Farm Biodiversity, Conclusion

Post author By Cherie Langlois
Post date August 26, 2010
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Photo by Cherie Langlois
Bourbon Red turkeys, a heritage livestock breed

This four-part celebration of biodiversity on my farm wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the heritage livestock breeds and heirloom plants that live and grow here.

In recent years, “heritage livestock” has become a popular term used to denote the genetically diverse, traditional livestock breeds that have been raised on farms in the U.S. and other countries for centuries. Unlike the uniform, high-production animals found on factory farms, heritage livestock breeds possess important attributes that make them especially well-suited for our hobby farms: superior mothering skills, higher disease resistance and excellent foraging ability, for starters. Many of these historical breeds hover on the brink of extinction (those that haven’t vanished already), and that’s seriously bad news for agriculture. As the authors stress in Taking Stock: The North American Livestock Census (McDonald and Woodward Publishing, 1994), a book put out by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy: “Agriculture depends on genetic diversity for its long term health and stability.”

Our farm is (or has been) home to the following heritage breeds: Bourbon Red and Royal Palm turkeys, Plymouth Barred Rock and Buff Orpington chickens, and Jacob sheep. (Learn about other rare livestock breeds from the ALBC.)

Photo by Cherie Langlois
Amish snap peas, an heirloom plant

Like heritage livestock, heirloom plants often have long, interesting histories. Essentially, heirloom plants are open-pollinated cultivars developed and grown during earlier times and passed down from generation to generation. “Open-pollinated” means the plant can cross naturally without human help and will breed true to type when you save and sow its seeds. For example, if you plant Amish Snap Peas and save the peas for planting next year, you get more Amish Snap Peas, provided no hybridization occurred. (Methods to prevent this vary with plant species.)

Many of the seeds marketed for modern gardens and farms, however, are hybrids—artificially pollinated plants that stem from crossing two varieties, each highly inbred to produce certain desired characteristics, such as disease resistance or uniform size. Try to save and plant these seeds, and you might get nothing at all or else a plant with completely different characteristics.

I became enamored with heirlooms several years ago after writing about them for Popular Gardening: Heirloom Farm and Garden, and have been trying more delicious, colorful, easy-care varieties in my garden each year. Some of my favorites so far: Amish Snap Peas, Scarlet Runner Beans, Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce, Forellenschuss Lettuce, Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard, Red Russian Kale, Vates Collards, America Spinach, Purple Tomatillo, and (of course!) Black Beauty Zucchini.

If you feel like experimenting with heirlooms yourself, check out the Seed Savers Exchange. If you already grow them, I’d be interested in hearing about your favorites before I place my next seed order!

~ Cherie

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Crops & Gardening

Stink Bugs

Photo by Jessica Walliser
Stink bug nymphs are taking over my garden.

I’ve been finding all these little bugs in the garden all summer long that I couldn’t identify at first. They didn’t seem to be doing any damage, so I wasn’t in a hurry to ID them. But after spending some time in front of my entomology books and on the internet searching through lots of images, I discovered their unfortunate identification. Baby stink bugs. Ack!

We have had a major problem with adult stink bugs coming into the house over the past few winters. Apparently this is happening across the country—and especially on the East Coast. It’s kind of like a horror story:

They came from Asia. Introduced in packing material and, now, they are causing homeowners across the country to scream with fear! Who are these smelly beasts? Big, bad, brown marmorated stink bugs!

Stink bug adult
Photo by Jessica Walliser
Adult stink bugs have been overwintering in our house for many winters.

According to our local cooperative extension agent, they aren’t an agricultural pest yet. I’m thinking that’s going to change. We have found them in the house for four winters now, but I have never seen them in the garden. This year, there have been hundreds of them out there. Which probably means there will be thousands in our house this winter.

Apparently, stink bugs overwinter in the house as adults, emerge in late spring, feed and breed. They lay eggs that hatch into nymphs that pass through several different instars (development stages) before morphing into a mature adult. It’s hard to describe the nymphs I’ve found, because they change several times before maturing. Basically, they start out very small and reddish in color, and then they get about 1/4 inch long and are black with white splotches and spindly, spiderlike legs. Then they flatten out a bit before turning into their shield-shaped, brown adult selves.

Regardless, we’ve got some work to do. According to our extension service website, the best way to keep them out of the house is to seal them out. Caulk all the doors and windows, light fixtures, baseboards, ceiling fans and entry doors from the attic into the house. And use that expandable foam stuff to seal cracks and holes where wires or pipes come into the house. Off to the hardware store I go.

