Poor, confused vegans. They think that they have the solution to climate change, if they could only convince everyone to adopt their ascetic dietary choices. It is true, factory farming of meat uses lots of fossil fuel inputs. But they miss the boat when they emphasize "of meat" instead of the "factory farming" part. The eggs I collect from my backyard chickens require less fossil fuel input than the factory farmed broccoli that is trucked from California to their local vegan-friendly grocer. Their broccoli requires fossil fuel in the form of fertilizer, tractor passes, getting laborers to and from the field, trucks to haul it to warehouses and distribution centers, and refrigeration equipment to keep it fresh. My chickens, on the other hand, require no fossil fuel inputs; they eat what grows in the garden and provide me with a continuous source of protein and vitamins that are missing from the vegan diet.
As the model of factory farming becomes increasingly untenable, what with Peak Oil raising farming costs, Peak Phosphorus, climate change, weeds becoming herbicide resistant and insect pests becoming insecticide resistant, the crystal ball gazers that come to the conclusion that it is time to ditch factory farming for sustainable permaculture are much more on target than well-meaning vegans. Vegans who want to eat foods that are out-of-season and shipped in from the other hemisphere, or eat grains and soy products that are factory farmed a couple thousand miles away are also part of the problem, albeit to a smaller degree than feedlot carnivores.
Instead of harping on the meat-eating habits of others, people that are concerned about climate change should be preparing to get all of their food locally. Subsistence farmers are the ones that have the lightest carbon footprint, even if they eat poultry they raise themselves, milk from their own goats, and fish from the local pond. Chickens, goats, and fish can turn biomass that is unfit for human consumption into valuable protein and necessary vitamins, like B12. Chickens can eat slugs, and they enjoy them, while slugs can be reservoirs of dangerous protozoan infections if a human were to eat one. Goats can chow down on poison ivy and detoxify a long list of plants that are better avoided by humans.
If it sounds like I am advocating a return to the farming household of yesteryear, with a few animals that are raised for household consumption, that is exactly what I am advocating. The population of Peru is about 30 million, and they raise (and eat) about 85 million guinea pigs a year -- which works out to just shy of 3 cuy consumed per capita. This is sustainable meat, raised on grass and forbs that would otherwise not make it into the human food chain, and no fossil fuels are required to produce it.
The next time a vegan lobbies you to give up meat and gag down an imitation yogurt made from soy juice, politely decline and think about local meats that you could produce.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Perennial broccoli??
How is it that American palates have been refined to demand the most transient of a plant's lifecycle? Large, tight heads of broccoli with unopened blossoms; large clumps of cauliflower with snow white curds; tomatoes at the perfect stage of ripeness; much energy goes into getting these from farm to market at just the right stage, and if one small flaw is discovered, the trip continues on to the landfill. If you are raising these in your garden, you can't be so fussy about appearances, if it's healthy, nutritious, and tasty, you need to be eating it. So you look up recipes for what to do with green tomatoes and learn that careful clipping with garden scissors can get a continual harvest from brassicas, not the one-shot that commercial agriculture has marketed to us.
I have come across an excellent source for Italian vegetable seeds: Pagano Seeds. The Italians have a much broader definition of what makes for acceptable broccoli. The yellowish fractal heads of Romanesco broccoli, the cut again and again florets of a raab type broccoli, and the leafy stalks of the Spigariello variety. I've had some of the latter growing in the garden, and it has yet to produce a flower head. It has taken the Georgia summer heat in stride, but the plant just gets bigger and bigger, with more leaves, but no blossoms. I suppose it is remaining true to its biennial character and will form heads and go to seed next spring. In the meanwhile, I am left with how to use it over the winter.
I tried cutting small branches and chopping up the leaves, stems and all, for the soup pot. The only problem with this is that the stems are quite tough. A 1/4" diameter spigariello stem requires a lot more chewing than a 2" diameter stem of store-bought broccoli. I think I will put these stems in the same category as collard ribs: something to chop up fine and feed to the chickens. But the leaves are a keeper, if you want some broccoli flavor to add to soups or other dishes. Just chiffonade them up and toss them in. I can see where these could be part of a food-security kitchen garden.
