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Urban Farming

Energy-efficient Homes (Version 3.0)

Energy-efficient home

The EPA updated the guidelines for Energy Star-certified homes. The guidelines, which will take effect in 2012, include new guidelines for thermal home-enclosure systems.

We’ve all seen that blue-scribbled star beacon of sustainability. Shopping around for a new air conditioner or refrigerator is always met with an “Oh, think of the electric bill savings!” when you come across an Energy Star product. You often leave the store feeling you can’t afford not to upgrade.

Now that blue-star label of eco-conscious, cost-conscious splendor is not only available for your microwave but for your front door, too.

You might have already heard of EPA-certified Energy Star homes, but now the organization is putting new regulations in place to reach even greater heights of energy efficiency (20 percent greater) that will have your checking account and planet Earth saying, “It’s about time!”

The new guidelines are broken down into versions. The current guideline version developed in 2006 is referred to as 2.0, meaning if your house is currently certified, you meet all the standards outlined by that version. However, the EPA has set new goals for their version 3.0 Energy Star-certified homes to take effect in 2012.

The new guidelines for the 3.0 Energy Star certification have taken into consideration the criticisms of homeowners and contractors responsible for the more than 1 million homes in the U.S. that meet the EPA’s 2.0 regulations.

“The concept is the same,” says Joseph Nespoli, chief of Energy Star-certified construction for state-based contracting company Campo Brothers. “Now, the plan is to tighten up the house even more.”

EPA-rated modifications are broken down within these outlined categories:

  • a complete thermal home-enclosure system (super-efficient insulation, windows and doors)
  • quality-installed, complete heating and cooling systems (AC oasis, cozy dens and hot showers)
  • a water-management system (moisture control for temperature stability and health risks that come with having a climate-controlled home)
  • efficient lighting and appliances (the aforementioned Energy Star-labeled refrigerator and those compact florescent/curlicue light bulbs).

Lastly, homeowners or contractors wanting to build according to the EPA’s new guidelines will need a third-party verifier to sign off on all improvements.

Reading about the new requirements of the 3.0 Energy Star home is not for the amateur recycling, bicycle riding, composting, energy-efficient-light-bulb-using environmentalist. For those well-versed in construction jargon, this project might be a cinch. Revisions like, “whole-building mechanical ventilation design requirements have been updated to prohibit the use of an intake duct on the return side of the HVAC system,” might sound perfectly natural to some, but for the rest of us, there is an extensive list of more than 8,500 Energy Star/EPA-certified contractors, easily searchable by location and expertise on the Energy Star website.

Along with the warm, fuzzy feeling of doing something good for the world, a newly improved Energy Star home will bring homeowners an estimated energy savings of $200 to $400 per month according to the EPA. Also, through December 2016, the U.S. government is offering tax breaks of up to 30 percent of the total cost of renovations and upgrades.

In order to reap savings on your roof, water heater, insulation, air conditioning, windows, and doors, apply for your tax break before the end of 2010.

 

Categories
Urban Farming

Awful Offal

Packaged meat

Photo by Judy Hausman

The omnivore chefs, farmer-authors and the Slow Food peeps are brandishing their knives.

In the Big City (there’s only one: New York) Mario Batali put Babbo on the map by serving lamb brains, and at the adorable Prune farther downtown, Gabrielle Hamilton grills marinated veal heart. Second-generation butcher (and former vegan) Josh Applestone takes on chef-apprentices at his local-only butcher shop in Kingston, N.Y.  Fully one-third of the decade’s best cookbooks listed on the food media site Eat Me Daily have focused on meat. 

Gourmet Glossary

Offal: Organ meats, such as liver, kidney, et cetera.

Tripe a la mode de Caen: The rubbery lining of the stomach of cattle or other ruminants, cooked with aromatics and a calf’s foot, Caen-style.

Tete de veau: Literally, veal head, including thymus, brain, tongue, muzzle meat, et cetera, prepared in a broth.

Sweetbreads: The thymus and pancreas of a young (usually) calf.

Foie gras: The purposely fattened liver of a goose or duck.

Flat-iron steak: The cut from the shoulder of a cow (aka top-blade steak).

Heritage breeds: Disappearing, diverse breeds of livestock, now valued for their adaptability to small farming.

We’ve all located our grass-fed beef source, our righteous veal, our heritage-breed pork and our Brooklyn backyard bunny supplier. We know that now we have to face flensing the flesh ourselves to be truly conscious carnivores.

