw milk, or any other agricultural product, ought to be beyond the purview of food safety regulations if the sale is conducted between knowledgable and consenting adults; we currently have more freedom to sign a contract with a skydiving agency than with a local dairy. And people wonder why farms are vanishing and the food system is broken...

Thoughts on raw milk, Part I

Raw milk is one of the touchiest flashpoints of food. Battles are fought all over the country between governments and food safety types who are absolutely convinced it's a menace to humanity and should be banned with the same force as cocaine, while equally fervent defenders swear it's all but the fountain of youth. Personally, I don't see it as anything particularly special, except as a symbol of the disfunctional nature of our food system and culture.

On our farm, we rarely drink raw milk, despite keeping our own dairy goats. Partly this is because we prefer the tastes and uses of yogurt and cheese, which we make from our own milk. Partly this is because we do see the point of food safety concerns with raw milk, and don't have a problem with home-pasteurizing any milk we do drink (all you have to do is heat it to 165F for a short period). But I don't think raw milk is inherently dangerous; I think it's like any other raw food in that its safety comes from its methods of production, handling, and preparation.

There is now a certified Grade A raw milk dairy in Missouri, Greenwood Farms, whose mere legel existence ought to prove that raw milk is not inherently dangerous. After all, the Missouri government seems hell-bent on claiming raw milk is illegal, despite clear wording in the Missouri statues stating otherwise: "an individual may purchase and have delivered to him for his own use raw milk or cream from a farm." (MRS 196.935) But yet this raw milk dairy managed to get certified to the same standards as any other dairy. Good for them. As is true for virtually any food, the danger is not the food itself but the way it's handled and prepared.

The best summary of the raw milk situation in Missouri (and the challenges facing small dairies in general) that I've found yet comes in this well-written piece from the Columbia Missourian earlier this year. It shows both sides of the argument, from the health officials absolutely convinced that raw milk is dangerous to the small farmers who find it a rational and manageable way to make an income on a small herd. It also clearly demonstrates the dangers well-meaning governments can pose to small farms, as when the State tried to shut down a series of small farms selling raw milk under the above-linked law in the name of consumer safety, only to back off and apologize when challenged with their own statutes.

In Part II of this long post, I'll explain why, regardless of your opinion of raw milk, attempting to ban it in the name of consumer safety is both hypocritical and pointless.

Market Plans, April 18 2009

We'll be at market again this Saturday with another small selection of early spring items. New this week will be the first harvest of radishes, 5-6 varieties of young, tender heirlooms that are wonderfully sweet and tasty. Like a lot of produce, we find that radishes taste even better when they're harvested young, before they've had a chance to mature and go woody. Don't be fooled by the small size. We'll probably also bring some young heads of baby lettuce, several varieties of color and texture. Still debating whether to sell these as miniature heads or just mix everything as a salad mix. Goose eggs, chives, garlic chives, and green onions will appear again.

In related comments, we had to be in Columbia today, so swung by Hy-Vee to do check on comparitive prices for produce. We have no real idea what produce costs these days, having not bought vegetables in any meaningful sense in years. We were stunned to see ratty, old-looking herbs (like chives and mint) in plastic containers being sold for almost $3/4oz; not even organic! Good grief, I've been given strange looks for charging $1.50 for our large bundles of 12-hour-old chives, and $1 for small bundles of fresh mint. Same for lettuce; mixed bagged organic lettuce was going for the equivalent of $16/lb, whereas I was getting gasps for daring to charge $8/lb for greens last year. The effects of the California water crisis must be taking hold...

Meal of the Week: Filipino barbeque

This was a Filipino dish I hadn't made before, sourced from a cookbook given to me by my mother to expand my horizons past traditional family recipes. It turned out wonderfully, and the basic idea would work for almost any kind of meat or vegetable.

The sauce was made from garlic, green onions, vinegar, honey, soy sauce, mustard, hot pepper, and five-spice powder. This being our kitchen, the garlic, onions, and peppers were ours. The mustard was our home-scratch-made version, which I try to keep a small jar of at all times. The five-spice was a custom fresh-ground blend of fennel, anise, black pepper, cloves, and cinnamon. The honey was local, and everything else was of decent provenance. All was mixed together and poured over...

The meat, which was a quantity of our farm-butchered goat rib strips. Now, these aren't quite the meaty, fat-dripping pork ribs most folks are familiar with, but they're what we have. We strip them from the bone fresh and freeze them as packets of strips, to be thawed and marinated for such dishes as this. After several days tenderizing and absorbing the flavor of the marinade, they were ready for...

