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.

The Future of Food

There's a documentary out called "The Future of Food", which someone loaned to us recently. While I'd known about the creeping dangers of GMO and agribusiness, this documentary really makes it clear how systematic and organized the system is: the government, the courts, and Monsanto and the rest of agribusiness are setting up a system that will make it virtually impossible for farmers to not live indebted or owned by big chemical companies, and give us no choice about what's available for the consumer to eat. I have a renewed mistrust of any bit of food that I didn't grow myself; organic food is better, but it's still probably not a good idea to trust anything. And what about eating when I'm away from home? I don't eat fast food, but even at nicer restaurants: what's really in the corn chips or the tofu?

It seems to be much worse in the US than other countries; other countries have wisely rejected or required labelling on GMO foods. I think we are so out of touch with where food comes from, and have had our taste buds dulled if not killed outright by fast food (I read recently that one quarter of all meals in the US are fast food), that we are more vulnerable to the transformation of our food supply into something that does not fill the needs of healthy support for our bodies, nor healthy support for the land, and utterly ignores the future in favor of making a little cash today.

I strongly recommend everyone try to see this documentary, although it's pretty depressing. We all need to be aware of what we eat and vote with our food dollars against this evil.

Scaling up the garden

Our climate is mild enough that we can grow a lot of vegetables outside over the winter without much in the way of protection. But mere lack of single-digit temps doesn't mean that we get enough sunshine in winter to actually allow plants to grow and for example put out new leaves; what's there in mid-October is as much as you get. If your aim is to grow all your own vegetables, you have to make sure to plant what seems like an unreasonable quantity. For the average person (well, at least for me), 6 kale plants seems like an awful lot of kale - and it is, in April. But in December, you can eat them to the ground in a week or two, and then it's store bought veggies for the rest of the winter. In the abundance of midsummer, it's very hard to think ahead to the cold dark days where that kale plant will be precious, and make sure there's a nice, rich spot for them all that won't get too soggy in the rains.

This problem of scale goes for things like onions and potatoes - many (most) people have no idea how many onions or potatoes or garlic they actually eat in a year, and how much that is; yet if you want to grow your own, you need to think on that scale. And that means some awareness of how much you planted last year, so you can tell if you should plant the same next year, or if you need to plant more. And of course, even then, things change from year to year - our potato crop was low this year, my guess is that after replanting tubers for some years we have built up viruses. So new seed potatoes this spring (from Ronningers - organic heirlooms from a family business).
And we are already getting low in potatoes to eat - we're having to eat All-Blue potatoes (which did very well) in the chicken noodle soup, and the potato pancakes, making some dishes look a little surreal (they really are blue - very funky with carrots). We're also low on onions (I saw this coming in June, but the later planted onions did poorly - and interplanting with tomatoes didn't work, the tomatoes ate the onions for breakfast). Fortunately, we do have what appears to be a vast amount of acorn and sweet dumpling squash (from just two hills!). We also have plenty of garlic. Oh, and the jerusalem artichokes, there's no end of those . All we need, really, is the right recipes.

I'm not sure if assuring an even stream of vegetables, without the feast-or-famine, is even possible when gardening, or if someday I'll have that kind of skill. Partly it may be accepting eating the less appealing foods when the good stuff is gone (like those tasteless tomatoes ripening in the pantry, "Longkeeper", and the jerusalem artichokes). But thinking ahead, learning how much you eat, and planting it in spite of how much it looks, is a set of hurdles to overcome or skills to acquire in the process of taking control of your food supply.

Sheep-to-lamb

First: don't read this if you're squeamish.

This is a garden blog site, but one thing we grow in our gardens is sheep, which we eat. Now that the garden is resting, and there's not enough grass left in the pastures for all the sheep, it's butchering time. We have it done; cutting up meat is quite a skill. But when the mobile butcher normally takes away the "guts" for discard, we try to use as much of them as we can; it honors the sheep to allow him to provide more value to us. At least, this is how we think. To a ex-vegetarian who's never been much interested in "variety meats" it's a real challenge; I have enough trouble with roasts, never mind hearts. So there's a lot of parts that still don't get used (tongue?), but we do our best.

