Organic farming: ridicule, discussion, adoption

Organic Gardening and Farming, packed with practical advice about compost heaps, chicken manure, and earthworms, languished in the early years.  But by May 1971, its monthly print run reached one million copies.  Proponents of a new back-to-the-land movement made J.I. Rodale the international guru of a style of farming he called “organic.”  His magazine became a bible.  Both publisher and publication were magnets for criticism.  The Whole Earth Catalogue, tongue-in-cheek, called both of them “subversive.”

A serious Reader’s Digest article published in October, l952, called followers of organic farming “misguided,” their practices “superstitions about soils,” and their advocacy for healty food “fads about nutrition.”  The article concluded that organic agriculture was “dogma of an extreme form” and provable “bunk.”

Despite the derision, Rodale continued to turn out articles citing the joys of giant tomatoes and super-sweet melons and woes created by artificial fertilizers an chemical pesticides.  He was fond of quoting a favorite author, John Stuart Mill, who said that ideas go through three distinct phases: ridicule, discussion, and adoption.

Mill’s insight has proven to be correct.  From a seemingly minor magazine published by a man who often described himself as an oddball, Rodale’s ideas have gradually taken their place in the main stream.  Interest in organic products, infinitesimal in 1940, climbed to such heights in 1990 that the movement required federal regulation.

J.I. Rodale

Rodale stumbled upon Sir Howard’s book in 1941.  By 1942, Rodale had Organic Gardening and Farming up and running.  The new magazine held some appeal to a nation of backyard growers deeply involved in home-based wartime food production; they worked daily in their Victory Gardens.  But foreign-born gardeners, used to older ways, were the magazine’s main subscribers. Today, Organic Gardening has both print and on-line versions.

Rodale explains his motivation for launching the magazine in a interview with Eleanor Perenyi. 

“It hit me like a ton of bricks,” Rodale says. “For the first time, I realized that food affects health, and that chemical fertilizers are dangerous to people, animals, and the soil.  I felt I had to share this experience with the rest of the country.  It wouldn’t be fair to know this and say nothing about it.”

Rodale moved his business operation from New York City to Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where he purchased a derelict 300-acres farm and turned it into a farming research center.  Perenyi visited the site in the 1960s and describes her experience in Green Thoughts.

“I look back on my visit to his farm as one of the more inspiring events of my life.  The cattle were sleek; the chicken in their chicken houses organically fed and living over specially designated pits for compost.  The houses were free of the usual chicken-house stink, and the bird we roasted for supper was the nearest thing to a poulet de Bresse I’ve eaten in this country; the breakfast egg was of a quality I had forgotten.”

The Soil and Health

A second movement, organic agriculture, also has roots in the 1940s.  Instead of finding its beginning in repurposing army munitions, however, the American organic farming movement grew from a more peaceful source, the publication of a book.  Sir Albert Howard’s work, An Agricultural Testament, first appeared in England in 1940.  The book arrived during the London Blitz, an improbable addition to war-torn bookstores and libraries. A second book, The Soil and Health, appeared in 1945.

Sir Howard’s tomes teach a benign approach to food production modeled on ancient farming systems.  An agricultural researcher and advisor, Sir Howard sought to popularize theories he found, then further developed, in India.  Impressed with peasant farmers’ ability to maintain soil fruitfulness by intelligent crop rotation, he sought to build even greater fertility by recycling plant nutrients back to the soil.  In other words, he advocated various forms of composted.  Sir Howard was convinced that chemical fertilizers and artificial pesticides were the wrong approach to increasing crop yields.  

The main theme of both An Agricultural Testament and The Soil and Health is complexity.  The author stresses the necessity of maintaining the intricate web of relationships among plants, animals, and humans.  Sir Howard’s ideas might have been lost in the cacophony of World War II except for an American who amplified the message and delivered it unceasingly to the American public.  That man was J.I. Rodale, his broadcast platform a small magazine called Organic Gardening and Farming.

Nitrates for bombs become nitrates for industrial agriculture

In the United States today, two completely different agriculture systems exist side by side: industrial agriculture, typified by the almond orchards described earlier, and organic agriculture.  I find it ironic that these two very different methods of food production originated during the same time period, World War II and immediately thereafter. 

Modern industrial agriculture grew up on Army and Navy leftovers.  With the end of the was in 1945, large surpluses of two important war materials existed: nitrate of ammonium (used to make war-time explosives) and nerve gases (used to kill South Pacific mosquitoes and African lice.)

