Soul Food Farm, the Tour

My friend, Jessica, works in the office at Chez Panisse. A tour of the farm that raises Chez P’s meat chickens was organized for the employees and their guests, so, naturally, I went. I had never seen a chicken farm before and although I normally abstain from the said meat, it is because I have a tremendous reverence and respect for the animals. Therein lies my interest in attending the tour.

I peeled myself out of bed on Sunday morning, stopped at Genova’s (an old and locally famous deli in Temescal) to get sandwiches for lunch, and met with Jess at her house in El Cerrito. Her and her partner, Russ, have an awesome container garden in their backyard. El Cerrito switched from small recycling bins to large cans, so Russ goes around retrieving the old bins for use as planters. They come complete with drainage holes and everything, and provide enough room for several little rows of seedlings.

Then, Jessica and I were off to Vacaville, where the fog does not make it in the hot sun. Our little East Bay selves were roasting (just like the fate of them chickens). 

Soul Food Farms is owned and run by Alexis and Eric Koefoed and lies just a couple minutes from the 80 freeway, but is flanked on one side by oak-speckled hills that give the feeling of seclusion. Alexis studied viticulture (raising grapes for wine), and bought the land for that purpose. Soon after, however, grapes took a downturn on the market, and Alexis and Eric sort of “fell into” chicken raising. The niche was there, and they reshaped to fit it.

 Now, they have 3000 laying hens and 10,000 meat birds, as well as a couple llamas and dogs. 

Alexis showed our group around, starting with the meat chickens. They come as chicks in the mail from a hatchery in Pennsylvania– the only hatchery in the U.S. that breeds this special French variety. The chickens were separated by age, which is calculated in weeks. At nine weeks, the chickens are “harvested” and sent to buyers, including Chez Panisse. A Sept. 2007 SF Chronicle article (“Raising Poultry the New-Old Way”) reported the chickens were harvested at 12 weeks. During our tour, Alexis emphasized the importance of harvesting at nine weeks, noting that this was the prime age for the best taste.

The same aforementioned Chronicle article discussed the balance between intimate, small-scale arrangement and industrial-like organization: “streamlining will help, but they’re wary of heading too far down the road toward higher production and efficiency.” Indeed, the chickens seemed much more organized than those at Green String, which, I think, is good for the chickens. Although, the structure did seem to highlight the purpose– these are for eating. It was slightly disturbing to hear people on the tour joke about how tasty the chickens were going to be, and about naming them before eating them. Like I said: reverence and respect. 

And nine weeks does seem like a short little chicken life, but, you know, those chickens looked good— happy, I mean. Olive trees were planted for the double use of shade for the chickens and the fruit for pressing into oil. They obviously had no diseases and there were no sore, featherless spots that are the indicator of pecking and fighting. 

The laying hens wander about the property and have a significantly longer life than the meat chickens. Alexis and Eric search about the property daily to look for eggs that have been laid in bushes and under trees— the prototypical Easter egg hunt. The llamas and hens hang out together under a big tree. There are no roosters, as Eric and Alexis said they cause too much drama and tension amongst the hens. Although, once, someone abandoned a little Bantam rooster on their property, and the humor of this one little rooster crowing everyday and surveying his harem of 3000 prompted Eric and Alexis to keep him. 

That is, until the day he disappeared– a predator must have snatched him, Alexis said. Well, we’ve all gotta eat.

the Search for Soil

Trying to garden in Oakland is like training a housecat to ride a bike. The waitlist for the city-run garden plots is too long to cope with, and the city does not exactly encourage the creation of new such community gardens. My back porch is choked with containers growing tomatoes, strawberries, bean sprouts, chard, mustard greens, and lemon verbena, but the containers do not satisfy the urge to get one’s hands deep into the soil, and the plants are also not so satisfied with this restriction.

The front of my apartment building is donned with two plots of plant space, each around 10 by 25 feet. All the plants (except for what seems t0 be a volunteer cilantro plant in its flowering stage) are typical lets-just-cover-some-space landscaping plants. Granted, some of the flowers are gorgeous and much-needed, but even still, I held that this small parcel of earth could be put to work to satisfy some basic subsistence needs as well as psychological contentment. 

The plots are covered in life-suppressing mulch where the landscape plants do not grow. Upon observing some of these in-between places, I decided to utilize them for gardening purposes. In went my other lemon verbena cutting, in went a squash, some broccoli (i know, not the season, but my roomie sprouted them for whatever reason), in went a pumpkin (also, roomie, is it really the season?), and in went a tomatillo. At another interstice, in went a tomato transplant, in went melon  and bean seeds. The other day, in went three cukes and an eggplant. 

Back to the training cats to ride bicycles, the apartment manager came out to walk her dog and discovered me watering the newly transplanted tomato plant. She said accusingly, “What are you doing?”

“I’m planting a tomato plant!” I replied in an excited and naive tone. 

“But I don’t think this is your property.”

“It belongs to the building, doesn’t it?”

Shaking her head, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I will ask the owner.” I didn’t hear anything more about it, and so far, my babies are intact. I painted on a brick ‘Garden Please Do Not Disturb’ to mark one spot.

The owner of the building, by the way, is a faceless corporation. So nice to feed the usurers, while others do all the work (the managers– I am sympathetic despite the excessive grumpiness). 

When I left the farm to return to Oakland, I knew my gardening capabilities would take on this character, and that I would be forced to plant in the overlooked extra spaces that do not exist as one large swath, but rather as a collection of interstices that demand a different set of strategies of locale and care, and involve education (training, if you will) of the residents in new values and aesthetic standards.

Urban Foraging

The SF Chronicle article on urban foraging pasted below highlights some of the creativity going on in making food and food knowledge more accessible. 

Making sure what grows locally is eaten also shows and teaches respect for food. One comes to realize how silly it is that we feel we must buy everything we consume, when some can actually come into being without any human intervention whatsoever. 

There certainly is a bounty within the urban harvest, and this can come through actually picking from neighborhood fruit trees and mushrooms in parks, but also through saving excess from supermarkets, farmer’s markets, and restaurants that would otherwise get thrown out. Until the litigiousness of our society is lulled, however, the latter will remain largely illegal.

Urban and suburban foraging needs to become the way of doing things. Homeowner’s associations should not be allowed to prevent the planting of crops and fruit trees, community farms and gardens must be present in places other than the most food-conscious urban areas. A broad and sweeping change is needed in the role consumption of food and other goods nation-wide. Our economy counts on it.

 

Changing how we live and eat, one fig at a time

Emma Brown, Special to The Chronicle

Monday, February 2, 2009

At 2 o’clock in the morning, most people in this college town are holed up studying, headed home from a bar or curled up in bed.

Asiya Wadud, however, is reaching for the weeping branches of a tree on the south side of the UC Berkeley campus, picking olives. A handful of her friends are helping. There is a little beer, a little wine; it’s part merrymaking, part urban harvest.

“Don’t worry about sorting them,” she says, dropping a handful into a paper bag. An alarming fraction of the fruits are mottled and a little wormy-looking. “We’ll do that tomorrow.”

Wadud, a bartender at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, has become obsessed with saving city-grown fruit from being wasted, which is why she heads out in the darkness, stripping smallish green orbs from the branches of this unassuming tree rooted in a patch of grass between the street and a concrete wall.

She’s also part of a growing movement of super-local eaters and activists interested in food not from the nearest farm, but from down the block. When she moved to south Berkeley four years ago from Ohio, she was struck by California’s ubiquitous fruit and by the way people let it rot, as if backyard apples and figs were something unremarkable.

She gathered the courage to knock on strangers’ doors and ask whether she might try one of their ripe plums, or sample a pear. No one refused; in fact, she says, people seemed relieved to share, as if the prospect of wasted food were a constant weight she was helping to lift.

Forage Oakland blog

So last spring, she created Forage Oakland, a blog on which she details her foraging adventures and where people can barter their excess backyard bounty, trading apples for figs and lemons for lavender.

The response has been enthusiastic – more than 120 people have registered, and now she spends her free time bicycling through East Bay neighborhoods, harvesting at one home and delivering to another. Wadud doesn’t pick anything without asking for permission – difficult at first for a born introvert. But now, the moments she spends with strangers and neighbors in their backyards, trying to thread a long-handled picker through tree branches to reach the highest-hanging fruit, are tiny revolutions against the anomie that is so common in urban life.

“People can live somewhere for years and never really know who’s next door,” she says. “But food binds us all, and it becomes this very simple way to connect.”

As food prices rise and interest in locally grown food intensifies, foraging has also become an inexpensive way to eat healthfully.

Between May and October of last year, the 27-year-old didn’t buy any fruit from the grocery store or farmers’ market. By then, she had made a map of forageable food sources in her neighborhood in south Berkeley.

“Making dinner, I’d check the map to find rosemary for the roast chicken,” she says. “Or if I wanted tea, I’d go over to Miles and Cavour (streets) and get lemon verbena. It’s more exciting to eat when you have this immediate connection with your food.”

Sustainable living has always been important to Wadud and was part of the reason she packed up and moved to Berkeley after graduating from the College of Wooster in Ohio with an urban sociology degree.

For example, when her boyfriend won a trip to Rome last year, her first thought was not what to pack, but rather, “What’s going to happen to the persimmons? Who’s going to harvest the persimmons? That’s my dilemma. It’s why I lie awake at night.”

Trading walnuts

Berkeley graduate student Georgia Seamans stumbled on Forage Oakland when she was surfing the Internet, looking for a recipe for nocino, an Italian liqueur made from walnuts.

