Categories
Animals

Move Over, Rudolph!

Goats with jultomte
Illustration by T. Rasmussen/ Provided by Sue Weaver

Nowadays, reindeer are the Christmas critters du jour, but we goats used to bring on Christmas cheer! Mom wrote an article about the Yule goat, which you can read, if you want to.

Long ago, in Scandinavia, country folk believed in wee fairies. Swedish fairy spirits were called tomte; Norwegians and people in Denmark called them nisse. They believed the wee folk took care of their homes and children and protected them from misfortune, especially at night, when they were asleep. Tomte especially loved horses and sometimes braided knots in their manes and tails. If you picked and brushed the snarls out, that made the tomte mad. Then they played terrible tricks on the farm folk. Tomte could be dangerously scary!

Goats with jultomte
Illustration by Jenny Nyström/ Provided by Sue Weaver

After the Christianization of Scandinavia, variants of the tomte and nisse—called the jultomte in Sweden, julenisse in Norway and tontuu in Finland—started bringing the Christmas presents in Sweden and Norway, instead of the traditional julbock (the Yule goat). They wear red, but they’re still small—not big and jolly like Santa Claus—and they deliver gifts in sleighs drawn by goats or carry the presents pack-style on a goat’s back.

A lady named Jenny Nyström began painting Christmas cards starring jultomte and goats in the late 1800s. Her son, Curt Nyström Stoopendahl, followed in her footsteps, as did many Scandinavian artists. You can buy vintage originals and modern reproductions of these cards at eBay. Mom collects old ones (some of them are pictured above). You could too!
 

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Categories
Urban Farming

The Miracle of Chicken Diapers

Black Cochin chicken

Courtesy Audrey Pavia

Maddie the Cochin hen will soon be spending all her time indoors.

When you keep livestock in the city, word gets around the office. I’m known throughout my department as someone who keeps chickens, and I’m occasionally posed with a question or two about chickens and their daily lives.

But the other day, I had a chance to do more than educate a coworker about charming rooster behavior or the tastiness of home-grown eggs. I had a chance to help a city dweller keep his pet hen.

It started when Kathy, a colleague of mine, came into my cubicle with a man I’d never seen before. He was new to the company and made Kathy’s acquaintance in the break area. Somehow, the subject of chickens came up and the newbie—lets call him Jim—mentioned that he had a pet chicken. Naturally, Kathy had to bring him over to introduce us. After all, chicken people must know each other.

After shaking my hand, Jim began to tell me all about his pet hen—lets call her Maddie—a black bantam Cochin. He lived in a town near the beach not exactly known for its livestock-friendly lifestyle and was worried that Maddie’s days with him might be numbered. He explained that Maddie lived in the backyard, but he didn’t know if chickens were legal in the city. In fact, he was pretty sure they weren’t. He was afraid someone might report him and he’d have to find a home for Maddie. He asked me if I was interested.

Because my flock consists of a few bantam Cochin mixes, I eagerly said “Yes.” I worried Maddie would have to deal with my bitchy leghorn hens, who would quickly drive her to the bottom of the pecking order, but I figured they would eventually accept her. Goodness knows the roosters would be happy to have her.

As Jim and I continued to chat, I began to realize that he was quite attached to little Maddie. He’d never had a chicken before and seemed to really love having her as a pet. It became obvious that it would be a sad day when Jim had to give up Maddie, and I no longer felt so enthusiast about adopting her.

“Have you thought about keeping her in the house so no one would know that you have her?” I asked him.

The stunned look on his face gave me my answer. “You can do that?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered him, following with an explanation of “chicken diapers.”

I’ve never used chicken diapers myself, but I’ve seen plenty of pictures online of chickens wearing them. Apparently, you can keep a chicken in the house without having chicken poop all over the place if you fit your chicken with a diaper.

That night, Jim sent me a picture of Maddie, thanking me for agreeing to adopt her if she needed a home. 

The next day, when Jim showed up at my cubicle, I thought it was to ask me if I was ready to take Maddie. Instead, he asked me how he could find chicken diapers. I referred him to ChickenDiapers.com and was thrilled at how excited he seemed at the thought of being able to bring his pet hen in the house. Thanks to chicken diapers, I think Christmas came early at Jim’s house this year.

