Updates

I got a chance to get some updates on folks I have introduced in earlier posts, and I wanted to share them. I guess this is the first weave of the woven stories that I promised. It's a short update, but an update nonetheless.

I'd been away from the market for over a month for a variety of reasons, but the talk of all the stalls Sunday was no different than that in the office cubbie: stinkbugs. and the discussion no less animated. All of the local farmers have been hurt by this year's stinkbug invasion. Unlike many other bugs attack on the fruits of your labor, this one is rather insidious. The bugs poke a tiny hole into things like tomatoes to feed, as I understand it.  So the fruit looks fine on the vine. When you take it off, that open wound starts to rot quickly and you'll get some oozing sometimes. Organically the way they are dealing with these beasts is pick them off and squish them. Tom of Nevr-Dun finds their smell the smell of victory (with the number flying around, I'd call it a small victory), and at least one of his clients thinks the smell is "woodsy".  Most other people think they plain stink. If you did want to spray them, there doesn't appear to be much option there. I haven't looked into this in great depth, but Karen of Serpent Ridge Winery, who I introduced here, noted that they are still waiting guidance from the USDA on handling the bugs. For their part, luckily, they have seen a lot of bugs, but don't feel their crop has been impacted.

The market on Saturday yielded the first bag of lettuce for the Fall season (for me, at least). It's amazing how good a fresh salad can taste. While we have lots of variants on salad during the Summer with various fresh produce, lettuce hasn't been available locally since June. So, no salads for us since June. The challenge of eating this way tests our creativity and ability to work with what we have.  No cold turkey here, I've been slowly increasing our dependency on local produce and reducing our reliance on the supermarket over a couple of years. This Summer is probably the first three month period where not a single item, I think, was bought from the store. So, the first salad of the season, with our own cucumber, our friend's tomatoes, radishes and peppers from the market, and our own lemon-infused vinegar, was amazing.  But, I digress....

Everyone has definitely struggled with the stinkbugs, and the drought is no less a problem. The farmer's I talk to use have a wide range of irrigation philosophies. Some are using water from their city water supply, some rely only on rain barrels, and some rely on nature. The latter were hit badly this year.  Shawn and Josie (introduced here)  have been using their water supply to keep their acre plus of property for Truffula Seed Produce going. This does mean very creative water hauling, as the property is divided across a road and their is no water on the one side. They have access to an old, deep well and would like to get that going so that they can rely on the rain more. But that requires investment in a pump and various other things; funds that they don't have now. Still, they've done pretty well this year and are sticking in for another. This was their first year at the market, and they had rented one property to grow on. In the coming months, they are hoping to find a second property, an acre, so that they can expand their farm next year and provide a CSA, as well as the Westminster Market. As though they had nothing else to do, Shawn is starting a graduate program at Goddard College in Vermont. It's an interdisciplinary program in sustainable farming, looking at the practicalities of sustainable, local, organic farming practices on scale. He'll do most of his work here, while he's still working their land. Josie is busy too with a bunch of canning. I've done some this year, but she love canning, as she described in this post. Because of her background in photography, her posts always have these fabulous photos and layout. She also has a posts on the beans that I described, but again, her photos are fabulous.  Otherwise, their Fall crops are coming along. They had some issues with the first set of seeds not germinating fully, but now everything is coming along. So they'll be in the market until November.

Serpent Ridge is now at the new wine season. They are picking their reds this Saturday and received shipment of the juice from the grapes they can't grow themselves over the last few weeks. Later in the month is pressing. I hope to be present for that and bring back tales of that adventure.

Local chicken and eggs

Chickens have certainly been in the news a lot lately, and so I thought I would add to the frenzy and write a little about our experience with local chicken farming, both for eggs and meat. I think I was first exposed to writing about pastured chickens through Michael Pollan, though it could of been a number of other authors. It was some time before I actually had a real local farmer's egg. I had read that the eggs were much richer in color and in taste, and that the yolks seemed to stand more boldly from the raw whites. That all sounded great, but my interest was really piqued by the topic of the last month or so: salmonella.

