ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

The worst of the cold weather is probably behind us, as spring approaches. The sun is out, and thoughts once again turn to the garden. It’s timely to review: how did our solarium perform over the short days and freezing nights of winter?

Adding thermal mass proved not to be enough to protect tender plants if outside temperatures dropped below ~25°. For the coldest nights, we needed to come up with a supplementary heat source. We use brooder lamps for ducklings. Why wouldn’t the same concept work for plants?

Electricity was the primary problem: a source wasn’t readily available, and providing a permanent hookup didn’t seem worth the cost or effort since power was needed only a few nights out of the year. So I wired an outlet at the solarium ceiling for two heat lamps to hang above our most sensitive citrus, an Improved Meyer Lemon and an Owari Satsuma Mandarin from One Green World that we planted right in the ground.

Power is provided when needed by plugging as extension cord into a male receptacle in a weatherproof exterior “inlet”.

This system works so well that we’ve moved into the solarium all of the cold-sensitive plants that we previously overwintered in the greenhouse. Space is at a premium in this 7? x 7? structure, so we’ve had to be inventive. Around the Yuzu Ichandrin, we installed shelving for pots . . .

. . . and above, a piece of ¾” pipe serves to hang containers.

Staggering the height of the plants allows more to be squeezed in along the pipe.

In the ground within the solarium, we’ve been growing herbs all winter long, herbs that otherwise wouldn’t grow in winter: cilantro, parsley, and an herb form of celery.

Fresh “cutting” or “soup” celery is great to have in the garden as celery, along with carrots and onions, are the three essential aromatic vegetables used in making stocks and sauces. Buying a whole head of celery in the store is wasteful. Although a good market will let you buy one stalk at a time, we’re a long way from a market. So keeping fresh celery on hand would otherwise be a challenge. Now all we have to do when celery is called for is wander outside -  with the solarium, any time of the year – pluck a few stalks, and tie them together with other herbs in a bouquet garni. Nichols has the seeds: VCE185, Afina. Plant seeds once, and from then on the celery will self-seed prolifically.

An added benefit: as long as I was wiring the solarium, I installed an outlet in the adjacent greenhouse to provide power for a heat mat. A heat mat will enable us to begin sprouting seeds in early February, a month earlier than would otherwise be possible. So it’s now time to begin perusing the seed catalogs and planning for spring plantings. Nichols and Territorial, here we come!

After a barren spell in November, our Muscovy ducks are laying again. Keeping a light on in the duck shed until 10:00 every night seems to have made a difference, as they began laying again shortly after we began that regimen.

Some of the ducks are content to lay in the duck shed. When we open the doors to let the ducks out in the morning (having been shut in over night to protect them from predators) there the eggs are, in the nests the ducks nestle into the straw in the corners of the shed. All we have to do is bend down and pick them up.

For other ducks, laying their eggs in the duck shed simply won’t do. So they seek out less convenient places. Some locations become semi-permanent, and they revisit them regularly: underneath the outdoor workbench behind the potting soil containers, behind the garbage and recycling cans, underneath the tarp covering the compost pile.

A few hens, however, are really secretive. They don’t want you to know where they are laying their eggs, and if you discover one location they tend to abandon it and find yet another. When the duck shed door is opened in the morning these secretive hens set off: alone, determined, and with a purpose. If you want to find their eggs, you have to follow them, and do so carefully and innocuously.  If they see they’re being followed, they will abort their clandestine mission. And if you divert your attention for just a moment they can vanish, disappearing into the brush.

Meet one of our surreptitious hens.

After watching this hen for several mornings I finally succeeded in tracing her to her nest right in the middle of a pile of brush and prunings waiting to be burned. And I do mean right in the middle. I had to carve my way in, using hand shears to tunnel a passageway through the bramble. Stretched out flat on my belly with only my ankles hanging out, I retrieved eight eggs.

Crawling on my belly like a reptile to find eggs simply wouldn’t do. I set a torch to that pile. She’ll never use that nest again.

The next day, that hen once more set out for her burn pile. What few coals remained of that pile were still smoldering. She circled it again and again, repeatedly coming back to and stopping at what had been her entrance. You could almost see her scratching her head: what the hell happened here?

Still, every morning she’s setting off towards where her burn pile used to be. There’s got to be a new nest. One morning I’m trying to follow two hens. Our burn pile hen disappears behind a copse of trees and brush. I rush to see where she’s gone. Damn, lost them both!

