Now What?

Excuse the following ramble. I think I am still processing.

When I made the decision to start growing food, it was without question that I'd grow it in a responsible, sustainable, non-polluting way. After all, I grew up with the mindset of not polluting the air, soil or water. It was something of which I have always been conscience. Putting the earth first.

While I can't afford an electric truck and tractor, now that I grow commercially, I do what I can to combine stops to reduce overall trips; use solar energy and rain to irrigate the gardens, into whose soil I am constantly working to sequester organic materials (aka carbon), so they'll retain moisture longer, leach less and become more fertile than when I began - thereby reducing the amount I need to use the tractor. When it was nearby, I used bio-diesel. I'd love to learn how to make my own some day. 

It's a habit, leaving things in better condition than you found it, that I adopted decades ago as a young Girl Scout. Living in Chicago and cherishing the camping trips in forested areas,we never left our trash laying around and we always respected Nature.


I grew up in awe of Nature. There was always something to see in the woods camping that I'd never see on the paved back yard on which I grew up. Our closest green space was an empty lot on which, before I was out of grade school, a fast food restaurant went up.  Parks were not grass, they were wood chips and playground equipment. You rode your bike not across fields to get there, but down paved streets filled with houses, concrete and useless lawns that no one was supposed to step foot upon.

My mom grew as much as she could in a very small space in that back yard, and while gardening wasn't my thing  until much later in life, I intuitively appreciated the out-of-doors. The rain and the sun and the changing of seasons were on my mind.We were taught to turn off the lights when we exited a room. We turned down the thermostat in the winter and used a blanket and opened the windows and appreciated the fresh air in the warm weather. I still prefer a warm breeze to synthetic air conditioning most of the time. We didn't toss trash out of our windows and we began recycling. That is after they decided to replace deposits on glass bottles and cardboard cartons with plastic.... well, everything.

I remember when they told us of a coming ice age of sorts when I was a young girl. I was scared half to death because winter was not my favorite season and I couldn't imagine it never being summer. I don't remember when they back-tracked on that idea. But it didn't seem to last too long because before we knew it, we were looking at "global warming". No more aerosol hair spray so we could help close up the hole in the ozone. From what I remember, anyway.

While I'm glad that the deep freeze event didn't end up happening, perhaps it's the missed marks of predictions in science such as this, that have caused some people to question the validity of what is now being called climate change. But it seems to me, that we have many more incidents and data backing up the warming of the world's oceans, and all of the damage that this is doing, than we ever had for an ice age. Even many US cities are being affected. Just ask the mayor of Miami about the ever increasing rising tide and what they're going through to protect the city's ocean-front properties. Made me re-think about retiring to some beach front property some day.

Yet, there are many people who cling to the idea that we, "mere humans", could never do anything, even collectively, to affect something as massive as the Earth's atmosphere.

This line of thinking is pretty interesting to me, considering some of the same people are saying how great they are and how responsible they are for other things that would require a much different posture than that of a mere humble human. Either we are capable of doing great things or not.

Well, let me just say; we are capable of doing great things; we have already affected this beautiful planet.

We have stripped its forests,







polluted its waters and air,  
















caused earthquakes,






longer lasting and more severe and violent storms - which have cost lives.

We've ruined soils by trying to do more, too fast,

and in the process, pushed a lot of species of life - to the point of extinction. 

How can anyone say "we" couldn't affect the climate, when we've already done so much damage in so many ways and in so many places around the world, just in my lifetime?


I don't know how old the earth is. I don't know for sure that if my old Ford truck were put out of commission and replaced with an electric one tomorrow, it would make a big difference in the big picture or not.

But I do know that nearly every time I drive or take the train into the city of Dallas from the south east, there is a haze of smog hanging over downtown as I draw near, that I don't remember seeing 25 years ago. 

I do know that when the neighbor fires up his old diesel rig and idles it for 15 minutes, it fills the air and my house with a suffocating cloud that lasts long after he's gone. And that can't be good for anyone to inhale. And the post oak tree he parks underneath, is dying.

