Category: Ecology, Politics and Philosophy

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National Loneliness Epidemic and Farm Pizza Parties!

I’m a little obsessed with reading and telling friends about our national loneliness and social isolation epidemics and trying to figure out what to do about it. (Anyone want to make me our local anti-loneliness tsarina? I have thoughts!) But mostly, I’m soooooo thankful to live where we do, surrounded by people who like being around each other, enjoy talking to one another, and building meaningful connections so that when we go through hard times, we can rally for each other. And we do! We feel so lucky to be on South Whidbey and hope you do, too. The farm party always brings those sentiments to the surface.

For those of you who didn’t make it, we had a special guest give a quick talk at our party. She’s an acquaintance of mine, named Gina, who I knew 15 years ago when I lived in Portland. We were friends of friends and found ourselves at the same events now and then. Three years ago, after not being in touch since living in Portland, she mailed me a calendar of all the farm pizza parties she traveled to that year (she’d heard I had a farm).

Farm pizza parties are her very niche passion, which she details on an Instagram account under “Farmsthatgrowpizza.” She adores farm pizza events as they combine community, gathering on local farms, eating local food, and za! I messaged her on Instagram three weeks prior to our party to “invite her” (kind of jokingly, as she lives in Chicago, and we aren’t really in touch), she asked if I was bluffing to which I said no (but I had been bluffing just a little bit, if I’m to be perfectly honest), so she flew out from Chicago for the shindig. Hilarious! And incredible! She’s a wild one.

Gina makes connections everywhere she goes and is probably going to live forever because of it. The World Health Organization states that social isolation is a growing public health issue that “should be taken as seriously as smoking, obesity and sedentary lifestyles.” And “healthy networks of social connections provide powerful protective health effects, increasing odds of long-term survival by 50%.” May Gina be an inspiration to us all! Farm pizza parties forever!

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What Makes a Farm a Farm?

What’s a farm, anyhow?

We just went to Remlinger Farm in Carnation for a concert this past weekend. Despite the bucolic landscape and old-timey signage, not a lot of crops could be found during our stroll of the land. It seems that they primarily run a music venue and an amusement park while using their historic name to brand a lot of value-added goods and junk food in their little market store. So, are they still a farm? Okay, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re still growing crops, but the example raises a bigger question.

When is a farm an actual farm and when it is just evoking farmy feelings? As farmers, we hear the word ‘farm’  tossed around in some dubious contexts. Is a historic farm that now just sells tickets to hay rides and corn mazes still a farm? On the other side of the scale, are nature-loving people with a couple horses and big garden actually farmers? And if they’re not farmers, would you call their land a farm? The dilution of the meaning of farming into a plethora of other activities, both commercial and hobbyist, has potential impacts beyond the mere academic discussion of language.

The dictionary defines farm as:  (noun) “an area of land, together with a house and buildings, used for growing crops and/or keeping animals as a business” or (verb) “to make one’s living by growing crops or keeping livestock.” Good.

I think it’s important to keep food production at the center of the definition of farm for two main reasons. 1) Farmers deal with a specific set of technical and economic challenges that gardeners, equestrians, concert venues and other land use operations do not. Farming is often more challenging and riskier than these other operations and should not have to compete with non-farms for loans, grants and stipends. 2)  Many people have an overly romantic vision of what a farm is. This is largely because the farms they’ve visited are not actually farms but rather large swaths of land with maybe a barn and a couple cows.

The USDA defines a farm as the following. A farm is any place from which $1,000 or more of ag products are sold within a year. Island County uses a similar benchmark to qualify property in the Current Use program which provides a significant property tax reduction. These definitions are too lenient for me as they’re often as loop holes to gain tax breaks. I like the FSA requirements better which considers a mix of percent household income made from the land as well as labor hours.

Anyhow, we’re not trying to warp the English language to our personal desires, but it’s an interesting exercise to consider what we mean by farms and farming. Let’s work to keep food production central to our discussion of what farming is and should be.