This morning, she’s off again. I’m keeping a loose tail. When I see her round that copse, I high-tail it over there. She sees me, pretends she’s just out on a stroll. But I’ve seen where she’s been looking, where she was headed.

That’s an abandoned wood rat mound, next to an old, rotting Douglas-fir stump. A little searching, and there it is, nestled under and inside the wood rat mound: her latest nest, containing a half a dozen eggs.

Another victory, albeit temporary. Tomorrow the game begins anew.

When you buy a whole or a half lamb from a local farmer, it’s not like going to the supermarket where you can pick out the exact cut you want, whether it be shoulder chops, loin chops, or a leg. Around here, you’re lucky to find a store that carries any lamb at all. In the mid-valley, the nearest place to buy a choice cut like a leg or a rack is probably Corvallis, at an upscale market such as Market of Choice.

When you buy local locker lamb, (half or whole) you get everything – from the neck to the shanks. You have to know how to cook the various cuts, as they each demand to be treated differently. And when it comes to an valuable cut like a rack, you don’t want to ruin it. Unlike a rack you buy at a market that’s been trimmed by a butcher, you cannot simply throw it in the oven and roast it. The rack has to be prepped for cooking first. If your rack comes wrapped in white paper from your local slaughterhouse, you have to prep it yourself.

A rack of lamb comes with a thick layer of fat across the back.

You have to take that layer of fat off. Leave it on and the rack will be impossible to cook properly. What’s more, the result will be a rack that is difficult to cut and serve; and the meat will be drenched in excess, unpleasant-tasting fat.

Fortunately, removing the layer of fat is easy. Simply grab it by one corner and rip it off – it comes off in one piece.  Begin by separating the fat from the meat with a knife at a corner, then pull on the fat, continuing to cut between the fat and the meat with a knife as necessary as you pull the fat off.

Now doesn’t that look better?

There’s some meat embedded within that layer of fat that shouldn’t be wasted. Trim it out rather than throwing it away.

There’s more . . .

You’ll end up with a nicely trimmed rack, a little pile of lamb meat – enough for maybe a soup or a burrito or a stir fry – and a big chunk of fat to be thrown out.

If you want, you can cut out a little of the meat between the rib bones, leaving little bone handles to grab onto when eating. Add that meat to your pile of saved meat trimmings.

We’ve trained our butcher to cut off the chine bone, and he mostly gets it right. With the chine bone off, it’s a simple thing to cut between the ribs, carving off individual chops for serving when the rack is done. If the chine bone is left on the rack, this is impossible – so you have to make sure the chine bone is removed completely at this stage. If some of it is still there you’d best cut it off. A hacksaw works. The picture above shows the chine bone properly removed.

Now the rack is almost ready for roasting. Rub it with sea salt and freshly crushed pepper. Chop up a clove of garlic or two, and the leaves from a nice sprig of rosemary. Put in a bowl with a teaspoon of prepared stone-ground mustard and a splash of red wine.  Whisk in an ounce or so of olive oil. Coat the rack on all sides with the marinade and let sit at room temperature for a while, until you’re ready to pop it in the oven.

Roast the rack in a pre-heated 450° oven for 20 minutes or so, or until the internal temperature reaches 116° (check with an instant-reading thermometer).  Do not overcook! Rack of lamb should be served rare. Remove the rack to a serving dish and let it rest for a few minutes while you get the rest of the meal on the table and prepare the sauce. The sauce can be really simple -deglaze the roasting pan with a healthy splash of red wine, scraping up all the tasty brown bits.  Carve the rack, cutting between and separating the individual riblets. Pour the sauce around the rack and serve.

Bon Appétit!

Thursday morning (January 5), our first lambs of the season were born, twins – a male and a female. At first, things looked to be going fine. Each was strong and healthy, although the male was a bit bigger than the female; and mama was feeding both. But Friday evening, we noticed that mama was no longer holding still for the female to let her feed. She was now markedly smaller than the male, who had been growing and putting on weight. She was looking weak. If we didn’t do something, she wasn’t going to make it.

Irina fixed a self-feeding bottle for her, but milk replacer is not a satisfactory solution. Even if you can get the lamb to drink from the bottle and feed itself, formula just isn’t nearly as good as mother’s milk. Lambs don’t grow as much or as fast, and they never catch up from a slow start to become big, healthy adult sheep.

