Book Report: Restoration Agriculture

At the MOSES conference in February, there was one workshop that stood out in a few ways: the speaker was extremely well-spoken, the standing-room-only audience was riveted, there was a standing ovation at the end, and his book sold out in the bookstore within the hour. The speaker was Mark Shepard and his book is Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers, which I read over the course of the last few weeks. The book takes permaculture principles and agroforestry and applies them to the temperate climate of southwestern Wisconsin. As I'll discuss, the book contains some problematic premises, but the overall message is a valuable and useful one.

That overall message is that it is possible to grow our staple crops in temperate perennial systems, restoring to some extent the natural North American biomes and reversing years of soil degradation in the process. To these ends, he advocates the use of permaculture principles adapted to the temperate zones (permaculture was originally developed in Australia), such as precise berm and swale systems and highly diverse interplanting to harness maximum possible solar energy and minimize water run-off. He makes the valid point that an acre of corn that is only "knee high by the Fourth of July" has already missed out on plenty of solar energy. Trees, on the other hand, are photosynthesizing from much earlier in the spring and much later in the fall. Also, as opposed to a flat one-level cornfield, the multi-storied forest system is taking in solar energy from all angles and through multiple layers of foliage. Besides the enhanced solar intake of a complex forest system, it is also more adapted to absorb rainfall: the multi-layered canopy disrupts the impact of falling water, turning even the heaviest rainstorm into a gentle mist by the time it hits the ground. He claims that with the use of well-planned berms and swales, ponds, and a multi-story canopy, he can capture every drop of rain that falls on his property, cutting erosion and runoff to zero.

There are some great ideas that Shepard puts forth in the book that I think could be applicable to anyone interested in more sustainable food systems. Let's take the example of planting a chestnut grove for nut production. The orthodox way would be planting trees thirty feet apart and nursing each one into maturity. Shepard points out that chestnut trees don't need those full thirty feet for quite a few years, so instead, plant a few times more trees than you need, much closer together. Then, instead of working to protect each and every sapling, you neglect them, coming back every few years to thin them by taking out the damaged, stunted, lower-yielding, or diseased trees. By the time you have full-sized producing trees, you've also harvested tons of hardwood from the same acreage and you're left with only the best trees. At another point, he cites a fact he learned in grade school - that if you plant 1,000 apple seeds, only one of them will produce edible apples. Instead of saying let's not plant any apple seeds, he says why not plant thousands?

Shepard calls the bluff of lots of modern permaculture enthusiasts, who plant shiny urban or suburban plots of fruits, but then buy rice and beans that are the result of annual agriculture. This is where my conflict sets in with Shepard. While permaculture at the quarter acre scale does not make much impact on the global scale, Shepard on the other hand makes a demand of complete abdication of the annual food system. He declares the annual food system unsustainable, which is true in the sense that you are forever taking more from the land than you are giving back. I am not, however, prepared to give up my rice and beans and annual grains. Shepard might say that I'm not sufficiently dedicated to the true sustainability of perennial agriculture. I'd agree that I'm just not ready for his particular revolution. I'm not quite ready to give up my bread, pasta, and popcorn.

He takes this disdain of annual agriculture to the length that he claims that every ancient civilization fell because their habit of annual agriculture depleted the land and therefor the ability of metropolises to provide for themselves. I do find in this reading, however, a bit of a logical fallacy. Civilization, as many people see it, was enabled by the very fact of annual agriculture. That annual agriculture will again be the very demise of civilization is perhaps too perfect an ironic twist even for me. He is right that the conventional model of commodity crops is not sustainable in the least, but I do not go so far in my thinking to abandon them entirely. I do believe that a large-scale agricultural change is necessary for the survival of the human race, but I do think that we may be able to work annual agriculture into the rotation in a very conservative way.

