Why we raise and eat meat

Last winter, the environmental/food website Grist briefly considered hosting an online debate over the ethics and realities of meat production, and we were invited to take part as one of a dozen or so folks with various perspectives on the issue. We carefully wrote up an opening statement on our overall perspective as meat raisers, processors, and eaters. The event never happened, in part because the person organizing it departed for another job, but we still really like our essay. Here's a reworked version, presented for no particular reason other than we think it presents some important and often-neglected perspectives on this complicated issue.

How these goats benefit our vegetable farm

My wife and I currently farm full-time on the fringes of the Ozarks in central Missouri, growing certified organic produce for local markets and restaurants while keeping dairy/meat goats, poultry, and a hog for home use. We are largely food-self-sufficient on the farm year-round, growing & preserving all our own vegetables, doing all our own meat processing on the farm (including hunting), making the vast majority of our cheese and yogurt from on-farm goat milk, and expanding into fruits, small grains, and mushrooms. We’re both serious cooks, and take the sources and quality of our food extremely seriously.

When we moved to this property in 2006, Joanna was vegetarian and I was nearly so. We were thoroughly disgusted with the industrial meat system and found it easier, cheaper, and more comfortable to cook and eat interesting vegetarian meals. This was particularly true during our previous time in rural Virginia where it was quite hard to find meat that met our standards. We love the diversity and skill involved in quality vegetarian and vegan cooking from fresh, whole ingredients, and easily accommodate our many visiting vegetarian/vegan friends without a second thought. Our most-used cookbook beyond Joy of Cooking is Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

However, our core principle in starting and operating our farm was self-sufficiency, both economic and culinary, and it quickly became clear that the best way for us to achieve that would involve managing animals for food along with our produce-growing. Our farm is set in a narrow Ozark-type valley, with rich bottomland soil along a small stream hemmed in by steeper, brushy, rocky pastures cut by ravines. While our flatland soil is good, there is not enough properly cultivatable acreage to either make a full living growing & selling produce or to fully feed ourselves on a vegetarian diet. By properly managing livestock on our larger brushy/pastured hillsides (like the one pictured below), which are otherwise unsuited to cultivation agriculture, we can convert static land to healthy human food while relieving pressure on the highest-quality ground. In addition, good animal management can improve both the fertility and ecology of these former prairie areas, which are otherwise reverting to brushy woodlands dominated by thick monocultures of ecologically boring cedar. In effect, rotational grazing of goats is roughly intended to replace the native herbivores like bison, and results in a healthier overall ecosystem. 

Moreover, pasturing goats on the slopes also directly benefits our vegetable production by generating on-farm fertility. We collect and compost the manure & bedding from their overnight shelters, which in effect is solar energy collected by the pasture plants and converted to natural fertility by the animals' rumens. We view this as a more sustainable source of vegetable fertility than chemical fertilizers or manure imported from off the farm.

My wife’s current rule is to only eat meat for which she’s taken part in the processing (i.e. on-farm), while I’ve been known to order locally-raised meat in restaurants from time to time. Like most traditional farms, meat is seasonal for us, helping fill the nutritional gap of winter and spring while largely vanishing from our diet through the flush of summer and fall produce. This approach makes our self-sufficient goals far more practical, while still saving us money and reducing our need to import faraway food onto the farm (like the “organic” imported beans we used to buy in bulk to provide protein through the winter).

In addition, our farm illustrates an oft-ignored or forgotten point: even dairy & poultry, mainstays of the vegetarian diet, involve significant management and killing of animals. Dairy animals don’t give milk unless bred, which means you have to dispose of the ever-increasing number of young somehow (especially the males). The same is true for chickens; even though hens don’t need a rooster to lay eggs, they do to make more hens (chickens are far from immortal). And something still must be done with the roughly 50% of hatches that are male. On our farm, we rarely raise animals specifically for meat, mostly eating the meat that allows us to maintain an otherwise on-farm vegetarian diet heavy on dairy and eggs. Thus we raise & eat any unneeded goat kids from the dairying births, and any unwanted roosters hatched our by our hens. The quantity of meat we eat each year is partially determined by the gender ratios of that year’s births. To do anything else would result in either a farm overrun by animals, or the passing off of the problem to someone else by selling the extras and pretending they weren’t going to be killed anyway. When we do raise a meat-specific animal like a hog, it still has secondary on-farm benefits such as natural tillage of fields we wish to replant, fertility generation, and effecient recycling of produce & dairy wastes into human food.

While vegetarian/vegan diets are perfectly healthy and practical for many people, they also rest on assumptions that may not be applicable to all contexts. There are many cases where raising meat ends up being cheaper or more ecologically sound than the equivalent food value in plant matter, largely depending on which kinds of principles and goals are most valued by those involved. The claim that plant protein is more efficient and sustainable to raise than animal protein is only true for the highest-quality farmland; areas that are more marginal (like hillsides) or ecologically sensitive (like grasslands) can easily be degraded or destroyed by crop agriculture but preserved or even enhanced by proper animal agriculture. The young goats shown below are happily using a landscape which would otherwise be unsuitable for agriculture, while generating fertility and human food.

From a land-use perspective, much of the world's surface will never be densely populated, and thus can be managed in three ways: tillage agriculture for crops, pasture agriculture for animals, or left alone. The third option is excellent for specific areas of special ecological or cultural significant, like national/state parks or conservation areas, but is not practical at a large scale. The first option, again, is only practical for landscapes and climates already suited for sustainable crop agriculture, which is a relatively small fraction of the world's overall natural landscapes. Properly-done animal agriculture allows for a more natural and low-impact way to manage areas like grasslands and hillsides, even if it's less efficient per unit area than crop agriculture in a think-tank world.

This is also true from a national or local self-sufficiency standpoint. Imagine a nation or region which consists mostly of poor cropland but good grassland/pasturage (like parts of Africa and South America, or  central/southern Missouri). If animals are forbidden for ethical or carbon reasons, that region will have to either import more of its food from elsewhere, or grow it using methods which are not ideal for that area. Forcing that choice makes no sense.

I'll happily grant that using good farmland to grow food crops for confined animals is poor practice. So is plowing under native grasslands and erodable hillsides to grow food crops for humans, or growing water-intensive vegetables in deserts like Arizona and California. Choosing the lowest-impact and most sustainable use for all types of climates and landscapes in the world will inevitably lead to some areas benefitting more from animals than crops, and we shouldn't reject that out of a knee-jerk disgust for current poor animal management practices in the modern industrial system.

An individual has every right to choose a no-animal-product diet for their own reasons, but keep in mind that all food choices, and all purchases, are in effect votes on how we want the local and world food system to work. Rejecting all meat or animal products in essence is a vote for dedicating more and more landscapes to crop agriculture regardless of whether they are properly suited for it, and in many places increasing the local environmental impact while decreasing the local ability to be self-sufficient. And I've barely touched on the environmental issues surrounding the theoretical elimination of manure as a natural fertilizer versus expensive, oil-based replacements, or the potential health and cost issues of replacing natural meat nutrition with more processed meat replacements.

