farming

Much has changed since we moved into our new place (and in the immense gap between posts), both locally and globally. We welcomed our new baby daughter in October, a great joy. In January I started my PhD in Systems Engineering in earnest and am almost halfway through a year of full-time study. If approved, my research will focus on complexity theory and energy availability and perhaps even have important conclusions applicable to Peak Oil.

Around the farm, much has changed. We’re entering our second growing season here and are much better prepared than last year. I’m focusing on no-till methods and more than doubled the number of beds from last year. We are trying to focus on rare varieties and unusual crops for a local market niche.

Many more perennials are in the ground now. Including the few things here when we moved in, we now have on the order of 60 berry bushes (cranberry, blueberry, raspberry, tayberry, loganberry, boysenberry), 6 apple trees, 2 peach trees, 1 apricot, 1 nectarine, 3 pear, 2 sweet cherry, 2 hardy kiwi, 2 paw-paw, 2 filberts, 1 elderberry, 3 grapes, 60 strawberry plants, 20 asparagus crowns, and many wild raspberries and blackberries. After gaining inspiration from attending a class at a friend’s farm taught by permaculture designer Mark Stephenson, I plan on adding quite a few more food forest elements, including nut trees, currants, grapes, and filberts.

Our few chickens have lived in a prototype mobile coop for a year, and in the next few weeks we’ll be adding 15-20 turkeys (Narraganset and Narraganset/Bourbon mix) and 20 more chickens (10 Dominiques and 10 Speckled Sussex) which will means I’ll need two more mobile coops. Goats and sheep are still down the line, but our plans for them are developing.

I’m starting to experiment with grains, with the primary goal being for animal feed since it is such a pain to get things like wheat cook-ready (although we’ll still do some of that for ourselves). We have a 20 x 20 patch of winter wheat going right now, a smaller (and less prepared) patch of spring wheat, and buckwheat will go in soon.

Infrastructure-wise, we now have a hay loft, a hand pump for the well, a movable poultry processing stand, and a wood shed. Inside, we have added insulation, installed a wood stove, and we are updating other parts. I have permanently parked the (craptastic) mower, and switched to the scythe full-time. (Note, however, I still will have a farmer friend bale the back couple acres). I’m also building a respectable collection of old saws, and will try to put them to the test this year.

While I believe very strongly that these adaptations could make the difference between surviving and thriving – or merely surviving—the decline ahead, much of the motivation for these efforts is to show that folks with no prior experience, a full-time job, and a full-time family can make these changes. Changes that reduce consumption precipitously, reduce carbon footprint, improve health, reduce bills all around, and produce happy kiddos – without unplugging from society.

Change is coming. The trick is to change yourself before things are changed for you.

In terms of post-apocalyptic prosperity, our evolving community is richer than we could have dreamed. An additional farmer friend recently bought a small farm just down the road from us, a friend who “gets it”, who grows sustainably, and is extremely gifted at it. This is in addition to our close friends doing the same thing nearby. In fact, within a mile of our place we now have 6 sustainably-minded friends across 4 acreages besides ourselves. Add to this the couple next door to us, one of whom is chef and owner of a high-class organic restaurant, with whom we’ve established an (only half-jokingly) “eggs for wine” exchange; the nearby skilled carpenter and his family (we have yet to meet); and now a much larger-scale operation by a PO-minded person discussed in this article:

From Krehbiel’s perspective, the world is not a stable place. The carbon emissions at the root of global warming are causing increasingly chaotic weather patterns that are likely to jeopardize centralized farming practices and food supply chains across the country, she said. At the same time, the oil dependent economy can no longer rely on the availability of cheap fuel for food and water transport due to the depletion of accessible oil supplies around the world, which is at peak oil. While for some, these facts may be a vague future concern, Krehbiel doesn’t want to wait around for hardship to settle in. For her, right now is the time to act, and putting some fervor into it wouldn’t hurt, either.

Sometimes I feel you can’t swing a cat around here without hitting 5 folks aware of the energy collapse –- or without getting tackled for feline harassment. They love cats here.

Of course, we’re still surrounded by neighbors who meticulously mow their 6 acre lots at least once per week (and call the sheriff on us for not doing the same –- we’re zoned agricultural, people!), others who think letting their dogs terrorize the countryside (and our chickens) is a good time, and a multitude of chemical-laden monoculture fields.

But all that will fade away with time – leaving our strengthening sustainable sub-community filled with some wonderful folks.

