Greenjeans Farm

One thing farmers know how to do like nobody else, is reach out to each other. 

I remember the first year we lived here in Potter, during the fall and winter we made the house livable, we had our first greenhouse (a growhouse sent from heaven which blew away in the storm the next year (another story)) and our first Christmas, and then we borrowed our friends Barbara and Skip’s tractor to plow up the area where the garden was going to go.  This was in March and we just couldn’t wait to get it all ready. 

Well March in Potter Valley is not exactly the best time of the year to decide to plow.  The Tractor got stuck, really stuck in the wet soggy ground.  I remember looking out the window and watching Jeff standing in the field waving his arms up and down out of frustration like he was doing jumping jacks.  I put on my rain boots and we tried the ol’ stick a board under the tire trick.  It didn’t work.  We stood and stared at each other trying to fathom how the heck were going to get that thing out, and how the heck we were going to pay for any damage we may have done to it.  Suddenly, like the cavalry arriving our other neighbors came up the driveway with their tractors and ATV’s and chains!  It seems they’d been watching with just a little amusement the scene at Greenjeans, and decided to help us out of our misery.  At the same time Barbara was driving into our driveway to see how we were doing with the tractor!  The neighbors got it out and Jeff drove it back to Skip and Barb’s.  Everyone got pickles and jam for their efforts and I will never forget the outflow of neighborliness for the newbees. 

I think this year will be much like that year.  Many of us are feeling a pinch, but with each other’s help we will get through it! I hope to be one of the "calvary" neighbors, but you never know...  No matter how hard you have it, you just have to look out your window!    

I did a smart thing earlier this year and managed it in a very dumb way.  I transferred my banking accounts to paperless reporting via the internet.  I patted myself on the back for not wasting all that paper and helping to reduce both ours and the banks carbon footprint, marveled at the way you can categorize your expenses right on line and print off the neat little reports, and went on my merry way.  Each month I received an email from the bank reminding me my paperless statement was available on line.  “That’s nice”, I would think to myself, “it’s ready”.  It really wasn’t necessary to do anything, I’m paperless right?  And I can check my account on line anytime I want…..  My little three ring binder where I would usually put my statements and check copies stood empty all year save for the first statement and the pretty reports I put in it.

Then day before yesterday I sat down to do my taxes.  Pretty straight forward here, income from my day job and Jeff’s part time endeavors and the farm.  Expenses tracked via statements, check stubs and receipts.  I quickly realized I had no statements saved or printed, no pretty reports, no categorization.  Eight hours, a stiff neck, a good ol’ excel spread sheet and a bottle of wine later I had captured the year, completely run out of black ink in my printer, and our taxes were 99% done! This year I will remember the stiff neck and the entirely wasted day  and send myself little annoying reminders regarding due diligence. 

The interesting thing that happened as a result of all this is I categorized not only the expenses for the farm, but every expense we had over the past year.  Some 1200+ transactions.  I am not much of a budgeter and we tend to live feast or famine, we are very frugal and always live well, but I’m into effortless these days and preparing for worst case, and let’s face it, when you are a farmer, some months are better than others.  Please indulge my feeble attempt to explain my utter disregard for saving money for a rainy day here. 

I took the total of every expense and divided it by twelve to get our average monthly expense. (I would love to say I always knew these figures in the back of my brain, but that would be a lie) I then compared the expense against our average monthly income after taxes insurance and house payment.  I then added in our projected refund from our taxes and portioned that out on a monthly basis.  Sure we will soon have money in our savings, but over the course of the year that will go out and not come back in.  We were still 200 dollars a month short!  At this point I panicked!  I can’t demand a raise!  I am lucky to still be working!  I could sell 20 more CSA shares….. but where would the time come from?  Jeff could get a full time job, but who would take care of the farm?  And there goes the CSA!  We could give it all up and move into town into one of those “Bank owned houses” that are now selling for about ¾ of what they are worth, totally not an option.    

So I sat in my wine induced eureka moment and thought of ways to shave it off the expense.  

I looked at the phone bill, and realized we don’t really NEED call waiting or caller ID or long distance for that matter. And we have a good ol’ fashioned answering machine.   We all have cell phones which combined are cheaper than our ATT bill.  However being in a rural area we do need basic local service for internet.  -75.00. 