I’ve read the books, I’ve seen the movies, and I know the industry is over-centralized, disgusting and dangerous to our health and even to the communities where the plants are located. We’ve gone out of our way to create demand so availability of the good stuff is now wider. The product is better and more consistent, too. Whether it’s grass-fed flat iron steaks, double-cut Berkshire pork chops, lamb sausage or a delicate roaster chicken, I know how to handle small-farm meat, now, and it’s way more consistent, less stringy, not gamey and reliably flavorful.

I vote for snout-to-tail eating: We honor the animal we kill by consuming all of its good body unsqueamishly. I get it; I endorse it; I’m pro. Refrigerator-case meat wrapped in plastic is sanitized. Even butchers don’t see hanging sides anymore. The meat comes to them from afar in large, pre-cut pieces also wrapped in plastic.

But here’s the thing: I just can’t enjoy offal. And, Lord knows, I’ve tried.

In a tiny farm town in Austria, the tavern had only lung soup to eat on a chilly night so we ate it. The bouncy chunks of brown lung were at least warm and pretty tasteless. I sought out the very best Parisian café for tripe a la mode de Caen. The mirrored café, tiled with murals of Brittany, was worth the trip but the intestines, served over an individual warming candle, still tasted like blood and dirt to me. Recently, a Parisian maitre d’ congratulated my dining companion on his choice of gelatinous tête de veau.

“Most people from your country won’t eat that,” he said. 

Cooking meat

Photo by Judith Hausman

Italian-style chopped chicken liver

As for me, I adore France but I’ll take the cod, please.

There is one exception. I say no to sweetbreads and kidney pie, but I say yes to chicken liver paté in almost any style.

I scarf up my mom’s Jewish-style chopped liver, made pasty with plenty of caramelized onions and lightened with added egg. Bring me smooth shallot and cognac-scented French-style paté or the Tuscan version, dark and chunky with anchovies. Smeared on crackers or toast ,these frugal spreads (let’s leave out the foie gras controversy for now) make wonderful lunches or earthy hors d’oeuvres. Even if I can’t get past the innards obstacle, at least I’m sustainably, hipply PC when I eat the livers of JohnBoy Ubaldo’s plump, chickens, raised lovingly and brought to the ‘burbs from about 3 hours north, near the Vermont border.

Read more of The Hungry Locavore »

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Equipment

Try Composting Before You Buy

Composting makes sense. It takes waste and turns it into a valuable soil additive.

Today, you can select electric and mechanical composters in barrel, box, ball and other styles. Some automatically or manually mix the compost, while others are more passive with the materials gradually breaking down.

All promise high-quality compost, easily made. While many, if not most, will do what they say, the reality is that making compost requires nothing more than a pile of organic materials.

A couple of guidelines include a good mix of brown (carbon source) and green (nitrogen source) materials, a way to retain them in a pile and a piece of tarp or section of plywood to protect the pile from excess rainfall.

A length of perforated drain tile is a simple way to maintain airflow through the pile.

You can do all of that and more with materials at hand. Cement block walls laid over a gravel base, hardware cloth framed with 2x4s or used wood pallets stood on end – all make adequate composting structures.

Heavy-duty wire livestock panels bent in a circle and tied, old woven netting or any type of barrier fence attached to a circle of steel posts will do for passive composting. The latter are especially well suited for leaves that can require several years for complete breakdown. For quicker results, use a garden fork to periodically mix the materials.

If you haven’t composted your kitchen scraps, lawn and garden clippings and livestock manure, you’re missing out. Look around your place, and you will likely find the materials you need. Your compost pile needn’t cost much; yet, it will produce a high-value product for years to come.

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Categories
Animals

Loving’ Weeds

Bull Thistle
Photos by Sue Weaver

Mom likes lots of plants most folks call weeds. We do too, because they’re yummy!

Thistles are some of Mom’s favorite flowers, but here in the Ozarks she spends hours grubbing them out of places we animals graze. We like to eat them when they’re young, like Oran is munching Bull Thistle in this picture.

We love young Nodding Thistles too. Our mouths are tougher than you think!

If you have a fast Internet connection (it’s a big file), you can download an 88-page color guide to Arkansas’ Pasture Weeds that Mom says is better than most of the books she buys.

Or, visit the Weeds page at the Maryland Small Ruminant Pages (one of Mom’s favorite online resources) for more great links to pasture plant identification guides than you can imagine.

Mullein

Some pasture plants most people think are weeds are valuable herbal plants, like Mullein. That’s the fuzzy leaf that Oran is eating in the second picture.

Mom has dust allergy, so in the winter when she feeds hay, she tends to get congested lungs and that makes her cough. When she does, she makes Mullein tea. She crunches a small handful of dried Mullein leaves into her teapot, then covers it with boiling water and lets it steep for a half hour or more.

