Come the Revolution

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We’ve got a good crop of aphid-eating lady beetles in the garden this year. On the one hand, that means we have aphids. On the other hand, it means nature is doin’ its beautiful, balance-keeping thing.

Botanically speaking, rhubarb is a vegetable, but a clever New York court decreed in 1947 that, since we use it like a fruit, we should call it a fruit. This suits me fine, since it means that even in Vermont (where we won’t have fresh local strawberries until late June at best) we can expect the first fruit of the season in May.

Some long time ago, my grandfather put a patch of rhubarb out behind the farmhouse. It grew next to an old shed still affectionately referred to as the chicken house, in the shade of a big thorn tree. I grew up eating the stuff — in the summer my cousins and I would pull big stalks off the plant and dip the ends in sugar, gnawing off big puckery bites and going back for more. As far back as I can remember, we young’ns were the only ones who ever picked it.

The chicken house came down a few years back, and this year the thorn tree finally stuck the wrong person and was cut into firewood, but the rhubarb patch is still there and thriving. When we visited my family last week I took the opportunity to harvest a couple of pounds. I can’t wait to move somewhere with a little bit of land, so I can take a division of that prolific plant.

Last week I broke out the canner and made a simple batch of rhubarb jam. It’s exciting to have something fresh in the pantry, and to already have something to show for this season: the first fruits of spring, all saved up in a jar.

(That hat, by the way? We picked it up on our visit to Hancock Shaker Village — another fixture of my childhood.)

We’re ready. And by “ready,” I mean relatively prepared for all the successes and failures that make up a farming life.

When we moved to Vermont just over a year ago, there wasn’t much we were sure of. We knew that we had work, from mid-April through October, at an organic vegetable farm; we knew we had an affordable apartment with a month-to-month lease; we knew we had each other. Beyond that, a lot of things were up in the air.

For starters, I didn’t know for certain that I would even like farming. I had a hunch that I would, but then I’d also once had a hunch that I’d really like haggis (and I’ll just let you guess how that one turned out). I knew that it would be hard work, and that my wimpy citified muscles and never-leave-home-without-it inhaler were a liability. There was a pretty good chance that I would stink at farm work. Could I hack it?

We also had no idea how long we’d be staying in Vermont. When the season was over, would we be able to find other work? Would we even want to stay in this area? Where would we go next?

The season came and went, and it was as hard as I expected. But I made it through, proved a valuable member of the team (most days), learned so much I felt like I was in grad school, and oh hey — I loved it. I won’t say I loved every minute of it, because there were some minutes that felt like torture. Like, for example, the many hundreds of minutes that we spent planting onions in the unseasonably cold, wet New England spring. Overall, though, it was a good experience, and that good experience has led us to the next step.

We’re looking for a little plot of land of our own.

We’re not looking to buy property right now. Our finances are such that five years ago, someone would’ve certainly tried to sell us on one of those infamous adjustable rate mortgages; now most bankers would probably look at us and laugh. We’re doing respectably well, and might even qualify for a USDA-funded loan, but we see no sense in rushing into a purchase that might not be exactly what we need.

Instead, we’re looking into leasing opportunities in the areas we’d most like to live and work. We’re putting together a business plan, investigating niche markets, and preparing want-ads for local papers. We’re scanning the agricultural internet for opportunities that fit our needs.

Cian, ever the realist, is anxious that I not get my heart set on having our own land to work by next spring, but then he had the same concerns a year and a half ago when we were looking for somewhere to apprentice. I have phenomenal luck and a knack for landing in just the right place, with a little help from friends and providence. So here it is, the official announcement: we’re looking for our Ten Acres Enough, and I just know we’re going to find it.

One of the joys of seasons is that in the fall, when the mercury dips to 48 degrees, we rush to don sweaters and scarves and complain of the chill; in the spring, when the forecast calls for a 48 degree day, we pull the tee-shirts out of our closets with mad glee and dash outside to soak up all the vitamin D our poor, sun-starved bodies can manage.

All winter long, pedestrians stare responsibly down at their own feet, avoiding snow banks, puddles, and patches of ice. You know it’s spring in New England when passersby once again begin to meet eyes and smile. This urge for human contact is stronger in spring than any other time of year, and the exchanged look is acknowledgment of a shared secret: we may be fully-grown adults now, but these first few days of spring still make us want to play hopscotch, or ditch class, or at the very least eat lunch outside.