In effect, we'd rather choose properly managed animals in a diversified locally-self-sufficient system than crop monocultures in a globalized vegan one. We'd rather kill our own animals raised on local hillside pastures than import monocultured soybeans in the form of tofu and other highly processed non-animal food products. We have no personal issue with individual vegetarians and vegans, having been there ourselves and loving vegetarian/vegan cooking, but would prefer those movements as a whole to be more aware of the large-scale ramifications of their advocated goals.

Exploring the Niangua River valley

We enjoy short road trips, hopscotching around Missouri backroads to find interesting landscapes, locations, and views. Missouri is such a diverse state, we'll never run out of worthwhile places to explore. Last fall we took a great overnight tour of NW Missouri, exploring a variety of state parks, conservation areas, good food, and more. This year, we headed southwest for an overnight trip to the Niangua River valley of west-central Missouri. The first day was a little odd, as things didn't turn out quite as we hoped/expected, but the second day was near-perfect and sent us home feeling quite happy and refreshed.

Day 1, we got up before dawn, did animal chores, and hit the road as soon as we could, with the truck loaded up on sleeping pads, blankets, and good farm-sourced food. We take back roads as much as possible when we travel, as we hate and fear highways while much preferring the relaxation and scenery of normal roads. The extra time it takes to get somewhere is, in our view, more than paid back by lower risk and greater happiness. So after an enjoyable drive, we arrived at a Niangua outfitter to rent a canoe for the day.

The Niangua has a reputation as a party river during the summer, but we hoped it would be quieter in mid-October. Relative to normal, I guess it was, but there were still plenty of people around. The outfitter, who had promised us an 8-mile float until dark on the phone the day before, informed us on arrival that we could only do a 4-mile float and had 4 whole hours to do it in. So we took a very slow-paced float, pausing often to rest and watch birds, and hardly paddling at all except for one stretch of strong upstream wind. The river was still pretty populated, as we dodged oblivious fly fisherman at many riffles, eventually starting to bang our paddles on the canoe as we approached to avoid getting a backcast in the eye. We also paused often to let other floating parties pass by, trying to maintain some solitude. The scenery was pretty, the water nice and clear like a good Ozark river such that the fish-watching was as good as the bird-watching, but it was definitely the Niangua: a regular pattern of sunken beer cans along the bottom was an obvious reminder of the river's dominant visitors, as were all the lures in the trees. It was nice to be in a canoe again, but it wasn't the highlight of the trip.

With our shorter-than-expected float, we got off the river by late afternoon and headed for our overnight destination, Bennet Spring State Park. This was a new location for us, and we hoped it would be similar to Roaring River State Park, one of Joanna's favorites which combines a trout hatchery with beautiful scenery and lots of good, remote hiking trails (we wrote about it here, toward the bottom). Bennet, though, felt like it belonged on the Niangua: packed with trout fisherman in expensive gear angling in the spring-fed channel for released fish, rampant screaming kids, highly developed features (the "park store" looked like a Bass Pro outlet; we couldn't find a single book), and crowds of RVs with satellite dishes. We hiked a few of the shorter trails in the immediate spring/campground area and found them poorly maintained if not entirely neglected: badly signed/marked, with lots of ankle-threatening washouts and holes. We also didn't see another person on these trails, despite the population density; neither did we see anyone else in the very well-done Nature Center. We shrugged, enjoyed a dinner of squash-and-leek lasgna, cabbage-pepper slaw, homemade rolls and more, before bedding down in the truck for a mercifully quiet night. Luckily I woke up the next morning before dawn, preventing the indignity of being rousted by the tornado-like "time to fish" siren.

To be fair, it's great that state parks and other outlets provide lots of different ways for people to enjoy the Missouri outdoors. What we found on this day just wasn't what we were looking for, any more than the long remote hike we took the next day would appeal to some others. 

 The next day, we needed to get away from people and chose a long hike into the hinterlands of Bennet, heading for an intriguing natural geologic feature miles up the valley. The trail led us through an enjoyable diversity of landscapes, ecosystems, and elevations, rambling from upland oak glades to stream-bottom forests, open fields, and lots of interesting rock outcrops. It still wasn't well-marked and the printed trail map was poorly done and nearly worthless, but the trail itself was clearly visible and enjoyable. Photos above show the dry stream branch miles above Bennet Spring (which steals its water), and Joanna investigating a large and well-preserved stromatolite in the stream bed.

We encountered plenty of birds, including large flocks of robins & yellow-rumped warblers, along with clouds of crows and vultures more than 50 strong. This baby three-toed box turtle was a highlight, along with various butterflies and more on a gorgeous warm fall day. Then we arrived at our destination, the Natural Tunnel:

This glorious feature tunnels beneath a limestone ridge for more than 200', forming a cutoff for the stream  branch which used to circle well around this ridge before typical Ozark karst erosion developed a shortcut (similar to our local Rock Bridge State Park but longer and more remote). Now the old stream channel is an abandoned bed, and the stream plunges through this instead. We had the place to ourselves, and spent plenty of time exploring and photographing it. Here's my favorite shot:

We did eventually have to leave, and headed back along a different trail, which offered even more scenic, ecological, and geologic variety, including this impressive stream bluff:

 Heading north for home, we intentionally took a lot of back roads, exploring the remote parts of the Niangua valley that aren't overrun by beer- and trout-fueled tourism. A good map, good instincts, and patience can reward you with very neat finds in almost any part of rural Missouri, and this was no exception. Small dirt roads gave us this blufftop view of the river, and these well-preserved cross-beds in sandstone.

Oak-prairie glades and savannas are common, on steep hillsides and valley bottoms, as the back roads wind through a mix of private and conservation lands. We'd particularly like to return to the 7,000+ acre Lead Mine Conservation Area, which we couldn't do much more than poke our noses into at a few points. It's also worthwhile to have some interesting guides and references; one of our favorites is Geological Wonders and Curiosties of Missouri, available from the Missouri DNR online store. This book is old and somewhat outdated, and many of the features described and listed are on private land where you can't (or shouldn't) get to them. But they're still fun to read about, and enough are findable with some skill and patience that the book is a worthwhile asset. For example, at one point we noticed some unusually folded rocks in a roadcut, looked up the area, and confirmed Joanna's rough memory that there were several suspected meteorite impact structures nearby.  Cool.

