Straight from the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield, a new internet-based project to greatly expand the CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] movement into places where it hasn’t been before. It’s a project designed to connect community organizers – volunteers with a group of friends and neighbors who want to get in on farm fresh produce and other fresh foods – to buy in to local suppliers in the usual CSA manner and set up a drop-off point in their area for deliveries and for members to pick up their weekly food items. The company, farmigo, acts as the middleman to negotiate directly with growers, coordinate deliveries and scheduling, and handle the nitty gritty of the business end. It also maintains the web-based platform for people to manage their accounts, order food, and pay the fees. To support this effort, farmigo receives a 2% fee on food sold and collects this from the producers rather than from the customers.

The idea isn’t entirely new, as CSAs in some regions have already set up their local businesses through websites, and even pooled with other suppliers to make for convenient ordering of variety items and coordinate deliveries. Farmigo is pretty much the same type of thing, but on a much larger scale and including big city dwellers. The farmers, fishermen, butchers and bakers who offer products through the service still get to set their own terms and commitment periods. When you check into the website you can click on a map to receive a list of suppliers in your area with links and information on already established drop-off sites.

Farmigo also facilitates one-time ala carte purchases of things like eggs, flowers, meats, seafood, baked goods and other things that will be delivered to the drop-off point on your usual days, so the customer isn’t limited to whatever crops are being harvested at any given time on their CSA’s farm, but isn’t corralled into long-term purchase contracts with those other suppliers. This also saves the member/customer the trouble of driving around to several different drop-off points to get their food allotments. Some suppliers will even deliver to your home, depending on where you live and the nature of your orders.

Those of us who do our own organic gardening, participate in local tailgate farmer’s markets, trade with our neighbors for crops we aren’t growing ourselves, and who have turned the art of wholesome organic foods, fresh air and hard work into a regular way of [homesteading!] life, of course recognize the value of any system designed to facilitate wider participation, cheaper prices to the customer and better premiums for the growers. As CSAs and the local food movements grow, more and more people will participate, everyone will be a bit healthier, and groups of neighbors working quarter-acre or less sized organic gardens can get together and plan who grows what, pool the results together, and create their own supplier CSA group!

Because I am lucky enough to have spent the past 20 years on my little mountain homestead growing food and “fitting in” with a local culture that was here long before I was, there would be great interest in a community organizer to make the contacts with various farmers producing a single crop or two of staples like corn and wheat and oats, things many CSAs don’t produce in bulk, but which most people consume regularly as part of their normal diets. Whole and milled grains, dried beans, cornmeal (grits, hominy, whatever) in bulk would be a sure seller. Value-addeds for those non-subscription purchases, such as compotes and jam, ciders and juice made from locally grown fruit. Pickles, hot sauces, vinegars, sun-dried tomatoes and other dried foods… the possibilities are practically endless. Not to mention those free-range eggs and honey for those who keep bees – which will hopefully be me by this time next year.

The primary requirement for suppliers is that their products be grown naturally/organically. USDA organic certification is not required, but this means no GMOs, no petrochemical fertilizers or pesticides, etc. Most small farmers and backyard gardeners don’t use such things anyway, as the whole chemically-based food production system was invented for big Agribiz where the economies of scale (like 5 square miles’ worth of corn) and government subsidies disguises the true cost of the foods produced. There are farmers in my area who have rotated 40 acres in beans, corn and wheat all their lives and never managed to destroy the productivity of their land with chemical adulterants they’ve never actually needed.

I don’t know if something like farmigo would make much of a dent in my region, where local farmers and producers have been participating in CSAs since somebody first thought them up, and where local farmer’s markets are easy to find any day of the week in cities, towns and villages throughout the countryside. But this type of modern organizing and management would be a good thing even here, so there is much to learn. The more people who abandon our American Industrial Food System the better, and again with enough organized coordination those economies of scale can ultimately lower the price of good, wholesome food so that more and more people can avail themselves of it. Win-win situation, so do check around and ‘borrow’ some ideas from those who are pioneering the food wilderness.