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Urban Farming

Tomato Soup

Photo by Judith Hausman

Some may consider these tomatoes rejects. I consider them soup.

I finally found it. Thanks to food goddess Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food (Clarkson Potter, 2007), I finally have the perfect summer tomato soup recipe. After many attempts that turned out too watery, too acidic, too sweet or were thickened with tomato paste, cornstarch, flour or cream, I tried her ultra-straightforward recipe and adore it.

The first “secret” to the recipe, arguably to all her food, is lots and lots of really, really good raw material. The tomatoes don’t have to look good at all; they have to taste good—no, great. I have access to piles of misshapen, won’t-sell, heirloom beauties at Rainbeau Ridge, but you might be able to buy a 1/4 bushel direct from a farm or beg some bumpy ones from a neighbor.

Alice’s second secret is one tablespoon of white rice, cooked with two pounds of tomatoes. When the little bit of cooked rice is blended with the cooked tomatoes, it thickens up the soup just enough to give it body and emulsify it without adding any rice taste, to speak of.

Almost any tomato soup recipe will ask you to blanch and peel the tomatoes: groan. It has to be done or you’ll have annoying slivers of skin to contend with in each spoonful. So be it. While you are at it, cut out the cores and any hard bits or blemishes.

Here’s my own one change: When the peeled tomatoes have cooled some, squeeze out the seeds and juice so you have mainly pulp left. Just pick them up in your fist and give them a good squeeze. Think Aztec ritual and throbbing warrior hearts. Reserve the juice and seeds though. You’ll strain that mess into the soup pot and discard the seeds. Alice has you strain the soup after cooking but I find my method removes enough seeds and is easier than dealing with the thicker cooked soup.

Alice’s recipe then asks you to sauté a medium sliced onion (and a leek, which I omitted) in a combination of butter and olive oil and then to add two garlic cloves. After they are soft but not browned, pile in the tomato pulp and strained juice. I added a few sprigs of basil and some oregano leaves, salt and pepper, and a little fennel pollen we had lying around. (Fennel fronds or even seed will do.) Cook it all until some of liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes have fallen apart thoroughly.

Wand-blender it all, and then add a cup of water and another tablespoon of butter.

Tomato.com. No stock, no paste, no celery and carrots. So good, so summery, so easy, just like the title of the cookbook promises. Go, Alice!

We served the soup cold with chopped herbs to sprinkle at will, a bowl of Greek yogurt to garnish it and a loaf of olive bread. The soup is just as good hot and cream can be added, but then be careful not to boil the soup in re-heating. If you want to freeze it, do so before the last cup of water and/or any cream, which you can add after you defrost it. Oh, and definitely double the recipe—you’ll want more.

Driving a Nail

I was driving a nail the other day and managed to smash a bit of the fleshy part of a finger. As I watched it turn red, then blue and finally black, I reflected on how simple driving a nail is and yet how terribly complex the entire operation can be. OK, swinging the hammer is as simple as is hitting the nail (at least for others), but the concentration of force that occurs is anything but simple. As the broad hammer head meets the nail head, the weight of the hammer and the force of the blow are transferred to the point of the nail. As it moves down into the wood, it splits fibers, moving them aside until the force has dissipated and movement stops, waiting for the next blow of the hammer.

Of course depending on where in the piece of wood you are aiming the nail and what kind and thickness of wood you are aiming at, splitting may not be such a great idea. Years ago, I read that the key in placing a nail successfully without splitting the wood too much was to dull the point. The flattened end now crushes wood fibers instead of possibly splitting the grain. A light tap of the hammer to the nail tip is usually enough.

I tried the technique and have used it ever since. Like so many things in the shop or life, what we learn from others can seem to be a little thing but can make a big difference in our success at what we are doing.

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News

Controlling Flies Around Cattle

Post author By Dani Yokhna
Post date August 24, 2010
No Comments on Controlling Flies Around Cattle

Flies can transmit diseases and reduce weight gain and feed efficiency in cattle.

They buzz and they bite, but the flies that cause a nuisance to people can also bring disease and nuisance to cattle. Fly control is essential in maintaining the health of dairy and beef cattle herds, whether in the pasture or the barn, says Purdue University entomologist Ralph Williams.