The entire afternoon, I was searching for one thing in particular: a good open view of the overall landscapes. The Ozarks are difficult to photograph well; in person you can see and feel the rolling topography, the glades and forests and open ground, and feel the remoteness and variety of the ground as you wind through it on dirt roads and rugged trails. As one writer noted, what the Ozarks lack in elevation they make up in steepness. But a camera's lens is almost always too small to convey the sense of place, and ends up looking like just another forest or hill. Then we rounded a hilltop bend on an obscure one-lane gravel track, crossed a cattle guard, and hit the brakes in satisfaction. A quick hike up into an unposted ridgeline bluestem pasture, and I had my Ozark scene. Prairie grasses, rock outcrops, hills in fall color, small farms in the bottoms, and a nice limestone bluff along the Niangua in the background. Here was the Ozarks we'd been enjoying all day, captured in one perfect location.

 I could have stayed on that ridge for hours, but the sun was dropping west and we had to get home by dark to take care of farm animals. So we wound north a while longer, eventually emerging onto "better" roads that took us north, across the Missouri River at Boonville, and back into the familiar terrain of home as the sun set. A thoroughly enjoyable day, and one that nicely balanced the deep sense of place we get from rarely leaving our own farm. This is the Missouri we love.

Our deep thanks to the friends who did evening and morning animal chores so we could be gone overnight.

Commodity farmers are not the only farmers

The Kansas City Star ran a very nice editorial recently, arguing efficiently and accurately for an end to many commodity support programs that unevenly benefit a small niche among American farmers. This line captures the point nicely:

Nearly two thirds of the nation’s farmers — growers of fruit, vegetables, nuts, beef and poultry — do without direct subsidies. The budget crisis is a signal that it’s time for the rest of the farm sector to get along with a lot less of what amounts to corporate welfare.

This disparity highlights the hypocrisy inherent in the USDA's dual approach to "farm" policy and public nutrition. USDA spends a token amount of money and a lot of hot air promoting a balanced diet heavy on fruits and vegetables and talks up healthy eating habits. It also has various small (relative to commodity handouts) side programs throwing token grant money at "specialty crops" and other supposed niche farms. In case you were wondering, here are the USDA's own words:

Specialty crops are defined as “fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture, and nursery crops (including floriculture).”

Then USDA spends far more on propping up a few selected commodity crops, a fraction of the total diversity of food crops raised in the US, whose abundant presence in the food system makes a nice inverted pyramid from the desired result: corn- and soy-based junk foods are pervasive and absurdly cheap, grain-based meat/eggs/dairy (particularly from feedlots) are prevalent and cheaper than a real market cost, while fruits and vegetables are harder to find, more expensive, and mostly without any direct government support at meaningful scale relative to commodity spending. No amount of healthy-eating cheerleading can counteract the basic economics behind junk food being cheaper due to commodity subsidies.

What is inherently different about commodity crops like corn and soy, as compared to fruits and vegetables, that makes the one deserving of heavy-handed subsidies and the others not? They're no riskier than produce, which face similar pest, weed, and weather concerns while being harder to store, transport, and market. Corn- and soy-based products have higher consumer demand than fresh produce. Commodities hold no inherent public health or social benefit as compared to fresh produce, and take no more skill or risk on the part of the farmer. So why are the nation's commodity farmers perpetually presented as desperate struggling honorable souls who need government largess, while produce growers are generally left to fend for themselves, if not criticized or ridiculed for their products being too expensive or hard to find?

Or to phrase it more accurately for my views (and to mirror the Star): if produce growers can be expected to fend for themselves in the free market, so can commodity growers. And if customers were asked to pay the actual free-market costs for commodity-based foods, they'd find our food a lot more attractive.

Advocating reform of ag subsidies is not (or should not be) an attack on commodity farmers; it's a request to apply farm policy fairly across the board. Few farmers, of any kind, are really ever in good economic shape, and commodity farms are an important part of the social and economic fabric of rural America. Farming of any kind is quite simply a difficult and risky a business, and there is a strong case for keeping farming as a whole a more stable long-term business model throughout the country. So reform can't be something sudden, just pulling the rug out from under commodity growers.  What's needed is a two-fold approach:

1) Reforming commodity programs from handouts to basic crop/farm insurance, such that farmers profit or lose on the open market like other businesses, but have basic protection from the disastrous years and bankruptcy that farms are uniquely exposed to, and that private insurance can't or won't provide affordably (if at all).

2) Applying such programs equally but proportionately across the board to all kinds of farms, ending the commodity favoritism that skews both agriculture and public health in the wrong direction.

Fall farm status & projects

Fall is just as busy, and sometimes feels busier, than summer. The growing areas are managed just as much, with the addition of all sorts of other cool-weather seasonal projects. Slowly things calm down as given areas/tasks are finished for the year, but it really takes until nearly Thanksgiving for us to feel the effects. Here's a wordy look at some of the different things we're doing this time of year on our very diversified farm. Though it seems like a lot, we enjoy most of it, and it all ties into our fundamental goals of personal independence, active outdoor work, and excellent food.

Final harvest

As much work as regular weekly harvests for market and restaurants are, there's a large pulse of salvage work that comes with the hard freezes. We are very serious about minimizing waste, and refuse to just dump or abandon food we worked hard to grow. It takes extra time to strip most of the usable immature peppers, green tomatoes, and more from plants; bring in all winter squash and other crops; and do what we can to preserve them. From freezing and canning lots of relishes and preserves, to regular batches of food dehydration, to simple space management in our storage areas, fall harvest creates a lot of extra work. Below, a small portion of the pre-freeze harvest extravaganza





Growing area cleanup & prep

As individual crops finish for the year, any remaining plant material is pulled out and either fed to the animals (e.g. beans, peppers, corn/sorghum) or hauled off for composting (e.g. tomatoes, zucchini). Below right, frost-killed tomato plants waiting to be pulled along with their trellising. Irrigation lines are pulled, drained, bundled, and stored in the barn rafters for next year. In some cases we'll spread and incorporate aged goat manure, depending on the past and future crop & fertility rotation in that bed. We don't like any growing areas in bare soil for long, so when possible beds are either planted in winter cover crop like rye, vetch, and/or oats; or mulched with straw or aged leaves. We're moving aggressively to limit our off-farm straw purchases, so raking fresh and spreading aged leaves becomes a more important fall task every year (see below).

Leaf mulch collection

Mulch is a very important aspect of our farm management, especially as we refuse to use plastic sheeting for weed control (too much oil, too much money, too much waste). Natural soil covers like straw or leaves help retain moisture, suppress weeds, add organic matter to the soil, and protect against winter freezing of soil and winter crops. We're trying to limit our off-farm straw purchases for financial and agricultural reasons (last year we spent $1,000 on local straw, which carries a lot of obnoxious weed seeds and is still grown under conditions not entirely known to us). So every year we spend more time in the autumn woods, raking tracts of leaves into piles which are allowed to sit for a year, gently decomposing into a much denser, nutrient rich material that is more efficient to collect, handle, and spread. This leaf mold (after being aged for a couple more years) also forms a core component of our homemade potting mix (again saving money). Above left, a lovely pile of this condensed material.