I have come across an excellent source for Italian vegetable seeds: Pagano Seeds. The Italians have a much broader definition of what makes for acceptable broccoli. The yellowish fractal heads of Romanesco broccoli, the cut again and again florets of a raab type broccoli, and the leafy stalks of the Spigariello variety. I've had some of the latter growing in the garden, and it has yet to produce a flower head. It has taken the Georgia summer heat in stride, but the plant just gets bigger and bigger, with more leaves, but no blossoms. I suppose it is remaining true to its biennial character and will form heads and go to seed next spring. In the meanwhile, I am left with how to use it over the winter.
I tried cutting small branches and chopping up the leaves, stems and all, for the soup pot. The only problem with this is that the stems are quite tough. A 1/4" diameter spigariello stem requires a lot more chewing than a 2" diameter stem of store-bought broccoli. I think I will put these stems in the same category as collard ribs: something to chop up fine and feed to the chickens. But the leaves are a keeper, if you want some broccoli flavor to add to soups or other dishes. Just chiffonade them up and toss them in. I can see where these could be part of a food-security kitchen garden.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Where to start building food security?
For those of us not raised on a farm (which is the vast majority of Americans), it can be daunting to think of where to start when remaking our homes into the source of our food. You may have had a few vegetable growing experiences, the taste of a tomato fresh from the garden, or an apple or an orange right off the tree, but a few fruits here and there don't add up to much of a meal. To get some real nutritional value out of your plot of land, you are going to have to have something growing that you can count on day in and day out.
Which is why I am going to start in an unusual place -- those ingredients that keep cropping up over and over, like onions and peppers and herbs like parsley and thyme. Maybe add carrots and celery to the list as well. This combination of a few vegetables and herbs is the starting point in many cuisines. In French cuisine, a mirepoix is some celery, carrot, and onion, chopped up and sauteed. It is a start for soups, stews, casseroles, you name it. If you have these growing in your garden, you can always at least get dinner started, then add whatever else you have on hand.
Onions are a must have for the food security garden -- specifically the Egyptian walking onion variety. Bulbing onions are too much work, you have to harvest them in the summer and then dry them and store them, why not just keep a stand of Egyptian walking onions going and clip them as needed? They are fairly winter hardy, so unless you are in the frozen northland, a bed of them could keep you going through the winter. The only time I have found them lacking is in early summer, when they are putting all their energy into making new topsets, most of which are too small to cook with.
Peppers are perennial plants, although most American gardeners think of them as an annual. When I lived in coastal California (where it never freezes), I had a hedge of hot peppers outside the kitchen door. Jalapenos, tabasco, serrano, and pequin at the ready any time they were needed. With a little planning and preparation, you can lift your pepper plants out of the garden with winter approaching and keep them going if you have a sunny indoor location.
Carrots and celery are biennials, so they can stay in the ground and be harvested as needed. I prefer the European celeriac to the American fondness for stalk celery; it is less fussy in the garden and you can clip the small stalks as needed while you are waiting for the root to grow to harvesting size. Carrots can go anywhere in the garden. They are good companions for every other plant, although there are some things that will cause them to come up stunted. Parsley, if you get the kind that makes a carrot-like root is another biennial that can wait in the ground until needed.
Think about the vegetables that you like to have on hand all the time. What's sitting in your freezer? A sack of broccoli and carrots that you put into stir-fries, casseroles, the crock-pot? How difficult would it be to have those vegetables growing in the garden, ready to harvest any time? For true food security, you have to quit thinking in terms of a big harvest and look at your garden space as one big pantry.
Which is why I am going to start in an unusual place -- those ingredients that keep cropping up over and over, like onions and peppers and herbs like parsley and thyme. Maybe add carrots and celery to the list as well. This combination of a few vegetables and herbs is the starting point in many cuisines. In French cuisine, a mirepoix is some celery, carrot, and onion, chopped up and sauteed. It is a start for soups, stews, casseroles, you name it. If you have these growing in your garden, you can always at least get dinner started, then add whatever else you have on hand.