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Categories
News

Congress Prioritizes Farm-to-School Connection

Farm to school
Courtesy Jupiterimages/BananaStock/
Thinkstock
The passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act will help to expand U.S. farm-to-school programs.

If there’s one issue that unites all Americans, it’s improving the health of our children. Thanks to the collaborative organizing efforts of many grassroots groupsadvocating for improved children’s health, the House joined the Senate in passing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (S.B. 3307) on Dec. 2, 2010. The bill now awaits the President’s signature.

This bipartisan legislation will make historic strides in improving children’s health by authorizing $4.5 billion over 10 years to raise the nutritional standards of food in schools. 

In a part of the bill that provides particular interest to small-scale farmers, Congress also made a first-time investment in farm-to-school programs, which connect K-12 schools with farmers’ fresh, locally grown food. While grassroots organizations have made laudable efforts over the years to increase fresh, local food in schools, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act will provide $40 million of funding to significantly expand farm-to-school efforts.

“Farmers will benefit from S.B. 3307 through establishing new markets serving schools, leading to increased revenues and an expanded customer base,” explains Debra Eschmeyer, outreach and communications director for the National Farm to School Network and a leader of the farm-to-school movement. “Schools will now have funding available to purchase directly from local farmers as well as develop healthy meal planning around what’s in season.”

Small-scale farmers, like Joel and Jai Kellum, who run King’s Hill Farm in southwestern Wisconsin, look forward to the new opportunities to expand their customer base.

“Having a contract to grow certain amounts of produce will definitely help my business’ bottom line, but farm to school goes beyond profit,” says Jai Kellum. “There’s a tremendous satisfaction and pride in knowing that the produce I raise will provide healthy meals for children in my area and hopefully even help rekindle their connection to our agricultural roots.”

As Kellum points out, the benefits of the farm-to-school expansion are two-fold. While farmers’ businesses may profit from the bill, children will reap the nutritional benefits.

Children consume up to half of their daily calories through what they what they eat in school cafeterias, according to the Child Nutrition Initiative, a child nutrition public education and advocacy campaign. As NFSN sees it, with one in three American children obese or overweight, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act will significantly ramp up improvements to various aspects of school nutrition, such as removing unhealthy food from vending machines and a la carte cafeteria lines and increasing the number of free school meals for children from low-income families. The benefits of the bill may also go beyond the cafeteria tray.

“Aside from great-tasting local food, farm-to-school programs help improve kids’ food literacy by teaching them what food is grown nearby, how their food is grown and what a healthy diet looks like,” says JoAnne Berkenkamp, local foods program director with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “Schools can make farm to school part of their classroom curriculum through starting school gardens, taking field trips to local farms or teaching children to cook what’s sourced locally.”

If you’re a farmer interested in selling to local schools, contact the National Farm to School Network for resources, including contacts and information on what’s happening in your state. 

Categories
Urban Farming

Cyclamen Time

City cyclamen garden bed

Photo by Rick Gush

You can find garden beds of red cyclamen all over Rapallo.

It’s officially cyclamen season here, and there are thousands of the things planted around Rapallo these days. Lots of people that live in apartments put cyclamen on their terraces and the local municipalities are big cyclamen users. Rapallo is a bit like Disneyland in that there are flower beds all over the place.

The city has a nice big nursery and greenhouse complex where they grow potted rhododendrons and azaleas and other flowering plants. They change the city flower beds perhaps three or four times a year and generally do a really good job of keeping the beds tidy. That’s a bit surprising because, in general, Italians aren’t big on maintenance and upkeep. There’s a saying that “Italy is falling apart beautifully” — and they’re not just talking about the ancient ruins.

So who knows how to explain this Italian mania for municipal flower beds? In the past two weeks, the city gardeners have planted thousands of red cyclamens around town. The gardeners will clean off the old blooms every once in a while, and the plants will bloom all winter long, no matter how cold it gets. The cyclamen will last until spring, when they’ll be uprooted to make way for the spring plantings. 

