"The Omnivore's Dilemma" book review

I very much enjoyed this book by the author of "The Botany of Desire" (which I also highly recommend).

The Omnivore's Dilemna is written in three sections. The first covers industrial agriculture, most specifically corn and the meat animals that eat it. The second is organic agriculture, starting with the integrated polyculture small farm, then looking at industrial organic. The last section is hunting and gathering, with some musing on vegetarianism.

The first section was the most interesting and illuminating for me. I find Polson's best stuff is looking at industrial production; he's about the one one I've read who approaches these topics with an open mind (I'm reminded of the potatoes chapter in The Botany of Desire). The problem facing farming is that it has become business, and our current paradigm requires growth; a mere 2% growth is standing still. Using hybrid corn varieties, lots of chemical inputs, and now GMO, we have increased production amazingly. But that's only half the problem: the population grows slowly in the US, and we can only increase our eating so much. One result is we are getting fat. We also eat more processed food, since we pay more for the same calories in a highly processed form.

There's a lot more on how miserable cows and chickens are, and all the industrial processing for cereal, etc. and how the system is systematically set up to stick it to the actual farmer - but for this I'd recommend the book "fast food nation" and the film "The future of food".

The second section starts with his visit to Salatin's famous pastured poultry setup. I find his enthusiasm about Salatin's integrated small farm to be a little over-the-top; I don't really like cheerleaders, honest skeptism is more interesting and educational. But I agree it's a great system. The discussion of industrial organic and the evolution and co-opting of the organic movement is also excellent; I knew that it wasn't all Farmer John with his hoe, but laser-leveled fields so specialized tractors can automatically cut hundreds of acres of baby greens is farther than I had imagined.

I don't hunt, nor am I a big fan of mushrooms, which may be one reason why the last chapter didn't do much for me - it was all driving hundreds of miles to hunt wild pig and find gourmet mushrooms (chanterelles and morels) and prepare grand cuisine. Perhaps you can justify it by his allusion to this being a meal from the forest, rather than from annuals (corn) or perennials (grasses eaten by cows). But he doesn't seem to notice in his all home grown or gathered meal that he's got wheat in his bread and pasta and garlic and sage (perhaps he grew them, he didn't say) and butter and pepper, etc, etc. All together it comes across as elistist and irrelevant. It's deeply satisifying to eat a meal all of food you grew yourself, it gives a feeling of connection to the land that can't be described, but while his meal was doubtless far finer than the simple meals we eat, our meals are much more real.

The discussion of vegetarianism, speaking as a ex-vegetarian who raises her own meat, was very well done. There is a dilemna between caring for animals and eating them, and I especially like this quote:

"Several years ago, the English critic John Berger wrote an essay, 'Why Look at Animals?' in which he suggested that the loss of everyday contact between ourselves and animals -- and specifically the loss of eye contact -- has left us deeply confused about the terms of our relationship to other species. That eye contact, always slightly uncanny, had provided a vivid daily reminder that animals were at once crucially like and unlike us; in their eyes we glimpsed something unmistakably familiar (pain, fear, tenderness) and something irretrievably alien. Upon this paradox people built a relationship in which they felt they could both honor and eat animals without looking away."

We do feel honor for our animals and appreciation for them, in spite of having cared for them and then having had them killed. The sheep butchering is a solemn moment. And somehow eating them does not seem wrong or bad.

...

Besides my impressions, there's another blog review of this book I recommend; it has a rather different perspective: http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2006/06/omnivores-dilemma.html

Lots of work, not so much produce

Spring is really here, and the warm weather makes me realize just how far behind I am! I don't have time to think, never mind blog... but here are some random garden observations.

I started almost 300 tomato plants (for about 18 people). Previous years it was in the 100 range. 300 is over the edge where the transplant-twice system works, and with so many people and so many varities organization is key. I'm organized, but not organized enough. I started starting on March 1 and the last ones were started on April 5. The early starts are nice and big, the late march ones are wimpy, the april 5 ones are teeny; although it's still some days short of the traditional tomato-safe day which is May 15. But I think for me, first week of March is ideal.

I ran out of pots (of course), so I tried newspaper pots again. Last time I wasn't too impressed. But this time I had lots in newspaper pots and pushed them close together, and the tomatoes did very well - I think since the newspaper stayed wet. The roots came right through the pots! I don't really like the official potmaker - I still need to tape the bottom about half the time. So any old jar will do just as well.

This year, like last year, I didn't have enough onions started. I started seeds in flats as early as January. Some of the early plantings were last years seed and didn't germinate well (onion seeds are like that). I think I need to start in December or something, though, if they are going to be large and robust by April.

"longkeeper" tomatoes lasted until April 1, at which time I said forget it and gave the rest to the chickens. Amazing.

For some reason the earwigs are late this year, and the chard is nice looking. We're eating a lot of chard. Well, to be honest, we're eating a lot of pizza, since we don't have time to cook :-) but when we do cook, there's just greens (and frozen, canned or dried stuff). There are a few potatoes left (getting sprouty) and some squash. We've had a couple of stalks of asparagus, but our bed is still young and the first shoots are like knitting needles (size 5). The first non-leafy-green I generally get is kohlrabi, which is just the stem of a green; we might be just a couple of weeks away for that. It takes forever for the carrots and beets to be ready and the peas are still only about 6" high. And there's rhubard, but that's not a proper vegetable.