She left a comment: “There’s a walnut tree on my block. Hopefully the squirrels will let me share in this year’s bounty.” Wadud wrote back offering walnuts, and in return Seamans gave her garden herbs. “We’ve been trading ever since. Our last trade, I gave her some end-of-season tomatoes and I got some hachiya persimmons.”

Those persimmons may have come from Boston transplant Diana Sherman, whose backyard tree hangs heavy with hachiyas. Their goopiness and delicate taste make them hard to give away in large quantities, she says. Last year, most of them ended up in the compost bin. “It was our first year here,” she says of the home in Oakland’s Westlake district that she shares with her husband. “The persimmons ripened just as we moved in, and we were totally drowning in them. We really didn’t know what to do with them.”

Not money-making gig

Chez Panisse regularly buys foraged foods for its gourmet menus, but for Wadud, capitalism and Forage Oakland have nothing to do with one another. Foraging, as she practices it, requires creativity, a certain do-it-yourselfness, and a willingness to share. Trading cash for goods requires none of those. It’s a way to say a little something about the world as she imagines it could be, instead of the world as it is.

“She’s not making any money, and she’s probably never going to make any money for this,” says San Franciscan Iso Rabins, who is in the midst of launching a foraged-foods business using a community-supported agriculture model, in which customers would pay a set amount to receive a weekly box of locally foraged foods. “She spends her whole day riding her bike around, picking fruit and giving it away to other people. It’s totally noble.”

There are similar projects, like Oakland’s People United for a Better Life in Oakland, or PUEBLO, which hires urban teenagers to pick produce and deliver it to senior citizens who have limited access to fresh fruit. Other Bay Area groups like North Berkeley Harvest and San Jose’s Village Harvest Project connect homeowners with too much fruit with volunteer parties who are willing to pick and take the gleanings to local food banks. Portland, Ore., Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston are among the other cities with similar programs.

“There’s a whole revolution,” says Matias Viegener, one of three Los Angeles artists who started a public fruit mapping project in 2004. When, calling themselves Fallen Fruit, they started posting fruit tree maps online and leading foraging tours through their Silver Lake neighborhood, they seemed unusual. “But in the last year,” Viegener says, “it’s kind of boomed. We often get to trees we know and they’ve been picked bare.”

New vision for city

Each of these projects, including Forage Oakland, issues a challenge to reconsider the city as a plentiful and generous place.

“This is not idealistic,” Wadud writes. “Rather it is necessary, pragmatic and creative – especially in times when much of the world is suffering from lack of access to healthful and satisfying fresh food.”

On a daytime foraging mission in Oakland’s Temescal district, she wheels her bicycle past a narrow home to a giant, hidden backyard, where pears and apples litter the ground. The air is heavy with the sweet stink of rot, but there are plenty of perfectly good specimens still hanging in the trees, and in another corner of the yard, oranges are just beginning to ripen.

She gathers pears and apples into two bags – one to leave for the trees’ owner, in thanks for allowing her to pick, and one for Forage Oakland, to be exchanged for something else.

“It’s overwhelming,” she says. “There is just so much fruit.”

Picking manners

Foraging ethics are a matter of some debate. Asiya Wadud always asks permission before picking a neighbor’s fruit. Others abide by the concept of “usufruct,” which allows one person to enjoy the benefits of another person’s property, as long as that property isn’t damaged in the process. In fruit-tree terms, that means that it’s legal to pick fruit from a branch of a tree you don’t own that is hanging over public property.

Bon forage!

Forage Oakland: ForageOakland.blogspot.com.

PUEBLO: People United for a Better Life in Oakland/Urban Youth Harvest: Peopleunited.org. Teens pick excess bounty from neighborhood trees and distribute it to low-income seniors.

North Berkeley Harvest: Northberkeleyharvest.org. Volunteers come to your backyard and harvest, and fruit is donated to local food initiatives. Drop-off donations of organic, edible fruit also accepted.

Village Harvest Project (San Jose): VillageHarvest.org. Arranges volunteer harvests, provides educational materials and advice on fruit-tree care and harvesting, and on food preservation such as making jams and preserves from home-grown fruit.

Portland Fruit Tree Project: PortlandFruit.org.

Philadelphia Orchard Project: PhillyOrchards.org.

Earthworks Boston: EarthworksBoston.org.

E-mail us at datebook@sfchronicle.com.

Rigo’s Work

Journal Entry Dated 12/11/08

Today, I woke at seven. Simon meowed me awake. We had a Rigo day today, with Rigoberto, the farm manager. I ate oatmeal with cinnamon, and half a grapefruit with honey at breakfast, showered and dressed. We all walked to the farm stand, the seven of us interns. Seven now. We went to an onion patch to weed and hoe. I was confused at first. I couldn’t find the onions. Julia gave me a bit of a lesson about it, but I was still having a hard time. I would try to pull the weeds and the onions would come out, too. Rigo came along. Ug, I knew I was doing it wrong. But he taught me. He showed me how to put my fingers near the base of the onion so that it would stay in place while I pulled the weeds near it. And how to chop up the earth near the plant, suppressing the weeds around it.

I felt like I was leaving the ground very bare around the plant. M felt the same way. Bob certainly does it differently. I suppose that means he has taught us well, if it is difficult for me to bear to do it any other way. I tried to tear some of the weed material apart and place it on the bare ground. We took a break. I had an apple and chocolate. I didn’t realize how much I had missed fruit, sugary fruit, until I bought some at whole foods yesterday. Rigo spoke with Julia a lot about his experiences crossing the border. I could understand only some of it, but Julia filled us in a bit afterwards. After that conversation, I felt like working very close to the others and talking, which I don’t always feel like doing. Sometimes it’s nice to work off on your own and be with your own thoughts when doing this type of work.

Rigo has a wife and children in Mexico, but he’s been working in Sonoma with Bob for 25 years. He said that at first, it was lonely being here. Now, his brother and son work with him, although he doesn’t get to see his son much, as they work on different farms, and his son goes to school at night, not coming home until 11 p.m. They start work at 6:30. Rigo said that there is this idea in Mexico that if you come to the U.S., you will make a lot of money fast and it will solve all your problems, but that when you get here, it’s not exactly true, but you keep coming back out of hope for a better future.

He goes back to Mexico about once a year. He takes an airplane there, but getting back in is another story. First, he walks three days in the desert in a group of about ten. They travel in groups because there’s a higher chance of making it across—at least a few will usually make it. There are bandits in the desert on both sides of the border. They have guns and they will take everything you have. Even the police are bandits sometimes. If the bandits don’t think you’ve given them everything, they will tell you to take off your pants. Rigo has a special pocket in his underpants to hide money. It’s like a game, Julia recounted, because they don’t really want you to take off your pants, for some reason. Julia didn’t quite understand why. Maybe because you may have a gun. Rigo said that he can tell whether or not they are really willing to kill you for your money.

After making it across the border, he must stay at a house for a few hours, to make sure the police are not coming for him. I am guessing this is what he has to do to protect the coyote, because after this, the coyote comes to pick him up (coy⋅o⋅te: a person who smuggles Mexican nationals across the border into the U.S. for a fee). He has to pay coyotes a lot of money. It costs almost nothing for him to go to Mexico compared with coming back.

He has five acres in Mexico that his wife and younger children work. His dream is to have an avocado orchard, and grow many varieties of avocadoes. He began working in the U.S. to have money to buy a truck. He bought a truck and other equipment with the money he’s made here, but will he ever get to live that dream? There must be people who can help him. There must be organizations in Mexico to help small farmers.

To me, this is just crazy—these are people. For 25 years, Rigo has worked here, growing food, feeding us, and feeding our children, and for 25 years, Rigo has had to endure the pain and loneliness of living far from his family. I cannot imagine having to walk three days in the desert. How do you survive that? How do you prepare for that? I especially cannot imagine doing that over and over again, to where it becomes simply part of your life. All this, and Rigo always has a smile on his face. He always has a positive energy.

On the way back to the farm stand, we rode on the back of Rigo’s ATV. I laid down on the trailer bed and watched the clouds as we bumped along. It did not even seem that I was moving, because the smeared clouds stayed in place, until the power lines passed above, moving together, then farther apart, intersecting and separating from one another. Andrea wanted to take a group photo of us all with Ross and Ross’ old truck, so we rode in the back of Ross’ truck to the top of a hill after lunch. The grass on the hill was such a rich green—almost neon. We had a lesson with Bob Schaffer on soil. He is such a good speaker.

At dinner, Melissa told us that she had just found out that her cousin’s two-year-old had been in a car accident and was “brain dead.” So little. I will be praying for her and for Melissa’s cousin. Lyle’s dog had puppies today, and after dinner, Melissa found out that she had one more puppy. She said, “I’m glad that puppies are being born.”

“Puppies are always being born,” I replied.

The Intersection of Human and Plant Lifecycles

 

I was on chicken duty this morning with Julia, and she found a dead chicken inside the coop. I went inside and placed it into a bin. It looked like maybe it fell from the roost and broke its neck. Jeff was going to help us deal with it. I wanted to put it in the compost pile, but he said that we should cut it open. I wanted to do no such thing, and he looked upset about the endeavor as a whole, so Julia and I went alone to bury it. We dug a nice hole, about a foot and a half deep. We said a prayer as we put the hen in and covered it. I said that I hope it had a good chicken life and that it ate lots of good food. Julia said, “I hope you’re in chicken heaven now, with all the worms you can eat.”

