Jim Brumm: Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World

The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times
Carol Deppe
ISBN 978-1-60358-031-1
Chelsea Green Publishing

Carol Deppe, The Resilient Gardener

I confess I’m pretty much a good-time gardener. I grow things that are pretty (love unusual limbs and bark) and I’m hardly ever short of flavorful herbs or greens for salad. If my plants are thirsty, I turn on the hose. If my soil needs amending, I dig in some homemade compost or simply head across town in any direction to a nursery or garden center.

But what about gardening in “not-so-good” times, when “ordinary trauma and minor disasters” like health problems and family needs trump the to-do list, or make it impossible to do the things our gardens need precisely when they need them? Or the “mega-hard” times that history proves deserve consideration – catastrophic drought, disasters (natural and man-made,) pandemics, energy shortages, economic instability, the ripple effect of war and terrorism?

“The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times” is a personal revelation about “All-American food security,” and a clarion call to action. Author, plant breeder and scientist Carol Deppe offers a bumper crop of clear explanations about why resilience (“An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary) in even the tiniest backyard gardens matters, along with a ton of practical how-to information about growing, processing and storing food for optimal use. Today, Deppe says, “…we can produce better, more nutritious, more delicious food than anything we can buy,” and learning to reduce inputs like labor and water means “we spend less, waste less, pollute less, and are more sophisticated, efficient gardeners, in good times as well as bad.”

And since we humans need calories and protein, not just salads and herbs, “The Resilient Gardener” focuses on “the five crops you need to survive and thrive – potatoes, corn, beans, squash and eggs” – and presents step-by-step approaches to grow, store and use these vital crops.

Deppe offers a big-picture overview of the diverse “erratic-climate-adjusted style of farming” developed during the Little Ice Age and still seen as a “model for a maximally-resilient farming community,” then invites us to better understand the inherent resilience of our own backyards by exploring its soil, topography and traditional uses by Native Americans and pioneers.

She looks at diet and food resilience, sharing how resilient gardening can help with physical limitations, special dietary restrictions and other health considerations like food intolerances. There’s a real value to the foresight that leads to having a “stash” of staples for our families, “designed to primarily enhance the quality of our lives in ordinary times (and) also enhance personal and regional reliance in hard times,” she says. “The Resilient Gardener” details different growing and storage methods, including best temperature and humidity conditions for 49 fruits and vegetables that keep longer than two months. You may know about keeping apples and carrots, but what about celery? Garlic? Jerusalem artichoke? Kohlrabi? Parsnips? Sweet potatoes and (true) yams?

And any gardener who reads the chapter on The Laying Flock will come away with a lust for poultry (Deppe adores her ducks) that goes well beyond quality eggs, garden fertilizer and a handy (beaky?) outlet for produce leavings.

Deppe’s stated goal is to “encourage more gardening, and more growing of food, especially staples.” She urges us all to expand our knowledge and pass it on to nurture resilient neighborhoods, resilient communities, resilient regions and a resilient nation. “The Resilient Gardener” challenges us all to up our gardening game for maximum flexibility, satisfaction and self-reliance … just in case.

With family roots in the fertile Red River Valley of North Dakota, Lynn Torrance Redlin has been part of the Cooking Up a Story team for a number of years. An avid gardener and home cook, Redlin is also a voracious reader, and enjoys exploring new information and ideas about our food system.

Cooking Up a Story is pleased to announce the formation of The Collective, an eclectic mix of local food leaders, and well connected folks in the sustainable food and agriculture world who are sharing their incredible ideas and first-hand knowledge directly with CUPS. We are tapping into this collective brain trust to bring even more exciting, diverse, and vibrant programming to our upcoming Food Farmer Earth series that launches in early April on YouTube. Our Food Farmer Earth channel will exclusively carry this new CUPS series, but it will be both sharable through the YouTube player (using their embed codes) on third-party websites, including our own, and by internet streaming to almost any connected phone, tablet, and television device on the planet.

We are honored to present the following members of The Collective:

Kathleen Bauer, Good Stuff NW

Kathleen Bauer, a native Oregonian, is a longtime passionate foodie, and writer for the Oregonian, and other publications. Through her GoodStuffNW blog, Bauer likes to give recognition to those who do good work, and her blog provides a comprehensive set of invaluable local resources on the Portland food and farms scene.

Anthony and Carol Boutard, Hillsdale Farmers Market, Portland, Oregon

Anthony and Carol Boutard, co-owners of Ayers Creek Farm, an Oregon Tilth, certified organic farm, located just outside Portland, grow a variety of specialty grains, fresh shell and dry beans, orchard fruits and berries, and winter vegetables, that not only taste better, they are less likely to be commercially available in the supermarket. They also sell their food directly to select restaurants, and to eaters who shop at the local Hillsdale Farmers Market. Disclosure: we purchase their food at the farmers market, and can personally attest to their freshness, and taste.

Liz Crain, Author of Food Lover's Guide to Portland

Liz Crain, author of the popular book, The Food Lover’s Guide to Portland writes about Pacific Northwest food and drink for online and print publications. In a town bursting at the seams with artisan bake shops, micro-breweries and micro-distilleries, food carts, neighborhood restaurants, and cheese shops, Crain’s guide is an indispensable tool for quickly navigating the local food culture.