That night, I dreamt of sheep grooming stands. The headpiece would hold mama still while our little black lamb snuck in and suckled to her heart’s content. Next morning, I went straight to the computer and googled “sheep grooming stand”, looking for inspiration. This design I found promising:

The concept is simple, the device quick and easy to use, and effective. Kind of like “stocks” for recalcitrant livestock.

So first thing Saturday morning I went to work, using scrap lumber and remnants of a dismantled dish antenna. The device was designed to be installed in the railings separating the two pens so as to be usable from either pen. It was ready to be put into service right after lunch.

Mama may not be happy, but baby sure is. Five times a day, Malingering Mama is in lockdown for nursing.

Results were immediate. She’s strong and healthy again, and quickly catching up to her brother.

Sunday morning, we woke up to a bit of a hullabaloo. Four new lambs were scattered about the yard, two white and two black. Lambs were bawling, mamas were baaing. We gathered up the lambs from the mud, cleaned them up, then set out to sort things out, figure out who belonged to whom.

Finding the mamas was pretty straightforward. Pick up the lambs, put them in the lambing pens, and the mamas should follow. That part went smoothly. Problem was, we only had one open lambing pen. The other was occupied by Malingering Mama – if she was minding her young ones properly, she could instead be let out with the flock. Crammed into a single pen, the new mamas were butting each other. Little lambs were flying. So we had to quickly erect an emergency, auxiliary pen and separate the combatants. Then came the hard part: which lambs belonged with which mama? After careful watching, seeing who was being fed by whom, Irina finally figured out the highly improbable solution: one mama had had triplets, all female, two white and one black; the other, a single female.

So at the moment, all is calm in the sheep shed.

This morning (January 10), Malingering Mama was observed freely feeding her female lamb, without being restrained. Maybe she was just suffering from a bout of post-partum depression. A release date is pending, depending on continued good behavior.

My sister complained that last week’s missive didn’t have any Thanksgiving photos. Hey, gimme a break – I was trying to get the newsletter out before the event. Anyhow, here you go, Peg!

Here’s the noble bird, before being sliced and served.

That’s a 20 pound, free range turkey from Joe and Karen’s Rain Shadow El Rancho, processed right on site at their own facility that does poultry other area producers as well (including our ducks). The turkey was Joe and Karen’s contribution to the dinner. Isn’t it wonderful to be part of a great community?

The photo shows the beer drinkers’ table. As you can see the beer is pretty local – Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter from just over the hill in Bend, smooth and creamy, perfect on a cold day while relaxing snug and toasty by the wood stove. Never fear, the La Ferme Noire Pinot Noir was flowing freely as well.

Each of the 20 guests brought something – in particular, I thought Kim’s chocolate chili was killer, even if it’s not what one might associate with Thanksgiving. It deserves to become a La Ferme Noire tradition – we’ll have to ask Kim for the recipe.

Irina made the beautiful orange soup in the photo.

AUTUMN SQUASH BISQUE WITH GINGER

Ingredients

2 tsp vegetable oil
2 cups sliced onion or leek
2 pounds winter squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 2 inch cubes (= 4 generous cups)
2 pears peeled, cored & diced
2 gloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped (or 1 tsp powdered ginger)
½ tsp thyme
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ cup plain non-fat yogurt (Greek yogurt is best)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Heat oil in large pot over medium heat
2. Add onions (leeks) and garlic and cook, stirring constantly until softened, 3-4 minutes
3. Add squash, pears, ginger and thyme, cook for 1 minute, stirring
4. Add broth and water; bring to a simmer
5. Reduce heat to low, cover pot and simmer until squash is tender, 35-45 minutes
6. Purée soup, if necessary in batches, in a food processor or blender
7. Return soup to pot and heat through. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice; stir
8. Garnish each serving with a spoonful of yogurt

My contribution was to cook the turkey. Here’s how:

Two or three days before cooking:

