the Biggest Little Farm movie

Today I saw a GREAT film. You’re gonna want to see it too! Beautiful cinematography, heartfelt story, important wisdom, and a great all-around experience. To get tickets, go HERE.

I truly believe that if we support and develop farms like this all across the United States, we can do away with large-scale monocultures. Really - go see this film.

New Dairy Information

I subscribe to Modern Farmer, which used to be a print magazine but is now online only. I like their articles about modern farming practices, and they are deep into sustainability and accountability. They recently published a new report from the Cornucopia Institute about the best dairies in the country. The Institute supports economic justice for family-style farming. This particular report studies several aspects of dairy farming: 1) the percentage of grass in a cow’s diet; 2) How much pasture is available for grazing; 3) the level of control a brand has over its milk supply; and 4) How the farmer suppliers expand their milking herd.

I was anxious to read the report and find the best dairy in our area. We have been buying from Straus Family, mostly because they use glass bottles that can be reused, and they are an organic farm. But I was distressed to see them at only the ‘good’ level on this list. They did not meet the criteria for grass-fed. Here is the list.

The highest-rated farm in our area is Organic Pastures, which I have trouble finding in our local stores, so more research is needed there. Meanwhile there are several other options for us on that list, which is helpful. One thing I have noticed is that a lot of grass-fed milk is not homogenized. I do have trouble convincing my family to drink ‘lumpy milk.’ One brand that we like that IS homogenized is Maple Hill. It’s got a 5-cow rating from Cornucopia, which is great, and I can find it easily in our Whole Foods. I just wish I didn’t have to buy milk from New York! So I will keep searching for a local dairy that has milk that is just-right for us.

image credit: spruce eats

We have some beautiful flowers blooming right now.

sage-leaved rock rose

heirloom violas

Geum

Echium

poppies

checkerbloom

Spring is definitely fully HERE. What’s happening in your garden? And where do you get your dairy products?

Bluma Organic Flower Farm

I'm only taking two classes this semester; one is yet another course in California native plants, and the other is a course in Nursery Management. (I had also signed up for a course on Plant Diseases, but it was cancelled because the person who teaches it retired, so they are searching for another disease expert.) My Nursery Mgmt professor requires us to get out in the community and research some sort of nursery operation, ideally volunteering some time there, and interviewing the owner or staff. Recently I read an article in our local paper about an organic flower farmer about 20 miles south in Sunol. I decided that was the perfect place to visit, so I contacted the owner, and spent about three hours there on Labor Day, weeding a row of flowering oregano and chatting with whoever came near. I also got to spend the lunch break with the team and ask more questions. It was a very interesting morning!

rows of Lisianthus and Zinnia

Joanna Letz is the owner of this two-acre, organic flower farm called Bluma. The farm is located in an area called the Sunol Ag Park, which is owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and managed by the Alameda County Resource Conservation District. There are six farms located within this land, which is in a sort of bowl-shaped valley surrounded by hills. Two creeks meet here, and it's easy to see the watershed influence on this land. The soil is very beautiful and Joanna adds 36 cubic yards of compost every year at the start of the growing season. That is the only additional fertility this land needs. 4th-6th grade students come here to learn about organic farms and local watersheds. There is a 59-foot high 'water temple' built on this land, which speaks to the history of water here. This temple was built in 1906 and originally collected water in a cistern which was then funneled to San Francisco though the Niles aqueduct. There are paintings on the roof of the temple. It's closed to the public now (though that might be temporary), but I visited there many years ago in my letterboxing days. 

You can see the water temple at the far left of this photo.

My 50-foot row of oregano was surrounded by a vast variety of weeds, many taller than me. It took me 2-1/2 hours to weed my row, and by the end of it I was pretty pooped. And my hands hurt badly this morning, evidence of the repetitiveness of the activity of grasping and pulling. Farming seems increasingly to me to be a young-person's game. At least this kind of small-scale farming. Joanna works the field from early April to late October, and then rests it by planting a five-seed cover crop, including things like hairy vetch, to return nutrients to the soil. Sometimes she uses weed cloth, but mostly the weeding is done by hand. The weeding is not about elimination; rather, the focus is on knocking back a lot of the large growth so that the flowers can get the sun and space to dominate. So nearly every row of flowers is in some stage of weed overgrowth, and the weeding is just as frequent a task as harvesting. Meaning, basically, it's an everyday task. 

