Gardening The Future.

I have now presented my poster to the class about my window farm. Thanks to everyone that stopped by to learn about window farming. Showing my window farm to people gives me an opportunity to educate others about creative gardening and producing/buying local organic food.

I was asked many times today about what I was going to do with window garden now that the class project is over. My garden will live on so do not worry. My window farm will be moving with me to a Boy Scout summer camp that I run. There it will hang in a window in the dinning hall. With this prime location I will have around 1500 people walk by it during the summer and I am sure that many of them will stop to take a look.

The possibility of having 1500 people learn about local food is an exciting idea that I cannot turn down. Exceptionally sense most of that 1500 will be middle school kids. Teaching kids at a young age is the easiest way to make meaning life changes.

And after camp the garden is moving with me to Chicago where I hope to expand it.

I hope that many of you are think about making your own window garden, and if you do please let me know. Here are a few things that I have learned from making my own can could help you.

First, herbs are the best to plant in a window garden because many of them do not grow to big. This style of gardening is not good for large plants. Also herbs allow you to continually harvest them without completely killing the plant.

Second, do forget to water them. The bottles themselves are not very big and with that they cannot store a lot of water. I have to water my garden every two days or it will quickly dry out. I learned this the hard way and my lettuce has not fully recovered from it yet.

Last, come up with a design of your own. You could simply build one close to mine or you could be creative. Being creative with your garden makes this project such a fun to do. A good friend of mine is now making one out of old sections of plastic plumbing of different sizes. Some of the pipes even have right angles in them so he can be even more creative with the design. He is planting wild flowers in his.

Over all this has been a fantastic project. I have truly enjoyed designing and building my garden and learning about environmental issues at the same time in class.

The Bigger Idea

My last post I talked about how unrealistic this project is when it comes to providing food. It is impossible to grow enough food from so few bottles and the amount it would take is huge. Some people did not like this idea that I was claiming that this was not realistic. I would like to clear up a few things.

While the amount of food this system can grow is very little it has allowed me to educate others on the idea of local food. Just before the start of this class I was learning for myself about the importance of local food but did not have a way to share it. This project has allowed me to educate others about this movement will showing them my project. The real value of this project is the education and not in production.

On another note Window Farms have showed up on Weekend Edition on National Public Radio a few weeks ago. I have posted the link to the story at the bottom of this post. A key thing that they talk about in this story is how much fun it is to build and take care of a window farm. In my opinion this plays as equally important role as education. If it were not fun then no one would take the time to build one.

While trying to find out exactly how much this project helps the environment I have came across a bigger idea. I want to know how many trees I would have to plant in order to cancel out my carbon footprint. This way I can sleep at night knowing that I am not making things worst. Worst as in green house gases. I am going to look into this and will blog about what I have found soon.

Back to Basics

Growing up I knew where my food came from. I was born and raised in northeast Kansas right by the Nebraska line on a 160 acre farm. I can remember a big garden and my mom and older sisters canning beans, corn, peaches, cherries, tomato sauces, and so much more. I knew the food came from our garden and that our meat came from our pigs and cows. But the older I became the more these ways of feeding ourselves began to die out. The grocery store became cheaper and more convenient and before I was old enough to help, our growing and canning practices stopped.  My parent’s garden now only consists of a variety of peppers and tomatoes for making and canning their own salsa. I feel as if I have missed out on the gardening generation.

Gardening always seemed like an unnecessary chore to me. It was hot outside and there were bugs, bees, and spiders in the garden and for those reasons, I liked to stay away. It was also not necessary because everything I needed or wanted I could get in the grocery store. That was my thinking up until around a year ago, now I am excited about trying a garden again and I have two reasons for it. First, I can attribute my curiosity and excitement to Barbra Kingsolver’s book we read for class, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  And secondly, I can thank my friend Ashley for volunteering me to work on an organic farm this past summer in southern France.

Ashley and I had been planning our trip through Europe since we were freshman in college. In December of 2008 we bought our plane tickets and decided where we really wanted to go. She found a volunteer agency out of Canada online and from there she found La Ferme de Noe in Trets, France. Working on a farm for 2 1/2 weeks was not high on my to-do list when vacationing in Europe but it was important to her so I said yes. It was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made.

On June 10th we arrived in the small town of Trets in Provence in the south of France. We began working the next day, mostly pulling weeds, hoeing weeds, mulching plants, and pulling more weeds. Ashley and I worked along side two other volunteers from Toronto, Canada named Esther and Kitty. We all shared a room and got along well. My biggest problem was that I know very very little French. I can say hello, goodbye, thank you, and finished. But for the most part that was not a big issue, thanks to the wonderfully owners of the farm, Lisa and Anita. If you can speak French, or even if you don’t, feel free to check out the farm’s website here: La Ferme de Noe.