In Italy, we had been taught to use raw eggs for the dessert, tiramisu. We asked them at the time about getting sick from raw eggs, and they assured us that it wasn't possible. Our cooking instructor showed us a number stamped to the bottom of our eggs and said that this guaranteed they were safe. In truth, I have no idea what those numbers meant or whether the European Union has any better luck with raw egg-borne illness. But we didn't get sick, either.  With concern over consuming raw eggs back here in the States, we tried to find alternatives. The primary suggestion for this and similar uses of eggs is to actually cook the eggs to kill any bacteria in what was called a custard. I read the directions carefully and decided that it required far more work than I was willing to put in, not to mention a level of skill I was sure not to have. I turned to purchasing "cage free" eggs from the supermarket thinking that they must be better. Maybe they are; I'm not quite sure. But I did come to realize through further research that the words "cage free" didn't really mean what I thought (like, without a cage) and the cost for the label seemed unreasonable. The eggs might be a bit darker than the average supermarket egg, but I certainly wasn't overly impressed. Then a few years ago, we joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) at Ceilidh Meadows Farm in Gamber, Maryland, owned by Donna and Charlie Hancock. Ah, we would get to experience all the cool things I'd read about that connected people with other people through local farming. Sure enough, the first morning that I pulled up their long driveway to pick up our weekly produce, the yards was filled with wandering chickens. This was a bit unnerving for me, but didn't seem to phase the chickens. The colors of the animals were remarkable, and they completely challenged my image of the white egg layer chicken. When we got home that afternoon, we cracked the remaining store bought eggs right next to Donna and Charlie's eggs. The difference was stark. They weren't just darker, they really were deep orange. And the flavor was much stronger. It was a great introduction to a new way of living. 

About the same time, our friends Maureen and Mike decided they too would raise chickens. Really? People I knew didn't raise chickens. At least not at the time. But they soon had three layers in the coop they built on the edge of their yard. (Those are the ones in the photo at the top of this entry. )

Their backyard coop

Soon after that, it seemed that chicken raising, for the purpose of eggs, was all in vogue. A Washington Post article highlighted the growing trend of urban chicken coops. These aren't exactly what the Hancocks have on their property. At the Hancock farm, the chickens and roosters are just roaming. Sometimes they get off the property, and sometimes they get killed. During our Summer in their CSA, more than one chicken hid and kept their eggs, giving birth to a new set of chicks for the flock. The urban set up is a small cage, though it seems that frequently people move the cage about the yard to have the chickens aerate the soil. Our friends too didn't have free running chickens; when theirs were out of the coop and adjoining caged yard, they were supervised. The chance of a fox or raccoon getting them seems to great to them. Maureen started getting old organic produce from markets for the chickens, giving them a much wider variety in their diet. And the eggs became deeper in color and taste all the while. And just good ole egg "look"... they recently won a blue and red ribbon at the Howard County Fair for their eggs appearance. The kids are in the mix, collecting the eggs and helping feed the group. Not to mention, picking them up at random and carrying them about the yard; chickens seem more amenable to three year olds than the average dog. Their flock has grown too. Maureen has adopted the chicks that the kid's elementary school hatches for science. And when a few of those turned out to be roosters, she found them a home at White Rose Farm where they could grow old crowing. Now the family have around 10 chickens laying every day. That many eggs adds up fast. But the great thing is that others like myself are quite willing to pay for eggs like that. Maureen and Mike are saving those proceeds to build another coop for meat chickens…. and a whole new adventure. 

At the time Maureen picked up their first set of chickens, I had never heard the term "layer". I had no idea that egg laying chickens weren't exactly the same as chickens used for meat. No idea that the timeline and setup for these two kinds of chickens are completely different. In fact, a little bit of research revealed that the number of farmers providing eggs in the area far exceeded the number offering meat.  I had read that aside from a wide range of environmental and economic pluses, free range chickens tasted richer than those from the big Purdue and Tysons farms. Documentaries on these giant industries have proliferated in the last few years, and an understanding of the unsavory practices against both low-income farmers and the animals themselves, among other things, has widely grown in the community. In many cases, these farmers, particularly those in the rural south are akin to indentured servants, pouring massive investments into an uncertain future. There didn't seem to be ton of evidence that the big organic companies were a ton better; better, granted. Somewhere along the line, we decided to opt out. I had read about Joe Salatin's farm in Virginia, again, I think, through Michael Pollan, and was sure there must be similar set ups in Central Maryland. His farming practices seemed ideal all around, and we were willing to pay extra for all the perceived benefits. 

