Hi Everyone,
In this update:
1. Welcome to new members
We have many new members this year, and we'd like to offer a special welcome to each of you. This is our 14th year of doing CSA. Many of our members have been with us for years, but there is always a turn-over, and we're glad that somehow people hear about our program and fill in the gap for members who move, start their own garden or just take a year off CSA.
If you are new, this might be your first in-season update. I try to send an update every month, but sometimes that doesn't happen. The spring is especially busy for us, and it isn't until we start our CSA pick-up that things actually start to slow down a bit. Solstice is a turning point in our calendar, as it is with all agrarian-minded folks and cultures. We still have lots to do—the weeds are coming on like crazy!—but most of the soil work and planting is done. So, here I sit, two days after solstice, unconsciously thinking that I just might have time for an update. That's kind of the cycle we operate in.
Some of you new members may not know that we are transitioning into biodynamic farming. The leap from being "organic" to attempting to be biodynamic ("BD") is huge. I suppose I could compare it to the difference between graduating from kindergarten and graduating from graduate school. The standard of BD is very high. Whereas everyone talks about "sustainability," that is the standard of BD. Many BD farmers fall short of the standard, but the standard is not lowered for that reason. You'll hear (and read in updates) bits and pieces about BD as you come to know our farm better. We're still in the learning/transition period, but that period is a long one in the BD tradition.
We'd like all our new members to be aware that we've written a "Jubilee Farm CSA Handbook" (see #4 below) that is posted on our web page. It answers many of the questions we are often asked. It may also raise some questions. If it does, or if you have general questions about the farm, you are welcome to drop us a note at jubileefarm@hotmail.com.
2. Farm School for kids and adults
During the months of July and August we offer our CSA "farm school." This year we've added a new "section" of the of farm school—one for adults. But we're also continuing our usual kid's farm school.
What is farm school all about? Well, let's look at the Summer Session CSA Handbook (which is posted on line):
14. What and when is the "Farm School"?
Each Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday during July and August we invite the children to join us for some kind of farm activity. Sometimes we plant, sometimes we harvest, sometimes we learn about farm animals by doing chores and collecting eggs. Sometimes we "play."
Tuesday activities are at 12:30, Wednesday activities are at 2:00, Friday activities are at 3:30 and Saturday activities are at noon, in order to accommodate different nap schedules.
So there you have it. This year the first day of Farm School for kids is Tuesday, July 7th and will run for eight successive weeks through July and August.
Our "adult" farm school is new for us this year. It is for members who are seriously thinking about farming. We are limiting the size of this class and I'm not sure if we're full or not. But there is more information about the adult farm school in our update of March 2nd, 2009 (which Joe has archived on our web page). If you have an interest, let us know.
3. What do we do on the 4th of July?
The forth of July is a business-as-usual day for us, so we will follow our normal pick-up and work-share schedule on Saturday the fourth.
4. Reminder about CSA Handbook
I've probably said enough above about the Summer Session Handbook. But it does answer a lot of questions, and provide a lot of information about our Summer CSA. It is posted on our web page and is written in a question-answer type format. Please consult it if you have questions about policies on the farm.
5. Report on Biodynamic Field Day
The BD field day held here a week ago Saturday was a success by any measure. The WSU team that sponsored the event was surprised by the large attendance. Attendees were enthused and excited about the subject. Barry Lia, the coordinator of the Washington State Biodynamic Group (and a part-time helper here at our farm) along with Wendy and I were the leaders of the event; Barry holding forth on the more academic/ideological side of BD, and Wendy and I on the more practical side.
It is interesting that WSU is not only a leader among Land-Grant Universities in promoting the organic alternative in agriculture; it is also leading the way in peer-reviewed research on biodynamic farming techniques. Several of the faculty members are sympathetic to BD, and some are clearly convinced and supportive regarding the effectiveness of biodynamic practices.
In all it was a very full and exciting day on the farm. It was hard to take a day off from concentrated work on the farm (although our crew worked, as did a number of our work shares), but it was a great day and we feel proud to be able to offer a place for offerings such as this.
