There is a resurgence of hope across America in the wake of Tuesday’s election of Democrat Barack Obama as President, promising a new direction of change for the future of our nation. Those of us who have been paying attention to the global financial meltdown, increasingly severe food shortages in the wake of global warming, and the outrageous poisoning of our citizens and livestock/pets by corrupt Chinese producers (a glaring example of globalization’s failures), are hoping that a new dawn in America will bring with it the serious changes to our agricultural policies that have grown increasingly necessary through decades of decline.

Now, politicians don’t generally talk much about agricultural policies while they’re stumping for votes in big cities. And they’re often so ignorant of agricultural issues that even rural dwellers – actual farmers – get nothing but pablum and platitudes in response to their questions. Luckily, journalist Michael Pollan wrote a great ‘open letter’ in the New York Times in October entitled, Farmer in Chief. This is a must-read for all of us committed to self-sufficiency, locally grown foods, the viability of family farms and homesteads, and the future health of an environment we all depend upon for life.

Pollan begins his letter to “Dear Mr. President-Elect” with an honest caution -

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Pollan goes on to explain issues like climate change, energy independence, health care and the general health of the economy in terms of our dependence on food depend crucially on sound agricultural policies. He explains very well what ‘went wrong’ with our food system over the past several decades, and how the antiquated, fossil fuel dependent system cannot be sustained. We no longer have cheap fuels and unlimited water supplies, our policies are haphazard, our subsidies unfair, our planning non-existent. Pollan then offers his particulars in this 9-page article, and the reasoning behind them is fascinating reading. He offers a complete rationale for organic farming many of us have been promoting and practicing for years, in three not at all ‘simple’ steps…

1. Resolarizing the American Farm
2. Reregionalizing the Food System
3. Rebuilding America’s Food Culture

I’ve added my voice to the growing calls for our leadership to pay serious attention to the many complex issues of our food supply – which IS our ‘national security’ – by sending this article as a link in a congratulatory email to President-Elect Obama. This is an immediate action issue, as Obama is right now choosing his cabinet and advisors. Agriculture and food policy issues must not fall to the back of the line. So add your voice to the calls for sane policy and firm leadership today!

You can also sign petitions and keep up to date on incoming news at the Organic Consumers Association. Don’t forget while you’re there to sign up for their email newsletter too!

People used to think about water as an infinite resource. They could use it, abuse it, pollute it and sink their garbage into it with impunity, it would never run dry and would somehow clean itself of sewage and chemicals and industrial waste. This short-sighted view of life’s most precious and necessary resource justified the great post-war “turf boom” expansion of the population into designed suburbs of cookie-cutter houses with neat green lawns and homeowners’ associations that decided they could dictate what residents were allowed to plant, whether there could be a few weeds in the mix, and how often those green expanses of useless grass had to be watered and dosed with chemicals in order to maintain the cookie-cutter expanses of identical expanses of useless grass.

Now that we know water is a lot more precious than we thought, that climate change is imposing long-term droughts on entire swaths of the earth, that unwise allocations have drained ancient aquifers, and that a lot of the water people have to drink is polluted by things nobody really wants to know about, it’s a good time to re-think our entire approach to water. This is yet another necessary change in humanity’s relationship with the natural world that must start in the countryside and outer ‘burbs with motivated individuals who will commit to doing things differently, and educate their neighbors about how it’s done and how great it can be made to look.

Most of the surface and groundwater on the planet is salty. Shortages of fresh water have led to conflicts and open warfare through history. In Bolivia the American corporation Bechtel has attempted to corner the water market in order to privatize it, even making it illegal for individuals to harvest rainwater from their own property. Their model for this ridiculous legislation comes from Colorado, where it’s also illegal to harvest rainwater (because it diminishes downstream supply).

Food not Lawns informs us that 270 billion gallons of water are used in the US every year just to water expanses of useless grass on people’s lawns. Out west in the desert areas of the country 70% of water use is just to sustain turf lawns. We simply cannot keep doing this and still expect to eat and live. If your homestead doesn’t yet have rainbarrels with attached faucets and hoses for watering your garden crops, this is definitely the year to install some, one per down-spout from the roof. The food crisis has hit America and will only get worse. Homesteaders and small farmers – CSA memberships and organizations – will have to take up some of the slack in providing locally grown food to communities, thus we need to be first in line to totally rearrange our water priorities.

We can also educate others about growing native plant species (that do fine with just annual rainfall) where expanses of useless grass used to be – and turning unused areas of their property into vegetable patches and fruit thickets and orchards instead of trying to maintain expanses of useless grass. Grape vines growing on fences can offer summer privacy as well as tasty grapes. Miniature apple, peach, cherry and nut trees can add shady spots for sitting as well as fresh fruit.

