The Electric Farmer

This morning’s harvest was one of the more interesting ones to date.  Got up at six, thunder started by 6:30, and got out to the gardens before seven–can’t say the time for sure, but the Dakota/Cherry traffic light comes on at 7 a.m., and it wasn’t on yet when I went through.

My plan, with a lot of little bits and pieces of stuff to harvest, was to start in the northeast garden, move to the east, then over to the west and up to the northcentral, cutting and bagging as I went.  Chard was first, then head lettuce, basil and lemon basil, broccoli, then kale and onions, and finally sugar snap peas.

The lightning was scary! But, I kept going because I figured eventually it would start raining, and it might rain hard, possibly hail.  I kept my head down, and tried not to think too much about the possible implications of dunking my hands in buckets full of water out in the middle of the garden while washing heads of lettuce.

What’s the likelihood of getting struck by lightning, really? Well, it’s probably a lot better if you’re out playing with water in a lightning storm.

About the time I was cutting the few remaining heads of broccoli, it started raining, and it got really, really dark.  I was thinking about cutting the side-shoots as well, but couldn’t really see them–it was ten o’ clock-at-night dark out there.

I also thought that maybe I should snip the kale quick in case it hailed, but then it really started raining, and I started wondering whether I would be able to get my truck out of the tall, wet grass and saturated soil down by the gardens if I waited much longer.

So, I loaded up what I had in the coolers, grabbed my cold mug of rain-enhanced coffee, and high-tailed it up to the trailer to seek refuge with H. and the dog, drink hotter coffee, and watch storm radar on the internet.

And then it started to pour.

When I got back down to the gardens about a half-hour later, there was a little over an inch of rainwater in the harvest buckets that were empty before I sought shelter, and when I headed back into town after finishing the rest of the harvest (including the kale, that shrugged off the little bit of pea-sized hail we did get), I was really happy our farm is on a slope at the top of the valley.

The Vermillion River was high and getting higher, and water stood in the valley’s beanfields. We’ve been getting great moisture so far for July, but maybe an inch in a half hour is just a little much.

Now I’m back in my cozy home in a cozy sweat-skirt and sweater and, yes, even some pink fuzzy slippers.  But, I’ll don some slightly cleaner and hopefully dry farm clothes later, pray for a sunny afternoon, and see you locals at the Farmers Market!

Can’t Say as I Blame Them…

Yesterday, I went out to work in the gardens and found this:

Deer-damaged Lettuce

If you’ll notice, the first two heads of summer crisp look quite lovely (ready for tomorrow’s market, even), but the third–the top one? Eaten right off.

The deer had also got into the west garden and eaten the tops and leaves off a couple of bolting-to-seed Green Ice lettuce plants I was saving for seed.  So, I grumbled, and H. put up another wire, and I went about my work.

Last night–or maybe this morning after last night’s heavy rains–it found the butterhead.  While the summer crisp was good, the butterhead is by far the tenderest, most lovely lettuce ever created.  And the deer, having completely ignored my lettuce all season up to this point, gorged itself on my lovely little heads.

I grumbled again, and wondered why the new wire didn’t work, and I spread some crystals from a bottle of coyote urine animal repellent in the area.  While I’m against the idea of caging a coyote and collecting its urine, I got it from a friend who got it when a nursery was going out of business.  So, I’m using it up.

Meanwhile, I considered my options.  The deer wasn’t particularly thorough about eating the heads it destroyed, so I cut off all the damaged heads in the row (summer crisp, a romaine, and especially the butterhead), and washed them up for tonight’s dinner.

Butterhead Salad

When I started eating the salad of mostly butterhead, plus some tuna, roasted red peppers, tamari almonds, red onions, and bleu cheese (dressed simply with lemon, olive oil, and black pepper), I realized that it’s pretty hard to blame the deer for their taste. Butterhead is simply the best, most tender and delicious lettuce there is!

Garden Notes (with pictures!)

I realize it has been awhile since I’ve posted images.  The mosquitoes are dying down a bit–allowing me to stand in one place long enough to take a picture without losing a critical amount of blood.