Pasture Flies
For pasture cattle, the two primary fly pests are horn flies, which are a biting fly, and face flies. Face flies don’t bite, but they feed around the eye tissue and can transmit bacterial conjunctivitis, or pink eye, to cattle.

“Horn flies are the No. 1 fly pest in the United States,” Williams says. “The threshold at which we recommend control is when those flies reach 200 per animal. It is not uncommon to see a thousand or more horn flies per animal.”

While horn flies don’t transmit diseases to cattle, they can cause economic loss by reducing cattle weight gain, feed efficiency and calf weights.

Barn Flies
For cattle in confinement, the stable fly is a biting fly that breeds in the accumulating feed waste and soiled bedding. As with the horn fly, stable flies don’t carry disease, but they, too, can result in economic loss for farmers.

House flies are the other common confinement pest. While they’re not directly associated with cattle, they can be a nuisance to people and surrounding neighbors.

Controlling Flies
“In confinement flies are best controlled through sanitation,” Williams says. “Farmers should identify and remove fly breeding sites, like waste and soiled bedding.”

In the pasture, however, fly control can be a bit more challenging. Topical insecticides can be effective as long as they stay on cattle for an extended time. One such method is through pesticide ear tags.

“Some of the products available are pyrethroids and organophosphates,” Williams says. “The pyrethroid-based tags generally are not very effective for horn flies because of a genetic resistance. Most of the organophosphate tags are very efficient for horn fly control. Abamectin is a new product that is available in some tags and has been very effective for both horn flies and face flies.”

Some tags also are available with a combination of insecticides that will control both face and horn flies.

Other fly-control options include self-applied dust bags in a forced-use situation, which cattle need to access daily, and pour-on insecticides, which can last up to a month. Feed-through insecticides, ingested with feed and released in the manure, can also disrupt flies. However, if not all cattle in the area are using them, flies could still be present.

As a biological fly-control option, farmers can introduce parasitic wasps to the farm. The females of these wasps lay eggs on fly pupae, and the wasp larva consume the fly before it emerges. Parasitic wasps may be purchased by biological pest control companies, which provide beneficial predator insects.

Poultry Urban Farming

Mobile Processing for Backyard Chickens

Post author By Rebecca Mumaw
Post date August 24, 2010
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Mobile poultry processing unit

Courtesy Cornerstone Farm Ventures

Cornerstone Farm Ventures created the “Mini Mobile Processing Unit,” a smaller, less expensive mobile slaughtering unit.

One of the consequences of the consolidation of food production in the United States is the dramatic decline in the number of slaughterhouses. According to the USDA, the number of USDA- or state-inspected slaughterhouses has declined by one-third in the last 15 years. Conversely, during the last five years, the number of small farmers has increased by 108,000. It is the small farmer who often serves the growing demand for forage-fed, natural, and organic meat and poultry products. To complicate things, the existing slaughtering facilities are already producing at maximum capacity and don’t have the processes in place to handle the needs of small producers.

The decline in slaughtering facilities is bad news for the growing number of urban chicken farmers. Chickens are often the animal of choice to be raised by urban farmers for meat. They require a relatively small amount of space and mature to market weight quickly. Unfortunately, there are so few slaughter facilities that urban farmers may decide that raising chickens for anything other than personal consumption is not economically feasible.

Mobile Poultry Processing

Mobile slaughter units appear to be the most immediate answer to the waning number of slaughterhouses. Mobile processing units are slaughterhouses on wheels and contain all of the tools required for slaughtering. All the farmer has to supply are the workers.

Fortunately for urban poultry producers, mobile processing units for poultry (called mobile poultry processing units or MPPUs) are the most common, because they are smaller and require a lower capital investment. A deluxe model was purchased by the Vermont state legislature in 2008 for $93,000 to bridge the gap for their small producers.

For the economically minded, Cornerstone Farm Ventures, a manufacturer of mobile poultry processing units in Norwich, N.Y., has built a “Mini Mobile Processing Unit.” The processing equipment is taken off the trailer and set up on the ground for processing. It’s small enough to be pulled by a standard 6-cylinder automobile. The unit sells for $10,000, according to the website.

Benefits of Mobile Processing Units

Mobile poultry processing units cost urban farmers much less to build than a permanent slaughtering facility, which results in lower processing costs per bird. Local communities that would normally protest the building of a permanent slaughter facility are more amenable to the mobile units, thus streamlining their purchase and implementation. And urban farmers can ensure that humanely raised birds are also humanely slaughtered with minimal stress.