In 1947, the massive munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, converted to civilian use.  Instead of using its stock of ammonium nitrate to make explosives for bombs, the site began to use the war surplus to make fertilizers for farms.  The government briefly considered using the excess nitrates on forest to increase wood production.  The goal could be easily accomplished by dropping planeloads of the powdery stuff at treetop level.  But proponents of agriculture won out over forestry. 

Though artificial nitrogen fertilizer was first used in the 1920s, global economic and political setbacks kept its use and distribution dormant for the next twenty-five years.  Likewise, the early use of DDT, discovered by an entomologist in 1939, had been restricted to military use.  The products were now poised to find their way into a civilian commercial market.  At first, sales of both artificial fertilizer and pesticides just crept along.  Then, in the 1950s, sales and use exploded.  The end result plays out today in multi-mile almond orchards, vast cornfields, and up-dated nerve agents to control insects. 

Bees work a longer season

Modern industrial beekeepers keep their charges hard at work pollinating and discourage honey production.  As a substitute for honey, an artificial food is supplied to the bees: high fructose corn syrup.  The same sweetener used in soft drinks is now fed to bees.  The super sweetener, combined with sucrose and protein supplements, arrives in tanker trucks at the temporary installations of migrants bees.  The bees do not appreciate the stand-in and frequently refuse it thus compromising their nutrition.  

In the 21st century, bees work a longer season, have less time off in the winter, travel thousands of miles from their home territory, and eat a modern diet based on corn syrup.  All of these condition weaken the species.  Worker bees become more susceptible to mite infestation.  Queen bees live shorter lives. A bee expert from Pennsylvania reports an exhaustion of sorts, “a strong immune suppression” which he compares to "the AIDS of the bee industry.”

Cross-country travel and an artificial diet are not healthy for bees.  Nor is the constant contact with insecticides and pesticides used in industrial-sized orchards and fields.  One insecticide, whose use continues to rise in the United States, has been banned in some European countries because it is a contributing factor to the decline of the bee population.  

If you have a pet, you probably have the chemical in your home.  It is the active ingredient in a popular flea treatments for dogs and cats.  To prevent fleas, just squeeze a dose of the clear liquid between the animal’s shoulder blades.  Used once a month, the neurotoxin collects in the oils of your pet’s skin and fur and is released over time to kill unwanted insects.  Since it is not soluble in water, the “medication” stays in the pet’s fur, even after swimming.  According to the package instruction, fleas and ticks are killed by “affecting the parasite’s nervous system, causing paralysis and death.”

Too busy to care

As Interstate 5 passes through almond orchards near Bakersfield, I watch carefully for hive-boxes.  I easily spot the squat white forms, about two-feet square, positioned at intervals along the dirt road that skirts the orchard and runs parallel to the freeway.

Five hundred feet separate one cluster of 20 or so of hives from the next. Each group is arranged haphazardly, the boxes not quite squared off into neat neighborhoods.  The bee quarters look like long, low, flat-roofed slums.  Even at 70 mph, I see bare gray wood on the two-storied hives where paint has chipped off.  The disheveled arrangement speaks of keepers in a hurry, too busy to care.

These are no bee mansions.  In other words, hives have not been equipped with extra stories where foraging bees store newly made honey.  Pollination is the game here.  Honey production is kept to the bare minimum.

Industrial agriculture prizes bees only as pollinators.  According to bee expert, Stephan Buchmann, only 25 percent of bees fly solely to collect pollen.  The other 75 percent primarily gather nectar; collecting pollen is only a side job.  Obviously, in an industrialized bee culture, there is a desire to reverse these percentages.  Genetic manipulation has proved somewhat successful in converting more members of the hive to work exclusively on pollination.

Honeybees, when allowed, still produce their own perfect food.  An intensely sweet viscous substance, honey contains 80 percent sugar and 20 percent water.  Made from nectar gathered from flowers, honey represents much hard work and flight time.  The contents of a 16-once jar of honey represents the efforts of tens of thousands of bees flying over 100,000 miles to gather nectar from more than four million flowers.  

Bees turn almond flowers into nuts

Almond trees require an insect intermediary to pollinate its flowers. An almond flower is only an inch and a half across.  Only a bee can turn each flower into a nut.  The flower is self-incompatible; that is, it cannot create a nut using its own pollen.  The flower depends on bees to bring it pollen from a different almond cultivar planted nearby.  To further complicate the process, an almond flower is more receptive to pollination on its opening day.  Pollination must be complete by day four or the flower will not set fruit.