6. Is it worth it? (A "Dark Night of the Soul" regarding Soil)
Often when people come to understand how much work the herd is, and how much work making and spreading compost is, and how much work fanatical cover-cropping is, and how much work BD in general is, they ask, Is it really worth it?
The question was put to me again a couple of days ago, and hit home. Our annual calendar, like that of the earth's and most living things on it, is punctuated by the changing of the seasons. Solstice is a big milestone for us each year. It's not like the end of spring quarter for a teacher, when he or she can walk away from the academy for the summer. Life on the farm goes on. But there is a change in our work load. It's a gradual change, but it happens. By solstice most of our long-season crops have been planted. The soil has all been worked, and the greenhouse "census" is diminishing. The first cutting of hay is generally in, and the compost is done or mostly done. With the big planting chores of May and June behind, we turn to harvesting and weeding which are also demanding, but not like what comes before.
So when Solstice finally arrives, we often find ourselves at the low point of the season in terms of our energy. That's probably why the question, "is it worth it?" was a bit unsettling—it was put to me on the 21st of June!
The whole BD regimen is a lot of work, that's for sure. But rather than consider the whole thing here, let's just think about one part of BD—the herd. I think (and hope!) that what makes the cows especially hard for us is that we are not just managing a herd, but establishing a herd. The same can be said for all of our endeavors to farm biodynamically. I believe that once in place, these practices will not be hard to maintain. But establishing them... that's another subject.
Staying with the herd for a minute, each year, as we are establishing the herd, we are doing something we've never done before. We are learning to manage our land, our grass, and our animals at a level we have never done before. We started with three cows the first year. We are now at 44. At some point we will find the balance point for the number of cows we can sustain on this farm. That will determine how much land we can sustainably put into crops. We're not to that point yet, so each year presents new "growing pains."
The herd will eventually offer some financial return. But now it is mostly a black hole both in terms of time and cash. This year we installed about a mile and a half of underground water line so we wouldn't have to haul water to the cows. That took us weeks of work, and about seven thousand dollars (another little distraction this spring!). And, of course, we do have to feed the cows. In the growing season, that means moving the cows every day. That takes time and energy. We also have to put up hay, which means either purchasing equipment to do it ourselves, or paying someone else to do it. Either way the cost is high.
The day will come when we will have many steers to sell each year. But that is still a ways away. In the meantime we continue to break new ground each year. We learn, we make mistakes and incur expenses. The pay-off is the manure which we compost each year. That's a big payoff, as will be the steers we will eventually have to sell. But in the mean time... what can I say except that there are costs in establishing a herd, as there are in each phase of our transition to BD.
All this again helps me to understand and appreciate the value of a farm whose growing practices can be handed down from generation to generation. Certainly each new generation makes its changes; but they are changes for the better from something that was already in place, and already worked. First generation farmers often end up re-inventing the wheel, and not just one wheel, but every wheel that allows the farm to go forward. Farming in an area where there is little collateral support for those of us to farm can be daunting. Is it worth it? My answer is "yes," but as we're still fairly close to the 21st, it comes more slowly than other times of the year.
7. The Agrarian Standard
In this part of the news letter I want to mention one of my favorite authors (Wendel Berry) and share one of the many ideas that seem to flow so freely in his writings. If you have any interest in environmental/agricultural/political issues, and if you haven't read Berry, you really should. He has written poetry, many collected volumes of fine essays, and novels.
In a collection of essays entitled Citizenship Papers, Berry has a short essay called "The Agrarian Standard." In it he compares what he calls the Industrial Standard to the Agrarian Standard. The Industrial Standard is what drives our nation, and now our globe. It is characterized by the phrase "more, more, more" which epitomizes its dissatisfaction with the way things are now, or with any specified level of achievement. No matter what we have, the only acceptable standard is to get more.
The Agrarian Standard, on the other hand, is characterized by the phrase "this much, but not more." It doesn't specify how much is "this much," but it does specify that there is a limit—that at some point, one would be satisfied, and have neither the need nor desire for "more."
I understand the "more, more, more" approach to farming, to economics, and to life. And I feel it—the pull of it. The culture (or lack thereof?) is riddled with this kind of thinking, and drives us with the unexamined assumption that more is better.