The grilling, which was a quite basic hot charcoal fire with the strips turned once and basted thoroughly with marinade. Finished, they were not quite the mouth-melting tenderness of pork but had absorbed the marinade wonderfully and were good, mildly chewy strips of spicy Asian barbequed goodness. Goat has its own flavor which I think goes really well with Filipino cooking, whose liberal use of vinegar helps soften the meat and imbue it with flavor. Plus, it's plenty authentic. We finished with...

The salad

which was an utterly simple mix of fresh spinach and various lettuces topped with sliced fresh radishes, all gathered from the garden a few minutes before dinner. The dressing to the left is a home invention of rice vinegar, soy sauce, chopped fresh scallion, minced elephant garlic, grated ginger, sesame oil, and olive oil. It turned out very well and complemented the ribs nicely.

A good, reasonably quick (other than the grill) spring dinner sourced reasonably from the farm.

Where and how will we grow new farmers?

We are about to reach a point in the local foods business where demand vastly outstrips supply. I have it from a trusted source that several large institutions in mid-Missouri are seeking to source "as much as they can" from our farmers. I just got an email from another local restaurant asking for my product list and prices. It's coming.

The problem is, as many have noted, small direct-market farms don't have the capacity yet. Farming is not manufacturing, despite the slogan "industrial food". It's a time-consuming process that doesn't react to quick market forces very well. We can't just up and order more widgets from our supplier when the demand for widgets jumps. New farmers can't just up and rent a storefront and get started. Also, many of us got into farming for the direct-market segment; we like our retail prices, our integrated operations, and our customer interaction. We're not necessarily set up for larger-scale wholesale farming, even to local sources.

The recent USDA census noted that while small farms were booming, mid-sized farms were vanishing, and it's those who have the best potential to really serve an intense regional demand. Either that (and that) we need a whole lot more farmers who know how to raise vegetables, fruits, meats...you know, FOOD. Where are we going to get them, and how are we going to make that possible?

Enter a neat article on Severine von Tscharner Fleming, director of a new documentary about young farmers, The Greenhorns. In true blogger fashion, I'm just going to throw these links out there, because I have to get outside and farm. However, I really enjoyed this quote:

She speaks in sweeping, lyrical terms, but her visions of the future of American farming are firmly based in reality. “We would like to live in a world where it is possible to go to school and then do a series of apprenticeships and on-the-job trainings and eventually become an owner-operator of your own farm,” she says.

Consider that our governments, and our major land-grant universities, are so busy propping up commodity agriculture and so reliant on agribusiness funding that they've almost completely missed this coming. Are there any major universities with meaningful programs in direct-market ag and vegetable growing? Many universities don't even offer basic instruction in how to start a business and manage tax implications, much less classes aimed at the unique challenges market farmers face. Joanna amusedly noted this year that the IRS's farm expense deduction list doesn't even include a place for "advertising/marketing". What does that tell you about the assumptions of government?

The boom in local foods makes me afraid sometimes. We're not going to be able to meet it all at once, and I'm afraid its long-term value may become obscured by justifiable annoyance on the parts of the chefs and institutions who are just now jumping on the bandwagon, only to find it wasn't ready for their weight. I hope the grassroots can rise to the task, because that's our best hope to meet this.

Updated planting plans

As part of organic certification, we had to submit a list of every variety we planned to grow, along with its seed source and maps of where it would be grown. This was something we already did, as we liked having lists and maps on our website to show customers where and how things were being done.

This year, our site has been somewhat neglected. I finally got around to updating our Growing Information page with this year's information, which some readers and customers might find interesting. Under Planting Plans, you can see maps of our market garden and field with their intended crops for this year (click on the smaller images to load large ones). Under Produce Varieties, you can scan a list of every item we'll be growing this year. Not all of these are for sale, some are for our consumption and some are just tests for possible use in future. But they're all being grown, contributing to the diversity of the farm. Last year I provided links from each variety to the seed source's online listing, but I don't have time to do that for 199 varieties this year.

Hope features like this are of interest.

Preparing the field - fencing

Getting some real fencing around the vegetable field is a significant priority. We've grown corn, beans, squash, and more out here over the past few years, and deer are a significant problem (as are raccoons). Fencing is a must, so we've been working on that lately. The goal is a solid welded-wire fence that will stop all small critters, tall enough to stop most deer, with several electrified wires to stop raccoons and goats.

First, we surveyed the fence lines we wanted to establish, laying out straight lines that would require a minimum of bracing and angles. Gate locations were an important consideration for future workflow of vehicles and people. When this was set, we used our potato plow to trench the fencelines so we could bury the bottom to deter digging.