1. Trim off wing tips, the neck, and Pope’s nose.
2. Dry  turkey inside and out and rub skin and cavity with a mixture of about 2 T coarse sea salt and 1 T of freshly crushed black peppercorns.
3. Put turkey on a rack inside a pan and then uncovered into the refrigerator to dry (this helps the skin to turn crispy during roasting).
4. Right then make the sauce. Throw turkey trimmings and giblets into a roasting pan, along with coarsely chopped carrots, celery, and onion.
5. Roast in a hot (~400°) oven until well browned and caramelized.
6. When turkey bits and vegetables are all well browned, removes from oven and place roasting pan on a burner. Splash in about a quarter bottle of dry white wine (an open bottle of pinot gris was handy) and scrape brown bits off the bottom of the pan with wooden spoon until they are dissolved in liquid.
7. Add chicken or other poultry stock (we had a couple of containers of chicken and duck stock in the freezer – a good quality store-bought stock such as Kirkland is okay, too) until turkey parts and vegetables are immersed and you have enough liquid for your sauce.
8. Add herbs and spices:  parsley, thyme, and bay leaf from the garden, a couple of whole cloves, perhaps a piece of star anise.
9. Bring to a boil and simmer for three hours or so.
10. Strain through a colander into another container and let cool.
11. When settled, spoon off the fat layer on top.
12. Refrigerate stock until ready to use. Having the stock finished on Monday means a lot less fussing when company is around on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day:

1. Take turkey out of the refrigerator in the morning to warm to room temperature before going into the oven.
2. About two hours before serving place turkey, breast-down, on a rack in a roasting pan. Add ~two cups of prepared stock. Put into a pre-heated 450° oven, immediately reducing heat to 375°.
3. 45 minutes later, flip the turkey so it’s breast-side up.
4. About an hour and a half after going into the oven, the turkey will be done. An instant reading thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the flesh where the thigh connects with the body should register 150°. The result: a beautifully browned, tender, moist, and juicy bird.
5. Remove turkey to a warm platter and cover loosely.
6. While the bird rests a bit before slicing, bring the prepared stock and juices from roasting pan to a simmer.
7. Thicken sauce (I like to thicken with corn starch rather than flour – it’s easier to control and I think results in a more refined texture). Put a couple of heaping fork fulls of corn starch into a small container, add cold water, whisk with a fork until dissolved, then drizzle into the simmering stock while stirring. Let cook a couple of minutes until stock thickens.  Repeat until you get the texture you want.
8. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For ease of carving and serving I first remove the hindquarters from the carcass, and then each breast in one piece.

Then the turkey is a snap to slice. You had to be quick: all the dark meat disappeared first.

And of course we had plenty of Irina’s famous bread, fresh, warm, and crusty from the oven.

Party animals that we all are these days, we had cleaned up and were in bed by nine.

The next day, the turkey carcass and all the leftover bones and trimmings went into the stock pot, along with aromatic vegetables (carrots, onions, and celery), fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, bay leaf), and a couple of whole cloves. A couple or three hours later, I strained the stock, set the bones aside to cool a bit, and put the stock back on the stove. I added a handful of barley (grown by our friends Paul and Nonie), sliced leeks, and diced carrots and turnips, all from the garden. When the turkey bones had cooled enough, I picked off the meat and added that to the pot, and then some diced potatoes. Simmer a bit more, until the potatoes are tender. Et voila! Turkey soup!

We’re now in to December, and we’re still harvesting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower from the garden – in fact, we have a new crop coming on, from the seedlings we transplanted out in August.

It’s pretty nice not to be dependent on the supermarket for vegetables, even in December. And really nice not to have to drive, or to travel at all, to get them. They’re right outside the door, fresh as can be.

The needed miracle has happened: our grapes are finally ripening.

Although the weather hasn’t exactly been hot and sunny, days have been warm even when overcast, and it hasn’t rained all that much. Persistent cloud cover has kept temperatures up at night.  While we probably won’t end up with the 21° Brix we’d like to see, we should come close and the grapes will be plenty ripe enough to make good wine, even if we have to chapitalize a bit. It’s a good thing, too – all the barrels in our cellar are empty.

Now all that’s left is to fight off the birds and yellowjackets for a few more days. The propane cannon is booming every fifteen minutes or so . . .

and Niko, our house guest from Germany, is on vineyard patrol.

Where’s that wascally wobin?

I’ve been monitoring temperatures inside the solarium since it’s been finished. During the day, temperatures have consistently been 10-15 degrees warmer than outside, even when cloudy. I was surprised to see inside temperatures falling at night to as low as outside temperatures. Since the main objective of the solarium is to provide some frost protection, that was a little troubling. So we added thermal mass, to better hold warmth during the night.

The tubes are 8? PVC, cut from two 20? lengths into five approximately 8? lengths (the shorter pipe is two 4? lengths glued together, which loses a foot). Caps are glued on the bottom and just slipped over the top. The tubes are filled with water, with Rim Guard added as an anti-freeze (Rim Guard is a non-toxic, agricultural byproduct of sugar beet processing, normally used for ballast in tractor tires – it looks and smells like molasses).

