I received some strange looks when a lifetime of hot sauce shipped in 6 weeks ago.. ;
now it’s understood by the better half and actively participating...<<<
Laughing and thinking that some are slow in the education of shopping for the future department.
You are right and consider that today’s prices are lower than they will be in the future.
http://www.growbiointensive.org/news_0808_agnotes.html
Creating Soil
“Creating World Class Soils” by John Todd appeared in the Volume XXV, Number 1, 2007 Annals of Earth. The article is mentioned in the Annals of Earth website but does not seem to be accessible there. We are reprinting the first paragraph and recommend that those interested in learning more secure a copy of that issue. “Soil formation is an extraordinarily complex geochemical, biological, ecological and diverse process. In recent decades new discoveries have made it possible to create rich and fertile soils in relatively short periods of time, measured in years rather than decades or centuries. To achieve rapid soil formation requires a number of concurrent strategies which, taken together, can produce excellent soils that, in turn, can support intensive agriculture, animal husbandry and agro-forestry. These strategies include soil remineralization, composting by utilizing newly discovered nutrient bind methods, the application of compost tea to soils and crops, and the incorporation of terra preta or dark earth techniques into soil building.”
Several reports to read:
http://www.growbiointensive.org/news_0805_news.html
The 5-Bed Unit: 2006-2007
by Dan and Margo Royer
Notes : Data Analysis : Design Changes : Garden Changes
Notes and Observations
This was a challenging season for our main-season crops, as it was an unusually cool summer. Our corn and amaranth struggled. We harvested more calories from 12.5 sq ft of tomatoes than 50 sq ft of corn!
This was a hard year for corn. The seedlings started out well but we continually found weak plants that needed to be supported. They grew inconsistently inside and outside the mini-greenhouses. (This was a garden research crop, experimenting with corn on 12-inch and 15-inch spacing both inside and outside of a mini-greenhouse.) All the corn was interplanted with pinto beans. We transplanted some cosmos seedlings at the edge of the bed to help keep the corn worms away.
Our main-season amaranth was planted on 18-inch centers, leaving a lot of soil exposed. In an effort to provide more cover we broadcasted buckwheat into the amaranth. This seemed to provide more moisture retention and might be worth repeating.
Sweet potatoes were an interesting endeavor. We pampered them, keeping the mini-greenhouse (MG) lid on until the sun had warmed the air in the MG and closing the lid earlier in the evening than we might otherwise. We tried to water with warm water, but that didn’t always happen. Periodically, we pulled the vines up from the ground to prevent them from sending down roots from stem nodes. The vines looked great, and we did enjoy eating our meager harvest.
Cayenne was harvested when the peppers were uniformly bright red and hung to dry. They are waiting to be ground or mashed into powder. There were some small, green peppers on the plants at the end of the season. The plants seemed to produce well and could have produced longer with more warmth.
The parsley grew lushly at first, but ran into trouble mid-season, encountering the voracious appetite of gophers. We did not get a complete harvest; however, it did pass the GROW BIOINTENSIVE intermediate yield level and produced the best yield in the 5-Bed Unit relative to the index!
The leeks were beautiful. Based on a shift in how much leaf was edible, we seemed to hit peak yield in mid-December. The leeks were still good as of December 28, but there was less edible weight. Because this is an income crop, we will need to convince our market to eat the greens!
We planted a catch crop of broadcasted amaranth (after the potatoes were harvested) and took the time to thin it, transplanting some of the seedlings into the gaps to better cover the bed. This seemed like a good time-investment that provided the benefits of both broadcasting and transplanting.
We were able to eat from our catch crop beans (planted after the winter grain was harvested), some as dry beans and some as shell beans. Because we pulled them out of the bed hurriedly before a rain, we didn’t shell the beans immediately and didn’t get any data on how many calories we were able to harvest. It became clear that getting the catch crop planted in good time is a key to a successful catch crop (in both biomass and caloric terms).
Watching grains we transplanted this fall spread out to cover the bed, we learned that we did not harvest potatoes thoroughly enough. Potatoes volunteered themselves all over the grain bed. This is challenging because complete potato removal at this stage seems like a large disturbance for the grains. Fortunately, the persistent volunteers were removed by the first frost.
As we compiled our data, we realized we need to perfect our record-keeping practices. For instance, we found many tasks for which we neglected to record the time invested, as well as some tasks grouped together by bed instead of separated by crop (which is more helpful). We also wanted biomass figures for some of our crops that we did not take dry samples for mid-season. This first year of record-keeping has given us a lot of insight into how to better organize and record our data.
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Data Analysis
Beds: Due to the beds selected in the garden, our 5-Bed Unit measures 583 sq ft. The beds are a little larger than 100 sq ft each. The design behind the unit is 25.01 beds, using GROW BIOINTENSIVE intermediate yields.
Calories: Our 5-Bed Unit produced a total of 56,138 calories. The design provides 2,129 calories per day. At this rate of calorie-consumption our 5-Bed Unit can feed us for 26 days. As 23.3% of the full design, it was projected to feed us for 85 days at intermediate yields.
Extrapolating to the full design, 240,825 calories were produced, one-third of the calories planned for in the design (777,232). With these crops, these growing conditions, and this rate of production, 80.7 beds would be required to meet the calorie goals of this 25-bed design. This is not surprising to us, as the mini-farm design is based on the intermediate yields in How to Grow More Vegetables, and the challenging soil and climate of the Research Garden inconsistently produce yields at the intermediate level. We suspect that, had we grown this 5-Bed Unit at our partner site, the Golden Rule, the yields would indicate that the design could be grown in fewer than the planned 25 beds.
Biomass: Total calculated dry biomass for the unit was 134.86 lb. (This is a small increase over the 133.9 lb published in the February 2008 Newsletter. As we crunched more numbers and rechecked our data, we realized we had not included the biomass from the amaranth for income.) The biomass yield is 23.13 lb per bed, between the beginning and intermediate biomass goals of 15 and 30 lb per bed. (We did not take dry samples of some of the crops; therefore, we do not have dry biomass figures for all the biomass produced.) The best yields came from the fava beans.
60/30/10: To meet the low weight-to-eat goals, the design is heavy in 60% crops and low in 30% crops. Considering Bed-Crop-Months, the 5-Bed Unit comes to 76/8/16. (60/30/10 is a design concept unique to GROW BIOINTENSIVE that emphasizes a healthy balance among crops that produce biomass and calories, considering both how area-efficient and weight-efficient crops are for calorie production. The 60/30/10 ratio is a guideline to minimize the growing area and maximize the sustainability of the process. See How to Grow More Vegetables and Ecology Action’s Booklet #31: Designing a GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-Farm for more explanation.)
Time: We spent 83.4 hours working in our 5-Bed Unit from February through September. We recorded the time spent on most activities and were able to estimate the times for activities that happened before the unit began or happened so regularly we didn’t record time spent each day. Examples of the latter are planting the fall 2006 compost crops and regular harvesting and vegetable cleaning. The 83.4 hours do not include watering or building compost. Watering is a task that is site-specific and will be different for each garden. However, it would be interesting to follow in our own climate, a project for next season. Because we did not build compost piles specifically for the 5-Bed Unit, this is a number we will not be able to fill in.