Today’s projects were mostly about weeding–the onions and the green onions to be exact, plus watering the newly-planted crops (heirloom Marvel of Venice pole beans and dinosaur kale), and planting the last bean crop of the summer along a newly-cleared trellis.

At the top of the new green onion bed that runs the length of the west garden, I had transplanted a few over-wintered leeks to make seed for next year’s crop.

The new planting also meant I needed to turn the compost pile and dig out some good stuff the amend the bed where the beans would live.  The bean planting I did less than a week ago is breaking ground today-I also sprinkled a little of the finer-grained compost alongside the emerging shoots.

I am finding it really helps to pre-soak the bean seed–not just swirl it around in a jar with the innoculant, but leave it in there for an hour or two to really start swelling up before planting. Of course, this is a great time of year to start beans because the soil is so warm–they sprout within a matter of days and get growing fast.

Above is an image of the first crop of beans I planted this season–Bingo shell beans from Territorial seed. They over-topped their trellis a couple weeks ago and are twining together. I’ve been weaving them into the top of the trellis occasionally so they grow horizontally.

Maybe next year I will create an arch with panels the long way to better support them (if H. lets me do that to his panels).

I have two beds of potatoes in the west garden as well as the new plantings of beans, onions, green onions, and other crops.  There is an amazing difference between them.

Sickly Potatoes

These are Red French Fingerlings that I’ve been saving and re-planting for a couple years.  Obviously, they have some sort of virus and look absolutely terrible.  If they make any worthwhile spuds, we’ll simply eat all of them, and I’ll order more certified virus-free seed next year if I want to grow this variety again.

Happy Potatoes

And in the same garden, in a bed below and west of the sickly ones (you can actually see the corner of this bed in the upper right hand corner of the “sickly” picture, is this very happy bed of Peruvian Purple fingerlings.

Other happy crops in the garden: my row of broccoli and paste tomatoes (now busting through their cages) in the east garden:

Below the broccoli row is a second planting of shell beans and trellised tomatoes. Below that is the eggplant and hot peppers left over from other plantings in the east and west gardens.  It’s amazing how quickly an eggplant can outgrow early flea beetle damage when the weather finally heats up:

See how those lower leaves are shot full of holes?  That all happened in June with the chilly and wet weather.  Once things got warm and sunny later in the month, it burst past that insect-riddled stage and now looks like it will be quite productive and healthy.

If you plant your eggplant in a really sunny and warm location, it can do this, but if you plant in a semi-shady spot, you’ll have flea beetle problems all season (I know this because I made that mistake). Eggplant just wants heat and sun–even the vigorous hybrids.

Other happily productive garden friends that I didn’t plant, but still provide an abundant harvest:

Mulberries

Dill Blossom

Some years, my dill isn’t ready when my cucumbers are. This year, it’ll be the other way around, thanks to all the early-sprouting volunteer dill and my late planting of cucumbers.

I also didn’t plant these–H. did.  And he is quite happy with the production of this particular vine:

The last image is one of a garden helper that I’ve never before been able to catch on camera (I almost said “on film”).

I was re-turning the bed where I took the leeks out a couple days ago, to hasten the decomposition of the grass and weeds, and to break up the clumps a bit.  I turned over a forkful of soil near the straw-mulched edge, and unearthed this little guy:

Five-lined Skink

Usually they are very quick to get back under the mulch–so fast, there’s no way to retrieve the camera and have them there when you get back. Heck, even if you have the camera on you, you have to be really quick. But, I think this particular one is both young and maybe a little dazed at having been unearthed in such a way.

I didn’t hurt him–he skittered off eventually.  I’m very glad I was using my blunt-tined digging fork instead of my hand cultivator or a tiller. And I’m also glad that my well-mulched garden provides such excellent habitat for the skinks, and they in turn provide me with a bit of insect and slug control.

Soba Noodles with Sugar Snaps and Curried Yogurt Sauce

Around 5 or 6 ‘o clock in the evening, I start thinking about what I should make for dinner.  This time of year it involves poking around the fridge to see what veggies I thought to harvest and bring in from the country.