First, sausage casings are really made of well-cleaned intenstines. It's laborious but not difficult to clean them. I have a new sausage stuffer, so we made some sausages (defrosted some ground rooster), and fried them up. Amazing to make your own sausages - lamb casings make small sausages, the diameter of a thumb - and the sausages look good and are delicious!

Then, haggis, though I chickened out from using the actual stomach of the sheep. The stomach is impressive to see but not appealing to use for food. Proper haggis contains the liver, heart, and lung, along with oatmeal, onion and spices, and steamed. Traditionally it's cooked inside the stomach, but I used a foil-covered bowl. It's not bad, but not that great, either; a fluffy, spicy, dark colored meatloaf with a liver favor. But I don't like meatloaf that much - Jay does, and he liked the haggis a lot.

Last year we sauteed liver and onions, and used heart and liver in shepherd's pie, both of which were fine. We still have a liver and a heart left, and four kidneys. Steak and kidney pie?

Another thing that comes from sheep butchering is the skins. We salt and dry them, then send them off to the Amish to be tanned, and get back sheepskins with long, wavy fleece, very soft.

I wish sheep were made entirely from steaks and chops, but they aren't, and eating meat means taking responsibility; for us "variety meats" are free food that would otherwise be thrown away (commercially they mainly go into pet food), it's highly nutritious, and most traditional cultures have highly esteemed these parts.

Our deep thanks to Baa-52 and his half brother.

Early tomatoes - variety trial report

It's time so start tomato retrospective (as I clear out the dead tomato plants - one of my least favorite chores). We plant a large variety of tomatoes, and usually we take careful records of which ones people like and their opinions. This year was so hectic we only have good data in the category of early tomatoes. But that was a good trial.

The early tomatoes tested this year were Stupice, 4th of July, Polar baby, Silvery Fir Tree, Early Pick, Oregon Spring, and Red Robin - all red tomatoes. The best find was Polar Baby - wow, it's early. It's unclear which of 4th of July, Stupice and Early Pick we'll grow; Early Pick and 4th of July have better flavor, but Stupice is open pollinated. Silvery Fir Tree and Oregon Spring are out. Red Robin only if I'm inspired to experiment more in containers - it wasn't really worth it.

The Data:

(note on dates: we had an exceptionally late, wet, spring this year - lots of rain in May and June. With our cold nights and clay soil, it takes tomatoes a while to get started and most production is in August, September and October. Official last frost is April 30, locals say May 15 is tomato-safe, but last couple of years we've had killing frosts in late May. This year we had no frosts after April 25 or so. And the killing frosts in late October were right on time - though we were spared the usual regular light frosts earlier in the month.)

Stupice (OP/Peter's Seed)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 4/30
first ripe 7/20
Small red salad type. Very sweet ("too sweet"). Productive for a long time.

4th of July (Hybrid/Burpee)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 4/30
first ripe 7/20
Small red salad type. Great flavor, much more flavor than stupice but not as sweet ("too sweet"). Productive for a long time. tends to crack.

Polar baby (OP/Peter's seed)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 4/30
first ripe 7/2 (maybe before, I wasn't checking!)
entered in county fair 7/16; won first in "red tomatoes"
Very small plant. Tomatoes were small, red, sweet but not much flavor - only worth it since they are remarkably early, several weeks before any others. Gave up producing in midsummer.

Silvery Fir Tree (OP/containerseeds.com)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 5/14
first ripe in august
Medium-small tomatoes, larger than salad type. Nice foliage. Terrible flavor in our trail. Not productive, had disease problems.

Early Pick (Hybrid/Burpee)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 5/14
first ripe 7/29
Medium-small tomatoes, larger than salad type. Lots of flavor: more flavor but less sweet than stupice.

Oregon Spring (OP/Pinetree)
seeds started early March; planted in garden 4/30
first ripe mid-july
Medium-small tomatoes, larger than salad type. more acidic, less flavor, consistency not great.

Red Robin (OP/containerseeds.com)
seeds started early March; planted in pots in late April
First ripe late June
entered in county fair 7/16, won first in "cherry tomatoes".
Very small, compact, designed for containers.
In container outside: very small, very flavorful tomatoes. In greenhouse: much larger, watery and bland. Haven't tested in the ground.