Hi Everyone,
In this update:
1. May Day Event May 7th Noon-2:00 (May Pole event starts at 1:00)
Although today is yet another cold, wet day, we are filled with hope by a very positive forecast that calls for a stretch of good weather. It looks like spring will finally arrive, and just in time for May Day!
We all know that May Day is really the first day of May. But at Jubilee Farm it is the first Saturday in May. This year that will be Saturday, May 7th. The event is for members and friends of Jubilee Farm; everyone is welcome.
What is our May Day gathering all about? I'm sure for the kids it's all about hayrides and the May Pole celebration. For a lot of the rest of us, watching the kids weave together their childhood memories (in ways we probably can't fathom) as they weave their streamers 'round the May Pole is a joyful experience that probably calls forth memories from our own childhood. It's also a traditional rite of spring: a time to participate in the life cycle of the farm as it is just awakening from a long, cold winter.
The May Pole Event starts at 1:00 sharp. But you're welcome to come at noon to meet with Erick and Wendy. We'll give all comers a hay ride, with the two of us alternately driving and talking about what's going on at the farm. We'll go visit the cows and chickens, and see some of the crops that are growing.
After the May Pole event, we'll have a variety of activities for the kids and adults. We hope you can join us on May 7th!
2. Late Spring Session and Summer Session sign-up
We are down to our last six-week Session before our main season, 20-week Summer Session begins. We'll have lots of good spring veggies in our boxes, so join us by signing up on-line for the Late Spring Session.
The Summer Session, of course, represents our Pacific Northwest growing season. Summer Session lasts for 5 months, and everything we put in our boxes during this time we grow right here on our farm. Unlike our off-season Sessions (Fall-Spring), we have a limited number of shares available for our Summer Session. So don't miss out. July will be here sooner than you think, and you don't want to miss the vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes, or the sweetest (and safest) strawberries you'll ever eat, or . . . . So, sign up now to make sure you'll be a part of our farm this year. You can do it on-line at www.jubileefarm.org. It's simple and fast. You can pay on-line with PayPal by selecting either full payment or a payment plan; or you can sign up on-line and mail a check if you prefer. But don't wait until it's too late!
3. Work Share Opportunities
We have started sending out work share applications for this season. The response has been very good, and we're thrilled with the number of two and three-year returning work share members we have. In case you don't know, work share members come to the farm once each week (on a regular, predetermined day/time) and work for four hours in trade for their share. We harvest, plant, weed, and, in general, do whatever needs to be done on the farm. And there is always plenty to do!
Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday mornings (8-noon) are the days and times that the majority of our work share members come in. But we also have the 2-6 shift available Tuesday through Saturday.
If you are interested, send a note and we'll get you the specifics about the work share program (jubileefarm@hotmail.com). Also, we will be having a work share meeting at 2:30 of our May Day celebration (May 7th) here at the farm for people who are new to the work share program this year and for people who are interested and want to learn more about work shares.
4. Another Cold Spring, but this year . . .
So how is this cold spring going to be different from last year? Well, as (I hope) you can imagine, we may have been caught off guard last year, but this year things will be different.
In the first case, I don't think this is going to be the "never-ending winter" we had last spring. We've already had two good breaks in the weather, and it looks like another good one is coming up next week. We have poised ourselves to take advantage of every weather break. Consequently we have about five times as much planted now as we did at this time last year.
Two days ago we had a dry day. Just after noon we spaded 9 long beds. At five o'clock we got a "crust" on the soil which enabled us to direct-seed. With Wendy and me working together, in just four hours we had made very large plantings of carrots, beets, turnips, greens and spinach. With a nice week forecast for next week, all that should sprout! Hurray!
We've also taken some extraordinary measures to assure that we will get crops earlier than last year. Until this season, we had never seeded spinach in trays. This year we've done two rotations of spinach, already! We also seeded into trays our entire pea crop. This is a lot of work, but direct seeding large seeds (especially peas that rot easily) into cool wet weather is a risk. With the benefit of the green house, they get off to a good start, and we can hold them until we get a planting window.