To paraphrase an old saying: An egg here, a zucchini there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

We moved in to our new house (5 acres!!!) in the middle of May. This meant that we didn’t have time to get any gardens ready, but we still did manage to get some things in the ground. PE is working on some lovely permaculture gardens for next spring that we will post pictures of soon! There are already 2 apple trees, 2 pear trees, lots of black walnut trees, and some wild blackberries on our property. Other than that we have a fairly clean slate to work with! As our friends say, we have less work because there isn’t anything to undo :)

After the last post about taking care of our friend’s chickens, the same friend decided that she had the itch to incubate some eggs! She decided that she was going to get Araucanas (they lay light blue eggs) and asked us if we wanted some. We decided that with our new knowledge of how easy chickens can be that we would go for it. We should be getting them sometime in November and are really excited about it! PE junior is also quite excited, he really liked going over and taking care of the chickens (including throwing food down on the ground for them to scratch).

Plant something: 7 tomato plants (from a friend who had extra) using a cool method (direct planting into sod) that some of our favorite CSA farmers taught us! 2 chocolate bell pepper plants and 2 yellow bell pepper plants using the same method. In our fall garden that I made using 3 boards and lots of organic soil (that I bought because I was itching to get things planted!) we have beans, peas, lettuce (several varieties), carrots, radishes, marigolds, and a really small variety of corn. We have 3 whiskey barrels that I planted grape tomatoes (a huge hit with my 2 year old and his friends!), basil (purple and regular), sage, parsley, and spearmint.

Harvest something: Tons of tomatoes, lots of bell peppers, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, basil, sage, parsley, and spearmint. PE has been experimenting with some hay cutting and putting it up in our small barn.

Preserve something: I did several types of tomato preservation (before we got late season blight ARGH!). A couple of times I made a big pot of tomato sauce for dinner with carrots, zucchini, etc. (from the great farmers market that we have in town) and froze the rest in ball jars for later. I also made salsa and canned it, cold pack whole tomatoes (which I did not like the results of, but I will wait to make a decision if I will do it again until I eat them!) green tomato salsa, and green tomato chili sauce. We went to a friend’s house the day she was working on canning a deliciously wonderful smelling tomato sauce (the kind that baked in the oven for 4 hours!) and helped her so in exchange we got a jar of the sauce. We also made tomato paste using her cool hand powered food mill which she later brought all 3 jars over for us! She calls it PE junior sauce because he was such a good helper making it :) I also went to a friend’s farm with PE and his parents and PE junior and we picked 32 pints of raspberries! So lots and lots of jam in July. It is so good on fresh baked bread. I also made basil olive oil and froze it. The next thing for me is canning all of the pears from our trees! I’m excited to try out some different recipes and figure out what we like. I also need to get the rest of our herbs in and dry them/make something from all of the basil (mmm pesto!).

Waste not: Our usual compost and recycling. We took all of the CFL’s (that we bought we aren’t stealing from the landlord!) from the house we were renting and brought them to our new house. We took the light bulbs from the house here and put them back in the rental house. We are looking forward to having chickens to help with the cleanup of the apples and pears under the trees. For now the bees are in them and the deer come along and snack. The dog also does a great job cleaning up after PE jr. Also using all yard clippings, leaves, etc. on our new garden beds.

Want not: We got a Vermont Castings wood burning stove put in a few weeks ago and are hoping that we can have that be our only source of heat this winter (instead of turning on the propane heater). We also have a great exchange going on with a friend. I babysit for her one day a week when her childcare provider does not work and in exchange she gives us food from her farm, maple syrup that they make, and the latest is firewood. PE goes and uses their splitter and gets wood from their huge pile of wood that they were feeling like they would not be able to get through before it rotted. I also did an order from Raintree, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, loganberries, gooseberries, and some other things I can’t seem to remember at the moment. We have some decent planting coming up in the next week or two! I have also been working on winter type projects; knitting slippers and scarves, making draft dodgers, and my next project is making corn heating bags.

Eat the food: We made the tomato sauce, and I have grand plans for some stuffed bell peppers. We also have lots of salad and beans. I hardly get the peas inside the house before PE junior is chowing down on them, and the grape tomatoes were his favorite snack this summer. I have been considering a special snack garden for him next year.

Build community food systems: I have already mentioned a couple here (friend with chickens, making sauce with a friend, and the friend who has an established farm that we exchange with). PE is working with people at our church to create an indoor winter farmers market either at our church or another church in town. I have also been going with a friend on some farm tours around the area. I get to see what different people are doing and get some ideas for what we should do around our farm, and also meet some more people who are doing lots of the same things that we are doing. I love that we are not the crazy ones anymore!

That is what we have been up to this summer! How about you?