When we calculate the time we spend raking and managing leaves, compared to the off-farm cash flow of purchasing large amounts of straw, it comes out close to even, without considering the side benefits of (a) a clean, known source for the leaves with few weed seeds and no unknown additives, (b) better soil nutrients from decomposing leaves than straw, (c) less fossil fuel use for short truck runs of leaves from our own woods than the large machinery needed to plant, harvest, bale, and transport straw from off-farm, and (d) a more reliable commodity that's less subject to price, weather, and demand fluctuations.

General cleanup

There is a surprising amount of overall cleanup to do on the farm before winter comes. Collecting various tools, hoses, and other items that might be sitting around; moving equipment under cover; collecting and stacking T-posts, trellis panels, and other infrastructure; collecting all bits of trellis string; staging hay and feed where we want them; preparing winter quarters for animals; tool maintenance and storage (cleaning, sharpening, oiling, etc.), and more.

Overwintering crop planting

There are many items that can be, or need to be, transplanted or seeded in fall to achieve the proper growing season. Garlic is an obvious example, but there are various other alliums (some onions, garlic scallions), greens (collards, kale, sorrel), and others (strawberries) that we manage in the fall for spring or even summer harvest. Winter cover crops are another important category. So even while the farm overall is shutting down, we're still putting new crops in the ground into November. Below left, a decent stand of oats that will eventually winter-kill into soil cover. Below right, ex-pepper and -edamame beds that have been manured and readied for fall garlic planting next week.

Seed saving & cleaning

We save our own seed for a growing list of crops & varieties, and many of the tasks related to seed saving occur in the fall. Some seeds (such as dill and cilantro) were collected over the summer, set aside during the busy season, and now need to be winnowed with a fan to sort the seed from stems, dust, etc. Summer squash seeds need to be scooped out from the hard, winter-squash-like baseball bats that we intentionally allowed to grow to absurd size, even as we shuddered each time we looked at the monstrous overgrowns (or realized that we could still sell them for $1/each at market...). Melon seeds that we set aside from perfect melons, rinsed, and left to dry need to be packed up. A selection of the best onions that we grow need to be selected and set aside to replant for seed next year. Tomato seeds from a variety that we really like need to be fermented and saved, just in case we can't buy more seed for it. Our winter-keeping tomatoes need to be set out carefully on shelves to store, so we can save seed from the longest storing ones come mid-winter. With some crops, such as cowpeas, the seed and the food are one and the same, and a nice selection of seed simply needs to be separated out from the eating supply. Below, saving summer squash seeds from a mature specimen.

Logging

Every fall and winter we work to clear more overgrown land (mostly cedars), seeking both to bring pasture back into production and to generate the lumber and firewood we need to maintain and build the farm. Much of this work also has environmental benefits, from increasing bird/wildlife habitat and plant diversity to decreasing soil erosion through thicker ground cover once the dense cedars are gone. Last year we had an extra push to get started on logging, as I needed fresh lumber to build our goat/dairy barn before winter weather arrived. This year I have a similar goal, to build a bigger and better chicken house that can accommodate our growing flock. I have a milling date set with our portable sawmill folks at the end of the month, and need to get enough ground cleared and enough logs down to be ready for milling, then construction. This includes pouring the foundations while nights are still mostly above freezing. There are many more areas to work on over the winter, but the chicken-shed-specific work has a high priority right now. Below, the future site of a long-term chicken house and pasture.

Goat breeding

If you want goat milk, you have to get goats pregnant (rather, a buck has to). We try to breed our goats in November, aiming for an April kidding date. This involves hosting a buck for a month, as goats only go into heat for a day or so every three weeks. Pasturing the does with a buck for a month generally gives us two shots at successful breeding. We don't actually have to handle the herd much differently, but it is another management item to pay attention to this time of year.

Butchering preparations

As on all traditional farms, fall and early winter are meat season. We do all our own meat processing on the farm, because we don't want to pay anyone else to do it, like the ability to make cuts just the way we want, can use more of the interesting parts this way (like saving hog casings for sausage), and minimize any stress on the animals since there's no transportation or fear. We'll only be doing one goat kid this year, as the other two are does which we intend to breed as future milkers. But there's a much larger pig than last year, several rounds of developing roosters, and one or more deer once the season opens in mid-November (given how many we've seen in the last few weeks, I'm quite antsy for this). Prepping for this work includes making enough freezer space for all the meat, ensuring we have freezer paper and other supplies on hand, and watching the weather for appropriate multi-day conditions. We also try to have most other weather-dependent farm work done, so we can take advantage of butchering weather without competing needs.

Firewood moving/winterization

Just getting the house ready for winter takes a bit of time. Collecting and moving firewood into position, having the chimney swept, moving storage foods (onions, potatoes, garlic, apples, etc.) into the back rooms which we don't heat and which stay at a nice stable 40 degrees all winter, changing out sets of seasonal clothing, etc.

Cheesemaking

I've been putting extra time into making rounds of hard cheese to store over winter; we already have more wheels of these waxed and aging than years past, with up to two more months of milking to go. We also freeze milk to get us through the non-milking months; this works well enough for basic cheeses, yogurts, and baking.

Normal farm work

 Among all this seasonal stuff, we're still harvesting regularly for biweekly market and weekly restaurant sales, including all the container washing, produce handling, calling around, etc. that accompanies these jobs. There's still weeding and watering to be managed, various daily chores, and so on. Like I said, fall is just as busy as summer, just with shorter days. Longer nights can mean more sleep, but also unintentionally late nights as we stay up trying to get cooking, office work, and housework done now that daylight is too precious to waste. That's life.

Market plans, October 22

We'll be at market this weekend with a wide variety of produce, hoping to be noticed among the expected glut of produce salvaged from frost-sensitive plants.

Napa cabbage: Big, beautiful, juicy, tasty cabbages; they range from 3-7+ pounds each. We just love these for slaw, fresh kraut, stir fries, and more (but especially slaw). We can go through multiple heads a week, keeping a big bowl of slaw in the fridge. For more on using fresh fall cabbages, see this post from 2009; it notes that we hadn't yet tried growing these for market sale. Now we have, there are lots, and they're excellent.

Green tomatoes: I suspect the market will be overrun with post-freeze salvage produce like green tomatoes, which is always frustrating as the supply way outstrips the demand. I wish more people experimented with all the ways to prepare and preserve green tomatoes. We have...let's just say an abundance.

Green peppers: Same as tomatoes, above. Our plants were loaded with developing fruit coming into this week of true freezes. We'll be drying multiple batches of these, but hope at least some will sell. The pig doesn't like these as much as green tomatoes, so some may end up as compost.

Garlic: As before, we'll be bringing a large quantity of garlic, expecting people to be interested in both seed and storage garlic. Several varieties are sold out or low, but the overall quantity and diversity remain. We'll start planting our own stock in the coming week.

