quote

"A natural garden ... includes the wide, wild world as it is, warts and all."
- Jeff Cox

a morning at the CSA farm, part 2

Some closeup shots below of the CSA farm veggies, via Bonnie. The deep red lettuce is a stunningly beautiful variety called 'Merlot' - I'm sure we can Google a seed source because I can't recall where Pat said she got her seeds. She is careful to buy her seeds from organic sources.
We're only on week 2 of our 20-week season. Hard to believe, when the solstice is already past we are only just beginning to enjoy the harvest, but that's how it is in Michigan.
We just ate the last of our Michigan strawberries - full flavored, sweet and red all the way through, as only a fully ripe strawberry can be. Ripe berries don't travel well, and folks who buy strawberries in the grocery store probably think strawberries really taste like juicy cardboard.
The tart cherries are beginning to come in, and my tree didn't produce this year, so I'll have to find a local orchard in the newspaper and make a visit.

A morning at the CSA farm

I brought my camera to the Whetham Organic CSA Farm to get some colorful shots for the blog, but my friend Bonnie had hers too, and she promised to send me some photos to share with y'all. Thanks, Bonnie!

You know you're on a farm when you see the implements along the road out back.


Salad, mmmm!










These are some of the cole crops, the potatoes and pea plots from a distance.


The peas and potatoes up closer:


A farm hand, mulching the potatoes...


Pat herself, queen of the peas ... Actually, she's instructing the organic gardening class right out in the field.


A look back to the house... it's so quiet and peaceful back in Pat's garden, makes you want to stay for a while.

Meet My Guest Blogger, Pat

Last year my family joined Pat Whetham's organic vegetable CSA* farm, here in Genesee County, Michigan. Just to give it a try see how we liked it. The food was fresh and healthy, organically and locally grown. It was a good year. And luckily, our half share was plentiful: we had more than we could use.
And, just maybe because of all of the green leafy veggies, my cholesterol level this year was better than last year's reading. All good, all good.
(*Consumer Supported Agriculture)

Farming is a real life gamble, when you think of it. We get a taste of that when we buy a share in a CSA farm and then wait to see what happens with the weather and insects and whatever else Mother Nature has in mind for us. Like with stock, 'the market doesn't always go up'. This uncertainty is what the farm family has to deal with every year for their livelihood.
It gives us a clearer idea about the precariousness of the climate change that we are beginning to experience as well.

Anyhow, this year I like to think we were first in line to re-subscribe.

We shareholders receive occasional e-mails concerning relevant topics from our CSA farmer, Pat, and upon reading the latest one, I had 'the light bulb' turn on over my head:
Ask Pat to be a guest blogger!
In other words, ask her permission to post her emails and help spread her words of wisdom and experience! So I turn this space over today to Pat.

From Whetham Organic Farm - "The Way We Live Now"

In the interests of further educating everyone I know:

[Linked] to this is a very interesting article by Michael Pollan, author of The Ominivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. ... I really want you to read it and think.

Pollan is good at making us think (at least in my opinion) and his work has helped fuel the 'eat local' movement across America by describing the production of industrial food in great detail. In this article he is very definitely equating our food choices with our environmental or carbon footprints. And it's about time. I've been trying to do that for 20 years, but no one would pay attention - including the environmentalists.

By the end of the [linked] article Pollan finally is saying Grow your own food. It's the best choice for the whole entire world and everybody in it. I agree and say also that garden needs to be organic, not chemical (because chemical gardening -and farming- uses more resources as well as being unhealthy for you and the planet).

Can you believe that many 'gardeners' never grow anything edible? Those people need to be encouraged to put some fruits and vegetables among those ornamentals!

Pollan talks about viral social change - that phenomenon where ideas spread like a computer virus. Let's help this particular virus along. Start praising all the gardeners you know for growing their own food.

Encourage others to try it. That's one of the reasons I started an organic gardening class this year - to encourage others, to show them how it's done if they don't know, to spread the word as Pollan is trying to do.