We're using a combination of farm-cut cedar posts and metal T-posts to support the fence. The former are a natural byproduct of our orchard-clearing, while the latter we scrounge and source from auctions, Craigslist, and so on (the welded-wire fencing came used from Craigslist as well). To set the cedar posts, we drill holes with a tractor-mounted auger before setting the posts, and brace corners with our farm-milled cedar lumber. Below, you see a future gate entrance to the field.

When all posts are set, we unroll and start attaching the welded wire. The ground is uneven enough to keep the fencing a bit wavy, and I expect the fence posts to settle and tilt a bit, but they ought to stay up and do their job. A little bracing here and there on poor performers will do the trick. Below you see the southern fenceline, for which we had to clear a stand of trees that was encroaching on to our good farm land. When all the main fencing is in place, I'll go back through and string hot (electrified) wire at several heights along offset insulators to discourage coons from climbing and deer/goats from rubbing. We'll be building solid cedar-plank gates for the main entrances, which is a good rainy-day project.

Hopefully this system works reasonably well, and we can keep the critters to a manageable level. There will certainly be a lot of tasty stuff behind this fence, so we'll see how it works. I don't expect it to be as straight, pretty, or perfect as a professional job, but doing it ourselves saves so much investment that it's worth it. We'd just rather do things ourselves whenever we can.

Preparing the field - spring burns

As we work to expand our vegetable field this year, we decided that a spring burn would be in order. The lower portion of the field had had some cover crops, but still a lot of grass, and burns can remove some of the dead material while contributing to soil fertility. In addition, given our goal of restoring our pastures to a more natural native prairie ecology, working with fire will be a necessity to suppress invasives and encourage natives. So on a calmish day, shortly after rain, and late enough that some greening had occured, we burned our lower vegetable field and a test patch of pasture above:

We hit the conditions perfectly, as there was enough fuel remaining to keep the fire moving, but enough greening to suppress any extensive growth. We had recently trenched the future fenceline, which provided a nice firebreak, and I had back-burned along parts of this first to give extra protection. The fire just quietly licked its way along the front, consuming what was left and leaving better ground behind. In years to come, we'll move toward a regular cycle of burns in the pastures, but this was a good start. In months to come, I'll post some paired photos of the burned areas' condition compared to non-burned.

Preparing the field - permanent beds

With spring's arrival, we're working to expand and prepare our vegetable field for planting. We've been slowly expanding from our market garden into the larger field over the past few years, and are taking several significant steps this year toward really bringing the larger area into production. I'm going to be posting several items about our preparation methods, including burning and fence-building. In this post, I'll discuss our philosophy on field management and our methods of establishing permanent beds.

Here's our vegetable field, looking NW. To the north, south, and east are pasture areas, while to the west the field slopes down to our creek bottom and the ridge beyond (direction of view). We've set aside an area a bit over an acre for intensive vegetable production, with an option to expand into pastures to the north down the road. In the foreground you see a series of established 4'x40' beds, covered in straw/hay mulch from the winter. In the background you see me starting to establish the next set of beds.

Our philosophy of field management is dependant on several goals. First, we want to minimize equipment use. Tractors and implements are expensive, repair-prone, require significant off-farm investments, and are damaging to the soil in the long run due to compaction and disruption. They are also very susceptible to weather and soil conditions. While they have an important role, we do not want to be utterly reliant on them.

Second, we want to maximize the efficiency of our land management. Vegetables are not grains; you have to grow them in rows with aisles in between, for equipment and manual access and also simply because the plants need space. Tomatoes and lettuce don't take to being driven over, walked through, or packed together the way a corn or wheat field does. Typically, a farm would plow and/or till the entire field, spread whatever fertilizer they feel the need to use, then plant in rows with aisles in between. A mid-scale vegetable farm might use a mechanized raised-bed builder which drives along, mounding soil into beds, but still involves tilling and preparing the entire field (row and aisle alike). While that may be time-efficient, we see it as resource-inefficient, because inputs are spread over far more land than is actually grown upon, and the impacts of any equipment use and tillage are spread over the entire land as well. Put it this way: would you drive over your garden bed with your car, or spread compost on your driveway? I didn't think so. We want to manage our fields to maximize our resource efficiency in terms of targeting inputs just where they're needed, and conserving the soil's texture and quality as much as possible.

Third, we want to minimize tillage. There are a number of studies and experiences clearly demonstrating the long-term detrimental effects of disturbing the soil's natural structure, and we would prefer to follow the pioneering example of organic no-till farms like Foundation Farm in northern Arkansas.