Link:

farmigo – Locally Grown & Fresh.

The current collapse of the world financial system has revealed some structural problems in our national economy that have flourished over a period of decades as corporate interests bought politicians and lobbyists to craft legislation to remove legal roadblocks to mass theft and market manipulation. And despite some changes in the D.C. political landscape, our government remains apparently helpless to do anything about corporate malfeasance on any level. With all the bad economic news dominating the public consciousness, some issues in the food supply sector are having a difficult time being properly correlated and attended to despite the serious level of danger they present to public health.

The food supply issues didn’t begin with the market manipulations on Wall Street and from there to exchanges all over the world. Though for many people the first alarms went off as the CDS fraud crashed the economy in 2008 and the financial players went looking for other markets to wreak havoc on. They seized on commodities – staple foods from the agricultural sector increasingly dominated by multinational corporations like Monsanto, ADM and Cargill. As a traceable beginning in 2008 to what this year became the “Arab Spring” movement across North Africa and spreading to the Middle East and southern Asia, food riots broke out in Egypt and Syria and portions of India as well as elsewhere when people could no longer afford to feed themselves and their families. Things have only gotten worse in the years since, and Americans are slowly waking up.

In 2011 a full quarter of the U.S. population are dependent on food stamps. As unemployment keeps on rising, the government strangely keeps slashing the food stamp budget to appease nutty Republican radicals who insist those hardest hit by the Great Recession are just “lazy” and undeserving of aid that might require corporations and billionaires to pay taxes. Why one of the political parties in our nation believes that Americans will quietly and without complaint starve to death in the streets in order to protect billionaires from paying as much of their income in taxes as their chauffeur does has never been explained by the financial sector’s pundits at the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Major cognitive disconnect.

But serious food supply issues encompass much more than just market manipulation and governmental paralysis. Consider some of these issues while attempting to get a picture of how dire the overall situation is…

Honey Laundering: China’s at it again – Adulterating pet and human foods with melamine wasn’t bad enough – though one corporate scapegoat was executed by the Chinese government hoping to save its place as cheap ingredients supplier to the world – the latest food scam involves honey. Not just fake honey in those little bee-shaped plastic bottles, Chinese honey brokers are creating honey by mixing sugar water, malt sweeteners, corn/rice syrup, barley malt and a variety of unrefined sugars. Failure to police storage requirements has resulted in heavy metal contamination as well, primarily lead.

If you’ve been thinking about beekeeping for honey (and handy pollinators), this is the year to get busy on it. Extension services in many rural counties offer literature, evening classes, and instructions on building hives. Agents often know who in the area builds hives for sale, and aren’t shy of giving out that information. Many people who are trying hard to eat better and healthier are being taken in by the Chinese honey scam, and big food processors using that fake honey in their supposedly ‘natural’ food lines are risking their markets. Grow your own honey or buy locally from someone honest.

Time to re-engineer the meatpacking sector – Late July brought the second largest tainted meat recall so far, when Cargill’s meat packing division recalled ~36 million pounds of ground turkey products tainted with a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella. The biggest recall was in 2008, when a slaughterhouse in California recalled 143 million pounds of beef due to allowing downer cows into the mix. The dangers to public health from e.coli, salmonella, listeria and other bacteria, and from adulterants and contaminates are high, yet our government doesn’t give the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] the power to force food recalls. Companies have to do this voluntarily, and they don’t often volunteer until people start dying and CDC tracks the source down.

If your family eats meat, now is the time to seriously consider raising your own or contracting with a neighbor who raises meat animals. A side of beef from a calf pastured for a year, dressed whole chickens raised happily free range, maybe rabbit stew meat, a slab of locally smoked bacon and/or ham… buying from known sources or doing it yourself could easily save your family’s lives. The more that control of our commercial food supply gets concentrated into the greedy hands of a few, the more danger is present overall. Avoid it like the plague it truly is.