Factory-sized fields require an industrial-sized pollination operation.  This is too big a job for wild gypsy bees or feral bees escaped from local hives. It involves hiring the services of more than a million hives, providing temporary employment to more than 20 billion bees.  And, therein lies the problem.

In Roman times, the beekeeper tended the bees and the bees tended his crops.  But industrial farming rearranges the formula.  Almond farmers have no time to care for bee hives, even though the insect residents are essential to the almond crop.  Instead, industrial orchardists leave bee tending to industrial beekeepers.  In the process, each farmer becomes a specialized monocropper: one with almonds, one with bees. 

National and local newscasts carry reports of strange, unexplained disappearances of bees in the Central Vally.  Thousands of worker bees leave in the morning and simply don’t return at night.  Other strange bee behavior also occurs.  The queen remains active in the hive.  The brood remains safe in capped wax cells.  Adequate food for the hive is present.  Why would the workers abandon all this abundance?

Acres of almonds

In early March, I drive from Los Angeles to Monterey to attend a California Small Farm Conference.  Interstate 5 connects the two cities.  Leaving southern California, the freeway is a straight arrow heading north out of the Los Angeles metro area.  Then the Tehachapi mountain range restricts the tidy flow of traffic for a while. Finally, the highway adds an extra lane and descends with sweeping curves into the broad and verdant Central Valley.  On the valley floor near the city of Bakersfield, mile upon mile of almond groves flank both sides of the six-lane freeway.  As yet, there are no leaves.  Each tree in enveloped simply, in an exquisite cloak of white blossoms.  

A typical California almond orchard varies in size between 20 and 400 acres.  The orchards near Bakersfield appear to be at the upper end of the range.  A row of 40 or 50 trees forms one leg of a plot.  Dirt roads run at right angels back into the field and separate one sector from another.  With this tree count, each section could contain up to 2,000 trees. 

In 2013, California has 810,000 acres of almond orchards.  The state has idea weather for almonds: a short, late winter chill and long hot summers.  Perfect weather allows California to produce 75 percent of the world’s almond supply.  California farmers added 20,000 acres of almond production in just one year, 2012. Miniature trees in adjacent fields represent future ambitions.  With frail trunks sheltered from the blustery weather in two-inch plastic pipes angled to face the prevailing westerly winds, these young trees will begin to produce nuts in three to four years.

These almond groves demonstrates monocropping on a grand scale.  We usually associate monocropping -- that is, the planting of substantial amounts of land to a single crop -- with corn, wheat, soybeans or cotton.  Here, almond trees replace the more familiar fields of corn.  Almond farmers face one problem, however, that does not trouble corn growers.  Corn is a wind-pollinated crop.  The natural breezes of summer carry corn pollen from plant to plant to create new kernels of corn.  Almonds, on the other hand, require an insect intermediary, the honeybee. 

Industrial exploitation of bees

Unfortunately, modern life has turned domestication of animals into industrial exploitation.  Honey bees have been particularly hard hit by the transition. By custom, small farmers have kept one or two hives to help with pollination of vegetables and fruit flowers.  With a season’s work complete, the farmer then feels entitled to usurp any excess honey. 

Until recently, commercial keepers of honeybees, just like small farmers, counted on two benefits from members of their hives: pollination and honey.  That is to say, large commercial bee operations counted on two profit centers: the sale of honey and hive rental fees for pollination services of their bees.

In 2003, however, the price of honey fell drastically and drove most American beekeepers out of the honey market.  That year, China alone exported 22 million pounds of honey to the United States. American honey producers complained about artificially low prices. In 2008, the federal government imposed "anti-dumping" import duties on Chinese honey. To avoid the duties, China sold to other countries who relabeled the product. The saga became a major food scandal when an American honey packer admitted buying cheap, illegal honey.

As honey profits receded for American beekeepers, the necessity of profits moved pollinating services to the fore.  Thus began a grand migration.

Instead of bees staying close to home and foraging locally, commercial beekeepers now use forklifts to load hundreds of hives onto flatbed trucks.  Collectively, these trucks cart tens of billions of bees around the country.  The largest American itinerant hive-keeper routinely assembles a caravan of 20 trucks to cart his bees from Florida to the West Coast.  Half of all of North American industrial bees and their keepers converge on the chilly orchards of California’s Central Valley in February to service the almond crop. 

Bees and human: mutually beneficial

Virgil encourages readers to consider bees 

    a small society comprising systems worthy of our high esteem.

