Cities are Already Home to Macro Farms, Why Not Micro Farms?

According the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency land use overview, “about two-thirds of the total value of U.S. agricultural production takes place in, or adjacent to, metropolitan counties (NRCS). About 1/3 of all U.S. farms are actually within metropolitan areas, representing 18% of the total farmland in this country.”

This, of course, is the source of a great deal of tension throughout our great land, as urban developments sprawl ever outwards, and the boundary between urban and rural gravitates further and further from the city center.

We drive past an excellent example every morning.  A new grocery store, which we refer to as “H.E.B.B.C.” for reasons not to be enumerated here, is growing brick-by-brick out of a cow pasture in which there are still many cuds being chewed.

This is, perhaps, upsetting to some purists who see economic development as a dirty word. We suppose it would be pleasant to see many strip malls torn down and replaced with dewberry brambles, but on the other hand, it would be equally unpleasant to be burdened by higher unemployment and longer lines at the soup kitchen. As with most things in life, there needs to be some balance.

Enter the urban small-scale farm. This is a concept that comes in many flavors, ranging from folk who do a lot of container gardening on their patios, to people with larger vegetable gardens in their back (or sometimes front) yards, to full production farms, complete with tractors and DBA paperwork, replete with agricultural use exemptions on their property taxes.

What makes a small farm any better than a large farm?

In order to fully answer that question, you really have to ask yourself a different question: why are modern farms so goldurned big?

The amount of arable land in use for agriculture in the contiguous 48 United States dwarfs that of every country in the world except India; if the U.S. has any sort of natural advantage or superiority over any other country, it is in farmland. Farms are what made this country great, but they are quickly disappearing, or more frequently, folding into larger “agricultural concerns”. In short, most food is now produced by giant multinational corporations. The Supreme Court may have recently decided that corporations are people, but those of us with working brain cells know that this is not true. Corporations are pieces of paper whose function in life is to produce other pieces of paper.

What are some of the consequences of this shift in who is doing our farming?

The biggest and most obvious difference is in methods of production. Farming is now highly mechanized, and production is regulated with an eye towards maximum production rather than with an eye towards health or long-term sustainability. The science of agriculture has come up with some truly remarkable ways to fight crop loss due to disease or dehydration, but at some costs which are not always apparent to the naked eye.

Quoting from the EPA again:

“Excessive nitrate in ground water can present a direct health hazard to very young infants. Ingestion of nitrate (NO3) can bind with hemoglobin in the infant's bloodstream and cause a condition called methemoglobinemia or "blue baby" syndrome. Nitrate does not bind to soil particles and is quite soluble, making it susceptible to leaching into groundwater if not used by the crop.”

Myrtle has warned about the dangers of contaminated drinking water, and it is fairly obvious that if numerous farms are in our urban areas, and runoff from farms can potentially contaminate our water… well, we’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Other dangers lurk, as well. The promise of genetically engineered foods is that there may be foods resistant to diseases which reduce crop yields, and it can even produce crops which don’t need as much water; however, the long term health effects of eating such foods is entirely unknown; worse still from our point of view, they just don’t taste very good. If you’re going to potentially be poisoning yourself, shouldn’t it at least have some kind of payoff?

And we haven’t even talked about meat production yet. Fully 1/4th of the arable land in this country is taken up with cattle production. Apart from the apaulling land and water use realities (it takes 40 times as much water to raise a pound of beef as it does to grow a pound of wheat), large-scale agribusiness is a nightmare waiting to happen. High-density feed lots sound high tech, but all they boil down to is a ridiculously unethical and highly unhealthy way to produce the most meat possible in the shortest amount of time.

A high density feed lot basically consists of very small pens with animals being force-fed high fat diets, often rich in additives like bone meal and fish meal, so as to maximize growth and minimize loss due to injury. Loss due to disease isn’t a problem because in addition to slaughtering well before the animals reach maturity, the “farmers” slaughter well before the incubation period of most of the potential diseases the animals may or may not be carrying.

To make matters worse, in addition to being perfect breeding grounds for many of the sorts of diseases with which we are bitterly familiar, high density lots are a perfect breeding ground for some new diseases we really don’t want to become too knowledgeable about. Prion diseases, which take many forms, have entered our consciousness through the back door in the form of “Mad Cow Disease”, aka bovine spongeiform encephalopathy.

The name is sorta scary, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. We are used to thinking of diseases as being caused by discrete agents – a bacteria, or a virus. These are small things, true, but we can think of them as “critters” who can be fought.

Prions, on the other hand, are not living things. They are not even the building blocks of living things. They are partial protein strands, and they are virtually undetectable, and they are everywhere. They are particularly noxious, however, when animals eat other animals of their own kind. Mad Cow Disease is just one notable example of a disease caused by these undetectable prions.

The incidence of prion disease in humans who have performed canibalistic rituals is the source for much amusing debate (there’s some reading we highly recommend of a rainy Sunday afternoon!), but the consensus seems to be pretty clear: if there is a pathological hazard in eating the brains of one’s own species, that hazard likely comes in the form of pathogenic prions.

So… guess what’s in the “bone meal” animals are fed on high-density lots? Go on, guess!

Once again, it seems to us that the payoff (easier to produce, cheaper Big Macs, Whoppers, Whataburgers, et al.) is not really worth the price.

All of which leads back to the small urban farm.

Techniques on a facility with just a few acres are naturally going to be significantly different than they would be on a large agribusiness operation. There will usually be far fewer fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides used on a small farm (even a non-organic small farm), for reasons of economy, and also because these chemicals aren’t as necessary for production purposes. A small farm will rotate crops more often, taking care of the problem of nitrates and nitrites via the use of green manures (crops like clover) which bind the nitrogen to the soil, in preparation for a followup crop like corn or squash.