Baby greens mix: Our very nice mix of young greens, including arugula, tat soi, mustard, mizuna, beet greens, and more. Great for sauteing, braising, soups, pastas, and more, or for strong/spicy salads. Featured on the menu at Red and Moe lately.

Baby lettuce mix: Tender young lettuce greens, great for salads with the season's last summer produce.

Daikon radishes: A reasonably mild, long white radish. Works well for cooking or pickling, or slicing onto salads. Can have a bit of heat, though less so than many fall radishes, and gets sweet with cold weather.

Anaheim hot peppers: Mild-medium heat, great flavor. Small ones harvested pre-frost, great for stuffing with cheese and roasting, or for chopping into sauces.

Other greens: Collards and mizuna for sure.

Leeks: We love leeks, and these should be quite good with a few frosts under their belt. The stalks aren't quite as long as we had hoped, but they are relatively thick, and they are tasty.


Herbs: Parsley is available in abundance. We'll also have thyme, oregano, sage, tarragon, mint, and maybe some cilantro.

The downside of dry

It's been very dry most of the summer; readers of this blog know that. Although the drought has been frustrating at times, we'll still take this year's weather over the last few absurdly wet ones and all the issues too much rain causes. But the opposite of bad isn't necessarily good; farming is the art of keeping your balance as the weather gives you whiplash. While some problems with drought are obvious (plants need water to grow), others are more subtle for non-farmers. Here's a look at some of the issues we've faced in dealing with 3 1/2 months of overly dry conditions here.

First, the conditions we've actually seen. Through June, we were in normal to too-wet conditions. We recieved 1.09" on July 3, and then the spigot was turned off. Since then, we've only gotten over .5" in a day 4 times, never again over an inch. Total on-farm monthly rainfall through July, August, and September was at or below 2". October has been the driest yet so far.

It's important to keep in mind that drought (and rain) can be very localized, far more so than temperature. If we're having a heat wave, likely much of Missouri is too. But rain can be drastically different over short distances, leaving individual farms and plots of land under very different conditions even in one locality.

The image below, from the National Weather Service's extremely useful and addictive Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, shows total rainfall across Missouri for the last 30 days (as of 10/14/2011). Our farm is marked with a black dot near the center of the image; note that there is a rainfall difference of nearly 2" between the northern and southern ends of just our county. The data are pretty accurate for us, at least: we recorded 1.43" of rain on the farm from 9/13-10/14, right on the 1"-1.5" line mapped by shades of green. It's worth noting that the color scheme here could be misleading to some: in my world, red implies drought and green implies lush times, though the opposite is true here (check the scale at right).

Part of the story, though, is that most of that rain has come in sporadic, small doses that never have much effect. Rather than a good one-inch soaker that really filters in and helps crops, the rain since July has mostly been little drizzles that move the dust around and vanish the next day. Over the last week, we technically broke a 21-day dry spell, but only with individual totals of .11" followed by a windy dry day, then .14" followed by two windy dry days, such that whatever moisture entered the soil vanished very quickly and never made it to any plants' root zones in meaningful quantities. Thus even the few inches of rain we've had each month this summer is misleading, because almost none of it has actually mattered.

So what?

Irrigation has become a serious issues. Vegetables take a lot of water to grow; a good rule of thumb is 1"/week. At best we've had half of that over the summer, and it's really even less since most of the rainfall has been in small batches that doesn't soak in. Thus we've been running our drip irrigation lines heavily trying to keep things happy. But we've started to take the drip lines out in places due to frost, so in places we have had to start using sprinklers, which are far less water-efficient due to wind and evaporation, but can cover larger areas more consistently. Newly seeded or transplanted fall crops, like spinach and strawberries that we intend to overwinter for spring CSA, take extra work to keep alive in these conditions.  

The problem has gotten worse toward the end of the season, as we start pulling out production crops and trying to establish dense winter cover crops like oats, rye, and vetch whose job is to grow into a nice thick stand before winter and protect the soil from freezing (or blowing away; see below). Instead, these either haven't germinated, have taken lots of sprinkler/hose watering to germinate, and/or have barely grown. The paired photos below show one of our northern fields which was planted in rye/vetch almost a month ago in antipication of forecasted rain which never meaningfully materialized. The seeds germinated and grew about an inch, but have looked the same (below right) ever since. This should be a good, lush, soil-protecting stand by now. Instead there are clouds of soil blowing around on windy days, and the plants are alive but barely growing. We have far more bare soil on the farm than we're comfortable with, but can't get cover crops to grow well enough in this brutal combination of drought, warm weather, and regular high-wind days that suck the moisture from everything. Even running sprinklers on this field hasn't had much effect.

Soil hardness increases as the ground dries out. This can make it hard to turn in manure or otherwise work the soil, and has been especially frustrating for handling fences and posts. The portable net fencing we use for goats and pig has gotten harder and harder to set up and move, as the posts won't go into the rock-hard soil. We had a mass goat escape recently as a fence post just fell over, opening a gap, and a similar thing happened to the pig fence.  As we clean out beds of peppers (below left), tomatoes, cucumbers, and other items that were trellised using T-posts and string, we find that the posts just won't come out of the hard ground. We've been digging them out with shovels one by one: the one shown below right wouldn't come even with that pit dug around it. Also notice how dry the ground is; most of the pepper plants are healthy, like the one next to Joanna in the photo, but there isn't much moisture to spare down there and it's taken a lot of irrigation even so.

Rodents have become more and more frustrating this year. We always have some damage from voles, it's part of the trade-off for permanent no-till vegetable beds, but they've been especially aggressive in tunnelling and damaging things this year. We think it's largely due to the drought; the only water available on the farm comes from our irrigation lines, and the voles naturally tunnel along right underneath, messing up the root zones, collapsing plants, and eating root crops like peanuts which they find there. They can also start gnawing on the irrigation lines themselves, looking for water. Many of our young blueberry plants have been mostly undermined and thus near-killed by rodents; you can practically reach into the caverns excavated within their root masses, where the water is. Snakes are the best defense against rodents, but we've seen very few snakes this year for unknown reasons.

Pastures, of course, suffer too. We keep our goats on pasture 24/7 from late spring through fall, rotating them regularly to new ground. Usually this allows the pastures to recover and regrow after grazing, but this year they've stayed brown and dead post-grazing. We know we're managing our pastures well overall because our milk yields this year have been equal to or higher than last year, even with drought-stressed pastures, but we're now running out of places to graze and the yields have really started to drop. In a wet year we can start over on pastures grazed early in spring, but those haven't regrown much this year. One farmer at market told me that they normally don't start feeding out hay to cattle until December, but this year they've already started. We're trying to supplement with bean plants and other farm-generated material, but are having to use more purchased hay than desired as well.