I said, “The worms will be eating you now!… you will be completing the circle.” We covered the grave with a large rock, and left to get ready to go harvest at Bob’s. I picked apples and bay leaves for myself, and then fig leaves and tomatoes for the Chez Panisse order.

 

After harvesting, Bob lessoned us. I was quite unprepared. I had forgotten the voice recorder and my notebook.

Bob looked at some weeds we had brought from an abandoned garden at Melissa’s church (that we plan to rehab), and analyzed them. One weed, a brassica, had several seeking roots and almost no secondary roots. He could tell from this that it was not happy where it was, because it kept sending out new seeking roots. It was a very determined plant, he said, determined to make seeds. It’s a kind of plant that blooms over and over and over, making new seeds all the way. If someone were to need motivation and determination in life, if they had been hurt as a child, and were now listless, he would give them a tea with a few of the blossoms, so that the determination for life of the plant would enter into the person. The characteristics of a plant can be absorbed by other life forms according to this view.

Bob also talked about planting seeds based on the lunar cycle. He plants seeds at the full moon in order to be organized, ordered, patterned, and grounded in nature.. I asked him if that’s all that is planned and he said yes, but if you plant seeds at the full moon, then all the other things you must do, like preparing soil, transplanting, and fertilizing, are scheduled naturally as a result. I develops a systematic cycle of nutritional establishment of garden, so you have food all the time. Organize your garden into twelve plots and plant one per moon– any moon will do.

Recognize character of this full moon: Nov 12, look around at the plants. This is the next to last of this year’s full moons. Look at the weather, soil temperature, the peach leaves (yellow, but lots of green), the hills are grassy. This way, you have three data points: the moon, the human calendar, and the circumstances.

 

Last year, Bob said, there was a very late frost in May, and some tomato plants were frost-bitten, which is akin to childhood abuse.

“If I poked your baby with a cattle prod when still a baby, it tenses the cells, and it loses its relaxation. Just like birthing babies in the hospital with male doctors and they grab it by it’s hind legs and hold it upside down and whack it on its ass to get it to breathe. Oh my god, this poor baby’s already breathing, I mean, let it lay upon its mother’s chest with its umbilical cord still attached for a moment, and let it feel—continue to feel the breath of the mother and let the mother squeeze it and release it, squeeze it and release it and develop that union that it’s gonna have for a few months if it’s lucky while it’s nursing. It doesn’t need to be jerked out and whacked on the ass or anything else, but you know, that’s what they do, somebody dreamed that up. You’re in a world where some puritan said, ‘You’re in a world of suffering, so let’s start ya out right!’”

 

I said, “And they wanna do that ‘cause they got whacked in the ass when they were a baby.”

 

“Of course, and that’s the human mindset and how do we change these paradigms, and the influences upon human culture and upon society, so that generations later we have an announcement of the more capacity of humanity, but we don’t do that, but excuse me I’m getting sidetracked when we’re talking about another issue. We’re looking at lunar planting…”

Trying

Our world is wrought with crazy downward spirals. Our planet is poisoned with massive amounts of manufactured chemicals, so we have many chronic illnesses, which we then treat with massive amounts of manufactured chemicals.

 

The health of our bodies and minds equals the health of our planet. When will we realize this? When will this not be an idea deemed ‘mystical’ or that of a ‘tree-hugger’? I hope the time comes soon, because we will rapidly be consuming plastic food. Already, we eat poison food, with chemical fertilizers and uncomposted manure, with terminator seeds that threaten the fertility of our entire system of food crops.

 

Our bodies are hurting. We have rampant motor vehicle deaths, asthma, heart disease, cancer, autism, bipolar disorder, depression, and obesity. What are we doing to ourselves? It’s sick, really, what we put into our bodies. It’s sick how artificial and far away from our origins it is, and it’s sick that it’s legal to poison our water, air, earth, oceans. Where is the accountability?— I look to the government for that. If a company engages in polluting activities, they need to be shut down forever, and the people responsible imprisoned. No ifs, ands, or buts. We need to stop our neoliberal system of trade that places the poison aftermath on someone else’s home.

 

Rip up NAFTA, revitalize Mexico’s economy, and start work programs to bring unemployed city people back into the agricultural sector—working on biodiverse, organic, sustainable farms that surround our cities. I guarantee that you will see a massive decrease in the instances of all the above ailments. Not that all will be peaches and cream, but overall, people would be happier and healthier.

 

I worry, though, that the very formation of the nation-state was contingent upon the existence of mercantile corporations of transnational trade. If so, and they are really irreversibly interconnected, then we may need a complete overhaul of the entire governmental system. I’m glad that McCain didn’t win, but I am not convinced that there is much that Obama can do within the current system. I can fantasize, but in reality, I am skeptical.

 

One thing that we can do that is immediate and very personally tangible is to know our own bodies, and to be aware of ourselves as consumers. Not only is it healthy for our economy (I’m talking personal economy, here) to produce rather than consume, but it is empowering. Instead of buying cough syrup, buy Horehound from an herbal shop, or even better, grow it—it grows like a weed. All you do is simmer it in sugar and water. It’s a lovely mild expectorant. Not only do you bypass putting chemicals into your body (and artificial colors and flavors), you also prevent the production and waste of plastic, you have an intimate knowledge of what you’re consuming, and you learned a new and practical skill! It’s actually very exciting, the feeling you get doing something yourself. Do you remember being a child and finally doing something yourself, and the sense of pride, ownership, and accomplishment it gave you? Guess what, adults need that, too.

 

As much as you can, use material that has come straight from the ground for your daily needs. Until small and locale mercantilism is made possible again, you’ll have to do it yourself. The Horehound is just one example. There are also easy and effective herbal remedies for headaches, earaches, eye problems, infections, insomnia, depression, and anxiety. All you have to do is try.

Today, we killed roosters.

When I got up this morning, I did not know that today would be the day. I knew we were to have a lesson. I went for a bike ride at 9 a.m. Jeff called and said that Bob was coming before noon and that we were to kill the extra roosters.

 

“Oh,” I said, and inhaled deeply. I still didn’t know what to think about the whole dilemma. I rode home and arrived just as Ross was driving up in his truck. Melissa, Ross, Jeff and I all sat for several minutes, talking. I asked Ross if he was sad.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I’m not particularly happy, but I’m also not sad… It has to be done.”

Bob arrived in his truck and pulled up right next to the chicken coop, unloading a butchering block with two nails stuck into it, a propane tank, a tall, large gas range, and a large pot. He filled the pot with water and turned on the range. I asked, “What’s the pot for?”

“For boiling the roosters to get the feathers off,” Bob said.

“Are we going to kill them away from the coop?”
“No, we’re going to do it right here.”

“I don’t think it’s good to do it right where their brethren can see them killed.”

“Why not? I’ve seen that.”

And he walked off. I said (to the air, really), “Well, that must have sucked.” 

 

Ross and I moved the butchering block and the pot to where Bob’s truck would block it. I was very relieved. I really don’t see why we would have wanted to freak out the chickens by beheading the roosters in front of them.

 

I was crying. I couldn’t help it. I was turning my face away so no one would see how twisted it was into a frown. Jeff left the scene. He was not cool with the killing of the roosters. Ross and Bob went into the coop and grabbed several roosters. The first to be caught and have his feet tied together was a shiny brown one. All the others were an orangey-blond. It was set on the ground after being tied, and it kept getting up and hopping. It hopped close to the range, so I walked over and restrained it. I held it down and pet it. It calmed down. It was looking around, its little eyes blinking. What a beautiful color it was. I picked it up and held it on my side, like I do with my cat. I held it for a long time while six others were caught, tied, and set on the ground underneath a tarp (To keep the sun off? To keep them contained?).

 

As the last ones were getting their legs tied, everyone was kneeling around the rooster-filled tarp. Mostly, they were calm, although every five or ten minutes, one would squawk and make a ruckus. Bob was talking about how tasty old rooster meat was, and how he, Ross, and Marius (his other son) shoot glass bottles with a 22. Marius is the best shot, but when it comes to shooting a rabbit, he always misses. For the killing of a chicken, he is never around, but when the liver pate is on the table, Bob said, Marius is right there.

 

The brown one I held was the first to go. Bob said that it was the oldest, two years old. I asked how long they live if you don’t kill them and he said two to three years, and that these roosters were nearing the end of their lives anyways. That’s a short lifespan, no?

 

Bob took the rooster, wedged its neck between the two nails on the block, and beheaded it with one swing of the ax. Then, he put the headless body into an empty trashcan, and the body jumped and flailed, making a great noise jerking the can around, and its throat making a dull clucking sound. I looked at the rooster’s severed head. Its mouth was opening and closing for about ten seconds after it was debodied, although its eyes were closed. It made me think of how connected the body and head are. When does life end in that context? Is the movement of the body really “just nerves,” or is the body still alive?

 

The blood had splattered onto my shoes. On the block, it was such a bright, rich red.

Aurelio came and spoke with us, talking of his experiences with chickens in France as a child. He spoke of how some people would cut their tongues and let them bleed to death upside down, and how he thought that was torture. A man who is working on the grape harvest also came over during, and was talking about how tasty roosters are. (Afterwards, Melissa said he was making her want to hurl). He asked twice if we wanted anything for lunch. Duh.