Operating Mobile Processing Units

Mobile poultry processing units are helping urban farmers meet customer demand and expand their businesses in spite of the slaughterhouse shortage.

Mobile poultry processing unit

Courtesy Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds

Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds has used a mobile processing unit for three years.

Jen Hashley, of Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds, says she and her husband, Pete Lowy, have been using a mobile poultry processing unit for three years to process chickens brooded in their Concord, Mass., backyard. The unit is owned by the New England Small Farmers Institute and was purchased using a federal grant from Rural Cooperative Development Grants. This grant is like those given for the purchase of mobile poultry processing units through the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program, a USDA effort to create new economic opportunities by foraging connections between consumers and local producers.

Hashley and Lowy are so pleased with the mobile poultry processing unit, they are helping to raise funds to purchase a second, more robust unit for urban farmers in Massachusetts.

“There are no slaughtering facilities available to the small producer in the Northeast,” Hashley says. “It would be very difficult to offer premium, pasture-raised chickens to our customers without the MPPU.”

Volunteers are an important resource for users of mobile poultry processing units. Including customers in the slaughtering process is a way to educate them about the work that goes into their traditional Sunday dinner. Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds use their website to recruit volunteers to participate in their chicken harvest.

Requirements for renting and operating a mobile poultry processing unit vary from state to state and can be fairly complicated. Training and licensing are required. The animals may need to be inspected prior to slaughter, and specific labeling specifications may need to be met. For information about slaughtering options in your area, Iowa State University has a comprehensive online resource, which includes a list of MPPU locations, a training manual, webinars and videos.

Animals

We Have Wasps!

Photos by Sue Weaver

Yesterday, Steve the dog was trotting over to visit us when a big black wasp flew out of nowhere and stung Steve right on the butt.

Steve yiked and dove under the deck (Steve is a Rottweiler-Chow but not a very tough one). Our wasps are very aggressive this year.

Uzzi and I decided to Google wasps and see if we could find something to help poor Steve (he’s afraid to come and visit us now). This is what we learned:

There are more than 4,000 kinds of wasps in the United States. Some kinds are also called hornets and yellow jackets. They’re aggressive from August through October, though they only come out during the day. Only females sting because a female’s stinger (called an ovipositor) is her sex organ.

We looked at pictures and discovered that the wasp that stung Steve is a Bald-faced Hornet. It was black with splashes of white on its face.

Bald-faced Hornets live all over the United States, so you may have them on your farm, too. Be careful! They’re very aggressive and attack anything that invades their space.

And, they have smooth stingers, so they can sting over and over until they want to stop (Ow!). Hornet stings carry venom that makes the stings hurt, itch and swell for about 24 hours.

A neat thing, though, is that they build cool nests out of papery stuff made of wood pulp that they soften by chewing and then mix with spit.

A few days ago, Mom and Dad were driving down a back road when they spied this … thing … up high on an abandoned house. It looked like a papery gray mask! They stopped and took these pictures. It’s a hornet nest built around a two-light bulb outdoor lighting fixture. Pretty neat, huh!

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Crops & Gardening

Hot and Dry

It’s been super hot here for the past few weeks. And, even worse than that, we’ve had no rain to speak of; not even the occasional random thunderstorm.

The garden is really suffering. I have been trying my best to keep up with a watering schedule but I’m continually trying to put it off. I feel almost guilty turning on the hose, knowing that it’s not really wasting water, but feeling kind-of like it is. When I water the vegetable garden the guilt isn’t there; I do see that as a necessity.

And my perennial beds were designed to withstand quite a bit of drought, but even this is too much for them to handle. I’ve had to lug out the hose several times over the past few weeks and I don’t like it. I’m crossing my fingers for a few rainy days in the near future.

The only happy plants I’ve got right now are my potted agave and my snake plant, both were made for hot and dry. All the rest are looking a bit stressed out. Even the weeds look fried.

Despite the weather conditions (and because of my regular non-guilt waterings), the vegetable garden has been doing pretty well.

My favorite new veggie selection for this year is the ‘Music’ pole beans I planted on the tee pee. They aren’t all that prolific and I have to pick them young, but they’re quite delicious and the plants are very vigorous and have covered the structure just as I planned (I love it when that happens!).

From the looks of it, they’ll be producing until frost. There are tons of flowers onboard and the bees are busy working them over. Always good to see.

