Honest Farming

If you spray your berry plants and flowers are your berries spray free?

The BC Berry guy told us to spray chemical fungicides this year and to tell our customers we didn't spray our berries. The ultimate in misdirection in two ways. It insinuates that we are spray free altogether and neglects to mention that many sprays are systemic.

If you use chemical herbicides on your berry plants are you spray free?

I don't even know how to address this one. If one is concerned about the environment then this is an important distinction. Do chemical herbicides linger in the soil and are they in the berry plants anyways?? Well speaking for strawberries we have never sprayed herbicides as all the warnings involved tags like "Be careful about your timing and your chemical mix as you can severely affect your strawberry fields" I think the chemicals are there. Our "pesticide" guy, when he dropped off our cover crop seeds and organic fungicide was FLOORED at how great our fields looked. He repeated more than once "YOu're doing this organically??"


If you use chemical fertilizer can you claim that your veggies are organic?

We used to think fertilizer was food for the plants and concentrated natural compounds the plants used. Kind of true. Chemical fertilizer was the last change we made to become more organic. As we evolved we learned more and more about the fossil fuel use, our carbon footprint, building the soil, the harm concentrated chemicals can cause....the list is endless. We did not claim to be organic until we stopped using chemical fertilizers....we still have them but are trying to give them away.....All our friends are greenies!!!! There are farms that are claiming organic that are still using chemical fertilizers.....

If you grow "local" tomatoes in a greenhouse hydroponically are your tomatoes quality?

The workers have to wear gowns and masks to mix chemicals to feed the hydroponic system. Tomatoes grown in sawdust. Yum. Have at em......I'd rather little boy pee thankyouverymuch!

If you consider all sprays "organic" as they are made from organic chemical compounds are you lying?

Yes we have a farmer friend who has told people to their face he is organic. That he uses only organic sprays. He is SO FAR from organic it is almost funny.......

If you raise animals and give them naturopathic remedies (some not even recommended for human consumption) can you claim they are organic?

I don't know how to address this one.....

One must really really question the farmer to get the real answer.....

My funny old friend....

I'm so sad tonight, very very sad.

As I stood and watered my as yet unplanted grape plants I thought of the funny little man who came to our farm 2 summers ago to buy our strawberries. He came because he read we were now "spray free" and he wanted our product.

He found we also had pickling cukes and he came back.

And then we couldn't get rid of him.

Mr. Ernie Scarbossa. A man with a life long love affair with food, gardening, cooking and preserving. A man who wanted to teach us all he knew as if he knew. He brought me his strawberry wine....truly scrumptious. He swore it was only possible because we were spray free. He brought me his bread and butter pickles. Instant love on my part. It is now part of my pickle season routine. His recipe. He brought pickles, zuchinni relish, anti pasto, garlic bread (never never had better....and he told me his secret - my lips are sealed - for now), chicken cacciatorie, red wine, cucumber relish....and he had so much knowledge to share. He had my mum and I up to his place to show us how to make his zuchinni relish and would barely let us do anything. He was very precise in how he cuts, brines, sterlizes and cans. He brings in California grapes every year and helped us start our own wine in the fall. He showed us how to put gouda cheese into the wine dregs and make some undescribably good cheese.....He gave us pointers in our garden and with our garlic. I entered some of his pickles in the fall fair; he won.

He has gardened his whole life and hated chemicals. He swore to me that one year his garden didn't grow because the compost he was given had herbicides in it....

He grew up and lived alone near us in the tiny town of Cumberland but recently moved because the strata wouldn't let him build a canning storage hut and wanted him to put away some of his tomatoes, rosemary and grapes from his front steps. He is 78 years old and never married.

Such a funny little man. So much knowledge to impart and sometimes so, dare I say it, annoying. We have a Scarbossa-ism in our house. We would say something like, "Do you think we should make some pickles?" And he'd say, "No! No! Let's make some pickles" And go into a long description of what we should do, how and when. Now when we are goofing around use his "No! No!......." - a positive negative....

He gave me some grape plants in the fall and I still hadn't planted them when he came to get his strawberries this year. (To my horror!)

He said he would be back on the first overcast day and we would plant them together.

He didn't come, I did wonder.

Today a mutual friend came with some very sad news....

He had an aneurysm between his knee and foot and had his lower let amputated. He was recovering nicely and with his positive outlook was looking forward to getting on his foot again. And then the superbug hit him. He is now lying in isolation in the Nanaimo Hospital fighting this antibiotic resistant bug that the HOSPITAL gave him. I am so scared that the outlook is not good. I am so angry.

