Put up jobs

Nov. 26, 2010: With age comes wisdom? Maybe. But to what purpose? If I am old enough to remember The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and don’t use that memory to inform and direct action today there’s been no benefit whatsoever. That incident, 1964, was a fabrication used by the U.S. to expand the war in Vietnam, and it comes troubling to mind these last few days as North and South Korea rattle their sabres. Who shot first? To listen to our own (Canadian) news sources like CBC it was the North that fired first and charges of “provocation” by the North Korean regime are discounted, ignored, and not pursued.

There are reports we would like CBC to dig into, reports available on the world wide web and that could be confirmed or discounted as false. They include:

• Reports that joint U.S.-South Korean war games are planned for or are taking place adjacent to the demarcation line between the two states.

• Reports that South Korean forces fired shells into waters claimed by North Korea an hour and a half before the North fired back, shelling Yeonpyeong Island.

• Reports that that jurisdiction over the island is itself a matter of disagreement. This fact is glossed over, if mentioned at all.

Who’s doing what to whom? Where is the CIA in all of this? How about other secret operatives representing either side? The fog of war is thick over the Korean peninsula, and we should be demanding that our publicly funded news service dig deeper and divlulge more lest we get sucked into yet another war.

Dancing with vegetables

Pot Luck editorial, Rural Delivery magazine, Nov. 2010

What a fine morning, listening to Folk Alley.com; bright sun streaming in the east window. Breakfast is a celebration of the last fresh fruits of fall, an omelet dressed with a sautéed mix of boletes and chanterelles from the woods along with Green pepper, tomato, and onion from the garden. Morsels of “Fromage Blanc” from Thom and Anne Drew’s Salt Rock Farm sprinkled over at the last add unique texture and tang. Yin to the yang? And just to round any rough edges lurking about there was, for reading over the omelet, excerpts from Joel Salatin’s latest book, “The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer,” in the just-arrived copy of ACRES USA.

If the rest of the book is near as idea-rich as the excerpts (and why wouldn’t it be?) it is a book many of our readers are going to want to pick up at the store or library. Maybe we can add the title to our Books from Rural Delivery. “Lunatic Farmer” is about relationships and ways industrial farming destroys them by aim or default, while Salatin and many others practice farming that builds and depends on close ties with the soil, neighbors, workers, and consumers. The ACRES excerpt is a web of thoughts critiquing how we live, raise our kids, treat our communities and neighbors as if they were little more than nuisances to be tolerated at best.  Salatin relates what’s apparently become an annual ritual at Polyface Farm, which is the summer day when all hands descend on a neighboring horse-powered farm to help bring in the hay. “Most farmers don’t do that anymore,” he writes. “They’ve all gone to round balers to make haymaking a one-man operation. The whole focus is to get rid of labor. And so our rural neighborhoods are full of teenagers playing soccer and video games while neighbor farmers drive their tractors by themselves and make round bales. Maybe both people prefer it that way: the farmer left alone and the teen unencumbered by meaningful work, just playing life away. But somehow it doesn’t seem like that’s as good for the strength of the community.”

I think he is right but for one important thing. Does the farmer prefer putting up round bale hay by himself? Or did he first of all find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to find or even to hire those teenagers to help put up loose or square baled hay? And if you can find workers for hire, can you afford to pay them a decent wage for making hay that sells for five cents a pound?

Okay, it’s a lovely day and why spoil it with negative thoughts or even facts? I’ll leave off talking about Salatin’s new “Lunatic Farmer” book with his vision for a great future. “I’d like to see everyone who ever wanted to grow something out on a farm doing it,” he writes. “Why should all this pent up yearning be sequestered in some sunless, lifeless office at the end of an expressway? Unleash that desire. We should have hundreds and thousands of land lovers dancing across the countryside, dancing with earthworms, dancing in eggmobiles, dancing with pigaerators, dancing with vegetables.”

There was a good turnout and prices were not so bad at a beef breed sale this past weekend at the Maritime Beef Testing Society barn in Nappan, N.S. It wouldn’t be a surprise when all the numbers are in and considered to find records were broken in one or more instances. Overall the mood in the mixed-age crowd was up beat, much like that of an ACORN (Atlantic Canada Organic Regional Network) gathering.  An upbeat attitude is critical if we’re to turn rural Canada around and get people back on the land.

It is good to see the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture is going to be working with the province’s Office of Immigration looking for farmers to come here. We can hope they’ll be looking to countries that have been sending us workers, from the Caribbean and from Mexico and the Philippines, for example. They are such diligent workers it’s said a smart farmer here doesn’t mix them with domestic employees lest they pick up all sorts of bad habits. In the 1950s we experienced a flood of Dutch immigrants, many of whom took up land and farms we’d turned our backs on, and made them produce. A defeatist attitude cripples. Immigrants bring fresh ideas, true. Better still they have little knowledge how things were in “the good old days.” Immigrants start fresh with how to make the best of what is.