Some suburbanites might be amazed at how much food can be grown in small spaces with proper management, or how great it feels to serve a healthy salad with tomatoes and cucumbers to the luncheon club that was entirely grown right there on the porch and in the yard. Getting more involved with our food and food production could do a lot to help encourage a more healthy diet generally, and an appreciation for where food comes from and what it’s really worth.

Once someone in an area visits a naturalized homestead and returns to remake his/her own lawn into a naturescape of natural beauty and healthy water use, it’s just not that hard to start a regular movement. Homeowners in any suburban subdivision are members of their homeowners’ associations. They can arrange for speakers to present at meetings, host xeriscaping field trips and tours, get the rules changed to allow those expanses of useless grass to turn into something naturally useful and beautiful.

Local creeks, rivers and water treatment plants will have to deal with much less of a load of toxins and chemical pesticides and herbicides, overall water use will drop significantly (saving homeowners money, important in a shriveling economy), and neighborly greetings over the fences will include garden talk and food exchanges and good advice and complements to the landscape, instead of just grumpy waves by sweaty, grumpy guys behind loud lawnmowers and leafblowers. Everyone’s lifestyle improves!

Many of us committed homesteaders either live near suburbia or actually in it. Or we know people who live there, and who are so caught up in their dead-end robotic conformities that they could really use something new and hopeful. Check out some of the resources below and see if there’s a way for us forgotten rural dwellers to add something back to what we left behind. Changing the world is a daunting task if you look at it in those missionary terms. But it’s not that hard if all you really want to do is expand your environmental skills to as many neighbors as you can!

Links:

Square Foot Gardening
Food not Lawns
Plant Native
Easy Lawns
Yard Beauty

In honor of Earth Day (April 22) and Earth Week (April 20-26), I went on over to EPA’s Earth Day Events & Volunteer Opportunities page to see what’s happening in my neck of the woods. I live in region 4, which includes the entire southeast plus Kentucky. If you’d like to pick up on some opportunities in your region, just click on the map and the list comes up.

In Atlanta the Children’s Museum is sponsoring one of the biggest regional events for kids. EPA has a character called “Mother Earth” who will distribute vegetable seeds and help children plant them in pots, and she’ll be giving away sun visors for the “SunWise Parade” through the museum. Sounds like fun, but I’ve no little kids and it’s way too far to drive.

Lots happening in Florida, but I won’t be there until Saturday – for a funeral, alas. Knoxville isn’t that far to go for their Earthfest event on Saturday, but I’ll be in Florida then. Oh, well. Looks like there’s just not much happening – at least, nothing government sponsored – in my Western North Carolina mountains. But wow! I’m looking out my window right now at the new green baby leaves on my hardwood forest, at gorgeous sprays of white-white dogwood scattered throughout, the red azaleas are in full dress around my garden bench, the tulips and cala lilies and jonquils are everywhere, wildflowers are popping up in the garden terraces where I didn’t plant them…

There are some great ideas available on the International Earth Day site, and interesting news and projects on the EarthdayNetwork website.

Hmmm. I’m guessing the best thing I could do today is sip some nice fresh mint tea while sitting on my garden bench planning all the hard work I need to do to get the place in order. It’s a perfect 72 degrees and the sun is intermittent. Happy Earth Day and Earth Week, all you hopeless nature-lovers!

Links:

Earth Day goes political and corporate
International Earth Day
EarthdayNetwork
EPA’s Earth Day Events & Volunteer Opportunities

A Happy Solar Homestead

When we discuss alternative energy strategies, any able homesteader is going to be concerned with building and various secondary retrofits to homes, barns and outbuildings. The more energy the homestead can gain passively – or conserve passively – the less energy will be required to supplement.

In these strategies 11-15 of the series, we’ll look at some of the ways a homesteader can use smart, green building practices and technologies to lessen their dependence on supplied energy sources.

Part 3: Building Technologies & Alternatives

11. Passive Solar Siting and Construction

Whether you’re building a new house or barn, or simply retrofitting to what’s already there, strategies for making the most of nature where you live will help to save on energy inputs.

To make the most of passive solar, consider how much direct sunlight falls on your homesite throughout the year. If you get ample sun (have a site that has an ample southerly exposure), plan accordingly. Big windows (with no significant overhang) can provide direct solar heating in the winter. Dark stain or paint on the south wall will also absorb heat from the sun. Conversely, walls that are mostly or entirely shaded during the day, plus the north wall, should have as few windows as is reasonable.