There are other advantages, as well, which suggest we should buy our produce from small farmers rather than from agribusiness. Check out some of the advantages of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Many also apply to purchasing your produce from farmer's markets or grocers who are supplied primarily by local growers:

• The use of Community Supported Agriculture arrangements increases the likelihood children will eat new varieties of fruits and vegetables, as they visit the farm of origin once or twice a year
• Buying local decreases transportation costs and increases the likelihood that your produce is fresh
• Knowing the farmer who produced your food increases the likelihood that you can make special requests
• Knowing the consumers who eat their food decreases the likelihood that farmers will cut corners on food safety
• The use of Community Supported Agrigulture arrangements allows farmers to receive payment early in the growing season, mitigating the traditional risks associated with crop failure – a late frost, for example, does not leave a farmer unable to afford to plant a replacement crop.

There are numerous sites devoted to Community Supported Agriculture; we suggest googling for “Community Supported Agriculture ” and looking into it.

And, of course, if you have any kind of yard at all, we really recommend you start a vegetable garden. If you've got room for it, plant some berry bushes (a fence line does quite nicely; they are pretty and functional). And fruit and nut trees are good, too.

But even if you don't have space, or are an apartment dweller, you can supplement vegetables received from a CSA via container gardening on your porch. Many ingenious designs exist for hanging baskets of tomatoes and cucumbers, in addition to “earth box” style beds, and various strawberry tower designs – the only limit is your imagination.

As for meat, grass-fed is best; if you really want to be sure your meat is safe, let us recommend halal meat.  Muslim restrictions on animal cruelty, coupled with their dietary restrictions, guarantees healthier meat and poultry.  Ask at your deli counter - many grocery chains and local butcher shops offer meat certified as halal.  We don't know of a similar shortcut on pork, but hey, our vegan friends think we've already gone too far, so what can we say?  Maybe Judaism and Islam both have a point:  bacon is tasty, but how can you tell if it's healthy?

Every little bit helps. So, don't let us hear you say “can't”! Let's make those statistics on arable land more misleading than they already are, shall we? Myrtle says your windowsill is not included in the count, but should be!

Happy farming!

Water, Water, Everywhere, Just Don't Take a Drink!

Sometimes we think we’re just being paranoid.  Other times, we wonder, are we being paranoid enough?

College Station is roughly 5 inches behind our average year-to-date rainfall totals this year, so we were exceptionally grateful this week when we received roughly 2 inches in one 24 hour period.  However, during that (for us) torrential downpour, several citizens noticed that fire hydrants were being set off like some kind of epic hydrological manifestation of government waste.

This being the small town it is, these good-hearted Nosey Joes called the local radio station, and thus we got word today that the reason the fire hydrants were being run like geysers is that the city water supply was too chlorinated.  “But don’t worry,” we were advised.  “The danger we usually watch for is the water not being chlorinated enough.”

Oh, hey, sure, we won’t worry.  After all, the folks from the city say not to worry.

We have written before about the advantage of distilling one’s own drinking water.  We are now doubly certain that this is the right course of action.  A brief perusal of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documentation on drinking water shows that there certainly are a large number of critters occuring naturally in our nation’s supply of groundwater, and that these critters must be removed via some sort of disinfection routine.  Chlorination and bromination certainly fit the bill for those particular needs. 

However, the list of problems caused as a side effect of disinfection seems (to us at Myrtle’s place, at least) equally disturbing.  Keep in mind that the following list only encompasses those risks the EPA has determined they have sufficient evidence for which to establish liability – there are other, longer-term effects they have not tracked nor yet quantified:

How contaminant gets there, what it does:	How disinfectant gets there, what it does:
Cryptosporidium: Comes from human and animal fecal waste; causes gastrointestinal illness (diarrhea, vomiting, cramps)	Bromate: Byproduct of drinking water disinfection; causes increased risk of cancer
Giardia lamblia: Comes from human and animal fecal waste; causes gastrointestinal illness (diarrhea, vomiting, cramps)	Chlorite: Byproduct of drinking water disinfection; causes anemia; in infants and young children, affects the nervous system
Legionella: Found naturally in water; multiplies in heating systems; causes Legionnaire’s Disease, a type of pneumonia	Haloacetic acids: Byproduct of drinking water disinfection; causes increased risk of cancer
Viruses (enteric): Comes from human and animal fecal waste; causes gastrointestinal illness (diarrhea, vomiting, cramps)	Total Trihalomethanes: Byproduct of drinking water disinfection; causes increased risk of cancer; causes liver, kidney or central nervous system problems
	Chloramines: Water additive used to control microbes; causes eye/nose irritation, stomach discomfort and anemia
	Chlorine: Water additive used to control microbes; causes eye/nose irritation, stomach discomfort
	Chlorine dioxide: Water additive used to control microbes; causes anemia; in infants and young children, also causes nervous system effects
	Fluoride: Water additive which promotes strong teeth, erosion of natural deposits, discharge from fertilizer and aluminum factores; causes bone disease (pain and tenderness of the bones); children may get mottled teeth

Additionally, of course, there are the various chemicals also found in city water supplies.  One wonders if some of these are in the list of “trace elements” doctors notoriously cite as the reason not to drink distilled water.  Following is just a partial list; the full list is too exhaustive to reproduce here, but this provides a sufficient taste:

