We have been working fifteen-hour days, six days a week around here. We are finally catching up on the weeding, now that we are drying up. I cannot complain. The cool spring and summer so far have caused many summer crops to develop slowly. Everyone is having this problem. There are many vendors at the farmer's market in Beloit, but few have more than greens, peas, strawberries, radishes, and few other spring crops. Usually, one can find summer squashes and beans by now. There was one vendor with tomatoes and melons, but he was not even bothering to remove the stickers from his produce. I also saw someone  selling full heads of cabbage, a late summer vegetable for sure, but short of that, most local farmers are dealing with the same issues. We are all hoping that some of our crops mature soon.

Speaking of farmers dealing with issues, many of the organic farmers on the western portion of the state are in dire straits. Not only did some suffer major crop damage from the floods last fall, but many of those same farms suffered another crop failure from the floods this spring. I heard of at least one farm that has lost over $1.5 million in crops and assets. Now the obvious question is: “Do they have crop insurance?” After all, that would seem reasonable, right? That's the problem. There is nothing reasonable about organic farming. The government offers crop insurance for some organic crops, but the organic farmer has to pay more in insurance premiums than the conventional farmer. However, the catch is that the organic farmer is reimbursed less than the conventional farmer for the same crops on these policies.

Also, vegetable crops are not insurable because the government claims that the prices are too hard to figure out. CSAs make the majority of their income on vegetables as do other market farmers. However, they are not growing Monsanto products and selling them on the commodities market to be resold to ADM or ethanol plants. So if they go out of business, it is not the government's concern.

Also, to add insult to injury, these farmer's, if they survive this catastrophe they may lose their organic certification because of run-off from fields that are sprayed with herbicides or pesticides. Could there be some kind of insurance for this? Don't count on it any time soon. Like I said, there is little that is reasonable in this profession.

So while I may sound angry, let me say that I am not. However I do not want to stick my head in the sand either. Food security is going to be the number one priority for our nation in the next five years.  We need to protect our food supply and as consumers we need to demand healthy food. Here's a number to think about. The United States is 42^nd in the world for longevity behind some third world countries. Jordon has a longer life expectancy than us. Let's all chant,  “We are number 42.” Doesn't that make you feel proud to be number 42?  Why are we number 42? Well, I suspect that food has something do do with it. Nutrition and health cannot be separated. Many countries expect more from their food than we do.

We are what we eat, literally. When we eat nutrient- sparse foods and products designed to resemble real food and then ingest all of the poisons associated with standard food production, how do we expect  to be well? Why are diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer continuing to plague us while disorders like bipolar, ADD and hyper-activity run rampant through our children? When do we stand up and say, “Enough is enough?” Our bodies have a tremendous capacity to heal themselves, but they need the right building blocks. You would not buy a house that was made of low quality construction material because it was cheap, and one should not eat cheap, low quality food either. You and your family are worth it.

We need to take back our food.  We should all grow “victory gardens” like they did during WWII. We should buy our food from the grower, and we should hold those growers responsible for their product. We should get to know our growers and demand the best for ourselves and our children. We can learn to cook again, and take time to enjoy our meals. We can choose to eat food that is not made of corn (check the ingredients of the last thing you ate or drank today). If you ate a burger with ketchup, you ate corn. The cow that the burger was made of was probably fed heavily with corn. Candy bars, soda, nutri-grain bars, and many ,many others are corn products. We are not designed to digest that much corn. There are other foods out there, and we can choose to eat them. It's all about choices. In a future blog, we will explore the problem with corn, nutrition, and our health as well as the reason that we are fed so much corn, but for now, that is all there is from the farm today.  

It's been well over a month since I placed an entry here. The reason, of course, is that we have been working around the clock (literally on some days) to get everything planted this season. It is part of the job that Susan and I accept. However, we both enjoyed a day off this week, and the prospects for having at least one day off per week look pretty promising until late fall. I even had a chance to ride my bike last night for a couple of hours. For those that know me, biking is one my passions, and I was ecstatic last evening because I had the opportunity to ride. It's funny how one appreciates an experience more completely when one the experience becomes novel again.

Susan and I can hardly believe the turn our life has taken over the past couple of years. The organic CSA has grown substantially over the past couple of years, and with it, we have had to undergo some growing pains. For example, when we added several drop-off locations this year to make it easier for people to get their shares, we needed to find a way to organize the baskets that are destined for different drop-off sites. Things were shaky our first week, but we have our system down now.