Comparing crops based on hours spent per 100 sq ft shows that the most time-consuming crops were peppers, parsley, and EBOs. Corn and beans were the least time-consuming. Note that the income crops are all fairly time-consuming. Here is a look at a few important diet crops:
Crop
Hours/100 sq ft
Calories/hour
B67 Peppers, Cayenne
29.9
368
B67 Sweet Potatoes
8.4
1,301
B38 Potatoes
7.1
3,238
B26 Pinto Beans
9.7
648
B36 Corn
4.3
534
Cayenne peppers, though very weight-efficient for calories, were not time-efficient this season. It is a good thing they are only a small part of the diet! Sweet potatoes and potatoes are in the middle as far as hours they demand, but they are the most productive crops for calories produced per hour. This makes potatoes important when considering both area- and time-efficiency. The pinto beans highlight this truth about potatoes, as they required 37% more time per 100 sq ft, but produced only 20% of the calories per hour. Corn is of note because of the few hours invested per 100 sq ft. The calorie yield was low due to a poor corn harvest; however, in a good year it seems corn could be notable for time-efficient calorie production. Of added interest, is the caloric benefit that interplanting corn with pinto beans creates on a per-bed basis. We interplanted all of the corn with beans, but did not look closely at the combined numbers this season.
Extrapolating 83.4 hours to the complete 25-bed design, it would take 357.9 hours of work (excluding the tasks noted above) to produce. The numbers are too new and incomplete to permit any statements about how many hours it takes to grow a complete diet. This is an exciting direction of research that will be valuable to continue.
Income: We did not market any of the income crops. These income numbers are completely theoretical. They are based on the direct-sale figures Margo calculated in 2006 and assume the ability to sell all the produce and seeds (see Form 8). The seed and plant yields are actual yields.
The total income produced by the 5-Bed Unit could have been $1,383.75. The chart below presents the income breakdown.
Crop
Seed or plant yield
2006 Sale Price
Income Potential
B39 Amaranth (seed)
0.22 lb
$2/packet
$1,084 (542 packets)
B39 EBOs
18.98 lb
$1.88/lb
$35.68
B39 Leeks
18.30 lb
$2.19/lb
$40.07
B26 Tomatoes (seed)
0.03 lb
$2/packet
$224 (112 packets)
These calculations assume 11,000 tomato seeds per oz and 35,000 amaranth seeds per oz (mean from HTG). A tomato seed packet has 47 seeds, and a packet of amaranth seeds has 227. Each packet will plant a 100-sq-ft bed.
The income crops produced more poorly than the diet and biomass crops. A theoretical income of $1,383.75 is a production level of $2,050.00 per income bed. The 25-bed design anticipates $12,170 per income crop bed (this assumes intermediate yields and ability to market all the seeds). The unit produced 17% of the design goals. The income potential cannot be extrapolated to the full 25 beds, because the proportion of income beds in the 5-bed unit is greater than the proportion of income beds in the 25-bed design. (Margo did not allow for this difference in proportion when writing the article “The Royer-Miller 5-Bed Unit” for the February 2008 print Newsletter. The listed income goal for the 5-Bed Unit is not adjusted for proportion, hence the difference in percent of goal achieved.)
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Changes to Consider: Design
As the design continues to evolve, we want to consider adding the following crops to the diet:
* Wheat
* Fava beans, dry
* Leeks
* Kale
* Parsnips
The fava beans will be advantageous as a carbon-and-calorie crop, maybe allowing the elimination of exclusive pinto bean beds. The goals of edibility (each crop weight and total weight) and small space will determine if we are able to make these additions. Complexity is increasing in both the diet and the garden through these changes.
We also need to increase the calories produced, possibly through more raisins, as discussed in the overview.
In this climate, sweet potatoes are a challenging crop to grow. We would consider eliminating sweet potatoes if this were to be our long-term home.
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Changes to Consider: Garden
We want to warm the soil for the sweet potatoes before planting and intentionally water with warm water, as well as keep the MG warm through later opening and earlier closing. We might want to trellis the sweet potato vines for the purpose of keeping the soil covered and allowing more sunlight to get to more leaves (more photosynthesis, therefore more storage root enlargment). This will also prevent the vines from rooting at stem nodes.
We made notes of some of our observations and learning during the growing season; however, we could have done more of this. When we prepared this report, it took some thinking back. It would be advantageous to record the items we will want to remember for future growing seasons.
We want to establish a procedure for recording our time-investments. This might mean making a column or space on the log sheet, possibly the back, for recording the time of each task. Our calendar system was OK, but we would often forget to take the extra step of making notes in another location. Moving this to the standard log sheet will streamline and simply the process. This efficiency will hopefully lead to more complete data. In addition, we recognize the need to simply be more dedicated to recording the times and will emphasize this next season.
http://www.growbiointensive.org/news_0805_agnotes.html
AGRICULTURAL NOTES
• From “The Organic Farming Response to Climate Change” by Paul Hepperly in the Vol. 27, #1, 2007, issue of Pesticides and You. The whole article can be accessed at www.beyondpesticides.org/infoservices/pesticidesandyou/index.htm#2007
“The Rodale Institute’s Farming Systems Trial (FST), which began in 1981 as the longest running agronomic experiment designed to compare organic and conventional cropping systems,” has shown that “besides being a significant underutilized carbon sink, organic systems use about one-third less fossil fuel energy than that used in the conventional corn/soybean cropping systems. … Since 1981, data from the FST has revealed that soil under organic agriculture management can accumulate about 1,000 pounds of carbon per acre foot of soil each year. This accumulation is equal to about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre taken from the air and sequestered into soil organic matter. … Why does the soil carbon level increase in organic systems but not in conventional systems when crop biomass is so similar? We believe the answer lies in the different decay rates of soil organic matter under different management systems. In the conventional system the application of soluble nitrogen fertilizers stimulates more rapid and complete decay of organic matter, sending carbon into the atmosphere instead of retaining it in the soil as organic systems do.” Studies conducted by the FST in collaboration with the USDA “show that mychorhizal fungi are more prevalent in the FST organic systems. These fungi work to conserve organic matter by aggregating organic matter with clay and minerals. In soil aggregates, carbon is more resistant to degradation than in free form and therefore more likely to be conserved.”
• From “USDA Introduces Small Lots of Seed Program” by Steph Hughes in the 2007 Summer Edition from the Seed Savers Exchange:
“For years the United States has required that all seed being sent into the country be accompanied by a Phytosanitary Certificate. At $50 or more per certificate, that price is prohibitive for small-scale gardeners like Seed Savers members. … Recently the USDA has introduced a new program that makes it easier for small-scale growers to import seeds from outside of the US. The Small Lots of Seed Permit allows the importation of up to 50 seeds of 50 different varieties per shipment, and is valid for three years. Currently, there is no charge for this permit.
There is a website that explains the program in easy-to-understand terms http://www.theseedsite.co.uk/aphis.html”;.