How inorganic contaminant gets there, what it does:	How organic contaminant gets there, what it does
Antimony: Discharge from petroleum refineries, fire retardants, ceramics, electronics, and solder; causes increase in blood cholesterol and a decrease in blood sugar	Acrylamide: Added to water during sewage/wastewater treatment; causes nervous system and blood problems; increases risk of cancer
Arsenic: Erosion of natural deposits, runoff from orchards, runoff from glass and electronics production wasts; causes skin damage or problems with circulatory systems and may increase risk of getting cancer	Alachlor: Runoff from herbicide used on row crops; causes eye, liver, kidney and spleen problems, anemia, and increases the risk of cancer
Asbestos: Decay of asbestos cement in water mains, erosion of natural deposits; causes increased risk of developing benign (?) intestinal polyps	Atrazine: Runoff from herbicide used on row crops; causes cardiovascular system and reproductive problems
Barium: Discharge of drilling wastes, discharge from metal refineries, erosion of natural deposits; causes increase in blood pressure	Benzene: Discharge from factories, leaching from gas storage tanks and landfills; causes anemia, decrease in blood platelets, and increases the risk of cancer
Beryllium: Discharge from metal refineries and coal-burning factories, discharge from electrical, aerospace, and defense industries; causes intestinal lesions	Benzo(a)pyrene (PAHs): Leaching from linings of water storage tanks and distribution lines; causes reproductive difficulties, increased risk of cancer
Cadmium: Corrosion of galvanized pipes, erosion of natural deposits, discharge from metal refineries, runoff from waste batteries and paints; causes kidney damage	Carbofuran: Leaching of soil fumigant used on rice and alfalfa; causes problems with blood, nervous system, or reproductive system
Chromium: Discharge from steel and pulp mills, erosion of natural deposits; causes allergic dermatitis	Carbon tetrachloride: Discharge from chemical plants and other industrial activities; causes liver problems, increased risk of cancer
Copper: Corrosion of household plumbing systems, erosion of natural deposits; short term exposure causes gastrointestinal distress; long term exposure causes liver or kidney damage; people with Wilson’s disease should consult their personal doctor if the amount of copper in their water exceeds the action level	Chlordane: Residue of banned termiticide, causes liver or nervous system problems, increased risk of cancer
Cyanide: Discharge from steel/metal factories, discharge from plastic and fertilizer factories; causes nerve damage and thyroid problems	Chlorobenzene: Discharge from chemical and agricultural chemical factories; causes liver or kidney problems
Lead: Corrosion of household plumbing systems, erosion of natural deposits; in infants and children, causes delays in physical or mental development, slight deficits in attention span and learning abilities; in adults, causes kidney problems and high blood pressure	2,4-D: Runoff from herbicide used on row crops; causes kidney, liver, and adrenal gland problems
Mercury: Erosion of natural deposits, discharge from refineries and factores, runoff from landfills and croplands; causes kidney damage	Dalapon: Runoff from herbicide used on rights of way; causes minor kidney changes
Nitrate (measured as Nitrogen): Runoff from fertilizer use, leaching from septic tanks, sewage, erosion of natural deposits; infants below six months who drink water containing nitrate in excess of the MCL could become seriously ill and, if untreated, may die; symptoms include shortness of breath and blue-baby syndrome	1,2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP): Runoff/leaching from soil fumigant used on soybeans, cotton, pineapples and orchards; causes reproductive difficulties, increased risk of cancer
Nitrite (measured as Nitrogen): Runoff from fertilizer use, leaching from septic tanks, sewage, erosion of natural deposits; infants below six months who drink water containing nitrate in excess of the MCL could become seriously ill and, if untreated, may die; symptoms include shortness of breath and blue-baby syndrome	o-Dichlorobenzene: Discharge from industrial chemical factories; causes liver, kidney or circulatory system problems
Selenium: Discharge from petroleum refineries, erosion of natural deposits, discharge from mines; causes hair or fingernail loss, numbness in fingers or toes, circulatory problems	p-Dichlorobenzene: Discharge from industrial chemical factories; causes anemia, liver, kidney, spleen damage, changes in blood
Thallium: Leaching from ore-processing sites, discharge from electronics, glass and drug factories	1,2-Dichloroethane: Discharge from chemical factories; causes increased risk of cancer
	1,1-Dichloroethylene: Discharge from industrial chemical factories; causes liver problems
	cis-1,2-Dichloroethylene: Discharge from industrial chemical factories; causes liver problems

 

Keep in mind, these are chemicals and compounds the EPA knows need to be monitored; on a regular basis, someone is supposed to be letting you know whether the levels of these various poisons is “acceptable” according to their formulations.

However, as a practical matter, most water supplies in the world cannot be properly tested and monitored sufficiently. There are simply not enough resources, both in time and money, to guarantee that your drinking water is safe when it comes out of the tap – and that is even if you make the assumption (a very big assumption, in our opinion) that the measures taken to assure the safety of that water were correct in the first place.

In point of fact, one of Myrtle Maintenance Personnel's one-thousand-and-one jobs working their way through college was as a transcriber for a civil engineering firm who did inspections of water systems in small east-central Texas towns, like Marlin and Weimar and a hundred other places you'll probably never go.  And we were never bored by the gruesome details, let us assure you.  The amount of machine oil, for example, which is permissible as a sheen on the top of the water in a municipal water tower is measured in inches.  If that doesn't scare you off of tap water, we cannot convince you.

Which brings us back to distilling your own water. Hurrah for the government officials with their pocket protectors who figured out what level of chlorine would kill the cryptosporidium; but doesn’t it make sense, once the bacteria are dead, to also remove the chlorine?

We’re just sayin’.

Happy farming!

Jest to mały świat, Olsztyn Poland!

Google analytics is a double-edged sword.  When reviewing statistics for our little efforts here, we sometimes run across depressing trends -- oh the inglorious bounce rate!  If we were trying to sell something , we would get downright gloomy.

On the other hand, we discover some rather interesting things, too.  All the visitors from foreign countries (we're up to 26 nations now) usually only stick around for a short while, which is reasonable, given how much of what we write about is oriented towards gardening and raising backyard chickens in Texas.

