Reorienting

Being in the nonprofit and activist world these days requires a lot of time on the computer. When I was living in Panama working in agroforestry I had callouses on my hands, a dark sheen on my skin, and plenty of room in my lungs from all the laboring on the land. Not anymore. Now my body is soft and underused. The mind is dominant. Exercise is rare. But yesterday began my reorientation and that of my garden. I dragged out the pick, spade shovel, round shovel and rake and went to work. My body aches today. But it is a good ache.

I wanted to reorient my garden beds to a north-south orientation to see if it makes a difference. I also dug paths down 2 feet rather than having flagstone throughout the garden taking up space. This gives me more access across the beds, and hopefully will encourage me to be more efficient in the growing space. In years past I've always had blotches of empty space left after everything was planted. Going for a more intensive garden in an already intensive space.

Here's the result. This is looking out my front/kitchen door.

Gardening in the Spaces Inbetween

This month I had the pleasure of spending some time in Oakland and San Fran, CA. I can't quite wrap my head around San Francisco. I feel as if I am floating everytime I am there. It definitely has something to do with those tall roads that go straight into the sky.

But Oakland definitely has its feet firmly on the ground. While there I visited People's Grocery's urban agriculture sites. First of all you must know I think PG is just about the coolest organization out there. I love their philosophy, strategy, look, creativity, strident adherence to empowerment. It is an inspiration to all of us at youth organizing types.




They, along with City Slickers on the other side of West Oakland, have taken over a number of small to medium sized plots and begun gardening and farming. Using a small staff and lots of volunteers and youth, they are harvesting upwards of 1500 pounds of produce from sites as small as 2000 square feet. They take this produce and sell it at affordable prices to families in the food desert of the urban inner city. That's the basics of their program, with layers wrapped around it like and onion that address food security, poverty, health issues, economic opportunity, and youth empowerment.




I wasn't able to work it out to be there when to help out with the work, but I did drive around a bit and snapped some pictures of the sites. Very Cool! Thanks People's Grocery and City Slickers for all you do and all those you inspire everywhere.

Check out the slideshow to the right.

My first experience of gardening after leaving home was in Minneapolis where I got myself a plot in a community garden. I was living in a basement apartment on the edge of Uptown (a mostly white middle class neighborhood) and the Phillips (a mostly black poor neighborhood). The garden was also poised at the edge of the two and used by people living in both neighborhoods. An urban bridge builder. It was a large and well established garden near the train tracks in what would have been an other wise abandoned piece of land. We had a shared toolshed, well organized compost piles, and organic regulations. I rode my bike there two or three times a week to plant, weed and harvest my 10x10 plot. I inherited a raspberry bush from the previous renter and enjoyed that luxury. I was vegetarian at the time so the garden provided pretty much all I needed for the summer. I remember being there for hours in between my summer classes and job. Enjoying the calm and peacefulness of the place in the middle of a loud urban environment. I would occassionally be there when other gardeners arrived to tend their own plots and we would trade accolades and tips on the specific varities of vegetables we were growing. That summer remains one of the strongest in my memories. I can still smell the tomato leaves and resulting lasagne.

Seattle where I have also spent a lot of time has an incredible network of community gardens. Immigrant farmers from various parts of Asia take over steep hillsides in between roads and houses and farm like they would were they at home in the steep jungle. Youth groups set up by rivers and in parks. Regular folks take over otherwise abandoned spaces. They call them P-Patches.

For the three years I was in the Peace Corps in Panama the women in the village of Cano Quebrado and I worked together to help each other grow kitchen gardens. We literally dug up the land and planted right next to their outdoor kitchens. We grew herbs, peppers, some vegetables. Whatever delicacies that didn't do well in the "monte" - cultivated plots in the jungle. They like to broadcast tomato seeds in areas that retained water all year round and let them grow like weeds or like the vines they really are. And grow they did. We had no shortage of water there, our struggle was fungus from being too wet. Many of those backyard gardens are still there today and the women still rotate from home to home helping with the work and trading varieties of vegetables and herbs.