One last facet of his book that bothered me is his point that on the last census, over 80% of all farmers claimed that they did not make 100% of their income from on-farm activities. While I don't dispute this point, I do take issue with the conclusions he draws from this fact. Instead of saying that we must reform the system, he says that we must instead must not get down on ourselves as farmers that we must work off-farm jobs and patch together income streams to sustain a family. He doesn't blink twice suggesting that we convert our very diet from annual grains to perennial nuts and fruits, yet the arguably less complicated task of changing the subsidy system and the accompanying legislation and entering a time where we pay the true price for our food. His choice of battle seems a bit arbitrary.

In reading the book, I became enchanted with the idea of a food forest, but it just added another facet to my "dream farm" instead of replacing the annual agriculture. He did start me down a path away from conventional orcharding, and I think that with the proper planning and attention to detail, one could design a forest system that works hand-in-hand with a forest-pastured pork operation, raising heritage hogs on the cast-offs of fruit and nut production. I'm glad I took the plunge and bought the book, as it has certainly given me plenty to think about as I go further down the path toward my own farm. It certainly is a good thing I don't take any one book too seriously, or I would have nothing left to eat!

Read this if: you are a landowner looking for a low-input way to do some reforestation; you have so far been unimpressed by attempts at viable permaculture; you need another facet of food production to feel guilty about supporting.

Farm Week: April 22-26, 2013

This week saw some sunburn-inducing highs and some frosty morning lows. We continued to transplant more brassicas (cabbages, kales, chard, choi, etc) and greens. The wind whipped through the valley sometimes upwards of 20 mph, and we eventually grew more skilled at wrestling with the long sheets of remay that are currently protecting many beds of plants from the morning frosts and the emerging flea beetles.

A little less than two weeks since our first round of transplanting and direct-seeding, we lifted the remay for the first round of cultivation. Depending on the crop and the bed layout, we cultivated at a few different levels: with the tractor, with a hoe, or with our hands. The tractor can cultivate under the wheel tracks, and in between 2-row crops or on either side of our 1-row peas. We follow the tractor with hoes or with our hands, scratching at weeds and weed threads in the crop row. In the direct-seeded 6-row crops like spinach or salad mix, we sat down in the wheel tracks and scooted down the rows, cultivating with our hands; in the turnips we did the same thing, while also thinning to 2-inch spacing. There is something wonderful about spending hours upon hours with your hands connected to the earth.

Another instant happiness-creator this week was the many whiffs of tomato leaves as we transplanted the first round of indeterminate tomato plants into the hoop houses. Summer is coming, and I know because the tomato plants are telling me so. Something that will also only get better as the summer comes was the season's first outdoor shower. So far, we've been showering up at the farmhouse, but on Wednesday it seemed warm enough to shower outside. As the air temperature increases and we figure out our water pressure and heater situation, the showers will become exponentially more enjoyable, but so far I'm a fan of the outdoor shower.

In the past week, I've seen countless songbirds, half a dozen wild turkeys, half a dozen deer, a few raccoons, and a porcupine, some at very close range. One week until I'm the co-parent of 25 Freedom Ranger chicks, so we're going to get their brooder and feed all ready this weekend! I see the sixties in the forecast all next week! Life is good and only getting better in the country. 

Thinking about: the tomato leaf smell, weed threads, temperature-dependent buzzing

Eating: pita with homemade garlic hummus and vegetables, bacon and egg sandwiches on sourdough, rigatoni with homemade puttanesca, homebrewed IPA

Reading: Mark Shepard's Restoration Agriculture, Harvey Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

Book Report: Eating Animals

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Jonathan Safran Foer, best known for his fiction, wrote a book about his feelings about eating meat. As a former vegetarian, more recent meat appreciator, and a current farmer, I had some warring reactions to his arguments. The book is predicated on the fact that Foer and his wife, both sometimes-vegetarians, were trying to decide whether to raise their impending first child eating meat or not. That question brought him on a three-year journey into the realities of factory farming, commercial fishing and fish farming, and the moral questions of killing an animal for meat. While not much of the information he cited about factory farming was new to me, it never really loses its shock value on repetition. While I have not been re-converted to vegetarianism, the book did push me a little farther down the path I''d already chosen: to eat meat exclusively when I raise it myself, or know intimately where it was raised. Because of my current living situation and choice of career, this will not require the great lengths and expense it would for a city-dweller, but I'll have to work on giving up deli meats.