Wind/erosion was mentioned above, but needs more explanation. As soil dries out, it becomes more prone to windblown erosion. We've had a lot of windy days this summer, even with our protected valley, and many days you can see soil blowing away. Often this is the really good stuff, and it's a real loss. We take soil conservation very seriously, it's one of the benefits of our permanent no-till vegetable beds with sod aisles, but we can do relatively little against windy drought. Mulch can help, but this dry year has struck in the middle of an intentional transition away from purchased straw mulch (expensive, seedy, otherwise problematic) to on-farm mulch sources like aged leaves, meaning we don't have as much on hand as past years. Increased cover-cropping is another way to hold soil in place, but as discussed above, it's been much harder to get these to germinate and grow under such dry, windy conditions. We're losing far less soil than your average bare giant commodity field, but we still care about it. Plus, high winds and low humidities are just personally uncomfortable: we have to drink a lot more water even on cool days and be otherwise careful of conditions.

Pig rooting becomes less effective. One of the side benefits of pasturing a pig is its ability to naturally root up unwanted grass like fescue so we can reseed and improve the pasture: it's an edible tiller that fertilizes as it goes. However, this year, the ground has been so hard and dry that wherever we put him, the pig hasn't been able to do much with it. We've run a hose and sprinkler out to him, which creates a small wet zone that he indeed has turned up nicely. But that's not practical at a larger scale, and so we've lost most of the year's potential pasture-improvement benefit. Instead he's mostly just hard-packed anywhere we've pastured him, making things worse instead of better. This one we didn't see coming.

Still better than monsoon, though. We'd like a nice balanced year sometime, but will keep plugging along with what we get. We've seen some form of the two extremes these past two years, from way too wet to way too dry, so are getting a handle on managing both. Overall, dry is better. But is a nice, soaking 1" of rain too much to ask even once a month?

Market plans & CSA tours

We will not be at market this coming weekend. We currently plan to attend three more markets (unless bad weather intervenes):
October 22
November 5
November 19 (just before Thanksgiving)

Last week we gave a preview of some items available for the rest of the season.

Our CSA tours last weekend went well, we thought, with interested people enjoying beautiful weather to tour the farm and some good discussions of farm management methods and CSA details.
We are starting to officially sign up people with a $50 deposit to guarantee a space in the 2012 program. Our goal is to have all slots reserved with this deposit by mid-December, and to take the first real portion of payment in mid-January (we're targeting a three-part payment plan for the year, maybe Jan-March-May?). Given that we consider the CSA to cover January-December of a given calendar year, it will be best to start the program off right with all members signed up. At the same time as the January payment, we intend to distribute the first share of the year, composed of winter storage items possibly including garlic, onions, sweet potatoes, winter squash, leeks, cabbages, and/or more.

Many people responded to the first tour offerings with interest but regret that they were out of town or otherwise unavailable that weekend. Thus we will be offering two more tour days:
Sunday, October 30, 2:00 pm
Saturday, November 5, 2:00 pm

We hope these dates will accomodate many interested people, and we can move toward really filling up the program. If you're interested, please consider making time for one of these events, and/or otherwise letting us know of your serious interest in the CSA. As before, we ask for people to RSVP for the tours so we know what to plan for. We'll be accepting reservation deposits at the tours or at market on days we're there (or we can work something else out). Just to be clear, like most CSAs, deposits and payments are non-refundable.

Farm insurance is worthless, 2011 edition

Back in early 2010, we wrote a long post discussing our concerns and negative experiences dealing with farm insurance, in theory a necessity for running a food-production business in this litigious and paranoid culture. In effect, our experience-based argument was that farm insurance (and most insurance) is either a scam or a waste of money, and doesn't actually protect a small farm because the insurance company can always find a way to back out of the supposed commitment (while keeping your money), and any real farmer doesn't have the time or money to fight.

A few days ago, I exchanged a few emails with a farmer from southwest Missouri, who is dealing with precisely this problem and wrote to us (and others) for advice. With their permission, here is the email exchange, kept anonymous by request. It speaks for itself as regards this issue:

EMAIL 1:

I have a CSA in Southwest Missouri. This was our first year. We just received a call from our insurance company saying they are cancelling our farm insurance because we get too much exposure. Was wondering if you could share the company you use so we can have some options. I have asked several people. thanks.

MY RESPONSE:

That’s terrible to hear. We have found the insurance industry very frustrating to work with, as no insurance company really cares about or understands small/direct-market farms, and we don’t fit into any of their pigeonholes. As far as we’re concerned it’s an expensive scam that offers no meaningful protection, since it’s so easy for the company to drop you or shirk their responsibility if you try to make a claim. What kind of coverage are they dropping? Basic damage coverage, like property, or product/customer visit liability? If interested, you can read more of our thoughts/experiences with farm insurance on our blog at:

http://cherthollowfarm.blogspot.com/2010/02/liability-and-insurance-on-market-farm.html

I’m a little uncomfortable sharing our insurance details over email with an unknown person, since it is such a problematic subject, but suffice it to say we’ve not found a company we feel good about. May I reproduce your email (anonymously if you like) on our blog, and/or forward to other farmers I know in the area, to see if others have input on the question?

EMAIL 2:

After I wrote a few people trying to come up with insurance, I realized how invasive I was being. Wasn't trying to pry.Yes, you can reproduce my email. Rather not have my name attached and I will follow your blog. We had farm and property insurance and all of a sudden we got a letter saying the company was going to stop insuring any property that could not be seen from five other properties. We can only be seen by one other farm and he has to be wanting to look our way.

So we called the broker and he said not to worry. Said he had lots of companies and he would get back to us. Soon he sent a bid for insurance more that one forth higher than we were paying before and he accepted our payment after he took what seemed like a hundred pictures and asked over two hours worth of questions.

Then they wanted us to produce books on our U pick orchard which we declined to do because we don't separate it from the other things we do here and thought it not to be their business. Well, to make a long story short, they called and the exact quote was

" we have been on your website._______ Farm is much too visible and we are going to decline insuring you. We will insure you to the end of the month and prorate your payment." So , here we are, today is the 7th and we have no insurance past Halloween. Of course, no insurance, no home loan.

This is not the only problem we face. We are trying to refinance the farm at a lower interest rate and no one loans to a "working farm". Hobby farms only. So I guess for that we will go to Farm Bureau. I am not a conspiracy person , yet I do believe they are trying to get rid of small farmers in order to get a higher tax rate on the land and because he who rules the food supply rules the world.

Thanks again for replying. We will find insurance somewhere before the first and I may just take down the website for now. Didn't know about your blog when I wrote the first time. I was just trying people from Missouri who had agricultural tourism.

Thanks.

Thoughts or recommendations for this person?