Onions are a must have for the food security garden -- specifically the Egyptian walking onion variety. Bulbing onions are too much work, you have to harvest them in the summer and then dry them and store them, why not just keep a stand of Egyptian walking onions going and clip them as needed? They are fairly winter hardy, so unless you are in the frozen northland, a bed of them could keep you going through the winter. The only time I have found them lacking is in early summer, when they are putting all their energy into making new topsets, most of which are too small to cook with.
Peppers are perennial plants, although most American gardeners think of them as an annual. When I lived in coastal California (where it never freezes), I had a hedge of hot peppers outside the kitchen door. Jalapenos, tabasco, serrano, and pequin at the ready any time they were needed. With a little planning and preparation, you can lift your pepper plants out of the garden with winter approaching and keep them going if you have a sunny indoor location.
Carrots and celery are biennials, so they can stay in the ground and be harvested as needed. I prefer the European celeriac to the American fondness for stalk celery; it is less fussy in the garden and you can clip the small stalks as needed while you are waiting for the root to grow to harvesting size. Carrots can go anywhere in the garden. They are good companions for every other plant, although there are some things that will cause them to come up stunted. Parsley, if you get the kind that makes a carrot-like root is another biennial that can wait in the ground until needed.
Think about the vegetables that you like to have on hand all the time. What's sitting in your freezer? A sack of broccoli and carrots that you put into stir-fries, casseroles, the crock-pot? How difficult would it be to have those vegetables growing in the garden, ready to harvest any time? For true food security, you have to quit thinking in terms of a big harvest and look at your garden space as one big pantry.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
What is food security?
I've been writing this blog for a while, but I've never really given a definition to "food security". I suppose it means different things to different people, but whatever it is, it's the opposite of being food insecure. Agencies that track hunger try to monitor food insecurity, which they define as not having enough food today, or not having enough food to last out the week or the month. Along that line, I will tentatively define food security as having available foods on hand to be able to cook up a meal. Maybe not if a dozen guests drop in unannounced, but enough for the members of the household for the foreseeable future.
And how do you ensure that there is enough food on hand? I can think of two alternatives: (1) the warehouse solution, where your pantry is well stocked with grains, beans, pasta, canned goods, etc., or (2) the food forest solution, where everything growing around your residence is an edible plant of one type or another. The Mormons are great boosters of the former solution, and recommend that each Mormon household have a year's worth of provisions in the pantry. While I like to have a well-stocked cupboard, if it is stocked by trips to Costco or Sam's Club, it is not as sustainable as the latter solution, having food for the gathering right outside the door.
If you want to evaluate your food security, you need to do more than to just count up the boxes of mac'n'cheese and packages of ramen noodles in the pantry. You need to take stock of all the edible plants that are within foraging distance. I've made a spreadsheet where I have taken account of all the edible plant species that I have access to. At last count, I was up to 126 species. Some are perennial crops I grow (figs, apples, strawberries), some are annuals (cilantro, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers), some are weeds that are naturalized here (henbit, dock, dandelions, chanca piedra), and some I don't even grow on my property.
I have no kudzu, but there are plenty of places I can go and cut it. I've been feeding it to the chickens and guinea pigs for a while, but today was the first time I actually tasted it. With the rain we have been having, there were some nice, big, young leaves, and I had to satisfy my curiosity -- why is it the guinea pigs' favorite food? It tastes like spinach, maybe a little blander. I suppose you could cook it as you would any leafy green, but it is going to need something to give it some flavor. The bottom line? No one in the South should be food insecure, not with all the kudzu we have. I know that Japanese cuisine makes use of starch obtained from the root of the kudzu, but I have not seen much in the way of recipes for the leaves. Perhaps I should research this.