Although Rapallo has gone big into red cyclamen this year, some of the other cities use the white, pink and purple cyclamen, as well. All of these cyclamen varieties are grown specifically for greenhouses; the plants will come back reasonably well in the following years if stored in the shade during the summer.

Most people don’t bother digging up and moving the bulbs. They just throw the old plants away when the weather gets warm. I’ve always thought that was wasteful, but the plants I’ve rescued from the garbage haven’t ever grown nearly as well in the second year, so I’ve stopped. (Well, mostly. I do have one pair of plants that the neighbors were dumping last year, and each has five or six flowers.)

I only have one regular cyclamen in the garden, but I do have a bunch of the small, wild, lilac-colored cyclamen. We collected the bulbs on our vacations in Corsica and Elba, and they are now happily growing in a half-shady part the garden. I’m not usually too keen on digging up wild plants, but where we collected there were so many thousands of the bulbs that I don’t think we had a negative impact on the colony.

Read more of Rick’s Favorite Crops »

Categories
Urban Farming

Doctors Try a New Rx

Veggie Prescription

Courtesy Hemera/Thinkstock

As part of the Fruit and Veggie Rx pilot program, doctors prescribed coupons redeemable for fresh produce at farmers’ markets in addition to their patient’s regular medications. The results of the program’s effects on patient health will be released in February 2011.

“Take two and call me in the morning” is a common, if not dated, expression associated with doctors’ prescriptions. But what if the “two” were not pills or teaspoons of elixirs, but instead cups of spinach, servings of broccoli or apples? If the folks at Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit organization in Bridgeport, Conn., have their way, such prescriptions could soon be a reality in many medical offices—especially in pediatricians’ offices.

Perhaps best known for its Double Value Coupon Program—which, in 2008, began doubling the value of food stamps at farmers’ markets around the country—Wholesome Wave launched the Fruit and Veggie Prescription Program in summer 2010. Furthering its mission of “nourishing neighborhoods by supporting increased production and access to healthy, fresh and affordable locally grown food for the well-being of all,” the goal of Fruit and Veggie Rx (as it’s being called) is to encourage women and children in low-income rural and urban areas to turn to fruits and vegetables before more conventional prescriptions.

“Like all of Wholesome Wave’s expanding efforts, Fruit and Veggie Rx is designed to simultaneously serve communities, farmers and consumers,” says Michel Nischan, president and CEO of Wholesome Wave. “Each dollar put into the Fruit and Veggie Prescription Program does more than just reinforce healthy, proactive eating habits. These prescriptions have the power to directly benefit small- and medium-scale farmers and to bring additional resources into the local economies of under-served urban and rural communities, two of Wholesome Wave’s most valued goals.”

For the 2010 pilot program, Wholesome Wave partnered with Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited, a corporate development group. They selected community health centers with obesity clinics in Massachusetts and Maine to write the fruit and veggie prescriptions to women and children in 100 families in addition to their regular doctor’s orders. The prescriptions were redeemable at partnering farmers’ markets.

Program participants were then monitored to see how increased consumption of fresh produce affected blood pressure, weight and body mass index, as well as blood-sugar levels in pre-diabetic patients and weight gain in pregnant women. While the analysis of the Fruit and Veggie Rx pilot program is not yet complete (a full analysis of the program should be available by February 2011), Juliette Storch, Wholesome Wave’s chief operating officer, says the participating families were excited to get their vegetables by prescription and most redeemed their scripts regularly.

Categories
Crops & Gardening

Aphid Mummies

Aphid mummies
Photo by Jessica Walliser
I was so excited to find these aphid mummies in my garden.

I finally finished cutting down and cleaning out our front perennial bed. I managed to fill three more tractor carts with leaves and other plant debris. It is such a good feeling when the garden beds are finally put to bed for the winter.

While I was out in the garden, I came across something very interesting that I learned about while researching my book, Good Bug, Bad Bug, but I never had the opportunity to see in my own garden. I was cutting down some stems of Heliopsis when I noticed that there were hundreds of orange aphids all up and down the stem. 