 

It continued in this way, I would hold and pet a rooster, trying to calm it, and then it would go to the block. Bob would chop its head off, flailing would ensue, and Ross and Melissa would do the defeathering…until the very last rooster. Bob handed the ax to me. I got up and took hold of it. Bob said, “Now, you hold its legs, and put its head between the nails—actually, I’ll hold it for you. Just give it one good clean whack right here.”

 

I did it. I gave it one good whack. I did well. I hope the rooster did not suffer too much.

 

Bob butchered the roosters right there, taking out their heart, liver, gizzard, and tossing their other entrails into a trash bucket. It was really nasty, really nasty. I think it made meat even less appetizing than it already is to me. It was good, though, to participate in that process. I think everyone should, particularly meat eaters. One of my biggest qualms with meat-eating is our disconnection with the origins of the animal and the process whereby it became meat on our table. It’s incredibly mystified, and I feel the industrialization of meat-production and its resulting mystification leads to a total lack of respect for the animal. It’s quite analogous to the lack of respect for the soil itself that Bob talks about.

 

That whole experience was intense, emotional, and draining. I was very upset at first, but when it comes down to it, to live is to die. Some of those roosters may have even been party to the roostericide that occurred on two occasions in the last month. Yes, there is death, but there is also rebirth and regeneration. Those roosters were immediately food for flies and yellowjackets that were all over the carcasses right away, and will be food for humans as well. Their internals are now in our compost pile, and will probably be dug up by a coyote, but also may make it to nourish the soil as well.

 

One rooster that Melissa had buried in the ground must have been dug up, because Jeff discovered a head in the garden. Interesting: a reemergence of the dead rooster.  Rooster zombie, Jeff said. I hope that my body decomposes into the earth one day.

 

I collected the few good feathers of the brown rooster I could find, and sewed them onto my hat.

A Good Economy

Our lesson with Bob the other day was about soil—it’s chemistry and analysis. Soon, we will have a lesson with Bob Schaffer (so many Bobs), who is a soil analyst. He uses the Albrechian method of analysis, which is the only one Bob said he trusts.

 

Bob began by discussing the importance of a farm that is self-sustaining, self-supporting. It’s whole, it’s cycled, it falls in on itself, a wave within a wave. The foundation of farming, he said, is the foundation of nature.

 

If you have a farm that is too large, it is a different economy. It is not able to be self-supporting. As the farmer, when your farm is too big, you cannot look at all the plants growing under your jurisdiction, you don’t know your employees, there is a data glut, and if you make a mistake, it can be devastating. If your farm is diversified, you can safely make mistakes (and experiment with new things). If your farm is simple, your necessary data is minimal and manageable. If your farm is manageable, you only need a few employees, and these people become an important part of your social and economic network. Most of all, you can look at all of your plants with your very own eyes. Nothing gets out of control, nothing escapes your attention (well, to a reasonable extent, anyways).

 

However, get too big and much can happen of detriment to your business, of detriment to the environment, and of detriment to your product—your food. Bob talked about a time when the Clines were employing a farm manager who had been convinced to use Monsanto’s products. This was in the 1980’s, when weed killers had just become very popular in Sonoma County. (Funny, this coincides with the deregulation of corporations and the neoliberalization of the economy. Huh). Monsanto’s sales people were sent around to ‘educate’ consumers on their products. They were fully aware of the opportunity to exploit this owner-manager system that had developed on the large farm. The Monsanto representatives would give rewards to managers who used their products. Either “cold, hard cash,” as Bob said, or things like free trips to exotic places.

 

This served as incentive to the Cline’s manager, as he began purchasing and using weed-killers on the vineyards. Bob, of course, did not like that poisons were being used on his friend’s farm. One day, he observed this manager directing workers to spray the weedless fields with the poison in the rainy season. It became apparent to Bob that not only was this manager ruining the Cline’s land, but was over-utilizing the poisons so that he could buy more and receive more incentive packages. Because, you see, this poison must stay on the leaves of the weed for three days to be effective, and spraying just before rain makes no difference. Not to mention there were no weeds to begin with. They had all already been killed.

 

The problem here was partly a lack of ownership. The manager didn’t own the land, and so didn’t have a sense of ownership of the land, and didn’t mind destroying it for a trip to Hawaii. The owner, the one who cares about the land, cannot even manage it for lack of time. Needless to say, that man was fired, and now Bob takes care of the Cline’s vines in exchange for some land of his own to grow on. Fred Cline still has too much land to manage himself, but I think at least now he found a manager with morals.

Saving Seeds to Save the World

The past few days, we have been working on seed-saving techniques with B, the store manager. She started out by talking with us about why we should save seeds. She discussed Monsanto and its patents on life forms. It is very dangerous for farmers to be dependent on these large corporations, she said, because if they control farmer’s crops, then they control the entire world’s food supply. I mentioned how scary it would be if all crops produced terminator seeds (which can happen just from terminator seed blowover into other farmer’s fields— these plants do not occur in a vacuum). 

 

Secondly, the genetic diversity of plants must be maintained. If a large producer only distributes certain varieties, and every farmer buys from them, those will become the only varieties of plant available for crops. This makes for a very vulnerable crop. With genetic diversity, different plants will be resistant to different conditions. A biodiverse crop will never be wiped out by one or two extreme conditions (like draught or frost).

 

Thirdly, (and here’s one I didn’t think of), B said a plant adapts to its environment, and so saving seeds will accumulate the plants adaptations. Also, I think, the plants that survive will be the plants with the seeds (natural selection), and the nicest tomatoes that we choose to take seeds from will reproduce (artificial selection). I think we’re both right.

 

So we set to work, cutting open tomatoes and massaging their seeds out, collecting their seed and juices in a bucket, and throwing the meat and skin in the compost. B said to use tomatoes when they are overripe and squishy. This way, the seed has had time to absorb the nutrients of the juice. The seed is further strengthened by leaving them with the juices in the bucket for a day before rinsing them in a strainer. After rinsing, dry on a cloth or paper towel in the sun, spread out. Viola! You now have seeds for next year. External cost: zero. Pleasure of squishing tomatoes: priceless.

“I Want to Kill a Rooster”

The first of the month. This is supposed to be a special day, right? It is said to signify and foreshadow the month as a whole. The part indicative of the whole.

 

It was my morning for chickens. I don’t like to do the chicken-work in the morning when we have to be somewhere early, and this morning, we had to be out the door at 8 to go harvest chard. We picked up Angelica at the farm store, as she was to help with the harvest. We needed as many people as possible, because the land that it was on (adjacent to Jacuzzi vineyard) floods soon. This was to be the final harvest before flood, and we (seven of us altogether) harvested many many boxes for Planet Organics. The plants were certainly very mature, with wild weeds protruding at ever opportunity. So many bugs were there, from diabrotics to fuzzy caterpillars. When I took this position, I never thought about how the frequency of my encounters with insects would increase. But, you know, they’re okay. And I think about the “I (heart) bugs” sticker I have on my glasses case that was given to me at a kid’s event. We saw, touched, and held many exotic bugs.

 

And, yes, bugs are “icky.” We are taught they are icky, and that a place with bugs is an unclean, unhealthy place. Think of a cockroach-infested house. Now, think of neatly trimmed and insecticide-laden rows of corn stalks. Ah. Clean. Sterile. Healthy.

 

But, now, I have come to not only know, but understand why insects play such an important roll in plants’ lives, and therefore, our own. For plants can live without animals, but animals cannot live without plants. All of these pots and pans and preparation accoutrements are simply extra. All that we really need, and that these things are all made to embellish, are plants.

 

I was going to say, “I really want to kill a rooster,” but then I stopped myself. The thing is that there is an overcrowding of roosters here. You know that ratio from my last post? Hens to roosters should be no more than ten to one. I don’t know what our ratio is here, but it’s not good. Several of the roosters are in a different room of the coop to try to ease the rooster-tensions, but that also leads to an overcrowding of the hens. Two roosters have already died from roostericide. Today, I witnessed two roosters ganging up on a third, biting the back of its neck. I screamed and threw grain at them. They dispersed. I was mad. I thought, Just you wait, and directed by anger at what I perceived to be one of the ‘mean’ roosters.

 

The slaughtering of the excess roosters is supposedly in the works, but it just seems so much on the back-burner. Here, we are witnessing this chicken-violence, and they are cooped up. They are trapped. Those poor roosters, if they had just been able to get out they wouldn’t have had to die like that. And it’s like M says, it’s not that they died, it’s just that they died like that: under population pressure and group politics (they remind me of humans sometimes).

 

I stopped myself from saying, “I want to kill a rooster,” because I thought of what it would be like to actually kill a rooster with one’s hands (wielding a weapon, but still with one’s hands), or even to witness the killing of a rooster. What would it be like to look into that rooster’s eyes just before its life ends, knowing its life is about to end? How do you choose which one to kill? At least it could be quick and painless, and its body could enter into the food chain through humans.

 

Jeff, our newest intern, does not like the idea of killing a rooster, or a rooster being killed, for that matter. M and I have seen a lot more of the violence and the lagging, though. When we discussed it at lunch today, M said, “It will make everything so much better for the ones that survive. I said, “What else are you going to do? Let it out? And then what?”

 

That’s really what we should do is let it out. Let them out. They should be free-range. But then, at night, they must come in, or else they’re food for coyotes. They’re food for something, always; as are we.

Sowing Seeds and Transplanting.

On the 22nd of September, Bob gave us a lesson on using the Junior Seeder he uses to sow seeds. He says they’re a few hundred bucks, and are much better quality and more reliable than the big, fancy, gas-powered machines available for thousands. Particularly, if you are running a manageable farm, you should have no problem with this mechanical device.