You can't even see the oregano through these weeds. 

My row when I was finished. I was instructed to pile the weeds up in the path on either side of the row; they will break down and feed the soil. However I did pull a lot of weeds that had a LOT of seeds on them, so those will likely germinate at some point and continue the cycle. So this practice is both good and not-so-good.

While I weeded, the rest of the staff was harvesting bunches of flowers for delivery. Joanna makes deliveries three days a week to local grocery stores and restaurants. She doesn't do the arranging, unless she is providing flowers for a wedding or other big event, which is a couple of times a month. She used to sell at Farmers' Markets, but doesn't any longer.

The flower bundles go in to a truck which follows the crew, and then into a cooler at the end of the field, that is shared by many farmers. 

Joanna shares a greenhouse with another farmer in this area and that is her main propagation space. It was fun to walk by that other farmer's fields, too - and see how he does large-scale (well, larger than mine anyhow) tomato and pepper farming. I was pleased to see that he also has cut down superfluous growth on his tomatoes (all of which were small cherry and saladette types) and interested to note that he has done the same on his peppers. Guess I need to take a hint and do that too.

The crew and I sat in an outdoor learning classroom (just basically a few picnic tables covered by a tarp) to eat our lunches, brought from home. Three of the staff are part-time workers - one works once a week, one three days a week, another is on-call. Only one is full-time (other than Joanna) and she works six days a week. There could be others that I didn't meet, and in fact, there must be. They all work from 6:30 am to 5:00 pm, a very long day. This is out in hot sun without any shade, of course. All of them are young, in their 20's, and all of them care about food justice and good organic produce. When asked what they wanted people to know, they said "buy your food and flowers at the Farmers Markets." 

A newly-planted field

Large-scale flower farming is overwhelmingly conventional, using pesticides and herbicides at will. Many also use specific hormones to enhance the crop in some way. Organic flowers cost more, and should, as I learned just from my one scant weeding session. Joanna uses the tractor only to create rows at the beginning of each planting, so this land is also largely no-till. While the weeds are a hassle for the workers, they are good for the soil, keeping a living root growing at all times and feeding the microbial life that lives there. This type of farmer recognizes that keeping the soil healthy will keep the crops healthy, and the downside is the weeds. But it's worth it to see the amount of insect life on an organic farm. Joanna's fields were full of a huge diversity of pollinators, and I saw very little evidence of pests, and trust me, I would have seen them if they had been there. Goodness me, it was my own private little jungle. 

I looked up from my task to take this photo of Joanna, the owner, harvesting flowers. 

I learned an awful lot just by spending the morning with these young, energetic, committed farmers. I encourage you to do the same in your neighborhood, if only to recognize the hard work farmers do to make our lives beautiful and delicious. Especially in our desk-and-computer-oriented tech society. We have it so easy in so many ways! And yet, even though the work was hard yesterday (and I was super relieved to go home after lunch instead of finishing out the day), there were tremendous benefits: Being outdoors in the sunshine, smelling sweet oregano as I brushed past it to pull a weed; using my body the way it's meant to be used, stretching and reaching and squatting and crawling; having my knees in the good dark earth and smiling at the earthworms as they revealed themselves to me; hearing the distant chatter from the other workers but not having to engage unless I really felt like it; the satisfaction of being set a task and completing it before leaving for the day; and the sweet knowledge that I didn't have to organize anyone or figure out the next step or spend time at home figuring out the logistics of the thing. I did not hear one mobile phone ringing. Instead I listened to the hawks and crows and jays. I saw a kestrel fly over the fields. Someone came by to visit the farmers and discussed powdery mildew. It was all very present and NOW. And I imagine that this sort of work could be quite addictive. 

Hard to choose a favorite flower from this farm, but this one might be it, some variety of zinnia that I haven't grown, but definitely need to!

The Wheat is Lodging

When you grow wheat, you begin to see what an important crop it is in our country. Google-research a problem with, say, kale, and you'll get a bunch of websites written by folks just like you and me. Google-research a problem with wheat, and BAM: You've got the big guns weighing in, from the USDA to the Land Grant Universities. According to the USDA, wheat ranks third among US field crops in planted acreage, production, and gross receipts. (You can guess the top two crops, I imagine.) However, wheat planting and production are actually down this year, due to lower returns and changes in government programs, as well as increased competition from global wheat markets. 