With these goals in mind, we've been planning and establishing the vegetable field along the same lines as our market garden, using permanent bed locations that are spaced to allow both equipment and manual labor to function. When these beds are established, they will stay established, as will their aisles. All driving and tire weight will remain in these aisles, and all crops and inputs will remain in the beds. Better conservation and resource efficiency, balanced by somewhat less time efficiency (though not having to plow/till the whole field multiple times per year ought to balance that somewhat).

Above you see our wide beds, 4'x40', established last year. These are designed to be straddled by our pickup truck, and are intended for growing crops that can be densely planted or need lots of room, like edamame, corn, squash, and so on. There are 24 of these.

Just west of these, we're establishing a grid of narrower beds, about 2.5'x40'. These are designed to be straddled by our tractor, allowing us to do some basic maintenance like mowing cover crops or trenching potatoes, while being intended for items that like to grow in lines, like potatoes, tomatoes, and so on. Also, these beds are narrow enough to be straddled by a person, making some weeding and planting easier. The image above shows the future home of these beds, shortly after burning off the grass. There will be 48 of these beds (view a map of the field plants here, though the information is out of date).


Given that we're establishing these beds in a pasture, breaking the sod is a near-necessity. We've done it here using a potato plow, a very simple implement which digs a single furrow at the center of the tractor's path. Each successive row is plowed with the tires in the previous tire track, so that the overlapping tire tracks become narrow permanent aisles between beds that are never driven on. Look carefully at the left side of the photo and you'll see this. In many of these beds we're coming back through with a one-time tilling to break up the thick clumps of grass, but do not intend to use such methods again once the beds are established.

From here on, we'll treat each bed as a garden bed, using hand cultivation, and mulch to manage weeds and soil tilth. Inputs like manure can be spread by truck in the upper beds, and a wide-wheelbase cart in the lower beds. This will sound like a great deal of manual labor to those accustomed to tractor farming, and it is. But equipment reliance brings with it a whole separate set of needs, like extra financial and resource costs that are often not properly accounted for. Using intensive, careful, organic methods, we expect to pull very high yields out of this area that will compensate for the labor needed. Patrice Gros at Foundation Farm in Arkansas has proven that such methods work very well when applied correctly, and we're following in his footsteps while adapting the philosophy to our own needs. As he writes on this front page,

Many of the farming methods used at the farm are extensions of gardening
techniques fine-tuned on a small scale.

I think that's a pretty accurate depiction of our philosophy as well, and it's rooted in centuries of European small-scale farming that is very sustainable and practical for the small, diversified, non-mechanized type of agriculture we're pursuing. Might not work for everyone, but we're expecting it to work for us.

Organic Certification - It's official!

Our mail today contained a most welcome delivery: our official Organic certification certificate, along with a copy of the inspector's report and other documents. I'll post more about these when I have more time (currently getting materials ready for market tomorrow), but this is the culmination of a LOT of work. We're very happy to be only the third (possibly fourth) certified farm at the Market.

More details in a few days when I can get to it.

A thorough debate on local food prices

There's been quite a little kerfluffle online lately, after the excellent food/farm blog The Ethicurean posted a provocative and thoughtful essay from a small hog farmer accusing small farms of "gouging" customers through their pricing. The essay, and the ensuing comment thread, are very much worth the time of anyone reading this blog. You will learn a great deal from all the perspectives offered:

http://www.ethicurean.com/2009/03/31/unfair-fare/

Later, another food blog picked up on this, and got Joel Salatin to write a commentary about pricing of local foods. My thinking has obviously been deeply influenced by Joel's libertarian approach to farming, and I thought his response was spot-on. There is some fair criticism that his Polyface Farm is, in fact, quite large and so its problems are not necessarily those of true small farms, but I think that misses the point. Even at a few acres, we run up against most of the same issues Salatin does with regards to inane bureaucracy, regulations, and limitations. In any case, read his take and the ensuing comment thread as well:

http://www.foodrenegade.com/guest-post-joel-salatin-on-why-local-food-is-more-expensive/

For my two cents, I think a core contention is whether farmers should be passing all costs along to consumers. I don't think most people realize just how expensive it is to farm, especially at the market scale. I don't mean inputs and seeds, though that certainly matters. I mean all the insurance and liability requirements, legal concerns, licenses, and so on, which are immensely expensive with regards to either the time to comply with them, or the money to hire accountants and lawyers to help you do so. And if you're trying to farm full-time, add in all the basic costs of living a reasonable life that allows you to save for retirement or health care. I feel fully justified in including my health insurance costs and personal cost of living in my prices; this small business is intended to be my primary livelihood and I can't separate that from the need to make a decent living.