It’s not for very big or very small seeds. You wouldn’t use it for very valuable seeds, either.

M and I both pushed it for a few rows. It was pretty hard work, but not too difficult. It requires a lot of calculation to decide what diameter of hole to use for the seeds. It depends on how many plants you want, what the germination rate is, and the frequency of seed dispersal. 

You can use a vacuum planter with pulletized seeds (made into pullets by covering with clay, but they’re expensive, and only really useful for industrial agriculture. 

The next day, we had a lesson on transplanting sprouted seeds. 

First, you broadcast seeds throughout an 8 by 8 inch nursery tray (Bob says they used to be available made with wood, but now only come in plastic). Once the cotyledons have reached a few inches, you transplant the sprouts to give them space, a group of two to three for every square inch of  tray space. If you water them the night before, the sprouts will be dry and easy to transplant. 

You must take a small handful of sprouts in your left hand and disentangle the roots of a few with your right hand. Pinch the stems in your hand left hand, while you use your right hand to make a hole in the soil. Place the group of sprouts in the hole, and cover with dirt. Don’t worry about making them stand straight up or anything. They’ll stand on their own after a watering. Actually, it’s nice to have them leaning away from you, to give you more room to work. 

Sowing seeds in a nursery is good for sensitive plants, and for time-space sharing. If you have something growing in the field that will be done with harvesting in a month, you can start growing another plant in the nursery. When the first plant is mowed down at the end of its cycle, you can have the other crop ready to transplant into the ground. Then, you’ve saved a month of field-space.

You can use three different data-points from which to cycle your garden or farm: the moon, the human calendar, and the conditions of nature around you. Bob always plants seeds at the full moon, but you can use any other lunar formation. Also, note the actual date. Then, look around you and see what the other plants are doing. Then, you’ll know, for example, that when you planted the summer squash that did so well, it was a late april full moon, and the catkins of the willow tree were out. No matter where you move, you will know that when the catkins are out on the willow tree, it’s time to plant the squash.

The latter data point helps because the seasons are always different. This year’s winter will be different than next year’s winter. The plants, though, are very attuned to the weather, and know when the first frost will be. If it will be early, they will go to seed early– if late, they will go to seed late, etc… It’s pretty amazing that plants are able to prepare themselves ahead of time. They are that connected to the dirt and the air. Sometimes, they get confused, but you have to really work at it, like spray a bunch of weed-killer at their trunks. Pretty funny that we put orange fences around the old oaks to mark them off from the other vegetation being mowed over and paved over for development, but then we use so much chemical crap on our lawns, it ends up killing much of those trees anyways.

Chez Panisse Party and Chicken Basics.

Sunday was the annual party for Chez Panisse and Green String staff. It was held in and around a large barn on Green String. Hay bales had been set outside for use as benches. A brick oven had been built and an iron door made from Aurelio’s forge expressly for the purpose of the party. Pizzas were made in the oven and two sheep roasted on large metal skewers over an open fire. There were beans, tortillas, and salads, and for dessert, homemade chocolate chip ice cream with biscotti and tarts from the oven.

There was much wine and all was drunk. Two large tour buses arrived with the Chez Panisse staff. There were many people with kids and dogs, baseballs and soccer balls, instruments and voices. I saw a few people I knew from Berkeley. And, of course, Alice Waters was in attendance. I regret not getting a chance to meet her, although she did wink at me. By that time, I was too wasted and exhausted to want to have an intelligent conversation with anyone. There was so much stimulation, I was drained, drained.

I met one of the head chefs from Chez, who suggested us interns come to the restaurant and see “the other side.” See the food prepared and eaten! When we fill their orders on Mondays and Thursdays, I sometimes think what will come of that bean or berry, and sometimes what comes of it is that it goes in my belly.

Monday was the usual morning order filling harvest for the restaurant, followed by a long lunch at Ross’ house, and fig picking. You must pick figs when they are at their full ripeness. Any green is too much. If they are not yet ripe, a milky substance leaks from their stem, which is irritating to the skin. Also, their stem nubbin must come off the tree intact to keep the fig preserved. It was Ross, his friend, M, and I picking. The picking turned into a fig-fight, with us all sneaking and hiding behind and up trees, throwing. Tired from our battle, we all sat down on the hillside, looking down over the grapevines far below. Ross’ friend, Colin, said, “This is so fun. It’s like being a kid again.”

I contemplated this the next day during our lesson with Bob. We learned how to use a seeder, which is a contraption with two wheels, a seed holder, and handles. You push it up and down the rows, and it sows the seeds into the ground at the desired depth and frequency. Bob discussed the economics of choosing the frequency: how much the seed costs, its germination rate, how old it is. We also hand-sowed seeds that Bob broadcast on another plot. Again, economics: Bob broadcast them because it was important that it was done right with this expensive seed and important plot—a crop of kale that is expected to produce five thousand dollars.

Being a farmer would not be like being a kid again. Being an intern, however, is.

Tuesday morning brought a lesson with Bob’s father (also named Bob). Bob Sr. is the local poultry expert. He is in his eighties, but is very much active. He is good to talk to, and has a great wealth of knowledge. He tells us that we are the ones who are able to make a difference; that he doesn’t have the time any more— it’s us.

Here’s the lesson:

The wild jungle fowl of Malaysia were domesticated into what we now know as chickens. The domesticated fowl were moved west to India, the Middle East, and Egypt. The ancient Egyptians were very talented domesticators, hatching many chicks in sand incubators and developing what is now known as one of the Mediterranean breeds, which have white eggs. 

From Malaysia, the chicken also moved east to China, where it was developed for meat rather than eggs. The eggs of these Asian breeds are brown. 

The chicken also moved north into Germany, France, and England. These breeds, such as the Dorking and Sussex, are small and produce many eggs.

In the U.S., “dual-purpose” breeds were developed– good for eggs as well as meat– and has now formed into a worldwide industry. These, of course, are big. Breeds include the Light Bromma, the Rhode Island Red, the Dominic, and the Jersey Giant. These breeds are also high in fat content. For example, Foster Farms chickens are 20% body fat. Bob Sr. said that he has developed chickens of only 6% body fat, and if  their testes are removed, they can attain a weight of up to 16 pounds, the size of a small turkey.

This is also about efficiency: how well a chicken can convert feed into carcass weight. At Foster Farms, they don’t want the chickens to be active, nor get any sunlight. If they do not move and do not get any sunlight, their flesh will be very tender. I thought about those  chicken commercials Foster Farms used to (still does?) do, where the chicken puppets are trying to escape. Jesus. 

It takes 21 days, almost exactly, to incubate eggs of any breed. For the Mediterranean breeds, a higher temperature of incubation is needed (like the Leghorns), but for the most part, you need 99.5 degrees of circulated heat or 101 degrees of static heat for an egg to hatch. Also, a high amount of humidity is needed. You can make a home incubator, with a light bulb to produce heat, and a dish of water to evaporate into humidity. You must turn the eggs a couple times a day, or the fetus will stick to the side of the egg and cause it to abort. Bob Sr. says he puts them on a flat cookie sheet in the incubator, and runs his hands over them to turn them. If you buy an incubator, always keep the eggs pointed-side down. The gives the fetus room to grow in. 

To find a fertile egg, you do a method called “candling.” You can buy a candler, or make one by poking a hole in the top of a tin can, placing a light bulb in through the bottom, and placing an egg on top of the hole, so the light shines just through the egg. If you see the little white sperm, then you know it’s fertile (you’ve all seen that funny white stringy thing in your eggs before, right? That’s the sperm! What would the anti-abortionists say?).

The Mediterranean breeds have become very bad at incubating their own eggs, because they have been hatched for them for so long, but the Asian breeds can hatch their own.

Don’t have many different breeds or different aged chicks together– they’ll fight.

Soybean meal is good protein for them.

Leave their poop on the ground in the winter and just cover with straw. When it decomposes, it provides warmth for the chickens.

You can free-range chickens, but you have to put them in at night to protect them from predators. To catch a chicken, pretend you’re walking one way, then walk the other way– you must trick them. Whatever you do, don’t chase them. You’ll never win.  

They really like lightly cooked veggies, and they also like their own egg shells smashed up– it’s a good source of calcium. Things like cantaloupe must be cut open so they can eat the soft flesh. They are great garbage disposers! 

They like grain spread on the ground. It’s good for scratching and finding. Give them a little at night, because it digests slowly. Give them standard feed in the morning. Veggies all day. Their feed (mash) must be 16-18% protein. If they’re not getting enough protein, they’ll want to eat each other. 

Hen to rooster ratio should be 10:1 max for Mediterranean breeds, and 15:1 max for Asian breeds. If it’s more, the hens will peck at each other. They can be very mean.

Melissa and I want to hatch some chicks. Bob Sr. thinks everyone should keep at least a couple of hens. They’re so easy to take care of, they provide the satisfaction and economy of growing your own food, and they produce fresh (and maybe organic and free-range) eggs right in your backyard. What’s not to like?

Potatoes Plus Amaranth Equals a Happy Couple

On Saturday, students from the UC Santa Cruz agricultural program visited Bob’s Farm, and M and I attended his tour. This group of students were much less shy about picking something off a plant and eating it, and asked very good questions.

 

Bob believes that poor quality nutrition is the basis of disease, which is an idea I have encountered elsewhere— for example, in a book I am currently reading entitled, Consuming Passions: An Anthropology of Eating. In this book, the author discusses how instances of TB and other diseases decreased dramatically many years prior to their identification and vaccine development. A malnourished person is much more likely to contract and die from an illness, and in impoverished countries even with medical care, diseases like TB, measles, pneumonia, and influenza are major problems.