Again according to the USDA, wheat, along with corn, soybeans, cotton, and potatoes, accounts for about 80% of all pesticide use in our country. 

This makes you wanna find your local, organic wheat farm, doesn't it? It sure does for me. It also sure as hell solidifies my resolve to continue baking our own bread with said wheat.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying our own wheat-growing experiment. There are some definite downsides. The main one is space, which is certainly a limiting factor. The ratio of biomass-to-product is quite high; the huge stalks take up quite a bit of room for such little return. You have to plant a LOT of wheat to get any kind of poundage at the end of the process. It's also a long-growing crop; I planted these seeds in October, and the plant probably won't be ready for harvesting until late May, at the earliest. This is an issue when I want to get summer crops in the ground at the beginning of May at the latest. Some crops, such as potatoes, should go in in February. In order to do that, I'm going to have to cut some of the wheat early.

There are lots of positives to growing wheat, though, not the least of which is how beautiful it is. It couldn't be any more GREEN.

Other benefits: The aforementioned biomass is actually a boon, as it can be used in several ways; as fodder for the chickens, or as a mulch for my summer plants. Finding organic straw is difficult, and I've basically made my own. It has acted as a wonderful cover crop over the winter, mixed with crimson clover as an understory plant. Live roots in the ground year-round really promote soil life and health. I mean, just LOOK at all the sunlight that's been captured in these beautiful leaves.

Here's another downside, though, at least in my garden. My wheat is starting to lodge.

Lodging is when the wheat falls over. It's happening in every one of my beds. The outside rim of each bed is fine, beautifully upright, and then the inner portions have keeled over. There are many reasons this could have happened, but I don't see that any are applicable here. The plants could be suffering from excess nitrogen (never a problem in my beds, trust me when I tell you that all my soil nutrient tests come back deficient in nitrogen, which is why I planted clover too - but the nitrogen nodules in the roots of the clover won't be available to nearby plants until after I cut down the clover and let the roots rot in the soil). They could be suffering from a deficiency of potassium (though my soil tests say this nutrient level is ok). They could have fallen from high winds, which I suppose is possible, but honestly, are our winds higher than those in the Great Plains? I don't think so. It hasn't been particularly wet this winter. Interseeding clover is supposed to help with this issue, and I did that. 

The only thing I can figure is, it's the variety of wheat. I planted all heirloom varieties, wheat that could be considered ancient and isn't used any longer on big commercial farms; Emmer, Sonora, and Red Fife. And from my reading, it does sound as though the lodging problem has been bred out of the newer strains, along with a lot of the nutrition. Honestly, I don't WANT to grow modern wheat. I want to grow the good, heirloom stuff.

I am cheered by reading that the lodging may not hurt the seed crop, if it happens before the seed develops. But I do think stems of wheat lying down and collecting water is going to invite rot; and in fact, some of the stems have some discoloration. So, this crop may end up being fodder and straw sooner than I expected, and I'll just have to keep buying my wheat berries from the local farmer. 

Have any of you ever grown wheat? How have you dealt with lodging?

"Greenwashing" at Farmers Markets

Piggybacking on my post about buying real honey a couple of days ago, here's another scam of which we need to be aware. Yesterday I received my monthly copy of Mother Earth News magazine. In the 'news' section, there was a brief article titled "How to Ask the Right Questions at a Farmers Market." This is in response to the problem of greenwashing, which is unfortunately becoming more and more prevalent. I first heard about this only about six months ago, but it seems that it's now a common problem. And since I frequently encourage you to buy locally from Farmers Markets, I think it's important that you know there is a dark side.

Greenwashing: "Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image."

We are becoming smarter and more selective consumers, and this means that producers have to come up with new ways to get us to buy their products. It's now quite common at the local Farmers Market to 1) have vendors who are not farmers at all and have no affiliation with the farm, 2) have produce that is grown by large commercial and conventional farms re-sold under the guise of small and local, and 3) have produce with misleading labels. 

It really stinks that we have to navigate the markets, once a safe space, with a more discriminating mind, but guess what? That's how much power your food dollar has. Never think that your everyday buying habits are not making change, because they are, so much so that the big companies have to figure out ever sneakier ways to trick you. 