Everywhere around us we see signs of spring. We hear the peepers at night, calling to each other to come out and play. We see the first shoots of daffodils and crocuses, poking their little green heads out of the ground. Canada geese reverse their arrow and point north once again. Trees begin to blossom, and on campuses across the northeast, college students park themselves on sparse plots of grass to sunbathe in as little clothing as they can bear.

Some part of me goes into hibernation each winter; I exist in survival mode, by putting my head down and pushing, emotionlessly, through the cold and the wet and the absolute dearth of sunlight. I speak no more than I have to and I go out of my way for no one, as though I’m trying to conserve my energy for what’s left of the long New England winter. Last week the temperature reached a whole 48 degrees and I, overdressed in a sweater and a light jacket, made small-talk with a stranger on a street corner. As he walked away I realized: this is my sign of spring.

We received a copy of this book — an original edition, no less — as a gift from friends last week. I found this passage especially lovely:

There is no home like the farm home. And with the incomparable charm of rural home life comes the infinite pleasure of creative effort and the exhilaration of contending with nature and winning bread from the bare ground. There are a constancy and a stability about it all. There is something to build on, something to look forward to in the years to come. [. . . ] Some people in the cities have an idea that farm work is not an “elevating” occupation, but I want to say to you, my friends, with all the earnestness of which I am capable, that agriculture is one of the most dignified employments in which a man can engage.

-Edward Owen Dean, Opportunities in Farming

The federal animal-tracking program NAIS would have been a disaster for small-scale farmers and homesteaders; the grassroots No-NAIS movement turned it into a PR nightmare for the USDA. Last week, Ag Sec’y Tom Vilsack proposed a new, more flexible program. Read on for details.

A NAIS history lesson

Way back in the day, some people at USDA dreamed up NAIS — a National Animal Identification System. While the intention — track disease, protect farms with good practices and hold others accountable– may have been noble, NAIS was the farming equivalent of “using a hatchet where you need a scalpel” (as a certain President might put it). NAIS would have required farmers, homesteaders and even pet owners to register their animals with the government, tag them, track and report their movements (across state borders, not around the farm), and submit yearly paperwork and fees.

The expense of the fees and tagging equipment would have driven many small farmers out of business. Others would have chosen to operate illegally under the radar. Beyond the expense, there was a principle at stake: Small producers were being punished for Big Ag’s bad behavior, and the effect would be to drive what little competition feedlot farms have out of business.

And there’s also that whole government-oversight thing. I bet you can guess how most farmers feel about that.

NAIS first came on the scene in Spring of 2005 and was supposed to be fully implemented by now, but USDA began backing off (thanks to major grassroots opposition) as early as April, 2006. Last week, USDA announced that NAIS is dead in the water, and a new program is slated to take its place.

Animal Disease Traceability Framework

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack proposed a new program to replace NAIS. Here are some basics of the proposal:

• After the Feds work with states to create a minimum standard, the details and administration of the program will be left to individual states. Records will also be owned and maintained at the state, rather than the federal, level.
• Only producers whose animals will be moved in “interstate commerce” will be subject to the new framework. Homesteaders and most small farmers will be exempt, including those selling live animals at local markets.
• Whereas NAIS required the use of expensive and excessive electronic chip identifiers, states will decide what forms of ID are officially required under the new framework. Visual tags and brands will be an acceptable possibility.
• Much of the $120 million already spent on NAIS paid for elements that will be useful under the new framework as well — IT infrastructure, for example, and NAIS electronic tags that have already been implemented under the voluntary program.

You can read more details at USDA’s Animal Disease Traceability site. USDA hopes to issue a proposed rule for the federal minimum requirements next winter, at which time they’ll offer a 90-day comment period. No need to wait until then to make your opinion heard, though — get in touch with your state veterinarian [pdf] to let them know what you think of the new proposed framework.

www.nataliedee.com

The “Sweet Surprise” ad campaign tells us high-fructose corn syrup is fine in moderation — but is moderation really possible? Read on.

Have you seen the Sweet Surprise advertisements? Launched in the summer of 2008, the $30 million multimedia campaign aims to improve public sentiment towards high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Well, that’s my take on it. The Corn Refiners Association, who paid for the campaign, has a different explanation:

The goal of the campaign is to dispel myths and correct inaccuracies associated with this versatile sweetener and highlight the important role high fructose corn syrup plays in our nation’s foods and beverages.

The TV ads, which pit mislead HFCS-free followers against in-the-know HFCS fans, boil the campaign down to three points: high-fructose corn syrup is natural, nutritionally the same as sugar, and fine in moderation. The problem with those three points is that they entirely skirt the real issue. Let’s take the campaigns points one at a time.