 

This has made me question the existence of so many systems of aid based on medical care. Have we overlooked the even closer and more fundamental necessity of good nutrition? Are we treating cancer, heart attacks, and diabetes at points far from their causation? Would it be better to ensure that people can glean food subsistence independently than to provide vaccinations?

 

When discussing the quality of soil at his farm, Bob said that it was a less productive soil than places in the Sacramento Valley, for example. He chose the land for this very reason, he said, because a very fertile soil will continue to be fertile for some time even if you’re farming it in an extractive manner. However, if you begin on tough soil, it will be more responsive and you will know quite easily whether you are doing things correctly or incorrectly. What drove Bob to be a farmer in this way was his observation that plants seemed to grow so well and fully naturally and without any external inputs, but human crops seemed to need so much to get them to grow.

 

It made me disappointed and angry to think about the productive and fertile soil of the Sacramento Valley, of which Roseville (my hometown), is a part. All of that precious ground was built on and covered with concrete as if it were disposable, and all landscaping by policy homogenous and not including anything for subsistence, or even for nature for that matter. Nice, clean, green grass injected with weed killers, and a tree in the middle of the street every 15 feet that can’t even hold itself up. What will happen if and when the land is once again needed for food production? Will we have the fuel necessary to tear the concrete back up again?

 

Our history of growing has allowed us to sap land of its nutrients and move on to the next plot. Sooner or later, we will reach a point when there is no next plot. Bob talked a lot about the ecological changes in Sebastopol. It used to be a temperate rainforest, and is now only suitable for the agricultural growth of grapevines. Initially, Sebastopol’s redwood trees were cut down and raspberries were grown. The summer rains stopped without the redwood trees there, and topsoil was lost in massive quantities as a result of the loss of flora. In one recorded instance, 18” of topsoil was lost in one torrential winter downpour. When the climate was too dry in the summer for raspberries, apples were grown. Now, grapevines are the main crop, able to withstand much dryness and low-nutritive soils. Soon, only something like buckwheat will grow, and then, desert-like conditions will prevent agriculture viability.

 

When we grow all for humanity and nothing for nature, nature cannot continue to produce, which is why at Green String, there is always one crop for nature for every human crop. Weeds will be allowed to grow or seeds actually sown between crops to provide ground cover, soil support, and structural support. The food crops grow with the weeds, and when the weeds become bigger than the food crop, they are cut down to size, but never pulled. Their root system is important in soil nutrient building and aeration, and it takes much less energy to merely suppress their growth vs. pulling them. A ‘clean cultivated’ farm, with nothing growing between crops, is not “under control,” but selfishly sucking all nutrients for human consumption only.

 

Bare? Fallow? Never.

 

Rico Berto

 

 

Human and Fly Consanguinity

09/19/08

 

Today was the day for the Sonoma Farmer’s Market, which goes from 9 am to noon. M and I left at 7:30 to go pick eggplants at another property. They have free-range chickens and a pregnant sow. There were so many eggplants, I picked them quickly. Then, we drove to Bob’s farm to pick up broccoli.

 

We met Ross at the market and set up shop. A lot of people there knew Ross. Next to us was Walter the Plant Guy, as Ross and M call him, who sells succulents and drives a beautiful vw bus. The sellers at the market barter a lot. Walter gave Ross a succulent in exchange for some veggies.

 

Afterwards, Ross gave us mula for lunch out, and we ate in the park from a French-style café. The tourists stuck out like sore thumbs. We certainly looked the part of farm-chicas, as I had on overalls and we both had muddy, dirty boots.

 

After yummy garden and Portobello burgers, we drove to the Jacuzzi vineyard and winery to use the kitchen. The Clines own the winery as well as Green String. A sign stating “Green String Certified” was donned on the side of the road near the property. Bob’s farm and, of course, Green String Farm, are also certified ‘green string.’ Bob does not agree with the current organic certification process, and believes it to serve only industrial-style agriculture. I agree. In order to go beyond ‘organic,’ Bob began the term ‘green string’ to label a kind of agriculture which adheres not only to the non-use of certain chemicals, but all chemicals, and generally a way of growing food that sustains nature as well as humans.

 

Jacuzzi has a gorgeous building at its entrance. I told M it reminded me of a plant that shows off its colorful blossoms so all the bees will come to it. Here, it’s the tourists who come to it. The building looks like a castle, made of stone with big heavy wooden doors and wrought iron hardware. The kitchen in the back is also amazing. The stove has twelve ranges. The cooking supplies are giant—giant bowls, pots, pans. The plan was to use the large amount of raspberries that were going to go bad if we didn’t make a product out of them soon. The product was to be raspberry soda. We spent the next hour and a half cooking down the berries ($80 worth) and straining their juice into a big pot. M and I took a break in the middle to check out the winery. We tasted a couple of wines at the tasting counter and chatted with the man working there. We also tasted various kinds of olive oils made and sold at the winery.

 

So much that is available in Sonoma is made locally. Everyone makes something; everyone is a creator of something, an artisan. When M and I got back in the kitchen, a man with orange hair and beard was unloading things and bringing them inside, including a toolbox. I assumed it was someone preparing for an event that was to happen later on. Then, he took out several very large cheeses: wheels and blocks, and opened up his toolbox, which was filled with an amazing variety of cheese-cutting knives. He cut a big chunk of cheese off the wheel, wrapped it in plastic, and gave it to Ross. “Here, Ross, this is for you.” It must have been a pound of cheese, it was so big.

 

Turns out this is Gary the Cheese Guy. He gave M and I a couple tastes of cheese. One a lovely parmesan. I said, “I like the little crunchies.” He said, “Yes, those are calcium crystals.” The other we tastes was a soft, white sheep’s milk cheese. Yum!

 

Outside, Ross gave up grocery money and the huge chunk of cheese. “Wow, thanks,” I said. I don’t think I have ever been in possession of such a large chunk of cheese. Amazing. Amazing how food is so bountiful and passed around so freely. There are very intricate connections of people giving gifts of food, kitchen use, land….

 

When M and I got back to the house, we collected the chicken eggs, and went to go talk to Bob, who was in the forge across from our house. We met Aurelio, who rents out the forge from Bob. We all talked for quite some time, about food, about work, about life and land and economy. Aurelio had forged a door for a brick oven specially made for a party to be held on Sunday. You see? Everyone makes things. And they’re very good at it. After Bob left, Aurelio showed us around the forge and showed us his portfolio photos. His brothers, who work with him, live in a house near us on the farm. They are very good at what they do. They are artists and craftspeople. They are artisans.

 

We have a fly problem in our house, so I thought we should get a fly swatter, or maybe sticky fly tape. We found a flytrap to use. It was a sticky roll with images of flies on it. The flies are attracted to the image and then get stuck. I wasn’t thinking, though, that the flies would be alive when they got stuck and would be tortured until they starved to death. What a trick! Imagine seeing your buddies, and going to hang out with them, only to find that they are dummies and you’re now stuck!  I said to M, “Let’s not use this after all.”

“Okay,” she said, “let’s toss it.”

I blew on it and discovered that one of the flies was still alive. I was going to take it outside and try to get the fly off. As I carried it, the fly flapped its wings with great effort. I took a little stick and put it under the fly’s body. Then, I gently lifted it up, attempting to free the fly from the glue. I watched as the fly’s mouth opened wide. I tried once more, and again, its mouth opened wide. It was screaming! It was screaming. I put the trap in the trash, disturbed, and tried to squash it with a piece of paper M had retrieved for the purpose. I hope I did squash it.

 

Oh! The image of the flies little mouth opening wide as I tried to help it free kept coming back into my head. Later, I tried to stop thinking about it, but then I realized that maybe I should think about it. What was that? Why did that bother me so much?

 

It bothered me because for that moment, the fly and I were consanguine. I was witness to its pain. I could see it. I had been looking closely. That fly screamed. I could not hear its scream, but that fly screamed. We are flies. We are small compared to those things that are large, we scream, we suffer, we die. We are consanguine with the flies, because we are also beings. It’s high time we realized that.

Cannard Farm Guests and Apocalyptic Prophesies

Today is Thursday, and on Thursday, we harvest produce for Chez Panisse in Berkeley. So, M and I drove to Bob’s farm (Cannard Farm– pronounced kuh- NARD) in Sonoma. We arrived a little past 8. We picked raspberries first, then string beans, then zucchini blossoms, then zucchinis. The zucchini plants are prickly, and they give a very hollow crunch if you step on their stems. I didn’t even know the blossoms were edible.

Two classes from Stanford were to arrive at eleven. The plan was to accompany them on a tour of the farm, and have lunch with the students and professors following. Then we heard that one class was a “food and politics” class, and the other a sort of  “varieties of music” class. I don’t need to state why the former class came, but the latter was to collect noisy objects from around the farm, as well as record sounds they heard.

Following Bob’s tour, all of us participated in the making of lunch under the direction of Charlene Nicholson Cannard (who is a chef at Chez Panisse). My goodness—the best pizzas ever, with eggplant, goat cheese, olives, figs, wow. Beans that I picked were made into a salad with oil, herbs, and breadcrumbs, a tomato salad with purple basil, fresh (really really fresh) mozzarella and basil, and zucchini blossoms stuffed with ricotta! Oi, that may have been the most memorable meal of my life. Everything was so great, I felt so lucky to be partaking in it, it felt so great to know that I helped harvest it just that morning.

