From GENE LOGSDON

The breathtaking photo accompanying this blog post shows a grove of young black walnut trees growing above a lustrous carpet of wild hyacinths in late spring. But what the picture does not show makes it even more wildly beautiful. I would bet that very few readers can guess, in environmental or geographic terms, where photographer Dennis Barnes found this lovely scene. I would never have recognized the locale myself, even though seventy years ago I played many a day right there in that exact spot. You are not looking at some lush tropical jungle, or wild sanctuary in a national park, or institutional arboretum, or wildlife preserve, or refuge far from the haunts of humans.  The location is a nondescript patch of Ohio farm country only a few yards away from a world of gullied corn fields. Seventy years ago it was open, park-like woodland used as sheep pasture and had been used that way for about another 70 years. The sheep kept new trees from coming in and limited the growth of wildflowers and brush. When the sheep were withdrawn, sure enough new trees and these wild hyacinths, which as children we had never seen, began to return.

At first there was nothing spectacular about this rejuvenating forest, but then Brad and Berny Billock (my brother-in-law and sister) bought the property, cleaned out much of the underbrush that had crept in and encouraged seedling black walnuts to spread out from a couple of hundred year old bearing trees. The Billocks reintroduced sheep but on a careful, rotational schedule. Then the flowers ran rampant through the grove. Botanists tell me that many wildflowers have the ability to remain dormant in the soil for years and then germinate and spring back to life when conditions are right again. More…

From DEBRA DANIELS-ZELLER

Cool weather makes me more appreciative of chunky soups. And adding hearty greens like kale, collards and even turnip greens to soup makes me feel like I’m doing my body a favor. You put all these pampered vegetables from local farms into one pot and how can it not be good for you?

Rain or shine, arugula shows up at markets almost all year in the Northwest. If you count your lucky stars by the amount of arugula we have at markets nowadays, you’ll see there really can be a “dark” side to too much warmth and sun. Greens wilt with too much heat. Just taste California arugula compared to Northwest arugula and you’ll notice the flavor difference. Cold enhances flavors and all our cole crops taste better than the warmer California. Arugula loves cool damp weather; no seasonal affective disorder for this baby. It’s so hearty, I’ve even seen this arugula in January and February at the markets.

I confess that lately I’ve been dreaming about arugula’s peppery, slightly bitter, assertive flavor that spikes salads, wakes up sleepy sandwiches, and perks up pasta. I puzzled a bit about using it in a soup, and when I asked a farmer what he thought about soup, he said he’d only heard of people adding it to salads and maybe lightly sautéing it. Was it a gamble? Would it get tough and stringy?  Would it lose it’s flavor?

I wanted to make arugula a star, but I didn’t want to go with the obvious and puree it with cream, or the vegan equivalent. What’s the fun of doing something boring and expected?  Though I imagine it would taste delicious when pureed into a soup with a hazelnut butter.  Sprinkle with a few crispy shallots on top. More…

From ECOCENTRIC

I don’t remember the last time I saw Jared Oakes – we were kids when I moved away from the Long Beach peninsula in Washington State – but it couldn’t have been too far (the peninsula is only about 30 miles long and a mile and a half wide) from the land he’s now farming. My family lived in Long Beach for a few short years, during which we befriended the Oakes family and I have only hazy memories of a super energetic blond kid, but the image in my mind evokes the wild grit that a venture into organic farming requires. The farm Jared runs, Starvation Alley, is on track to become the state’s first organic cranberry operation.

Through a stroke of internet luck, I happened upon the Starvation Alley Facebook fan page late last week when I friended Jared’s sister Tiffany, so I sent an email and made contact with Jared’s girlfriend and partner, Jessika Tantisook, then gave them a call to catch up with my childhood friend and hear about their extraordinary endeavor.

Given the lack of respect with which most Americans have treated cranberries over the years, their environmental impact hardly seems worth it. But if we support small, organic farms and consider the hard work that goes into a product like Starvation Alley’s, maybe cranberries can recapture the wonder and respect a traditional dish deserves.

It turned out that after growing up in Long Beach, Jared had spent eight years in California and a stint in the restaurant business, when his relationship with Jessika, who was already on her way to a career in farming, got serious. Jessika was in Ohio doing community gardening through Americorps, and when they decided to make a life together, it presented something of a crossroads for them. The future, as they say, was wide open. Both had a strong interest in farming, and Jared’s parents had five acres available back home. Nobody was growing organic cranberries in the entire state. In fact, they said it couldn’t be done, and the couple couldn’t resist the challenge.

But that lonesome niche has also been one of their biggest obstacles – the insular and increasingly elderly community of growers offers little in the way of guidance or mentorship to the new farmers. Even online, there are few answers to the many questions that pop up, in part because cranberries are such an obscure crop…
~
Complete article here
~~

~~

From GENE LOGSDON

One of my favorite people has farmed, with her husband, in both Ohio and North Dakota and lived to tell about it. Growing corn commercially in Ohio is hard enough but in North Dakota, it takes an infinite capacity for pure and undefiled optimism to make a go of it. She summed it up perfectly with only the slightest hint of a sarcastic smile on her face: “Well, actually, there is an advantage to growing corn in North Dakota. The snowdrifts hold the cornstalks up until a thaw and another freeze-up allows you in the field. In Ohio, the mud keeps you out of the field until the stalks fall flat on the ground and you can’t harvest them at all.”

This situation has been extremely pertinent this year. The weather has kept the ground wet through much of the Corn Belt but that mud doesn’t stop today’s machines of mass destruction when farmers get desperate enough to harvest anyway. They grind their way through the wet soil, leaving in their wake roiling, rolling gullies of ooze deep enough in the wettest areas to sink a Greyhound bus. In our county, we were visited this fall with the strangest scene yet: bulldozers scraping off the country roads thick layers of mud that massive farm implements had dragged out of adjacent fields. The fields were left looking, in the wettest spots, like battlefields crisscrossed with trenches and bomb craters.

I know many of you will think I am exaggerating because no one has previously had any idea of what happens when huge, powerful machines meet sopping wet soil. I am not criticizing the farmers for the enormous soil compaction that follows such meetings. They have to get the crops off any way they can and waiting for a freeze-up is too risky. They are caught in a situation few could have predicted. We always have had years of contrary weather during harvest but now the scale of the operation makes the scale of devastation so much worse. In former years, many more farmers with fewer acres each could limit the problem just because of that. With only a comparatively few acres per farmer, they could wait for the ground to freeze so they can get the crops harvested without massive soil compaction. When every farmer had only twenty acres or so of corn to harvest, and did it mostly with hand harvesting and horse power, mud or snow was not a soil destruction problem. Harvest just went on casually all winter long whenever conditions allowed. More…