The other effect this book had on me was squash any remaining desire I had to force myself to like seafood. Between various allergies that keep popping up (shrimp, lobster, crab, and more?), and my distaste for many kinds of fish, the highly destructive fishing practices and disgusting fish farm conditions he describes really put the nail in the coffin of any future fish-eating. Finally, the book did make me think more about the moral questions of killing animals for food, no matter how humanely they were raised. Next week, twenty-five chicks arrive for Dan C. and I, which means that ten weeks later I'll be grappling firsthand with killing animals for meat. At the scale I'm dealing with, I have much more control over a good life and good death than many of the farmers he describes in his book. Larger producers send their animals off to a slaughterhouse or abbatoir, where they lose control of the process. The horrors of large factory slaughterhouses that Foer describes are completely avoidable at the small scale, but that doesn't mean it won't be a bit horrifying in its own way.

Overall, the book was well-written and compelling. Its tone does shift from intense curiosity at the beginning to spirited lecturing towards the end, which makes for a less enjoyable read - although that was probably the point.

Read this if: you need to be strengthened in your vegetarianism; you eat commercial meat with a clear conscience; you are curious why your Purdue chicken is so cheap compared to an organic humanely-raised heritage bird.

Farm Week: April 15-19, 2013

Work continued this week in the greenhouse, potting on more tomatoes and peppers, hardening off more greens, and giving our onions a haircut for better growth. We kept on with the transplanting, the tractor practice, and added a few new faces to the farm!

This week's adventure in tractors was the winning combination of bucket-loader and manure spreader, combining all kinds of hand-eye-foot coordination into one package. After a few minutes, I got the hang of the controls for the bucket loader, but I think I would have taken to it more easily if I had played more video games as a child! The scooping motion necessary to move compost from the pile to the back of the spreader takes some practice, and while it got easier by the second load, I was still being a little too timid. Plenty of time to practice! The manure spreader combines the specific skill of backing up and otherwise maneuvering a trailer with the PTO engagement that I learned for the spin spreader and the rototiller. Surprisingly, when I took the wheel to do a three-point turn with the trailer, I found that I had magically become better at it in the past two weeks of non-practice. It was like I had only remembered the skill and forgotten the other 50% of very frustrating non-sucesses. I think I'm going to like tractors.

As I alluded to above, we got some pigs this week! Two tiny little Red Wattles, which I helped named Biscuit and Gravy. They'll fatten up all summer on the farm's scraps and some feed, and then will take their place in the freezer! Right now, though, they're very cute, and the kids are having a great time taming them.

The other thing I have been reflecting on this week is how odd it is to be completely dependent on the radio for all of my news and weather on a daily basis. I've been an avid listener of NPR my whole life, and even had a few jazz radio shows during college. But usually, I've listened in the car or as podcasts while I do chores or run errands. The radio was always a supplement to other forms of media - I could look up the local weather report on the internet when I got up, and turn on the TV for a major news story. But my discovery this week is that when you don't have a TV, internet, or even cell service, you are subject to the schedule and the reporting whims of your local radio stations. I might turn on the radio to get a weather forecast and wait half an hour before I know how many layers to put on. This week especially, when I turned on the radio to non-stop news coverage of the events in Boston, I felt that I was always playing catch-up without the ability to pull up the whole story. It was an exercise in patience, and for the first time I really understand what it's like not to have total control over your information-gathering/media consumption. This week was a peek into that pre-TV, Rockwellian image of a family gathering around the radio for the latest news.