The first farm we purchased from was Jehovah Jirah, in Washington County. We were thrilled with the product. Is it different from store bought chicken? I recall that I thought so at the time. Since it is all I've eaten for a long time, it's now all I know. But, I recall our group conversations shortly after we got our first order. It seemed that the meat was a bit more "gamey" than the average bird, and their chickens were also a bit smaller. Since then, we've purchased from several farmers and have found sources within Carroll County. I have also learned that there a number of varieties raised, yielding different characteristics. One of our primary sources for the past year is Michael Akeys of Green Akeys Farm outside Westminster. He has raised at least three varieties in that past year, heritage and "commercial" breeds. He recently likened the more commercial Cornish Cross bird to a couch potato: the birds will sit at the grain bin all day and ignore the huge pasture they have at their disposal. Apparently the Freedom Ranger is a better breed, still having a decent amount of meat on their bones, but willing to get out and stretch their legs! Michael isn't convinced that the true heritage chickens are the way to go. These older birds tend to be smaller, with much less meat, particularly breast meat, on them, and they just aren't as popular with customers, he says. As a customer, we did find the heritage birds we purchased last year a bit small and found nothing superior in their flavor. So, we're quite happy with his decision to grow Freedom Ranger, and we're really glad that he is experimenting and evaluating along the way. Interestingly, he and his family have only been farming a few years, having decided to take the plunge and buy a 62-acre farm after finding the eggs from the CSA they joined four years ago so fantastic. That's an amazing transition from consumer to supplier, and I plan to write an entry on the family farm soon. In the meantime, here's their blog. 

The difficulty for the average consumer in purchasing from farms like JJ and Green Akeys is that it takes planning. You generally need to order in advance. Birds are only "processed" every several weeks. So it certainly isn't as convenient as dropping by the local store. We tend to buy a bunch at one time, which will tie us over for a few months at a time. But there are others options. Many farmers markets have one or two vendors selling directly. This allows people a chance to buy each week what they need.  At the Westminster Market, I buy from Scott of Sattva Farm in Frederick County. His chickens are certified organic and taste great, but he's not on the Net much. To find Scott, you want to find your way to the market. 

Summer Reading

I have several posts in my mind right now, but unfortunately, haven't had the time to get them out and onto paper. I thought I'd start this one by highlighting some of the reading I'd done this summer, and where I plan to take what I learned to investigate and write some new blogs in the near future. Call it a preview. With references.

I tend to read mostly non-fiction and in the last year have read a lot about food and food movements. I'm amazed at how influential the written word can be, how it can drive people to make wholesale changes in their lives and behaviour. The classics in local living, or at least the mosts referenced in my experience, are Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and several by Michael Pollan, most often Omnivore's Dilemma.  I think the former tends to resonate heavily with people who like a personal story, to which they can relate and be encouraged to take on similar endeavors. Kingsolver makes it attractive to try living locally, at least just a bit. The number of people I have met who cite her book as a major source of change in their lives is huge. And more than one have taken steps such as raising chickens based on her family's story. I myself started making cheese solely based on her insistence that it really wasn't that hard to make mozzarella cheese. As a result of that chain, I now make yogurt every week, and it's the best you'll ever taste. So, those kinds of works are extremely motivating. Others like this are Plenty, by the Canadian couple who was among the first to attempt a 100-mile challenge, and the more extreme See you in a Hundred Years, from the New York couple that decides to regress to the turn of the 20th century in the Virginia countryside for a one year period. Ok, I'm not sure that the latter book will motivate many people to give up running water, even for a month, but it is interesting.