After installation of the tubes, I’ve noted low temperatures inside the solarium remaining 2-3 degrees warmer than outside low temperatures at night, which is getting close to the additional warmth we need to protect our tenderest plants during the coldest of cold spells. Our coldest nights come on clear, crisp days when the sun shines brightly, which should allow the tubes to absorb plenty of heat. This winter will reveal how the solarium performs under those conditions.

After a cool start, summer is at last in full swing on the farm.

It’s that time of the year when we almost have more than we can eat, share, put up, give away, or feed to the ducks and sheep.

We’ve already got one batch of sauerkraut fermenting. Our new, stainless steel krauthobel was a joy to work with. Shed one head  into bus tub, add a little salt (1.5 oz per pound of cabbage) and mix, dump into sterilized crock, repeat until done.

The traditional wooden one Cousin Doris sent us last year from Germany was fine for a couple or three heads, but swelled as it became saturated and became more and more difficult to slide. Finally, the joints came unglued and it fell apart.

We picked only half the cabbage in our cabbage patch because that’s all our one crock could accommodate. The second crock that we bought new to use last year seeped – so we returned it as soon as the kraut could be taken out.  But now we’ve got another, pre-owned #10 crock, in great condition, found at the Antiques Mall in Albany. You can count on the old ones not seeping.

It’s been hard to find time to sit at the computer, writing blog posts. This time of the year, there’s more to do on the farm than there is time to do it, and I find myself rather working outside than sitting at my desk. But farm work leaves the mind free for thinking. I’ve been asking myself, what is the purpose of this blog, and why continue to do it?

We’re beyond the point where there’s any hope of inducing the changes we need to make as a society to deal with the realities of peak oil and climate change. The minds of the deniers will remain unpersuaded until the bitter end, and undoubtedly even beyond. To avert climate change, we would have to implement plans to cease burning fossil fuels immediately, bringing the global economy to a grinding halt. That’s just not going to happen, regardless of how catastrophic the consequences of not doing so. The consequence of failing to plan, on a societal level, for the inevitable involuntary halt in the consumption of fossil fuels, is the social and economic disruptions that are beginning to evidence themselves around the globe.

The aim of this blog is to chronicle how peak oil and climate change are playing themselves out. I seek to highlight the economic manifestations of peak oil, putting them in the broader context which most economists fail to see.  I want to communicate the signs of global warming and the climate changes it is inducing, as those signs manifest themselves.

And finally, I want to share with others our personal efforts to effect the change that we do have control over, to reflect on the changes we can make in our own lives that heighten our freedom of action and increase our flexibility to respond to an unknown future. The hope still remains that humans might not screw Earth’s climate up so badly that survival becomes impossible or pointless.

In light of the realization that we need to stop trying to “save the planet” and instead just realize our place in it, I’m thinking of my calling as Lebenskünstler. Life is an art form, to be lived as poetry. Paul Kingsnorth at Dark Mountain Project explains:

This is what [poetry] means: to counter the progressive narrative with all its fixations on expansion and control, on windfarms and transistor radios and electric cars and superstores and growth and measurement by results. To have time on our hands to sink into other ways of seeing. Poetry is the still point, the pole around which the chaos runs and circles, and the duty of the poet is to remain still, to watch, to report back in language which distills the essence of the movements all around her.

I may not have the soul of a poet. But perhaps I can chronicle. We can all sit.  Each of us has the capability to realize the mystery and the beauty within which we find ourselves. We all can do what we can. And that’s all anybody can expect.

Global civilization’s many crises continue to develop, seemingly in slow motion.  Despite the EIA’s decision to tap 60 million barrels of oil from reserves and signs that Saudi Arabia has managed to increase production a bit – at least momentarily – resulting in global production rising, oil prices stubbornly remain high at around $118 (Brent) and just below $100 (WTI) – high enough to threaten whatever “recovery” economists and politicians might hope to see as dozens of countries across the globe experience energy shortages and power outages. Washington European nations, at the moment trying desperately to head off a Greek default that could ruin its banks and put an end to the Euro project, continues lurching from crisis to crisis – Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy – each more serious and more implacable than the last. Arctic sea ice continues in its death spiral. Antarctic ice is melting faster than ever. 2010 was the most extraordinary year for extreme weather events in history, and 2011 is already the most costly for natural disasters – after only half a year. In Washington any action at all, much less the drastic steps necessary to avert global ecological suicide, are proving impossible. Even efforts to return to the “growth” that is responsible for our predicament are gridlocked in a time warp, as Democratic policies which would seem woefully timid to the Roosevelt administration are blocked by Republican insistence on imposing policies  that would seem extreme and vicious to the Hoover administration.