Our electric bill has been the bane of our life for the entire time we have lived here.  We heat our home with wood, but somehow our electric bill is always huge.  We do have a hot tub that we enjoy most mornings and we do not wish to give that up.  We have to run 2 freezers and refers to preserve and keep the harvest.  I have given up fighting with PG&E and am going to put us on an automatic payment plan that averages your expense over the course of so many years.  -25  at least. 

Then I had to look at our grocery bill.  We love to eat, and eat for fun and enjoyment!  It is our entertainment, we don’t get out much.  Jeff is a fabulous cook and I am a fabulous eater and a food junkie.  Food to us is wealth.  And our expenses show it.   Food is the bulk of our expense other than our house payment.  I made the commitment to myself to save 400 dollars a month on food BANG, just saved it.  I know there is room in there, and we have all the veggies and fruit that we need from the summer, that is as long as we keep the PG&E going to keep the freezers running.  Thus the Toni and Jeff challenge.  Oh yeah baby, there will be more to say on this topic!

From the Wikipedia Encyclopedia:

A pesticide is a substance or mixture of substances used to kill a pest.^[1] A pesticide may be a chemical substance, biological agent (such as a virus or bacteria), antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest. Pests include insects, plant pathogens, weeds, molluscs, birds, mammals, fish, nematodes (roundworms) and microbes that compete with humans for food, destroy property, spread or are a vector for disease or cause a nuisance. Although there are benefits to the use of pesticides, there are also drawbacks, such as potential toxicity to humans and other animals.

I don’t know about you, but as an organic farmer I do not list birds, mammals, fish, worms, microbes or most insects as pests.  I gladly welcome them to our farm, in fact we worry when they are not present.  That would mean that their would be no good bugs and birds to eat the bad bugs, no worms to enrich the soil, no fish or frogs to eat the flies and misquitoes.  I have yet to feel the rife competition for food, and there is very little property destruction caused by those nasty little microbes.  If pests include mammals as it does in that definition, does that not mean humans too?  Oh great, lets kill each other so we don’t compete with ourselves for food!  AND lets get those little suckers while they are young! 

I have just read an article in the Seattle P.I., regarding a study of the levels of pesticides in the system of 21 children in Mercer Island Washington.

“The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study published online in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets," said Lu, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.”

Nuff said?  You would think!  “Well chalk one up for the cause!”, I thought to myself,  “Yet another study with the same findings”.  I then went on to read the comments.  Some 40+ comments!  Some stating the article was a “non-story”, not unlike global warming.  Some of the comments stated that Organic food is just too expensive, and is not an alternative since the yields are so low.  There was a lot of talk about washing and peeling being a viable cure to the situation. 

Hmmm….. If organic yields are so low, why is there always a time each year that even after the 20 CSA bushel baskets have been filled some 30 times over the course of the season, I fall in a heap on the kitchen floor and declare if I see one more basket of fruit or vegetables that need to be processed I’ll go into a coma.  And I don’t know about you, but I haven’t peeled a vegetable for over 20 years, conventionally or organically grown! There are vitamins, fiber and most importantly flavor in that skin!  Peeling a vegetable would be like eating a boneless skinless Chicken breast from a chicken that was grown in a cage and fed antibiotics all of its life, what’s the point? (but that’s another story).   Most of all as a farmer I enjoy watching the quail walking across the yards, and the crazy Killdeer that lay eggs in the vegetable garden and then act like they are having a heart attack if you come near their nest.  I love the beautiful colored spiders that take residence in the rose garden.  And I even love the toad families that hide in the rocks and come out at night to eat those nasty little slugs. There’s something exciting about going out before light and feeling having the bat that eats it’s weight in insects each day whiz over your head.  Call me crazy, but I think it’s sweet that my husband has named the tree frog that sneaks in through the open window and visits the overflow drain of our bathroom sink from time to time.  Sure, sometimes there’s a worm in a tomato or an ear of corn.  And a pesky little earwig or two hiding in the cabbage, but you know?  They wash right off, and they haven’t been treated with “pesticides spawned the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II”, so it really doesn’t matter if you eat them anyway! 

My mother died last July.  97 years old, She was a total radical,feminist.  Yesterday my sister and brother in law and niece let her ashes go in Commencment Bay in Tacoma!  It was a touching and funny thing.  She blew back at them.  Just like mom.  She would rather stay on the beach!  They ran like hell! 