The Nation has a good article looking at How change is going to come in the food system despite united resistance of the big corporate players to cater to public demands for better, less adulterated and far less fattening foods. There is a lot of good information in this article’s analysis to arm yourself with when next you try arguing with a friend, relative or acquaintance about the importance of healthy food and the severe shortage of it in our commercial food supply.

And finally, the good news. The New York Times informs us that vegetable gardens are booming in a fallow economy. We homesteaders have of course known this all along – and have done more than our share to get more people digging and grow the local markets – but we should always welcome mainstream coverage that helps to spread awareness. Recent movement in many states to allow the use of food stamps at farmer’s markets and bulk purchases straight from farmers are helping more people to get more and better food than they could purchase in the grocery store.

Many localities are also sponsoring seed exchanges through the Lions or Ruritan, sometimes through local Chambers of Commerce, 4-H and FFA clubs at high schools. These have committees in charge of getting open-pollinated seeds from local gardeners and farmers, packaging them, and then distributing them free in the late winter and early spring to local residents planning their season’s garden crops. Local schools and civic clubs are offering gardening classes and contacts to suppliers of tool exchanges, equipment like chicken coops and bee hives, and farmers who sell chicks, calves, kids and kits to those wishing to raise their own meat animals. Local butchers are making a comeback, and in many states the Extension Service offers classes all the way up to Master Gardening certification. So get busy, and get your neighbors busy making best use of all these developing local alternatives to Big Ag and Big Food, Inc. We will be a much happier and healthier nation for it, and probably much smarter as a people for our awareness and direct involvement in this most important aspect of everybody’s lives.

Links:

NYT: Vegetable Gardens Are Booming
How Change Is Going to Come in the Food System
Time to re-engineer the meatpacking sector
Honey Laundering: tainted and counterfeit Chinese honey
Risks of tainted food rise as inspections drop

I was reminiscing the other day to my gathered grandchildren about the annual childhood vacation journeys my family used to make from wherever we were living at the time to my paternal grandparents’ home in central Kentucky. Dad let us take turns as navigator in the shotgun seat, getting us from point A to B in a day’s drive, using nothing but those “little blue roads” through the rural countryside he loved so much. Occasionally one of us kids would get us good and lost, then the next in line would have to find a way out. He was never in a big hurry, we often spent more days than necessary getting to Grandma’s house.

One of the things I recall most fondly were the painted advertising barns we’d see along the way. “See Rock City” barns no matter where we were or how far it was from there to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ubiquitous tobacco barns in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky painted to advertise for Mail Pouch or Red Man or some other cigarette, chew or pipe tobacco. Some very unique painted barns advertising for local or national businesses. We used to keep a page of the trip log for listing those, along with each eagerly anticipated Burma Shave series of one-word jingles and the usual list of state license plates seen along the way.

Those old ad-barns are quickly falling into distantly remembered history, as tobacco bases become increasingly rare and as the barns themselves deteriorate. Some have been salvaged as ‘conversation piece’ paneling for fancy rural log McMansions, pulling in a pretty penny for those who dismantle rotting outbuildings in a newer generation. In an age of interstate highways lined by boring billboards, seeing a unique working barn with a real advertisement on it is becoming a rare occurrence.

Would it surprise you to find that barn painted advertising is making a comeback? It surprised me, but then again, I don’t go far from home very often, and then mostly via interstate. But barn painted advertising still has its uses, and can return money to a landowner equivalent (or better) than from simply renting space for a billboard to be erected. All it requires is that the farm/homestead have frontage on a well-traveled roadway, and a good sized barn that can be easily seen from that roadway. Thus ‘selling’ the side and/or roof of a barn or other large outbuilding to a company for advertising could possibly be a good source of ‘extra’ income for homesteaders to think about.

