Posted on 06/18/2014 3:20:31 PM PDT by Lorianne
By 9 a.m., Jack Motter had been planting peas for hours..
He pushed a two-wheeled contraption that deposited a seed every few inches along neat rows at Ellwood Canyon Farms, just outside Santa Barbara. As clouds gathered overhead, he picked up the pace to avoid losing days of work to the fall rain.
Timing can mean the difference between profit and loss for the 4-year-old farm.
Motter and his business partner, Jeff Kramer, are part of a growing crop of farmers — many of them young — choosing to produce food without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. As consumers demand more fresh and local food grown with minimal environmental effects, a new generation has taken up organic farming.
The two Brawley, Calif., natives, both 30, have learned that small-scale agriculture is neither easy nor lucrative. Their days on the 15-acre farm start at dawn and end with exhaustion.
"There's nothing romantic about it," Kramer said. "It's hard work and long hours for little pay."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The best garden I ever had was when I used chicken litter. I also had some tall weeds! I wish I could find some. Back then my dad and I drove up to a chicken farm and the farmer used his back hoe and dumped a scoop full into my dad’s truck free of charge.
That is the only difference. All the rest is jazz.
“That is the only difference. All the rest is jazz.”
OK, I understand your argument now. When you buy organic produce, you get bugs thrown in for free plus music.
LOL, the worldwide organic growing of those crops is negligible or non-existent. They are global bulk commodity corporate farming crops, which also just so happen to be the identities of those who are burning and planting the rainforests. That was the very simple point, genius.
Don’t you have a super-short growing season?
Aren’t we lucky that we can afford to grow food organically and not starve.
I have a nice kitchen garden that is organic, but I’m a foodie and my garden is planned to give me fresh, unusual produce to play with.
I have the luxury of growing my garden as I do because I don’t have to depend solely on the food from the garden to feed my family. My crops are the cherry on top of our meals. I get a lot of produce, but not enough to live off of.
Yup, data is a good thing.
However... recognize that you can market your free-trade, free range, bpa-free, GMO-free, growth hormone-free, gluten-free, organic, heirloom “fingerling” potatoes to dingbat liberal hipster douchebag “slow food” movement “foodies” for 20x the price of a Russett...
Who wins?
Bwhahaha... My husband used to work for one of the largest food processors/canners in the US, in Clovis CA. (Now moved to the industrial area in Fresno.) He worked his way to “cook”, THE chocolate cook. (I miss the “ accidently” dented cans brought home.)
Do you know how much “defects” (FDA term) is actually in the food you consume daily? How many allowable bug parts, rodent bits and droppings, maggots, and other filthy things? No? Halfway through my husband talking about what is actually in the food, I told him to please not go on or I would vomit.
I grow everything I can. What I cannot I buy locally. The meats and dairy are fantastic. I can everything possible. Yesterday, I canned 20 pints of chili con carne. Except for the beef and spices, I grew everything. Including the price of the beef, jar, and water, each jar “costs” me less than 50¢. Not one maggot, bug bit, or rodent turd. The chili kicks butt, tastes fantastic and I know where everything came from- me and the local rancher/butcher.
There are millions of young conservative women on the internet who do the same thing this middle-aged woman does. They care about their family and are doing all they can for their family to thrive on better home-cooked food for much less than the junk in the stores.
To each their own.
Great. As do I. Home grown is not, however, organic. The contortions involved in certifying for organic do nothing to improve the quality of the food.
Never said commercially canned food is better than home canned. It can, however, be a lifesaver. Both are safe from bacterial contamination if done properly.
I grew up on home grown food.
Did not intend to step in a nest of hornets. I heartily applaud home grown food and prefer it. Was speaking only to the certification process for organic sales.
I have a raised planter, had hubby cut down the stupid trees the former owner of the house had in. They didn’t even look nice. It made a good bed for strawberries transplanted from the old house, and green beans.It is up high enough I can sit on the side and get the weeds, which the strawberries in a couple of years will crowd out. We put in more top soil before we planted. Green beans (Bush KY Wonder) are vining.
Things we only eat once in a while are not worth growing.
We are fixing to till up the only other sunny section and put in more veggies. We have a old dog kennel we can section off that area to keep the 2 dogs out. Put in a double water hose coupler and a sprinkler to do the watering. My black berries are along the fence line and will propagate like mad.
Now if I can only get the mole out of the back yard.
There’s a market for it,
and as a bonus, when the grid collapses, you can feed your family.
China’s farmers have been “organic” out of necessity -
they even put their “night soil”, ie, chamber pots, out on their vegetables in the morning.
Costco carries pallets full of organic sugar from Paraguay (!) and organic coffee.
Don’t tell me those commodities grown organically are “negligible” when they are available by the pallet at Costco.
Don’t you have a super-short growing season?
Yes, and it can be over come.
Many have built green houses or ‘hoop’ houses.
However, being up north, we have more daylight. I live in the mid-state region, and the sun is up before 5AM. It’s still light outside at 8:30pm
In the fall you protect from frosty nights with plastic covers or old bedspreads.
Here is a video of a very successful farmer who uses ‘rolling’ greenhouses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SazUkS2ZYLI
I don’t buy organic in the store because it’s always more expensive and I don’t really see why I should think it’s somehow better.
But the “organic” fertilizer I used last season was a real game changer because my yields really went crazy compared to the Walmart fertilizer I had been using for years.
And I grew all of my vegetables in containers, including my corn, and I’m sure I saved water and was also able to concentrate the effectiveness of my fertilizer because I grew them that way.
Costco is big, and organic farming is definitely a selling point in certain markets. But commodity inorganic feedstocks are such an absolutely gigantic market it just dwarfs all of that. I just don't see organic farminc as having a negative impact on global inorganic farming - there's far too much of a profit motive supporting the inorganic side, and the scale of inorganic industrial farming is just too immense.
Now in the United States, it would surprised me if the liberals use organic farming to try to destroy any other kind of farming in our country. But all that will do is offshore everything and starve our farmers - which is exactly what liberals do to everything they touch.
What ‘organic’ fertilizer do you use?
I used Tomato Tone, I think it’s called (online from Walmart). And also some Alaska brand fish and kelp pellets (online from Home Depot).
And the local grower I buy flowers and starters from uses something with Dr. in the name and all of his stuff always just takes off once I replant it. I would have bought what he uses but I think the ones I chose to use are a little bit less expensive.
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