Michael Pollan of course has a long run of books that are fact-based accounts of food and food industry. Omnivore's Dilemma hit my sweet spot, at least for the first three-quarters of the book, and I found the material both shocking and enthralling.  I can source that book as a major change point in my life, leading to a massive reduction in the use of grade two corn products and a complete re-evaluation of our family's meat sources. Because of that material, I initiated group buying of pasture-raised meat and all of our meat in the last eighteen months has been purchased from local farmers practicing sustainable, admirable techniques. That book is a bit thick for many, and I know a lot of people preferred Food Rules, though I never read that one. Going outside of reading and onto the screen, the film Food, Inc. has had a massive influence people and the way that they think about food. I have had countless people ask me about that film and other tv reports that have spawned since it was released. Another fabulous fact-based book about nutrition, so with a different perspective than Pollan's work, is Real Food, by Nina Plank. I read that one sometime in the Spring, and I thought it was absolutely excellent.

But I digress, as I didn't read any of these works this Summer. I did read Organic, Inc. though, by Samuel Fromartz. This is sort of a mix of the two styles above. Fromartz discusses the history, motivation, and existing tensions of the organic food movement and industry, starting in the early twentieth century. He interweaves the stories of farmers who have tried to make a living from sustainable  agricultural practices in a global economy world. A central theme is this tension between organic and local movements, and whether that can realistically be one in the same. As organic food becomes more widely consumed, what is the impact of the resulting Big Organic industry.  It's definitely an interesting read for the lover of non-fiction, fact-based, stories kinda things. Here in Maryland there are a number of local farmers who are certified organic, and a number who aren't. I am also seeing more Naturally Grown labels posted. In any case, one of those is Nev-R-Dun Farm in Westminster, Md., owned by Tom Reinhardt. In the last few months, he went through his recertification process and I hope to talk to him soon about what that entails, why he's going through formal certification (which costs), and what he thinks about being an organic farmer in Maryland. More to come on that. In the meantime, you can find Tom at the Westminster Farmers markets (Sun/Tue) and at his website, www.nevrdunfarm.com.

Another book I picked up in the middle of Summer and haven't completely made my way through is The Winter Harvest Handbook, by Eliot Coleman. This came to my attention through Amazon "recommended for you" and the subtitle is Year-round vegetable production using deep-organic techniques and unheated greenhouses. I like the idea of year round vegetable production, so I took a closer look. Low and behold, they are running a winter CSA (community support agriculture) in Maine, growing produce in unheated greenhouses. This just fascinates me to no end. I have a small greenhouse that I usually run as a cool house, meaning at around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but here they are in Maine, in lots of snow, using no heater at all and making enough produce to sell to folks. It motivated me to get my own greens, like lettuce and a few other things, in the ground early enough so that they should provide a harvest without using electricity this late-Fall and winter. It also motivated me to find a winter CSA somewhere that I could take advantage of for fresh produce through the winter months. Thanks to Local Harvest (www.localharvest.org), I was able to locate a winter CSA about 40 miles away in Pennsylvania. It means we'll have to take a hike every few weeks to pick up food, but I gathered up some friends to pitch in, and it seems well worth the experiment. This CSA doesn't start until nearly Thanksgiving, but as it does, I'll report on that experience. The farm we've subscribed to is Everblossom Farm, www.everblossomfarm.com, just outside Gettysburg.

Another book from this Summer was Made by Hand by Mark Frauenfelder. The subtitle of this new book is Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway world. This is a light read that fed into my own drive to be self-sufficient, or to at least have the knowledge that you could be. Fraenfelder takes the reader through his own adventures of raising chickens, keeping bees, building musical instruments, pursuing edible landscaping/permaculture, and the like.  I'm not about to raise chickens, but I do plan on writing a post about my friend who has taken on raising egg layers over the last year and a half.

Other things in the head and hopefully soon in the works are a few local farmers we buy from: Michael Akeys of Green Akeys farms (www.greenakeys.com) just sold me eighteen chickens in the last few weeks after an eventful six months trying to get them all to processing stage, thanks to intervention by the local fox population. And, Greg Thorne of Thorne Farm in Westminster runs a naturally grown 25-acre farm with a wide selection of produce, but also flock of sheep that are used both for wool and meat. (http://www.thornefarm.blogspot.com/)

Mendocino Lives Local

I am away for a little while, and I wasn't sure what I would find to write about during this trip to the West coast. What I found on the first leg was quite a treat, though, so I figured I'd pass on some of those notes. We were in Mendocino County, California, a few hours north of San Francisco, south of the Redwoods National Park, and along the coast. Having flown into Sacramento and driven nearly four hours to get to the hotel, we had already seen an incredible variety in landscapes.