If customers won't pay the price I need to charge to make a living, that's my problem. I chose this business and I'll sink or swim with it. But one thing I won't do is suffer an existence of poverty in a well-meaning attempt to serve people cheap food. My skills, effort, knowledge, and talents are too valuable to me to give away to an artificially subsidized concept of food. If I can't make a living at this, I'll quit and do something else, as will many other of the young small farmers just coming online.

Ball's in your court, customers. I loved this comment from the second blog link:

Living expenses have snuck up on me, things I never paid for before. TV used to be free. I never had a cell phone until the last couple years. There didn’t even used to be an internet. I pay willingly for all these things, mostly for my own entertainment and enjoyment. How can I in good conscience justify paying $100 a month for satellite TV and cry “poor” about food, the very sustenance of my life?

One thing Joanna and I are working toward is open books; in a year or two, we'd like to make our books available to any customer at market, so they can see just how much it costs to grow each item, how much we pay in liability insurance, how many hours per year we spend wrestling with tax codes and regulatory messes, and so on. Some people seem to think market farming is like a garden with a business licence. Hah. Maybe it is if you don't follow the rules, but it's a classic case of ethical people taking the fall for everyone else.

Coming soon will be a long rant about the inanities of the insurance and liability issues we face as a small market farm, along with the equal silliness of the way tax codes and business structures restrict our ability to farm.

Market plants 4/11/09

As of Thursday evening, we're intending to be at market this Saturday. Won't have a lot to sell yet, but we feel it's time to start making a presence. Probably 6-8 goose eggs and some fresh chives and mint, plus lots of farm information, a signup list for future on-farm events, and so on. Sounds like the first few weeks of market have been extremely busy, so we're looking forward to seeing it first-hand.

No freeze damage

We recieved no damage from the early week's freezes. Everything looks healthy and ready to start growing again. Such conditions do set us back, as much of the lettuce, beets, and radishes have not grown appreciably in several weeks due to the cold weather, but they're alive. Now with more temperate conditions on the way, I hope they'll get back to work. This will delay our real market products a few more weeks, but that's better than losing them.

The temps here never dropped to a damaging level; our thermometer read 29 both mornings. Even accounting for the frost pocket down at the valley bottom, that's not enough to damage what we had out. Still have no idea whether fruit growers were hit; I'll look forward to making some inquiries at market on Saturday.

Random animal photos

Sometimes I just need to step back and view the blog from the reader's point of view; what aspects of the farm just don't make it through my lens? With that in mind, here are a few gratuitous cute animal shots:

One of our black Ameraucana hens enjoying her nest box. Look closely; I love the cheek feathers on this lady.

Toulouse geese on range, the source of delicious eggs and hopefully goslings. They also taste very good roasted. The fellow in the sunlight is the dominant gander, with his mate behind him. In the background is our other mated pair.

Gloria, our resident nun-goat. She hasn't shown an interest in breeding in her life, much less actually born any kids. She's currently kept around as company for our useful goat (see below) and for more pasture control until we start expanding the herd next year. Shown here doing her job, eating brush.

Garlic, our main dairy goat and source of milk and kids for this year. She's due in mid-April, after which we'll start having fresh dairy again as well as (probably) a couple cute and tasty kids.

We'll be adding more chickens this summer, as well as five test turkeys. Look for hogs, sheep, and more poultry down the road.

Market forces in food

A fascinating article in the Washington Post this morning:

Simplicity Becomes a Selling Point

The authors document numerous ways in which food manufacturers are shifting to simpler ingredient lists and displaying those lists more prominantly.

Last week, Snapple Beverage unveiled a reformulated line of drinks and an eight-figure marketing campaign emphasizing that its iced teas are made from green and black tea and "real" sugar. Frito-Lay is boasting that its potato chips, tortilla chips and even Fritos are each made with just three ingredients. The hope: that consumers will equate fewer ingredients with healthfulness, even when it comes to ice cream and chips.

"It's a convergence of health, food safety, taste and traceability," said Phil Lempert, a food and consumer behavior analyst who calls himself the Supermarket Guru. "People are reading labels more carefully than they were previously. When they pick up a product and it has 30 ingredients and they don't know what half of them are, they are putting it back on the shelves."

This seems a very good development. Of course, there's an element of greenwashing here, but greenwashing in the service of an admirable change is not the end of the world.