• This information appeared in the May-June 2007 issue of HortIdeas, but was originally written by Valerie Imbruce of the New York Botanical Garden:
In Homestead, Florida small-scale fruit and vegetable growers from Southeast Asia “participate in a form of alternative agriculture which is actually embedded in global agricultural marketing and distribution systems. Their highly diverse ‘home gardens’ are the antithesis of large-scale monocultural farms in the mainstream of American agriculture, yet most of the income derived from them comes not from local markets, but rather from the same regional and national markets relied upon by conventional agribusiness. In some cases, various types of produce from various growers are shipped together to satisfy large orders received from municipal areas in the North. … Some of the Homestead growers use the Blue Book of produce buyers to identify potential sales prospects at a distance. … Cooperation with fellow growers can sometimes contribute greatly to marketing success. For instance, it is apparently a common practice, as noted above, for a number of Homestead growers to participate in fulfilling a single order. The idea, which makes good marketing sense, is to be able to offer ‘one-stop shopping’ for a wide range of fruits, vegetables and herbs, which can be supplied consistently even if some growers have crop failures.”
• The January 17, 2008, “Organic Bytes,” put out by the Organic Consumers Association (www.organicconsumers.org), lists “The Top Agricultural Breakthroughs of 2007.”
It notes that “a deluge of new scientific studies from a wide variety of institutions indicate that in comparison to genetically modified (GM) crops, organic agriculture can better feed the world, reduce global warming, provide greater nutrition, and boost the economy. … The UN announced that organic agriculture is the best way to feed the world and help stabilize the climate.” Crops that are being developed through traditional breeding methods include “a wheat variety that can withstand high salinity in soil, non-GM corn and rice varieties that can tolerate droughts, an iron-fortified non-GM maize strain that reduces anemia rates in children and the discovery of a non-GM variety of allergen-free peanut.”
• In the May/June 2007 HortIdeas, Permaculturist Dan Hemenway responds to an earlier article about the benefits of using charcoal for farming and sequestering carbon in the soil. He cautions: “The drawback of your report was the lack of stress regarding the prospect of producing pollutants in the process of making charcoal. Any kid who ever made charcoal sticks in a test tube can attest to the foul gases that are released. These are combustible and are indeed used as a fuel in some cases.”
• There’s a very interesting article in the May/June 2007 Organic NZ magazine, called “Growing Your Way to Fat-Free: The very versatile plum.” One of the facts mentioned is that a particular variety of plum can be identified by its pit. There are also sections on plum Botany, Cooking and Medicinal Uses, Species, Growing Conditions and Harvesting. According to this latter section, “The best way to tell if your plums are ripe is to taste them. Flocks of birds, wasps and kids circling your trees are usually reliable indicators.”
• The following is taken from “Put farm subsidies out to pasture” by Brian M. Riedl, in the Christian Science Monitor but originally printed in the Los Angeles Times:
[F]ederal farm policies specifically bypass family farmers. Subsidies are paid per acre, so the largest (and most profitable) agribusinesses automatically receive the biggest checks. Consequently, commercial farmers—who report an average annual income of $200,000 and a net worth of nearly $2 million—collect the majority of farm subsidies. Fortune 500 companies, celebrity ‘hobby farmers,’ and even some members of Congress collect millions of dollars under this program. These farm policies … impose substantial harm. They cost Americans $25 billion in taxes and an additional $12 billion in higher food prices annually. Environmental damage results from farmers overplanting crops in order to maximize subsidies. By undermining the nation’s trade negotiations, subsidies raise consumer prices and restrict US exports. … Lawmakers would be hard-pressed to enact a set of policies more destructive to farmers, taxpayers, consumers, the environment, trade, global antipoverty efforts, and even our health than the current farm policies.
http://www.growbiointensive.org/news_0805_notes.html
NOTES OF INTEREST
• This comes from “America’s Thinning Food Pantry” by Benjamin Gisin, Editor of Touch the Soil, a new bi-monthly magazine about sustainable agriculture (PO Box 3662, Idaho Falls ID 83403; www.touchthesoil.com).
“In 1900 11 acres were farmed in America to feed each person. In 1954—the peak of American’s food production—the number was 7 acres. In 2006 there were only 3 acres farmed for each person in the US. This doesn’t mean that farming is getting more efficient. It means we’re importing food. “To make up for the loss of farm ground around the world, roughly 10,000 square miles of Amazon rainforest are deforested every year, 80 percent of which goes into food production.
The reasons behind faltering global food stocks are complex but are the convergence of several events that resulted in demand outpacing supply and stressing the earth’s capacity to produce. Here are just a few of the details leading up to the current situation:
The first major food-shock event took place in early 2006. Having nearly collapsed its grain reserves, India, with 1.1 billion people, announced it was entering the world market for a mere 6 million metric tons of wheat. For perspective, America produced 56 million metric tons of wheat in 2007 from some 51 million acres. So 6 million metric tons represents about 11 percent … of America’s wheat production. India’s announcement advanced the world price of wheat by 25 percent, and it has been on an uphill climb ever since.
Historically, China maintained a policy of trying to have one-year’s worth of grain for every citizen, which they almost achieved. But in 2001, China entered the modern world by joining the WTO. While we may never know all of the reasons, upon joining the WTO, China decided to sell off its grain reserves (the world’s largest at the time). Liquidating its grain reserves had two effects: it artificially kept grain prices (and food prices) in check and gave the false impression the world was feeding itself from current production.
Living off its food savings account, China would have to reckon with it some day. That day came in 2006. As Chinese authorities had to come to grips with a global grain market too expensive for Chinese consumers to import, it started moving what was left of its grain stocks onto its domestic market to avert dramatic food inflation that might cause political turmoil.
While the world did not produce enough wheat to meet consumption in 2007, and wheat and barley prices are off the charts, the world dodged a major food-shock event in 2007. China, by reducing its wheat consumption marginally and increasing its production marginally, was able to produce what it consumed. … The risk of China and India defaulting to become greater importers of food should not be downplayed, particularly in an environment where the world’s grain farmers produced enough to meet consumption in only one out of the last eight years.”
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• The following quotes come from a much longer article, “A $93 Billion Tab We Can’t Afford Not to Pay” by Lester R. Brown, that appeared in the July/August 2007 issue of World Ark (www.heifer.org):
“The health of an economy cannot be separated from that of its natural support systems. More than half the world’s people depend directly on croplands, rangelands, forests and fisheries for their livelihoods. … A strategy for eradicating poverty will not succeed if an economy’s environmental support systems are collapsing.” Brown goes on to estimate the cost of reforesting the earth, protecting cropland topsoil, restoring rangelands, and fisheries, protecting biological diversity and stabilizing water tables and comes up with $93 billion a year. He concludes: “Many will ask, ‘Can the world afford this?’ But the only appropriate question is—Can the world afford to not make these investments?”
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• This information is taken from “Bicycles, Night Soil, and the Future of Garbage” by Lisa DePiano in the May 2007 issue of Permaculture Activist:
In Northampton, Massachusetts, a business called Pedal People picks up hair from the beauty shop, coffee grounds from a café, and food scraps from area households. These “waste” products are then taken to a local CSA farm, where they are layered with leaves and turned into compost. This business is carried out on bicycles that have attached trailers with separate bins for different types of waste. The Supervisor of Solid Waste Management for the Northampton Department of Public Works said, “ ‘In the beginning people wondered how long they were going to last. But they have made it through the best and the worst of the seasons. They started as two people, but they have continued to grow. People see them on the streets, and they are now accepted as a legitimate business. Pedal People is a worker-owned cooperative. Because of low overhead, the service can offer its customers a competitive rate and pay its workers a living wage.’”
http://www.growbiointensive.org/news_0805_vigil.html
The Essence of the Night Vigil in a Wild Camp
By Zachary Makanya
Zachary is the Kenyan Coordinator of Participatory Ecological Land Use Management, an association of 170 NGOs in 10 eastern and southern African countries. He helped organize the Five-Day Pan-Africa GROW BIOINTENSIVE Workshop and Four-Day Symposium that took place at Manor House Agricultural Centre last August.