You can do this yourself, though it wouldn’t be as quick a turnover to income as going through a company that contracts ads for billboards and such, that might consider your barn. For local companies, check with advertising directors to pitch your location and visibility of your outbuilding(s). This can work for regional companies as well, but national companies generally go through those advertising firms. You could try both, take the deal that offers you the most for your offered advertising space. Lucky homesteaders may in this way earn extra income just for having outbuildings visible to the public, and in return get a showpiece of a barn that can someday be worth even more as salvage!

And don’t forget to consider that you can always advertise on your visible barn/outbuilding your own farm logo if you belong to a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] cooperative, offer Agri-tourism attractions and/or B&B accommodations, or deal directly with the public for U-pick or fresh harvest produce, eggs, honey and/or meat. In such ventures advertising pays, and being visible to the public can only help.

Links:

Barn Painting & Advertising
Merced Sun-Star article
Rock City: Barn History

Sigh. As the Kabuki in D.C. continues into yet another week/month of grandstanding on the budget and raising the debt ceiling, a good many of us homesteaders are watching our state governments engaging in the same kind of bad budgetary theater as summer hits hard (and early). This year it looks a lot like neither the weather nor government policies care to offer any help to rural America, where the ‘Great Recession’ is a whole lot more like a Great Depression.

In Washington the drastic budget cuts are of course not hitting ADM or Cargill or any other giant Agribiz subsidies – mostly used to grow bioengineered corn, soy, etc. for animal feed. Rather, cuts in the USDA, EPA and FDA budgets are targeted at conservation, extension, research, renewable energy and rural development programs. Less money for inspections and enforcement, less for policing big livestock operations, less for wetland set-asides, etc., etc., etc. The slashing goes on and on, and bodes ill for just about everything that counts in this world. As if this wholesale gutting of all programs geared towards sustainable agriculture, responsible land use, regulation of pollutants and development of alternative crops isn’t bad enough, they’re also slashing food assistance programs like WIC and food stamps.

The Rodale Institute has a very good overview of how the Republican’s scorched earth policy is targeting small-scale farmers, organic growers and specialty farm/homestead programs that have been important to those of us actually engaged in trying to live sustainably on the land. With $39 billion in cuts to conservation programs aimed at protecting environmentally sensitive areas and $350 million for the Organic Transitions Research Program, it seems quite obvious that today’s politicians don’t have much of an appreciation of what it takes to grow and market nutritious food.

Meanwhile, here at my homestead where the summer crops were planted late due to too much rain and some concern about fallout deposition of cesium from Fukushima (which was high in this area), the rain finally did slack off. To nothing. Haven’t had more than a few drops in over a month, and issues with the cistern have us on water rationing in the household – there’s nothing to irrigate with. That hasn’t been an issue most years given that average rainfall here is ample, but this year’s shaping up to be hellishly hot and dry. I can do nothing but wait and see which crops make it through to the next rainy spell, keep some potted seedlings in reserve to plant REALLY late if need be. If it’s to be a super-hot summer, it could last well into November. That’s enough time for most things, even if planted late.

Below are some good articles and resource collections so that we who will be most affected by what Washington (and our state governments) do about the coming second dip of the Great Recession. I urge all my readers to educate themselves to what’s happening nationally and locally, and get involved. Call your representatives. Write letters to the editor. Bring up the important issues at the farmer’s market and at church and at any other community meetings where people who are also affected can be found. Money is just paper and computer data these days. Wall Street’s paper is even less than that. But everyone has to eat, and if there are no food producers people will starve. Our land, our labor, our crops are much more imp We must speak out. We must speak loudly. And we must enlist all the help we can get.

Links:

Agri-Pulse Communications
Rodale Press
Rural Resource Guide [NC]
American Farmland Trust

One of my granddaughters is graduating from high school next weekend, she won’t be 17 until a week later. Yes, she’s extremely smart and plans to be a surgeon, has already been accepted to an excellent school with most of her costs covered by scholarships. The two eldest grandsons will be starting their final year in college this coming fall, though of course no one knows in this economy if there will actually be jobs for them when they graduate.