But on examination, this assumption is questionable at best.
8. U-Pick on the Farm
We want to be sure to remind everyone to bring scissors to the farm for cutting u-pick items. It seems we've gone through a dozen pairs of scissors in the first two weeks! Losing scissors has always been a part of CSA pick-ups and we've found that short of securing their first-born as a deposit, we can't buy enough scissors to meet the need. So the simple solution is to ask everyone to bring their cutting implements of choice, along with their box to take home their produce. Please try to remember to bring them along with you each week. Thanks!
9. The "Rule of Return"
How simple can it be? When you use something, you need to return it. No, I'm not talking about scissors. This is much more important; I'm talking about soil. And I'm borrowing the phrase "Rule of Return" from an amazing book, Look to the Land, written by Lord Northbourne (British) and first published in 1940. Northbourne was the first to use the term "organic" as we now use it in agriculture, although he was actually a Biodynamic farmer.
The value of agricultural land, Northbourne pointed out, is its fertility. From the dawn of the human cultivation, people have used the fertility of the soil to produce healthy crops. The more fertility the soil has, the better the crops grow, and the healthier the crops are to sustaining life.
Until about the year 1900, in one fashion or another, something was always returned to the soil in place of what was taken: this is the "Rule of Return." Early on it was accomplished simply by the nomadic lifestyle of many ancient peoples. Land was farmed, and then left as bands of humans moved on. The land that was left was subject to re-growth of native plant species and the grazing of wild animals. In time the decay of plant life (much of which is based on the "gift "of photosynthesis fueled by the sun rather than the soil), along with the manure from animals constituted a "return" of the (relatively speaking) very little that was taken. As agriculture developed, and as animals became domesticated, people discovered that the practices of allowing land to lay fallow and of spreading the manure of animals on the soil rejuvenated its ability to produce. To this day, surviving indigenous farmers continue these practices.
But in the industrial world, things have gone otherwise. As population has grown, and even more as the "industrial standard" (more, more, more—see number 7 above) has become the assumed standard, agriculture has violated the Rule of Return. The result is that the land has gotten less and less fertile.
I often think of an observation my dad once made about the family farm back in North Dakota when we were attending a family reunion. What Dad noticed, and his brothers and sisters (8 of them)—and especially the brother that still farmed the land—all agreed was indeed the case—was that when they were kids, grass and weeds grew everywhere. Any land that wasn't being used was covered spontaneously with green growth. But now, where no artificial fertilizer is used, nothing grows. The soil has become inert, lifeless. Now the soil is capable of producing crops only if it is highly subsidized by an ever-increasing amount of synthetic fertilizer. The "more, more, more" of the industrial standard is requiring even more, more, more of our non-renewable resources, along with the plethora of pesticides that are required to help unhealthy plants fight off insects.
Well, something is being "returned," someone might say. At least fertilizer is being put on the soil, even if it is artificial. Doesn't this satisfy the Rule of Return? No, it doesn't: not if all we are doing is dipping into our collective fertility reserves to foster the illusion that we can continue to take more than we put back with impunity. The natural processes of "return"—composting, cover-cropping, fallowing, manuring—all at some point capture and transform the free, non-polluting, and ever-present energy from the sun. The industrial standard of "return" eschews these practices as too slow and "not enough." In their place, the industrial mind has created a fertility subterfuge that combines the exploitation and wanton waste of the earth's fertility reserves with chemical processes that are destroying our planet. Profits are extorted from the soil and the true costs are being passed on to a future generation.
But the Rule of Return is not one that we can just choose to ignore for long. In just a matter of a few hundred years, the fertility of our nation has been largely squandered. The good news is that these losses can be remediated. But it will take time. And it will take more than the two-and-a-half percent of farmers in the US who farm organically to do it.
I really don't know what it will take for our nation and others to "come to their senses." Maybe nothing short of a world-wide famine will wake us up. But I like to think that people are now beginning to realize that we can't just take and take and take to get more and more and more. We have to put back. The irony is that there is more satisfaction and fulfillment in returning than in taking. How did we ever get seduced into thinking otherwise?
Erick and Wendy