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The Fallacy of Sunk Costs: Farm Addition

The Fallacy of Sunk Costs- Who’s into it?

Sometimes a benefit and other times a detriment of long farm days are the countless hours alone with one’s thoughts. A morning spent pruning tomatoes and dragging irrigation lines offers opportunity to practice deep breathing, mindfully listen to the sparrow songs or to stew on last night’s suboptimal conversation with your sister while mentally spiraling about foreign affairs. There’s time for it all!

We spend many moments with the gentle coo of the wind but also keep our brains stimulated with a wide assortment of podcasts. A few of us love “The Gray Area with Sean Illing.” This is a philosophy show that covers culture, politics, and other big conversation topics. I’m pretty sure it was here, I learned about one of my now favorite philosophical principle that comes in handy most farm days and in the rest of life, too. It’s called “The fallacy of sunk costs.” Anyone else a fan??

This concept expresses the mental error in one’s tendency to keep going on an endeavor just for the sake of finishing it. You’ve invested some time, money, and energy so you want to complete a task even if the costs of completing it outweigh the positives. It’s knowing when to cut losses and till in those overly weedy carrots, shrug your shoulders and leave the last 10% of the giant fruit tree unpruned or close the book you’re not loving and pick up something else. There’s nothing to gain by doing otherwise!

Every day, we look at our mammoth to-do list and decide what’s a priority and what just isn’t going to happen and not infrequently we kiss some hard work goodbye for the sake of future plantings and more vital tasks. Prioritization and letting go might be a farmer’s most important skills and are just nifty life talents, too, aiding in efficiency, time, productivity and happiness!

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Funding Cuts to Food and Farming

Boy, we get swept up in the breezy vibes of summer on Whidbey Island. Goss lake swims, farmers markets, crab pots and street dances. We’re all darn lucky to be here. But despite the glow, we feel compelled to highlight new and growing concerns about our local economical and agricultural resiliency. It seems that every week there is a new decision from Washington DC aimed at dismantling the way we feed ourselves.

Let’s start funding to critical food and farm programs. The budget and staffing cuts across nearly all agencies is pushing many small farmers, food banks and school gardens programs to the brink. With AmeriCorps cuts, our South Whidbey school gardens will no longer have the funding for their intern program. This limits the amount of food they can harvest for their meal program. Also, back in February, the administration put a freeze on most of the infrastructure grants awarded to small farms through the NRCS and cut an additional $3 billion in grants to climate-focused, regenerative farm programs.

These programs helped farms of all sizes promote sustainability through greenhouse gas reduction and carbon sequestration. (Luckily, some of this freeze on NRCS grants melted after much public outcry). Finally, cuts to the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System will impact how scientists study, maintain and distribute valuable seeds and plant germ to crop breeders. This impacts our ability to adapt to climate change.

What about Good Cheer food bank? As pandemic funding for food bank assistance phases out, food banks get double whammied by addition cuts to the Emergency Food Assistance Program ($500 million) and the Local Food Purchases Assistance program (another $500 million). Many small, diversified, first-generation farmers relied on these programs as an outlet for their produce.  It’s a triple whammy to food banks when you consider the skyrocketing need for these services. Potentially 130,000 Washingtonians lose their SNAP benefits as fallout of congress’ newly passed budget bill.

Zooming out, the hits keep coming for larger farms across the country. ICE raids on migrant farm communities are putting many crop producers on edge, especially growers that rely on hand labor. Many grain producers across the Midwest saw their business model evaporate overnight as USAID eliminated over $1 billion in foreign food aid. And while I’m not fan of GMO soybean production, I feel for the farmers who’s tight margins fell victim to the sweeping tariff regime. Now China and other countries are turning instead Brazil, where more soybean destruction means more Amazon deforestation.