As the world and national situations get continually worse and worse, the subject of education and its value in whatever kind of society we all end up with when the chaos of massive changes is finally over is a pressing consideration for a great many parents, not just dedicated homesteaders who are at the leading edge of change. As the reactionary forces embodied by right-wing Republicans in state governments and in D.C. seek constantly to destroy the system of public education, parents are often left to wonder if the kids are learning anything at all that might help them do well in life.

Public schools, private schools, charter schools, magnet schools… the choices often boil down to how much money parents have to spend, and out on the rural homesteads of America there usually isn’t a lot of money because it’s all gone into establishing and constantly improving on the choice to go back to the land and ‘ground’ the children in a way of life we consider more honest and broad-ranging than the more urban lifestyles we left behind.

Depending entirely upon the family situation, income, distance from schools and transportation, there is another choice that many parents both urban and rural are making these days – Homeschooling. This can involve parents teaching their own children, or it can involve certified tutors/teachers who manage a group of children from large families or cooperatives of families in a one-room schoolhouse situation. Or it can involve rotating parental teachers each offering their own knowledge and specialties over periods of weeks or months.

Children who are home schooled still have to take those approved achievement tests every year and demonstrate proficiency in the basic subjects required by legislation such as NCLB. There are websites that offer tools and lesson plans, shops in many towns offering books and supplies, and there are organizations for home schoolers where issues can be discussed, other people’s experience can be shared, and hints on the best approaches can be formulated. I’ve included some links below for those interested.

For whatever reasons, it is safe to say that the home schooling movement does include a good many rural homesteaders. If you are among them, and your child has reached the level where higher education comes next, many would ask how hard it is to get home schooled children into college. Do all colleges take home schooled children? Do state colleges welcome home schooled students? What about private colleges? Are scholarships and grants available to home schooled students?

It takes a good deal of dedicated research for families to find answers to all their questions. Depending on your reasons for home schooling, you may find SuperScholar’s list of The Ten Best Colleges for Homschoolers to be a valuable resource. Check with a local organization as well for state colleges and community colleges that welcome home schooled students, and with the proprietors of materials distributors in your area for information about financial aid. Many religious denominations offer scholarships through their private schools, as do some organizations.

As the summer progresses I’ll take a look at some of the educational alternatives homesteaders in my region have established, how well they’re working (or not), and what I can find out about colleges here and what they require – besides the SATs – to accept home schooled students. Along with hopefully helpful lists of resources, forums and advice for homesteaders who wish to educate their children outside the government system. The sooner parents start thinking about their options and doing their own homework, the better prepared they will be to accomplish this very important life-task while doing right by their children. So stay tuned, homesteaders!

Useful Links:

Best Colleges for Homschoolers
Homeschool.Com Community
Homeschool Central: Resources
Wiki’s Extensive History and Overview

Despite what my trusty Geiger counter tells me about the presence of radioactive isotopes in my air, water and ground, it’s in the 80s here in the mountains this week and things really must be planted. After several days of steady rain when levels were up around 10 mcrem/hr here on the mountain, we got a break yesterday when it fell back to entirely undetectable. Today it’s up again to an average of 5 mcrem/hr, which I’m guessing is going to be our new ‘normal’ background. At least until Fukushima stops dumping, and that may take months.

So I’ve turned some beds, busted up the clods, and scattered seed for salad greens and bunching onions. I figure what we’re getting here of airborne radiation is primarily iodine-131, which has been showing up in milk in various states closer to Japan than mine. We can live without fresh milk, dry works just as well for baking and cooking, was processed long enough ago to be free of radioactivity. Butter is a bit more worrisome because we go through a lot of it here on the ‘stead, cheese less so due to the fact that it tends to get aged pretty well. After 4-6 weeks even relatively high levels of iodine will decay away, since its half-life is 8 days. Nothing that I can plant right now would have detectable levels left of iodine by the time it’s ready to eat, so I feel pretty good about that too. Cesium is a bigger problem (134 with a half-life of 2 years and 137 half-life at 30 years), but that will be much more of an issue at and near Japan as well as in seafood and seaweed. What will make it here won’t be more than after a Chinese bomb test.