Harriet Fasenfest, author of A Householders Guide to the Universe

Harriet Fasenfest is fiercely loyal to discovering the deeper truths about life, and to growing, cooking, and preserving fresh food. In her lifetime she has owned small restaurants, continues to teach on a wide variety of food subjects, especially relating to food preservation, and householding, and her recent book, A Householders Guide to the Universe, and her DVD, Preserving With Friends are both required resources in any serious food enthusiast’s library collection.

Michele Knaus, Friends of Family Farmers

Michele Knaus, executive director with the nonprofit organization Friends of Family Farmers (FOFF), meets with small farmers across the state, and understands the challenges that they face. Her organization is involved in supporting food policy initiatives to help Oregon farmers maintain their profitability, and to thrive. A graduate of Portland State University Master’s Degree Program Leadership for Sustainability Education, she is also involved in educating eaters about our food system at their monthly Friends of Family Farmers InFARMation (and Beer!) event.

The garden is not just a garden. The garden is a metaphor for having a place to develop an ethical way to understand life, and to make a life that is ethical. —Alan Kapuler

If there were an intergalactic spacecraft capable of carrying but one life safely in search of contact with other sentient beings, my vote would be for Alan Kapuler to be humanity’s ambassador to the cosmos. Leading a lifetime of work devoted to organic gardening and open pollinated plant breeding in the public interest, Kapuler, a molecular biologist by training, poetically expresses his reverence for all living things as embodied in his concept of a garden, and his daily work planting, breeding, and cataloguing his organic seeds.

This is the fourth of an ongoing series with Dr. Alan Kapuler, founder of Peace Seeds, and former co-founder and research director for Seeds of Change. He currently resides in Corvallis, Oregon where he continues his research projects, and maintains his remarkable organic seed catalog.

In part 2, Kathy Hessler, Director of the Animal Law Clinic at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland (Oregon), discusses some of the important work that is being done to try and address the problems associated with factory farms. According to Hessler, this effort involves a large coalition of folks from different states, as well as internationally.

From the video, these are some of the important areas of concern where the laws need strengthening:

1. Environmental concerns: Massive manure lagoons pose threats not only to surface waters (rivers, tributaries, etc.) but also to groundwater supplies that are often ignored under current laws. For example, federal laws (largely) allow for the unregulated discharge of farm wastes.
2. Address federal “Right To Farm Laws” that impede the ability of local communities, and even small farmers to restrict the operations of nearby factory farms when their actions cause harm to them, and their community.
3. Property Tax reforms: Allow for the reduction of local property tax whose value declines due to their proximity to large factory farms.
4. Food Labeling Standards: Like the organic label, require strict standards for terms, such as, “cruelty free” and “pasture raised,” so that consumers know what they are really buying.
5. Regulate large amounts of animal waste by treating it in a similar way we treat human sewage.
6. Antibiotics contamination from animal waste, and meat consumption that is cause antibiotic resistance in human diseases.
7. Reexamine the dual role of government to regulate the agriculture industry, and at the same time, being charged with also promoting it.
8. Address one size fits all regulations that treat a small farm operation in the same manner as a large farm.
9. Address systemic problems that are posed by factory farms even if climate damaging methane gas emissions, can be converted into otherwise beneficial energy production.

Filmed at the Friends of Family Farmers event on November 9th, 2010.

Editorial

In this Friends of Family Farmer’s sponsored talk, Kathy Hessler, Director of the Animal Law Clinic at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland (Oregon), discusses the important subject of factory farms in relation to animal welfare protections under existing federal and state laws.

In a nutshell, livestock in America do not enjoy any protections under the law; they enjoy the same rights as a personal kitchen toaster. There are no federal laws, including federal and state animal anti-cruelty laws, that apply to farm animals. One small exception applies to the transportation of livestock (poultry is exempted from this law) that requires certain conditions be met after 28 hours of continuous transport, but these are quite limited in scope.

In perhaps a time gone past, before factory farms existed, before the introduction of mega-farms, manure lagoons, and indoor warehousing of chickens, pigs, turkeys, and other livestock— before the advent of antibiotics, and vitamin D that made factory farms (large CAFO’s) even possible, (the laws of) nature would not allow a farmer to mistreat his animals; it would have directly harmed their economic interests to do so.

While many farmers do not abuse their animals today, for a number of good reasons, including moral and economic concerns, the absence of legal animal welfare protections have served to support a small segment of the agriculture sector, the large factory farm, effecting a disproportionally large number of animals.

When one looks at the pictures of livestock housed under factory farm conditions, as in Dan Imhoff’s anthology book, CAFO, these images depict the brutality, and obvious torturous conditions of their care. It should be noted, in some states, there are efforts underway to make it a felony to film any farm operation clandestinely, and in Florida (unbelievably), one senator unsuccessfully tried to make it a first degree felony to openly film any farm without first obtaining written permission of the farm. Under Florida law, that would have meant up to 30 years in prison, and obviously would have been a serious deterrent for shining light on continuing livestock and environmental abuses.

Large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are the Maginot Line in the agricultural sand—in a civilized society, there can be no reasonable justification for their existence.