This month, I went to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape South Africa to participate in a meeting called by Africa Biodiversity Network (ABN). One of the activities was to take part in a wild trail where the participants went and stayed in the wild for 2 days. In the evening, we camped and slept around a camp fire.
It was a good practice; each member of the team kept a night-watch for about 50 minutes. During this time, the rest of the members would be asleep while the night-watch kept vigil, kept the camp fire burning and watched around – in order to ensure that the rest of the group were safe. After the time for one’s watch was over, the night guard would then wake up the next person in the line, and this went on the whole night. In case of danger, we had a duty to warn others of the impending danger, and while this was not explicit, those awakened may have been expected to react in several ways:
1. Wake up immediately
2. Try to understand what kind of danger they faced and what kind of action to take
3. Once agreed, spring with vigor and zeal to chase away the danger
4. Keep on the watch
This exercise made and left a deep impression on me. It reminded me of nature and the essence of keeping watch on biodiversity and its environment. Those of us who are passionate about biodiversity and nature are supposed to monitor and keep watch what money-hungry human beings are doing and whether this amounts to destroying the environment. As we go on with our business, we all should have whistles in our lips so that in case we see people destroying nature and the communities’ livelihoods, we immediately blow these whistles and awaken everybody. This is how Africa has been able to resist GMOs and push other imminent dangers away. This is why whistles are being blown about AGRA and AGRO fuels, as we all know that these have been introduced in the guise of addressing the problems of the world.
During my watch, I was gifted to see a leopard. My torch shone on some flashing eyes, and there it was: the spotted one, as we call it in my community. It disappeared behind some bushes. After five minutes or so, I also saw it in another side of the camp, and this time it disappeared into the night. Of course, during the rest of my watch I was very alert.
I was trying to imagine what could have happened had I gone to sleep and not kept the camp fire burning. Obviously, we all would have been in danger. But we all trusted each other, and hence people went to sleep knowing that someone was watching.
In the last day of the camp, I was the last watch, and I was able to see how the night changes into day. I was surprised by how birds and baboons welcome the daylight. Suddenly the birds were singing and the crickets louder. I looked at my fellow human beings – none detected the change to daylight as they were all sleeping, so disconnected from nature that we, unlike other earthly creatures, do not notice the changes in nature.
I have several questions for all the friends of biodiversity and nature. One: do we really keep watch over the biodiversity, nature, and communities, or have we all gone to sleep? The second question is: if we are asleep and others are keeping the watch, do we awaken to their whistle-blowing, or do we turn the other way round and go on sleeping in our comfort zones? The last question is: shall we now keep on sleeping, or do we join the watchers and whistle-blowers? The choice of what we do, my dear friends, is yours and mine and indeed ours. A quote from Mark Twain may help us remain focused:
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream and discover, and be part of the change you want.”
http://www.growbiointensive.org/news-0802-news.html
Karla Arroyo Rizo is the Garden Manager at Los Cañadas in the Cloud Forest area of Veracruz state in Mexico and was an Ecology Action Intern in 2002. Jodi Roebuck of New Zealand was an Intern at the same time.
I started working with the Biointensive Method when I got to Las Cañadas in the year 2001, 6 years ago. I used to weed the beds they had, and I started to plant with the Biointensive Method. I haven’t stopped since then and I’m still amazed at its benefits. I worked in Las Cañadas garden for two years and was in charge of 150 beds that produced food. Taking advantage of the abundance, I started producing a few seeds. Then I went to do an Internship at Ecology Action. I was there for six months to learn more about the Method, and that changed my life. I want to thank Carol and John and all the team for preparing me to continue using the Biointensive Method. When I was there, I met Jodi Roebuck, a great friend and seed lover who taught me about the possibility to establish a garden to produce seeds. When I came back to Mexico, inspired by such experience and with the support of Las Cañadas, I started 12 beds to produce seeds. Today after 4 years there are 40 beds, and I hope to duplicate that number soon.
Last year I travelled to help Jodi establish his Biointensive garden to produce seeds at New Zealand’s SEEDKEEPER. In a season we made 40 beds and about 20 compost piles! Jodi has a lot of experience in seed production and an incredible seed and book collection about agriculture, which gave me the opportunity to study when the sun was intense and we couldn’t work in the garden. They were eight very intense months. Being in New Zealand with SEEDKEEPER was great training: I was able to come back to Mexico with all the vision of what I had to do to improve what I had been doing.
The Seed Garden is keeping alive 38 vegetable varieties with open-pollinated seeds produced with the Biointensive Method. Many of them are in danger of extinction, and most of them are not commercially available. It’s sad to think that 90% of the vegetable varieties are extinct and that the varieties that can be commercially gotten in Mexico are “improved” seeds adapted to chemical agriculture, most of them hybrids.
It is imposible to compete with NAFTA, because it allows the free entrance of corn and bean seeds from Canada and the United States to Mexico. As a result, the future will see the loss of a great number of corn and bean varieties in our country, including many ancient (Creole) varieties. This is frustrating! This is why now more than ever we are promoting the exchange of seeds. The Seed Garden is organizing a Mexican Network of Creole Seeds in which small organic producers exchange seeds for free. In exchange for corn, beans and other vegetables we give seeds they need, and in this way we can distribute these varieties that could very soon disappear.
Each year, we publish a catalog in which the varieties that are produced in the Seed Garden are shown and the seeds from the Mexican Network of Creole Seeds are made available to the public.
My dreams for the following years are:
1. To have varieties that are more resistant, productive and delicious, to be able to produce seeds of varieties we don’t have such as celery, broccoli, Swiss chard and artichoke and to adapt potato, sweet potato and Jerusalem artichoke varieties, among other things.
2. To make available to the public through the network corn and bean varieties that have been adapted to different climates.
About the lessons I have learned in Las Cañadas, there are so many that I don’t know how to talk about them. I have learned:
* To produce material for compost from wild plants, such as gigantón (a type of dalia), San Nicolas, Sauco, etc., grown Biontensively, that have the capacity to produce big amounts of biomass.
* To recognize the importance of knowing your soil’s conditions in order to produce better plants. For example, the soil in Las Cañadas is acid and low in phosphorus and boron, and it is interesting to see the results once lime and phosphorus have been added.
* To share the Biointensive Method in the workshops organized by Las Cañadas. Each course is a lesson.