They were kind of beautiful, in a weird way, so I looked a little closer. Then I noticed that at the top of the stem were all these aphid mummies. The mummies are called such as they are just the exoskeleton of the aphid after a teeny tiny parasitic wasp called the aphidius wasp has parasitized it. The adult female wasp is so tiny that she can lay a single egg on the back of an aphid. The egg hatches and the resulting larva tunnels into the aphid, eating it from the inside out. The wasp larva eventually pupates into an adult while still inside the aphid, all the while turning it into a mummy. When the adult wasp has matured, it chews a perfect round hole in the back of the aphid mummy, emerges from it and flies away. And here, right in my very own garden, were a bunch of aphid mummies—and coming out of the back of one of them was a wasp! Sooooo cool to see.!

Of course, I ran inside and grabbed my camera to take a few pictures. They aren’t as close as I would like, but you can get the idea of what this is all about.  If you look carefully, you’ll see the brown aphid mummies and a small black wasp with clear wings.

Here is the biggest lesson to take out of this: If I had sprayed the aphids with a pesticide, blasted them off with the hose or even squished them with my fingers, I would have been killing all these beneficial wasps preying on them. Understanding how beneficial insects work in your garden is so very important to maintaining a healthy balance of both good and bad bugs.  How fun to see the whole cycle in my very own garden—and in December none the less! 

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Categories
News

New Ag Chair to Face Farm Bill Challenges

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow
Courtesy Office of Sen. Debbie Stabenow
U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow will take over as chair of the Agriculture Committee in 2011.

Let the post-election game of musical chairs begin. Based on the November election results, the leadership of various Congressional committees will change when the 112th Congress starts in January 2011. Among all the changes, the gavel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry passes to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., a leader praised for championing small-farm issues. 

The 21 Agriculture Committee senators hold legislative oversight of everything related to the U.S. agriculture industry, including farming programs, forestry and issues related to nutrition and public health. The Agriculture Committee chair provides the vision and leadership behind what ultimately appears on America’s dinner plate.

Stabenow brings a seasoned experience to her new position, having served on the Agriculture Committee in the Michigan House of Representatives, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. As the first woman from Michigan elected to the U.S. Senate, Stabenow quickly earned a reputation for building bi-partisan collaboration toward common goals and for working with diverse agriculture groups.

Farm Bill Priorities
Stabenow’s upcoming tenure as Agriculture Committee Chair comes at a crucial time in the national agenda as dialogue heats up regarding the 2012 Farm Bill. The omnibus bill serves as a cornerstone of all federal agriculture, food and nutrition policies.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, as we begin writing a new farm bill that once again recognizes the importance of America’s agricultural economy and rural communities,” Stabenow says.

Fortunately for small-scale farmers, Stabenow strongly supported small-farm interests in the 2008 Farm Bill, under which we currently operate. Because of her work, this Farm Bill is the first in history to recognize the importance of specialty crops like fruits, vegetables, nursery products and floriculture, which make up half of the country’s agriculture cash receipts. This new title in the Farm Bill added $3 billion toward specialty-crop programs, including organic research and the USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, which aims to improve competitiveness of the specialty crops industry through grants supporting marketing, agri-tourism, research, sustainability and food access.

“Sen. Stabenow has been a champion for Michigan growers of fruit, including apples, as well as growers of vegetables, nursery and floriculture crops,” says Julia Baehre Rothwell, chair of the Michigan Apple Association. “All of agriculture should embrace an agriculture chair who understands and supports specialty crops, in addition to traditional livestock and row crops.”

Agriculture Roots
Stabenow’s commitment to agriculture stems from her home state of Michigan, where agriculture is the second-largest industry and employs a quarter of the workforce. Michigan farmers produce a strong diversity of more than 200 different crops and products, leading the nation in 19 of these commodities, including tart cherries, blueberries, dry beans and cucumbers for pickling.

Stabenow will have a bushel full of challenges as she takes on this new role in January. With new faces in Congress, many of whom were elected to cut federal spending, Stabenow will need to once again champion programs like those supporting specialty crops to make sure agriculture priorities are not slashed on the budget chopping block.