Thankfully, Santa Fe now has a burdgeoning community and school garden movement. Although I no longer have a need as my own 2 acres keep me busier than I can handle, I am grateful that others are utlizing this incredible resource. The City has pilot gardens in three parks and will be adding a fourth this summer. Youth Allies have a plot in each garden and merrily grow what they need for their free Food Not Bombs meals served fresh and hot twice a months in City Parks.

Everywhere around the world there is evidence of people gardening in the spaces in between. Inbetween full-time work and home life, inbetween two houses, inbetween rich and poor, black and white, one country and another, jungle and kitchen, desert and rainforest, inbetween languages, cultural barriers, wet and dry, long-term and just starting...but we keep on gardening.

Falling in Love with my Tumbleweed Farm

My farm started as a garden. My garden started as a driveway. A severely compacted gravel ridden urban heat island. We moved into our home 4 years after it was built. The previous tenants were renters, the builder/owner had never lived there. The renter did the best she could with the outdoor space. And she took most of it with her when she left, leaving only a few thorny rose bushes, crowded periwinkle, overbearing mint, and zealous iris bulbs for us to work with. Despite the obvious challenge, my husband and I thought this was the most logical place to put the garden given it is right out our kitchen door, southwest facing and in “Zone 1” – the area you walk by everyday, multiple times a day as long as you leave the house. We dreamed of picking sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes not yet hardened by the hot New Mexico sun each morning on our way out the door to work.

He was willing to do the digging, so dig he did one weekend while I was away. I came back to a space of about 200 square feet that he soaked, fought with, broke shovels and axes on and finally dug down as far as he could in concrete slab like clay we were calling earth. What happens to earth when you drive ATVs, construction equipment and cars over it for years. He got about 12 inches down and hit what felt like bedrock. We trucked in a thick layer of compost mixed it with the clay and quickly put in our first garden since it was already July when we finally unloaded our boxes at the house that first year. After a slow start after which we did a soil test and added lots of bonemeal for a needed nitrogen fix, we got a bumper crop of zucchini, and that was about it. I’m convinced that in the wild zucchini would be a pioneering species – the first to come in after a fire, volcano, or other such disturbance to repopulate the area. It does well anywhere! Funny enough, we’ve hardly gotten any zucchini out of our garden in the three years since. In fact every year we seems to get one crop that does better than all the rest, but it is never the same thing from year to year.

We did install a drip system that first year. Most of the water soaked down about 12 inches and then ran off like a sheet of rain on that bedrock– still too concrete underneath for it to penetrate. The downhill side of the garden and driveway got most of the watering that year. But over the years it has worked itself out. I am reminded of the Growing Power gardens in Milwaukee where I grew up. One the south side of the City where it is mostly concrete, they just lay topsoil mixed with compost on top of paved parking lots and grow tomatoes in raised beds. After seeing those big, red bright tasty tomatoes that came from the urban gardens, I firmly believe Nature will work with what ever you have if you give her enough attention, love and care.

The next year I just had just given birth to my son in the spring and was lucky enough to spend 6 months off work home with him through the growing season. During every single nap I plotted, planned, dug, planted, weeded, harvested, and enjoyed my summer garden. When he was awake I would sit him in his squishy practice seat in the middle of the garden. He would reach out for the nearest plant and gum basil leaves, corn stalks, and spinach as I picked through the tomato patch. His first experience of solid foods was from those green leaves fresh off the stalk. From the look on his face, he loved it as much as I love the earthy smell of tomato leaves when you brush up against them in the hot sun. YUM! Breathe deeply. My son and I spent most of our first months of his life together out in that garden and continue to every year since. Even in the winter we play in the garden. Protected by a coyote fence to keep the dogs and rabbits out, it is the warmest place in the whole yard in late afternoon. On a warm winter day, it feels like summer, and an exquisite place from which to watch the sunset.

In year two, I expanded the main garden plot adding about 80 square feet and taking over the front flower beds adjacent to the walls of the house for another 150 sq feet. I added a few key flowers and shrubs to the flower gardens to attract beneficial insects and filled in the rest of the space with kitchen herbs. I love the convenience of reaching out my front door for the fresh rosemary and thyme the soup recipe calls for. No more “I forgot the ____!” runs to the grocery store. The herbs last most of the winter too – I just consider them “dried on the vine” in January and harvest them brown.