North of Sacramento everything was agriculture. No surprise there, of course. But, a surprise to me was how big the fields were and how few inhabitants. Where in Central Maryland, the countryside is dotted with small farms and farm buildings, while not close together, aren't that far apart either. Guessing measurements is certainly not my strong suit, but I figure in Carroll County, even in heavily farmed area, you have farms that are 5-100 acres and houses along them. Not the case in this part of northern California. The sunflower, corn, and grape fields stretched out as far as the eye could see and along Interstate 5 going north, we were surprised by the occasional farmhouse or other building. This is BigAg.

The other thing that was interesting was that it was farm land at all. What wasn't part of the crop fields was bone dry brown in color. And the hills to our West were clearly high desert. Brown and full of low lying scrubby bushes, or simply bare ground. I didn't see large overhead irrigation systems, but there must be massive irrigation to make those crops work. The sunflowers had all gone to seed and were dying down, but there were large orchards, corn fields, grapes, beet fields, and other things we didn't recognize at 65mph.

We turned West and headed over the mountains that separate that flatland from the coast. Another hour or two of windy roads, and we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of green and Redwood trees. Logging trucks started passing by. Making our way through the shaded forest, we finally came out into the sunlight again and directly into Pacific Highway 1, running North-South along the coast. We had made it to Fort Bragg and Mendocino County.

A quick stop into the visitor's center. We were met by signs that said "Buy Local. Think Local. Be Local. Mendocino County." And brochures for "America's Greenest Wine Region". Lots of organic restaurants. and advertisements for the coast's farmer's markets. In a few days, we were able to check out a little of the wine region, the farmer's market, and discover local candy cap mushroom ice cream.

According to the advertising, the Mendocino wine growers are proud to grow sustainably and organically. Their figures state that in 2008, 22 wineries use sustainable practices, 28 grow organically, and 20 are certified organic, six are certified biodynamic, ten are fish-friendly certified (nope, no idea what that means), and one uses 100% solar energy. We drove to one of the county's wine appelations, the Anderson Valley, to check it out. Not wanting to subject the family to too much wine tasting, we just headed out in the car and checked out three wineries based on their name or the look of the tasting room as we went past.  I wasn't sure what to expect of this region, and given all the Big Ag was saw near Sacramento, I figured there would be a lot of Big Wine. Wrong.

Our first stop was Toulouse Winery, pronounced "Too Loose". We chose it because it had a cool duck motif on the sign, which later we discovered was meant to be a goose. It was still cool. This is a very small winery in great environs. They make about six wines, using their own or other Anderson Valley farmer's grapes. The area terroir is similar to the Alsatian area of France, so the primary grape is Pinot Noir, and there is a lot of Muscat and Gewurztraminer. We also saw Riesling and Zinfandel at each place, with some Pinot Gris. Toulouse Winery doesn't take itself too seriously. It has adorable t-shirts with the duck/goose in a frenzied pose that say "Too Tense? Toulouse Pinot Noir", and another with a drunken goose holding a wine glass, "Got Too Loose." But their wines were good too. I'm not a huge Pinot fan, but I did like all the ones I tried that day reasonably well. They all seem to make dry muscats, which were indeed dry, but still tasted like muscat; not my favourite. I found a few good Zins and Sauvignon Blancs along the way.

Our second stop was the larger Navarro Winery, or at least it feels larger. It feels more commercial, and I think indeed, it is larger. But they too only sell direct. And they don't ship to Maryland, unfortunately. They have a slightly larger selection of wine, and they sell gewurztraminer and pinot noir grape juice, which are fabulous. All of these wineries were kid friendly, offering them their own drink of some kind or another. The estate grown Pinot Noir at Navarro was absolutely fabulous. They were selling futures on the current vintage, which would be available in 2012 for pick up. Something I hadn't seen before. Large gardens outside gave kids something to do after they downed the grape juice.