Then she strains it through cheesecloth (ingesting hairs from the leaves tickles her throat) and drinks up. Ahhhh! It’s tasty. Better she says than commercial tea. Uzzi and I don’t know about that, but to us, the young leaves are delicious eaten raw.

You can chew up a piece of Mullein leaf to poultice a bee sting and it helps. Mullein flowers, Mom says, can be packed into a little bottle and then filled to the brim with olive oil. After six weeks the oil sooths earaches. Mullein parts are used to treat many simple ailments. Read more about using herbal Mullein here. 

Humans also use fuzzy Mullein leaves for toilet paper when they’re out camping. But what they may not know is that some people get itchy rashes when their skin comes in contact with Mullein leaves. They should test it on the inside of their arm and wait 20 minutes before using it for toilet paper. Yow!

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Urban Farming

Birds in the Lamp

Photo by Audrey Pavia

Enterprising house finches made a nest in our antique hurricane lamp.

This morning was typical. I dragged myself out of bed to get ready for work, bleary-eyed from staying up too late watching episodes of Dexter (trying to get caught up since my husband Randy and I just discovered the series after 4 years — where have we been?). I fed all the critters — a 20-minute ritual — and then sat down to eat something. As I sat at the kitchen table in a stupor, listening to the toaster oven timer ticking away, something outside the window caught my eye.

A bird. Close to the house.

It flew to the slatted patio cover and then vanished. Where did it go, and what was it doing on the patio? Nothing there but some stuff hanging: windchimes and a couple of bells and old lanterns we picked up at antique stores. The bird feeders were in the front yard, where Foxy the Urban Barn Cat rarely goes. So why the avian interest in the patio?
 
I don’t do caffeine (doctor’s orders), so my morning stupor continued for awhile as I munched on my breakfast. While swallowing my last bite, I saw it again out of the corner of my eye — a bird.
 
Okay, something was going on. When you see a bird come back to the same place twice in a matter of minutes, there’s a reason. I went outside.
 
It was a female House Finch, a little brown bird native to Southern California but seen everywhere in the U.S. The boys are a bit more colorful than the girls. Their brown bodies are adorned with a red head and neck.
 
Lady Finch was hanging on the side of an old, cream-colored iron hurricane lamp we had picked up somewhere. When she saw me, she flew off. I then noticed twigs poking out of the bottom. Seems Lady Finch was building a nest inside the lamp.
 
The lamp’s ornate ironwork didn’t leave any spaces big enough for a bird to enter on the sides. I walked all around it as it swayed in the breeze. How did she get in there? Then I noticed that the bottom—where the twigs were poking out—had a hole in it big enough to fit a small candle. Seems that is where the female finch — and no doubt her mate — were getting in and out of the lamp.
 
I stood underneath it and looked up, wondering several things: Once the nest was built on top of the hole in the lamp, how would the birds get in and out? How would they stay dry in the torrential El Nino downpours we have been getting with such a “holey” roof to their home? And most importantly, how would the baby birds stay inside a nest that was built over a hole?
 
The answers to these questions remain to be seen. You can be sure I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Finch Family as they tackle life in a hurricane lamp.

Read more of City Stock »

Categories
Crops & Gardening

Historical Wisteria

wisteria
Photos by Rick Gush

All the wisteria here is blooming now, and it’s fairly spectacular.  The purple flower clusters are almost unimaginably lush as they hang in thick sheets from fences, walls and patio trellises. 

Wisteria is a big vine, so it’s not used so much in the smaller gardens, but for all the big villas it’s practically a landscape requirement like the figs, laurels and olives. 

When driving along the sunny coast road where many of the villas are located there are many stretches where the whole road seems purple these days. The big bloom is in the early spring, but some plants continue a sporadic smaller blooming for the whole warm season. The purple wisteria is by far the most common, but there are a few white or pink wisterias also to be seen.

Hannibal's bridge

Some of the historic villas have extremely old specimens of wisteria vines still growing in their gardens.  One fancy monastery near Portofino has a wisteria said to have been planted at the beginning of the nineteenth century when Napoleon ruled northern Italy.  The thick trunks of this two-hundred-year-old patriarch wisteria flop messily above a large courtyard that looks out over the water.  When in bloom it supports hundreds of thousands of purple blossoms. Quite impressive.
 
We’re finally at the point in our own garden where we’ll be ready to plant a wisteria at the top of the garden complex next year, so I’ll buy a few dormant plants at the local ag fair in January.  In two hundred years I’ll imagine it will look great dripping down from the top of the big cliff.