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Urban Farming

Visiting Petunia

Photo by Audrey Pavia

Petunia is an important stop on my walks around the neighborhood.

Even though I have horses to ride and chores to do, I still feel like I need to take a walk around the neighborhood a couple of times a week for exercise. Nothing clears my head after a day at work like a stroll through my urban farming community.

I mostly like to walk into the hilly neighborhood just above my block. The homes are relatively new, with “big” lots of a 1/2 acre or more. The landscaping in the front yards are pretty, and the corner houses usually have horses or other critters I can look at or even visit with along my stroll.

One house about four blocks from my home is my favorite stop along the way. That’s because an adorable piglet I’ve dubbed Petunia (named after the lady pig in the Looney Tunes cartoons) lives in the backyard.

My first meeting with Petunia was my favorite. I hadn’t noticed her before when passing that yard, which also has some bunnies in a hutch and a friendly palomino gelding. One late afternoon after work, I passed the yard and she caught my eye: the cutest little pig I had ever seen. I stopped and called to her.

Petunia looked up at me from her rutting and began to oink oink oink as she trotted in my direction. I squatted down so I’d be closer to her level and reached a few fingers through the wire mesh fence. Petunia made contact with me, her little pink snout brushing against my straining fingertips. We shared a moment.

Any thoughts of ever having my own piglet are pretty much out of the question, thanks to an unpleasant experience my spouse encountered one day when we were visiting some country folk in the mountains. The kindly older couple invited us out for lunch and a ride in their horse-drawn wagon after I interviewed them for an article I was writing. After a lovely buggy ride, we came inside for lunch, where we met their huge pet pig. The pig had the run of the house and had no qualms about openly begging from each person as we dined on our tacos and refried beans. Just a few moments with this large pig slobbering on his leg while he ate was enough to turn Randy off to the idea of ever having a pig.

So for now, I get my piggy fix from Petunia, who is always happy to see me as I pass by her yard. Maybe she won’t be as adorable when she grows up, but right now, in my eyes, she is the cutest piggy in all of Norco.

Garden Art

Photo by Rick Gush

One of my original pieces of garden art: Half-Assed Patio Furniture

It’s pouring rain this morning, so I’m just going to be slumming here in the office. I have an apartment near our home that I use as an office and workshop, and I have two little gardens there. The rear garden, which has floor-to-ceiling window doors looking out on it, is a fairly charming little mess of green leaves and comfortable shade, and it boasts two peices of garden sculpture.

The sculpture pictured above is the piece titled “Half-Assed Patio Furniture.” When I lived in the States, I often built Adirondack chairs, and I even had a little business building these comfortable monsters for awhile. For this art piece I built two halves of an Adirondack and fastened them together backward. It’s a piece with graceful curves, and the honey varnish on the wood acts as a brightening lamp among all the shady greens. The seats are too skinny and unsupported to be able to use as a sitting place. My wife is not particularly impressed with this artwork and would rather I had just made a usable chair. Ha!

Garden art

RapMaster Pinocchio

The sculpture pictured right is “RapMaster Pinocchio.” He’s made out of welded sheet metal and covered with concrete and boat paint. A few years ago, some friends and I took him out on a boat and dropped it to the bottom of the bay. Then two scuba divers went down and took movies of him standing there. These days, he’s enjoying a stay in the garden, waiting for an opportunity to jump from an airplane or bake in a bonfire.

I’m a big fan of homemade garden art, and I really enjoy making it myself. I think the key is that it is not just display but personal expression. Buying statues from the garden center is swell, and I’m all for it, but making one’s own art is another thing. Gardeners frequently construct whimsical arrangements that they display in their gardens, and I’m crazy for those, because they’re personal. A statue from the garden center is less personal.

All gardens are themselves art, and even vegetable gardens are delightfully personal pieces of art and expression. When I look at other people’s vegetable gardens, I enjoy thinking about their thought processes as they built their gardens. Why did they build it in this way, and why did they decide to put that other part over there? The whole thing seems, to me, to be a personal expression. Even folks that only have a little patch or maybe even only a small apartment terrace manage to project a whole lot of their own personalities in their gardens. I don’t think we grow gardens just to eat the vegetables or cut the flowers for our vases. I think we garden because it is a pleasurable method of self expression.

I like August rainstorms. The garden is so big and sprawling and needs so much time just to water it these days that a rainy day is like a vacation. Ahhh!