I do know that when the wind blows from the south, the air is noisier with I20's traffic and it's not getting quieter. And surely the exhaust from all of those vehicles is being filtered by fewer and fewer trees as we cut them down in lieu of more places to shop and eat - for things that do nothing to clean the planet. Urban sprawl is coming to my side of town. Quickly. And I'm not excited about it.

And I don't know that what I, as one person does, alone, affects things or not; but what we do as a nation, collectively as millions of individuals, until very recently, has caused more pollution to this big, blue, beautiful planet than any other country on it. And it made perfect sense that it should be up to us to bite the biggest bullet to help fix things. But that, apparently, wasn't fair. Over two decades of negotiating and 200 countries later say otherwise.


Farmers all over the world are among the first to feel the imbalances in the seasons. And in turn, those who eat food feel it soon thereafter.

The longer rainy seasons. The longer dry spells. Higher low average temperatures. Higher highs.

California just recently came out of what I believe was its worst decade of drought in generations - only to be followed by floods.  

Generations that occupy the same land now experiencing fewer chilling hours each winter; forcing them to move orchards to higher elevations in order to produce food and make a living. To yield less, means to charge higher prices.

The push is on to develop strategies for drought tolerant species of vegetables, using season extending and soil protecting structures to grow food where it used to grow more abundantly - before climate changes began affecting yields.

Farming organically actual helps sequester carbon, BACK into the soil. It conserves energy and water. Organic farming slows runoff and erosion of topsoil by rebuilding it.

Farming without the use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides reduces pollution because the products we may use, break down in the sunlight, with water or quickly with exposure to air. And, a small, organic farm, refuels itself in a closed loop system when combined with livestock whose manures are used for fertilizer and sometimes, fuel.

Organic farmers are on the front line - and in a place to help where others refuse. But we can't do it alone. 

I realize we can't turn back the clocks. And no, I don't want to have to light a candle to see at night or have to build a fire to make myself and friends a meal, or not be able to communicate with you all via this blog, a computer or a cell phone. Or live totally off-grid all of the time. I like running water and heat just like anyone else. 

But I want to do it in a way that does not leave a trail of smog and pollution behind me. And I want my government to lead the way with matching or better funding for safe, alternative and renewable energy sources as fossil fuel gets. I don't want to say, "me first and too bad about the rest of the world." And I really do think most of us agree.

What comes around, (the planet), goes around.

I want to embrace every eco-friendly option I can afford to embrace and save up to afford more.

I want to conserve as much energy as I can and leave the little slice of Texas that I am fortunate enough to own, in a better way than which I found it; stripped down to nothing but sand burs and Bermuda grass where it wasn't bare sand. Not a grain of top soil to be found unless you went to the back 3 acres of unspoiled prairie.

I want to be an example for conservation and living responsibly.

I want to encourage more people to learn to grow a small back yard garden of popular foods. Organically.

One of my goals for Eden's has always been to be green. As green as I can be. Solar power and rainwater collection for at least some of the irrigation and animal's drinking water.

Solar panels for the walk in cooler and hopefully some day for the yurt and my house and one day I hope my main automobile will be green, too.

My thinking was that the lower my overhead, the less I'd have to mark up the food I grew to pay the bills and make a living - so more people could afford to eat well. I have been green out of frugality, if nothing else.
 
I believe, we all can be examples of conservation. 

We have become a society of disposable phones, packaging of packaging - of food that can and should be coming out of our own back yards as much as possible, raw and local otherwise. And we are a society of convenience over conscience with profit over people and the environment. Or safety.

None of us is perfect. No one is asking us to be perfect. But if my shopping or living habits contribute to the pollution of my land, soil or water, I will certainly do whatever I can to change that. Maybe now more than ever.

We don't own this planet. We are simply borrowing it from future generations of people, of children, of those who haven't even had a chance to see it yet. 