The second photo is of Hannibal’s bridge in Rapallo.   The main river used to run where the street is now, but was diverted west a hundred yards about a hundred and fifty years ago.  After Hannibal and his elephants crossed over the Alps just a bit north of here, they passed through Rapallo and around 217 B.C. Hannibal’s troops built a bridge over the river in Rapallo, so they could continue their march south toward Rome. 

So, it’s a bit sad, but this will be my last blog for Hobby Farms.  It’s been an enjoyable year and more.  Blogging has a pleasurably cathartic effect on me, and I’ve met a bunch of interesting gardeners who have written to me.

The good news is that I get to start blogging on the sister Urban Farm site.  I hope some of the HF readers will take a glance over there and find me.  I’d also appreciate it if even more of you would write to me.  And if you’re ever in Northern Italy with an hour to spare, please come visit Rapallo and my garden.

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Categories
Urban Farming

Respect for Small Farmers

Italian marketplace

Photo by Rick Gush

Everyone in Italy likes to eat local.

Italy is quite different from the U.S., and I, quite frankly, think it offers a good role model for American agriculture. I wouldn’t want to copy the idiotically criminal Italian political system or the tendency for Italian mothers to do the laundry of their 40-year-old sons who still live at home. As far as I’m concerned, the most impressive feature of Italian society is the fact that small farmers are respected here. More than respected—almost revered.

Small farmers and their products are highly prized, and their products sell for fair prices that do not fear low-cost foreign import competition. It’s hard for us Americans to understand the depth of Italian rigidness and pickiness concerning the food they eat.  When I was courting my Italian wife, I once brought freshly baked cookies from a local bakery to dinner at her house. She asked me where the cookies were from and I described the bakery. 

“Oh, we don’t eat things from them” she said, “They use cheap butter.”

She thereupon dumped the cookies into the garbage. I was shocked, but gradually I’m realizing most Italians will not compromise at all with their food.

It is no surprise that Italy is the largest organic-food consumer and producer in Europe.  In Italy, people insist on paying more for top-quality ingredients for their kitchens. It’s a great place to be a small farmer. Even being a really small farmer is quite alright. Mom-and-Pop operations are numerous and thriving here. A huge number of Italians work regular jobs and also farm part-time and a great number of their products make their way into the marketplace.

Italian television participates enthusiastically in the general reverence for small farmers.  Every day, the television stations will broadcast programs that feature the operations and products of small farmers. The weekends are loaded with agricultural television content.  I counted 11 hours of agricultural shows last Saturday. Italy is also a great place for someone who enjoys watching television shows about small farmers.

This is not to say that farming is easy in Italy. Far from it. Italy is the land of heroic farming, where even the steepest areas are cultivated on thin terraces that are created by the extremely laborious process of building rock walls and backfilling with soil. Not far from our house is the Cinque Terre, where the seaside cliff terraces are so steep that the grape harvest was once lowered directly into boats anchored in the water.

My diet has certainly changed since I married my Italian wife. We have personal relationships with most of the stores and vendors from whom we buy our food. We know the people who make lots of the cheese we eat, the guy who grows a lot of the vegetables we eat and the grower of much of the olive oil we use.

I am really enjoying my own gardening activities here. I score a lot of points within my Italian family for my ability to contribute quality fruit and vegetables to our diet. All in all, I find that the plants and the bugs and the dirt are all quite similar to America here in Italy. The biggest difference is the societal respect for small farmers and their products. 

Read more of Digging Italy »

Categories
News

Prevent Respiratory Acidosis in Calves

Newborn calf
As soon as a newborn calf is delivered, focus on establishing respiration.

Cattle producers expecting a calf crop should take time now to review procedures to combat respiratory acidosis in newborn calves. Calves with respiratory acidosis are unable to rid their lungs of excess carbon dioxide its body produces and are less able to obtain nutrients from colostrum. 

“Every baby calf born is in a situation where there is a build-up of carbon dioxide and its byproduct, lactic acid, during the delivery process,” says Glenn Selk, Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension cattle reproduction specialist.

Delayed passage through the birth canal in the face of uterine contractions that pinch off the umbilical cord compromises oxygenation of the calf. Although the calf is able to breathe as soon as its nose passes the lips of the vulva, expansion of the calf’s chest is restricted in the narrow birth canal.

Continuous forced traction can seriously aggravate the situation, Selk says. “As soon as the calf’s head has passed the lips of the vulva, traction should be interrupted, the nostrils cleared of mucus and cold water applied to the head.”