Thinking about: food forests, efficiency, warmer weather, pests large and small

Eating: italian sausage and borlotti beans, brown rice with yellow dal (lentils) and baingan bharta (eggplant); salami finocchiato on San Francisco sourdough

Reading: Mark Shepard's Restoration Agriculture, Jonathan Safron Foer's Eating Animals

Book Report: The Unsettling of America

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In The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry strings together a series of essays touching on the state of the culture in 1977 as it related to agriculture, the environment, energy use, and even the human body. After hearing many farmers and other agriculturally-minded folks reference Wendell Berry as a major influence, I decided it was time to go back to the source and see what I could glean firsthand. Instead of going online and ordering a book from a major retailer, I just started keeping an eye out for Berry in the many used bookstores I seem incapable of avoiding. Finally, at The Dawn Treader in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they had one book in stock, and this was it. It seems people don't get rid of Berry very lightly. In looking at Berry's bibliography, I didn't exactly start at the beginning in terms of his agrarian writing. I approached the book, however, as a long, well-written postcard from the nascent sustainable farming movement as it was in 1977. Thirty-five years later, some chapters resonate more than ever, while some of his social philosophy is in need of a 21st Century update. Ignoring his diatribes about birth control and the importance of the marriage bed, I'd like to go into some of the things I found more relevant than ever.

First, his insistence on the need for good farming rings more true than ever. A few days ago, I posted this excerpt on Berry's ideal farm. My feeling upon reading that passage for the first time was "I couldn't have said it better myself." His insistence that the diversified farm is the healthiest farm is something that I feel is somewhat lacking in today's sustainable farming movement. To be fair, it seems extremely difficult to run a diversified farm profitably. For each enterprise to be big enough to make sense financially, a diversified farm requires more than one or two dedicated farmers. He further goes into the political and agro-academic pressure for farmers to "get big or get out" that has resulted in fewer and fewer farmers every year farming more and more land in monoculture systems. While the tide is starting to turn in some corners of agricultural academia, he makes the still-valid point that research and development in farm technology and farm machinery has so far been focusing on removing as many humans from farming as possible, ignoring almost entirely tools that would make farming on a smaller (human) scale easier for the modern farm family without mortgaging it to the hilt.

Another still-relevant point that Berry makes is the inescapable impact one's choices have on the earth:

"...no matter how general may be a person's attitude towards the world, his impact upon it must become tangible at some point. Sooner or later on his behalf - whether he approves or understands or not - a strip-miner's bulldozer tears into a mountainside, a stand of trees is clear-cut, a gully washes through a cornfield.
    The conservation movement has never resolved this dilemma. It has never faced it. Until very recently - until pollution and strip-mining became critical issues - conservationists divided the country into land they wished to preserve and enjoy (the wilderness areas) and that which they consigned to use by other people. With the increase of pollution and mining, their interest has become two-branched, to include, along with the pristine, the critically abused. At present the issue of use is still in its beginning.
    Because of this, the mentality of conservation is divided, and disaster is implicit in its division. It is divided between intentional protection of some places and some aspects of "the environment" and its inadvertent destruction of others. It is either vacation-oriented or crisis-oriented. For the most part, it is not yet sensitive to the impact of daily living upon the sources of daily life. The typical present-day conservationist will fight to preserve what he enjoys; he will fight whatever directly threatens his health; he will oppose any ecological violence large or dramatic enough to attract his attention. But he has not yet worried much about the impact of his own livelihood, habits, pleasures, or appetites. He has not, in short, addressed himself to the problem of use. He does not have a definition of his relationship to the world that is sufficiently elaborate and exact." (pp. 27-28)

In the 35 years since Berry characterized conversationists, some things has changed in the environmentalist movement: pollution and strip-mining continue to be problems, but global warming, fossil fuel dependency, and fracking have replaced them as the "large and dramatic" issues of the day. We have become more aware about the everyday "problem of use," but few of us have done much in the way of major change. Just as in 1977, there are select few of us living "off the grid," creating our own fuel and food. There is a certain portion of highly educated liberals who have made a series of small lifestyle changes: reusable bags, water bottles and coffee mugs; energy efficient light bulbs and appliances; hybrid cars; compost bins, rain barrels and even shares in a local CSA. But cumulatively, a small segment of Americans making small lifestyle changes doesn't add up to much progress toward the hyper-awareness of our relationship with the world that Berry idealizes. At the same time, I don't think this same segment of people is entirely ignorant of their impact on the earth. They are too comfortable in their "livelihood, habits, pleasures [and] appetites" to make any drastic changes, and so comfort themselves with these small changes, for which they are in turn rewarded with cultural capital from their own set. Right now, though, the vast majority of Americans live just as Berry describes us 35 years ago, without a thought for our very real and tangible impact on the earth. I certainly don't know how to change that, and people far more powerful than I have tried.

