Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Environment Home Life

Storm Damage Update

LAKE MACBRIDE— The sound of chain saws echoed through the neighborhood yesterday, including in our yard where a tree service climbed the Autumn Blaze maple tree and removed the broken branch high in the canopy. They also removed a large branch from the maple tree on the north side of the house. The branch was growing toward the structure, and could have fallen on it should another intense storm come through. It seems increasingly likely another intense storm will hit, sooner rather than later.

The storm peeled back the southwest corner of the metal facing on the roof. From the ground, it appears there is water damage to the underlying wood, it will have to be inspected and repaired. One can accept the reality of intense weather, caused by climate change, but it is much more than words on a web page. The work of recovery absorbs our resources and time, and portends more of the same. Dealing with disasters, even small ones like ours, is not how we intended to spend our life when we were in grade school.

On the plus side, there is a buyer for the firewood the disaster will produce, and finding an inexpensive tree service will be an asset going forward. I bartered some of the cut maple wood with a neighbor who will use it to smoke meat. In return, he will press some apples into cider. The storm’s wake left more neighboring than I can recall in a long time.

According to the U.S. Census, our household is above the median net worth for people our age. Not by much, but enough so that to say we are working poor is inaccurate. Poor people don’t have a net worth. At the same time, trying to make ends meet is challenging.

The reality of working seventy hours per week for less than a living wage, is there is less time, energy and resources for everything else. At the center of this life is the notion that we can maintain priorities and get the most important things done. Add disaster recovery, and the equilibrium is upset.

It’s approaching 5 a.m. in Big Grove, when I’ll depart for the newspaper, hoping to finish the week’s proof reading and catch the grand opening of a new restaurant in town before heading to the orchard for work. In the hour or two of daylight after my shift, I’ll glean a garden plot to make room for the disaster brush pile. Once that is done, organize for our presentation at the library on Sept. 30. We make plans, work the plan, and hope for the best— sustaining our lives in a turbulent world.

Categories
Writing

Salt Fork Kitchen Grand Opening

Salt Fork Kitchen
Salt Fork Kitchen

SOLON— Salt Fork Kitchen, 112 E. Main St., is slated to open for Sunday brunch on Sept. 22 from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m., with jam session. My friend Bill posted this note about the grand opening on Facebook,

I’ve been helping open Salt Fork Kitchen, Solon’s newest restaurant, get up and running. Supplied by it’s own farm (Salt Fork Farm). Chef Jay, and crew sport a great menu. Everything made from scratch from fresh ingredients. Sauces, by Jay, are incredible, as is everything. Home made bread, and biscuits, and yesterday was hummus making. I could go on, and on, so please come by, and enjoy. Grand opening this Sunday, September 22nd, 8:00 to 2:00. Jam session so follow, so bring your fiddle, guitar, or bluegrass bongos.

The restaurant grew from Salt Fork Farms and readers can find more information at the website saltforkfarms.com. Here is a snippet,

Salt Fork Kitchen is a long time dream of Eric’s. It will be a locally sourced, made from scratch restaurant providing quality food at a fair price for you, and the farmer.

The article I wrote with background information can be viewed here. If work schedule permits, I plan to stop by for the opening.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Pick a Peck of Peppers

Hot Peppers
Hot Peppers

RURAL CEDAR TOWNSHIP— Part of Thursday’s work was to harvest the hot pepper row at the CSA. We have Anaheim, which is not really hot, Hungarian wax peppers, jalapeno and Serrano. The peppers looked very nice, and the work prepared me to discuss them with customers at the drop site later that afternoon. I am ahead of myself.

The day started by picking kale, as it does on delivery days after the plants mature. The customers like kale, especially young children who anticipate it will be turned into baked kale chips for snack. For every leaf put in the cooler, two are discarded in the field, so there is a lot of marginal quality kale that returns to compost.

On a vegetable farm, there is a lot of marginal food generally: not quite good enough for customers, yet still a fresh and delicious food ingredient. Some is offered as seconds to customers, the farm workers take some home, and some returns to compost. This year I am experimenting with a bartering business of processing labor traded for a share of marginal food. A crate of peppers with bad spots becomes cut pieces in bags to be frozen. This operation included broccoli, tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers and eggplant, resulting in a more than adequate household supply for the coming winter.

I harvested eggplant after the kale and before the hot peppers. There is a lot in the field. Eggplant is a global favorite vegetable, but in Iowa a person can only eat so much of it. We offer half a dozen varieties of eggplant, and customers take it with their share. The eggplant from my weekly share was aging, so upon returning home, I baked off half of it and removed the flesh to make babaganoush, some for now, and some to freeze for later.