Bird list & other natural events, September 2011

It's dry; our on-farm rainfall totals for the past three months are July (2.03"), August (1.76"), September (2.17"). Most of that came in little spurts here and there, never enough to really soak in and reset the water clock. The ground is rock-hard, dust rises from our field roads, pastures don't regrow after goats have browsed them, trees, plants, and crops all wilt. We're watering like crazy trying to keep things alive, especially young seedlings and transplants; greens don't regrow as fast which cuts into our sellable yields. We had our first light frost September 14, and several more between then and early October, when we recieved two killing frosts in the low areas of the field.

Coyotes have been very active the past few weeks; we hear our local pack regularly in the evening and overnight hours. They tend to travel along the Silver Fork valley, just north of us, but definitely move up and down our side valley as well. Multiple times we've seen coyotes along our forest edges, including a pair in the orchard just a few days ago, and find their scat on our roads now and then. Like hawks, I enjoy their presence and hope they'll leave our animals alone; they're a very neat animal to see and are an important part of the food chain here. Others in the area are reporting lots of coyote activity too, and some attacks on livestock, though I remain more concerned about the various packs of domestic dogs allowed to roam freely in our area. Good fencing goes a long way toward hopefully allowing nature and domestic animals to coexist.


September marked the opening of fall bird migrations, as you'll see from the 26 new species observed on the farm compared to August. Many of these were only seen a few times as they passed through, but did find something they liked about our ecosystem long enough to pause and be noticed. Hawks have been very active this fall, including a beautiful but annoying Cooper's Hawk which will....not....leave...., just keeps hanging around benefiting from the plush populations of warblers passing through but forcing us to confine the chickens far longer than we've ever had to before.

I've been carrying binoculars most mornings as I go out to milk and do animal chores, as there are often thick mixed flocks of birds flitting around the diverse habitat of our main field/pasture, highlighted in the clear light of morning sun. Fall migrants don't sing or call as much as spring migrants, and are generally drabber in color and patterning, so it takes more work and observation to identify and distinguish them. It's an enjoyable challenge most of the time, and really helps us understand our surroundings more thoroughly.

Publishing a month-long list certainly obscures the day-to-day and week-to-week changes in migrant behavior. Some birds, like the Broad-winged Hawk, are long gone by the end of September. Others, like the White-Throated Sparrow, showed up October 1 and just missed being included (they could easily have been here one day earlier and just went unnoticed). But the lists still give a sense of the diversity we observe and interact with here.

NEW IN SEPTEMBER (26 species, some observed earlier this year but not in August)

Canada Goose
Red-Tailed Hawk
Black and White Warbler
Red-eyed Vireo
Black-throated Green Warbler
Nashville Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Red-headed Woodpecker
Grey Catbird
Brown Thrasher
Northern Flicker
American Redstart
Least Flycatcher (likely, unconfirmed)
Cooper's Hawk
Red-eyed Vireo
Cedar Waxwing
Magnolia Warbler
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Common Nighthawk
Tennessee Warbler
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Lark Sparrow
Tree Swallow
Canada Warbler (new species for the farm)
Killdeer

PRESENT IN SEPTEMBER (31 species)
Turkey Vulture
Red-shouldered Hawk
Broad-winged Hawk
Mourning Dove (inc. 2 recent fledglings observed by the barn at the end of the month)
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Barred Owl
Whip-poor-will
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Belted Kingfisher
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Eastern Wood-Peewee
Eastern Phoebe
Great Crested Flycatcher
White-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Tufted Titmouse
Black-cappeed Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
Blue-grey Gnatcatcher
American Robin
Northern Parula
Summer Tanager
Scarlet Tanager
Northern Cardinal
Indigo Bunting
Eastern Towhee
American Goldfinch

MISSING/UNOBSERVED SINCE AUGUST (8 species)
Fish crow
Eastern Kingbird
Grackle
Golden-winged Warbler
Great Blue Heron
Wood Thrush
Louisiana Waterthrush
Field Sparrow

Market plans, October 8

We'll be at market this Saturday, kicking off a busy weekend for us. Saturday and Sunday afternoons we're hosting CSA farm tours for interested customers; please let us know ASAP if you're interested in attending. Many have written to say they're interested but out of town that weekend, and we will be holding more events later in the year, but both of this weekend's tours will be happening as we have signups for both days and can still accomodate more.

At market this weekend:

Garlic: We are sold out of two varieties (German Extra Hardy and Chet's Italian Red), but have all the others. Like the last market we attended, we'll be bringing extra garlic as people tend to start stocking up this time of year, and looking for planting stock as the planting season is about to start (mid-October through early November).

Onions: We've sold most of the braids we initially made, and it's so dry here the onion necks won't braid properly, so we may end up just selling some loose.
Green tomatoes: A nice seasonal specialty, explore all the possible uses for these underappreciated items. We love the traditional Southern way, skillet-fried in fresh-ground cornmeal, but there are so many more options. Find lots of ideas in past blog posts here and here.

Greens: Mustard, chard, and kale will all be available as loose greens. Lots of uses for these; saute them with garlic, chop into soups and stews, top pizzas, etc. We may have some baby greens to offer, though it depends on on total yield and restaurant needs.

Sweet peppers: Our usual mix of shapes and colors, great for eating fresh or almost any cooking use. Our top uses are pepper salads, and cooking/roasting for sauces.

Hot peppers: Anaheims & jalapenos. Anaheims can be roasted and frozen for later sauces (or make & freeze the sauce now), and are excellent dried if you have a food dehydrator. Jalapenos can be dried as well, and exceedingly useful.

Daikon radishes: A reasonably mild, long white radish. Works well for cooking or pickling, or slicing onto salads. Can have a bit of heat, though less so than many fall radishes, and gets sweet with cold weather.

Peanuts (hopefully): Fresh green peanuts, perfect for Southern-style boiled peanuts. We haven't found time to do a test dig yet, but we know there are (or were) some peanuts down there because there are vole holes in the bed and peanut shells at the surface in places.... We hope they've left some for us, and we hope to get some to market on Saturday.
Herbs: Parsley, cilantro, dill, thyme, oregano, tarragon, sage, mint & possibly more.

Rest-of-the-season preview:
We plan to continue on the every-other-week market schedule for the rest of the season, assuming weather cooperates. So, the current plan is that we will be at market on Oct. 8, Oct. 22, Nov. 5, and Nov. 19. Here are some of the product that we expect/hope to bring in the remaining weeks.

Leeks: These look big and beautiful. We usually like to wait for a nice cold spell to start harvesting these, as it improves the flavor. They'll need a good cleaning before use, becuase we hilled them with soil to get a nice, long blanched stalk.

Chinese cabbage: We have quite a few heads of Bilko cabbage, a very tasty variety. The heads are large and may look daunting, but they store well and are so good that we power through them in the kitchen. A huge bowl of slaw can disappear very rapidly at our table.

Sweet potatoes: We had a reasonable yield this year, in spite of some rodent damage. These are currently curing, a process that enhances the sweetness & overall quality. The varieties that we grow produce mostly smallish roots that are perfect for cubing and roasting. Yum.