According to my calendar, I could risk planting corn and beans at this point, even though last frost date is officially May 10. In this my 19th gardening year here, I’ve never seen it freeze that late. Blackberry winter always hits during the first week of May, but it hasn’t been below the 40s in all those years. My biggest plans for the upcoming weekend are to organize the ‘shroom hunters planning to converge here. It’s morel time, it’s scheduled to rain, and we are very much looking forward to the feast.

Meanwhile, my local plant supplier – Painter’s Greenhouse has changed hands. Steve and Susie Painter have chosen to retire, transferring the business to the Owens family. The focus has changed from landscape and houseplants to garden vegetables and herbs, which can be purchased by the dozen for not much more than the cost of seeds and potting soil. I got some heirloom tomatoes and very good non-hybrid peppers last year that did so well I still have some in the freezer. The tomatoes were viney enough that this year I’m planning on just letting them hug the ground, there isn’t a tomato cage anywhere tall enough to handle them. A 3-4 inch layer of straw on the ground should allow for good fruit without having to be off the ground entirely, and Painter’s should have bales of straw as well.

I encourage readers to check out their own local suppliers and give them their business. They will pay attention when you request they offer heirlooms and open-pollenated varieties, as these are in great demand these days. If your homestead doesn’t have a local supplier, you might look into the idea of becoming one yourself! At Painter’s there are weekly sales events in season with cook-outs, local bluegrass bands and lots of diversion for the kids so you can roam the greenhouses at will. These have proven immensely popular, and they often allow local artists to set up as well. Our potters and ceramic artists are gaining quite the regional reputation, and there’s just nothing more glamourous than having a few unusual pots and planters decorating your porches with great greenery planted within. Supporting local artists is always a good thing, and helps to establish great networking opportunities to grow homestead viability in a number of creative ways.

Remember that local networks of sales and barter tend to keep what’s valuable circulating locally instead of just enriching some faceless corporation somewhere. When thinking about growing things from the ground up, it’s good to remember that can mean much more than just fruits, veggies and herbs. The same is true of local Farmer’s and Tailgate markets, CSA cooperatives, etc. So when you’re surfing after a long day doing work about the homestead, don’t forget to do some localized searching for developing cooperatives in your area that it may behoove you to investigate and/or join!

Never heard of anything called “agroecology?” Don’t feel alone, it’s not a very familiar term. Yet it could as easily be called “organic” or just plain “sustainable” and we’d easily recognize it.

Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, has a nice website explaining what agroecology is all about and how it’s being put to work in the developing world to help people supply food for their families and communities in a sustainable way. Working WITH nature, not against it.

Jill Richardson also has a great report on agroecology on Alternet, New UN Report on How to Feed the World’s Hungry: Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture.

Those of us who are just starting – or always expanding – our means of doing for ourselves should pay serious attention to the many projects all over the world attempting to empower people to do the very things that we’ve decided to do. Big Changes – and let’s face it, we all know that Big Changes are in the offing for the future if humanity is to have any future – are coming. We’re on the leading edge for reclaiming the “mysteries” of life that the modern industrialized world tried so hard to breed out of us. They can start small, just as we’ve been beginning for ourselves. Bottom-up will be the only way sustainable changes can come unbeholden to multinational gigacorps and Big Biz. Monsanto’s World Vision isn’t a world I’d like to leave to my grandchildren.

So do check out the links for agroecology. Then, if you’re already somewhat established, look around for some of the latest regional doings related to agritourism. I’ll have more of that in future posts, so stay tuned!