Returning to Whidbey, we farmers rely on many other basic governmental services under attack. Severe cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service threaten our ability to plan for several weather and monitor climatic trends. Cuts to the USPS threaten our ability to run a mail order seed company. (We’ve already seen an increase in lost and misrouted parcels, costing us hundreds of dollars). And perhaps most devastating, the Big Beautiful Bill’s rollback of funding for green energy systems means more climate change. It also means more challenges to our fragile agricultural and ecosystems.

This is not a normal time, and sometimes it’s hard to see how we turn this ship around. We must all lean into this challenge…one seed, one dollar and one act of resistance at a time.

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Seed Terminology and Labels: Open-Pollinated, Non-GMO, Hybrids, and Such

Annual Seed Spiel…Okay, we’re revisiting an oldie but goodie this week: Seed terminology and the common misconceptions around labels. As a small seed company we pride ourselves on strictly selling only open-pollinated, non-GMO and certified-organic seeds. What the heck to these terms actually mean and are they related? Let’s start with “open-pollinated,” a term referring to the way the plant reproduces.

Open-Pollinated

As opposed to “hybrid” or “F-1” varieties, open-pollinated varieties (OPs) are genetically diverse populations that are free to cross-pollinate within themselves. No plant is a poster child for the variety. Every individual’s genetic make-up is slightly different due to the free-flow of pollen (similar most wild species). You can save seeds on open-pollinated plants and get something that resembles the variety. You just need to save from enough plants to get a good representation of the variety’s diversity.

Hybrids

Hybrids come from two in-bred parent lines crossed by breeders to create a particular set of plant traits in the offspring. Seed saved from these hybrid plants will revert back to a hodgepodge of their parent traits. They often don’t resemble the desired plant at all. This benefits the breeder and seed company by removing the farmer from the seed work. This forces farmers to purchase the hybrid seed every year.  Think of open-pollinated varieties as the free-love plants, and hybrids as highly arranged marriages. We mostly grow OPs on the farm (maybe 90%). Still, it’s hard to find good OP varieties for crops like cauliflower due to a century long neglect of classical plant breeding in favor of hybrid development. Open a Johnny’s seed catalog and almost every vegetable is a hybrid.

While some hybrid breeding techniques border on “soft-GMO” by some definitions, hybrid varieties can be produced and sold as Certified Organic. Hybrids aren’t bad, per se, but the industry focuses on these varieties to the detriment of our collective ability to grow, save, and adapt our own OP seeds.

GMO

Okay, what about GMO and Organic? GMO (genetically modified organism) refers to a plant that’s inserted with one or more genes to create new traits, often to confer herbicide resistance, viral resistance or insect tolerance. They are almost exclusively used in commodity crops produced on a huge scale (think soy, canola, cotton, corn, sugar beets). GMO seed can’t be certified-organic. If I buy a packet of GMO corn seed and grow it with the most ecological, practices possible, it still couldn’t sell that corn as Organic. Organic Seed must be GMO-free and produced under strict practices defined by the National Organic Program of the USDA.

Now here’s where it gets a bit tricky. Many varieties, both OPs and hybrids, are grown for years using conventional practices, (ie. plenty of synthetic fertilizers and herb/pesticides.) That seed could be grown out for a single generation in a certified-organic environment and be sold as Certified-Organic. As long as it’s not GMO, Certified Organic tells you nothing addition about that variety’s underlying genetics or past environment. Many Certified-Organic varieties actually don’t do that well in organic conditions because they were not bred for those conditions. Conversely, plenty of non-organic heirloom varieties will do great in organic conditions since they were bred over 100 years ago, in the absence of modern chemicals. Now that’s interesting, aint it?

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Reduced Tillage Musings

The quest to reduce tillage, reduce inputs and ultimately, reduce work, continues….

Patty ponders ways to reduce tillage.

Our soil management regime currently centers around planting annual cover crops in the fall. Usually this is a mix of a legumes and grasses which grow a bit in late Sept/Oct., rest through the cold, dark of winter and surge into growth in spring. They often reach 6 feet tall by May when they flower and become fibrous/carbonaceous.