What I find interesting here is that once again, consumer demand and cultural shifts are doing a far better job than most government policies at creating a needed change. This new approach from food companies has very little to do with proposed laws; it's all about the news and people's shopping habits. If this really takes hold, far ahead of slow-moving government efforts to reform the food system, it has the potential to change our food system far to the better. Just like sweatshops and organics in Walmart, these shifts are happening because of customer feedback to companies who then willingly respond in an effective way, not well-meaning laws that force companies to respond in an ineffective way.

Now, there is very much a role for government here. Rather than mandating over-zealous food safety standards, government could instead mandate better packaging and ingredient standards. Requiring processors to make ingredient lists large and prominent, with the source of every ingredient (lists if necessary), would go a long way toward allowing customers to make the sort of informed decisions that appropriately influence a free market. Let customers make their own food choices, but make it very clear on the bag, box, or carton exactly how many countries those ingredients came from, what they are, and so on. Heck, I'd even consider requiring produce to have an informational card stating what pesticides and fertilizers were used.

Companies like Dole are moving toward this sort of thing, by inserting codes that you can enter online to see the farm on which the fruit came from. That's cute, but far too susceptible to greenwashing. But it's a start, and if they start doing the same thing for ingredients and growing/production methods, we'd really get somewhere. Imagine if Product A came with a large label saying "ingredients potentially from countries T-Z, with products from facilities in states A-D, final assembly in F". That's entirely doable from the manufacturer's point of view, and provides the consumer with the information they need to make a decision. And, if you're going to pass a top-down one-size-fits-all law, at least pass one that's naturally easier on producers already doing what you want the law to achieve (like small farms and simple foods, for whom this would be quite easy to comply with).

Government itself is not the problem, just the current philosophy of how it should be applied.

First sales of the year!

We've officially opened our sales season for the year, setting up a booth at Saturday's Spring Roundup Community Day, sponsored by the Columbia Farmers Market. We don't have too much product yet, especially as the last few weeks' cold weather has slowed the growth of our lettuce, beets, radishes, and so on. But we had fresh goose eggs, blown goose eggs, and fresh chives & mint. We sold almost everything, and had quite a bit of interest in the eggs. If I could magically conjure up more geese, we'd be able to sell a lot more eggs. I already heard back from one customer who loved them. I also talked to a couple whose young son is allergic to chicken eggs, and who are desperate for a local source of non-chicken eggs (they currently drive to Jeff City to buy duck eggs). We don't have enough eggs to supply their needs, but I told them I had a few contacts who might, and to check back with us next week at market. A good example of the failure of our national food system to provide diversity.


The primary purpose of the day, however, was informational. We've spent some time putting together a good market stand setup with useful information, and wanted to give potential customers a chance to learn about us and ask questions. That, after all, was part of the point of organizing this event in the first place. On the table ablove, you see lots of photos, plus two binders containing our organic paperwork, records, and the NOP standards. I want customers to understand what Organic means and why it matters to have the seal. There's also a signup sheet for notification of future on-farm events.

We'll be at the Saturday market starting this coming week. It's going to be a little while yet before we have enough product to financially justify coming, but goose eggs and fresh herbs are popular, and I want to start establishing a presence and drawing in customers. Look for us there!

Preparing for the freeze

We spent a busy Sunday afternoon preparing for the coming killing freeze, working as the temperature steadily fell and a cold misty rain fell that was almost, but not quite, snow.

I got a call from a TV reporter trying to find out more about the freeze and its effects on local farms; she asked if she could come out to film us working to protect our crops. I said no (I got the sense a lot of farmers had been turning her down). I have a very low opinion of TV news, and no matter how much they promise to not be in the way, they would be during a very busy day. It's tough, though, because the media so often gets these kinds of stories terribly wrong. I remember an incident leading up to the 2007 freeze in which a local newspaper reporter called me to check facts on a story he was running the next day, in which he claimed that the freeze would mean no local vegetables that year. I had to explain the difference between long-lived, early-budding fruit trees and annual/seasonal vegetable crops that weren't even in the ground yet; he really didn't know the difference between an apple tree and a tomato plant. And if he hadn't happened to call when I was near the phone that afternoon, that story might have run. Just frightening.







In any case, this is the sort of thing we're trying to protect. Above, you see a just-emerged lettuce seedling. We have many beds of very young lettuce, beets, radishes, and more that are fairly cold-hardy when older, but when they're just a day or two out of the ground, can be damaged or badly set back by sub-30s temperatures. We're not sure how our larger lettuces and plants will do either, but if the next three nights knock all the newly emergent stuff out, we'll have lost a lot of money. Hence work like this:





Above you see an example of the clear plastic hoops we use as mini-greenhouses on some of our lettuces, radishes, and spinach. They work pretty well and I think the more mature plants in these setups will be ok. Behind the hoops, Joanna is spreading thick straw mulch over beds with young plants or just-germinating seeds. Loosely scattered, the straw holds a multitude of air pockets that act as a reasonably insulating blanket.