We also added asparagus trenches, cherry tomato & basil patches, raspberries, fruit trees, rhubarb, and a few choice wild strawberries in our front yard the second year. This April will mark three years since we planted those asparagus. We are still learning what they need. Every year we have added about 2 inches of new compost, but they are still slow in coming and a few have died off. We are trying to stave off the crab grass that is threatening to take over the trenches. The third year is supposed to be the charm with asparagus. Once they pop their crowns up this year it will mark the start of our year as locavores. Asparagus season. I talked to a local farmer recently about having youth help out throughout the season. He said sure, anytime between asparagus season and blackberry season. His way of marking the start and the end of the natural farming cycle in northern New Mexico. I am planting blackberries this year too so we have a marker for the other end of the season.

The cherry tomatoes were the bumper crop that second year. We had so many our neighbors wouldn’t take any more from us. So we learned how to roast them, dry them, add them to every imaginable dish we could think of. We did manage to eat them all up before canning season came. Roasted cherry tomatoes with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper are irresistible. Once we learned that, we did the tomato patch in pretty quickly. But many did fall to the ground and get squished, only to leave seeds that came up the next year as volunteer plants. They didn’t produce as much the second and third years but they keep doing decently enough.

It seems every year one plant shines above all others, and it is never the same one. The third year of our garden, we only expanded about 20 square feet to add a strawberry patch to the front yard. That year we got a bumper crop of pumpkins. Delicious sweet, round, small sugar pie pumpkins. My favorite. And enough purple green beans to freeze and can and last us into the early winter.

This year we plan to take over another portion of the driveway and turn it into terraced vegetable gardens, making room for more variety and more harvest to last us into the winter with canning and freezing. We will also plan green manures on the southwest side of the house in a fairly flat spot getting it ready for a future grain crop. I also plan to diversify our food forest. Last summer we added four raspberry bushes and 5 egg-laying chickens to the mix in the orchard. This year we will add 4 more chickens to give us enough for all our needs including baking from scratch. Then I’ll expand the wild strawberry patch – which my son treats like a treasure chest of delight!! The berries grow small but they are packed with sweetness. He cherishes them, months after the harvest ended last year he still went out into the yard everyday to check the plant for berries. Plus blackberries, sandcherries, and other native fruit bearing edible shrubs.

I’ve just started my tomato, pepper, eggplant starts two weeks ago. I am working slowly towards my plan of having a 1.5 acre urban farm that can provide us with food year round. We have a 2 acre plot but about .5 of that is too steep to do anything with except nurture it and help it go native again. Maybe plant a windblock on its contours. We will add 3 goats for yogurt and cheese this summer and focus on the food forest. I await the day when I can lie on my little patch of bluegrama grass under the pear tree and pick fresh, juicy fruit while harvesting eggs with my other hand while my son gorges on tamed wild strawberries, and my husband milks the goats. That is when I will have achieved true wealth and abundance in my life.

I’ve been closely observing the land I call mine for four years now. I’ve walked every inch of it, listened and looked closely where the sun falls, how the water flows, where the good dirt is still left, how the wind blows, how it changes over the course of a day. And still I feel as I am just getting a sense of it. The land is responding well. It was so abused, misused, and ignored when I arrived it has been a slow healing process. Working on one eroded, compacted patch at a time. Working on building corridors, stringing together patches that have a bit more vibrancy in hopes that the land in between will respond as well some day and fill in the holes.

I have built a relationship with my land and I love it. I get the sense it loves me too. She appreciates the care, the attention, the patience, the light touch I use. I don’t try too hard to get it to do what I want it to. If it doesn’t want to grow zucchinis one year, I don’t force it. I feed it as much as feels right and as much as I have time for. Every small act of kindness is returned. We have an incredible view of the mountains from my house. When I moved in, I thought that might be as good as it was going to get on that damaged spot. But the land has responded with vigor and vibrancy. There is still a lot more I can do for it. Many more troubled areas being cut open by rivers of water when the rain does fall or the snow melts off, needing to be slowed down and redirected, needing time to soak it in. But we are getting there. Growing together, learning from each other, listening to each others’ needs. I won’t force it to feed me all year long if it is not ready. I won’t put too many animals on it. In this way I believe we will continue to tread lightly but grow deeply together.