None of us really knows what is going to happen in the future. I don't think climate change is ultimately going to bring us cooler weather. But it did last year, and it has so far this year. We need to be flexible. We can still grow great crops if we have cooler springs. We just have to strategize in a different way, and use our resources a little differently.
We may have been caught last year waiting too long for the "just right" weather. This year we are ready for whatever we get.
5. The cows are still in the barn!
I suspect the cows are wondering if they're ever going to get out of the barn. So are we! Last year they had been out for almost two months by now. But it's been too wet and cold to put them into the fields. Grass doesn't grow until it is 50 degrees, and I don't have to tell anyone how many days in the last few months we've failed to see that.
It's looking like we'll be getting them out next week, if the prediction for drying and warmer weather holds. Oh are they going to be happy! I wish you all could be here to see them when they hit that fresh, green grass for the first time. We could try to take a movie of it, but I fear it wouldn't quite be able to capture the whole thing. It's an exciting moment for all of us.
Having more cows this winter than ever before and holding them in the barn for two months longer results in an incredible increase in the volume of the manure/bedding mixture. As you can imagine, we're pretty happy about that and are looking forward to getting it into piles and starting the composting process. The compost will be spread in September and planted immediately with a winter cover crop. Eight months later we'll be planting veggies into that well-amended soil.
6. More bad news for the US meat industry
Another new study has confirmed the legitimacy of growing concerns about the safety of meat raised in US feed-lots. A study released this week in the medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that about half of grocery store samples of beef, chicken, pork and turkey contained bacteria that cause staff infections, and slightly more than half of the samples contained bacteria that were resistant to three classes of antibiotics.
These aren't unprecedented findings, but only confirm that the vast majority of the US meat supply is being raised in a way that is literally breeding strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.
An article in the Seattle Times (4/16/11) states:
The American Medical Association, the World Health Organization and other medical groups have warned that the misuse of antibiotics in food animal production may be creating a serious problem to human health by fostering development of drug-resistant bacteria.
The lead researcher in this most recent study, Lance Price, put it this way:
Our lifesaving medications are being used as tools to make animals grow faster. We must do everything we can to protect these antibiotics that protect our health.
This research is just another illustration of how US industrialized agriculture exploits pubic resources to maximize short-term profit for corporate owners: the corporation gets the profit, the citizens are left to pay for the losses.
In the particular case of feed-lot abuse of antibiotics, it works like this. Industrial agricultural corporations have learned that large doses of antibiotics keep animals alive in the horrific conditions that exist in feed-lots. This increases profits. But what are those increased profits based on?
The medications that Dr. Price notes are "lifesaving" to humans were developed in large part through public research. These pubic resources are being used to raise profits for feed-lot owners. The problem is that like most resources, and in this case in an unusual way, antibiotics are not unlimited.
"Lifesaving medications" of antibiotics kill bacteria that are harmful to people (and animals). But these bacteria, like everything that lives and multiplies, are subject to mutations. The more generations of bacteria there are, the higher the number of mutations there will be. Bacteria can multiply at a rate of fifty generations every twenty-four hours!
Most mutations are not beneficial, and because they provide no reproductive advantage they are not passed on. But a mutation that renders a bacteria immune to antibiotics is highly advantageous, and results in new strains of bacteria that will require the development of new antibiotics.
Our "lifesaving" antibiotics have become the mainstay of feed-lot survival. Because of the use of such enormous amounts of antibiotics, the likelihood of a mutation that renders them immune increases. The study cited here has identified three classes of antibiotics that bacteria have now become immune to because of feed-lot use.
Who bears the expenses of developing new antibiotics—"super drugs" to fight of the new "super bugs"—that have come to us via the animal feed-lots which provide a great deal of profit for a relatively few corporate shareholders? We all do. Again and again the pattern is replicated: benefits shared by a privileged few, costs borne by everyone.
Scientists now busy themselves trying to isolate new antibiotics to be used to save human lives. These antibiotics, if discovered, will be readily utilized by the feed-lot industrial agriculture until they no long work, and need to be replaced by others. It's almost like having a research and development unit made of the brightest minds in the world working for you, and having someone else foot the bill.