Then we enjoyed an improvisational musical performance (which quite comically included the word “balls”). It was great, actually. Some of the recordings the students had made of the food preparation played while we ate. It was like a contraction, an audible folding over of the past into the present. The making and the consuming.

Some people ate a cow named Mr. Smartypants, but I didn’t. I said that he must have not been very smart.

Once all the students left, I was wine-tired but, of course, helped with the cleanup. I did my favorite task, though— dishes. Bob washed and I dried. He asked me about the day (he had snuck away after giving the tour—from my understanding, he keeps very busy). This sometimes-called-menial task provided such a great opportunity for conversation, and the task was finished before I knew it as a result.

We talked about food, of course, and I asked Bob if he thought there would be a time when there is not enough food in the U.S. for everyone to eat. He said definitely. I asked him when he think that might happen, and he said within the next ten months. “Within the next ten months? That soon?”

“Yes,” he said, “look at the financial system right now. We’re worse off than in the depression. We are very poor right now [meaning the U.S.].”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Ninety percent of the financial corporations are in the control of the federal government right now… My friend says he thinks we’re turning communist…. If something like that happens, everyone’s going to come to you.”

“Yeah, and steal my food!… You know, I have a garden in Sonoma, in the city. It’s only about two acres, but very nice, and very productive, and I got a note the other day from the city that says it’s illegal to grow crops in the city of Sonoma!”

“What?! Why?”

“I have no idea, it’s just illegal.”

“Huh.”

We also discussed whether one should have their money in the bank right now. He says to keep it in silver and gold. I said to keep it in alcohol.

I really trust Bob and respect his opinion, and to hear from him that he thinks it will only be within the next ten months that our systems of food production and distribution come crashing down really affected me. For some time now, I have been telling people about my anxiety concerning food production and availability. I don’t really know what they think, but I know that most people don’t take me seriously. Perhaps they think I am actually insane when I say, “Hoard food, hoard water, and buy a gun,” and yes, it sounds crazy, but, in fact, the crazy thing is that it’s not crazy. Perhaps that phrase is a bit extreme, but the point is: be prepared, and that can mean mentally as well as physically. Most important, though, is be aware. Our systems our fallible, and are actually now teetering on the edge of complete disintegration. When it will actually happen and what that will result in are the questions to be answered.

Right now, it is bothering me, and I don’t exactly know what to do about it. 

Lesson With Bob Cannard

Today, M and I received our first formal lesson from Bob Cannard, Green String’s Director. We walked around the field, and he discussed how one assesses a plant: the color, the anchorage of the roots, the symmetry, the turbidity (it’s ability to hold itself up).

You determine any problems with a plant based on its symptoms. If the roots are not extensive (with few little feeder-roots), then the problem is likely soil-related. If there is yellowing of the leaves and a lack of turbidity, the plant is not receiving enough moisture. A corn plant will even send out a fat seeker root in the direction of a leaky faucet 50 ft away. When pointing out the roots of a celery plant, he was careful to say that the brown feeder roots were “not old, but have lived.”

Bob emphasized that a plant is non-deceptive– it is naked, it does not get up and walk away, it is right there for you to observe. By looking at a plant, one can observe its many pasts, as well as its future. Glancing at the leeks, we could observe the pasts apparent in the dry, brown hanging leaves, as well as marks left on the plant from leaves already decomposed. You can see past wounds– past trauma– by looking at a plant. (I can’t help but think of humans as Bob discusses the lives of plants).

We observed the cycles of a plant as it translocates its nutrients from outer (or lower) leaves to inner (or upper) leaves, all in preparation for “seed babies,” as Bob likes to call them. 

A good plant is bouncy (it will perk back up if you bend it), has good tear strength (a test of how much pressure it can withhold before it tears), and has good radial and/or bilateral symmetry. The fuzziness, waxiness, and scent of a plant keeps bugs away until the plant is ready for the bugs. A good and healthy plant can defend itself from bugs, but needs bugs in order to digest and decompose its used parts. 

As we observed plants, many cucumber beetles, or Diabrotica, flew around. These bugs eat plants, and so are considered foes by many farmers, but Bob discussed how they only eat the old leaves, not the new. Mildew is also your friend, as it likewise helps to break down old organic matter and make its nutrients accessible to new plants. 

Time-space sharing is another method Bob likes to use. You can overlap the planting and harvesting of plants, in order to increase your efficiency. So you can be harvesting celery while eggplant is coming up, for example. The celery and eggplant share space and time, thereby increasing production. It also promotes biodiversity and helps crops withstand frosts, heavy rains, or other extreme weather. The varying root structures also support each other. 

Morning Glory grew amongst the squash plants, which Bob said would transfer its mildew to the squash plants when they were ready to be broken down. 

The soil on GS is crumbly and compact. Bob said it’s high in magnesium. You water it, and then rototill a couple days later in order to break it up. If you rototill too soon, the clumps are squished together– you can see a shine on the clumps that is a sign of this. What causes it to clump is also bacteria and microorganisms. A good tester of moisture in the soil is digging out a handfull from about 5 inches deep, squishing it together with your hands as much as possible, and then seeing if it breaks up again with just a bit of tapping. If it does, you’re good to go. If not, more water and rototill.

Bob advises against lining plants with plastic. when the organic matter is chopped up after harvest, most of it ends up being plastic. I believe that we will one day be eating plastic (if we aren’t already), and you know what they say: You are what you eat.

First Day at Green String

I have gotten settled in at the farm house at Green String Farm. Ross and Melissa (the other intern) were setting out herbs to dry on the upper story of the barn by the farm store. 

We drove to the intern house, where Ross made carrot juice and Melissa fixed me up a snack of goat cheese, tomatoes, and fresh purple basil. Melissa showed me the satellite chicken coop. There are too many roosters, and the pecking order is getting violent. Many of the hens have backs bare of feathers. I told Melissa of my friend’s theory that chickens are stupid and don’t even realize or care that you’re taking their eggs. M said that she disagreed. One of the hens, she said, lays many eggs and is angry when they are taken. 

We gave them vegetables and fruit that was bruised, and fed them three buckets of grain. Some of the hens waited at my feet in anticipation of me pouring more grain from the bucket I held. I was hesitant about the chickens– imagining they would peck at my feet and thinking of Orwell’s animal farm. They are the only animals kept at the farm, but I think taking care of them and collecting their eggs will be one of the most difficult things for me to reconcile, particularly when dealing with the issue of over-crowding and their naked backs. 

Melissa will be making various herbal soaps to sell. I am interested in making apple butter, but the trees at GS are immature and don’t bear much fruit. If a lot comes from other farms, though, perhaps that will be a possibility. 

M and I will be making some bread for the morning (i brought my own apple butter for the time being). Ross and his girlfriend are coming for dinner. I made a cashew alfredo sauce last night– perhaps we’ll use that.

My mind will certainly be occupied by food for the next several months. 

I am at the Petaluma Library and will check out:

A Continuous Harmony, Berry

The Essential Agrarian Reader, Wirzba

Alternative Agriculture: A History, Thirsk

Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization, Manning

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, Kimbrell

Currently, I am also reading this great book called Consuming Passions: An Anthropology of Eating by Farber. I will post more thoroughly on that book later.

Bounty of Ideas at Slow Food Nation

As I thoroughly described in my last post, I was in attendance at Slow Food Nation’s “Food For Thought” speaker series on Saturday, August 30th. Following are my notes  as well as some thoughts of the discussion on Climate Change and Food, which included Wes Jackson, Carl Pope, Ari Bernstein, Patrick Holden, and Anna Lappe, and was moderated by Mark Hertsgaard.

 The talk began on a somber note, as projections of drastic decreases in crop yields as a result of climate change was discussed, as well as potential future problems with water availability for those crops. 

Wes Jackson countered that the actual changes that will take place as a result of climate change are unpredictable, and Carl Pope stated that it is that very unpredictability which may lead to our demise. “We are a weedy species,” Pope said, “we adapt– but we cannot adapt to uncertainty.” Just one degree celsius increase in temperature in our prairie land, Jackson said, may turn the prairie to a dry, hot, sandy terrain, or, some say, could even create the exact opposite effect of a wetter (but still hotter, of course) environment.

Anna Lappe spoke of her “sleuthing” at food industry conferences and what those industries are or are not doing to counter global warming. While the Grocery Manufacturers Organization held its first ever Sustainability Summit, the Meat Manufacturers Conference was void of any inquiry on the topic– this when meat production creates 18% of greenhouse emissions globally!

Monsanto, according to Lappe, puts forward the rationale that the increase of small, organic farms would take up so much space that we will be sacrificing our forests for farms. Proponents of biotech farming dispense this information to the public, creating a false impression of the real consequences of organic farming vs. chemical farming. It is true that organic farming can result in lower yields in the short term, but if we concern ourselves with the future of the human species, land that is sapped of its ability to support plant life as a result of irresponsible farming becomes the obvious loser in the production-race. Indeed, Lappe said, the inefficiency of chemical agriculture is not accounted for in many calculations (for example, the oil used to ship fertilizer across the globe).

And, anyways, hunger is not even about scarcity, it’s about democracy! We do not have a lack of food, we have unequal access and distribution. (Berry discusses democratic land distribution in Home Economics.)