In our family, we have a way of being ourselves.  It is both disturbing and comforting.  Most of all we know it is love unbrideled.  You don't have to earn it or keep it. You might have to deal with it  and make your choices, but  It is just there, always.   and ready for more! 

The free radical farmer

In chemistry, radicals (often referred to as free radicals) are atomic or molecular species with unpaired electrons on an otherwise open shell configuration. These unpaired electrons are usually highly reactive, so radicals are likely to take part in chemical reactions. Radicals play an important role in combustion, atmospheric chemistry, polymerization, plasma chemistry, biochemistry, and many other chemical processes, including human physiology.

Growing up in the 60’, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s had its up’s and downs, but it taught us to guard that open shell configuration.  We were a different generation who were taught to look at life from different perspectives.  Most of us  ( the baby boomers ) were born in the affluent and kind 40’s and 50’s. We lived in neighborhoods and our mothers wore dresses and pearls while they pushed a vacuum or we wished they would have.  Then something odd happened.  Some of our mothers were not content to just push a vacuum, and were certainly not content living in one.  Television had opened up their eyes to a world outside of children and husbands and home keeping.  There were women who knew that they were equal to men they could do the same things men did,  There were people of color who dared to believe they were equal to anyone else in this world.  There were people unafraid to sit in the front of the bus and drink from the same water fountain, walk out the door to be independent; people who fought to be educated, and to be valued on an equal basis. These people saw that there were plenty of places in the world to be beside the place someone else had put you in.

Radical thinking? Radical behavior?  You bet.  Open configuration? Yep!  Highly reactive?  Absolutely!    It’s the free radicals that cause change.    From there on you know the story; free thinking, free speech, free love, free to be you and me yada yada.   There was a sense of exploration and activity that held progress as the standard.  Both good and bad progress.  As long as it progressed Unfortunately all of this progress involved production.  Everyone had the right to have everything all the time.  A chicken in every pot, a tv in every room.  Freedom and Justice for all.  Unfortunately, everyone and all things being equal brought on a certain twisted sense of entitlement.  The shopper entitled to that fresh strawberry in the middle of winter.  The multitude of clothing we put on our backs and electronics we use and dispose of when the next new thing comes along.  Made in far away countries under who knows what conditions. And as usual people, male and female, all colors and religions thought of ways to take advantage of this brave new world. 

We started as a nation of farmers.  We were many people from many different countries including our own trying to make their way. A self sufficient lot who brought what we knew here. 

Over the years through science and chemistry we have learned ways to manipulate nature to do our bidding.  Super plants and hybrids, pest resistant species, genetically modified organisms. 

Sprays and powders that would kill any bug in the world,we soon found, were also killing us.  All the while living in the horn of plenty of the world and actually eating what we wrought.  Every family was entitled to a salad of iceburg lettuce and cardboard tomatoes with a big glob of ranch dressing to get their serving of veggies in, no matter if it was the dead of winter.  Meat treated with antibiotics to assure that there was enough for every plate.  Eggs laid by hens that never saw the sunlight and never left their cage in the interest of production.  No matter that the nutritional value of those veggies and meat and eggs had gone out the door long before they hit the table. The vegetables had to be picked before they were naturally ripened to facilitate packing for the long trip ahead often thousands of miles to show up in the supermarket to be waxed down and sprayed down to showcase their pale beauty.

The planes, boats, trucks and trains that brought this bounty to our tables used gallons and gallons of gas and diesel.  The fumes made the air grey; the air made our lungs grey, which in turn made our skin grey.  We no longer were a vibrant melting pot of traditions and taste and color, we became a nation of grey. Yet we went on happily enjoying our four food groups  basically eating our pesticides and cardboard and making sure to take our multi vitamins and work out at the gym.

It is frightening that every new born child born in the United States has traces of over 200 types of pesticide in their blood.  It is ridiculous that by eating 10% of our food locally and organically grown, we could just as well be taking 2 million cars off the road.    It is crazy that we recognize global warming, mark the symptoms, and do so little to slow or reverse the progress, not wanting to upset the economic machine, or our way of life in too radical a manner.   It is death to think that the United State senate would vote down a bill that deals with alternate energy, because there are no provisions for the oil and coal companies in the bill.

This is the story of the Free Radical Farmer.  This is a story about turning your head and realizing that you already have what really works to grow and be healthy.  It all starts with the soil.