Working material back into the soil so we can run a seeder through the dirt again is a big process. This entails grazing sheep, flail mowing, tilling, chisel plowing, perhaps tarping, tilling again, maybe raking or some combination. At minimum it’s a 6 week process that requires no less that 4 passes with the tractor per bed. It’s a ton of labor, fuel, and tractor wear and tear, but the worst is the amount of soil damage incurred in the process.

It’s a constant dance of building and destroying soil health, just to maintain status quo. I’m always scheming about how to streamline this process, or otherwise change it up without sacrificing the benefits gained from the cover crops (which are vast). One option is buying compost to maintain organic matter instead of growing cover crops, which doesn’t require mowing and tilling to incorporate. Unfortunately, compost is incredibly expensive to buy and labor intensive to spread. It also doesn’t capture carbon, prevent erosion, maintain soil biology (the rhizosphere of cover crops keeps the soil ecosystem happy through the winter) or suppress weed growth like cover crops do.

One interesting soil management strategy we’ll test next season is the use of live pathways.  First we’ll seed a field of, say, red clover in the fall and let it grow until the following spring. Then, we’ll mow the field and strip-till 4-ft wide beds every 7 feet, leaving permanent 3 ft-wide clover pathways between the beds. This field layout could theoretically last for years and hopefully won’t require planting and tilling of cover crop every season. The 4 ft beds will be fertilized, planted, and weeded like normal and then mowed after the crop is harvested. We’ll manage pathways with a 3 ft riding lawnmower which will shoot clover clippings out the side into the bed as a nitrogen-rich mulch. The following spring the bed will hopefully be re-established with a single pass with the rototiller.

Granted, I can foresee a millions ways things could go awry, but hey, it sounds cool on paper. We’ll try to keep you posted on results!

 

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It’s a Bird’s World

And…we’re home. We had a wonderful, whirlwind of a road trip to North Dakota and back. One of the perks for me (Nathaniel) was witnessing dozens of species of migratory birds not usually seen on Whidbey. The Montana and North Dakota grasslands, lakes and wetlands hosted thousands of ducks, shorebirds, song birds and raptors: Golden Eagles, nighhawks, rails, avocets, meadowlarks, buntings, bobolinks, and so many more.

Birds take up much of the conversational space here on the farm. Brian and I (and increasingly Annie) are avid birders. We consider these winged friends an integral part of the farm community and ecosystem. We all love scoping the harriers, eagles and hawks soaring across the fields and identifying the many sparrows, wrens and finches that perch and sing in our crops. Last year we added a few bird boxes to our fence lines. These were immediately adopted by migratory tree swallows. (The kestrel box was unfortunately hijacked by the invasive starlings.) This year the Cedar Waxwings have begun foraging for berries in our maturing hedgerows and warblers discovered our fruit trees.

But despite their endless majesty the birds often pose significant management issues on the farm. The biggest headache is caused by the finches (house finches and goldfinches) and their voracious appetite for our seed crops. If not preemptively excluded with massive 150′ x 50′ bird nets, finches will completely wipe out a bed of bok choi, borage, spinach or kale seed within a few days.

Our grass-nesting savannah sparrows also create a mowing conundrum. While we’d prefer to mow in April or May to prevent the dandelion from setting seed, the sparrows don’t reliably fledge their young until mid-late June. Mowing any earlier can destroy their nests and eggs or outright kill their chicks which haven’t yet learned to fly. And finally, the killdeers. These rowdy plovers build their camouflage nests in our fallow spring fields, at the beginning of the busy tractor season. We spend hours scouting for nesting sites (which are often revealed by the screaming nearby parents who fake broken wings to lure us away from the nest) and marking them with bright flags before discing, mowing, or plowing a field.