I don’t usually have a lot of veggies in the fridge because they’re best when fresh-harvested that day, but I wasn’t able to make it out to the farm to harvest anything today because my truck was in the shop. However, I did do a substantial picking of sugar snaps yesterday before pulling about half of the not-so-productive vines down.

Starting with that, a package of soba noodles, and a desire for both curry and creamy, I made the following dish:

Cook soba noodles according to package directions (making sure to take the little bands off before you dump the bunches in boiling water)–I used all three bunches in my package.

While they are cooking, mix 1/2 tsp garlic powder, one to one-and-a-half tablespoons curry powder (I used Penzey’s Balti–use what you like), a couple dashes of salt and liberal grinding of pepper in a small bowl–then add and mix in about a cup and a half of plain yogurt. IMHO, you are cheating yourself if you use anything but full-fat.

Drain the pasta, rinse with cold water, drain well, and mix the pasta with the creamy yogurt sauce. Then heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a frying pan on medium-high heat and throw in some chopped small spring onions (white parts–save the green parts for another use or for garnish). Let the onions just start to brown.

Then (after having removed the tops and strings), throw in about a cup of sugar snap peas and let them just get a tiny bit of brown spots on them before dumping in a can of diced tomatoes with most of their juice.

Turn off the heat if you have an electric stove–you can simmer for just a minute if you have gas. Don’t really cook the peas–they should stay crunchy. Dump the contents of the pea/onion/tomato pan over the pasta and toss.

You might also garnish with a little chopped cilantro–I did. Serve at room temperature–easy because combining the rinse-cooled noodles, cold yogurt sauce and hot veggies makes it a good temperature to serve–no need to eat super-hot food when it’s hot outside.

Serves two with some leftovers unless you’re farmer-hungry–four if you have something else to go with it.

Local ingredients: peas, onions, cilantro.

Truck Love

So, I had to get my truck in today to get a little lovin’ before the big trip to Rapid City and the Black Hills this coming weekend for the Dakota Rural Action Local Food Summit (with Deborah Madison as keynote speaker!).

The total bill for two new rear tires, mounted and balanced, plus a new windshield wiper thingamajig that allows my wipers to work even when it’s raining (I’ve found this helpful), plus new rear brake drums (and the prerequisite checking of the fluids and belts and air-in-the-spare) came to just over four hundred bucks.

I haven’t put a lot of money into my little S-10 lately, so that wasn’t a huge shocker.  Vehicles are money-pits, but they’re an essential part of doing a little farm business, and for the money (and it was bought used eight or so years ago), my pickup was, and is, a great deal.

Big pickups are all the fashion in South Dakota–the bigger the better, and if it has that loud diesel growl, well it’s macho as can be.  It also helps to have lots of chrome and a bed that’s never seen a scratch.

But, I’ve noticed that a lot of people who are doing serious work on a budget have smaller trucks with more miles and more scratches–trucks that last.  The big pickups have big beds that might carry a lot, but they’re a b*tch to load and unload. Still, they look fancy pulling a big trailer with 4×4, Custom, and Deluxe emblazoned on their sides.

Whatever. While I may look with longing on the 60s and 70s domestic pickups (the ones that weren’t too huge or high to load and unload), the big trucks these days seem all about show–certainly the gas mileage is showy. Mine gets a modest-but-respectable mpg, and it gets used for its intended purpose quite a bit of the time.

The only gripe I have about the S-10 is that crappy plastic bumper that’s ubiquitous these days. The problem is that there’s no tow-point on the front of  the truck that doesn’t require going underneath the bumper to hitch. Then, when you pull the truck out of the ditch or the farmyard, you inevitably crack the bumper to pieces. Bad design.

Pickups are great for carrying things, but they do get stuck–even the big ones with four wheel drive.  There just isn’t enough weight on the back end unless you constantly put a bunch of weight in the back–and then you’re killing your gas mileage and making it hard to put other stuff in the back. So a good tow point is essential to a good overall design.

