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

Happy hookers

The sex trade is alive and well in Canada, and in the world for all I know. In Canada I am sure, that surety reinforced by ads being run in our provincial daily, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) defending tar sands exploitation.

Who do they picture, full colour, full page, cooing over her love of the environment and so glossing over the incredible despoliation of the northern Alberta environment and killing migrating ducks? Lovely, young, innocent looking as can be blond biologist Megan Blampin Devon.

Credentials? Lovely, young, innocent looking as can be blond biologist, who you can tell just by looking would never have anything to do with filling lakes with chemical-laden slurry or killing ducks. “Everyoe I work with loves the outdoors,” she writes, “The last thing we want to do is harm it.” Well, true, that may not be what they want to do. What they want to do is extract oil from sand, and if in the process there is massive collateral damage, darn shame.

Industry caught on some years ago that PR was best handled by the fairer sex. Got something to cover up? Hire an attractive woman to rub your public image.

Where’d summer go?

“Pot Luck” editorial from Rural Delivery Oct. 2010

We’re now three days into fall and already hardwoods are blushing at the thought of winter when they’ll all be naked as jays. There’s an odd expression, naked as a jay. The odd time, though, we do see Blue jays with heads as bare as a vulture’s.  The odd time too, we see strange birds along this shore. After hurricane Earl we were visited by two large and conspicuous shore birds, Black skimmers and Laughing gulls. The gulls descended on our yard to forage among the chickens. They descended on Sobeys and SuperStore parking lots in Liverpool and it was not long before the shoppers were not amused at having to shoo them out of the way to get in the door. Why so seemingly tame? Is it because they ordinarily live among people who feed them? Were they starving? Maybe they don’t live where there are many people and so they have not learned to keep a safe distance. Where is Robie Tufts when you need him? The late and great observer and writer about birds of this region says in his “Birds of Nova Scotia” it is possible the Laughing gull once nested “throughout Nova Scotia,” but that the last nesting pair was reported in 1941. He then goes on to say that in 1968, “immediately following the arrival of hurricane ‘Gladys’ on 21 October thousands of Laughing gulls were dumped along our shores.” As suddenly they were gone, died or back on track migrating south. What strange birds have wound up on the Avalon Peninsula in Igor’s wake? At least one Harper reported, early on mistaken for a penguin. Summer folks have largely migrated south, north, all directions of the compass. A few stragglers remain. A warming climate encourages that. A warming climate this past gardening season brought on a bounty of ripe tomatoes, which is unusual here on the shore where heat units can most years be counted on fingers and toes. I’m guessing there are more ripe red tomatoes, some heritage varieties, in the garden right now than we’ve managed over 40 years.  The realization of having lived here four decades only dawned recently. “Dawn” is the wrong word. It came as a shock. Talk about where summer went, where did 40 years slip by?
A year ago while visiting in northern Vermont I asked a young poet if she had read any of Walter Hard’s poems. Hard, who died in 1966, was for years considered the state’s Poet Laureate even though at the time Vermont didn’t formally have such an exalted position. She had not heard of him. I then asked a number of others who’d lived in the state long enough to feel they were Vermonters if they heard or read any of Walter Hard’s works. They had not. What a shame. Over the next while we are going to try to make a dent in that lost reputation by publishing a selection from his several books and many poems. In a forward to Hard’s 1933 book of poems, “A Mountain Township,” writer and social activist Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote, “Asked insistently as he often is, by serious-minded critics if he considers his work ‘poetry’ he only laughs. Questioned – perhaps with some impatience – by a self-appointed judge used to more formally literary writers, ‘But if you won’t claim that it is poetry, why print it in short lines as if it were?’ He answered with perfect sincerity, ‘Because I think, if I do, people will read it more as I mean it.’ Informed severely by a doctrinaire of verse, ‘I can’t see the faintest trace of rhythm in your work,’ he remarks good-naturedly, ‘Can’t you? I can . . . It’s kind of a Vermont rhythm, you see.’” I hope readers get a kick out of “Oh Sweet Content” (page 28), which appears in “A Matter of Fifty Houses,” published here with permission from the writer’s grandsons, Steve and Crosby Hard. The Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture joined forces with AgraPoint to put on a small farm show in September featuring workshops much like those offered at the Falls Brook Centre, the Pollination Project, Windhorse Farm, the Harrison Lewis Centre, the Free School, and more. It seems plausible that these NGOs were responding to a vacuum created when Nova Scotia and to a lesser extent New Brunswick pulled back on delivery of a full range of extension services to the rural community.  Could it be that departments of agriculture have taken note, seen the country looking elsewhere for help, and said, “Hey, we should be in there!” They should be, and it is good to see tangible evidence of support for small and part-time farmers and country people in general. Then again, can the non-government providers compete delivering programs that are not heavily subsidized through tax dollars, or government grants (more tax dollars) of one sort or another? Are government departments prepared to step in filling the vacuum of need in all ways? Some ways? If the latter, which “some ways,” that we’re not duplicating efforts or interfering with one another? On the other hand, maybe it’s best there be a variety of providers delivering programs the way ice cream shops deliver flavors for every taste. Eventually each will find a niche or drop by the way.
Off to collect a wild mushroom or two. The Nova Scotia Mycological Society’s third annual mushroom foray is on, this year based out of White Point Resort. Earlier in the week Twila Robar-DeCoste provided a drawing and painting mushrooms workshop here at the Harrison Lewis Centre. An hour’s walk early on in the day was time enough for half a dozen of us to find a basket of boletes. Another year I’m lucky to find one or two all summer long. Now let’s see what four or five dozen pickers find. It will be wonderful having experts along to identify one bolete from another. Some of the differences are obvious, while others are subtle.
It was a wonderful foray. Fifty or so hikers fanned out on four trails along the coast and inland madly gathering and bagging every mushroom found – dozens upon dozens of different species. Mycologists from the New Brunswick Museum led by Dr. David Malloch joined Nova Scotia experts identifying the collection that’s to be documented, photographed, dried, and sent off to the Irving herbarium at Acadia University. That was all good, but Malloch had a small bombshell to drop on my understanding of the forest we were scouring for fungi. His after dinner talk was titled, “Where the Boreal Forest Meets the Sea.” Maybe off Labrador, most of us probably thought. With perhaps the exception of the Cape Breton Highlands, the Maritime forest is Acadian, not Boreal. Malloch says no, and to prove his point projected maps showing a fringe of Acadian Boreal Forest dominated by softwoods from above Bar Harbor, Maine, north along the Bay of Fundy, and around at least three-quarters of the coast of Nova Scotia. It is a far different forest than the one found inland. No wonder, then, that prescriptions for restoring the Acadian forest don’t make a lot of sense “where the forest meets the sea.”   Happy Thanksgiving all, DvL