Haiku Blogging

Forty days of posts
Makes blogging minds so weary
Haiku posts this week




Eating strawberries
Grown forty minutes away
Such a good breakfast

Don't Let Good Fruit Go Bad

One of the first major projects I started working on in my VISTA year was to implement a "gleaning" program for Del Norte County.  My supervisor, Angela Glore, had had the idea for the program since before I started with Community Assistance Network, and she put me to work straight away getting started on it.  "Gleaning" is a term that orginated long ago in history, and dates back to at least biblical times; it refers to collecting extra food that would otherwise go to waste and giving it to the poor.  Large landowners and farmers would let peasants go through their fields after a large harvest and they were allowed to keep the extra produce that wasn't harvested.  Modern gleaning programs take that same basic idea and apply it to communities; volunteer harvesters go and collect extra produce from local farms, public spaces, and even peoples' backyards, and take the gleaned food to local food banks.

Our program, the Del Norte Community Gleaning Project, really took off last season.  We contacted 4H and got their Citizenship Group involved with the project; the Citizenship Group is a group of high schoolers who take on community service projects each year.  They go down to the California 4H convention in Sacramento every spring to present their ideas for projects, and when they presented the gleaning project, they won 1st place for their presentation, competing against 4H clubs from all over California.  Throughout the summer, the 4H kids and I collected produce from all over the county, primarily receiving extras from the harvests at Ocean Air Farms.  We also collected from Crescent City's Farmer's Market each Saturday, and the 4H kids even went and collected apples from backyard orchards which were then pressed and served as apple sauce at the Farmer's Market.  In total, from May through November, we were able to collect 4144 lbs. of produce.  All of that food was distributed through CAN's food bank, to the people who need it most.

Gleaning programs exist all over the country, but our program was most directly inspired by Food For People, the network of food banks in Humboldt County.  Food For People has a well established gleaning program that primarily gleans from the multitude of small organic farms around Humboldt.  Each year, they take in thousands of pounds of food that is distributed through their food banks.  When we were first getting our program off the ground, we talked a lot with Jason Whitley, who heads up FFP's gleaning, who gave a lot of advice and assistance to us as we were starting.  Just a few weeks ago, Angela, VISTA Laura, and I took a work trip down to Humboldt and happened to run into Jason at Cafe Brio in Arcata.  As luck would have it, he was about to head out to Eddie Tanner's Deep Seeded Farm to do a gleaning pickup, and we had a couple hours to kill.  We went out to Eddie's farm and spent the next two hours harvesting beets, kale, cauliflower,  and spinach.  We didn't get a final weight from Jason, but we harvested a van full and all of it got sent off to be distributed at the food bank.

The Community Gleaning Project will be collecting produce again this year.  We'll be at each Farmer's Market and we encourage anyone who might have extra produce to call us any time and we will come out and harvest it for you.  We're also always looking for extra volunteers to come out and help collect.  If you are interested in getting involved in any way, contact me at ccaldwell@canbless.org or (707) 464-9190.  Also, check us out on Facebook: "Del Norte Community Gleaning Project."  And follow us on Twitter @GleanDelNorte.

Cutting Some of that Red Tape

I was reading recently (here, in NPR's food blog) that there's research that favors using local foods as the more efficient option when administering aid. Which is contrary to current policy. Currently, it is required that we Americans "Buy American" for the rest of the world. It was a policy developed to promote the interests of domestic agriculture. A little extra cash in Farmer Joe's pocket wasn't so bad, when the government would buy his grain and distribute it to foreign aid organizations. But this has evolved into a system that largely benefits large crop-specific (often for GM crops) and shipping lobbies, instead of  Farmer Joe, the family farmer, or agriculture as a whole.

Since 2008, 75% of all food aid, paid for by the U.S. government has been required to be purchased from the U.S. and shipped on  U.S. preferred vessels. Before that, 100% was purchased and shipped from the states. This costs a lot of time and money. When it takes a long time to get food to hungry people, food organizations are forced to face more extreme bouts of hunger than they would have to if the food were more readily available. It's estimated that we could cut off 14 weeks of waiting for a response to a crisis. Imagine having to wait 3 1/2 months for fresh food after an earth quake.
Changes could be made to Farm Bill that would speed up the process and feed 17 million more food than we do now - with the money we are already spending. Only 47% of the food aid budget goes to actual food - the rest is red tape, shipping, overhead, markups for growing and shipping regulations.

Letting the people have a little more say in where their food comes from could do a lot of good. The people would feel comfortable with the food their provided - local foods being the familiar sort. Aid organizations would be better prepared to respond quickly in the event of a crisis. Local farms would be supported, and these people could start working their way toward their own sustainable foods systems, economies. That sounds like a lot of good. But then how much of aid work should be in line with foreign policy and trade?