The Raw Truth About Raw Milk

March 2010

I grew up in Wisconsin, “America’s Dairyland.” Infamous for our cheeseheads, fried cheese curds and weak, watered down beer.

According to a website entitled “Wisconsin by Luke” there are 11 federally recognized tribes in WI today. The name of the state was taken from the Chippewa Indian word "Wees Konsan" meaning the gathering of water. Jean Nicolet was the first European to reach Green Bay in 1634. In 1763 France ceded Wisconsin to Great Britain then Britain ceded it to the United States in 1783. It is also called "The place of the beaver" and also called the Badger State.

Luke, who created his site for a school project, goes on to describe Wisconsin’s important rivers - the Mississippi, the St. Croix, Fox River and Green Bay. The St. Croix flows into Lake Superior which is bound to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario. This web of lakes and rivers is how my great-grandfather came to settle in New Richmond, Wisconsin. He and his brother immigrated to French-Canada settling in Ontario, assumingly got bored there and decided to take a canoe from the Canadian border through Lake Superior onto the St. Croix.

They disembarked on the shores of Bass Lake on the central west border with what is now Minnesota and somehow claimed hundreds of acres surrounding the lake in Dakota Sioux territory for themselves. This part of how my family took the land from the original indigenous habitants – our history of colonization - is not recorded in my family’s history books or memory.

Once there, like many other European settlers who populated the rolling hills of Wisconsin, they began to plant corn, potatoes, alfalfa and raise dairy cattle. Their cows were fat and well fed by the lush perennial prairies and grasslands, shaded by the tall trees of the surrounding forests and a well-quenched by the decent sized lake they drank out of and cooled off in. Outside of being milked in the barn twice a day, they roamed freely all of their days.

My family has since sold off most of the land surrounding the lake to urban escapees from the Twin Cities looking for rural respite, or, sons and daughters of farmers who now make their living by commuting to industrial jobs in the Cities. Their pontoon and speed boats now crowd the lake for sunset parties and water skiing.

I myself spent every summer growing up on and in that lake at my grandma’s cabin. You couldn’t imagine a more idyllic childhood. Me and my 80 cousins spending our summers together fishing, swimming, making forts in the forest, and occasionally helping out at the dairy farm.

I milked a few cows in my days there, but only a few. They were typically cows who had some kind of utter infection and were taken off the machines and milked by hand until they recovered. The days of milking the entire herd by hand were over well before I arrived on the scene. And my mother prefers not to talk about the forced farm chores aspect of her childhood. Mostly we would stand guard of my aunts flower beds as the cows were led from the fields back to the milking barns, or help load hay into the silo at the end of the summer. When I was very little I remember the farm house, no more than 1000 square feet where my Grandpa Ray and Grandma Delia raised five kids followed by my Uncle Dick and his first and second wives who raised eight kids. They since have torn down that teeny villa and built something much larger – more what you expect of a typical American farm home these days.

In the 1997 the farm received a certificate from President Clinton and the White House in celebration of its 100th year designating it a heritage farm. A few year’s later, with none of his eight children stepping up to take over the dairy farm, my aging Uncle Dick after countless triple by-pass heart surgeries decided it was time to switch to beef cattle. We guess it was all the raw milk, cheese, eggs, and other artery clotting food one consumes in excess when you live on a dairy farm. I believe there is a reason the best heart disease doctors and The Mayo Clinic is in the heart of the dairyland.

I remember during those summers on the lake, my aunt delivering raw milk from the farm to my grandma, presenting it to her as some kind of special, coveted treat. Me and my suburban siblings eyed it suspiciously and never did drink it beyond a taste that was quickly spat out. My mother encouraged this suspicion in us. Having left the farm for the city as soon as she was old enough, she had bought only ultra-pasturizied or powered milk since. Like most she was convinced by the urban myths that this was the only milk safe for human consumption. Our young minds, like so many of our young urban counterparts who believed that carrots came from the grocery store, were convinced that raw milk, straight from the cow’s utter, was something not to be messed with. A dangerous warm concoction that at best would make you sick just by smelling it.