[I don’t know which is the more interesting in this search, the recipes are the talk about rare seeds....granny]
Couple of ideas for seedkeeper boxes:
History, and several others to take a good look at:
Looks interesting:
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/AD090E/ad090e.htm
APPENDIX
ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN PROTECTED AREAS AND BUFFER ZONES
CASE STUDIES22
* Case study 1. Organic agriculture and bird conservation in Muraviovka Park, Russia
* Case study 2. Organic paddy rice in coastal wetlands in the Delta del Ebro, Spain
* Case study 3. Organic beef production in tropical wetlands of the Pantanal Region, Brazil
* Case study 4. Organic agriculture in natural habitats in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada
* Case study 5. Organic agriculture in the Oak Forest of the Biological Reserve of Cachalù, Colombia
* Case study 6. Ecological Village in Bali Barat National Park, Indonesia
* Case study 7. Organic farming in the Yaoluoping National Resource Reserve, China
* Case study 8. Organic agriculture in the Jeseniky Micro-Region, Czech Republic
* Case study 9. Organic shade coffee in buffer zones of the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, Mexico
* Case study 10. Organic shade cocoa and coffee in tropical forests in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, Mexico
* Case study 11. Organic forest-grown yerba mate in the Guayaki Biological Reserve, Paraguay
* Case study 12. Organic orange production to restore tropical forest in the Guanacaste Conservation Area, Costa Rica
* Case study 13. Organic banana to protect the threatened Atlantic Forest in the Guaraqueçaba Environmental Protection Area, Brazil
* Case study 14. Organic Agriculture and forest conservation in the Ampay Forest Sanctuary, Peru
* Case study 15. Organic agriculture in the tropical cloud forest of Las Cañadas, Mexico
* Case study 16. Organic and shade coffee to maintain buffer zone and biological corridor functions between El Imposible and Los Volcanes National Parks, El Salvador
* Case study 17. Organic shade cocoa for the improvement of habitats of the Talamanca-Caribbean Biological Corridor, Costa Rica
* Case study 18. Organic land management and bird conservation in the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve and other protected areas in Brandenburg, Germany
* Case study 19. Wild farming inside the biological corridor in the Adirondak National Park, State of New York, United States of America [posted below by granny]
Case study 19. Wild farming inside the biological corridor in the Adirondak National Park, State of New York, United States of America
Wild farming begins with practices that include planting native pollinator corridors, building ponds, bird and bat houses, restoring riparian and wetland habitats, adopting non lethal predator controls on ranches, and developing cropping systems uniquely adapted to a given ecosystem or bioregion.
The Adirondack coast of Lake Champlain is involved in a programme which combines sustainable farming with the protection of biodiversity104. It covers many hectares of natural land and farmland, including Jamie Phillips’ farm (owned by the Eddy Foundation). This farm is a model farm found inside a wildlife corridor that connects the Adirondack National Park and Lake Champlain105. This corridor is called the Split Rock Wildway. Most of the area is covered by forest maintained in a natural state. The rest is composed of fields returning to forest and agricultural fields dedicated to organic farming (fruits, vegetables, grains and mushrooms). The organic fields are criss-crossed with hedgerows of native fruit-bearing trees and shrub species, and are set in a matrix of natural forest106, making them a suitable habitat for pollinators, grassland birds, raptors and small mammals.
[a small snippet]
In the last decade, the adoption of organic agriculture has indirectly established a rescue process of species, varieties and breeds threatened by under-use or extinction. The restoration and enhancement of under-utilized species and varieties has been motivated by specific demands of both consumers and farmers.
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/AD090E/ad090e00.htm#TopOfPage
United Nations Thematic Group
Sub-Group Meeting on Wildlife, Biodiversity and Organic Agriculture
Ankara, Turkey, 15-16 April 2003
ORGANIC AGRICULTURE:
THE CHALLENGE OF SUSTAINING FOOD PRODUCTION
WHILE ENHANCING BIODIVERSITY
Nadia El-Hage Scialabba
Secretary
Priority Area for Inter-Disciplinary Action on Organic Agriculture
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Rome, Italy
nadia.scialabba@fao.org
Table of contents
1. INTRODUCTION
2. THE BELOW-GROUND FOOD CHAIN: SOIL BIODIVERSITY
3. THE FARMING SYSTEM FOOD CHAIN: GENETIC RESOURCES FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
4. THE ECOSYSTEM FOOD CHAIN: WILDLIFE BIODIVERSITY
5. CONCLUSIONS
APPENDIX - ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN PROTECTED AREAS AND BUFFER ZONES - CASE STUDIES
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2004-September/020790.html
Hi, I have a question and was wondering if you all could help. In groups through history Who was the “Seed Keeper”?
Native Americans started out as hunter-gathers but at some point in time turned to “farming”? How about older groups? How were the future crops seed entrusted and to who?
Any information you may have will be helpful.
The reason I ask is as I was sorting my bean seed I noticed I had not taken care of them as I should have, Some had mold. Witch I surely would have been able to stop if I had made sure they were exposed to more air all along.
If this was the only food for my group I be in deep trouble.
This started me thinking about the history for seed saving, and wondering how different groups saved seed and who was in charge.
I’m not sure this has any thing to do with Permaculture but with out seed I guess there would be no need for Permaculture.
Thank for your input. Sandie OR.
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2004-September/020791.html
I’ll bet it was a distributed job, something that everyone in the community involved with managing and harvesting crops participated in,
required knowledge if you were entrusted with growing food. Those who by experience, observation and experimentation gained exceptional
knowledge of seed production, harvest and storage, would have taught the others and contributed to a shared knowledgebase that was passed
down through successive generations.
Fremont people, Paleo-Indians seed saving in Utah
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/09/20/utah.canyon.ap/index.html
Until recently, Range Creek was all but unknown. An expedition from Harvard’s Peabody Museum made a stop in 1929, but visited only a few
sites. In recent summers, archaeologists and graduate students have quietly conducted a labor-intensive survey — keeping the area’s full
significance under wraps until news reports surfaced about the land transfer in June.
Archaeologists have documented about 300 sites — pit houses, granaries and petroglyphs — but they’ve surveyed only about 5 percent of the
canyon drainage.
Among recent finds: a paddle-like wood shovel; a rare bundle of arrow shafts, found wedged in a canyon wall; a perfectly preserved
beehive-shaped granary with a cap stone, still a third full with piles of parched wild grass seed and corn; and a pair of human remains from
surrounding federal land. The Fremont would have used ladders, ropes or cords to reach some of their granaries, set at impossible heights.
LL
—
L.F.London
lfl at intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/permaculture/2004-September/020625.html
Add this database to the Permaculture Library:
1.
Native American Ethnobotany
A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native
American Peoples, Derived from Plants.
http://herb.umd.umich.edu/
Dan Moerman
Professor of Anthropology
University of Michigan-Dearborn
About:
Native American Ethnobotany database
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~dmoerman/about_ethnobot.pdf
and
http://www.umd.umich.edu/database/herb/about_ethnobot.html
Excerpts:
This database is the result of a series of efforts over 25 years. A book
based on the data base has been published by Timber Press, in Portland
OR in 1998.
The book was given the Annual Book Award of the Council for Botanical
and Herbarium Libraries in 2000.
In 2002, the database had about 80,000 hits.
As noted, In the spring of 2003, substantial revisions of the database were
made, revising its looks, and adding links to the US Department of
Agriculture
PLANTS database. This means that complete botanical information on useful
plants, plus pictures, range maps, and endangered status, are
immediately available
The database now contains 44,691 items. This version added foods, drugs,
dyes, fibers and other uses of plants. This represents uses by 291
Native American
groups of 4,029 species from 243 different plant families.