He describes the perfect bee yard.  It must be protected from winds, close to a tree-lined stream to provide shade and water.  Near the hive 

let all round be gay with ... spreads of fragrant thyme

                                and masses of aromatic savory.

         Let there be gardens to amuse them with the scent of 

                brightly colored flowers... wild strawberries

                 ... a luxury of limes and lindens and lilies ...

In Georgics, Virgin beautifully describes the mutually beneficial relationship that has evolved between bees, flowering plants and humans over the past 10,000 years.  In the 21st century, however, the disappearance of honeybees is a worrisome possibility.  What if this symbiotic relationship ceases to function?  Simply put, if worker bees disappear from our farms, vital foods disappear from our grocery store shelves and Farmers Markets.  Neither tomatoes nor cucumber nor squash can exist without bees to pollinate their flowers.  Almonds and walnut will vanish along with fruits such as  peaches, pears, nectarines and apples.  

Human beings have successfully domesticated several animal species.  Cows, horses, sheep, goats, cats, dogs and honeybees -- all accepted the human invitation to share our lives.  Mutually beneficial relationships have existed between human and these species for thousands of years.  Cows, sheep and goats trade their milk and meat for protection from predators.  Horses accept the confines of safe corrals and give farmers their broad shoulders for work.  This last is an important trade since each horse produces the work of ten people.  Cats trade who-knows-what rewards -- only they truly understand -- for convenient hunts of rats and mice.  Dogs are more forthright.  They alert us to intruders and lap up our appreciation of work well done. 

Bees gather pollen

Virgil, a Roman poet writing fifty years before the Christian era, uses poetry to educate his readers about working the land. He discusses how to lay out a vineyard.  

                              Make sure the [rows] run parallel

             and still maintain right angles with the boundary lines.

He advocates crop rotation. 

While your land gets a chance to rest by changing crops

    don’t think that all the while your fallow isn’t earning a return.

Virgin devotes an entire book, 568 lines of poetry, to the habits and proper care of honeybees.  He describes foraging bees as :

youngsters who haul themselves back home exhausted

                        
leg baskets loaded down with thyme.

The “thyme” carried in “leg baskets” is not the actual herb, but pollen from the herb’s flowers.  During a gathering journey, a bee moves among many flowers of the same species. An herb such as thyme is a favorite.  On her rounds, she (since all worker bees are females) carries pollen from one thyme plant to the next.  

Pollen, sticky and bright-colored, is a plant’s equivalent to semen.  It clings to hairs on the bee’s back and legs.  Some pollen brushes off as she dives into each new blossom in search of nectar.  The flower uses the captured pollen to begin a process of pollination and setting seed.

But not all pollen stays behind in the field.  Surplus amounts remain on the forager’s legs.  When she returns to the hive, these grains are removed by other worker bees and stored in wax cells as food for newly hatched brood. 

The difference between bees and wasps

To protect myself from an allergic reaction to bee venom, I carry an Epipen at all times for a self-administered dose of epinephrine if necessary.  I arrange my garden pathways to minimize contact with plants and bees, and I organize my garden schedule to avoid the special bee hazards of early fall.

Apis mellifera

Actually, it was a mistake to blame this scary event on bees (Apis mellifera). The actual culprits were yellow jackets (Vespula vulgaris), more properly identified as wasps, not bees.  We lump the two species together because they share some common characteristics.  

Both species live communally; both species are organized around a queen; member of both species are similarly colored, yellow and black/brown.  

Vespula vulgaris

In several ways, the two species are quite different.  Bees only seek food in flowers.  Yellow jackets, on the other hand, forage for sweet sap and carrion as well as flower nectar.  They become pests at picnics because they find hamburger, soft drinks and discarded pieces of peach attractive as food.

Both wasps and bees inject venom through their stingers.  Because of its barbed stinger, a honeybee stings only once, then dies.  A yellow jacket has no barb, so a wasp can sting repeatedly.  In addition, if their nest is disturbed, yellow jackets will attack, even swarm, an intruder.  Honeybees are much less aggressive. 

While honeybees over-winter in their hives, yellow jackets die off each year.  Only a fertilized queen wasp survives the winter.  Yellow jacket hive-membership reaches its peak in September.  Overcrowding and a diminishing food supply make for anxious and easily angered insects.  To be safe, I make few visits to my garden between early September and first frost in mid-October. 

Bees bring danger

In early September, clusters of kids and their parents wait for the school buses by driveways along Greenhaven Road.  It’s time for families to change from vacation to school schedules.