The problem with straw is that it can be hard to pull back off, especially when you have very young and delicate plants underneath. For the youngest beds, we spread old sheets first and apply the straw over that. This adds another layer of temperature protection, and makes it easier to pull the mulch off the plants.



Of course, one of the problems of a multi-night freeze is that you can't easily take these measures on and off during the day. So all these plants are going to have to hibernate under the mulch and blankets through at least Wednesday; we're taking the risk that a few days without sunlight is less destructive than 25 degrees.



Plants aren't the only thing we're trying to protect. I've been trying to get the foundation piers for our new prep shed poured for weeks now, and haven't had a window in which the ground was dry enough AND there wasn't frost in the forecast. I finally got my window last week, but the concrete hasn't fully cured yet. So I covered each pier with an old shirt or sweater, then a big piles of straw mulch. Hopefully this keeps the worst of the freeze away and maintains the integrity of the concrete:

All in all, though, we're not the ones with the most to worry about. The biggest dangers of freezes like this are to flora with flowers and buds, like fruit & nut trees and berries. I told the TV person to call orchards and vineyards. I wish I'd reminded her of one other thing, too: this is NOT an "early" freeze. Average last frost date for mid-Missouri is April, and we can expect the possibility of frost through May. What makes this unusual and dangerous is the fact that spring is very early this year, as I've been documenting for over a month, which makes the buds on fruit trees and so on come out early and become susceptible to a later freeze. Vegetable folks like us take our chances, knowing this might come and planning our plantings accordingly. We have some control. Orchards and vineyards can't really stop their trees, vines, and so on from reacting to natural stimuli.

Still, this isn't likely to be the absolute disaster 2007 was; we're expecting up to three nights of freezes, not four; and those temperatures were in the teens, not the 20s. Still, once you get below 28 or so it's a killing frost for a lot of things. Much will depend on just how cold it gets these next three nights. Subtle changes in cloud cover, wind, and geography can mean the difference between 29 and 26, and the difference between loss and survival.

More freezes on the way

As of early Friday morning, the NWS forecast for Sunday-Tuesday shows another classic spring system moving through, with the typical low-pressure cycle of a very warm day followed by storms and a night or two of cold. In this case, we have another chance of snow and predicted lows for Monday night of 26.

One thing I've learned in years of closely tracking NWS; their forecasts are pretty good, but they always overestimate the lows associated with a strong cold front (or at least the St Louis office does). Any time you see a system like this, you can virtually guarantee they're going to keep revising the nightime lows behind the cold front down a few degrees as the system approaches. If I could place bets on this, I'd have my retirement fund in hand. So when I see that they've already pegged Monday night for 26, I get real nervous about any vegetation and crops.

We can already tell the difference in our produce from the last few weeks' readjustment toward cooler, wetter conditions after the absurdly early spring. Other than the peas, most things aren't growing very fast. The lettuce and beets are just sitting there, going semi-dormant in the frequent cold nights. The beets are of especial concern, because most of them are still just emergent with their tender first leaves. Though they're generally pretty hardy, a hard mid-20s freeze will hit a lot of plants; even if it just sets them back, it's a problem.

And that doesn't take into account all the natural vegetation; many trees are well into their bloom and many animals are becoming active. 2007 had multiple consecutive nights of temps near the teens; we're not anywhere near that yet, but if this system stays on track you're going to see a Freeze Warning issued by NWS for Monday.

Chances are we'll be out there Sunday or Monday with lots of bed sheets, straw, and more to protect the many, many beds we now have in production.

UPDATE: Is there a Reno pool on the NWS that I could invest in? At 5:55AM this morning they posted the following Special Weather Statement:

THE POTENTIAL FOR A HARD FREEZE EXISTS EARLY NEXT WEEK...AN UNUSUALLY COLD AIRMASS IS EXPECTED TO DROP SOUTHWARD OUT OFCANADA EARLY NEXT WEEK IN THE WAKE OF A STRONG EARLY SPRING STORMAND MAY RESULT IN A HARD FREEZE FOR SEVERAL NIGHTS IN A ROW OVERPORTIONS OF THE MID MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. LOW TEMPERATURES IN THE MID TO UPPER 20S OVER PORTIONS OF THEREGION ARE EXPECTED ON SUNDAY NIGHT...AND THIS IS EXPECTED TOCONTINUE INTO MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY NIGHT.THOSE WITH TENDER VEGETATION INTERESTS SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THELATEST FORECASTS AND STATEMENTS FROM THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICEAND ALSO FOR POSSIBLE WARNINGS.