Finally, we ended up a Handley Cellars, a woman-founded and owned winery over 30 years in business.  The vintner and co-owner, Milla, is featured in the book Women of Wine. They have some certified organic fields, and they have been practicing organic since the beginning. I asked about how they handle fungus issues, which seem like they would be huge in an area that gets so much fog. She said they use sulfur, which is okay for organic gardening, and that this year, they have had to because it has been so cold. They get grapes from the Anderson Valley, but they also grow in Sonoma and incorporate those into their wines. Like the others in the Anderson Valley, they were heavy on the Pinot.  The woman helping us heard we were in Fort Bragg, and recommended we try the local candy cap mushroom ice cream there. So, off we went.

Cowlicks is a handmade ice cream on Main street in Fort Bragg. It has a huge array of flavours, but the most intriguing was definitely ice cream made from locally grown candy cap mushrooms. It tastes like maple. Exactly like maple. Except there are small pieces of mushrooms in the ice cream, so you are aware it's not maple. This place was like a few other places we ate in the area; full of good vibes.

On Wednesday, we visited the Fort Bragg farmer's market. Similar in size to ours in Westminster, it was clearly an attraction for locals and tourists alike. I wasn't sure what to expect, because the Mendocino coast sure doesn't look like a place you can grow food. I think several people had come from further inland, but within 30 miles range. They are behind us in the growing season, with farmer's offering the last of the strawberries and the first of the blueberries for the year. There was tons of garlic - I think I saw six varieties - and at great prices. I almost went home with a brade of fifteen large heads for twenty bucks.  One organic farm from Fort Bragg boasted potatoes grown without irrigation. Another woman, from Pacific Preserves, made a fabulous lemon ginger marmelade. She said she tries to get her fruit as local to "her" as possible; her parents, living in southern california and florida grow her lemons! Another interesting stall was that of the Noyo Forest Farm, a community farming group that teaches children and adults organic, sustainable farming practices in the town and runs demonstration gardens.

Also along the rugged coast there, we visited the picturesque town of Mendocino where I found these itsy frogs littering the leaves of some kind of salva flower (I think). They were so close in color to the leaves, you hardly saw them.

We headed north to the Redwood National Park yesterday. A stop in Garberville at Getti Up Coffee and Cattle company for a quick bite to eat: country music blaring on the outdoor speakers, the wind-driven water pump for the fish-in-a-barrel-pond, drive up espresso (of course), and a sign on the door "our beef is all local, grass-fed, and never frozen." Now that's a tall order.

Listening to the Lorax

One of the large beds being prepared for Fall

In one of his most powerful and popular books, Dr. Seuss tells the tale of the destruction of the Truffula tree forest, that ultimately led to the downfall of the entire region. By selfishly exploiting the environment, the short-sighted society had suffered a boom and bust. The once-greedy Onceler retells the history to a young boy amidst a torn landscape. He closes by handing over the last remaining Truffula seed, with the bidding to regrow the forest and do right by the land. Shawn and Josie of Truffula Seed Produce are trying to do exactly that.

Josie and Shawn from Truffula Seed

The young couple are in their first year at the market, selling produce and plants from the farm in New Windsor, Maryland. But prior to this, they had apprenticed at other local organic farms in order to learn the trade and the business. The farm itself is not theirs; they essentially rent land from Josie's parents and on a neighboring lot. It fascinates me that when most people their age are toiling in the downtown office looking for the next promotion, they are embarking on a path that will certainly not bring fortune. Recently, I had the opportunity to spend several hours with them touring the garden, learning a bit about them, their family, and the drivers behind this venture into sustainable agriculture. I imagine the wealth of that conversation will cover several entries. I thought I'd dig in.

Truffula Seed Produce is grown largely on Garden Gate Farm, the remnants of an old dairy farm purchased by Josie's parents about five years ago. It's not one of those giant tracks of open land with a farmhouse and outbuildings standing starkly against the landscape. There are a wealth of trees and a variety of plants. A few small cabins and the old farmhouse are home to three generations of Josie's family. Josie and Shawn take care of the fruit and vegetable garden, providing food for the extended family in a barter arrangement for rent. Her parents raise chickens and grow various other plants and trees for the family's use. The arrangement helps  the couple to provide organically, sustainably, grown produce to the community. They sell at three local farmer's markets in Westminster and Takoma Park, but do not have a CSA or farm stand.