Categories
Homesteading

Nature’s Swag

Holiday swag
Photo by Cherie Langlois
I couldn’t resist making holiday swags with debris leftover from last week’s storm.

A few weeks ago, a fairly impressive wind storm littered Douglas fir branches around our farm, plus snapped off the dead top of the big, old fir gracing our horses’ pasture. (Fortunately, it missed the horses, wisely holed up in their barn.) It seemed a shame to let all of those branches go to waste, and so—being in a holiday-decorating frame of mind—I spent a pleasant hour last week making Christmas swags for our front door and gate.

Making a swag from natural greenery found on your own farm is incredibly easy if you have the right kinds of evergreen trees, shrubs and plants available.  Here’s what I did:

  1. Armed with pruners, I gathered some of the fragrant, downed fir limbs and then wandered up our woodlot-bordered gravel drive snipping an armful of other pretty greenery to add to the swag: cedar and hemlock branches, sword fern, salal, and holly. (These are all Northwest natives except for the latter, which has sprung up here and there on our property from seeds spread by birds.)
  2. Back on our front porch, I separated this natural booty into two piles. First, I placed several long fir branches on the bottom, with the ones on either side sweeping slightly outward to form a balanced swag-like shape. Then I layered the rest in the following order, with each layer a shorter length than the last (snipping with the pruners as needed):  cedar and hemlock branches, sword ferns, and finally salal and holly.
  3. Gathering the branches and stems together at the top of the swag, I wrapped them securely with a length of flexible hotwire, leaving extra for hanging. (You can also find wire specifically for making wreaths at craft supply stores.)
  4. I keep a bag of velvety bows, pine cones, and other decorations saved from holiday wreaths and arrangements given to us in the past that I use to decorate swags. On one, I attached a red bow, pine cones and faux holly berries to the top. And to the other, I fastened a white bow and strands of gold and white beads.
  5. After attaching the wreaths to our front door and gate, I took a moment to adjust branches and ornaments and tried to creatively neaten up things a bit. These quickly-made swags are certainly nothing fancy, but I love their pretty simplicity and that they come mostly from nature, right here on our farm.

Happy decorating!

~ Cherie

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Categories
Urban Farming

All Herbs, All the Time

Herbs

Courtesy Shenandoah Growers

Shenandoah Growers grows organic herbs in greenhouses so we can enjoy fresh herbs year-round. 

Despite a mild few days, the handwriting is on the wall. It’s time to pull out, tidy up and harvest thoroughly for the last time. In the suburbs, our landscape is all soft greys and browns now.

Recipe: Chermoula

Ingredients

  • 2 cups cilantro leaves (2 large bunches)
  • 1½ cups parsley leaves (1 large bunch)
  • 3 to 4 garlic cloves
  • 1/2 to 3/4 tsp. salt, to taste
  • 1 T. capers
  • 1/2 tsp. hot pepper flakes, or 1/2 to 1 small, fresh hot pepper
  • 2 anchovy filets, rinsed (optional
  • 2 tsp. cumin seeds, lightly toasted and ground, or 1½  tsp. ground cumin
  • 1 tsp. sweet paprika
  • 1/2 tsp. coriander seeds, lightly toasted and ground, or 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • 1/3 to 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, to taste
  • 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Preparation

Remove the stems of the cilantro and parsley. Place the herbs in a food processor along with the garlic and salt, and chop. Add remaining ingredients and more olive oil or salt if desired. Serve with grilled fish and vegetables, or with chicken.

Makes approximately 1 cup. Can be frozen in 1/4 cup foil packets.

From my herb garden, I had sage and parsley for the Thanksgiving turkey stuffing and some rosemary (already moved into a sunny window) for the carrots, but of course, the basil has already been frosted. However, all year-round, Shenandoah Growers in Harrisonburg, Va., sends both organic living herb plants and organic fresh-cut, packaged herbs to the East Coast, Florida and Ohio markets. What began as an entrepreneurial small business now features 80,000 square feet of state-of-the-art, closed-system greenhouses and 125 local employees and seasonal, small-scale growers. Pipes below the plants carry warm water through the rows; computer-controlled vents in the vaulted glass ceilings ventilate; and giant curtains protect the young plants from too much or too little sunlight.