While I was working, others were bagging potatoes, picking lettuce in the high tunnel, harvesting tomatoes, collecting herbs, counting onions, preparing garlic and doing all that is required to get the Thursday deliveries out to customers. It’s a day in the life of a community supported agriculture project.

Categories
Home Life

Survey of the Storm Damage

The storm prematurely knocked acorns from the Bur Oak
The storm prematurely knocked acorns from the Bur Oak

... and apples from the tree...
… and apples from the tree…

The worst damage was knocking over a locust tree...
The worst damage was knocking over a locust tree…

... which somehow missed most everything,
… which somehow missed most everything,

...except the lilac bushes.
…except the lilac bushes.

The Golden Delicious apple tree lost another branch...
The Golden Delicious apple tree lost another branch…

... the maple tree lost two. One fell to the ground...
… the maple tree lost two. One fell to the ground…

... and one didn't.
… and one didn’t.

Categories
Environment Kitchen Garden

Letter to the Solon Economist

To the editor,

National Farm Bureau’s spokesman Mace Thornton was recently quoted by David Biello in Slate Magazine, “we’re not convinced that the climate change we’re seeing is anthropogenic in origin. We don’t think the science is there to show that in a convincing way.”

That a large national organization with strong Iowa roots would assert such a thing is ridiculous.

First of all, farmers experience the effects of changing climate directly. If they do not connect the dots between the increasing use of fossil fuels and the warming planet, it is the talk of bureaucrats and paid analysis not grounded in the science of the greenhouse effect and its relationship to climate.

Secondly, whether farmers are convinced that climate change is anthropogenic (i.e. caused in part by human activity), has become increasingly irrelevant. The USDA has already begun to incorporate climate change in its projections and outreach. According to Biello, “many American farmers— even those who would question whether climate change is man-made— are already doing exactly what efforts to combat climate change would require: precision agriculture to cut back on fossil fuel use, low or no-till farming, cover crops, biodigesters for animal waste, and the like.”

Climate change is real, and it’s happening now. If you would like to hear more about the science of climate change and what you can do to help remediate its causes, please attend a public meeting with me and Senator Rob Hogg on Monday, Sept. 30 at 6:30 p.m. at the Solon Public Library. All are welcome.

Footnote: Slate Magazine, July 16, 2013, Why Don’t Farmers Believe in Climate Change? by David Biello. Link to article here.

Categories
Home Life

Dealing with the Storm

LAKE MACBRIDE— A neighbor posted this message to our community email list last night,

Dear Neighbors,
Our garden has produced tons of great tomatoes this year, more then we can or can. Tomorrow I will pull my trailer up to the road with some of the surplus tomatoes on it.  If you would like some home grown organic heirloom tomatoes help yourself.

It was a generous gesture, the kind of which we need more in this dog-eat-dog world, where the Darwinian struggle for existence is taken literally and has also taken a turn toward the coarser side of human nature. He posted before the storm rolled in.

One neighbor called the brief storm, “(the) worst in 20 years.” He and his family built about the same time we did, during the early 1990s. The rain was intense and the wind sharp. With the climate crisis, one expects this sort of storm, and seeing how it plays out is never a pleasant experience.

We lost a tree, some lilac bushes and a big branch from our favorite tree, the autumn blaze maple in front. The apple crop was mostly knocked from the trees. When the sun rises we’ll see what is left to finish ripening, and whether there was any structural damage. I won’t be going to the farm today while spending time with post-storm cleanup. It could have been a lot worse.

Next steps are to finish coffee and breakfast, make a list and start doing things on it when the sun rises. There’s a song about that.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Work Life

Rain and the High Tunnel

Western Sky at Sunrise
Western Sky at Sunrise

LAKE MACBRIDE— After arriving at the farm, I took this photo and headed to the high tunnel to plant lettuce. The western sky was illuminated by the sun, a harbinger of rain, which came, along with lightning and thunder, within the hour. I continued planting while the drops pattered against the heavy gauge plastic and nature’s light show played in the distance. We need rain, but not much fell. There are only three more weeks in the CSA and already we are preparing the farm for winter.

Part of the work was setting up irrigation in the high tunnel, repairing the drip line where it leaked and making sure it aligned closely to the rows of newly planted seedlings. It is more time consuming than one would think. When people depend on a vegetable crop, there is no choice but to irrigate when drought comes. It is difficult to budget for the extra labor of irrigation— one more uncertainty in the life of a farmer.

Using a margin trowel, I dug five or six holes in a row and then planted seedlings, covering each over the top of the soil block. By the end of the day, my shoulder was sore, so one flat remained from the job— perhaps tomorrow on that one.