To ensure that we have vegetables throughout the season, we need to manage our succession plantings very carefully. This means that we track our items from seed, transplant dates, and growing season length to name a few considerations. While we seem to possess the level of organization necessary to do this, we have experienced some interesting events that we have had to address. Fortunately, to date, we have managed most of the unforeseen events that have happened. For example, a mob of Asian beetles decided to feast upon our tomato plants while we were starting them under grow lights indoors in march. They literally decimated about 100 plants. Fortunately, we were able to replant them and get them to the high tunnels outdoors, and last week, we transplanted about 600 tomato plants.

Similarly, a ground squirrel found our squash and melon seeds in the pots outdoors in the high tunnels to be a tasty spring treat. For those that know me, you already know that I could not kill the animal, and because the squirrel may be a mother with babies, I could not even live-trap it because the babies may starve. That leaves us with few options. The squirrel ate about 150 -200 plants. It set us back a few weeks. We are still trying to catch some of the squash up.

Then, of course, there are the trials of equipment breakdowns. One night, I planted until 3:00 am, only to find the next day that the planter did not plant consistently for about two hours. I had to go back the next day and replant about one third of that field. I am happy to say that the aforementioned field is doing well. Of course this would not have happened if we would not have started farming human-consumption row crops. However, the events that have led us to organic farming on a larger scale have been serendipitous, and we feel that this is an important part of our mission.

Last year at this time, if you would have told me that I would be farming 40 acres, I would have fallen over laughing. I have a lot of experience gardening, even gardening large plots. Gardening or farming for a CSA or the farmer's markets is pretty much the same thing as gardening, only more of it. Our five or so acres dedicated to the CSA and market are very manageable. Farming larger acreage, requires different skills—skills that, in case I did not mention it, I do not inherently possess. That does not include the fact that I had no idea on what land we would grow these kinds of crops on.

As a rule, I don't let small obstacles like this stop me from doing something that I set my mind to. The problem was, I hadn't set my mind to this at all. It just happened. First, Dan Boutelle and Ann Bausum appeared in our lives and they were interested in having someone grow organic food on their land. At first, I thought that I would work with a local farmer, Robert (Bob) Damm, to see if he and I could grow organic food together on this land. My hope was to show other farmers that we could grow organic crops in Rock County. Dan and Ann were very supportive of this idea, and without them, we would not be engaged in this endeavor.

Unfortunately for us, Bob decided that he wanted to stay retired. He is a very knowledgeable and helpful person, and he offered to help me get started. He helped us find the appropriate equipment like planters, discs, rotary hoes, and a combine. While I did not have the knowledge, at least I had a mentor willing to show us what we needed to know to undertake this project.

While we were getting ready for spring, we had another serendipitous encounter with Dr. Kathryn Brown. Dr. Brown. approached us looking for someone to organically farm some of her land. She has been instrumental in pushing me over the edge into farming. Her land is within sight of our farm, and we just finished planting it this past Sunday. Interestingly, our paths had crossed about 15 years earlier. We are very thankful for this opportunity presented to us through our encounters with Dan, Ann, Bob, and Dr. Brown, but what are we doing with this opportunity?

The answer is grow food for people to eat that is safe and local. It's hard to deny that times are getting difficult. Diesel fuel is close to $5/gallon, and its direct impact on food prices will be felt this summer and fall. To further exacerbate the problem, rising demand for food from developing nations like China and India where their expanding middle class wants the same standard of living that middle and upper class US citizens have enjoyed since after WWII, are driving up the demand for food, and it doesn't take a market economist to see that prices are going to be going up. This year alone, input costs like fertilizers, both conventional and organic are triple what they were last year. Factor in the insanity of growing fuel instead of food, and we have the makings of “The Perfect Storm” for food prices soaring out of control in the next year. Clearly the global mass-production of food system is broken and we will all pay, starting with our lower class. Our only answer is to get back to basics and start eating more locally.