As we watched my grandma add it to her coffee, use it for baking those brownies we really loved, or drink it straight, we felt she was taking her life into her own hands. My grandma, the sweetest, hardest working, powerhouse matriarch was really living on the edge in those moments. She didn’t die when she drank it, and for that she earned our everlasting respect for her steel stomach and superpower immune system.

So a few months ago when my husband suggested we join a raw milk group in Santa Fe, I was immediately suspicious. The idea that a farmer in Lubbock, Texas would drive up to Santa Fe once a week with a mini-van full of this forbidden elixir - raw milk, butter, cream, and the occasional side of beef, seemed as equally incomprehensible to me as my grandma drinking from the disease-steaming carafe of milk delivered and living through it.

News of this clandestine activity was whispered to my husband over lunch by an acquaintance after he mentioned he was lactose intolerant. She suggested it wasn’t the lactose, but the pasteurizing that was inconsistent with his constituency. So he signed us up and began bringing home gallons of thick milk with a thin layer of cream on the top.

The first time I joined him in the raw milk pickup it was winter, a dark early evening as we drove through the winding streets of northside neighborhoods following such directions as “one block past the three tufts of beargrass.” It seemed rightfully hidden to me as I was still convinced of its potential deadliness. We pulled up to a suburban adobe home with a line of people, hoods pulled tightly over their heads to keep out the cold, silently standing in line as the farmer distributed the white liquid from the back of his mini-van. My husband got out and went to the back of the line. More came silently after him. I could see him trying to make small talk with the other illegal consumers to avail. It felt like a scene from an urban street. Our drug dealer had come into a big supply and needy users lined up quietly trying not to let their jones get the best of them before they could quietly slip away from wherever they had come to get their fix. And in some ways, raw milk is illegal unless you can weave your way through the complex matrix of food safety regulations the government has created that keeps most farmers and consumers confused about real food.

Even after a month or so of my husband bringing raw milk home from these pick ups, forwarding me emails from the farmer on the successful health inspections they passed, I still felt myself avoiding it in the fridge, thinking it suspicious nonetheless. Not being familiar with its smell I was unsure I would know when it was spoiled. Despite the fact that this milk met my commitment to eating locally, and sustainably from food that is raised humanely, I still couldn’t even bring myself to partake of the cheese he made from this concoction.

Finally after getting badgered too many times because I was still buying milk in the store when there was already “milk” in the fridge, I decided to dig up the “raw truth” about raw milk. Like most things tied to the food system these days it is a matter of wading through corporate spin, urban myths, and getting to the real heart of the matter.

Here are a few things I found out:

• Did you know there is an Annual International Raw Milk Symposium? The 2nd one will be held April 10, 2010. Guess where….Wisconsin.

• What is raw milk? Cow's milk taken straight from animals fed only fresh, organic, green grass, rapidly cooled to around 36-38 degrees F., and bottled. Unpasturized and unhomogenized.
  

A few points on Raw Milk Safety

• Not all raw milk is the same. Look for raw milk from cows pastured on organic green grass their WHOLE lives for the best health benefits to you. Any food can be contaminated depending on how it is produced, packaged and handled.

• To get a “Raw for Retail” permit in Texas your milk is tested for at least three things:

• Standard Plate Count – Number of bacteria in milk, has a strong relationship with the keeping quality of milk and the cleanliness of the dairy; legal limit less than 20,000ppm
• Coliform Bacteria – used as an index of the level of sanitation and/or water quality employed in the handling and processing of milk and milk products; legal limit less than 10
• Somatic Cell Count – used as a parameter to detects udder health and milk quality; legal limit less than 750,000
  

• When kept at the optimal temperature of 36-38° F. (2.2-3.3°C.) you can expect fresh raw milk to last from 7-10 days. Higher temperatures allow the normally occurring lactobacilli to get busy making lactic acid, which gives soured milk its characteristically tangy taste and reduces its shelf life.

But don’t leave it to the government, or me, to make your decision for you, do your own research. Most agree that milk from cows fed a heavy grain diet must be pasteurized to kill bacteria harmful to humans. Know the source of your raw milk and how it was raised, fed, and handled. Start by checking out the information and resources on the website Raw Milk Facts: http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/

And thanks to Luke, whoever you are, for posting your school research project: Wisconsin by Luke: http://www.pocanticohills.org/usa99/wi.htm