I've been calling this for over a month now. Reporters, take notice.

Organic Inspection in photos

We had a special guest during yesterday's organic inspection: photographer Catherine Szalkowski. Cat contacted us back in February, interested in conducting a long-term project tracking the transition of an integrated farm through the seasons. She's been coming to the farm once or twice a week ever since, spending the day quietly following us through our daily work, and has become a comfortable and welcome part of our lives.

She was especially interested in following along during the inspection, and sent us some of her favorite images from the day. All images courtesy of Catherine Szalkowski, who was gracious enough to agree to our posting them:

Organic certification - inspection recap

Our official Organic inspection took place yesterday, and I think it's fair to say it went well. Having never gone through the process before, I'll walk through it for the interest of customers and farmers alike who may be wondering how this works.

We're certifying through MOSA, a non-profit agency that is trained and approved by the USDA to handle organic certifications. Some states have their own government-run programs, like Iowa, but Missouri killed its program years ago. So we're using Wisconsin-based MOSA because we liked their approach, setup, and philosophy best of all the agencies we looked at (they're based in and focused on the Midwest and were very approachable with questions and concerns). They have some inspectors on staff, but not enough farms in Missouri yet to justify a trip down, so they hired an independent organic inspector based in Kansas City to do our inspection and prepare a report.

He showed up right on time at 10:00 am, and began by spending a little time interviewing us about our background in farming, choice of methods & location, justification for going organic, and so on. Much of this is written into our application, but understandably he wanted to see if the reality on the ground matched the paperwork. Really, that's what the inspection is all about; it's one thing to send in a 100-page set of documents, but it's another to demonstrate the viability and reality of those documents' contents to an independent, knowledgeable inspector.

So after talking through our backgrounds, methods, philosophies, and so on, we toured the farm. He needed to see all our growing areas, and asked a lot of questions about management practices, the surrounding landscape, and so on. For example, he was checking to make sure no ground uphill from our fields could be contaminated, for example by a conventional agricultural field with runoff. Not a problem; the forested ridges on most sides of our farm provide Organic's dream buffer zone. In many cases he was checking that things were as we said they were; are there fields we didn't declare? Activities we were hiding? Suspicious-looking sprayer in the barn? Did our maps match reality? Was there evidence of pesticide use or other prohibited activities?

As any photographer knows, reality can be framed in such a way as to send a very different impression from the overall picture. Our Organic application is a like a photograph, sending the picture of the farm that we intended to. The Inspection is like an auditor gazing around the entire scene after the shutter snaps, looking at what else might be there and whether the photographer captured the scene fairly and accurately.

After we'd finished the physical walkthrough, we returned to the house for more interviews and questioning which covered our methods, knowledge, and so on in some detail. He also needed to inspect our receipts, seed packages, and physical records, again to ensure that there was evidence of what we claimed and no evidence to the contrary.

All in all, the process took about three hours and felt, to us, like going through another graduate thesis defense (preparing the application with its copious record requirements felt like writing another thesis). My impression was that we passed with flying colors, and indeed when we were finished the inspector conveyed that he was very impressed and felt that our farm embodied the ideals of Organic (paraphrasing).

So now, we simply wait. He will write up a thorough report and send it to MOSA, where a certification review board will assess the report and our application and make a final decision about our status. Once we receive a notification of approval (which at this point we expect), we can start using the O-word officially and the USDA seal and so on. But we have no idea when that will be; it could be a month or two from now given how busy such organizations are this time of year. But at least it's a major step, and a good feeling to have an independent professional inspector approve of our operation.

Reminder: neat Market event this Saturday

Just a reminder of a very cool food & farming event coming up this Saturday afternoon:

The Spring Round Up Community Day will bring together local farmers, community members, gardeners, cooks, and all who enjoy fresh, local food. The afternoon event will feature speakers and workshops on diverse topics connected to food, agriculture, cooking, gardening, and home preservation of fresh foods. Local farmers will have booths at which customers and community members can stop to talk, ask questions, learn about the farms, and build relationships in a more relaxed setting than the farmers market. Come join us to learn about and take part in your local food supply!

http://www.columbiafarmersmarket.org/spring_roundup.shtml

We'll have a booth where you can learn more about our farm, and purchase some fresh goose eggs or blown eggshells for decorating.