Overall, I enjoyed Berry's writing style, which made even the most dated portions of the book worth reading. If nothing else, this book provided me a peek into the state of the sustainable agriculture movement ten years before I was born, which adds just a tiny bit more context to every other book I've read on the subject. I'll be seeking more Berry out eventually, working my way through his vast bibliography of essays, books, poetry, and even fiction. The next time I need a literary lift after an agricultural clunker, I know what the antidote will be! In the meantime, I have quite a few books waiting for me on my shelf.

Read this if: you are a Berry completist; you are curious about the way the world looked in 1977; you need a little inspiration to be a better farmer or person in the world.

Farm Week: April 8-12, 2013

Week two started in sun (and sunburn!) before reverting back to a frigid rain, but not before we had time to plow and till a few fields! We direct-seeded our carrots and spring turnips, got the peas in the ground, and transplanted some head lettuce and brassicas: kale, chard, cabbage, and bak choi. The continued greenhouse work of seated seeding was contrasted with the very physical rumble of the tractors and the flexibility and agility demanded by efficient hand transplanting, leaving us very sore the next morning.

I started my tractor education this week! After some basic practice driving a tractor around and (attempting to) back up a trailer, I got in some practice on my first three implements: the spin spreader, the chisel plow, and the rototiller. Spreading a custom blend organic nutrients is the first step toward preparing a field for planting in the spring, and it is a low-stress, high-dust introduction to the tractor. After emptying eight fifty-pound bags of nutrients into the cone of the spreader, I donned my protective eyewear (sunglasses), facemask, and earmuffs and headed out to the field. Then off comes the spreader and on goes the chisel plow. A much more intuitive tool, the chisel plow is dragged through the field at a depth of about eighteen inches in order to aerate and loosen the soil without inverting the soil profile too much. This trip to the field involved a little more coordination; it took a few passes before I got the timing down to lower the plow right where the row started and lift right when it ended. A chisel plow also shows you how mistaken you were about driving in a straight line. The third and most complicated implement we tackled this week was the rototiller. Far from your garden variety walk-behind model, this rototiller is over five feet wide, and when dragged behind a tractor at the right speed with the right power will make a bed so smooth and fluffy you just want to lie right down in it yourself. Running the rototiller can be a slightly nerve-racking experience. For one, besides lowering and raising at exactly the right time, you also have to stay in as straight a line as possible while also lining up in a precise way with your last row so as not to leave any untilled spaces or create ridges by tilling too close. As if you weren't concentrating hard enough already, each and every rock you pass over with the machine makes a clank so big you're sure that this time you've broken the thing. I tilled and "punched out" (drove over to create a bed and a tire track/path) six beds, and the whole time my face was frozen in a look of "yikes that wasn't a straight line at all what was that sound I'm not very good at this at all did I just break this thing?" When I was done, it turns out that the beds didn't look so bad after all, and the good news is that I'll only get better with practice.

In other news, fellow apprentice Dan C. and I put in an order on Friday for twenty-five Freedom Ranger chicks to be delivered in the first week of May. We plan on raising them for meat, both for our own consumption and to sell to any CSA members that are interested. Mostly, we're doing it for the learning experience, and if the first batch goes well, we might scale up production for future batches through the rest of the season. So look out for future blog posts on baby chicks in the brooder, chicken tractors, and adventures in chicken slaughter!