Is HFCS Natural?

Manufacturers use a fairly complicated chemical process to turn corn into plain old corn syrup, made up of glucose, dextrose and maltose, and corn syrup into high-fructose corn syrup (fructose is sweeter than glucose, which is why food processors tend to favor it).

The FDA has ruled that products made with HFCS can be labeled natural as long as the corn syrup itself never touches glutaraldehyde, a highly toxic synthetic chemical used in its production. A year ago two U.S. studies found that about half of all tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup contained mercury, which is a potent neurotoxin.

So yes, the FDA once stated that HFCS can be called natural — but they also used to think Bisphenol A was no big deal, and we see how that’s turned out.

Is HFCS nutritionally the same as sugar?

This one’s fairly true. Table sugar, or sucrose, is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose, and my understanding is that HFCS has only slightly more fructose than glucose.

Fructose has some marks against it when it comes to nutrition; it’s been loosely associated with obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, because the body processes it differently than other sugars. Agave nectar, a sweetener preferred by many natural-food types (who should all read this), has much higher concentrations of fructose than HFCS.

When it comes to HFCS, IS there such a thing as moderation?

“It’s fine in moderation!” the pretty blond in the commercial cajoles her HFCS-resistant beau.

It’s in that last little caveat that the Corn Refiner’s Association makes a sweet, sticky mess of the facts. High-fructose corn syrup may be fine in moderation, but it’s virtually impossible to moderate. It’s not just in the fruit drink at your kid’s birthday party; it’s in the sandwich you send her off to school with each day. It’s not just in the popsicle you share while picnicking in the park; it’s in the yogurt and cereal you eat while reading the paper together every morning.

See, government tariffs make sugar artificially expensive, and the Farm Bill’s outrageous corn subsidies (which, remember, come from that money you send to Washington every April) make corn syrup really cheap — and cheap corn syrup is a great way to add (empty) calories and flavor to processed foods.

In a world without cheap HFCS, soda would still be best enjoyed in moderation, but I doubt you’d find sugar quite so high up on the list of ingredients in Thomas’ English Muffins. It would be much easier to avoid overindulging in sweeteners if we weren’t pre-paying for high-fructose corn syrup with our taxes.

The average American consumes TWELVE teaspoons of HFCS a day, a fact which I can’t quite get over. If our food system placed more emphasis on whole foods — the kind that taste great without the addition of high-fructose corn syrup — maybe we’d be able to enjoy caloric sweeteners in moderation. In the meantime, it takes nothing short of an obsessive vigilance to keep our HFCS-intake to a minimum. Few people have the time, the tools or the money to avoid the high-fructose corn syrup that’s in virtually every class of processed food, so how exactly does the Corn Refiners Association expect us to consume it in moderation?

How can we avoid this stuff?

The obvious answer is to read labels, but when you’ve probably got better things to do than stand in the grocery store picking up loaf after loaf of bread looking for one that doesn’t contain HFCS. Here are some tips:

• Choose whole foods whenever possible.
• Check The Greenists’ HFCS-Free category for suggestions.
• Consult the Accidental Hedonist list of foods containing HFCS (it’s a good idea to double-check these items, since I don’t know how up-to-date this list is kept).
• Use The Good Guide to research HFCS-free products ahead of time (and if your grocer doesn’t carry an HFCS-free option, ask for it!)
• [Cian adds] Shop at your local natural foods store, where someone else is paid to read ingredient labels for you. Ask employees for HFCS-free recommendations.

GM-crop producing, seed patent-owning, farmer-suing Monstanto Corporation owns the seed company that supplies Burpee, Johnny’s and other favorite providers with some of their most popular seeds. Keep reading for details.

It’s seed catalog season. I poured over our Johnny’s catalog for an hour and a half last week, reading each and every description and fantasizing about spring. Later, leafing through the catalog for a second time himself, Cian said “I just want to grow everything. Even the cover-crops!”

I know we aren’t the only ones lusting after green growing things right now, and I’m sure it’s a boon to seed companies that farmers and gardeners order their seeds in the depths of winter, when we’re planting imaginary gardens that would put out more produce than we could ever use (if we even had the space for them).

Which is why now is an important time to ask if Monsanto will own your garden this year.*

In 2005, Monsanto bought a multinational corporation called Seminis, which produces and distributes more than 3,000 varieties of popular garden seeds. I mean really popular seeds; over the years they’ve distributed such well-known varieties as Early Girl and Better Boy tomatoes, Red Sails lettuce and Red Knight bell peppers.