About half of them are medicinal.
2.
Edge: The Third Culture: Dan Moerman
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/moerman.html
DAN MOERMAN is William E Stirton Professor of Anthropology University
of Michigan-Dearborn. His first work related to health emerged during his
dissertation research with a rural black population in coastal South
Carolina
in the early 1970s.
St. Helena Islanders told him of their complex theory of health involving a
subtle system of pressures and flavors of the blood which, if things
went badly,
could cause various illnesses which they treated with a series of plants
(called “weeds”) gathered from fields or planted in their gardens.
Since then, he has done research primarily in two areas — medicinal plants
(primarily of Native American peoples who originated the uses of most of
the plants used by the Islanders), and of the impact on health of the
knowledge and understanding of it that people have.
[I have not checked the links...granny]
Very interesting:
http://www.tabletophomestead.org/wordpress/?paged=4
A nice blog about setting up off grid in Oklahoma.
This page is a full page on cooking and canning with pressure cookers, hints and info.
http://michaelbunker.com/2008/03/off-grid-living-for-agrarians-part-11.html
center of the Republic of Texas.
3.11.2008
Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 11
Although there are mentions of rotational kind of “seasonal” or annual crop farming in the scriptures (crops such as wheat, corn, and barley - used to make bread and other staples), by far, when speaking of food products, or God’s providence, or blessed wealth, the Bible talks about perennial crops or perennial food items. A blessed land is said to run with “milk and honey”. We read about olive trees, almond trees, pistachio trees, milk, honey, dates, sycamore figs, apples, grapes, and pomegranates, as well as many root crops including garlic, onion, and leeks which in many cases could be left or stored in the ground for a good part of the year. I think we can all agree that the original garden planted by God for man was made up of fruit and nut orchards and perennial crops. I don’t think that annual crops were instituted until after the fall, but of course that is mainly speculation. But I do believe that many crops which are considered annual seed crops now were actually perennial plants in the original garden. For example, Tomatoes which are an annual plant in most of the world, are actually perennials in the Tropics and all the modern species of tomato are derived from perennial fruit.
As we mentioned in some previous parts to this series, quite a bit of food was stored “on the hoof”, which is actually one of the Biblical means of storing wealth and being prepared for hard times. Biblical herdsman concentrated their efforts on animals that were fairly easy to keep, reproduced well or copiously, could be pastured on free or relatively free lands, and that did not require expensive care or feeds. In short, it seems that a man’s wealth was determined by that which was renewable, sustainable, and somewhat perennial. A wealthy man would have had a land running with milk and honey; he would have had orchards, and vineyards, and cattle, and root crops that come up and produce all year or every year. Those who depended inordinately on annual crops were subject to drought, disease, and famine. We ought to think about that when we get started in our own homesteads. Our family has made a practice of planting trees every year, and the majority of those trees are chosen for some type of food production. I think setting a goal to plant 5-15 fruit or nut producing trees a year... EVERY YEAR... ought to be in every homesteading plan, no matter how much land is available. If a small acreage gets too crowded with trees (is that even possible?), then the oldest trees can be harvested for the wood. Pecan, Cherry, Walnut, and Apple wood is great wood for woodworking, building, and for firewood. We also plan on planting fruiting bushes and vines every year as well. You also ought not worry about producing too much fruit or nuts. Remember that you will always be buying food for your animals until you can produce enough on your own to stop buying feed. Feed a portion of your crop to your animals, because fruits and nuts are a great addition to a balanced animal diet, and rotted fruit is great for a compost pile. Fruit and nuts can be dried, powdered, canned, etc. pretty easily. It is a truism that in this current environment our diets are greatly lacking in fruit and nuts, so changing our diet to represent those items which are more permanent and perennial is just a good idea.
Permaculture
One of the topics I talk a lot about around here, and one that you will hear me speak quite a bit about in the future, is permaculture. The word “Permaculture” is a combination of the terms Permanent and Agriculture. Permaculture is a philosophy and design theory that revolves around the idea of inter-dependent planting and design. The overall idea is one of sustainability, but it goes beyond that. A permaculture plan is one that incorporates all the sustainable ideas in a way where each area benefits and serves another area - in a type of symbiosis that is hard to explain, but easy to understand once it is grasped. For example, a permaculture idea of raising chickens might be a chicken coop and pen system where fruit and nut trees and bushes are planted so that they drop their fruit or nuts into the chicken pens. The coop might be designed so that the chickens (which produce heat, fertilizer, and carbon dioxide - all of which is necessary for plants) have a portion of their “run” in a greenhouse. By going about their normal duties, they produce a large portion of the heat and CO2 that is necessary for the plants to survive. The plants produce oxygen and food for the animals, and the fertilizer can be used to boost the productivity of the plants. This is mainly just an idea to get you started on the overall philosophy, but modern pastured poultry and pasture rotation/animal rotation schemes are all based on some permaculture philosophies.
Proper, sustainable, permaculture design of the homestead can greatly reduce the overall workload, and can reduce or eliminate many of the costs related to running the homestead. A few hours of planning and design can eliminate untold amounts of cost, work on the homestead. Some permaculture ideas, though they will not eliminate labor completely, will certainly eliminate costs. Using chickens in insect and pest control; using properly planned and designed orchards to produce food for our animals, and using animals to work and improve the fields and gardens, are all a part of permaculture design.
In coming to a right mindset on these issues, it is necessary that everything we think be put on the table and debated. Our diets ought to change to better represent our location and our geographical reality. We ought to eat those things that grow well locally, and as much as possible it should reflect those things that can be grown perennially or that increases the sustainability of our homestead. From the species of trees we plant, to the types of crops we grow, we need to keep in mind how that choice is going to effect us and continue to effect us in the long run. If we get into the mindset that we are always going to be able to put in a nice annual garden, or some annual seed crops, and that somehow that that idea is sustainable, then we are likely to fail if things do not forever continue as they are now. From the day we start our homestead we ought to be thinking of some type of perennial or continuous food production. It is hard in this world of immediate gratification and a “get it now” mentality, to plan for a crop that will not mature for many years, but we ought to always remember that this is exactly the way that God works, and our patience will be rewarded in due time. One of my greatest anticipations is to see the trees we planted in our first year here on the ranch, produce fruit. Not only is this a great example of God’s mighty works in and through us, but it is a profound picture of His providence and grace towards us, that He provides sweet and free fruit from the ground abundantly to all of His children who will reach out and take it.
Your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
http://michaelbunker.com/offgrid.html
Links to the chapters of “Off Grid Living”
http://www.homesteaderlife.christianagrarian.com/about/
About Homesteader Life
My name is Scott Terry. I’m a dairy farmer/homesteader from Lisle NY.
Homesteader Life is a blog about…..
Learning to live Simple, Seperate, and Deliberate lives. Enjoying creation, but not worshipping it. Eating, Drinking and Being Merry. A Blog dedicated to berry pickin’, chicken pluckin’, buck skinin’, and building Christian Agrarian Culture.
Devoted to subduing the earth and replenishing it, bringing every thought captive to Christ, and restoring our republic.
http://www.homesteaderlife.christianagrarian.com/category/garden/
http://farmblogs.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html#8784626920023569879
This blog is about blogs about farms from all over the world.