Labor Day also ends my flower season.  I shift away from a summer garden schedule with its daily care of plants and toward other types of house and farm work.  Everyone in the neighborhood is compelled by the season to change.  But none more than myself ... for a very serious reason.

Several years ago, while doing fall weeding on hands and knees.  I shoved my trowel into a nest of ground-bees.  Not happy with the intrusion, an angry swarm flew up to sting me around my face and neck.  I limited the damage to seven stings by running into the house.  But this amount of venom was sufficient to cause anaphylactic shock.  During the short drive to the Westerly Hospital Emergency Room, the soles of my feet began to feel like wet sponges, and large welts formed on the back of my neck.  I announced to the triage nurse when I arrived, “I’ve been stung  by bees and I don’t feel too good.”

A doctor ordered an intravenous drip of epinephrine.  Nurses provided constant observation for the next forty-five minutes while my blood pressure stabilized.

Anaphylaxis is a severe reaction to an allergen, in my case, bee venom.  The body reacts in several ways: hives, rapid heartbeat, acute drop in blood pressure, intense breathing problems.  The symptoms are caused by chemical changes as the body releases histamine and other chemicals into the blood stream.  Once an allergic reaction is established, a similar response is likely to recur with any new exposure.  

Spicy salad and poetry

Everyone is intrigued with the bright orange and yellow petals of marigolds included in the Aiki Farm salad mix.  I use no salad dressing, so every bright petal, every baby green lettuce leaf shows off in undressed glory.  Guy asks if all flowers are edible.  Liesbeth gives us a list of the most common edibles: nasturtium, marigold, violet.  Then she sorts through the greens, laying individual leaves on a spare dinner plate to identify the more obscure greens. “Kale, I think.  It’s peppery.  Spicy. Minty, almost.” 

I light tea candles in clear glass holders to keep evening bugs at bay.  Small vases of flowers and white candles alternate down the length of the table.

Liesbeth checks her watch. “It’s almost nine and still light out.”

She tells us stories of long summer evenings in Holland where she lived as a child.

“You’re at the latitude of Madrid here is Stonington,”  she reminds us.  Even after more that twenty-five years married to an American, Liesbeth sees herself as a Dutch woman.

The conversation weaves back to food and agriculture.  Phil quotes the opening lines of Virgil's Georgics.  “What tickles the corn to laugh out loud, and what star/ to steer the plough and how to train the vine to elms .../ I take upon myself to sing.”

“I just did a review of that Roman classic for Amazon!” I tell him.  “My favorite part is his chapter on beekeeping.”

Barbara and Al have heard stories about the disappearance of bees.

“What’s up with the bees in Connecticut?”  Al asks.

“Everyone is safe and at home,”  I reply.  “Connecticut beekeepers do not have large operations.  They do not cart their bees from coast to coast in that crazy pollination circuit.”

Ryan dips a small twig into the melted wax of a tea candle, then leans back against his father’s chest.

“Ah, the country life,”  Guy sighs.  He speaks for us all.

It’s been a perfect relaxed and friendly day, a bright blue-skied afternoon followed by a bugless evening.  Congenial company brings good food and imaginative tales to my table.  As we clear dishes and blow out candles, fireflies light our way back to the main house. 

Rhubarb crisp

Liesbeth brings a huge pan of rhubarb crisp made from fruit harvested in my garden.  As she begins to describe what rhubarb is and how it grows, I interrupt.

“Why don’t you show people the actual plant?”

A small group marches down the hill, Ryan on crutches, to investigate.

Everyone love hot dog slices from Three Mile River Farm served on toothpicks ready to dip in spicy mustards.  The pieces are firm and tasty, not mushy and vaporous like sort-bought.  I made hamburgers small enough to fit dinner rolls.  Guests can taste one hamburger topped with golden zucchini relish and another with crisp slices of dill pickles.  Both condiments originate from my garden and kitchen. 

Table conversation keeps coming back to food.

Phil brings a bag of fresh cherries as well as a pie.  Everyone swoons over the shiny crimson orbs.

“The guy at Purity Farm struggled to get this little box of cherries to fit into the paper bag,”  Phil tells us.  “So I ask him, ‘Are these any good? His answer?  He said, I don’t know.  They’re my first.  I haven’t grown them before!’ "

Those cherries are indeed good.  So good I return the following week to buy some more.  Paul Desrochers shakes his head and says with his usual terse honesty.  “A bear must have gotten them.  The tree is stripped of fruit.  Took out a couple of branches, too.”

More local food

Barbara and Al arrive late to my Sunday picnic.  Barbara brings a tray of deviled eggs and the first of many food adventure stories.