Limit heat gain in summer by planting deciduous trees (apples are good) fairly close. Also bear in mind that any south-facing roof is a good place to put solar panels or solar collectors for hot water (or both). If you do install these, you’ll want retractible awnings for your south windows because you don’t want any summer shade trees interfering.

Green Building Basics

12. Earth-Sheltered Building

A home sheltered on 2 or 3 sides with the earth itself will maintain a much steadier temperature all year round. It will be warmer in winter (and hold heat better), cooler in summer than a fully above-ground dwelling. The same is true for barns if your homestead includes livestock, as well as for spring houses and/or root cellars.

There are now “sod roof” designs too, though these also require clever planning. Plus, if you’re growing grass or wildflowers on the roof, you won’t have it available for solar collectors. The plus again is insulation as well as heating/cooling supplied by the earth and plants themselves. Because our property slopes steeply to a side-ridge next to the cabin I’ve been considering a cute little Hobbit-House dug right into it – round door and all. If I ever get a backhoe, that’s just what I’ll do. Until then, I’ll be content that the first floor is earth sheltered on 3 sides. Works great.

Earth Sheltering

New Green Building Technology: Dirt Floors

13. Supplemental Heating and Cooling

Depending on where your homestead is located in this big country, your needs for heat and cooling will be tied directly to your microclimate. If you live in a climate that requires supplemental cooling in summer (and can’t earth-berm), a water cooling system is probably the most energy efficient bet. Moving air is always good, window and attic fans work well. You can always wet your tee-shirt and sit next to the fan, be cooled in no time! Or take some time off and go soak in the cold creek.

For supplemental heat a good size homestead should be able to use wood – a renewable resource. Simply maintaining a sizeable stand of forest can supply a lot of wood from thinned saplings, standing dead and windfall (you’ll want to keep your forested acreage well anyway to diminish chance of fire). If your woods are limited be sure to replant what you take, and choose fast growing hardwoods (like tulip poplar or locust) instead of evergreen conifers (soft woods like pine and fir).

Wood Heat Stoves & Solar

Central Boiler: Outdoor Furnace

14. Recycle All the Building Materials You Can

When building or adding on (or even doing some serious remodeling) always try to get recycled building materials if you can. There are businesses in almost every good-size town/city that specialize in recycled materials – used bricks and cinder blocks, poles and logs from old houses and barns, hardwood floors, windows, doors, ceramic tile, barn and house sidings, bathroom and kitchen fixtures and plumbing, even cool interior touches like railings and finials and moldings and such. Not only do these generally cost much less than new, sometimes an able homesteader can get great materials for free by offering to tear down an old barn or dwelling and salvage what he can.

Neighbors can often help supply materials as well, so get to know them. We’ve picked up many a brick, cinder block, window, door and other supplies from people who have been collecting for years, and are trying to make room for the new “free stuff” they’re collecting. Every recycled item you use to improve your homestead is energy NOT wasted by anybody else to produce new. It’s also money saved.

ReNew Building Materials & Salvage

15. Long Term Food Storage

While home food preservation (canning, drying, freezing) is its own separate series, the wise homesteader will want to make best use of strategies for long-term food storage that don’t require extra energy inputs. One of the best strategies for long-term food storage makes double use of a spring house/root cellar combination. Even if you have a well for house water, you can use this strategy at your creek or any natural springs on the property.

Flowing water – particularly spring-fed or ground water – tends to be cold and stay within a small temperature range year round. Our spring house (10×10 feet square) was dug into the mountainside at creek level many years before we moved here. There is a concrete plastered cinder block trough along the back wall, parallel to the hillside. A pipe coming through at one end brings spring water (~40º all the time) into the trough steadily. The trough has an overflow pipe on the other side that drains it back to the creek. This cold water also moderates the temperature in the space, and I’m fond of storing melons in the trough during the summer so they’re always cold but take up no room in the house fridge.

Any root vegetables (rutabega, beets, parsley root, celeriac, potatoes, turnips, onions, carrots), winter squash, pumpkins and fruit like apples and pears can be stored in this cellar in straw (so they don’t touch directly) for up to 9 months without significant spoilage and no freeze damage. I have seen in-ground root cellar/spring houses of this design in Oklahoma that work every bit as well as mine. Also have seen this design used in a house cellar food storage area in Pennsylvania, built before there was refrigeration and with a trough the entire width of the farmhouse that served refrigeration needs very well.

Peace and Carrots: Root Cellar

Walton: The Root Cellar Home Page

In part 4 of this series – items 16-20 – we’ll look again at energy systems for producing electricity or otherwise readily usable juice, this time at hybrid systems that combine several strategies at the same time to get the most usable power from the most readily available sources. Do stay tuned!