Here are the pharmaceutical companies that he avoided his whole life coming to bite HIM in the butt. The feedlot animals being over medicated creating bugs that are going to be the death of us. So far they only take on the weak.

When is power, profit and the almighty dollar no longer going to be the motivation for government policy?

The sentence itself is an oxymoron. It's kind of like trying to think about where the universe ends...

Cheers Ernie, I am thinking of you - I hope you feel my love.

Education!

Check out this!

My Geese Know....

Where their food comes from.....

The local bread outlet gets rid of excess....to farmers. It's sickening really the waste bread we pick up for our livestock. Some of it is not even outdated.....We signed a waiver....We are NOT allowed to eat or sell the bread we pick up it is strictly for the animals....

The organic bread goes to the geese! It has selenium in it, which is missing in our soil....The geese are not stupid, they know what's in those bags, they were pulling it out of the back of the truck!

Is this not the ultimate irony....We are trying to eat from the land and the animals are eating our throwawy waste....And I don't even want to think about all the plastic bags we are dealing with.....and the multiprocesses, packaging and fossil fuels that went into producing the bread...

What is wrong with our society people?!

Brewing Tea

To the untrained eye this might not look like much....

I see gold....green gold....
Maybe it's more recognizable on straw.....hint...it's from the rear end of a chicken!
Green green gold.... the horse equivalent
This "tea" is brewed from horse manure. Composted horse manure!

(Hubby picked up a few loads last week.)

And this "tea" is brewed with chicken poop!

My poor garden is just so sad this year, partly the weather but part of the problem in my garden this year is fertility. That is a lack of nutrients and compost. We ran out of time in the spring and didn't get much on and used strictly organic slow release fertilizer which would be great in addition to other amendments....

So what is the quick garden food fix??

Research!

Manure Tea!

So I head out to the chicken house and grab a bunch of poop/straw, I pick up the poop that is EVERYWHERE (a whole nother blog post) and dump it into a large plastic container. I've tried to re invent the wheel and didn't bother with the burlap sack or pillow case that most websites recommend the manure is put into....I just threw the poo in, added a scoop of soil (micro organisms), and filled the pails and containers with water.....(Let the water off gas overnight before adding poop if you're on city water!)

Stir often, I probably stir it up to 5x a day. I've read a fish tank bubbler works wonders....or a sock with a rock tied to a string to sploosh up and down.....I find I can lift the straw up and out and sploosh it back in making lotsa bubbles....oxygen is important!!

Chicken manure tea should brew for 3-6 weeks...But the Horse Poop Tea brews fast, like the next day fast........

So I scoop out a bit of the liquid without the chunks....

Pour my liquid green gold into the watering can. Do you know how hard it was to take this picture and pour at the same time??? THAT'S why it's focused on my fingernail.... I still like the photo though!

Dilute with water down to a "tea" colour.....

And water very very carefully (no splashing!) I watered my brocolli, caulis, peppers, and squash.My eggplants already look different, and YES I left some tea free to see if there was a difference.
A quick easy environmentally friendly "mircle" grow food!

I plan to do my rhubarb this week.

I have great plans for my garden next year....

Tongue Tied Tuesday!

My kids know.....

**warning some photos a bit graphic**

Where their food comes from.....

I've written about 'fresh from the field bacon' well about a turkey???

We had a turkey with structural defects....He couldn't walk very well and as he gained weight it became harder and harder for him to move.... It became hard to watch so we had to do the deed...

We had lots of interested bystanders.....

We had lots of helpers.....

and intensely curious kids....

who checked out all aspects of the poor turkey.....
like tendons and plyers and toes that move!

and legs...

tongues and eyelids and well I won't show the rest of the photos.....

think brains.....

But the end result, well, nothing like a strawberry fed free range turkey!!!

A Whole New Appreciation....

Looks pretty cool....lets give it a try!

A neighbor down the road has 5 norwegian work horses and asked if she could put them to work......!

One horse got to eat and the other work..

Everyone tried to pretend they didn't want to go first........

The first try was along the edge of the fields....Not so easy!!

Then we moved to the ploughed field that's sprouting weeds.

A hot and dusty job.....and tiring for all involved...including the horses

Even the woofs had a go!

And of course my boy wanted to try.....I guess when we talk about pioneers he'll have whole different appreciation for what they went through.

When everyone and everything had had enough (it was HOT!) oh about 20 minutes and four circles around the field later.....

She hooked them up for a nice carriage ride home....

And I couldn't resist adding this shot of the barn (ready for a paint job.....)

So how in the heck did they break sod on the prairie all day long?

And I promise not to complain about folding my mountain of clothes that I didn't have to handwash in a creek......