Despite the few annoyances, we thoroughly enjoy the diversity of bird species that forage, nest, sing, shelter or just fly over our fields. (FYI – we are strong advocates of Bird-Be-Safe collars for those of you with outdoor kitties. They have significantly cut down on Patty’s bird kills, AND they are supremely fashionable!)

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What’s up with Real Organic?

Many of you already know this, but to some of you this may come as a surprise, so brace yourselves for some news.  It might blow your mind…. You ready?? Ok… don’t say, I didn’t warn you… Here it comes —  the   Organic  label   is   imperfect.  Did I hear a gasp out there in the crowd? You, in the back, are you going to be ok?  We’ll check back in on you in a little bit.  So. Why do I speak such blasphemy? Well, my friends, let me tell you.

Back in 1995, the National Organic Standards Board defined the term organic as “an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain, and enhance ecological harmony.” Sadly, in recent years, Big Ag convinced the USDA to ignore the main element of what it means to be organic— the soil! Now, the organic labels allows input dependent hydroponic warehouses and confined animal operations. This leaves consumers in the dark regarding how and where their food was produced.

The organic label still prevents the use of synthetic herbicides and pesticides and encourages at least some amount of crop rotation. This provides customers more confidence in what they’re buying than unlabeled goods can.  We still reach out for the organic products in the grocery when we can’t talk directly to the producer we’re buying from.  However, all this watering down of “organic” has resulted in some new movements in the farming world that bring us soil lovers new energy and hope.

One exciting movement is the recently formed Real Organic Label.  Organic farmers and advocates started Real Organic to push the National Organic Program back to its roots in the soil. In the meantime it serves to distinguish pasture-raised and soil-grown products from other organic goods. It’s a small, but growing movement with a lot of sustainable ag thought leaders at its helm.

The other thrilling move in the sustainable farming universe is one towards “regenerative” ag practices. This is like the Real Organic folks, as it aims to tend and care for soil.  The Regenerative Ag movement is working to address climate change by promoting farming practices that sink carbon back into the earth. These approaches include planting perennials, cover crops, limiting tillage, rotating animals, and increasing plant diversity. I’m sure Nathaniel will nerd out on all of this in greater detail in a future newsletter.

Check out the new, beautifully produced Netflix Documentary “Kiss the Ground.” Woody Harrelson narrates through a compelling cast of real farm characters who aim to reverse climate change by restoring soil. It highlights a fellow named Gabe Brown who farms outside of my hometown of Bismarck, ND. He farms in such an innovative manner that he’s named one of the 25 more influential ag leaders in the US (#NDpride!).  This flick was stellar enough to get my ND teacher sister back into composting. She texted me repeatedly, “I’m so inspired.” Aww.  It’s worth 90 minutes of your time and the ideas it holds are worth all of us taking seriously.

What are you waiting for? Get thee to Netflix! And then to your compost bin and beyond!
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A Patent on…Pinkness?

Dow, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, BASF….what do these company names connote to you? You probably know them as some the world’s largest producers of chemicals, from glyphosate to alka seltzer. These companies, along with a few others, own hundreds of other smaller companies.  As a group, they are responsible for the majority of chemicals produced on the planet. These chemicals define how we grow food, manage our health, and run our industries. But did you know these companies also pose one of the greatest risks to biodiversity threatening the worlds food supply?

In addition to producing the herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides that commonly drench fields, these companies are increasingly altering and patenting the species and varieties on which these chemicals are sprayed. The playbook often goes as follows. Take a common variety that has been grown, saved and selected on for thousands of generations. Use modern GM tech to alter a single gene or two among the plant’s tens of thousands. Apply for a utility patent which claims you’ve invented a novel product. Force this product on the world’s farmers who now have no financial choice but to stay on this technological treadmill. Use patent law to prevent other farmers, gardeners, independent breeders and universities from saving, sharing, and selling the seed or using the genetic material to breed new varieties for the public commons.