Here's an online form to Tell Congress to cut the red tape. Or follow this link to find contact information for your congress members, if you'd like to write a more personal letter.

Training an Orchard

Well, first things first... It turns out that I've been describing this thing all wrong.  For over a month now I've been promoting this event as a free "pruning" workshop to prune the new orchard at Mountain School.  After two blog posts, multiple Facebook mentions, and dozens of flyers distributed, I found out that there would actually be no pruning taking place at all.  At the start of our free workshop, the first thing I learned was that with first-year saplings you don't prune the trees, you "train" them.  So, despite my inaccurate description of the event, the day went on as planned for the first annual Gasquet Orchard Training Workshop.

Just as a reminder, this is the third installment in a series of blog posts I've written about the Gasquet Orchard Training (formerly Pruning) Workshop.  You can read the other posts here and here.  And I would like to sincerely thank Deborah Giraud from the UC Cooperative Extension for making the drive up from Eureka and braving the rain with us to teach us such a useful skillset.

And we certainly did brave the rain.  This day has been coming for over a month now, and due to the busy schedules of the planners, this was the time we could do it and we were going to get out there, rain or shine.  Luckily there has already sprung up a small group of Gasquet residents who are committed to this project and are eager to take part in any and all activities related to the new Gasquet Garden and Orchard.  We were also joined by a couple of US Forest Service firefighters who heard about the workshop and were curious to learn about pruning (excuse me, "training") from a pro.  We got pretty fully soaked through in the two hours we spent in the orchard, but spirits were high and we all had a good time and (hopefully) learned something about fruit tree maintenance.

Before heading and trimming

And what did we learn?  Well let me clarify the pruning vs. training situation.  The first thing Deborah taught us was that you don't "prune" first year trees.  Pruning is the practice of cutting back, or "heading" (more on that later), vegetative growth on mature trees in order to promote better fruit production.  Training is the practice of establishing proper structural support in your young tree by controlling the growth of the branches and trunk.  Proper training in a tree's first year ensures that it will not grow excessively bushy with weak limbs; sunlight would not get evenly distributed, the branches would not be able to support the fruit, and most importantly, the fruit would be too small and not taste very good at all.  After all, the main objective of training and pruning is to control the distribution of the tree's resources in order to produce big, delicious fruit.



After heading and trimming

 The way you train trees is by going to work on them with a pair of pruning shears.  The objective is to give your tree a strong trunk or central leader, and to have a few strong branches that are evenly spaced apart on the trunk.  Our fruit trees had already grown a number of small, first year branches from the nursery, so we had to remove quite a few branches and cut back the branches we were keeping.  When you're training your tree, there are two types of cut you make: heading and thinning.  Thinning a branch is when you cut it off at the trunk, ensuring it won't grow back, and giving your keeper branches more space and access to sunlight.  Heading is when you shorten a branch down in order to help it grow stronger and have more girth.  As you make your heading and thinning cuts, you keep in mind the type of structure or arrangment that you want to give your tree, and there are a few different options.

The basic options you have for arrangement are central leader, open center, and y-shaped.



Central Leader



 



Open Center



• Central Leader might be the most recognizable, as it most resembles basic "tree" structure.  You have a strong, predominant trunk with your scaffolding limbs (branches) evenly distributed around around the trunk.
• Open Center is an effective arrangment for having even sunlight distribution coming to the tree.  There is no central leader, and instead has 3 or 4 main scaffold limbs that are (in theory) evenly spaced apart around the trunk.  This method also makes future pruning and harvesting very easy since the trees don't grow as tall.
• Y-Shape: similar to the open center except you leave only two primary scaffolds.  This is a good way to utilize space in an orchard, if you train the "Y" to be perpendicular to your row of trees.

Each of the different types of arrangments will work best for different types of fruit trees, but those are the basic shapes you want to give your tree and each one of them will work well.  The method we primarily used for our fruit trees was the "central leader" but a few of them will most likely end up being "open center" depending on how they are pruned next year and the following years.  We just went with the natural shape that the trees already had.