Excellent photos of animals and poultry, peacocks and all of
God’s creations.
OVENCRAFTERS
The Wood-Fired Brick Oven Builders & D.I.Y. Oven Plans
http://www.ovencrafters.net/grains.htm#anchor247193
Grain Suppliers and Growers
UNITED STATES
Jennifer Green
Heirloom grains, seeds and beans,
Scott River Road
Fort Jones, CA
(530) 468 4340
Charles Belford
Hierloom Wheats
Red Hill Road
Petaluma, CA<94952
(415) 847 0095
Dan Thomas
Biodynamic Grains
Wheat and Rye grower
4870 Sixth Avenue, North
Karlsruhe, ND - 58744
701.525.6797
Wheat Montana Farms
Three forks, MT - 59752
Montana Flour and Grain
2502 Chouteau Street
Fort Benton, MT - 59442
406.622.5436
Walnut Acres
Pennsylvania Creek ,PA -17862
1.800.433.3998
Kamut Association of North America
295 Distribution Street
San Marcus , CA -92069
619.752.5234
Walton Feed Incorporated
135 North, #10
Montpelier, ID -83254
1.800.847.0465
Moores Flour Mill
1605 Shasta Street
Redding ,CA -96001
916.241.9245
Cooks Flour Company
2109 Frederick Street
Oakland ,CA - 94606
Wheatland
P. O. Box 513
Brigham City, UT - 84302
1.800.676.0191
Black Ranch Gormet Grains
5800 East Side Road
Etna, CA - 96027
916.467.3387
Arrowhead Mills
Texas
1.800.858.4308
Giusto’s
Keith Giusto Baking Facility
Petaluma CA (707) 762 8757
Warehouse
344 Littlefield Avenue
South San Francisco, CA - 94080
650.873.6566
CANADA
A. Scheresky ( Canada ONLY)
Box 240
Oxbow, Saskatchuan - SOC 2B0
306.925.2115
EUROPE
AUSTRAILASIA
Wholegrain Milling Company
New South Wales
011 61 2 6742 3939
www.wholegrain.com.au
Kialla Pure Foods
Queensland
011 61 7 4697 1170
http://grainsandpulses.blogspot.com/
Thoughts on Finding and Evaluating Seeds for Grain Production
Offered by Anthony Boutard
With vegetables and fruits, gardeners and small-scale market farmers are used to opening a catalogue and ordering seeds or plants. The characteristics of the variety are generally outlined in a useful fashion. Various quantities of seed are offered. Unfortunately, this easy commerce is not available for the full range of grains.
For those of us who are interested in unconventional grains and seed crops, it doesn’t take long to find that the characteristics of varieties are poorly documented and supplies are limited. We have no choice but to hunt down seeds, grow them out, and make good observations on growth and culinary qualities. This site can serve as a means of sharing information gleaned from that experimentation, to the extent growers and gardeners are willing to share.
For example, in my experience, the naked barleys have a weaker straw than wheat, oats or rye. They lodge, fall over as the grain ripens, making harvesting difficult. Over-dense planting exacerbates this problem. The plants hold up better when they can tiller extensively, so plant at a lower density. Older references add credence to this observation. In my limited experience, the two-row barleys have the weakest stems. Bear this in mind as you proceed.
As David Mader notes, grains purchased from food stores are often stale or dried at a heat that weakens or kills the germ, making them useless as a seed source. Local seed and supply companies offer grains, but they are run of the mill varieties. In addition, they represent a narrow range of culinary qualities. Often, they are treated with fungicides and insecticides, so take care if you are an organic farmer.
As you can see, we are left with few options. Here are some sources for small grains offered as a starting point. This is not a definitive list, and I hope people will add to it.
Kusa Seed Society: http://www.ancientcerealgrains.org
Kusa offers a good range of cereal grains in the form of several seed collections. They have one of the better sets of variety descriptions. They offer 18 varieties of naked barleys in three collections, two collections of wheat, as well as millet, hulled grain and lentil collections. Most of the varieties are offered at 100 grains per variety, but the hulled grains come in 25 ear packs – an ear has two grains. The grow-out process will be three to four years. I am planning to work with a couple of these collections each year. Kusa also offers literature on grains.
Sourcepoint Seeds, 26422 Moss Rock Road, Hotchkiss, CO 81419. Catalogue is $3.00, checks payable to Anpetu Oihankesni.
I have purchased naked barley seeds from Sourcepoint, specifically the varieties Dolma, Tibetian Purple and Glutinous. As with Kusa, quantities are limited, but I have had good germination and consistency of type. Anpetu, the owner, is very knowledgeable, and willing to share his observations. He carries a wide range of grain and seed crops.
Seed Savers Exchange: http://www.seedsavers.org
SSE has a good selection of grains available through its “Listed Members.” Typically offered in quantities of 25 seeds. The Yearbook provides cursory observations, but less detailed than Kusa’s.
Bountiful Gardens: http://www.bountifulgardens.org
Has a few grains and seed crops available.
Welter Seed and Honey Company: http://www.welterseed.com
Welter offers a range of wheat varieties and other grains such as triticale, and has certified organic grain available. Many are labeled VNI – variety not identified.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds. http://www.johnnyseeds.com
Johnny’s carries naked (hulless) oats and hard spring wheat in 50# sacks. They also have that standard (hulled) barley variety “Robust.” They appear to be out of stock at the present (January 2009).
From Anthony’s Grains
Frikeh & Other Green Grains
The core of this entry is cribbed from an article we wrote for Growing for Market a few years ago.
Most of us think of small grains in their mature, dry state, which allows them to be stored for many years. Less well known is the tradition of enjoying small grains in their immature (green) state as a perishable, seasonal delicacy. Throughout the Middle-east, from Egypt to Turkey, immature durum is processed into frikeh (frik, firik, freekeh). In southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria, immature spelt is roasted to produce grünkern. Across North Africa, heads of green barley are steamed and then threshed. There are similar traditions in the Ukraine and Georgia using bread wheat.
These green grains are more nutritious than mature grains, high in dietary fiber and low in phytic acid. The smoky, sweet and grassy quality of the grain adds a unique and new dimension to vegetarian dishes. I believe we are the only frikeh makers in the US. Most is imported from Syria, Jordan and Australia. The Australians have mechanized the process.
Harvest of the grain is done during the brief interval between the “milk stage,” when endosperm is still liquid and sweet, and the “soft dough” stage, when the endosperm is solidifying and developing its starches. Too early and the grains shrivel; too late and the grains are no longer sweet and green. The right moment is when a kernel is pinched and yields only a tiny drop of “milk.” The window for high quality frikeh production is about four days.
We cut the wheat with a sickle bar mower and the sheaves are stacked on the corrugated metal sleds with their heads lined up in a row. The heads are then roasted with a large propane burner. The goal is to burn off the awns and scorch the chaff that surrounds the grain. The fire imparts a smoky flavor to the grain, and the heating stops the maturation of the endosperm and stops the degradation of the chlorophyll. The ideal frikeh grain is green with just the tip charred.
Next year, we hope to modify a hedge trimmer so we can harvest just the heads. The less straw we handle, the easier the task. We are also thinking it might be possible to do the parching in a pepper roaster.