Unfortunately, over the last couple decades, our vehicle manufacturers have decided that sporty looks outweigh useful function.  Or maybe there just aren’t enough farmers and ranchers left to lobby with their dollars for something that really works.

Long Shanks

I grow an old French heirloom leek called Blue Solaise (or Bleu de Solaise), so-named because of the color of its beautiful flags–the top part of the leek that is great for making soup stock, but not usually used in cooking otherwise.

Blue Solaise Leeks, 2008

Blue Solaise is an extremely cold-hardy leek–here on the northern edge of Zone 5 it overwinters quite handily, unless it is eaten down by deer–these leeks are very sweet after a few frosts.  Currently I have about five or six survivors from last year’s crop that are forming huge ball-shaped flowers, and will make seed I can save after that.

The usual trade-off between a super-hardy and a summer-harvested leek is that while the cold-hardy leek’s shank (the part you eat) is very thick, it is usually fairly short–Blue Solaise is generally a pretty squat plant as leeks go.  Too, when you grow leeks in beds as I do, it’s difficult to do the hilling required to elongate the shank as much as possible.

What I have noticed over the past few years of growing this variety is that when two leeks end up growing together (more than one seed germinated in the cell, and I didn’t notice and thin at transplanting time), the shanks are longer and thinner–more like a summer leek.

This year’s crop was transplanted in April, and they went into a bed that looked really good then–but I should have known it’d be weedy because it wasn’t a finished bed last year.  I’ve been progressively trying to get the grass and weeds out of there, but in the process, I realized it was going to be a season-long battle.

Next door to the leek bed was another weedy mess–this one an experiment in letting my soon-to-be-seven-year-old son decide what he wanted to plant and water and weed and sell at the farmers market. Well, even though I was quite willing to help him with these chores, it soon became apparent that I was going to be doing all the work.

I pulled the last of those carrots on Thursday, and I turned under the ridiculously weedy bed.  I turned it again today, and slowly worked through all the soil to get every last clump of grass and thistle root out (I’d at least been pulling everything that was going to seed during the carrots’ brief sojourn there).

Once the bed was clear of weeds and worked deep, I started making trenches–one at a time–along the short axis, pulling back the soil, working in some pelletized chicken manure, then digging the leeks out of their bed and transferring them to the new one–planting them deep so only the top couple inches of leaves (flags) were sticking up.

Altogether, I managed to get eighty-five leeks into that (about 3 1/2 x 15′) bed–they’re spaced a bit closer than they were in the old bed, but they are all growing singly, as the transplant allowed me to separate the doubled-up plants. They’re also growing deep in a nicely amended soil that should hopefully encourage them to grow both fat and long.

I doubt that this is the best time to do this kind of project–it is warming up, after all, and we’re past the solstice too.  But if nothing else I’ll learn if it’s worthwhile, if I’m going to grow leeks in beds, to get the young transplants going in a nursery bed and then move them to deeper quarters when they reach a reasonable size.

Anaerobic Decomposition

Fill one raised bed with animal manure and bedding mined from a foot-deep deposit in an old barn, hire two guys to walk on it for about a month to press out all the air, and what do you get when you dig it up?

A smell only a dog could love–equal parts old-fashioned floor-cleaner and soiled diaper sitting in a hot car.

I’m really glad my neighbors on either side have their houses shut up and their air conditioning going because my backyard is officially reeky.  I cleared the paint chips from the back part of the raised bed I built last fall and then started digging up the soil that had been seriously compacted during the house-painting process.

That “soil” was mostly the aforementioned mined brown gold, which didn’t smell bad when I got it–sure a little bit of ammonia odor, but it was mostly absorbed by the bedding contained in it, and the top part dried out pretty quickly and became completely odorless.  But once all the air got pressed out of it, the whole thing under that top crust turned into an anaerobic ammonia pancake.

I dug it out in three sections down to the landscape fabric I’d laid beneath. It was so tromped down, the texture of the fabric was imprinted on the underside of the big chunks I carved out with my shovel. Once I dug each section, I emptied a bag of hedge trimmings I offered to take off my neighbor’s hands (and keep out of the dump).