Garden Gate Farm was purchased only a handful of years ago, so Shawn and Josie were not raised on farms and with a heritage of living off the land. Indeed, they grew up in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. So, how did they get from there to here? Like others involved in local living, the answer is complex and not entirely clear. They cite influences that led them to the point of pursuing a simpler lifestyle. Both attended a Quaker school as children and Shawn went on to a Quaker college. Josie's parents had dreams themselves that led to the eventual purchase of Garden Gate Farm, probably forty miles and a world apart from the communities that line the DC Beltway. Shawn served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, gaining an appreciation of the people, culture, and simple means. They have clearly read a lot, and thought a lot, about the environment and community living. They worked at local farms and found support to pursue sustainable agriculture.

Those are some seriously long beans!

Arriving at the farm, I pass a large summer garden on either side of me. Here they grow food for the market and some items just for the family. If I recall correctly, there are fourteen varieties of tomatoes, accompanied by various squash, beans, chard, potatoes, onions, herbs, melons, and a wide selection of other plants. There are some really interesting super long purple beans. Shawn explains that they don't lose their color when cooked and don't have a hard bit on each end, making them easy to prepare. They look like eggplant-colored spaghetti!

Behind the original farmhouse is a high tunnel they constructed this spring. Constructed of a series of giant metal arches, draped in heavy plastic, the high tunnel is essentially a green house. The extra warmth the tunnel brings allows them to move plants outdoors earlier and harvest hot weather items like tomatoes sooner. Having dealt with the wildness that defines tomato plants later in the season, I am intrigued by their clip system. Where I constantly prune, stake, and tie the plants that defy taming, theirs are clipped to strings that hang from the tunnel rafters. The specially designed clips and string allow them to save a lot of time and get a better harvest. But the tunnel also demonstrates the risks of their approach to farming:  dust beetles have destroyed all their eggplants.

The couple have chosen to farm not only organically, but without the use of approved organic products they feel are still bad for the environment or consumers. For fertilizer, they begin with 6 inches of leaf litter compost and do not amend during during the season. They also apply no pesticides or fungicides. As we hand pick squash bugs from the undersides of their Fall squash leaves, Shawn says, "this is how we control pests." Looking across the field, the amount of labor required is daunting to me.

We sat for awhile in their work room shelling dry beans. I had never seen dried beans in their shells, nor had I ever seen beans as beautiful as these. Each dry pod contained a handful of gorgeous multicolored beans. Shelling them in a circle while engaged in conversation made for easy work and shared experience. Josie has written a blog entry with loads of photos and wonderful details about their bean growing. You should read it!

Tiger's Eye, Jacob's cattle, and a bit of Calypso beans

While we sat on the floor emptying the beans from their pods, we talked a lot about their background, family, future, hopes, and economics. This is not a highly profitable venture, and it's fair to say that right now its not at all profitable. Like most small, particularly organic, farmers, they spend their lives largely working. They sell or consume all that they produce and cannot fully meet demand. But their hourly wage would not rise to that of the federal minimum. Like many other young farmers, they tell me, they are blessed by unique circumstances that allow them to run this business and live a simple lifestyle. They are grateful to consumers who are willing to pay a premium price at the market for the food they grow, and they appreciate that customers are deciding to spend more on food for a wide range of reasons. I'm sure that many customers, on the other hand, are just as grateful that someone else is willing to work, bent over in the hot Maryland sun, removing squash bugs by hand, and helping heed the message of the Lorax.

The modified washer drum allows for efficient spinning of lettuce

Well that's a sampling of what I was able to see and learn during my visit; more to come. In the meantime, this is where you can find them...

Farmers Market at the Westminster Antique Mall
Tuesday 4:00pm - 7:00pm
The Antique Mall on the corner of Rt. 27 and Hahn Rd.
Westminster, MD

Crossroads Farmers Market
Wednesday 3:00pm - 7:00pm
Holton Lane, just off of New Hampshire Ave., one block south of University Blvd.
Takoma Park, MD

Downtown Westminster Farmers Market
Saturday 8:00am - 12:00pm
Conway Parking Lot at the corner of MD 27 and Emerald Hill Lane
Westminster, MD