I was out with some other moms today and the topic of soy came up. They were telling me about how it can cause sterility in boys and has other adverse effects. I decided I should do some research on my own and found two very interesting websites. I am going to post them both as they both have very different opinions. One talks about how soy is horrible and the other site refutes the first. I was most concerned about how soy would affect my 4 month old boy, but most of what they talk about is based on soy formula (I am breastfeeding exclusively). I do eat some soy since I have cut out all dairy products from my diet (again because of the breastfeeding, it hurt his tummy!) I eat tofu, edamame, and soy ice cream. I don't drink soy milk though I drink almond milk. Basically what I have decided is that soy is not bad as long as you eat it organically as is the case with most other foods! Also I don't think that you should eat too much of it, again the same as most other foods!

Anti-soy article
Article refuting the first article

The staff at the Energy Bulletin put together a great article today examining the peak production rate of phosphorus. By applying the same methods used by Dr. M. King Hubbert (the man who accurately described Peak Oil in the 1950s) to phosphorus production, the authors discovered that not only had the U.S. reached its peak production in 1988, but the world had peaked in 1989!

Why is phosphorus important, you might wonder? From the Energy Bulletin article:

The current major use of phosphate is in fertilizers. Growing crops remove it and other nutrients from the soil... Most of the world's farms do not have or do not receive adequate amounts of phosphate. Feeding the world's increasing population will accelerate the rate of depletion of phosphate reserves.

and

Phosphorus may be the real bottleneck of agriculture.

Population growth was only possible because we found phosphorus deposits and cheap energy to extract, transform and transport it to farms. When we plot data of world population versus world phosphate production, we find a significant correlation.

The problem of phosphorus depletion is just one more example of the imminent crunch in resource reserves we face. I wrote about a similar concern in my Peak Salt article nearly a year ago. The difference there is that we don’t actually face a salt shortage until we face an oil shortage -- an example of a subtle but critical interaction between resources. What we in the Peak Oil community are discovering is a complex system of feedbacks and tipping points, just as the world is discovering in the issue of global warming.

Why the similarity? Because the resource extraction/consumption system is of the same type as the global climate system: chaotic. Despite the name, chaotic systems have a certain elegance and structure; however, they present severe problems when we attempt to model them.

In the next post, I will discuss the true nature of the chaotic Global Resource Crunch we’re already experiencing.

Peak Oil and global warming are enormous problems, but are still only part of a network of impending disasters -- all of which appear ready to juxtapose at the exact same instant. Between the riveting news debates over Donald Trump’s hair and the wardrobe malfunctions of Britney Spears, there recently appeared one of the most frightening (and shockingly underreported) news stories in recent memory: populations of the North American Honeybee -- the workhorse pollinator of American agriculture -- are plummeting rapidly.

As sources like CNN noted casually, pollinator species (including honeybees) have been in persistent decline for decades due to factors such as an invasive parasitic mite. But the mite is now ruled out as the cause for the current collapse -- the main suspects include commercial pesticides, genetically modified crops, or an unknown pathogen. Given the past evidence of pesticides’ effects on bees, my money lies on careless commercial operations indiscriminately spraying killer chemicals.

I have a knack for asking simple questions that have complex answers. With thoughts of sustainability and self-sufficiency on my mind for many months now, I’ve asked myself quite a few of these questions. One question related to these topics is ‘How much food is required to feed a small community, and how much land will that take?’ This is a seemingly simple question, but an important one if your intent is to build a small, completely self-sufficient community. What makes the answer to this question complex, at least for me, someone with absolutely no experience growing food, are the number of variables involved. I started Calorie Calculating to answer this question, and chose PeakOilDesign as the home of this blog because it seems a nice fit with the efforts being made here.

Please be clear on the point that I have no experience in growing food. The vast majority of content contributed by me will be book-learned. My posts at times will be me simply thinking out loud, and at other times sharing my newfound discoveries in the world of agriculture.

What I hope to accomplish in addition to answering this question is to create a formula that anyone can use to determine the volume of grown food needed to meet their caloric needs, whether that be a single homestead or small community, and how much land will be required. The purpose of the formula will be to give newcomers like myself a starting point. Its focus will be on what’s desirable, not optimal, and will not pretend to be a replacement for experience. The formula will take on two forms, one written and the other computerized.

I only recently started to answer this question using Google, the library and bookstores. What I quickly realized is that I will need to approach this topic methodically. An initial formula will be created that only takes a small number of variables into account. After that’s created a few more variables will be added and the formula modified accordingly. This will continue until the formula takes all variables into account.

My next post will be listing as many variables as I can think of. See you then.