And how do you ensure that there is enough food on hand? I can think of two alternatives: (1) the warehouse solution, where your pantry is well stocked with grains, beans, pasta, canned goods, etc., or (2) the food forest solution, where everything growing around your residence is an edible plant of one type or another. The Mormons are great boosters of the former solution, and recommend that each Mormon household have a year's worth of provisions in the pantry. While I like to have a well-stocked cupboard, if it is stocked by trips to Costco or Sam's Club, it is not as sustainable as the latter solution, having food for the gathering right outside the door.
If you want to evaluate your food security, you need to do more than to just count up the boxes of mac'n'cheese and packages of ramen noodles in the pantry. You need to take stock of all the edible plants that are within foraging distance. I've made a spreadsheet where I have taken account of all the edible plant species that I have access to. At last count, I was up to 126 species. Some are perennial crops I grow (figs, apples, strawberries), some are annuals (cilantro, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers), some are weeds that are naturalized here (henbit, dock, dandelions, chanca piedra), and some I don't even grow on my property.
I have no kudzu, but there are plenty of places I can go and cut it. I've been feeding it to the chickens and guinea pigs for a while, but today was the first time I actually tasted it. With the rain we have been having, there were some nice, big, young leaves, and I had to satisfy my curiosity -- why is it the guinea pigs' favorite food? It tastes like spinach, maybe a little blander. I suppose you could cook it as you would any leafy green, but it is going to need something to give it some flavor. The bottom line? No one in the South should be food insecure, not with all the kudzu we have. I know that Japanese cuisine makes use of starch obtained from the root of the kudzu, but I have not seen much in the way of recipes for the leaves. Perhaps I should research this.
Friday, July 4, 2014
Livestock
Permaculture is not a plants only endeavor. Animals are crucial partners in keeping an ecosystem healthy. Here's a picture of one such partner, of a very tender age. Let's hope he grows up big and lives a long life, chowing down on the insect pests in my garden.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Always a pot of greens on the stove
What gives a better feeling of food security than coming home to a house filled with the aroma of a pot on the stove? Or a slow cooker filling the house with a melange of odors of all the ingredients dumped into it? A pot on the fire, ready to dip into, has to be one of the big improvements that sedentary agriculture achieved compared to the lives of nomadic tribes.
While nomadic tribes could subsist reasonably well on a diet based on milk and meat, the addition of carbs from plants is what really allowed populations of farming communities to take off. And in the beginnings of civilization, plants were not as gentle to digest as our supermarket choices are today. If you have ever gathered wild onions or garlic, you may have noticed that they were quite a bit more fibrous than store-bought scallions. Or wild mustards with their stringy leaves and stems. All that fiber and all those carbs in the digestive system moved people from a starvation type metabolism to a metabolism that could pack on the pounds. This can be seen around the world when "aboriginal" people leave the hunter/gatherer ways of their ancestors and adopt a modern "civilized" diet -- the rate of obesity skyrockets as does the incidence of diabetes. It takes a few generations to adjust to rich living!
To ensure the continuation of our rich-living lifestyle, we need to be able to have those high quality vegetables available at all times. One way to do it is to take the advice of permaculturalists and plant a wide variety of fruits and nuts, trees and bushes that will start bearing early in the spring until late into the fall. If you have enough of a surplus during the growing season, you can dry, pickle, or preserve the excess bounty for use during the winter. In this post, I'd like to point out an alternative, having a large planting of one or two plants that can be the staples of a diet and that continually produce throughout the year.
A good example of this is taro (Colocasia esculenta). A good sized plot of taro, and you will have an unlimited supply of leaves for the stew pot and roots to either fry into chips or boil up to make poi. I'm still wondering if there is a good way to prepare the stems, or if they are best left as animal fodder. Even in cold climates, the taro corms stay viable in the ground, so if you have to, you can always go out in the middle of winter and dig up some carbs.
In a tropical climate like Hawaii, taro would be the only thing you need, but in my temperate climate, I have to think of something that I can pair it with that I can continually harvest during the winter. Collards. There is a reason that collards are the quintessential Southern side dish -- they keep growing during our winters and a patch of them in the garden can keep the kitchen supplied while the taro corms sit in the ground dormant.