While weeding our potatoes today I started doing some math in my head (this could be scary, but what else can one do while weeding a half acre of potatoes). An acre can produce enough food to feed one person fairly well on a vegetarian diet for a year. Even if the average diet were less dependent upon meat, we could accomplish a large portion of a goal to eat locally, if enough people decided to farm on a small scale and if people were willing to pay for their food what it is worth (more on this in a minute). I believe that there is something in the neighborhood of 150,000 people in Rock County. Assuming that there were approximately 3750 farmers willing to farm 40 acres or 1875 farmers who would organically farm 80 acres, we could produce enough food locally to feed our people. Of course, this kind of farming does not have to be confined by geopolitical borders, I am just using Rock County as an example.

Rock County has over 720 square miles of land. Where could the food be grown? Take a look around you. Most of the fields that you see are producing either corn for ethanol, corn for high fructose corn syrup, or grain for feedlots. Forgetting all of the problems with feedlots, and simply looking at the math of production, it takes nearly 10 acres of land to produce the meat required to meet the caloric requirements of a human for a year! That is a ten fold difference from a vegetarian diet. Also, not all meats are created equally. Chicken has a better land use ratio than beef an pork. However, that is not even the worst of it. Most of the meat produced in this area is also shipped out to processing plants across the globe where some form of food/industrial product is created. How insane is that? Farmers will grow local food if consumers demand it. However, consumers need to be prepared to pay for the real price of food.

Mass-production food is heavily subsidized. Many large industrial operations are large simply due to the incentives offered to large production facilities. When you notice that the prices at your local farmer's market are slightly higher than your local grocery store, do not assume that it is because your local farmer is looking to cash in on the local eating craze. What you are seeing is the actual and honest prices of producing food. There are many factors at work here, too many to address today, but suffice it to say that we are paying for our food elsewhere—taxes, wars, and health care costs to name but a few.

Where else can we grow locally? Look around again. How many lawns to you see in your neighborhood where fertilizer and water are applied so that we can spend hours using gasoline mowers to cut it so that is does not get too long. I once knew a man from Laos who expressed his amazement at how many people simply killed the food in their yards. In fact, the concept of a lawn puzzled him most. He could not figure out why everyone did not have a garden. Most lawns are between 1/5 to 1 acre in size. During WWII, everyone was encouraged to grow “freedom gardens” because food was in short supply. One of the first steps that we can do is grow our own gardens. That is as local as your food can get.

Over the next few weeks, I will post suggestions for managing a garden at home, and how to minimize labor spent in the garden. We all can make a difference and be proactive with our food choices. I have attempted to offer some food for thought (pun intended). We can make a difference locally, if we choose as a community to do so. It will require some thought and a lot of organization, but those of us in southern Wisconsin can set an example, if we choose. We are always presented with choices. Susan and I have chosen to produce local food, and you have chosen to buy local food. That is an excellent start. There is still a lot we all can do if we are to address the issues before us surrounding food and food production. Consider the lyrics of the Rush song, Freewill: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” What do you choose to do about the impending food crisis? Susan and I must answer that question as well.

We are finally getting a reasonable break in the weather. The wet weather has left large portions of some of our fields waterlogged, and while we appreciate the life-giving nature of the water, a few dry days have helped us out tremendously. We should be able to get into the fields to do some preparation work. We are working up about 30 new acres this spring, and weed control early is very important. In subsequent years, the practice of winter cropping and undersowing a green manure will minimize weed encroachment in the these fields. We will be planting 10 acres of human consumption corn and about 17 acres of human consumption soy this year. We are also attempting to cultivate a variety of black bean this year for seed, which we will plant next year as a row crop.

The fifty or so flats of seedlings that we have started early are doing well. We had to move them from  under the grow lights to the greenhouses earlier than we had planned due to an insect problem. Apparently, the Asian beetles the over-wintered in our siding have found a way into the southern exposure room where we had our seedlings. They began to feast on the tender shoots, indiscriminately destroying our early seedlings. Once we identified the problem, we moved the seedlings to the greenhouse. The nighttime temperatures this past week, however, dipped too low, and we had to move the seedlings into the house each evening. Fortunately, they are recovering well. I just checked the recent forecast, and it looks like we will not have to bring them in again for at least a week.

We have also had an opportunity this week to catch up with planting vegetables. By tomorrow, we will have everything in the ground that should be by this point in the year. Spinach, several varieties of lettuce, radishes, arugula, and kale are some of the vegetables that we have planted this week. We expect to plant potatoes and onions as well by this weekend. In fact, we are caught up enough, that we actually came in early tonight. We will get to eat dinner tonight before 9:30! Now that is something to get excited about.