Thinking about: horsepower, routines, reciprocation, projects

Eating: sweet potato and black bean tacos; pasta salad with green beans, olives, hard-boiled eggs, potatoes and dijon-mayo; roasted beets, potatoes, carrots, and onions over refried borlotti beans

Reading: Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, Augusten Burroughs' A Wolf at the Table, Mark Shepard's Restoration Agriculture

Wendell Berry on a healthy farm

"...One need not be a specialist to understand the difference between good and bad farming. There is nothing mysterious or abstruse about it. It only requires enough acquaintance with land and people to have some sense of what a prospering farm and a prospering farm community ought to look like and the same acquaintance with the signs of greed, hopelessness, neglect, and abandonment.
    The health of a farm is as apparent to the eye as the health of a person. To look at a farm in full health gives the same complex pleasure as looking at a fully healthy person  or animal. It will give the same impression of abounding life. What grows on it will be thriving. It will seem to belong where it is; the form of it will be a considerate response to the nature of its place; it will not have the look of an abstract idea of a farm imposed upon an area somewhere or other. It will look cared for - groomed, so to speak - like a healthy person or animal; it will look lived in by people who care where they live. It will show no gullies or galls or other signs of erosion. The waterways and field edges and areas around buildings will be grassed, something that becomes more necessary the steeper the ground is.
    The place will look well maintained. Buildings, fences, equipment, etc., will have been kept in good repair, carefully used, protected from the weather. ...
    A healthy farm will have trees on it - woodlands, where forest trees are native, but also fruit and nut trees, trees for shade and for windbreaks. Trees will be there for their usefulness: for food, lumber, fence posts, firewood, shade, and shelter. But they will also be there for comfort and pleasure, for the wildlife that they will harbor, and for their beauty. The woodlands bespeak the willingness to let live that keeps wildness flourishing in the settled place. A part of the health of a farm is the farmer;s wish to remain there. His long-term good intention toward the place is signified by the presence of trees. A family is married to a farm more by their planting and protecting of trees than by their memories or their knowledge, for the trees stand for their fidelity of kindness to what they do not know. The most revealing sign of ill health of industrial agriculture - its greed, its short-term ambitions - is its inclination to see trees as obstructions and to strip the land bare of them.
    Woodlands, orchards, and shade trees are part of the diversity of life that is another of the prime characteristics of a healthy farm. And this principle will extend to cropland and pasture. The aim of a healthy farm will be to produce as many kinds of plants and animals as it sensibly can. This will be an ordered diversity, the various species moving in rotation over the fields. The land will be fenced for livestock, and its aspect will change from field to field.
    Related to the principle of diversity is that of carrying capacity: the various crops and animals will be sensibly proportionate to one another; the farm will strive as far as possible toward the balance, the symmetry, of an ecological system; there will not be too much of anything. The fields will not be overcropped; the pastures will not be overgrazed. It will be understood that plants growing on a farm are not just its produce, but also its protection, and so a row crop will be followed by a cover crop, the cover crop by a sod of grass ad clover.
    And a healthy farm will not only have the right proportion of plants and animals; it will have the right proportion of people. There will not be so many as to impoverish themselves and the farm, but there will be enough to care for it fully ad properly without overwork. On a healthy farm there will be the right proportion between work and rest. ...
    Finally, a healthy farm will be so far as possible independent and self-sustaining. It is necessary to say "so far as possible," for we are by no means talking here about a "closed system." Simply by selling produce, a farm involves itself with other places both economically and biologically. And unless it encapsulates itself under a glass roof - which is really to become less independent - a farm cannot produce its own weather. Many farms cannot provide their own water. The wild plants, animals, birds, and insects upon which a farm's health depends will not respect its boundaries any more than the rain. And, of course, the people on a farm will belong complexly to a larger human community. Nevertheless, a certain kind and a certain measure of independence is a practicable ambition for a farm, and it is a necessity of agricultural health and longevity.
    For one thing, fertility, the major capital of any farm, can be largely renewed and maintained from sources on the farm itself - assuming that all else is in balance. By proper tillage, rotation, the use of legumes, and the return of manure and other organic wastes to the soil, the fields can be kept productive with minimal recourse to fertilizers from outside sources. If the organic or decayable wastes of the cities, which have their source on the farm, could be returned to the farm, that would greatly increase both the health of the land and the independence, if not of the individual farm, at least of agriculture.
    Equally important, by the use of good human power, animal power, solar, wind, and water power, methane gas, firewood from its own woodlands, etc., a farm can produce by far the major part of its own energy. This, of course, calls for a revitalization of local skills. But given the skills, these sources of power are possible. They come from the past and/or from new technology.
    As a farm measures up in these various ways to the standard of health, its troubles from pests and disease will radically diminish, and so consequently will its dependence on chemicals. A healthy farm will have no more need for these expensive remedies than a healthy person has for medicine.
    Health, then, does not "come from" independence or "lead to" it. Health is independence. The healthy farm sustains itself the same way a healthy tree does: by belonging where it is, by maintaining a proper relationship to the ground. It is by this standard of health or independence that one recognizes the absurdity of a farm absolutely dependent upon a complex of industrial corporations, which are in turn dependent upon the actions of foreign governments and politicians whom the farmer did not vote for or against and cannot influence.
    The ultimate good health of a farm is in its ability to produce independently of the ups and downs of the Dow Jones Industrial averages or the vagaries of politics... Those who pride themselves on the "science" that has made agriculture an industry have found this sort of independence beneath their notice. But I have watched, in Tuscany, a plowman driving a team of white cattle to a wooden plow, and realized that I was seeing the continuance of a motion and a way and a preoccupation begun before the rise of Rome. It is not nostalgia or sentimentality or wishful thinking to say that that man and his plow and team on the hand-built terrace under the olive trees represented a value, perhaps an immeasurable value, that modern agriculture has superceded but has by no means replaced."