Once again, look for organic farmers and like-minded citizens to lead the way, in spite of the profit seekers and those who choose to stay in the old ways of increased fossil fuels use, at the expense of small islands and countries on the other side of the world, our own shorelines, and the very air we breathe and water we drink.  By the time some people notice the effects of the warming of our oceans, because they don't have one nearby, it may be too late.

It's time we think of others and err on the side of caution. At least, that's what I think.


Eat Your Food - Naturally!


Marie

 Click for some tips on how you can do your part, and some links/sites to follow;

Food and Water Watch
DownWinders at Risk - local organization dedicated to cleaner air for North Texas.
A plethora of 100 sites. One for everyone's fancy.

It's All About the Dirt

Unless you are growing in hydroponic or aquaponic systems, it’s the heart and soul of your farm. Soil.

So in honor of World Soil Day - December 5th, 2015, the next few blog posts will chronicle the story of the soil here on the farm and its recent journey from leached out water logged to restored. 

In this 2015 International Year of Soil, the soil here at Eden’s has taken a bit of a beating. 

With over 50 inches of rain, nearly 30 of it in just a couple of months late winter and early spring, the constant, heavy, flooding downpours not only kept us from planting what we wanted, but leaching of the nutrients in the soil had apparently become an issue beyond what I estimated and yields were low - very low. 

Leaching is something I have dealt with somewhat before. I had simply added more organic fertilizers to the compost mix those years, beefed up the frequency of foliar feeding and things seemed to perform adequately. 

I know, my CSA and market customers know, my chef friends know – we’d all seen it with our eyes and tasted it with our mouths; this farm produces wonderful and bountiful yields! 

I was doing things pretty much the same. Organic matter was being added back in each year, slowly, as the mulch and leaves broke down and manure aged, at the very least in the troughs where the plants were growing. And, I still used pretty  much the same fertilizer schedule as in past years. What had changed?

Rain. And lots of it.

I thought I was going to be able to start moving organic matter onto the rows on a much thicker, faster and more efficient basis with the new loader over the winter. However, my tractor – can’t cross water – no, inflatable wings didn't come with the loader. I need a Bat-motractor from Gotham City.

Nor can it keep from getting stuck in what amounts to quicksand when things are really wet out there. The utility company gave me a complimentary 2' rut at my gate during one of their service calls last winter, making it nearly impossible to get out to the field with the tractor - to farm or to improve the rut - until the soil was much drier. And we just were not getting enough dry days in-between the deluges.

This meant a bit of a delay in moving compost out as fast as I wanted. Heck I couldn’t even prepare soil to plant potatoes, much less drive around with bucket loads full of mulch. Trust me – I tried. Ahem. Don’t ask.

Many of the summer crops had been planted, in-between monsoons, in rows I managed to get prepared by hand, but seemed to be failing miserably or yielding very low and not always good looking veggies.

Of the few rows prepped with the tractor, before the spring rains, things were noticeably better. I got a great melon crop out of just a few rows this year.

But the vast majority of crops performed poorly, with low yields. I knew something was wrong. 

The rest of the rows were composted with the tractor's loader, and fertilized during the "flash-drought" as it was dubbed by some. By late October, the soil was re-saturated and transplanting and direct seeding for late fall and early winter crops began. Finally!

But then in a few weeks I noticed that seeds that had been direct sown would germinate, and stop at their cotyledons leaves.

Plugs that I’d bumped up into larger pots for another farmer, were double the size of any transplants from the same batches out in the garden – the ones that had actually survived.

I took a PH meter to the soil to see if something had changed. It was registering much lower than the prior year. When I say low, I am talking LOW – like almost 5.0 and as low as 4.5 in unamended areas.

Last year after the rainy spring season we'd had, it was right at about 5.0 and a just a little higher in most test areas, and then I had been halfheartedly considering planting a field of pick your own blueberries and calling it a day. Now, with the PH even lower – I was nearly kicking myself for not having done it for real!