My own personal Farmers Market, right outside the back door

We'll talk about other options besides the Market too, but first, the Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit out of Wisconsin ("promoting economic justice for family scale farming"), has created a handy printable guide for you to take to the Market with you. It has a list of questions for you to ask the vendor, which will help you determine whether the food is really local, if it's in season, if it's organic. As I've often said here, if you talk to the farmer, you'll learn all you need to know, and this guide will help you to do that. Real farmers are so happy to answer your questions, so happy to talk about the work they are doing, because they are proud of it and proud of their product.

By the way, local small farmers often can't afford the official organic certification. Don't let that stop you from buying from them. Many of them limit the use of chemicals because it's simply a best practice; if you talk with them, they'll be happy to tell you about it. 

Remember the seasons, too. If it's December and your local market has tomatoes, you should be suspicious. However if it's May and your local market has tomatoes, that farmer just might have a heated greenhouse and a very clever touch. You'll know if you talk to them. If you don't know what's in season right now (and how could you help but be confused when you can buy most produce any time of year in any big store?), there are lots of good guides for figuring that out. For instance, you could go to The Seasonable Food Guide and type in your state to find out what's in season during each month. It says that right now, in California, in early January, there are nearly 70 items I can buy that are in season. (Granted, when I type in Minnesota, there are only 14 choices. But still! 14! Pretty amazing in that climate. Some are stored items like sweet potatoes.)

Now I have a confession to make. I actually don't love shopping at Farmers Markets. Most of it has to do with a sort of impulse I feel about wanting to buy something from everyone. I get all weirded out by the vendors watching me look at their produce and then not buying something.I've been to countless markets and I nearly always feel it, especially in the dead of January when the offerings are small (as they should be!) and farmers are probably hurting. Going in there and asking questions of them makes me even more uncomfortable. It feels like asking them to prove themselves. But here's something I know is absolutely true: If I were selling my produce at the market and someone came up and started asking me questions, I'D BE DELIGHTED. I'd be so thrilled to talk about my farm and how I do things. Goodness why do you think I write this blog? Basically to brag about what we grow here! So if a vendor is reluctant to talk to you, well then, you're right to be suspicious.

However! If all of this just makes your skin crawl and you just can't do it, there is another option; you could connect directly with the farms in your area. CSA boxes are a great way to get the produce directly from the farm, delivered right to your door (sometimes there is a pick-up location). You simply sign up with the farm to receive a box of whatever they have growing every week, every two weeks, or every month. Sometimes they ask you to purchase a few months right up front - this is good for them because it gives them the resources they need to buy seed and supplies. It gives them a guaranteed income. And you get a box of great stuff on the regular. 

I'll tell you what, it'll force you to cook what's in season, with new produce that you may never have cooked before. Many of the farms include recipes in their boxes so that you have some ideas to start with. It's a fun adventure! And since these CSA farms offer visits and tours, you'll be able to see firsthand the operation and have the confidence in knowing you're buying the good stuff. You can often even volunteer work time to lower the price of your subscription, which gives you the added benefit of learning what it takes to put food on your plate. 

The amount of different things you can buy from subscription is huge - eggs, wine, dairy - I even bought my parents a fish subscription one year from a local Sacramento River Fish Farm. I think they'd tell you how fun it was to get different kinds of fish every month!  As I've written about here before, we even had a meat subscription for a time from a local grassfed operation. It was great. 

I just ordered more wheat from a local place near us in the Capay Valley, Full Belly Farm. They aren't really set up for that kind of thing, but I've developed a relationship with them over time and they are happy to send me wheat every six months or so. It just took one phone call that first time to set that up, and they've been so accommodating. We've also been there several times, to eat a fabulous Mother's Day dinner, to pick up organic straw, and just to visit the farm. They have an open door policy. That's the kind of transparency you want! Many, many family farms are doing CSA boxes now, and one great place to figure out who is in your area is Local Harvest. Just put in your zip code and find out what farms are near you!

I'm sorry that we all have to be so discriminating when it comes to our food, and not just at big supermarkets, but also at the small Farmers Market. But it's just one more step in making sure we are eating the very best produce available, and sending a message with our purchases, too.