For those of you who can't grow your own, CSA is a good choice, particularly a really local CSA where you can see your food being grown, maybe help out a little, and gain some understanding of the whole process of gardening and farming and the ways it can help or hurt the world.

I have a few more "viral" ideas coming along in my mind. Expect to hear about them soon.

Pat

Hands On Organic Garden Workshops

We began on Friday morning. Pat's living room was full of like minded people from all kinds of situations, from home gardeners with city or suburban lots to some with actual farms. Beginner gardeners, experienced, and everything in between. A couple gals from the USDA even, and a few people who want to start businesses of their own.
It looks like a great start to me, I'm looking forward to March when we get our hands in the potting soil!

Here are the particulars from Pat's e-mail. She may have room left in the Saturday class. Look back in my blog for location and contact info.

Learn As You Grow
At Wetham Organic Farm
A Practical Experience in Organic Gardening
Continuing Hands-On Workshops
Throughout the Growing Season
Focusing on Annual Vegetables

Session #: Topics
1. What is Organic? The Philosophy and practice of growing in a healthy, environmentally responsible way. The importance of good soil. Planned biodiversity in and around the garden. Choosing seeds, finding organic seeds, selecting varieties, planning for seed-starting. (February)

2. Appropriate Tools for organic gardening - supplies and tools for seed starting (transplants), soil mixes for transplants, soil blocks, timing for transplants - when to start seeds for early crops or warm season crops. (March)

3. Soil tests, composts and manure, minerals for fertility - beyond NPK, planning and laying out your garden for yearly rotations, transplanting - from seed flat to pack or pot. (Early April)

4. Applying minerals and compost, working the ground - machine or hand, the benefits of raised beds, early outdoor transplanting and direct seeding - cool season crops. (Late April)

5. Starting vining crops, beginning weed and insect control, putting in warm season transplants, thinning early crops for best production ( May)

6. Succession planting for continuing harvests, mulching, pruning and training tomatoes, planning space for fall crops, disease control in vine crops (early June)

7. Care and harvesting for continued production of summer veggies, how to know when it’s done producing, summer cover crops, starting transplants for the fall garden (late June)

8. Direct seeding fall crops, composting, understanding late season production (July)

9. Managing late crops for harvest throughout the fall. (August)

10. What worked this year and what didn’t - beginning the plans for next year by refining design and rotation as well as crops and varieties end of the season chores, using leaves in the garden, winter cover crops. (September)

Friday Sessions: Feb.22, March21, April 11, April 25, May 16, June 6, June 27, July 18, Aug. 15, September 19. Saturday Sessions: Feb 16, March 15, April 12, April 26, May 17, June 7, June 28, July 19, Aug. 16, Sept. 20.

I'm sure my piping on about local educational opportunties is getting a tad tedious to some readers, but I do have a few more to post, and then I take another turn on this path. After all, learning in the winter is my way of maintaining contact with 'the green fuse'* here in the frozen north. (I'll have to post that poem soon...)

Two updates

First, the organic CSA farmer I have written of who is offering the monthly hands on workshops on organic vegetable growing, Pat Wetham, has got a new phone number:
# 810-867-4435.
I hope you'll sign up for her workshops! With the trend toward fresh, organic and local food, what could be more valuable than knowing how to grow your own veggies in your own yard? Nothing is more local, and there is nothing like knowing how your food was really grown, because you've done it!

Also, this morning the League of Conservation Voters sent out their online voter guide to the 2008 presidential candidates(link). It's pretty interesting reading. The LCV sent a questionnaire to each of the candidates and then researched what they said (their public statements), what they promised (their platforms), and most importantly their track record, what they did (how they have voted.)

It won't surprise you on the Republican side.

That joke Giuliani did not extend the courtesy to respond and has no federal voting record. But his opinions are simply not environmentally responsible.

The flip-flopping Michigan Mitt did not have the manners to reply either and has no federal voting record. He says he loves coal and drilling.

'Mac' McCain must not have grandchildren he cares about, he has a 26 voting record.

The Democratic candidates did surprise me a bit.

Billary has a 90 percent voting record. If I liked her I'd say Yay.