Another technique used in controlling your trees' arrangment, beyond just properly training with the right cuts, is to use spacers between your scaffolds.  If you are trying to create an open center tree but your scaffolds are too close together, or if the angle is too tight and the scaffold gets too close to the leader, you can wedge something between them in order to get the shape you want.  We used this technique on a few of our trees, including this one which we want to be an open center:

We ended up getting all 24 of the fruit trees trained in well under 2 hours, which really went by in a flash, despite the rain.  You may have noticed at the top of today's post, I called this event the "first annual" Gasquet Orchard Training Workshop.  That's because we intend to continue with this event each year to make sure they properly develop; one of the most important lessons we learned is that fruit trees need to be maintained and observed every season to ensure a healthy tree.  Continuing the tradition each year will also open up the possibility of learning new things.  This entire workshop centered around how to train first-year trees, but the practice of pruning fully mature fruit trees is a whole other set of skills and knowledge.  We'll carry on with the orchard and make sure that it develops right.  Hope you can make it next year!

Unplugging and Undoing

Committing to forty blogs for the forty days of Lent has confirmed it for me. There's a day for everything, and every day has a thing. There was World Water Day and Crab Meat Day and International Women's Day that we blogged about. There was Spinach Day and Reagan's Frozen Foods Day that we didn't. Some days seem more poignant than others.

I found another day, National Day of Unplugging. The third annual event occured this past weekend.  The idea was to have a day of rest from wired, plugged-in living. It's no coincidence that it occurs during the sabbath of some religious traditions: from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. This sort of sabbath is directed at any modern gal or guy addicted to technology and wanting slow down for a bit, religious affiliations aside. Sabbath Manifesto and UNDO promote a weekly 'sabbath' like this, to encourage us to process the passing week and engage with the living and the breathing. There are ten principles, they say, to follow for a successful day off the grid. Among them, are "connect with loved ones, "nuture your health," get outside," "drink wine," "eat bread," "give back."

It's a lovely way to slow down and enjoy life. To enjoy nature and anothers company. To enjoy food. Every week UNDO posts suggestions for how to spend your day of rest. Last week they suggested sharing a plate of cookies with a neighbor you never speak to, asking a stranger what was the worst date they'd ever been on, making a meal using local produce and at least one unfamiliar ingredient. They even suggest outtings and events specific to New York, L.A. and San Fransisco.

theundolist.com suggested trying an unfamiliar fruit or vegetable last week

I didn't directly participate in this year's national event (aside from not having internet connection at my house). I left my phone on, answered a few calls, a few texts. But maybe this weekend. Maybe I'll turn off my phone and have a picnic - there's plenty of nature to enjoy in these parts!

If you have any ideas about how to unplug and enjoy food and community in Del Norte this weekend - sound off!

World Water Day, Revisited

Just last week, we talked about World Water Day -- this year focused on agriculture's great thirst. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured an article about California's farmers in the central valley who are being faced with large scale cuts in irrigation water rights due to a dry winter. Many farmers are facing cutbacks in the amount of land they plant and harvest.

Many people argue that southern California is not an agricultural Eden and shouldn't be so heavily farmed, given the general scarcity of water and the engineering feats needed to bring water for irrigation. But the reality is that much of California depends on irrigation not just for successful farming, but for a successful economy. When large farms can't plant their full acreage, lay-offs are not far behind. The WSJ article demonstrates the ripple effect of cutting irrigation water: even the local Ford dealership expects to feel the pinch in fewer car sales over the next year.

Stories like this emphasize how deeply water is embedded in everything we do. Too little water for cotton equals too few car sales to keep a dealership financially healthy. That's the negative.

The positive? Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. Large-scale drip irrigation systems were first developed in Israel, where water conservation isn't a luxury -- it's a desperate need. Drip irrigation systems put water directly at the roots of the plants and use a fraction of the water used by sprinkler systems. The Green Revolution (the development of high-yielding plant varieties) tried to solve one problem, hunger, without considering related problems of land fertility and water use. It might be time for plant breeders to stop working on ever-increasing yields under "perfect" conditions and focus more attention on varieties that are drought-tolerant.

Food Freshness-IQ



screen shot from the freshness-iq quiz



We talked recently about food storage and preservation, and being a part of the process instead of handing everything over to modern technology. Well, Sub-Zero, the giant of food preservation and refrigeration systems would argue that there is a way, that they have the technology to keep your food at it's freshest . I am not here to advertise for them or take a stance against their product. Simply put, I know I couldn't afford such a system, and I find the more idyllic, affordable and energy efficient root cellar to be more appealing to my romantic sensibilities. But what they did was put out an interactive quiz to test you on what you know about food storage. Do you know what ethylene gas is, which fruits emit it, which vegetables are sensitive to it? Do you know what kind of atmospheric conditions your tomatoes need to stay fresh? Take this quiz to see what you know. And even better? Every quiz completed earns a dollar for Food Corps, an AmeriCorps program that works specifically to gain food insecure youth access to fresh, nutritonal foods. Food Corps volunteers do this by delivering hands on nutrition education, building and tending school gardens and bringing high quality local foods into public school cafeterias.