I’m hoping the carbon in those stems will serve to sequester some of the excess nitrogen contained in the manure/bedding mix. After the hedge trimmings, which also added loft (air–also good to avoid anaerobic stinkiness), I shoveled out the partially-decomposed contents of my compost barrel over the twigs, then pitched the manure chunks back on top, which broke them up at least partially on impact.

Out in the gardens, I often have more carbonaceous stemmy materials (from fall and spring clean-up) than nitrogenous green stuff–though the weeds I’m pulling are certainly helping bring that into balance.  Here in town, I’ve generally got plenty of nitrogen from all the kitchen scraps, but less abundant carbon unless it’s fall and I’m collecting leaves.

In Gardening When It Counts, Steve Solomon points out that the ideal C/N ratio (that of humus) is 12:1, and claims that spreading or composting with a lower ratio will burn off nutrients and kill microorganisms.

This is same thing that happens when you add nitrates as chemical fertilizer– it causes fast but weak growth (more susceptible to insect predation and disease) plus a lower overall nutrient value in the crop yield.

A higher C/N ratio takes longer to decompose, and the nitrogen is tied up as soil microorganisms need it to break down the carbon in order to reach that 12:1 balance. That’s why using wood chips (very high carbon) on paths works well to suppress weeds, but you should never use wood chips to mulch your vegetables because they simply won’t grow well, or sometimes at all.

Considering the low C/N ratio of the manure/urine-soaked bedding combo, I’m trying to add a little more carbon to my mix with the twigs in order to keep the nutrients in the bed from burning off as well as protecting my little buddies in the soil.

I’m tempted to mix in a little half-rotten straw, but I might not, as I’ve been tearing up lightweight brown cardboard cereal and pasta boxes and adding those to the contents of the compost barrel that’s now spread in the bed.

One good sign I noticed as I was carving out wedges of compacted manure and bedding was a great population of earthworms big and small–including some real lunkers. I haven’t seen earthworms that big in a long time.

They were happily tunneling their way through all that good stuff–now they’ll have even more tasty treats to make into good humus.

At any rate, that part of the raised bed, which wasn’t planted because it really wasn’t even close to full, will have to sit and get worked on by all the worms and microorganisms until next spring. The only thing I can foresee doing (if I can get my hands on any) is to throw a layer of topsoil over all the composting goodies.

It’ll be like icing on the cake!

Ravenous Beasties

If I haven’t posted any images of the gardens lately, it’s because I can’t stand in one spot long enough to focus the camera. The mosquitoes are the worst I’ve ever seen them out there, and all our mowing the tall weeds and grass has hardly made a dent in their numbers around the gardens.

I headed back out to the farm after selling my cooler full of veggies at the farmers market yesterday afternoon.  Gave a quick (practically running while windmilling our arms) farm tour to my newly-transplanted friends from Wisconsin who serendipitously appeared at the market just before I left.  Maria and Susan–hope you had a safe trip back to your new digs!

One of the best things about this blog is the new and interesting people who contact me through it.  It’s exciting to finally get to meet in person the folks I correspond with via the ‘nets!

After my friends headed out, I quickly donned my grubby, grass-stained and bug repellent-drenched long pants and long-sleeved shirt and got the brush mower going again.  I finished up the mowing in the main part of the gardens by about 7:30 last night, headed back in, cleaned up (again), and H and I headed out for dinner and Ed Johnson’s open stage at Raziel’s (fast-becoming a Thursday night tradition).

We hopped up at a ridiculously early hour (for a Saturday, anyhow)–both of us hoping to accomplish more on our respective projects before the 90% chance of rain materialized.  He headed off for the roofing project; I headed back out to the farm.

I could’ve done more mowing–there’s still plenty to be done–but I didn’t want to exacerbate my growing headache (dehydration? DEET? beer? exhaustion?), so I did some lighter-weight work instead.  Worked up a couple rows in a west garden bed for dinosaur kale, planted that, pulled some more thistles, and then set to hoeing the strawberries in the northeast garden.