Because of Seminis’ market share, it’s difficult for the seed companies we love to stop selling them altogether. The Organic Seed Alliance reports that

Seminis’ varieties account for 11 percent of Fedco Seed’s gross sales, and the numbers are much higher in categories like melons and squash. While Fedco founder C.R. Lawn expressed his personal inclination to have nothing to do with Monsanto, the volume of sales demands careful consideration.

(Fedco has since dropped all Seminis varieties.)

To keep Monsanto out of your garden this season, avoid buying seed produced by Monsanto-Seminis — and ask your gardener friends to do the same. The list of varieties they produce is too long for me to list here, but you can use Seminis’ website to research specific varieties. Make sure you look at products for both home gardeners and professional growers.

Johnny’s currently carries 21 varieties produced by Monsanto-Seminis, and they’re working on phasing out those varieties as suitable replacements are found. They sent Emily of Eat Close to Home this list of all the products in their catalog currently supplied by Monsanto-Seminis:

• 103 SIERRA BLANCA onion
• 224 FREMONT cauliflower
• 240 HANSEL eggplant
• 241 GRETEL eggplant
• 568 BISCAYNE pepper
• 642 DULCE pepper
• 733 CELEBRITY tomatoes
• 2038 KING ARTHUR pepper
• 2063 BIG BEEF tomatoes
• 2212 PRIZEWINNER pumpkin
• 2260 FAIRY TALE eggplant
• 2309 X3R RED KNIGHT pepper
• 2365 ORANGE SMOOTHIE pumpkin
• 2368 PATTY GREEN TINT summer squash
• 2894 SERRANO DEL SOL pepper
• 2954 CHEDDAR cauliflower
• 2991 CANDY onion
• 122 BEAUFORT tomatoes
• 2794 GERONIMO tomatoes
• 2700 MAXIFORT tomatoes
• 2373 TRUST tomatoes

Alternately, you could get your seeds from one of the many distributors that isn’t supplied by The Devil Monsanto; High Mowing Seeds, Fedco, Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek are all good examples, and Botanical Interests, whose first-ever print catalog comes out very soon, carries only one Monsanto-Seminis variety (the “celebrity” tomato).

Monsanto has their fingers in our food system every step of the way — and if we’re not careful, before long it’ll be their food system. Check out The Organic Consumers Associations’ Millions Against Monsanto campaign for more.

*I’m speaking metaphorically, of course. Monsanto doesn’t own your garden unless you try to save seeds from one of their products. Then, watch out — they might come after you.

The weather was perfect yesterday morning, and I knew this really cute guy would be selling leafy greens and flowers at the Rutland farmers’ market, so I decided to head downtown and check it out.

I was impressed with the sheer number of vendors — people were selling everything from jewelery and handbags to pupusas and dog biscuits (and, of course, vegetables). I went with $25 in my pocket, intent on getting some cheese and asparagus and seeing what else struck my fancy.

I did come home with cheese (a lovely hard goat cheese from Consider Bardwell Farm in West Pawlet, VT). I also got a jar of very interesting apple cider vinegar & horseradish jelly, which will be good with the cheese and on our morning english muffins. The loaf of honey-oat bread I bought from a very old man turned out to be absolutely perfect, crusty on the outside and moist on the inside. I got some rhubarb (for literally half of what it would have cost in DC), which I’m hoping Cian will turn into a crumble.

I was able to pull Cian away from his work for a few minutes to get some tasty Pakistani food from a vendor. Oh, and I spent some time talking to Karl Thomsen, who does beautiful seat weaving — a trade he learned from his father. And there was a woman from the Czech Republic selling cookies so beautifully decorated I’m not sure I could bear to eat one.

Overall a good haul, and under budget. There wasn’t much point in buying veggies, since we get those at work for the time it takes us to pick ‘em. The one big disappointment was asparagus. Since “our” farm doesn’t have an asparagus bed, I was really looking forward to picking a bunch up, but no one had any! I know we’re a little further north, but I can’t believe that not a single bit of asparagus is ready to harvest yet. What’s spring without asparagus? I ask you. Maybe next week.

This list from LiveScience was published last fall — it documents the 7 best foods to have on a deserted island. If you could only eat seven different foods for the rest of your life, you might want a meat-lovers pizza with three kinds of cheese, but it turns out you’d be better off with grilled fish and sauteed kale over barley. Who knew, right?

(Hint: Click on the “Start Here” button right above the introduction to view the list.)

Photo by Kıvanç Niş.