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture. 1977. Third printing, San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1978. pp 181-184.

Farm Week: April 1-5, 2013

My 2013 farm season has started with a cold front of frigid nights and mornings, combatted with a never-ending rotation of layers and plenty of greenhouse work. The heated greenhouse is full of trays in all states of germination - the earliest of spring greens, plus onions and their relatives ready for transplanting, and tomatoes getting a hot head start. Outdoors, the winter rye is waking up on the untilled fields, the chickens are starting to lay more eggs, and the peepers are signaling spring by the end of the week.

The week was mostly an introduction to Chubby Bunny Farm, which is a fitting way to start the "Farm Week" series here on the blog. Chubby Bunny Farm is located in the small hamlet of Falls Village in far northwestern Connecticut. Dan and Tracy are in their twelfth year running the business, and their tenth year on this land. The farm sits in a valley on the south side of Canaan Mountain, with 12 out of 50 acres currently in production. This year, the farm will provide over 250 weekly CSA shares starting the first week of June and running through the end of October. Besides the 12 acres cultivated for row crops, the farm includes a 60' heated greenhouse for starting transplants, and 60' and 100' hoop houses for season extension and some heat-loving crops in season. While the vegetable operation is the bulk of the business, the farm also houses a small laying flock, a family cow, and a few feeder pigs each summer. The tilling and some cultivation is handled by a pair of tractors of about 50 horsepower each, but all of the seeding, transplanting, most cultivation, and harvesting is done by hand. This year, I am one of four full-season apprentices living and working on the farm; besides all of our hands-on learning opportunities, Dan is very open about the finances of the farm and the reasoning behind his farming decisions. We'll also be participating in the Western Connecticut CRAFT program, which includes visits to plenty of nearby farms.

I also spent the week getting situated in my new living arrangements! We apprentices are living for the season in decommissioned campers on the edge of the farm. We each have our own camper, complete with a little mini kitchen, and we share an outhouse, utility sink and an outdoor shower between us. We're constantly making little improvements, like constructing a covering over the sink, laying out a stone floor outside the tub, cutting a path to the neighboring stream, or digging a fire pit. Right now, we're relying on space heaters, sleeping bags, and layers for warmth, but as the weather warms up we'll eventually be grateful for our placement in the coolest part of the farm. We have mostly no cell service in the valley, and our internet is limited to the twice weekly overlap of hours of the local public library and our free time, so there will be plenty of time for reading, writing, and reflection.

Thinking about: flannel, thrift, imminent spring, leafy greens

Eating: fresh, delicious, rich eggs; spiced chickpeas and carrots with fresh ginger; seeded rye and gorgonzola cremificata

Reading: Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture