Tuesday, May 27, 2008
















Okay I finally got this thing to put a picture up. These are the farm and the fresh pasta we made with Jen's kid Rafael (and Leslie), some cuddling goats and heirloom beans and cowpeas. I can't remember what we've done since I last wrote but some of the things are broadcasting millet, seeding black garbanzos and heirloom beans. Oh yeah, husking corn with this really nice corn husker - beautiful green corn - threshing beans, lots of hoeing. The corn and beans, millet and buckwheat that we seeded last week are up and really nice and we're going to take out the horse cultivator this week hopefully though it's been raining for a few days. What do you think over there, do you think people in the Toronto area would be interested in a grain CSA? Jeff and I are really into it the grain and legumes thing, we would really like to do it and it's pretty low overhead. But do you think that people would be interested in fresh milled flours, dry beans, lentils, chickpeas and cool whole grains?? Grains are so neat because of how nutritious they are and we don't really think about how many of them are obselete now that wheat has taken over. Anyway, my hands just stopped working so my grain nutrition sermon is being aborted. Just look at the pictures...

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Farming at last!

For all those people that got a little depressed after reading our last post, fear not! All that driving was worth it! We're here in Fort Jones, California in this beautiful valley farmin' grain!!! And it's good good fun. This farm is great, and we're learning a lot and getting more and more excited every day to grow grains and legumes for our CSA when we get back. It's so so fun and worthwhile, I think. We've been at Windborne Farm with Jennifer Greene for a week so far and we're getting into the swing of things. We're done some cool stuff so far such as seeding chickpeas, beans, heirloom corn, buckwheat, millet and cowpeas. We've been hoeing lentils and moving tons of irrigation wheel lines which are those big aluminum pipes on wheels that farmers round here use to irrigate their field crops (all the farmers around us use them to irrigate their acres and acres of alfalfa). It's been really great. This week, Jennifer's got a CSA drop-off so we've been watching her beautiful mill in action as well as her nice seed cleaner (the old kind, you know, we had one at Whole Circle, but she's got her's done to a pretty fine art).
We've baked in her wood-fired oven (yummy flat breads) and made pasta and bread. And best of all cultivated with her Fjord horse Thor. As an added bonus, she taught us to spin wool and card weave which is really fun - we're gonna teach some school kids how to do it tomorrow.
So yeah, the view from an organic farm is definitely better than from the I-40. Though there is an awful lot of high-noon irrigating of alfalfa going on around here, and that means big mists thrown into the air when it's 45 degrees in the blazing sun - not too efficient.
So it's real good and Jeff and I are looking forward to incorporating a lot of what we;re learning about into our own farm in the future. Hooray!

Friday, May 9, 2008

Across the U.S.....



You know, exiting the boundaries of the farm and venturing into the rest of the world is always a little bit shocking but I gotta say, leaving Pat's beautiful homestead in the mountains increased the shock level by A LOT especially considering we left it to drive ourselves West across the Southern United States! Sheesh, I don't recommend that for anyone who has a mind towards noticing the way that our society is well just slightly functioning in the most backwards, inefficient way possible. I was trying to make my mind wrap around the crazy things I was seeing - pre-fab houses on the backs of semi trailers moving down the highway, giant fields of just harvested cotton smack dab in the middle of a town where you must have to know a secret password to find fresh food - these sights caught between the bumpers of cars the size of boats. Now, I know that this exists, that this is how our society works, that's the whole point of what we're doing, but from the point of view of the U.S interstate, the world seems pretty bleak. We're like polar bears who have decided to only eat peaches. What!?!?!? I mean, everything we do seems to be completely the opposite of efficient or sensical. And the apathy - oh the apathy....
From the point of view of the interstate (and I'm not saying that this is necessarily the best way to view the world) people don't seem to want to analyze how their actions are going to effect the lives of their children and certainly not their children's children - but it's gonna be science fiction come to life in my opinion - war, scarcity, death. We don't seem too believe that we need to function in a way that is at all in line with how the earth functions (like those peach-eating polar bears), we'll just use up all the oil, all the trees, all the land and not think about what the hell our kid's are gonna do. And not just in terms of what are they gonna use for resources but also, what's gonna make their lives enjoyable, calm, fulfilling 'cause I can't believe that living in some kind of futuristic bubble is gonna be too nice. At least, as I say, that's how it looks from the godforsaken interstate.
However, thank god for the Santa Fe Farmers Market and the New York Times!!!!! By that I mean, the Santa Fe Farmers's Market is beeeeeeautiful. And when we got to my mom's the New York Times had a great article about urban farming in NYC, Detroit and elsewhere. To my relief, I was reminded of all the awesome people who are doing positive, innovative things (not, apparently the gov't of Burma, but, well, at the farmers market?!?!?!?) and soon we're heading out to someone just like that to work on her farm for a month, phew.
Now how's that for ending on a positive note?
(p.s. I couldn't figure out how to put a caption on the photos above, so the first one is a big ol' dead-looking field in Arkansas and the other two are the Santa Fe Farmers Market - hand-spun mohair and oyster mushrooms)