We occasionally have visitors from other countries who stick around a bit longer, but we can almost always explain that behavior by remembering where our international assortment of friends are currently traveling -- France, Switzerland, England, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Chile, New Zealand and Turkey are all explained in such manner.  Everyone else in the world shows up on the front page, maybe reads one post, and then goes on their merry way.

This morning, however, we have discovered a visitor who intrigues us.  Someone from Olsztyn, Poland, logged on and read 12 full pages of Myrtle-mania.  We don't know anyone in Poland, nor even anyone who has informed us of an interest in visiting Poland.

This makes us curious.

A brief inspection of the summary of Olsztyn according to wiki reveals that it is a charming community with a lot of history, some of it probably bloodier than is hinted at in this article.  We are fascinated, too, by the notion of a "municipal forest".  We like that idea.  What further gets our attention is the fact that we don't have a readily available Polish translation feature on Blogspot; Hindi, yes, Polish, no.

Which means that whoever these intrepid Myrtle fans were, they most likely spoke (or at least read) English far better than we could hope to speak or read Polish.  Not surprising, given that multilingualism is far more common abroad than it is on our own shores.

We hope they are able to have backyard chickens in Olsztyn.  We may have to go there ourselves some time just to find out.

Happy farming!

Have You Been to Jail for Justice?

Some say Dr. King or Gandhi
Set them on their way
No matter who your mentors are
It’s pretty plain to see
That if you’ve been to jail for justice
You’re in good company

We have always admired those who cannot abide injustice.  Sometimes it is not a particularly practical point of view – Steve Biko, Medgar Evers, Mahatma Gandhi, Antoinette Brown, Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lech Walesa, Susan B. Anthony, and the guy who stood in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square all come to mind as people who were not made comfortable as a consequence of their brave actions.  But jail is, in some cases, not as bad an option as it is in others.

Even in the aforementioned list, there is an opportunity for discernment – some of those people were assassinated; others merely spent some time in the pokey, and then went on their merry ways, often to the joy and great benefit of the literary world.  But they all spent time facing down authority figures who were, in material terms, much more powerful than themselves.

Gandhi spoke of satyagraha, or “Soul force”, as the causal agent of his own effectiveness.  He argued that no matter how meek or humble the actor, satyagraha makes the meek and humble far more powerful than the high and mighty.

Nowhere is that more evident than in our chicken coop. 

The term ‘Pecking Order’ is not a misnomer.  Chickens maintain their social structure through a vicious ordeal of constant pecking, and it is not always pretty.  Sometimes it can be downright mean, particularly if there is a rooster, or worse still, more than one rooster, in the flock.

We don’t have roosters, but we still have a pecking order.

On the bottom rung of that social ladder sits Bombarella, first in girth, but last in standing.  She is constantly belittled by the other birds for her matronly qualities – she is a “broodie”.  She sits on the daily take of eggs, and would dearly love to hatch them.  It ain’t happenin’, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to be a mother.  When she sits too long… the other girls start pecking her, telling her to conform, to get out of the box, to start being a “normal” chicken.

And she just takes it.  She’s last in line for everything as a consequence.

We wondered what would happen to this social order when we added new chicks to the flock, and now we have found out.  Bombarella has been to jail for justice; she has satyagraha to spare.
When they were about four weeks old, we moved the four baby chicks to the enclosure you see here, inside the larger coop.  They are getting used to their new environment, on the deep bed of leaves, and without artificial lighting at night.  We have perches for them, and in every respect, they are in a miniature version of the larger coop.  But the resemblance between this setup and the apartheid regimes of nations who believe in ridiculous notions like “separate but equal” cannot help but be noticed.

And the sense of social justice is about on a par with those backwards regimes, as well.

We have had to double-wrap the enclosure with chicken wire to keep the babies from sticking their heads out, where they would surely be pecked so hard we could not guarantee their safety.

And we’ve got one tunneller who has discovered, to her chagrin, that she is not yet welcome in the larger flock.

Enter Bombarella.

She of the bottom rung, the humblest of our birds, who will not fight back on her own behalf, is sheer terror on those who would attack the babies, throwing herself headlong between any would-be marauders and the defenseless chicks.  We could not be prouder of her, though we have to sadly shake our heads at the ironic thought that in a few months, when the youngsters have matured, they will probably pass her by in the pecking order, leaving her even farther down the ladder than she was before.

Still, history will record that, for one bright shining moment, one small voice for justice could be heard despite the four walls of her cage.  Bombarella, you rock, my friend!  We’ll pass you some extra grubworms when the other girls aren’t looking.

A Chicken in Every Pot

We frequently encounter people who are "on the verge of chicken".  We also encounter a lot of people who are just on the verge, but that's a subject for another time.

This whole backyard chicken thing is a trend, and we can't really take credit for much of it, since most of the documentation we have read or cited for the ease with which chickens may be maintained in an urban environment comes from numerous folks who have done this gig before us.

Nonetheless, we are pleased and happy to help out with anybody who wishes to embark on a poultryful existence.  You want chickens, we'd be glad to help.  It's in the news all over the country -- usually on a slow news day, of course -- that people already have birds in the middle of town.  This article from the Burlington Express is a good case in point although anyone not familiar with Vermont's largest city might have assumed the entire state was one big barnyard.  Not true, but Myrtle can only hope they are working on it.  :^)

Meanwhile, closer to home, we are in the initial stages of putting together a Brazos Valley Backyard Chicken group of some sort, though we need a catchy name, among other things.  It's hard to get organized unless you sound like it's already a "thing".

So... anybody in the Brazos Valley who wants to get into the gig, we initially plan on having some sort of Fall festival similar to Austin's Funky Chicken Coop Tour, only, we'll be more forgiving of the use of maroon in the color scheme.