But on the farm, all is not bleak.

Mama duck has been in the duck house, sitting on her clutch of eggs, for 28+ days now, long enough they should be hatching. Yesterday, I noticed that one of the eggs had been pushed out of the nest. Reaching down to pick it up, I found a hole where the egg was partially cracked open. The egg being cold, I expected the duckling to be dead. But then I noticed a slight motion.

From long experience, we have learned that non-intervention is the best policy when it comes to handling farm animals. Interfering takes time, an emotional investment, and sometimes money that equals or even exceeds whatever profits might be realized – and the efforts are usually futile, anyway.

But this time, I couldn’t help myself. I picked off the remainder of the shell imprisoning the duckling (those shells are tough!) and placed it under a heat lamp, close to water and food. A couple of hours later, the little darling was up and about. That night, we let the older ducklings into the brooding room. The new arrival spent the night snuggled up with its older brothers and sisters.

The next morning, we opened the doors as usual, letting everybody out to roam free. The new duckling soon found its way back to mama.

Sometimes the magic works.

A cautionary note, for anyone thinking of moving to Oregon: here’s the farmer on an Oregon summer day, working in the vineyard.

Recall the heretical, anti-growth words of beloved governor Tom McCall:

Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.

Where is a Tom McCall when we need him?

By Irina

Ever since we began keeping a small flock of sheep, mostly for meat and barter, we’ve been lamenting the fact there is no market for wool, gratis or otherwise. Our sheep get shorn once a year, and their wool always landed in the burn pile. A shame, and a waste.

At long last we have found a wonderful solution to this problem. The Creekside Fiber Mill recently opened in Lebanon, providing the much-needed service of accepting raw fiber (from sheep, llamas, alpacas and goats) from anywhere in the U.S. and processing it into yarn, batts, rovings, or needle-felted fiber products. Living nearby, we save shipping costs, which in the past have been substantial enough to make wool a losing proposition.

I took last year’s wool from four ewes in various non-white colors and had it processed into rovings for spinning.

After I saw the needle-felted blankets they produce at the mill, I gathered all my scraps, old pieces, odds and ends and had 2 blankets made. The results were so beautiful that a friend offered to buy both of them at first sight.

Needle felting is particularly appropriate for less than prime fiber or left over wool as any size pieces can be used to create these felted pieces. The sheets of felt can be used as is, or the felt can be cut to create garments, pillow covers, hats, purses – your imagination is the only limit.

Having a local fiber mill means I may be able to develop a great niche market for my wool. In 2011, we’ll have nine ewes to be shorn. I can hardly wait to create some interesting designs and projects.

At long last, our poultry project is beginning to yield results.

Facilities are through the shake-down period and running smoothly, and we’ve been collecting an increasing number of eggs over the last few weeks.

Muscovies are at the water trough (there are automatic waterers inside the shed).

The trough is big enough so that the ducks can get in and swim around a bit, which they seem to enjoy immensely. This trough used to be right on the other side of the fence, belonging to the sheep. But the ducks much preferred the large trough to their small tub, and were constantly going under, over, around and through the fence to get at the sheep’s water. So we gave up and switched. Note the “duck deck” under the trough. Turns out ducks love to eat mud. The trough quickly came to be perched on a mesa. Putting a 4? x 8? deck under the trough solved the problem.

Two Khaki Campbell drakes and Khaki Campbell and Rouen hens are at the outside feeder.

The ducks are finally getting old enough to begin laying eggs. And this week, off some went to the slaughterhouse – all seven Pekins, and all but one of the Rouen and Khaki Campbell drakes. Or at least that was the intent. One of the Khaki Campbell males slipped out the door while I was gathering them all up (I had neglected to install a latch that could be operated from the inside, an oversight that has since been corrected) and, in the dim light of pre-dawn, I inadvertently replaced it with an unlucky Rouen drake. Which is why you see two Khaki Cambell drakes and no Rouen drake in the photo.

fortunately for us Scio Poultry Processing is just up the road a piece. It’s a soon-to-be USDA-inspected facility owned and operated by our friends Joe and Karen Schueller at Rain Shadow El Rancho.