Links:

Oliver De Schutter SRFood

New UN Report on How to Feed the World’s Hungry: Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture

Agroecology.Org

My homestead isn’t the only one spending these frigid, snowy January nights making plans for the coming year. Those of course include an assortment of building, maintenance and development projects that never seem to all get done, which is why around here the very definition of “Homestead” is “a perpetual work in progress.”

But with the seed, plant and equipment catalogues coming in almost daily, it’s garden planning that helps me get through the mid-winter doldrums. Sadly, the ongoing – and in many places, worsening – economic depression is not looking to get better any time soon. And an interested observer in all things political/economic will also have noticed that there are new bubbles inflating as bailout money is being jealously hoarded or just funneled straight into newer, more lucrative derivatives and speculatory gambling casinos. Whenever recovery (on Main Street, Wall Street’s doing just fine) threatens to break out, something happens to further impoverish those who still have homes and jobs. As if just to make sure no “little person” gets a break. It’s winter, so of course the cost of fuel oil and coincidentally all other petro-products shoots through the roof. Gasoline is near $4 a gallon in my neck of the woods, diesel is already there.

It’s the food bubble that should most affect our annual planning, though. Seems the incurable gamblers on Wall Street forced to give up on their real estate betting bubble have recently taken to commodity speculation. Specifically, speculating on the staple food crops/products of entire regions and nations. This serves to drive prices way high, even if the commodity is in ample supply. Rice, for instance. Wheat. Corn. Soybeans. Whatever. Food riots have been breaking out in North Africa (where the Tunisian dictator recently learned the limits of his actual power), southeast Asia, South America and even portions of north-central Europe. I saw somewhere that we could expect $12/gallon milk and $8/loaf bread by mid-summer. Don’t think I believe it, but you never know.

So it looks like I’ll be expanding the area of garden dedicated to my own family’s food supply this year. I will also be doubling my solar drying capacity to keep up, ensuring the fame doesn’t starve next winter. I’m tripling the potato patch, planting more storing varieties while increasing the fresh red section. More greens, way more tomatoes, intensified onion and leek production, an entire 100′ section of staggered bean pole wikiups, and turning the entire bottom end between the fence and forest into one giant pumpkin patch. I figure if I plant a bit more intensively I should be able to grow the same number of pepper plants and plan whole blocks of regular and fancy basils between them and the more widely spaced tomatoes. Will try my hand at intercropping too, planting cool-weather don’t-mind-shades beneath the bean tents and shallow-rooted greens like spinach and mustards amongst the peppers and tomatoes.

Last year and this winter has been a time crowded and full of family ‘issues’ to deal with, so I’m not yet close to the fencing and shelter-building I’ll need for my dream of chickens, goats and bees. And since the tiller died, I’ve not much hope of turning the high field to wheat or corn. So I’ve been looking around for some local organic farmers who do grow staple grains and such, hoping to trade or at least not spend anything more than I can make weekly on my herbs, produce and value-addeds. So I’m seeking new markets and new suppliers that won’t require me to appear in person at the various tailgate markets within a 50-mile radius. The price of diesel makes that business plan untenable for the coming season anyway.

To my absolute delight, I discovered Asheville Local Foods, Inc. on-line and went exploring through their website. I’ll write about this absolutely wonderful idea in future posts, along with my thoughts on how this type of effort can be expanded and subdivided to accommodate buyers well outside the city proper, even to the point of exchanges between producers themselves. I think it could work almost anywhere that people are wanting to buy local, healthy and even organic foods and food products, where everybody who’s anybody already knows what a CSA is, and where tailgate and small farmers’ markets draw community buyers on a regular basis all season long.

So stay tuned while I finish my homework and ruminating, go ahead and check ALFInc’s website, and see if it gets your planning juices going as it has mine. Be back soon!

Link:

Asheville Local Foods, Inc.

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!