If you are interested, please email us and tell us your interest level; we are looking not only for people who already have birds, but also people who are just "on the verge".  We can help you navigate the city ordinances on chickens, and help you select the best breed for your family (we have an ongoing feud with an Ameraucana family; Myrtle is, of course, a Barred Rock), and we can give you a lot of advice about bedding, feeding, etc.

Maybe you don't want the chicken in your pot, but you really need her in your backyard, trust us!

Happy farming!

Just Where Exactly Does Everyone Think This Stuff Goes?

We recently commented on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, noting that "dispersants" and "evaporation" are misleading terms, because thanks to a little concept from elementary physics known as the Law of Conservation of Energy and Matter, nothing just disappears.  Oil is being dispersed to somewhere, and in the case of the Gulf oil spill, it's being dispersed to the underwater ecosystems that no one is noticing; Bobby Jindal is all upset about the Louisiana coast, but the fact that all the fish in the Gulf are dying is a distant concern to him as a human politician.

We were surprised and humbled to have been noticed by The Mike Malloy Show for that post.  Sorry for bumming you out, Mike, but it had to be said.  Anyway, we have in the interim had another instance forced upon our notice of people just not getting it when it comes to fouling our own nest.  The City of College Station evidently sprays herbicides in the storm gutters on our street.  Why they would do this is, to us at Myrtle's, a complete and baffling mystery.

Of course, we don't view weeds as a detraction around here; our chickens absolutely love dandelions; chickweed is called "chickweed" because chicks really dig it.  Dollar weed is a little trickier to harvest, but they gulp that down, too.   In short, all the things that people around these parts pour thousands of dollars of chemicals over the course of their lifetimes onto their lawns in order to kill are, on our backyard farm, considered a crop.

We suppose Shepherd's Purse doesn't look all that attractive to someone who is aspiring to a Better Homes and Gardens manicured St. Augustine lawn, but then, we consider it a damned sight better looking than a basal cell carcinoma.

 

And that's the bottom line:  we as a society have stopped thinking about long term consequences, and don't have the first clue about how to meld aesthetics and functionality.  A beautiful field of well-kept and manicured wildflowers is infinitely to be preferred to a chemical-laced poisonous field of perfectly manicured croquet lawn.  And weeds, unlike herbicides or pesticides, have never been linked to ADHD or other rampant childhood maladies.   Nobody came back from Vietnam with cancers caused by dandelions.

And no accidents, to our knowledge, have ever been caused by weeds growing in cracks in the cement in our city storm drains.  Can you just see Myrtle rolling her eyes?

When deciding how to care for our lawns... or our storm drains, for that matter... the question we ought to be asking ourselves is, "Do I want to eat or drink anything that has come into contact with this stuff?"

Because, honestly people, do you really think it just magically disappears once you've put it "out there"?  Are we really that daft?

So, to the good news:  Weeds are good!  Provided you're willing to do a little extra work, you can have a beautiful yard with lots of surprising little variations and pockets of color.  If you want to get rid of a certain species, overseed that area with clover.  In Texas, that means red clover in fall, white clover in spring.  If you have too many weeds and too much yard, get chickens!  Or better still, get a goat.

And happy farming!

Of Chickens and Monkeys and Textbooks (oh my!)

The anniversary of State v. John Scopes seems like an excellent time to apologize to the rest of the country for the absurdity that is the textbook industry.  The great state of Texas has undue influence on that industry nationally, and now we have word that the lunatic fringe has managed to cause all kinds of half-truths to be included, and whole-truths to be wholesale excluded from our history books.

We wonder two things about this controversy:  first, is anyone really surprised?  This is, after all, the state where a governor once famously exclaimed "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for Texas!"  We have a Tea Party favorite of a governor now, who brags about balancing the state budget (in contrast to the federal budget), but conveniently "forgets" the fact that only several billion dollars in federal assistance allowed us to balance said state budget....  And second, why is textbook revision a big deal, anyway?  It's not like these books are going to be read or comprehended, regardless of what they say.

In short, we are an ignorant state, and have been for a very, very long time.

We recently saw a bumper sticker for some Texas secessionists who quoted Sam Houston.  They forget that Sam Houston encountered a secession movement before; he told them to go to hell.  He'd say it again today.

So, as we savor the irony of the educational devolution taking place on the anniversary of a trial about evolution, just remember:  at least we aren't being eaten by saber-toothed tigers anymore.  Big Myrtle can tell you how scary cats can be; almost as scary as theological bigots in elected office.

Happy farming!

A Bit of Perspective

"The one thing people cannot afford to have," wrote Douglas Adams, "is a sense of perspective."  Given that we are all microscopic dots on a microscopic dot in the vastness of space and time, if we ever truly had a sense of our own insignificance, we would go mad.

There are those who would argue, of course, that we are already mad, and they may have a point.

Either way, we couldn't help but be struck by a strange sensation this past weekend when we were up on the roof blowing new insulation into our attic.  Myrtle's place looks a lot different from a bird's-eye point of view, and it got us thinking about our use of space in slightly different ways, which will hopefully bear fruit this fall when we begin reorganization of the garden along more ambitious lines of production.

One of these years, we may invest in a panoramic camera so we can give you a proper grasp of the wideness of our project; these broken glimpses don't do proper justice to what exactly is meant by 1/2 acre.  It's not as vast a space as a sprawling ranch, and yet... by comparison to the miniature strips of dirt and turf attached to most modern homes, it is a sprawling wilderness.

We've noticed, however, that by sticking with any kind of recognizable geometry, we have severely limited the practical growing spaces for our consumable crops.  We will get a full year's worth of salsa and pasta sauces from the tomatoes and peppers in the planters pictured here, and we will get a sizable quantity of corn, as well, but there is room to produce so much more.  We are therefore going to break up these spaces with fenced in areas and build micro- versions of the macro- schema.  The whole thing will take on some qualities of an agricultural equivalent of a fractal drawing.  The smaller pieces should reflect qualities of the whole project.