I had straw-mulched the aisles in that garden a couple years ago, and the straw is almost completely decomposed now.  After stirrup-hoeing the first bed of berries, I raked what was left of the straw mulch into the bed and around the plants, so I could hoe the weeds making headway in the aisle and then hoe the second row of berries as well.

Once both beds were weed-free, I raked the area I’d mowed last night between the east and northeast gardens and used the pigweed and grass clippings to re-mulch the aisle between the berry rows (and hopefully provide a little nitrogen).  It amazes me how much organic material it takes to cover such a small space–the mowed area (about 20 x 30′) provided just enough material to cover an aisle about 1 1/2 x 25′.

Sometimes I don’t think there’s enough organic material in the entire county to fill my greed–er, need for it. Give me your compost, your manure, your spoiled hay and grasses, preferably weed-free…. Unfortunately, I don’t dare use the mowings from the lower part of the gardens as mulch or even in the compost–too much bindweed in it.

The grass and amaranth mulch will break down fast, I might dig it in a little–and when it dries out, I know the volume will be shockingly less than it is even now.  That’s OK because the plan is to let the strawberry runners simply take over the aisle between the two currently separated beds.

Right now, even more than nitrogen-rich grass and weed trimmings, what I really want is more horse manure. I saw the neighbors running loads of fresh green hay down the road this morning, and I was waving and smiling and thinking how great that stuff’ll be once the horses are done with it.

If you’re a small farmer without the facilities, inclination, or time to raise livestock, seeing how well your neighbors (who graciously provide you with used bedding and manure) treat their animals should make you excited and happy.  I know I got the warm fuzzies seeing that hay go by, and I don’t even like horses all that much.  But I do love what comes out of them!

Once the strawberry upkeep was completed (and I’d donated a few pints of blood to the ravening hoards of flying beasties), I did a quick hoe along the sides of the okra bed.  I’ve already thinned that stand of plants once–having seeded thickly based on my previous years’ experience with poor germination.

This year every okra seed germinated, but the rabbits have done a little thinning of their own.  I haven’t had a huge amount of rabbit damage thusfar (the critter damage prize this year goes to the moles), but then H has taken a few bunnies out of the competition.

As I was finishing up the last of the hoeing, the sprinkles started.  My conflicted self felt bad for the roofers, who’d hoped to finish most, if not all of their project before the rain started, but I was also jumping for joy inside for the labor-free watering.

The first round of rain didn’t last long though–I suppose I could go back out and get even a few more projects completed out there, but I’m rather enjoying the absence of a whining hum in my ears and not having to windmill my arms and slap myself repeatedly. The ravenous flying beasties can torture the deer and ‘coons–I’m staying inside.

The Great Weed Mow-down

Spent only about an hour harvesting for market today–there’s not a lot ready in the gardens, though there is a lot in the gardens.  The rest of my morning (which started at about 6:30) was spent doing all kinds of projects to manage the health of what’s there.

As this is my research and development year (or as I like to call it, my sabbatical), I’m more focused on long-term management and learning new techniques. I’ve already been to a couple conferences this year, and there’ll be a couple more events this month–Yankton organic field days and the DRA Local Foods Summit.  I’m doing presentations at both, and I hope to makes lots of new contacts.

I also picked up Steve Solomon’s Gardening When It Counts and am reading through it slowly and carefully, gleaning what bits make sense for my operation. I don’t agree with everything in there, but I am leaning more toward Solomon’s extensive rather than Jeavon’s intensive growing schemes. I recommend picking it up if you are a small-scale market grower, or a large-scale home gardener.

Solomon’s dry gardening techniques make a lot of sense particularly in my squash and melon garden (the “hilltop garden”) because I don’t have a good watering set-up there.  I did manage to get the hose to about half that area this morning, but much of the thing was flood-irrigated more than watered.

Still, the plants look healthy and happy, and besides that one squash bug and clutch of eggs I rubbed out, I haven’t seen any other signs of trouble as yet. A couple of the neck pumpkins are starting to run–it’ll be interesting to see if they can be contained within the borders of that garden when they reach their full size.