Speaking of food democracy, Lappe touched on the growing consumption of meat, and how it is held that humans naturally desire meat. She asks, is this really autonomous desire? In South Korea, she recounted, she had witnessed boycott demonstrations against U.S. imported beef. They felt the beef to be unsafe and a possible carrier of mad cow disease and were critical of ad campaigns which they felt had created a demand for meat. I think of advertisements I have seen for U.S. beef. They show lean steak at very close range, so that it appears to be a landscape. Herbs appear to be trees and bushes. If eating meat is such a natural inclination, what is the use for millions of dollars spent on ad campaigns? People should just naturally seek out flesh, no? Hence, the market for meat is created through ads and through cultural ideals on the performance of wealth.

There was also much discussion on the U.S. Farm Bill signed by Mr. Bush. Pope made the argument that the farm bill is not about food for the poor at all, but is rather about the most food from the least labor. This, of course, creates unemployment, and even a permanent unemployable class. Jackson agreed, and stated that the greatest source of untapped energy on this planet is in fact, human energy.

Patrick Holden put it succinctly that “a lot needs to happen in a terrible hurry.” I firmly believe it does, and the hurry will be terrible if we don’t hurry now. However, solutions made to work in the short term, said Carl Pope, must also work for the long term. 

A rich point in the conversation was reached when, following this comment, Jackson spoke of the need to de-emphasize growth as the dominant economic ideology. This sounded to me like Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy. Jackson certainly had a good point with this comment– our country in particular suffers from the Frontier Illness, which contributes to the tacit understanding that there is always space to grow into. This is what creates sprawling suburbs and decrepit inner cities; growing out leaves everything shallow. 

Pope raised issue with this idea, stating that we cannot stop thinking about growth when “three hundred million people in India want electricity.” Jackson diffused the tension by raising above his head a swatch of prairie grass he had traveled with from Kansas. The grass itself measured about 18″ long, but the thin, intertwined, knit-like roots stretched 8 ft. down. Talk about deep economy!

Slow Food Nation: What It Took To Get In

 

Farmers Equal Liberty?

I attended the three Slow Food Nation panel discussions on Saturday, August 30th. I had a ticket for the first panel on Climate Change. An amazing panel. 

 

But…. Who I really wanted to see more than anyone else was Wendell Berry. He is my hero of the land, and his writing is what sparked my interest in agriculture in the first. I hoped to snag an extra ticket somehow by asking around. Before the first panel commenced, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me. “Are you going to the panel at 4?”

“Yes, I am.”
“I tried to get a ticket, but it was all sold out.”

“It did sell out fast. I only got a ticket because my husband is on the panel.”

“Who is your husband?”
“Wendell Berry.”

How funny. I just so happened to sit right next to Tanya Berry. I tried to conceal my excitement.

“Really? He’s the reason I want to see the talk.”

We chatted a bit, and she said, “Well, if you really wanna see it, you could just hang out in the theatre.”

I thought, Hey, good idea.

After the Climate Change panel, I went to the woman’s bathroom in the basement, where I discovered a lounge area adjacent. Some people were inside, eating lunch. I sat and wrote and thought until the next panel was about to begin. Since the bathroom was not past the ticket takers, I walked right into the second panel, on Edible Education, undetected.

Now, all I had to do was sit through this panel and hide until Wendell’s panel began. It had been so easy the first time. I would just do the same thing as before. Meanwhile, the only consumables I had brought in my bag were an Odwalla bar and a canteen of coffee— and I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I was getting quite hungry as the second panel wore on. 

At the end of the panel, the discussion mediator was handed a note and announced, “Everyone, please clear the theatre between panels, and if you have a ticket, then you may reenter. We need to clear the theatre between panels. Thank you.”

Oh no, had I been detected, so close to the start of Wendell’s panel?! By now, I had to see Wendell Berry speak. I had already starved myself for some hours. 

I planned to exit near the stage, thereby avoiding the crowd in the aisles, and go in through another set of double doors near the bathroom stairs. Oh no! They have those doors closed now! I shoved my jacket into my bag and returned to the door I had exited through. I said to the girl manning the door, “I left my jacket in there. Can I go back in?” She nods. Whew. That was close. 

I go back in, make my way through the crowd and down to the basement to the women’s bathroom. I wait for the line to die down and then enter a stall. Should I stay in the stall until the panel starts? No, that’s silly. I was my hands and sit back in the lounge. A photographer readies his equipment, but other than him, I’m the only one there. I sit behind a pillar, hoping to be unnoticed, writing in my notebook just to make it appear as if I’m press, as if I’m supposed to be there. Eek. There’s a girl who is wearing a staff apron. Will she question me? I am so jacked up on caffeine that I am paranoid! 

Paradoxical, isn’t it, that I have to starve myself in order to attend the talks about slow food.

I will wait until the bathroom gets busy again. That will tell me if they have begun to let people in.

What if they are now checking tickets right at the theatre entrance? What will I say? I left my jacket? Then what? An escort?

Thirteen minutes and still undiscovered. Soon now. Soon. I also want a good seat. Is that too much to ask? What if the staff can smell my guilt?

Guilty, guilty conscience.

I overhear some ladies walking into the restroom, “Do you think people who had a ticket for the panel beforehand just stayed in here to see this one?… Oh, no. That’s right. They couldn’t. They had to leave.”

Ten minutes til showtime. Here I go.

I get a comment card from the lady with the basket. She asks me if I have a seat yet.

“No.”

“Ok, well, it’s all full down here, but you can go up to the balcony. The stairs are…”

“Oh, I’ll just go down to the stairs by the stage.”

“Ok”

I sit in a good box seat on the side balcony. I’m in!

Wendell Berry is the bomb!

It was so worth it.

Green String Institute

Green String Farm is where I will be spending three months of my life 09/08 to 12/08, to learn methods of sustainable agriculture. I want to touch the soil, I want to encourage the plants, I want to partake in the harvest and welcome everyone to the table. 

Most of all, I want to use my body. Wendell Berry says the greatest source of untapped energy is human energy. Human energy! Why have we considered for so long labor to be unpleasurable; the use of the body unseemly? Even sex is viewed in this way. Berry also says if we had a machine to that to our liking, we wouldn’t do that with our bodies either! 

I think we should connect every treadmill in the country to the power grid.

My body wants use (and i include the brain as part and parcel of the body). It wants to do, to form, to change what is outside of it. It wants to take in, break down, return. I want to know where what I consume is coming from. The greatest tragedy of our time is the loss of history: what is this that I eat/wear/drive/read? Where did it come from? Who made it?

The festival of disconnect is Christmas. Yes, Christmas. That celebration when we get a whole lot of shit from nowhere. It just shows up. Magical, huh? Oh, wait, we know where it comes from! Those happy laboring elves! They are so happy in their little elf sweatshops making tons of plastic crap for all the girls and boys. 

This holiday teaches our children ignorance. My Christmas would involve making, creating.

This disconnect is why I don’t eat meat, and refrain as much as possible from animal products (if it’s free, ok). One has no clue what this animal who this meat constituted endured to be on our table. In fact, we attempt to mystify its origin as much as possible. ‘Nugget’ is not an element of the chicken’s anatomy. I have seen chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs. Why are they not in the shape of chickens? Or any other contemporaneous animal? No, they are shaped like creatures that have been extinct for so long, they might as well be mythological to the child– further blurring reality. 

I will eat eggs on the farm. I know where those eggs came from. I know those chickens. I don’t see any nuggets.

 

p.s. green string is currently accepting applications for its innovative internship program

The Radical Farmer

It has been a long time since I have written, and it has been two years since my fieldwork in NYC. I have worked with the Berkeley Needle Exchange for the past year, and am now preparing to intern at Green String Institute in Petaluma.

So, what brings me from poop to permaculture? It’s actually quite a straightforward trajectory, actually. 

What really interested me about the houseless was their radicalism, their critique and ‘fuck you.’ They believe there are some fundamental discontinuities in our system, and in fact, their mere presence is a signifier of a welling crisis. More to come on that topic.

But to stay astride with my point– the houseless want more intimacy with the earth. Today, I recounted to a friend a story of a person I interviewed who said that he was ready for the world to die; he wanted the world to die. He said that he could not go and kill a deer and eat it because he would be arrested without a permit, and anyways, all their space has been paved over. It was impossible for him to subsist except by purchasing food with money. 

Many of my subject-people expressed desire to have their own land from which to sustain themselves, some actually were migrant farm workers. Ownership, though, was a key issue for many. Wendell Berry speaks of democratic ownership of land- we are far from it. 

I realized that I am not interested in the traditional anthropological and sociological questions of homelessness, but on the very specificities of the houseless themselves. Why? I was hoping they could point me in the right direction. What do I do? Do I live without a house, too? Do I cease to participate in the usury and consumerism that plagues our nation, makes us fat, and widens the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? I could, but it would require placing myself in a space of destruction and dissolution. You cannot exist outside of the system without disintegrating or becoming reabsorbed. It just doesn’t work. 

So then what? Study policy? Change things from the inside? I think so. I’m pissed off and I aim to force people to stop doing things that piss me off. I want power. With power, I can help to alter our system of disgust and distrust, this simulacrum of a reality, bent upon its own destruction in the hopes of attaining another dollar. We need a new system of values.

In this search for new values, I need to start from the ground. The dirt is where our sustenance lays– the heart of our very being in this world. If change will come from anywhere, it will be from there. It is the basis not only of our biological, but also our economic self. Considering the state of the latter, dirt should be worth its weight in gold.

Both the houseless and the sustainable small farmer are coming from the same place: a place of seeking alternatives– those which we badly need.