Busy, busy - life as a dairymaid

Spring is still a couple of weeks away, but it seems like I'm already way, way behind. Behind on seed starting, tree planting, digging, you name it, I'm behind. I blame it on the goats - milking two goats and coping with the milk takes time - half an hour twice a day, plus making cheese (even with other things done in the elapsed time, it's at least an hour per gallon of milk/pound of cheese), then the laundry and dishwasher to keep the milking materials clean; it's a 10 to 15 hour a week part-time job. We are getting 4-6 pounds, twice a day; so about 9 gallons a week. We do enjoy the fresh milk; we used to go through about a gallon a week. Having lots of yogurt is nice; it's thinner than store bought yogurt, as expected (they do all sorts of tricky things to make yogurt thicker, gelatin and modified food starch and all that). It makes great lassi, though. You can drain it to make a type of cheese, but it's easier to just make cheese in the first place.

I make a lot of chevre. It's very easy; just add culture and rennet, let it sit for 24 hours, then drain. It's rather dull by itself, we try adding it to quiche and pasta sauce, but it remains plain. It really needs to be made into cheesecake :-). To get over the plainness, I've been experimenting adding garlic, herbs and things to it; Jay's a big fan of the garlic. The other type of cheese I can make reliably (well, usually - todays isn't looking good - if you forget to add the lipase before the rennet, just give it up...) is feta. I have been experimenting with a cheddar recipe; I'm not happy with the way my cheese press works, so I've not been even trying to get something I can age for 6 months! But every so often, my not-pressed-enough, lightly aged cheese is really delicious. I'm rather taken aback when I cut into one of the many rounds in the fridge and find a tangy, creamy, delicious cheese that works on a sandwich.

I used to make mozzarella a lot, but I haven't done it lately. I'd need to find time to make lasagna to use it up...

Last year I tried making butter from cream from our goat's milk. Goat butter is pure white. It also has very little flavor. It was like crisco, and there didn't seem much point in it for all the work. But the chevre often has a buttery flavor, so I added some chevre culture so some cream (just spooned off the top of the 6 quarts that went into the unlucky batch of feta), left it for a few hours, and the resulting butter actually has a buttery flavor! It's still stark white, but we can learn to live with that.

Permaculture

I first heard about Permaculture around 2000. I actually got the idea when I was thinking about planting my first fruit trees, and getting my first chickens - and the loop between the chickens eating the fruit and the poop being fertilizer sprang into my mind. As I went around telling everyone about this, I was pointed to permaculture and Bill Mollison's "Introduction to Permaculture". I think I photocopied half the book. I tried some of the ideas, mostly with rather indifferent success, and I didn't think about it too much.

I finally took the official PDC (permaculture design course) last year, in 2005. This did change my perspective quite a lot.

Since then, I've had some seemingly endless discussions about what permaculture actually is. It's kind of like arguing with myself before I took the course . Some things about permaculture, or at least the culture surrounding permaculture, really bothers a lot of people. And some of the techniques sound great, but it's unclear how practical they really are if you just want to feed yourself and others. And I can understand all this, since these same thing used to bother me. Now I can ignore the sillier suggestions, and ignore the "culture", and just apply permaculture and use the skills, in as many ways as I can.

Permaculture is a way of looking at the problems and working on solutions that are nature-derived and inspired (water flows downhilll, bugs eat plants); rather than the rather determinisitic, authoritarian way that is embedded in our culture (the water will flow where I want it, or else! Kill all the bugs, no matter what the cost!). There is a simple ethic; and some principles (between 10 and 50, depending on who you listen to) that are useful thinking points (like each element should perform multiple functions, or edges are the most diverse and productive parts). That's what I use of permaculture. There are also any number of ideas and techniques, and many people seem to associate these techniques with Permaculture and insist these techniques are the by-all and end-all of it. But if that was all, well, they are fine and grand ideas but they must take quite a bit of tuning to get the technique actually working right.

It's been a year since my course, I was helping with registration for the 2006 course that's started, which has got me thinking about what differences the course might have actually made, on the ground. Most things are about the same, frankly - the biggest change was involvement in community, we met a number of interesting people who have similar interests, which is wonderful. I started a website for the local permaculture group (the siskiyou permaculture resources group): http://www.sprg.info; and a yahoo mailing list (sprg). I've tried a few more techniques, with indifferent success :-) Planted a lot of trees and plants in hedgerows. I feel more strongly about eating diverse plants and that weeds may be edible too. More encouraged to leave areas wild, rather than neatening everything up. I examine and care about various individual weeds. Some has been validation and deeper understanding of why some of the things we're doing already is good. The most useful part has been in thinking about the layout issues - deciding where to put the garden, where to put rainwater cachement tanks, how to handle drainage ditches, is easier with some design criteria.

And I'm more aware of this particular place, of Fairweather Farm, as an entirely unique place, not like any place described in any book, so I should observe carefully and consider what I see and experience as more important than what I read in books or find on the web. Who knows our soil, who knows the wind here, who really understand how dry it gets in summer? Even other parts of Ashland are quite different in soil and water and wind. We all have to observe our own gardens, and learn from them, there is no book or teacher that can replace that.