“I arrived at the Market behind schedule yesterday,” she tells us breathlessly.  “Whit Davis had already sold out of eggs.  So had Don Henry.  But he referred me to Studio Farm.”  Barbara shows off her twelve perfectly grown and perfectly prepared eggs.  Golden yolks, mixed with mayonnaise and market herbs overfill each cavity and spill onto perky whiles.  With a sense of triumph, she places the tray on the serving table. “I’ve succeeded in my local quest!”

The bocce games winds down and chairs around the picnic tables fill up.

Phil has stepped way beyond his “I-need-a-little-help-here” apprehension.  I greeted him at market on Saturday and asked about salad makings.

“Oh, everyone will bring salad stuff,” he replied. “I found something much more exciting.”

And so he did: a Dondero Orchard freshly baked fruit pie.  Before he adds his prize to the growing collection of local foods, he solemnly reads aloud the ingredient label for all to hear. 

Everyone had taken the challenge of local food seriously but none as literally as Guy.  Guy and his family are my back-fence neighbors.  He and I also share an interest in gardening and a long-term friendship built on ten years of work together remodeling a barn and completing various landscape projects.  Most recently, we have created a joint food garden.  

As I set up two long picnic tables and a dozen folding chairs on the lawn by the annual beds, Guy strides down the garden path that connects our two properties.  He looks a bit sheepish and folds his arms across his chest before he asks my advice.

“I got a shell-fishing license the other day.  Went with a buddy this morning and dug some steamer clams. Shall I cook them up now?  Or wait till later?”

I laugh with delight and give him a high-five for ingenuity. 

Lawn bocce and local food

My own garden provides interesting food options for a Sunday picnic.  But to expand the collection, I ask each guest to bring a potluck dish prepared from a local food source.

I call Phil, a watercolor artist who lives in Stonington Borough, with an invitation.  There is a lengthy pause as he considers.

“Local food?  I’m going to need some help here.”  He sounds truly mystified.

“It will be easy,” I reassure him.  “Just come to the Farmers Market on Saturday and pick up a couple of head of lettuce.  We’ll make a salad when you arrive.”

Lawn bocce is the first order of a picnic afternoon.  Since many of my ten or so guests have never met each other, the game serves as a pleasant icebreaker.  It also entertains children while they mix with the mostly adult company.  I have no fixed bocce area so the entire mowed area around the house serves as the court.

At an early season picnic, Ryan, who is twelve, arrives on crutches.  His right leg has eighteen stitches and is immobilized by heavy bandages. I assume he’ll observe play from the bocce bench, but no, he participates enthusiastically and becomes the mainstay of every game.

We start the first round up the hill by the terrace.  I hand out the rulebook, but no one can figure out how to score.

“Scoring seems to be lost in a bad translation from the Italian,”  Phil quips.

With that, the guests toss the book aside and make their own rules.  In some areas of the yard, the view of the bright yellow palino is obscured in a clump of grass.  In another location, the tiny sphere bounces off exposed ledge rock and rolls unpredictably for several feet.  Under the canopy of a large conifer, the surface is softer and holds fewer surprises.  The growth of moss slows the small ball when a team member pitches it forward to start another round. 

Garden picnics

Elisa, my garden apprentice arrives on Thursday for our usual two hours of joint farm work.  The sweet smell of new mowed grass hangs in the morning air.  Instead of the customary schedule, I divert our morning’s work from food garden to flower beds.  I’ve invited twelve guests for a picnic on Sunday afternoon.  I want the place to look its best.  I’ve challenged each guest to bring a dish that’s produced locally.  I want to hear their opinions about the food and the farmers from whom they purchased.

At a recent international conference on food held in Italy, speakers discussed consumers’ main concerns about food supplies.  A report summarized their findings: consumers want authenticity, trust and knowledge in their farmers.  Scientists, of course, would prefer that we take a more analytical view of our food.  But everyday eaters want to rely on the basics: taste and relationships.  They prefer to trust sensory qualities relayed to their taste buds and a working relationship with their farmers. Hopefully, this combination will lead to superior food and nutrition. 

To lure friends and neighbors to the pleasure of good locally grown food, I hold several picnics each summer.  I remind myself of a flower enticing freindly bees to my colorful abode with the offer of sweet nectar.  Humans have lots of ways of bonding.  At my picnics I combine two favorites -- food and playful physical activity.  A set of bocce balls sits near the picnic table in their red canvas bag; local meat and fish is ready for the grill.