We have written many times about having to rely on personal experience, given the lack of specific science in the area of microfarming and this, we believe, is part and parcel of that paradigm.  There are, however, some pioneers who have gone before us in the realm of space optimization on smaller plots for the purposes of sustainable food production.

Surely if small-scale farmers can make a go of it on an acre of degraded land in Tibet or Uruguay, we can make it work on a half-acre in the middle of a town whose entire purpose is to support the largest agricultural university in the world.

Of course, the town whose entire purpose is to support the largest agricultural university in the world is, itself, deficient in many of the qualities of progressive thinking necessary to support ventures such as Myrtle's, but that is a whole other topic of conversation.  We will undoubtedly expound upon it when it comes time to start putting in facilities for a goat; we certainly discovered the limitations of the City of College Station when our friends Hugh and Linda first got their chickens.  One thing at a time, though.  Next project:  maximum veggie space.  Then dredging the pond.  Then goats?

Happy farming! 

Poseidon... and the Need for a Garden...

We have been thinking about the ocean a lot more lately than we usually do.  Mr. Myrtle Maintenance is from a small town near Corpus Christi, so he thinks about the ocean more than Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance, who is from out on the Llano Estacado (far west Texas, for the yankees among you).  However, the ocean has been impressed upon all of us lately, due to the criminal foolishness of our oil industry.

Oil doesn't really have a future; it hasn't for twenty-plus years, but our culture has become too fat and lazy to realize it.  Oil is dirty, lazy, and cheap, and those who make their money from it are equally dirty, lazy, and cheap.  We have known for a long time, at least two decades, how to garner enough solar and wind energy on a house-by-house basis to get rid of the electrical grid altogether, and we have been able to run cars on natural gas for decades; on top of that, for about five years now, we've had alternatives to internal combustion engines we could have been using already.

So why have we stuck with oil?  Because it was cheap to produce, and people could make a lot of money doing it.  But there has never, in the entire history of the industrial revolution, been a less effectively regulated industry.

And now we are paying the price for our collective laziness.

The real scope of the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico has not even been hinted at yet in the mainstream media; talk of "dispersants" and the "evaporation" of oil has dulled our sensibilities on the nightly news, but anyone who remembers their basic physics knows that nothing simply disappears.  Where is the oil being dispersed to?  It's being dispersed to a vertical column beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.  Which happens to be where a lot of fish live.  A LOT of fish.  Fish who form the basis for a whole other industry, a whole other lifestyle, a whole other economic basis for an entire region.  And it is going to, quite unlike the oil, simply disappear.  Dead zones in the ocean are not easily repaired once they appear; coral reefs, which form the basis for whole underwater ecospheres, take centuries to develop.  And in just a few short weeks, already at least a fifth of existing underwater coral in the Gulf has been contaminated.  Those are conservative estimates, and the oil is still pumping out.

Think about that.

Even if not one more drop were to enter the Gulf, 20% of it by the most conservative estimates is already likely to be dead for centuries.

There is simply no repairing that damage, and it is not likely to be limited to the Gulf, either.  This oil is going to end up washing up on the shores of Great Britain before all is said and done.  British Petroleum is quite literally coming home.

Adding to the cheerful news, we have only recently had, thanks to the invention of the "Argo float" pictured at left here, the ability to measure ocean temperatures effectively enough to tell whether the ocean is cooling, staying the same, or warming.

Surprise!  It's warming.  Which means the Earth is warming.  The oceans are far larger than land masses, and far deeper than the earth's habitable surface areas.  The heat-retaining capacity of the oceans is several orders of magnitude (10,000+ times greater) than that of either the land or the atmosphere.  And the water warms up more slowly, and cools down more slowly, than either the land or the air.  Which means if you want an accurate measure of how much heat the planet is retaining, you measure the water.  It comes as no surprise to Myrtle, who is a graduate of elementary physics studies, that in a partially closed system like Earth (far more energy is added to our global system than escapes from it), cranking up industrial production and greenhouse gasses is likely to cause an overall increase in temperatures.

Certain ostriches (well funded by the sleazebags in the oil industry) have attempted to deny that warming is occurring, but those foolish shenanigans should be well and thoroughly over now.  Denying global warming with the evidence from the oceans is tantamount to Ptolemaic astronomy in the Hubble telescope age.  It's not just stupid, it's evil.  Because we can't afford it any longer; we are already well past the time to take action.

So.  Is there any good news?  Yes, there is, though it seems faint at times.  The good news is, we can adapt.  Those who have space and can meet city ordinances, we say you should get chickens, and plant gardens.  In the short run, it may not seem like much, but in the long run, it will work wonders.  We also suggest buying an electric vehicle as soon as possible.  As soon as we are able to get off the electrical grid ourselves, we'll blog about how we've done it; if you're in that process yourselves, good for you!  Keep up the good work!  Maybe even drop Myrtle a line and tell us what we can do ourselves, or what we can do to help you.

We're all in this together, ultimately, so let's keep our chins up, and keep working the land.

Happy farming!

For the Birds... (or so they think!)

In the long, sad history of scarecrows we have known, one fact becomes very clear very quickly:  crows don't scare too easily.  And that's just your garden variety crow; by the time you move on to other rapacious species, such as thrushes, and grackles, and pigeons, oh my!  We feel certain that had Harper Lee been a corn farmer, she would have written "To Kill a Flamingo" instead of "To Kill a Mockingbird".