If this sounds evil, it’s because it is. While in many cases patents are used to incentivize and reward creativity, this phenomenon does the opposite. By locking up more genetic material in the hands of multinational corporations, intellectual property laws prevent hundreds of thousands of farmers and breeders the opportunity to use this gift of nature, this public technology, to further develop varieties that will be important to the future of our species.

We’ve heard from many organic seed companies and university breeders that are feeling the chill. But the problem gets even nuttier. Now, many of these companies are applying for patents over entire traits. These include pinkness in tomatoes, long necks in broccoli or even, get this…drought resistance! These are traits often governed by the interaction of hundreds of genes in ways nobody completely understands (let alone created).  It remains to be seen how well some of these more egregious patents will actually get approved. Or more importantly, hold up in court if the company actually sues for infringement.

The issue really hit home for us local organic seed producers when another small local seed company received a letter from one of the companies mentioned above. It was essentially a soft threat, stating that they were in pursuit of patenting several broad, vague plant traits, similar to the ones I just listed. A more formal way of saying: you little pesky seed companies better think twice before carrying any varieties that also have those traits, cause they’re ours! Oof. Unfortunately, this is all going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I think the best way to counter this trend is to decentralize the seed sector so completely, with hundreds of thousands more breeders, seed savers, regional seed companies, seed libraries, etc, that such patents could never be feasibly enforced. I like to think we’re playing a tiny role in this project.
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Regenerative Agriculture and Rewilding Farms

There’s been quite the buzz lately about Regenerative Agriculture. This is a new wave of farming practices that goes beyond the organic standards set by the National Organic Program, toward a truly more sustainable, ecological type of agriculture. As the climate continues to change beyond recognition, the world’s topsoil continues to erode. Wild ecosystems continue to get bulldozed into industrial monocultures. It’s becoming clear to an increasing number of farmers, consumers and political leaders that something drastic needs to change. Business as usual may continue to feed increasing numbers of people in the short term, but will precipitate ecological collapse in the not-so-long term.

The list of necessary changes to our global agriculture are endless. One area of focus must be the transformation of marginal, low-productive farmland back into diverse, carbon-sequestering habitat. Areas with minuscule rainfall, rocky soils, short growing seasons, etc., would, in many cases, be better left to regenerate into their former forests, prairie and scrublands.

Back in the mid-century, as Agriculture’s get-big-or-get-out mentality compelled farmers to plant “fence line to fence line.” We lost nearly all of our remaining woodlands, hedgerows, bogs and prairies east of the Rockies.  It’s imperative that we restore these features of our native landscape. Any small losses in yields as a result of this restoration could be offset by a combination of smarter, regenerative farming practices. These must focus on soil building and polycultures. Couple these practices with smarter national policies and subsidies that incentivize healthy food over ethanol, corn syrup and beef. These changes would help stabilize the climate and provide critical habitat and ecosystem services without significantly diminishing global food yields.

On Whidbey Island, our land management could use improvement. There are few productive farms outside of the Coupeville prairie and vanishing little healthy, old growth forests or wetlands. Instead we have a steady increase in 5-acre parcels with a single house, fenced lawns, and perhaps a single horse or cow. If we are serious about both fighting climate change AND feeding a growing population, we need to be smarter with our scarce land resource. I’d like to see most of our rural “homesteads” transition either into actual food production or back into native forestland. Future development should be concentrated in existing urban areas or other marginal lands.

On our farm, we inherited quite a bit of rocky, unproductive pasture. We could put this toward grazing sheep or pastured poultry. This would likely be difficult to incorporate into our already over-complicated business model. Also, we like taking weekends now and again, which animals don’t easily allow. Instead, we hope to return this area into a mix of carbon-sinking perennials: orchards, hedgerows, and native trees. This week we experimented by seeding a native wildflower mix on a 1000-sq ft patch of dirt we’d prepped for the past 6 months. (Check out https://northwestmeadowscapes.com if you’re interested in establishing some rare and hard-to-find wildflower and grass species on your property.) This winter we intend to expand our hedgerows area and plant more fruit trees.