When the calf is completely delivered, primary attention is directed toward establishing respiration. Mucus and fetal fluids should be expressed from the nose and mouth by exerting pressure using the thumbs along the bridge of the nose and flat fingers underneath the jaws, and sliding from the level of the eyes down toward the muzzle.

Selk says the practice of suspending the calf by its hind legs to clear the lungs must be questioned.

“Most of the fluids that drain from the mouth of these calves probably come from the stomach, and the weight of the intestines on the diaphragm makes expansion of the lungs difficult,” he says. “The most effective way to clear the airway is by suction.”

Respiration is stimulated by many factors, but only ventilation of the lungs allows the cattle producer to render help immediately.

“Brisk rubbing of the skin and tickling inside the nostril with a piece of straw also has a favorable effect,” Selk says. “The phrenic nerve can be stimulated with a sharp tap on the chest slightly above and behind where the heartbeat can be felt.”

Find additional recomenddations on cattle management by contacting your local cooperative extension.

 

Categories
Crops & Gardening

Rennet Apples and Wild Bluebells

bluebells
Photos by Rick Gush

Bluebells

The apples are just about the last fruit trees to bloom in the garden, and they’ve finally started flowering. 

The plum trees bloomed almost a month ago and are now loaded with tiny fruits.  I’m trying to get my wife interested in making some jam or something with the bumper crop of wild plums we’ll get this year. 

I’ll have to put out big nets underneath the trees to catch a significant portion of the falling fruits.  My wife’s not crazy for them, but I am, and a few of the neighbors are too.

I’ve got one apple planted on the side arm of the garden where there is a thin bed at the bottom of a twelve-foot cement wall.  I planted the apple there a few years ago and have been training it to grow flat against the wall.  It’s doing very well and last year we harvested the first fruits. 

rennet flowers
Rennet Flowers

This tree is a Rennet apple, a very common variety among the small farmers around here.  I think it’s common in the south of France also.  Rennet is a very old variety, but has maintained a reasonable market share.  Both the small markets and the supermarkets sell Rennet apples.

The fruit, which keeps very well, looks sort-of like a russet, but the flesh is not as crisp.  The fruits are slightly flattened and covered by an unattractive dull green-yellow skin.  The flesh is neither crisp nor mealy, but very flavorful and perfumed.  The fruits can be huge. We had a few fruits last year that were the size of softballs.  It’s a great cooking apple, but we mostly eat them fresh.

The second photo shows a patch of bluebells that are also flowering at the moment.  This is one of the wild plants I found on the cliff when I first started clearing the slopes. 

The ten bulbs I dug up five years ago have taken well to bed plantings and have multiplied nicely, to the point that I give bulbs to friends as gifts. 

The blue flowers are a nice foil for all the reds and yellows in bouquets, and the cut bluebells last very well in a vase.  We’ve got a big patch of bluebells in the bed where we grow basil in the warm weather.  We can use a lot of basil, so we usually grow almost a hundred plants packed together in a narrow bed.  The bluebells are in the same bed, and they don’t mind the summer basil growing on top of them.

Being an ex-nurseryman myself, I’m always embarrassed when a nurseryman makes a mistake.  The Rennet apple we’ve got espaliered now was supposed to be a local Genovese apple variety with small red fruits.  Oh well, at least it’s growing well. 

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Categories
Crops & Gardening

Good Things to Come

strawberry blossoms
Photo by Jessica Walliser

My daffodils and tulips are pretty much finished blooming and are being replaced by lots of blooming perennials, especially in my shade gardens. 

So far the deer haven’t found my hostas (I give them another month at most) and the rabbits have steered clear of all my emerging annual seedlings (I give them until their babies grow up and they all leave their dens—hungry).

The vegetable garden looks glorious.  I got lots of free leaf compost from my municipality and used it as a mulch. 

Sure, I had to shovel my own and fill up the back of my Subaru numerous times with overflowing buckets of the stuff, but it is so worth it to see that dark, rich brown compost rather than cracked clay when summer arrives.  The plants are happy too.

My peas are up several inches and are nearly grasping onto the grapevine and branch teepees we erected.  The radish are almost ready for saladizing; and the carrots, kohlrabi, and beets have emerged from the dirt and are ready for all those little bunnies to find their way underneath the fence slats. 

Last year our blueberry crop was pitiful so I added elemental sulfur last fall in hopes of righting the pH and giving them a boost.  Payoff!  They are loaded with blooms and bees right now.  Hopefully I can keep the birds and chickens off them this year and we’ll get enough to make some jam.  The strawberries are blooming too. 

Always exciting to know how many good things are to come. 

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