After the watering and weeding and fertilizing the chard row I’d harvested for market today, plus another dose of Deep Woods Off (the mosquitoes are AWFUL right now), I started up the brush mower.  It’s actually not technically a brush mower–it’s a heavy-duty string trimmer on wheels–but to call what we do with that thing “trimming” would be a gross understatement.

It was 11 when I started and noon when I ran out of gas (tha tank wasn’t full when I started), my hands and forearms cramping and vibrating from the hour-long assault against the bindweed making its way up through the central garden. I took down the chickling vetch cover crop as well–everything in my path, and fairly scalped the earth to remove the low vines of the flowering bindweed.

I could probably have spent another two hours or so behind the trimmer–the guy who comes to mow is once again quite late in coming, and the entrance to the gardens and area above the north central garden are probably too thick and high at this point for a regular lawnmower to handle.

So, I’ll take my one cooler full of veggies to the market this afternoon and see if I can sell the bulk of them in an hour or so–then it’s back into my impossibly grubby, sweaty, bug-repellent-soaked mowing garb to see what more I can accomplish.

Food Safety Bill will Shutter Farmers Markets

But the response can’t just come from small producers and vendors.

There has been a lot of hullabaloo about the various versions of food safety legislation working through Congress, and there has been a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding.

I haven’t posted on this matter before now for a couple of reasons.  It has taken me some time to sort through all the e-mails, information, and actual text of the bills.  I’ve also been pretty busy actually growing food for my family and the local market.

The Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) has a good fact sheet (pdf alert!) on the newest version of the food safety bill, H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. The bill essentially sets up one-size-fits-all federal oversight for ALL producers, even those selling only direct to consumers in local markets.

The oversight includes FDA standards for growing, sorting, packing, transporting, and holding of raw agricultural products no matter the size of the producer or the locale of the market, registration (with fees) and inspection of premises engaged in processing food no matter their size, and mandatory recordkeeping and electronic filing for all those producing agricultural goods to be eaten by people.

The bill, as it stands, is a big, elaborate, and expensive mound of red tape for producers to wade through, which once again benefits large producers who can afford to pay fees and hire staff while eliminating competition from the little guys (and gals) who don’t have the time or the profit margins to add one more thing to their plates.

The reason for the Food Safety Enhancement Act is obvious–there have been way too many outbreaks of food-borne illness in this country, and they have been vexing to trace with the elaborate supply lines used by large-scale food producers.  But the Bill doesn’t discriminate between those who have been responsible for the outbreaks and those who are selling good, clean food to local markets on a small scale.

I reject this level of government oversight, and I’ll bet there are a lot of other small producers who feel the same way.  The people who buy food from me know where it comes from, and the USDA and the IRS both know I’m farming, too–I fill out the Census of Ag, and I report my farm earnings on my taxes. I also remit state and local sales tax on what I sell.

One of the reasons I don’t pursue organic certification of my crops is that I’m not interested in having to report to the federal government about the food I grow and how I grow it–though I’m happy to show any of my customers who ask. I’m not interested in paying more fees and keeping more records other than those that improve my crops and my practices.

I’m interested in growing healthy, safe, nutritious food for my family and my community and finding more ways to increase the sustainability and positive environmental impact of my farm. If the government says I can’t sell that food in a local market without paying their fees, filling out their electronic records, and working under their close scrutiny, I will simply quit growing food for market.

And I’ll bet you’ll hear the same thing from a lot of other independent-minded small producers, too.  Oh, we’ll keep growing for ourselves, of course, but I don’t think it’s outrageous to suggest that many producers will quit selling and many farmers markets will be a shadow of their former selves or shutter completely if this thing goes through.

If you buy local food; eat local food; or just want to keep small farmers in business for the good of your local, regional, and yes, even national economy; I suggest you take action on this bill.  Read the fact sheet, write, call, or e-mail your representatives, and get the word out.

You can also visit the Western Organization of Resource Councils’ website, www.worc.org, for more information.

We do need food safety legislation, but that legislation’s weight should fall on those whose complex systems and lax oversight are causing the problem.