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Electrical Generation
Part 2: Transportation and Motorized Equipment
Part 3: Building Technologies & Direct Alternatives
Part 4: Hybrid Energy Systems
Part 5: Collective Strategies for Communities

I visited the daughter of a dear friend of mine last summer. It was her 12th birthday party, which I wouldn’t have missed for the world – I’ve known and loved this young lady since before she was born. The party was held on a stretch of flat lawn below the house, which is a ~70-year old timber frame atop a tall knob in Asheville, North Carolina.

There’s a path with timber-crossed bark-backfilled steps winding down the hillside from the house to the lawn. At one point along the path there’s a little grove of tall hemlocks, blue spruce and Frasier firs with a rhododendron mid-story boundary that’s cool even in the heat of summer. An old rope swing that doesn’t look strong enough to hold anyone anymore dangles from a lone oak’s limb, a little shady clearing off the main path. There, blending unobtrusively amongst the firs and hemlocks was a different kind of tree – different enough to catch my attention sharply that day. So I collected a needled twig hoping to identify it when I got home.

It was as tall as the hemlocks, not as tall as the firs. Maybe 45 feet, conically shaped just like its coniferous neighbors, but with the oddest needle and twig pattern I’d seen in all my days. The needles paired off the twig opposite each other like hemlocks do, but each needle was an inch long. Hemlock needles are tiny in comparison, and fir needles grow at all angles. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, reminded me a little of some fern-like throwback (but this was definitely a conifer tree). When I asked my friend she told me she didn’t know its name, but did know it’s very rare.

I’d forgotten to look it up when I got home, found that saved twig and now dry needle-leaves folded in a page of newspaper just the other day when cleaning out the shelves near my computer (shows how often I clean them out!). Decided it’s about time I went looking to identify this strange tree that looks like it belongs here, but which I’ve never seen anywhere else in all my hikes in these mountains. Of course I went surfing…

I went to a dozen different conifer identification sites. Federal government, state government, academic departmental, professionally scientific. Nothing quite like it except yew, and those are rare out east as well as having needles much shorter than my sample.

I added the adjective “rare” to my search, and suddenly three or four sites came up with something that looked an awful lot like what I had. Sure enough, it turned out to be Torreya Taxifolia. a confer so rare they say its only mature specimens are in botanical gardens under highly controlled conditions. It’s also called Florida Torreya because the only known wild members of the species grow in a tiny range along the Apalachicola River in 3 counties in the Florida panhandle. It’s closely related to the Florida Yew (Taxus floridana), the only yew in Florida.

My friend’s tree is a member of a species that got “left behind” after the last ice age, when its fellow northern climate trees repatriated themselves northward as the ice melted. The Torreya didn’t, and the only wild stands that remain are mostly shoots from old stumps. No mature trees at all in its only known wild habitat.

So how, I wondered, did my friend happen to have a healthy, beautiful, nearly 50-foot Torreya in her yard? …Looking as if it belongs there?

The answer to my question came from Rewilding Torreya taxifolia. Seems there’s an effort to re-naturalize Torreya in its original habitats, and to do that they’re following an old lead. The only grove of mature “wild” Torreya happens to be located at the Biltmore Gardens in Asheville. It originated in 1939 when a dozen specimens were transplanted from the Apalachicola stand. All the original specimens are still alive and still producing strong seed after more than 65 years. Clones are being raised elsewhere in controlled environments.

The Rewilding website has a great story tracing the details, and about how squirrels have been spreading the seeds over the last half-century plus from Biltmore’s grove. My friend’s tree is not distant at all from Biltmore’s managed forests and gardens (as the crow flies maybe two or three miles). It’s probably one of the natural, squirrel-abetted ‘escapees’ from the first viable seeds those original transplants produced.

It’s a striking-looking tree, graceful and well-shaped. It caught my attention directly (in a small grove of mixed conifers set as part of the landscaping, not a focal piece) when I wasn’t looking for anything unusual. I told my friend to save me cones or berries or seeds or whatever the tree produced in the way of seed (turns out it is seeds and not cones, none evident when I met it), as I would love to have a nice standing row of these along the property line and would take good care of them. I have old American Chestnut stumps here that still grow shoots. They live to about 5 (not long enough to fruit), then die of the blight that wiped their parents out in the 1930s. I’m trying to save those too…

I beg to differ with Nearctica’s information that “the only mature individuals of the species remaining are in cultivation.” The Biltmore transpants have been producing offspring for as long as they’ve been producing seeds, and some of their offspring are gorgeous. This is a tree that obviously belongs here. But because it’s as rare as my chestnuts, don’t tell anybody I know one personally. I’m gonna have to press harder to get some seeds from my friend, see if I can’t have two or three growing here in my yard. A repatriated ice age conifer might find an open niche here, you never know.