There was a sense of connection today. Not only to the cycle of planting and harvest, but to everyone else. While I may have been alone, the presence of everyone I have known was with me. It’s hard to explain, but being protected from the storm in the high tunnel was part of it as I labored in the field of an indeterminate future— hopefully one with lettuce.

Categories
Environment

Hitting the Sweet Spot

View from the Pepper Patch
View from the Pepper Patch

LAKE MACBRIDE— Yesterday’s presentation to a group of university students went well. In 30 minutes and 70 slides, a story of the climate crisis and its relationship to food systems unfolded in what felt like my most confident public speaking to date. The students seemed engaged in the narrative, and the questions at the end were thoughtful. Perhaps I have found my sweet spot.

One of the hopes for On Our Own: Sustainability in a Turbulent World has been to work through ideas and practices in local food systems. This included real world experience working on four farms, maintaining a large garden at home, and networking with people who play various roles in our local food system. The question has been, can one more person make a living producing, selling and promoting local food? The answer is yes, but I enjoy writing and speaking about it more, leaving a quandary regarding how to go forward.

My work with the Climate Reality Project requires a certain amount of public speaking and writing, but it is volunteer work. Local food system work, like any paid labor requires full attention and is physically challenging, leaving little room for other things. Balancing the two, and resolving the quandary, may be possible, but the path is not clear yet. That’s good news for readers of this blog as I reflect on this year’s local food system experience and work through how to spend next year during the coming weeks.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Waning Days of Harvest

Foxtail and Compost
Foxtail and Compost

LAKE MACBRIDE— The abundance of this year’s local food system has been remarkable. The more than adequate spring rain, combined with a late growing season, had everything producing, including the author. The term “local food system,” in this context, means how an individual home cook acquires and produces food for the table.

This year, our food was mostly organic, and if we grew celery,  lemons and limes here, we would have little reason to visit the produce aisle at the grocery store, except to compare our produce with theirs.

But the season is ending. Talk turns to cover crops and preparing the fields for winter. Gleaning will begin soon, plot by plot, uprooting the plants and taking the last bits of produce. The gleaning process wrecks the garden, making way for a fall turning of the soil. Seldom have I gotten the garden plots turned before winter arrives. Maybe this year, but I doubt it.

The red delicious apples are ripening, not ready yet, but soon. And so begins the vortex into fall’s final push into winter. Working four part time jobs has been a grind from multiple perspectives, not the least of which has been the wearying effect on my bones and muscles. Four more weeks at the orchard, maybe a job or two at one CSA, and work into October at the other. The four to five hours per week at the newspaper is the only constant: I complete two years there in October.

Whatever the challenges of this life, they are much better than the office work I did for so many years. The sense of creation, and contribution is tangible, even if the pay isn’t adequate to live. There is more work to do before this harvest is closed. I relish its opportunity and the life it engenders.

Categories
Environment Kitchen Garden

Then Rain Came

Carmen
Carmen

LAKE MACBRIDE— A co-worker and I were talking about the weather on the farm. For city-folk readers, people who work in agriculture do that a lot. I asked her, “when was the last rain?” Without hesitation, she answered, “in July.” And except for a couple of sprinkles, last night’s rain was the first since then. It was luxuriant.

My job at the orchard is related to the u-pick operation, and the rain meant customer activity would be suppressed after a very busy Saturday of temperatures in the 70s and clear skies. No orchard work for me today, so, to the grocery store to pick up some necessities and soon I’ll be at work in the kitchen preserving food.

There is a lot of food to work on. The first crop of apples is ready to be used today or never, so that will happen. It will either be juice or apple butter. Not sure yet. The pears are also in, so I’ll use 4-5 pounds to make a batch of pear butter while the rest ripen.

I have half a gallon of Concord grapes, from which I will make jelly.

From the aging hot and bell peppers, I’ll make pepper sauce with onion, tomato and garlic. Anything tomato-y or onion-y will get added to the pot. It is a variation on my traditional hot sauce mix, and designed to use up produce in the refrigerator. This will be run through the food mill and processed in pint jars.

Tomatoes are everywhere in the kitchen and garden. Some will be canned, some cooked into a batch of chili, and not sure what else. The vines are really producing this year, in my garden and at other local food sources.

So with this tentative plan in place, off to the kitchen and the work of sustaining a life on the Iowa prairie.

Update: 9:19 p.m. The stove was on most of the day, and I made chili and fruit salad for dinner, seven pints of pear butter, three pints of concord grape jelly, two pints of diced tomatoes, and six quarts, one pint and one half pint of hot pepper sauce. Did two loads of dishes and cleaned all the pots and pans before retiring to bed.