No, scarecrows don't work.  What does work, however, if you want to keep your avian friends from reaping what you sow, is trap crops, and around here, the best trap crop is sunflowers.  We have planted a wide variety of sunflowers this year, in the belief that at least some of these different species will surely yield big bulging disks of seeds that the birdies will flock to instead of to our precious corn crop.  And judging from the first few flowers to bloom, we've done well this season.

No sign of birds pecking the seeds out yet, but it's really just a matter of time.  And just in time, too, because the corn is ripening quickly.  This Spring's corn crop is a variety called "Kandy Korn", and we'll know it's ripe when its tassels get so long and pink it looks like Cousin It trying out for a Flock of Seagulls cover band.

We are always fascinated by the reactions we get from the neighbors when we have a large corn crop in the ground.  This is the crop people think of when they think about a vegetable garden, but it is not really all that common a non-professional crop.  Corn is a space hog, for one thing.  Also, it takes a lot of water; in a year like this one, where we are three full inches behind our average rainfall totals, that can be a critical problem.

And then there are the aforementioned birds.  What they don't eat, they knock over.  It's enough to make a backyard farmer batty.  But don't fret; just plant some flowers!

They're pretty, some are tasty, and most of all... They're for the birds!

Happy farming!

Ares and Aphrodite in the Garden

We believe fervently that the Greek gods and goddesses really need to hire some new publicists.  All their best lines have been stolen, and all their worst foibles have become all-encompassing moral warts.

It's just not fair, really, but what is an immortal Olympian supposed to do about it, put down their goblet and intervene?  Please.  That whole deus ex machina thing is so first century Levant.  It just isn't done anymore.

 For divine image reconditioning, the Gods need to look to modern metaphor merchants, like Myrtle, for instance, who has already rendered the opinion that Apollo and Dionysus symbolize the conflict between domestic and wild horticulture.   Nor are the poet and the vintner the only members of the pantheon to get Myrtle's attention.  Demeter and Persephone have each had some part of their stories told, as might be expected.  What little appreciation remains in our culture of these ancient myths is often associated with plants, farms, and gardens.  Demeter and Persephone have gotten less publicity, perhaps, than some others of their kin, but at least what publicity they have received has been mostly positive.

Not so for Ares and Aphrodite.  This pair has been relegated to the celestial tabloids for all eternity, and the rendering of their identities and stories has only gotten worse with the passing of time.

But is our modern dismissal of these archtypal figures reasonable, let alone fair?

Placed in the context of a garden, Myrtle's answer is "no", with some important caveats.

For starters, it is important to recognize that the Ares and Aphrodite we think we know are really just romanized bastardizations of themselves.  Pop psychology may be comfortable saying men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but this is puerile poppycock.  The Roman versions of these immortals are the inspirations for monster truck rallies and junior high girls dressed in practically nothing and dancing wildly to  "Brick House", respectively.  We'll leave you to be the judge of which is the more corrosive influence.

But Mars and Venus lack the moral depth of Ares and Aphrodite -- Aphrodite in particular.  There are some martial elements to gardening, particularly in the initial stages, where a wild copse is beaten into submission with plow and shears, so Ares has some place in the creation of a green, growing place, but it is Aphrodite who in particular has not received proper recognition in the agricultural arts.  Ginette Paris gives credit where it is due in her fascinating tome Pagan Meditations: The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia; indeed, she points out that there are a variety of myths about Aphrodite, who probably served the Greeks as the replacement for a series of earlier goddesses, running from Isis in Egypt through the various Ishtar cults which cropped up as far afield as the Indus river.

Paris also writes of "the interplay between fire and water, between Ares and Aphrodite."  The sexual ecstasy central to the National Enquirer version of these star-crossed lovers' tales is important in their metaphorical realm, as well, but it is not the only element, nor is it even the most important characteristic of the union of Ares and Aphrodite.

One wonders at what point in their history this union  became a chronicle of infidelity; why did some ancient poet or bard ever decide to marry off Aphrodite to Haephestus in the first place?  One suspects it is because, crippled though he is, Haephestus (Vulcan, to the Romans) has a potent maleness, a fertile virility, all his own.  But he is really just a metaphor for more of the same qualities Ares brings to the table -- he is rugged, dry summer to Ares' wet, sensual spring, when his fire melts the snows of winter, and he is overcome by passion for the dewy earth.

And both are central to the growth of life-giving vegetables.  That's right -- the gods of war and of the anvil are basically steroid-laden ploughboys.

As for Aphrodite, Demeter and Persephone have stolen all her laurels.  A sachet of lavender is an homage to sexy, slinky Aphrodite, not frumpy Demeter.

Think about this seriously, for a moment, please.  What is a flower?  It is the in-your-face sensuality of a plant that is letting its hair down and telling its neighbor, "Hey, baby, wanna buy me a drink?"  And it wouldn't smell nearly so sweet if it was imbued with the essence of "I'm really wholesome!  Don't I remind you of June Cleaver?"

No, a garden is basically one giant metaphor for sex.  There is no getting around it.  There is only proper placement of context, and appropriate balancing of one need against the other.  Venus and Mars were both too narcissistic to be anything other than lousy lovers, but if you listen to your garden closely, you can hear the ancient echoes of Ares and Aphrodite, whom we think probably had a far better thing than the modern storytellers would have you believe.

In other news, our corn is almost ready for harvest!  We'll update you soon!

Until then...

Happy farming!

Dionysus v. Apollo, redux

Any metaphor worth stretching too far is worth repeating too often.  From a chicken-brained point of view, the fundamental inadequacy of your argument should always be obfuscated by the superficiality of your affect.  To that end, we submit that our little urban homestead is increasingly a microcosm of the age-old conflict between two different paradigms -- the orderly and poetic on the one hand, represented by Apollo, and the natural and chaotic on the other, represented by Dionysus.