Unfortunately, we can't opt out of paying for the aftermath of short-term profit agriculture, whether that aftermath is health issues or environmental issues. But we can protect our own health, and the health of the earth. To do so we must fight back. As consumers, we can play a decisive role by saying, "no" to feed-lot beef and confined birds.
Remember that we consumers are complicit in this whole sordid affair insofar as we are willing buy meat products from corporate, factory farms simply because they are a handful-of-change less expensive at the point-of-purchase (though way more expensive in the long run).
If we are going to change market policy in the US, we consumers have to be willing to pay the real cost of the products we buy. If we aren't willing to do that, we become co-conspirators with those who are willing to despoil the earth for personal gain.
There are two caveats to my last (somewhat harsh-sounding) statement. The first is that some people truly cannot afford the "handful-of-change." I believe that with most of us it is a matter of prioritizing. But fortunately, I know neither who buys what, nor what anyone's other than my own financial situation really is (and sometimes I'm not so sure I really know what mine is). So I can't and don't want to judge anyone. This is an issue we all have to assess for ourselves.
The second caveat is that sometimes there just is no alternative to factory-farmed meat. This is one of the reasons that Wendy and I are very happy to include in this update some information on two new, local meat-bird farms. Both are small and committed to raising quality meat products in a humane way—with no antibiotics!! See #9 below for more information. We're hopeful that you all will at least give both these two operations a try, and in so doing continue to use your food dollars to support responsible agriculture.
7. Soil and Health
The health of the nation is directly related to the health of its soil. What could be simpler?
When Sir Albert Howard made this claim just 60 years ago in his book by the title of Soil and Health, his readers found in it nothing particularly startling. It was to the people of his generation, and in a word from that era, a "truism."
In our world, we don't think much about the health of our nation's soil. We tend to value oil and minerals that are in the soil, but we overlook the simple truth that without fertility we cannot produce food that is nutritious. It is possible to live without nutritious food; but we cannot do so in good health.
Modern agriculture has lulled us into the erroneous belief that any old dirt can become productive by simply adding the right chemicals. But the human experiment with synthetic fertilizers is a relatively new phenomenon. Many see that experiment to be over.
Last year researchers from the University of Illinois published data that shows the use synthetic fertilizers reduces organic matter and carbon in the soil, and is responsible for the loss of organic (non-soluble) nitrogen. Interestingly, these researchers point to Sir Albert Howard who, in the aforementioned text, said exactly what these researchers, using modern scientific techniques, demonstrated in their research.
Clearly the loss of soil fertility brought on by the use of synthetic fertilizers doesn't happen overnight. But what has now been shown to be the case in the laboratory has been known by conventional farmers (who probably have never read Sir Albert Howard) for some time.
It is common knowledge among users of synthetic fertilizers that over time it requires more and more fertilizer to get the same—or nearly same—results. But there comes a day when the chemicals not only can do no more, but can't even do what they used to do in lesser application quantities. I've heard farmers say with dismay that lately they've increased their use of fertilizer significantly with a decrease in productivity.
It is clearly a case of diminishing returns. Soil that is treated like dirt becomes exhausted, weakened, and unable to produce what it once did. People who eat food produced on soil that is treated like dirt also become exhausted, weakened, and unable to function as they once did.
Crops grown in depleted soil simply do not contain the nutrients of those grown in fertile soil. People whose diets consist of food grown in depleted soil lack the nutrition needed to maintain health.
It's as simple as that.
BTY, it doesn't follow, of course, that people in ill-health have necessarily had diets consisting of food grown in depleted soil (please recall your freshman logic course where you learned that the argument form: [p implies q, p, therefore q] is a valid modus ponens, but the argument form: [p implies q, q, therefore p] is a formal fallacy called "affirming the consequent"). Please, don't ever infer an antecedent by affirming the consequent; it's the logical equivalency of scratching your fingernails down a blackboard!
8. March 31st: A day of reckoning
Many of you have written or called asking about the latest flood.