But I felt this was certainly indicative of something being wrong. Out of balance. With that drop of  PH, certainly other things were lacking, too.

I’d added extra nitrogen to compensate for any of the compost that might still be “active’. I’d added various basic soil amendments like I’d done the first several years – and each year for the first 4 or 5 years, the yields increased as the soil got healthier.

Then in year 6, and in year 7, 2014, I first noticed some things, like tomatoes, losing ground. I took a PH reading to find it had dropped to the 5.0 reading, down half a % from the time I had taken it a few years prior – when things were doing pretty darn well.

I started reading how excessive rain can cause a drop in the PH levels, causing the soil, specifically sandy soils, to become acidic and wreak havoc on the nutrients.

There are some “quick fixes” you can find at just about any East TX feed store; “fixes” that can end up making a total nutritional mess of the soil.

And then there were the long term fixes. I had opted for the latter. That is where the need for last year’s fund raiser for the loader came from. 

I knew if I added compost and got the biology back in the soil with the use of home brewed aerated compost teas and Texas Worm Ranch's Worm WineTM, it would build up the soil, and the micro-organisms, bacteria and fungi. In good time Nature would repair itself, as I continued this cycle towards the goal of a closed loop system.

I guess I was 2 years late to the fix. The compost hadn't been added until after the soils had been stripped of just about everything useful, leaving me with a lot of sand and a little red clay. I needed results - now.

Had the gardens been fully amended with the decomposed mulch before the first monsoon spring in 2014, much less enduring another record season of winter/spring rains in 2015, perhaps things wouldn’t have become quite as depleted as they are now.

Or was there something else going on?

I called our ag extension office here in Dallas County to see if they could offer some kind of guidance. Maybe there had been something really strange grown, or dumped, here over 100 years ago or something that had some mysterious affect on the soil. I didn’t know? I just knew that everything I’d been doing, following the advice of my mentors, was not working any more.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t really offered any help and in fact was told that “we don’t have anyone here that can help you on that scale.” No offer was made to take my name and number and have an extension agent who could help me, call me back at another time.

Frustrated, and standing out in my dying field, I just hung up and nearly cried. 

How could I have worked so hard all this time to have nothing but native "weeds" like henbit, purslane, lamb's quarter, pigweed and Bermuda, pencil and prickly pear cactus and mesquite trees – oh, and the asparagus – surviving? 

A colleague of mine who practices bio-dynamic farming, as well as organic and sustainable methods, was taking a break from growing, so he could, you know, actually make a living. But he agreed to take my case as a consultant and help me remotely from Houston.

He had experienced a very similar situation on another farm just a few years ago. In fact, the soil lab had sent a hand written note back with their soil test declaring it the worst soil they’d ever tested. It too, was very sandy and depleted. Little to almost no organic matter, too. I hoped that at least I had that advantage, with all of the compost I'd spent the last half of the summer spreading out there.  At least the top soil had some OM in it. I was beginning to feel a sense of hope again.

He knew it would need a big boost in the arm of various raw materials and amendments to help the current crops and act as a temporary bridge until Nature and the Worm Wine could do the rest. And this calculating of all of these test results and minerals, etc., is unchartered territory for me. I knew I'd need some help.

I've always gardened based on how the plants react and what the soil needed based on experience. Not soil tests. I’d been taught to “read weeds” by one of my first farm mentors, and a cool book by Charles Waters, in order to know what amendments to add – and so far, mostly it was N and OM that I needed - and it had worked for many years. But it seemed two seasons of excessive flooding rainwater had begun to undo everything I'd done thus far. 

 

So, I’ve taken soil samples from the aprox. 3 acres currently under production and

 mixed them together and

sent them off to Texas Plant and Soil Labs for testing. I hope I don’t get any sarcastic hand written notes back with my results. LOL

To be continued…..

PS - Heather has a few classes coming up soon at her Worm Ranch in Dallas. Check it out.

Marie


Eat Your Food - Naturally!