A diet of just taro and collards could get pretty boring though. That's where some perennial herbs and onions come in handy. Rosemary, sage, wild garlic, mint, there is a long list of flavorings that can be grown in the kitchen garden to spice up these two staples.
If you are reading this blog to get ideas on how to improve your food security, ask yourself what plants are the reliable producers for your area. They may be weeds. My last entry talked about salsify and upland cress. I haven't given up on those two and I hope to naturalize them in the areas adjacent to my main garden. They, along with the taro, have grown like weeds and haven't suffered any insect attacks. I can't say the same for my collards, as they will on occasion be hit by a plague of harlequin bugs. But that doesn't make for a total loss, at least the harlequin bugs are easy to shake into a container to then toss into the chicken coop.
At one time I thought that Jerusalem artichokes would be a good choice for a perennial, always-available vegetable. I tried growing them for two seasons, but I had less than stellar results. I suppose if I had to, I could give it some more effort and make it work, but given how well the four that I have already mentioned do in my climate, I think I have settled on my staple greens.
While nomadic tribes could subsist reasonably well on a diet based on milk and meat, the addition of carbs from plants is what really allowed populations of farming communities to take off. And in the beginnings of civilization, plants were not as gentle to digest as our supermarket choices are today. If you have ever gathered wild onions or garlic, you may have noticed that they were quite a bit more fibrous than store-bought scallions. Or wild mustards with their stringy leaves and stems. All that fiber and all those carbs in the digestive system moved people from a starvation type metabolism to a metabolism that could pack on the pounds. This can be seen around the world when "aboriginal" people leave the hunter/gatherer ways of their ancestors and adopt a modern "civilized" diet -- the rate of obesity skyrockets as does the incidence of diabetes. It takes a few generations to adjust to rich living!
To ensure the continuation of our rich-living lifestyle, we need to be able to have those high quality vegetables available at all times. One way to do it is to take the advice of permaculturalists and plant a wide variety of fruits and nuts, trees and bushes that will start bearing early in the spring until late into the fall. If you have enough of a surplus during the growing season, you can dry, pickle, or preserve the excess bounty for use during the winter. In this post, I'd like to point out an alternative, having a large planting of one or two plants that can be the staples of a diet and that continually produce throughout the year.
A good example of this is taro (Colocasia esculenta). A good sized plot of taro, and you will have an unlimited supply of leaves for the stew pot and roots to either fry into chips or boil up to make poi. I'm still wondering if there is a good way to prepare the stems, or if they are best left as animal fodder. Even in cold climates, the taro corms stay viable in the ground, so if you have to, you can always go out in the middle of winter and dig up some carbs.
In a tropical climate like Hawaii, taro would be the only thing you need, but in my temperate climate, I have to think of something that I can pair it with that I can continually harvest during the winter. Collards. There is a reason that collards are the quintessential Southern side dish -- they keep growing during our winters and a patch of them in the garden can keep the kitchen supplied while the taro corms sit in the ground dormant.
A diet of just taro and collards could get pretty boring though. That's where some perennial herbs and onions come in handy. Rosemary, sage, wild garlic, mint, there is a long list of flavorings that can be grown in the kitchen garden to spice up these two staples.
If you are reading this blog to get ideas on how to improve your food security, ask yourself what plants are the reliable producers for your area. They may be weeds. My last entry talked about salsify and upland cress. I haven't given up on those two and I hope to naturalize them in the areas adjacent to my main garden. They, along with the taro, have grown like weeds and haven't suffered any insect attacks. I can't say the same for my collards, as they will on occasion be hit by a plague of harlequin bugs. But that doesn't make for a total loss, at least the harlequin bugs are easy to shake into a container to then toss into the chicken coop.
At one time I thought that Jerusalem artichokes would be a good choice for a perennial, always-available vegetable. I tried growing them for two seasons, but I had less than stellar results. I suppose if I had to, I could give it some more effort and make it work, but given how well the four that I have already mentioned do in my climate, I think I have settled on my staple greens.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Which vegetables offer 'food security'?