The next step is to thresh and winnow the grain. Scorched durum is very easy to thresh and it can be done by hand, at least for home use, if not commercially. All of our test runs were burned with a plumber’s torch and threshed between our hands. Depending upon other tasks at hand, a farmer can probably hand process 200 LB of frikeh in a couple of days, enough to add some zip to a CSA box. It might be tedious alone, but a fun project for interested subscribers.
For small batches of seed grain, we use a screen made from 1x4 boards and 4x4 hardware cloth. Rubbing the heads of grain on the screen allows us to thresh small lots faster than messing around with a thresher. This should work fine for frikeh. We use a larger stationary thresher for the task. A small combine that allows hand feeding would also work. Be forewarned, it is a sooty business, and you end the day looking like one of Dorthea Lange’s coal miners.
From Anthony’s Grains
Our first year, we hand winnowed all of the grain. We now produce over a 1,000 LB per year, and use a Clipper seed cleaner. You will need to clean the grain twice, once after threshing and then later when the grain is dry. The grain is at its very best fresh, but in that moist and sweet condition it is more perishable than berries or peaches. Drying allows the farmer to sell it at a measured pace, which is how we sell most of our frikeh.
Drying is the most perilous part of the process. In our first year, we dumped hundreds of pounds of grain destroyed by molds and yeasts. We learned a couple of things from the experience. First, clean the grain immediately, you don’t want anything that can hold or trap moisture. Second, tarps are not a good surface for drying grains. The grain must dried on screens, otherwise it will mold very quickly.
We use two-foot wide 8x8 hardware cloth for the screens. The frames are made from 1x4 boards. We have both four and eight foot long trays. The longer trays must have a divider in the middle. We have found both sizes work well. The longer trays are easier to move with a forklift. These trays are great for all sorts of odds and ends, such drying beans, garlic and peppers, as well as storing sweet potato tubers for slips.
When fresh, we put a thin layer of grain in each tray, consolidating the trays as the grain dries. The trays are stacked five or eight high atop a sawhorse and stickered with furring strips. A sheet of corrugated roof panel sits on top to keep the birds and squirrels at bay. Situate the trays in a barn or on a porch where there is good airflow. Better yet, move them outdoors during the day, keeping a corrugated sheet on top.
During the first few days of drying, especially, it pays to be obsessive about the process. We set up an empty screen on the horses and pour the grain out of the tray that it sat in overnight into the fresh screen. This is the best way to shake up the grain, and assure that it is drying evenly
The finished grain is rinsed a couple of times and cooked for 45 minutes to several hours. It holds up well to extended cooking. Frikeh is traditionally served with lamb or chicken. Tradition aside, the grain may be used in any recipe that uses rice or bulgur wheat. It is extremely versatile and wonderful with all summer vegetables. We cook up big pots of the grain and use it over several meals. It can be used in soups, salads, raitas and pilafs.
A longtime champion of frikeh, Paula Wolfert provides a recipe or two in each of her various middle-eastern cookbooks.
For three years, we parched spelt for grünkern. It is delicious, and a completely different flavor from the durum. Unfortunately, it was too time consuming to clean. The tip of the spelt head has a sharp tip that detaches and is inedible. The tip is almost the same size as grain of spelt, and was not removed by the seed cleaner. Lots of hand work. If you have a gravity table kicking around, it might be worth a try. There were a many sad faces when we dropped the grünkern.
References:
Musselman, L. J. and A. B. Mouslem. 2001. Frikeh, roasted green wheat. Economic Botany 55(2): 187-189. See http://www.odu.edu/webroot/instr/sci/plant.nsf/pages/frikeh
Wolfert, Paula. 1998. Mediterranean Greens and Grains. NY: HarperCollins. 368p.
Wolfert, Paula. 1994. The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean. NY: HarperCollins.
Wolfert, Paula. 1994. Mediterranean Cooking. NY: HarperPerennial. 320p.
from:
http://grainsandpulses.blogspot.com/
http://grainsandpulses.blogspot.com/
A Few Resources
I looked back at the earlier posts yesterday and realized there were some great comments that went with them. I’m glad to see the interest in grains on smaller farms is strong. I’ve recently been reading the Eatwell Farm Blog. Nigel grew a bunch of wheat this year to feed his chickens because the price of grain has been so high. Maybe those high prices, along with the continued demand for local, quality food will encourage more growers and that will in turn make appropriately sized equipment more accessible.
My experience with growing and processing grains is on a much smaller scale than Anthony’s, usually small test plots in the 100 sqft range. I haven’t managed to justify jumping up in scale on valuable vegetable land for a crop that might only be worth a fraction per acre of any other crop that we were growing. My biggest temptation was to grow cover crop seed, since we buy in quite a bit and it’s hard to find organic sources. I also figured it wouldn’t take that much space to set aside a bit of the cover crop I was growing anyway and let it fully mature - even thought that’s probably a full two to three months longer the field would be out of vegetable production.
In my experiments with growing grains and beans and other seeds I have collected a few resources and I thought I’d share them here and encourage other folks out there to submit their own articles to the blog.
I’m sure there must be more good books out there than just this one, but the most general, scale appropriate book I’ve found is Gene Logsdon’s “Small - Scale Grain Raising.” I don’t believe it’s in print anymore but if you can find a copy it’s a great overview of a number of different grains and legumes, equipment for growing them, reasons for growing them, and ways to use them. The book is focused mostly on the homestead scale, but a lot could be transfered to small scale production and the basic information for a vegetable grower like myself is useful. There is quite a bit of information on feeding livestock as well as growing grains for human consumption in the book.
Carol Miles at WSU (http://sustainableseedsystems.wsu.edu/nicheMarket/index.html) has good information on growing dry beans. There are plans for a thresher and a cleaner that are motorized but very small scale and relatively inexpensive. The thresher is a modified garden chipper/shredder based on Alan Dong’s design. I have Rotohoe chipper/shredder, the one suggested for modification, and I have used it, completely unmodified to thresh wheat, hull-less oats, rye, vetch, dry beans, chic peas, spinach, and other seed with good success. The model I have has L shaped blades that are fixed. I have friends who have a model that has straight flails. They did the modification, ganging the straight flails together, and run a lot of dry beans through it. They have had problems with beans shattering if they are too dry and the machine clogging if the plants are too wet. We both run whole plants through the machines (without roots).
I’ve seen the WSU cleaner in action and it is a little simpler to operate than the box fan and tub method than I use, very simple to fabricate as well. For smaller seeds, some folks from Bejo Seed were showing a similar set up to the WSU cleaner at the Organic Seed Alliance conference a few years back. Their model was built with a blower fan and clear plastic pipe and fittings, maybe 2”. They were actually using it for separating different density allium seed but for smaller beans, or grains, and smaller volumes, the pipe might work better than the larger plywood and sheet metal version that WSU shows. The clear plastic was great for demonstrations, and for adjusting air flow since you could see everything that was happening inside.
Alan Dong also has a design for modifying a Corona grain mill to a grain huller (http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/LTRAS/Itech/thresh.html). I don’t have any experience with this design but it looks very straight forward, kind of like a small belt thresher in some ways.
As the summer progresses and there’s more seed threshing and cleaning happening I’ll try to get some photos and maybe even video of these tools up on the blog. If anyone out there already has good shots I would love to see them.