We, of course, are attempting to produce enough fruits and veggies to provide all our dietary needs.  Naturally, this means we have planted all sorts of "intentional" looking things, like pecan trees, pomegranate trees, olive trees, corn, squash, etc.  These plants require a lot of tender loving care; pecans are notoriously thirsty; we have heavily mulched our baby and built a clay retaining wall to assist this needy little artist in its never-ending quest to get enough water.  However, the entrance to our property is announced by a beautiful little yellow flower, sprouting from a prickly-pear which never actually needs any attention at all.  We'll be harvesting more fruit from the poet, true, but the libertine is, at present, far more aesthetically attuned.  Curiously, the cactus, lacking in artificial discipline, has a natural discipline which serves us well; we manufacture the protection for the pecan, but the cactus brings its own.

Who is the harder worker, we wonder?

Likewise, the Apollonian domesticated seedless grapes will eventually be less work for us than the wild, Dionysian mustang grapes, particularly in the matter of getting rid of the pits, but Apollo is not nearly so productive as his eastern cousin.  The fact is, this is a beautiful grape vine, and it will some day be an attractive shade provider for a bench we intend to place on one side of this arbor... but it is really nothing compared to the vast, sprawling wild grapes in our faerie ring area, and around the back porch, and along the fence between the pond and our neighbors...

At this point in the conversation, we really must mention the Greek notion of ergon; what is the proper thingness of a thing?  If that sounds like a horrible translation to you, congratulations! You're paying attention!  Meanwhile, of course, there is a reason for this apparent lack of etymological deftness -- "ergon" doesn't really translate all that well, but the idea is a fairly straightforward one:  each object in existence may best be given a particular application.  The "ergon" of a toothbrush is the collection of qualities which contribute to the use of a toothbrush in dental hygiene, for example.  the "ergon" of a knife is the sharpness which allows it to cut steak.  Or broccoli.  Different knife, of course, so slightly different ergon.  With us so far?

Good.  Because the "ergon" of a domesticated seedless grape is fundamentally different from that of a wild grape.

The wild grape is useful both as a border, and also as a wine producing crop.  It looks beautiful, but it is beautiful in a completely different way from the seedless cousin.

In short, we happen to like the balance struck in our garden at present.  We have plenty of "tame" plants, but they are almost always paired with a "wild" neighbor.  Marigolds and basil, meet catnip and anise.

Olives and pomegranates, meet black-eyed-susans.

Speaking of wildflowers....

Until next time...

Happy farming!

Singin' in the Rain

Our green, growing grove of great goodies never looks quite as nice as it does when it's wet.  And usually, it's wet for pretty much the entire month of May.  In College Station, we average about 5.5 inches of rainfall every May, and that is far and away more than we get in any other month.

Until today, however, we had gotten a total of (and I am estimating here, so forgive any rounding errors) zero inches of rain for May.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.

We're very, very glad to see the wet stuff falling from the skies this evening.  Very glad.

Myrtle doesn't think much of complainers, however, so we aren't complaining.  This extended dry period has provided us with plenty of opportunity to deepen the pond, and what little grass we have left in the yard hasn't needed mowing in a while, so that's a plus, too.

We're going to eliminate grass entirely this fall -- "green manure" crops will replace grass.  Red clover in the winter, white clover in the spring; we're quite hopeful that in addition to fixing nitrogen in our soil, it will be quite pretty.

Meanwhile, keep checking the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration web site for news about more wet stuff and...

Happy farming!

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having the colour of blood or fire, of the eyes, of the face, of hair or an animal's fur, having very left-wing political opinions, involving opposition or competition that is violent and without pity, something that is likely to make somebody very angry, the colour of blood or fire, red wine, a person with very left-wing political opinions, to owe money to your bank because you have spent more than you have in your account, to become very angry, Something that is , If you say that someone's face is , You describe someone's hair as

An Unbelievably Satisfying Moment

Picking the first blackberries of the year proved to be as phantasmagorically satisfying as an experience could be.

They're still just slightly red when you pick them right now; usually, folk wait until the red has turned to complete blackness (hence, "blackberry"), but we are 1) not patient enough for that, and 2) perfectly happy with that tart little bite at the front end of the berry experience.

There are few things in life as tasty as berries from your own backyard.  The fact that they also double as a thorny hedge is just a bonus.

We'll probably have several buckets of berries by the end of the week (you can see all the red ones on the vines right now, and they turn very, very quickly); we've already noticed numerous canes volunteering their way up in between the current plants, so we'll have to mark carefully when we pick the berries -- the idea is to prune this year's producing canes all the way back to the ground some time after harvest; next year's berries are on the empty canes from this year.

They are about a month away from harvest, but we are also going to get our first production quality wild grapes this year.  We probably won't get enough for wine-making, but we will almost definitely get enough to try our hands at some mustang jam, which will be quite an experience.  Hopefully, next summer, we will be producing our first batch of home vinted dark black cheese accoutrement.

Which brings us to the week's big rumination....  We want to make our own cheese.  But what do you have to have in order to make cheese?  Some form of dairy product, right?  Like, say, goat's milk?  Which would require... let us think... what is it?  Oh, yeah, a goat!

There's no telling exactly how many complications we will run into along the road to goat ownership -- a tall fence around the pond area, for one thing, not to mention getting permits and all that legal folderol -- but when the proprietors of Myrtle's place set their hearts on something related to self-sufficiency, we've come to expect that it will happen, sooner or later.

Just witness the berries!  Two years ago, we planted puny root stock, and now we are swimming in juicy, sweet, tart little berries!

An incredibly satisfying experience, indeed.  Now we just need to make some good mustang wine, bake a nice blackberry cobbler, and eat a good home-grown salad topped with home-grown feta.  If you can think of a better way for us to be spending our time, by all means let us know.

In the meantime,

Happy farming!