 

 

Starting almost fresh I took produce to our nearest farmers’ market last week. The market is in Sable River, a stop along the main highway defined by a couple of gas stations, a summer restaurant, and gift shop. Spring to fall, two markets weekly alternate between the Esso and the Irving pumps. It is one thing to think about one day taking garden produce to market and quite another to actually do it even on such a small scale. What to harvest – what did I have? How much to harvest? How to clean and pack and make attractive? How to price? What else do I need? A table, tablecloth, scale, bank, bristol board for signs, scissors, a marker. Only the basics come to a fair list and commitment of time and thought.

So, how’d it go? Wonderfully. I sold some stuff. People seemed happy enough to see those large cabbages. The beets, a long rather than globe variety, were mature to put it kindly. I feared they would not sell, for customers would think them woody. I cooked up a long root, peeled, and sliced it on a plate for all to see it was red and moist clear through. The beets were a popular item. Three five-pound bags of jelly grapes were picked up, some carrots, and a couple of zucchini and cucumbers.

Altogether it was a fine way to spend a Saturday morning, visiting with friends new and old. The weather was much like today, which makes a huge difference. I’m now eyeballing where the pigs rooted up ground beside this year’s garden with thoughts of expansion in 2011 so’s to make the farm market a more regular part of the weekly schedule around here. Any WWOOFers looking for a chance to garden come spring? Our door is open to these fine young volunteers. The half dozen who came by this past summer contributed much more than their good labor. Salatin nails it for me when he writes (also from the ACRES excerpt from “Lunatic Farmer”), “The older I get, the more I appreciate youthful energy. Surrounding myself with enthusiastic youthful energy, leveraged meaningfully by my experience, is definitely better than growing old lonely and grumpy.”

Time to gather up junk for the fall pick-up. Best to all. DvL

Greener grass

By all accounts the Atlantic Provinces were blessed with a bumper year for forages both pastured and stored. By September, for some, the party was over, however. Was talking to George Fullerton over on New Brunswick’s Kingston Peninsula who said a couple of farmers were feeding out hay as pastures dried up. It had been dry there, and even hurricane Earl failed to deliver much needed rain.  The hurricane, though it did bring a good wash of rain to southwest Nova Scotia, was over-blown by the media. Was it even hurricane strength when it reached our shores?

A bit of a blow doesn’t send Nova Scotia’s youth fleeing for cover. They grab a bed sheet and are off down the road, as you see in this photo taken by Brooke Gray near Broad Cove on the South Shore.

Taking hurricane Earl in (bedsheet) stride.

 

Prince Edward Island may have taken more of a lashing. In the aftermath, Les Halliday, beef specialist with the Prince Edward Island Department of Agriculture, came up with a recipe for growing two-foot corn. “Grow to eight feet then add a little bit of Earl.”  Earlier I had asked Les about feeding green potatoes to livestock. “Green potatoes are not good for man nor beast,” he responded by email. There is a toxin, solanin, “produced on exposure to sunlight. It can be present before the green shows on the skin or on spouted potatoes. . . . If it is just skin deep you can peel them; however, if it is deep into the flesh it is best to compost.” Compost it is.

There is a level of anticipation that department of agriculture efforts toward improving the Cape John Community Pasture (a slow, slow process indeed) will evolve into a long-term commitment to all those pastures the government once maintained. One Nova Scotia Department employee who we can fairly safely guess would have been in support of such a move was Brian Smith who retired just last year from his position as Executive Director of Agricultural Services, and died Sept. 2 in Truro after battling cancer.

“So very sad,” wrote one person who worked closely with the beef industry for years. “He was one of the good guys.”  John Tilley, Nova Scotia Cattle Producer chair, echoed the sentiment, adding that when there was a meeting scheduled and it was made known that Brian would be attending, “there would be a sigh of relief.” Why? Because “he knew how to build trust.”

Tilley spoke of Brian’s “Whole style,” describing is as “low key. He knew how to listen, and how to respond to what was being said.”  As students return to colleges, universities, and schools in the region so, too, we hope and in fact fully expect, will pressure for these institutions to step up to the (dinner) plate with local foods for cafeterias.

We frequently rail against the big supermarket chains for failing to engage with our farming community by purchasing truly local (not 24 hours by air, land, or sea transport) foods. Considering how much food is consumed in institutions of one kind or another from schools to hospitals to prisons, it would pay to re-direct some of that pressure.  National and even international corporations are feeding our kids. They are so big they likely cut contracts with only the largest suppliers – unless forced or embarrassed to do otherwise. As an example of size, multi-national Sodexo, Inc., which has been contracting with Dalhousie University to provide much if not all of its food, claims on its website to be, “the leading provider of comprehensive service solutions in North America serving 10 million customers in 6,000 locations every day.”

If just one of these big meal providers would look to Atlantic Beef Products for its beef the abattoir could just about disband its marketing and sales arm. It might even be able to chew its way to shorter wait times that have in recent months been forcing those who can to ship finished cattle to Ontario or Quebec.

Saving the best for last, by coincidence desserts figure in two articles in this issue of Atlantic Beef, one in John Duynisveld’s Pasture Notes, and the other in Hugh Harmon’s New Brunswick Cattle Producer report. Even a cow that’s eaten its fill will find room for another mouthful of lush green grass, Duynisveld writes, comparing that phenomenon to the way we can always seem to find room even after a big meal for a slice of pie.

Happy Thanksgiving and pie eating to our readers in the U.S. DvL