The ducks arrive in crates.

Go in the front door, and come out in cryovac packages.

That’s a dozen ducks, which should be plenty for holiday dinners and more.

We chose to raise ducks rather than chickens because free-range chickens are readily available and affordable, whereas ducks are a delicacy, a luxury item we couldn’t otherwise afford. Getting the infrastructure in place was neither quick or nor particularly cheap, but now we have in place durable, efficient, predator-proof facilities adaptable for a wide variety of poultry.

Now here’s a surprise. From Science Daily:

Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.

The paper, titled Fruit and Soil Quality of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Agroecosystems, is published in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLoS ONE.

All the farms in the current study were in California, where conventional farms use the ozone-depleting methyl bromide (which is slated to be replaced by the highly toxic methyl iodide).

In addition to finding organic strawberries are tastier and better for your health, researchers found the organic soils excelled in a variety of key chemical and biological properties, including carbon sequestration, nitrogen, microbial biomass, enzyme activities, and micronutrients.

The Science Daily article quotes lead author John Reganold, Washington State University Regents professor of soil science:

Our findings have global implications and advance what we know about the sustainability benefits of organic farming systems. We also show you can have high quality, healthy produce without resorting to an arsenal of pesticides.

The authors offer a summation of the study’s methodology, findings, conclusions and significance:

At multiple sampling times for two years, we evaluated three varieties of strawberries for mineral elements, shelf life, phytochemical composition, and organoleptic properties. We also analyzed traditional soil properties and soil DNA using microarray technology. We found that the organic farms had strawberries with longer shelf life, greater dry matter, and higher antioxidant activity and concentrations of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds, but lower concentrations of phosphorus and potassium. In one variety, sensory panels judged organic strawberries to be sweeter and have better flavor, overall acceptance, and appearance than their conventional counterparts. We also found the organically farmed soils to have more total carbon and nitrogen, greater microbial biomass and activity, and higher concentrations of micronutrients. Organically farmed soils also exhibited greater numbers of endemic genes and greater functional gene abundance and diversity for several biogeochemical processes, such as nitrogen fixation and pesticide degradation.

Our findings show that the organic strawberry farms produced higher quality fruit and that their higher quality soils may have greater microbial functional capability and resilience to stress. These findings justify additional investigations aimed at detecting and quantifying such effects and their interactions.

The mobile slaughterhouse could play a critical role in the burgeoning local food movement. This photo of a “slaughtermobile” is from an article in the Washington Post. The article reports the USDA is paying more attention to small and mid-size farms, encouraging organic and sustainable agriculture, and investing in projects to bring locally grown meat and produce to consumers.

A mobile slaughterhouse, with a team composed of a butcher and a federal meat inspector, travels from farm to farm.

USDA’s efforts to help small farmers are focused within its “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program, which seeks to help make the link between local production and local consumption.

USDA has published a Mobile Slaughter Unit Compliance Guide to help those who want to establish a mobile slaughter unit under Federal inspection and operate in accordance with Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regulations.

The Land Institute near Salina, Kansas has been crossing selected strains of wild intermediate wheatgrass grain with annual wheat varieties to breed a commercially practical perennial grain. Gene Logsdon at OrganicToBe.org reports that pancakes made with flour (trademarked Kernza ™) from the resulting grain is pretty tasty.

The flour makes a light dough and the pancakes taste just a tad sweeter than ordinary wheat flour.  * * * It is exceptionally high in some nutrients known to be important to human health and deficient in many modern diets: Omega 3 fatty acids, calcium, lutein, and betaine. It is particularly high in folate, important for preventing stroke, cancer, heart disease and infertility. Folate is also believed to be important for maintaining good mental health in old age.  My mind generally glazes over when reading about nutrient values of various foods so that folate might come in handy. To me the important thing is that for once something that is good for me tastes good too. Kernza ™ does not have enough gluten in it to use alone for leavened breads, but as more and more crosses are made with it and regular wheat, all things are possible.

Being able to grow grain without plowing up millions of acres of soil every year would cut down on erosion and help build soil tilth while enabling farmers to cut way back on fuel and greenhouse gas emissions – saving farmers both time and money in the bargain.

But the search won’t be over until researchers come up with a good perennial bread flour.