Winter squash: These are also curing, for the same reasons as sweet potatoes. We'll likely bring some of the Delicatas and/or Acorn squash to market, since these are short-storage varieties. The long-storing butternuts we'll reserve for CSA members after the new year (when the flavor tends to be best anyway).

Parsnips: We expanded our parsnip planting compared to last year after reasonable success, though we're a bit concerned about possible damage from carrot flies or other burrowing insect pests based on a couple of roots that we've looked at. Plus, we've had to irrigate these a lot, and rodents have been burrowing right along the irrigation in other beds; that's not a good combination for a root crop. We won't know the yield until we harvest, and these benefit from remaining in the ground until late fall/early winter.

More ways to use green tomatoes

Green tomatoes are generally abundant in the fall, but this year they are especially prolific. The hot summer weather was hard on tomato plants, but once the plants recovered from the heat, they put on new growth and new tomatoes--lots and lots of new tomatoes--but not early enough for them to ripen before frost. Our tomato plants aren't alone in this; all of the growers that I talked to at CCUA's Hootenanny said the same thing; everyone has big beautiful tomato plants loaded with perfect green tomatoes that just aren't ripening.

Last year we brought lot of green tomatoes to market, and virtually no one wanted them. This is a shame, because there are many diverse and delicious ways to make good use of green tomatoes. So if you want to support local growers, think about working some green tomatoes into your cooking and maybe preserving some for the winter. For cost-conscious shoppers, learning to use green tomatoes is a good idea; the supply tends to be high and the demand low. Many growers are likely to have bulk quantities available at a very reasonable price.

Here's a run down of some of our favorite recipes that expands on last year's descriptions of using green tomatoes. At the time, we made reference to a recipe for green tomatoes baked in a pie. We have since tried that recipe and can highly recommend it.

Green tomato pie

The recipe is from In a Vermont Kitchen, p. 373 (& can be viewed in the google book preview). It makes a fantastic dessert that is very similar in flavor to an apple pie made with sour baking varieties like Granny Smith.

 Canned green tomato apple pie filling

The above recipe is for fresh eating, but green tomatoes can also be included in a canned pie filling for enjoyment during the winter. The cookbook So Easy to Preserve has just the recipe that we've used. We don't reproduce unadapted cookbook recipes online, as we believe authors are entitled to their copyright, but encourage you to look up these books and/or try similar recipes wherever you can find them. It's so nice to crack open a jar in the winter and make an easy pie sourced from the farm.

Green tomato chutney

Our favorite recipe is for a green tomato apricot chutney from Sundays at Moosewood (p 317). We freeze this in small jars and enjoy it on bread all winter and spring. Joy of Cooking  also has an excellent green tomato chutney recipe (p 847 in the old edition).

Pickled green tomatoes

This will be our next experiment with green tomatoes. Anyone have a favorite recipe?

Handling fall frost

Saturday night we had a good, solid frost here in the valley. It wasn't our first, we've had three light frosts since September 14, but it was by far the strongest and enough to end the season for a number of things. We knew it was coming and prepared as much as practical, including making some choices on what to protect and what we were ready to let go. The average first frost in central Missouri is October 15, while northern Missouri averages around October 1. Given that our narrow valley puts us in a climate setting significantly north of our actual location, an early October frost isn't terribly unusual.

We're used to the weather patterns here, in which a clear, still night can result in a frost. Fall always brings a pattern of strong cold fronts that sweep through, with clouds clearing rapidly post-front into a still, clear night that allows cold air to pool and settle on our narrow valley. Any time the overnight  forecast for Columbia reaches 40 or below under these conditions, we know to expect frost. With a forecast of 37 for Saturday night, we knew it would be a real freeze.

Sure enough, when we went out at dawn, frost extended throughout our main field and up the pasture slope beyond. Above left, a frozen-solid sheet protecting tomatoes, taken near 9am as the sun finally started to thaw things out. Above right, some very nice frost crystals on bush bean leaves. We also had a few rows of new kale and collard transplants, which normally can handle frosts, but were so young we covered them just in case. Their cover was frozen solid both nights, but the plants are fine. We hope to be harvesting these for CSA in early spring.

 We made some choices on what to protect and what to let go. Our tomato plants are mostly lush and healthy, but some recovered better than others from the August heat wave that stopped all flowering and fruiting for a while. The southern end of the main tomato rows, to the right in the photo above, look nice but have almost no fruit on them. The northern end is loaded with green fruit we hope can still ripen, so we focused our efforts on covering those and left the others open; they won't be doing much more anyway. You can see various row cover fabrics and cheap sheets covering the better tomatoes in the middle distance (row cover at back is over cabbages and greens for insect protection, not frost). In this photo, too, you can clearly see frost extending across the area.

 The zucchini we decided to sacrifice. This final planting has been producing amazingly, very stable and healthy for a long period of time, but sales have been going down significantly. We pick these daily to get the most efficient harvest of high-quality baby squash, and that isn't economically efficient if people don't buy them. So over the last week we've been paying less attention to them, and let the weather have its way with them. We salvaged one last bulk harvest of all sizes, which will feed a happy pig for a few days.

 The peppers, on the other hand, we definitely wanted to save. Peppers mature very slowly, and though these have been producing well for us, they're still loaded with green fruit that we want to give every chance to mature. So we draped row cover over these, pinning it in place on the trellis string with clothespins, both Friday and Saturday nights. This worked; despite the zucchini freezing solid in rows 30+ feet uphill, these suffered little to no damage. With at least one more week of warm sunny weather coming up, we'll get a lot more peppers now.

We spent Sunday morning with our regular work crew, cleaning up the frost-killed plants, mostly tomatoes and zucchinis. After stripping the fruits for pig food or our kitchen, we chopped the large, viny, bushy plants into shorter chunks and trucked them up to a high ridge far from the field. We'll compost all these remains, but don't want them sitting around near the field spreading insects and disease. Filling the truck multiple times involved some fun stomping down of the remnant to squeeze more in, feeling like an old-time grape stomping or hay-stacking.

Many other items don't care about frost, or were already dealt with. Leeks and parsnips actually benefit from a few freezes before harvest, and many fall items like greens, chard, and cabbages don't care. Sweet potatoes and winter squash were mostly harvested already and are currently curing for proper storage and later distribution, though we covered some remaining winter squash to allow more to ripen.

The first real frost always creates a pulse of urgent work, but afterward it's nice to start cleaning up and finishing beds for the winter. We're mostly grateful for the continued dry conditions (~2" of rain in both August and September, with no rain since 9/18) as it makes fall work much easier and cleaner. Conditions are perfect for cleaning out beds, spreading & incorporating manure, getting cover crop seeded, and more. Eventually we really need some rain for the health of pastures, fruit plantings, and more, and just so we can finally take a break indoors, but in the meantime we're really getting work done and moving nicely toward next year.