Obama voted a 96! Yay!
But I must comment Hill and Obama have not been Senators long enough to test their true mettle...

Edwards voted a 59, which is hard to understand considering his spearheading of the defense of the Clean Air Act. Maybe he is cleaning up his act? I need to do some further reading.

Of course my man Dennis K. with a 92 beat Hillary but didn't come in as well as Obama. But he left to work on retaining his congressional seat again.

You can spend a lot of time reading up on the issues, and the LCV has done most of the footwork for us! We know where they stand (non-partisan) and what they stand for (the future of the planet!)
They have a richly informational website that really educates. For instance, if you can stomach it you can study what the present despoilers are doing and what they have accomplished here.

Isn't it about time we voters let the powerful know we won't support them if they don't take care of our planet?
Clean air, beautiful public spaces where nature can live, and safe water are the commons that belong to us all. Why should the profit of a few take those things we share away from us!

Winter is the time for gardeners to grow

No, I don't mean our waistlines from all the sitting around reading and writing and planning. Or growing plants indoors though many of us do. I'm talking about learning more about our preoccupation. We read books, magazines, newsletters and the internet, we attend workshops and conferences, and we take time to organize, digest and internalize what we learn.

Today I sent in my five dollars to reserve a place in a beekeeping workshop at the Genesee Conservation District. It sounds fun! I'd like to keep bees, although Herb is to say the least circumspect. He keeps saying things like, bees sting people.
Well, I probably won't get a hive this year, what with the economy and being on a budget and all. But it will be fun to learn. And speaking of budgeting, the CSA organic gardening workshops I posted about a few days ago are a great deal - if I plan to help out, as a CSA subscriber I can attend for free! HOW COOL IS THAT! I though Pat's organic vegetables and greens were first rate last year, and we had more than we could use (so I froze some and gave away some). Now I get to combine the pleasure of being around like minded people, learning good skills, and I can bring my veggies home the same day! Yipee!

Learn from an expert

I'm planning on taking this series of workshops:

Learn as You Grow:
A Practical Experience in Organic Gardening
Continuing Hands-On Workshops throughout the Growing Season
at Whetham Organic Farm

Gardening is a rewarding hobby for many people throughout the country. It relaxes us, brings us closer to nature, improves our health in many ways. Vegetable gardening also allows us to eat the freshest food possible - from garden to table as it has been done for millenia by people all around the world. But not everyone is confident in their ability to bring real food to their table or to do it in a way that is environmentally beneficial as well as healthful to them. Gardening organically is proven to be ecologically sustainable and to provide food that is more nutritious.

This series of workshops on our farm is designed to teach the philosophy and principles of organic growing to beginning gardeners and those who want to convert to organic practices. These classes will begin in late winter and continue through the season. In spring and summer the sessions will take place in the hoophouse and the garden, providing the hands-on experience needed for practical application of the information.

Participants will learn how to choose varieties and seeds; the importance of soil tests and the minerals needed to increase the fertility of your garden; how to start transplants (in seeds flats and plugs and in soil blocks) and how to transplant. All will be able to take home vegetable plants for your garden. Later in the season participants will actually work in the gardens on our farm, learning when and how to plant seeds and transplants, how to choose cover crops for summer and fall and how to compost.

Workshops will begin in late winter (February) and will continue through October. Ten sessions are planned with each session 2 to 3 hours in length. The cost to attend the entire series is $150. Individual workshops will be $25. Space is limited .

Pat Whetham has 30+ years experience with organic vegetable gardening, including 19 years on a certified organic farm.

This series of workshops focuses entirely on vegetables and herbs and will not cover flowers or ornamentals except as the same techniques apply. Fruit trees will not be covered at all but some of the information can be applied to small fruits such as strawberries.

Contact Pat at Whetham Organic Farm for details: miorganic@aol.com or 810-659-8414 or reserve your spot in the workshops by sending in the form below with a $25 deposit. Send to Pat Whetham, Whetham Organic Farm, 11230 W. Mt. Morris Rd, Flushing MI 48433.