Marketing Manager Sarah Yoder tells me that basil is, by far, the most popular herb plant, followed by cilantro and mint. “You just snip the amount you want. The oils remain much more concentrated because the leaves aren’t being handled,” she explains. The growing plants last much longer than the cut bunches, as well. Six other popular herbs are available as plants through Shenandoah Growers.

“People often don’t really know what to do with herbs, so we include growing and cooking tips with the plants,” adds Yoder. Shenandoah Growers’ website offers many more tips and tempting recipes. The cut herbs come in a wide line of one-recipe amounts—from the 1/4-ounce size up to larger 4-ounce catering packs—and a line of Latin flavors, too. All the herbs are sold in recyclable packaging.

Using these smaller amounts, you can experiment with fresh-cut herbs to see what you like, and then plan on growing them yourself next spring. You’ll also develop cooking routines that let you make better use of the bunches you buy.

Here are three ways (plus a fourth afterthought) to use up the extra from a large bunch of herbs or to hold on to what’s still growing for you this year.

Herb Salt

Use aromatic and sturdy herbs like rosemary or thyme. Make sure the herbs aren’t at all damp, dice them and combine them with kosher salt—about 2 T. herbs to 1/2 cup salt. Wait a couple of weeks for the herb flavors to infuse the salt.

Pesto

An obvious use, but try a new combo. Chermoula is a parsley-cilantro pesto with capers, garlic and anchovies and no cheese (see recipe above). Or try mixed herbs whirred with roasted red peppers. Add almonds instead of pine nuts. Walnuts, cream, thyme, lemon? Leave out any cheese when you freeze your favorite, and add it in when defrosted. Of course, salsas and chimichurri use fresh herbs up nicely, too, but they don’t freeze very well.

Flavored Vinegar

What could be simpler? Half cider vinegar, half white wine in a pretty bottle; add sprigs of rosemary, tarragon, sage and mint together or use them solo; also try lemon or orange rind, garlic cloves, and black or red peppercorns. Let the bottles sit awhile to mellow. Use up dribs and drabs of unfinished red wine, too, but the clarity of the white combination is nicer for gifts.

Herb Afterthought …

While writing this post, I thought of another great herb use: If you chop up the herbs finely and mix them with dry mustard powder and the same white wine (or beer or fruit juice) into a smooth paste, you ‘ll make a dynamite gourmet herb mustard. Homemade herb mustard is burning hot to start so mix it up a few weeks before you use or gift it away.

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Categories
Equipment

Pritchel Hole, Horn, Step and Anvil Placement

Anvil - pritchel hole
Courtesy Hemera/Thinkstock
The anvil’s pritchel hole (the small, round hole on the right) is used as a base for punching holes in metal.

Anvil use can be as simple as a base for straightening bent metal or as complex as making metal bowls or other decorative work. One of the simplest features of an anvil is the pritchel hole. It is used as a base for punching holes in metal. If the anvil you find doesn’t have one, you can substitute a bolster block. It’s a multi-hole, rectangular steel block that you can place on the anvil, positioning the selected hole over the hardy hole. With different size holes to choose from, the results will be more precise.

The horn is just that, a cone shaped projection for rounding metal shapes as well as working hot metal, drawing it out over the surface of the horn. Some anvils have a horn at either end or small ones to the side for specialized work.

The step or table is another very simple and functional part of the anvil. If you are going to use your anvil for cutting metal, this is the place to do it. The step is softer than the face, making it easier to redress or resurface if a chisel damages the step. An alternative to using the step is to place a piece of steel over the face for a cutting surface, or simply use a cutting edge hardy hole tool.

Placing your anvil is very important to stability and function. Our farm anvil sat on a section of log. It was not anchored, which it should have been for safety purposes. Most anvils have holes or feet to be spiked, chained or otherwise anchored. Other bases include timbers bolted together or a steel base.

Next week, we’ll take a look at anvil options.

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