I've slowly come to realize that modern industrial agriculture has shifted the public's taste to vegetables that require value added industrial processing, which is not the same thing as having food security. For example, while chicory is a leafy green available during the cool months of the year, Belgian endive is the same plant that has had some industrial processing done to blanch it of its bitterness. This blanching process ends up increasing the inputs to the crop without adding to the nutritional value of the final product.
Another example is broccoli versus broccoli raab. Growing a large, dense head of broccoli requires a specialized climate, which is why most of the broccoli in the country is grown in the area around Santa Maria, California. The raab version of broccoli, with multiple small heads, offers more in the way of food security because it can be cut several times over a longer period than the single cutting of the conventional broccoli crop. It can also be successfully grown in areas that do not have the narrow temperature range of the central California coast.
In planning a food security garden then, one has to discard vegetables with narrow growing requirements or industrial processing inputs and replace them with other crops that yield over a longer time period or can even be stored "in the field". My recent experience growing salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) has led me to consider it as a very good candidate for a food security vegetable. Coming into last winter, I had a few salsify plants in the garden, and they handled the Arctic Vortex winter well, surviving the 12F low in January. They are now putting on some spring growth and coming into flower, and I have been cutting the immature flower buds and cooking them like asparagus, which they are akin to in flavor. In reading up on it, I've seen where it can be cut at all times of the year and that it doesn't increase in bitterness when it begins to flower. From a food security perspective, growing large heads of broccoli is a wasted effort, whereas keeping a patch of salsify well tended will provide a long-term harvest of flower buds, leaves, and roots.
Another good candidate is upland cress (Barbarea verna), also known as 'creasy greens'. This was also one that came through the winter unscathed, and even seemed to put on some growth. I've prepared it much as one would turnip greens, and to me, the flavor of creasy greens is preferable. It's also a decent addition to salads, giving them a little kick, something that I would never do with raw turnip greens.
Both upland cress and salsify are said to easily reseed themselves, but how they do that in my garden is still an open question. I am hoping that I can establish them on my hugelbeds so that they will be sustainable in the truest sense of the word. While these two vegetables receive little attention from industrial agriculture, I can see a definite need for them in a food security garden.
Another example is broccoli versus broccoli raab. Growing a large, dense head of broccoli requires a specialized climate, which is why most of the broccoli in the country is grown in the area around Santa Maria, California. The raab version of broccoli, with multiple small heads, offers more in the way of food security because it can be cut several times over a longer period than the single cutting of the conventional broccoli crop. It can also be successfully grown in areas that do not have the narrow temperature range of the central California coast.
In planning a food security garden then, one has to discard vegetables with narrow growing requirements or industrial processing inputs and replace them with other crops that yield over a longer time period or can even be stored "in the field". My recent experience growing salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) has led me to consider it as a very good candidate for a food security vegetable. Coming into last winter, I had a few salsify plants in the garden, and they handled the Arctic Vortex winter well, surviving the 12F low in January. They are now putting on some spring growth and coming into flower, and I have been cutting the immature flower buds and cooking them like asparagus, which they are akin to in flavor. In reading up on it, I've seen where it can be cut at all times of the year and that it doesn't increase in bitterness when it begins to flower. From a food security perspective, growing large heads of broccoli is a wasted effort, whereas keeping a patch of salsify well tended will provide a long-term harvest of flower buds, leaves, and roots.
Another good candidate is upland cress (Barbarea verna), also known as 'creasy greens'. This was also one that came through the winter unscathed, and even seemed to put on some growth. I've prepared it much as one would turnip greens, and to me, the flavor of creasy greens is preferable. It's also a decent addition to salads, giving them a little kick, something that I would never do with raw turnip greens.
Both upland cress and salsify are said to easily reseed themselves, but how they do that in my garden is still an open question. I am hoping that I can establish them on my hugelbeds so that they will be sustainable in the truest sense of the word. While these two vegetables receive little attention from industrial agriculture, I can see a definite need for them in a food security garden.
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