The flood was serious. It wasn't a flood that put water into people's homes, or even into anyone's barns (that I know of). There was no loss of human life, and I heard no reports of animal life lost to this flood.
At 58.21 feet, this flood was just barely into the lowest level of the floods classified by King County as "major." It was exactly four feet lower than the all-time record.
But in a different way from the devastating floods of 1990, 2006, and 2009, this flood may have been the worst of all.
The reason is this. Every other "major" flood has occurred in November, December, or January. During these months, most of us who farm in the valley have put our fields to "bed" for the year. Cover crops have been planted in September and by the time the first flooding occurs the soil is protected by the lush growth of winter rye, winter wheat, oats, and/or a variety of legumes.
Flooding brings minerals from the mountains, which is a good thing. When the flood waters recede, they leave behind a layer of silt that coats each blade of grassy cover crop. This silt is rich in both organic matter and minerals.
But on March 31st, most of the farmed acres in the Snoqualmie Valley had already been plowed. Cover crops had been buried beneath fresh and very-much exposed soil.
As the river overflowed its banks and poured into these plowed fields, the water ran brown. The scream was so quiet it was heard by only a few. But to the few of us who heard, it was nearly unbearable.
I'm thankful that we no longer use a tiller or a moldboard plow. But we had disked and planted some areas, and for the first time we suffered erosion. Our most serious loss, ironically, was an area we disked on March 20th and planted into a permaculture crop. We did this for the very reason of avoiding the risk of erosion. In hindsight it looks (and feels) like we took a chance. But had we taken this chance in any of the last 80 years, we would have been fine. Never in recorded history have we had a flood like this after March 15th. But this year we did.
On that same (dark) day, a Federal Judge in Seattle released his decision on a lawsuit filed by farmers and residents of the Snoqualmie Valley against the Army Corps of Engineers. The short summary is that the judge chose to rule on the narrowest of issues, ignoring much of what we and PSE argued in our respective cases. But he came down squarely on the side of the Corps, saying they have the authority to decide whether a proposed project warrants downriver impact studies or not. He didn't say they decided rightly, only that they have the right to decide.
We are reeling from both the flood and the legal decision. The flood is history. We can appeal the lawsuit to the Ninth Circuit, and we may do that. It will cost another forty thousand dollars. We have 90 days to decide. Honestly, we don't know what to do. But for me and Wendy, in spite of anything and everything else, we need to be about the business of growing vegetables as effectively as we can. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Today we will transplant lettuces and brassicas. We will care for the cows. We will work in the greenhouse, move more tomato plants from the hot room in the barn to the propagation house outside. We will do what needs to be done, with the hope that the pain of our "day of reckoning" will fade, and that we will come to see these events in a different light.
9. Meat birds (chicken, turkey, geese, duck) availability
I think most of you know that our local farming organization, Snoqualmie Valley Tilth (SVT) sponsors a Mentoring Program. One of the outcomes of this program is two new farming operations that, like ours, have set their sights on raising both animals and crops.
It happens that the people involved in both these new endeavors have been members of Jubilee Farm and had other associations with us for several years. Even if that weren't the case, we would want to help these people in any way we could. But knowing them all, and having known them for years, makes it all the easier!
We also know that a lot of you are very interested in getting quality, local meat that is humanely raised. So really, this is a no-brainer for us. All we need to do is get those of you who would like to purchase locally raised meat together with the people who are raising it.
To accomplish this, I've asked both groups of farmers to collaborate on something to print in our newsletter. They have done that and I am pasting their note below. If you are interested, you should look at both their offerings. There is some overlap, but there are also some differences that give you a number of great buying options:
"Jubilee is excited to have two suppliers of fresh, pasture-raised chickens and turkeys this year. Chickens will be available in the summer and turkeys in the fall. Email snovalleypoultry@hotmail.com for more information on dates and to reserve birds. Each farm has different types of birds so visit their websites at teakellfamilyfarms.com (who is also offering ducks and holiday geese) and www.wholesome-eats.com for more information. The deadline for ordering holiday birds is May 30."
Erick and Wendy