Links:

Torreya taxifolia Arn

Rewilding Torreya taxifolia

Florida Torreya

I’ve been looking around at vacation ideas, delighted to discover a nifty partnership and grant program involving folks like the Ag department, the cooperative extension services, the park and forest services and even state and local arts councils, which they’re cleverly calling “Agritourism”. It’s really quite the innovative way to put some capital and ideas to work in the rural sector. Innovative, that is, unless you’re old enough to remember the Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal.

I know that a lot of committed homesteaders spend their vacation time working on the ‘stead instead of jaunting off to ski in Switzerland or tromping through the Amazon, but it’s really nice to take a few days off and at least get off the property for awhile. And the best part of supporting initiatives like agritourism is that it’s really, truly Green!

Even better, it’s Green without costing a bundle. It always seems kind of funny to me when things show up in my searches (this time it was “green vacations”) that simply don’t apply to anybody I know or hope to know in the idle rich jet-setter category. Ah, well. Maybe “Green” jet-setting is a new fad like bottled water – you know, the dumb things people do to look really cool without a thought to whether it’s actually cool or not. For instance…

From About.com I got a return entitled Top 10 Green Vacation Ideas. I’m advised to use the Swiss train system when I go skiing in the Alps. Check. Then a suggestion to book an eco-friendly hotel – with link to The Tides Riviera Maya Resort & Spa in Mexico. Check. The best advice is to skip the Galapagos and Amazonian rain forest even though ‘everybody’ wants to go there, because they’re “ecologically fragile.” Check. Somehow I don’t think these suggestions were meant for people like me…

So I checked a return on MSNBC that informs me ecotourism might be just as environmentally damaging as regular old everyday tourism. Once again the primary subject is how much actual travel is required to get to those “…lush national parks [in other countries] and exotic islands that attract the environmentally minded.” Odd, that. Every homesteader I’ve ever known was “environmentally minded” long before the rich and beautiful jumped on the bandwagon. Huh.

Green Living Ideas had some quite good ideas, still aimed at the jet-setters who jaunt off to the Himalayas or Machu Picchu for the weekend. Seems like my own ideas to take advantage of the clever “Art and Farm Trails” in my own state are better. We can stay at a nice small rural town B&B or even camp in a state park (all trails include at least one), go from there to a local arts and crafts festival or seafood fest, visit organic farms and wineries, pick our own apples or peaches or blueberries, take some cool lessons on the best cheap feed for free range chickens and how to best separate the cream from goat’s milk, then make cheese without using genetically engineered bacteria. Then on to ride a ferry and tour a lighthouse or two, take a hike or go fishing at the park. Sounds like a perfectly lovely week to me.

Some of my grandkids think this homestead is the perfect vacation spot. They’re right, but that doesn’t mean I’m on vacation when they’re here during the summer! The grandson who lives here doesn’t ever seem to want to go anywhere else, but I’ll bet we can talk him into it. He’s quite artistic, and one of the trails has potters’ studios and artists who will let him dig right into the clay!

At any rate, it’s good to start thinking about getting away from it all for a few days this summer if you can. And I’m thinking that by supporting the agritourism initiative in my state I’ll also get the chance to meet and exchange knowledge with other farmers and homesteaders and artists and crafters close enough to where I live to maybe share ideas and work together.

Check out some of the more innovative agritourism partnership projects at Homegrown and Handmade. Then do a search on it in your state, see what the offerings are. We can’t lose here, and I’m thinking I’ll have to do more research on some of the grants. Like one that will pay me not to mess with the mountainside of black cohosh because it’s endangered (I wasn’t messing with it anyway, so I might as well get paid!). Maybe sign up to host some tourists eager to learn how to manage ginseng and goldenseal in native forest as cash crops, how to make basalmic wine vinegar from native muscodines, or charge ‘em a buck or two to tour the culinary herb operation I’m planning to establish…

Not to mention the fact that some of those grants might just pay for the culinary herb operation too. You never know, I might someday BE an agritourist trap in the eco-tourism trade!

Links:

Ag Marketing Resource Center: Agritourism

Tennessee Agritourism Initiative

Agritourism in Kentucky

Oklahoma Agritourism

UC: Agritourism and Nature Tourism in California

NC: HomegrownHomemade

Agritourism Partnerships in Illinois