By volunteering for 17 days I was bitten by the gardening bug and it really got me interested in organic foods and gardening.  That alone was part of my reason for enrolling in this class. So my experience in France and reading Kingsolver helped me in creating an idea for my project. But before I get to that I thought I would share a few pictures from my days at la ferme:

Mt. Sainte-Victoire in the backgroud, half weeding onions in the foreground

tomato plants galore- freshly pruned and mulched

corn patch minus many weeds

half weeded beet patch

kittens, kittens, and more kittens

chickens and geese

the farm house

the gorgeous view of the mountain

For my project I want to try and design and educational program that can be implemented into schools. This program would cover the whole age range of children in schools, from preschool to 12th grade. Like Kingsolver explained in her book, some kids do not know where food comes from. This program would teach them in two ways, first they would have to research about fruits, vegetables, and grains they are interested in growing eating then it would be hands on were they would actually be planting and harvesting these crops in a school garden. Not only would this help schools with the costs of food for school lunches (the food grown would be served at lunch) but students would have healthy school lunches and would be learning important information on how to grow their own food in the future.

Over the semester I will be researching to find out how projects like this one have worked in the past as well as talk to a school close to my hometown about working with me on this project and starting a school garden.

My Yard: An Organic Farm?

This week I am looking at organic farming and culture. First, a little bit of history, sustainable agricultural practices have been documented since around 2000 BC either through books or archeology. Also destructive practices have existed throughout history, shown through rock paintings and cave pictures, dating from around 3500 BC, that reveal parts of the Sahara desert in Africa once produced crops and were fertile fields. The desert exists today because of over grazing and desertification, which occurs with the depletion of the soil. Some examples of successful systems include: the Chinese use of composting and mulching in around 2000 BC, the Sumerians irrigation and wind breaks, and the Aztec floating gardens which allowed them to have several crops each year without soil depletion.

The written word has documented agricultural practices, for instance, sustainable systems appeared in the first century, Columella wrote, “The earth neither grows old, nor wears out, if it be dunged.” He also recommended grains in rotation with legumes and fallow. Also during this time, Cato, Varro, Palladius, Vegetius and Pliny the Elder wrote about soil building and conservation techniques. Closer to our time Thomas Jeffereson recommended protecting the soil from grazing during the rest period, and raising a large crop of vegetables; making use of vegetable manures of all kinds, by this he meant composting; sowing clover and grass seed with the grain crop to serve as pasturage or green-manure; and practice horizontal plowing as a preventative of gullies and washes, this was the use of tiers.

Humans by nature forage, our foraging today takes place in supermarkets. We satisfy this need by wandering the aisles instead of wandering our fields or gardens. But, the current consensus is that agriculture today could be converted to local organic within a few years. Many areas are already taking this step, especially in the West. Locally, a few organic farms have sprung up but most areas of Kansas still employ industrialized techniques for farming. These include what I call the destructive three “ations”, irrigation, fertilization, and cultivation and also the use of pesticides that is so detrimental to many life forms including humans. These procedures have led to phenomena similar to the desertification mentioned above, just to name a few: large areas of land in Australia have been made unusable because of irrigation in areas where there is a salt table that has risen, and here in the US at the mouth of the Mississippi, a large area of land has been ruined because of nitrates and pesticides. It is not known how long it will take to recover this land. Nitrates also get into lakes and ponds causing exponential algae growth which chokes off other vegetation and reduces animal production.

All of this evidence points to the need for natural methods of producing food that work in harmony with nature not against it. Although I feel using organic ecologically sound techniques would produce enough food for humans, many people think we need to alter food to enhance production. If this is or does become necessary, in addition to organic farming, I think I have mentioned before the research The Land Institute in Salina, and other such researchers are doing to develop perennial sustainable crops. These crops would negate the use of the three “ations” and pesticides, and US citizens should demand more research in this area instead of genetically altered seeds.

As for the future, the use of gardens or small farms has re-entered our culture recently. As we’ve seen in class personal gardens are becoming popular again. The community garden has been around for quite some time, but more people are getting involved in these projects in the last few years. I picture large urban areas being utilized in this way in the near future, because of the demand of the people. This will be affected by rising fuel prices and growing health concerns. A side affect of this will be the offer of a type of socialization that has been lost because of industrialization, and that is the social life of local markets and gardens. Traditionally women have been food growers in the past, my Mom and many other women in the early to mid twentieth century had gardens, it was a common practice. I think by getting back to gardening women can become more in touch with there own natures (it’s very centering and relaxing) and learn to socialize with each other in different ways. I also think small organic farms and gardens will become the accepted norm as more people see the economic, social and health benefits they offer.

My Yard: An Organic Farm?

I’m looking at organic farms and economics today. The first site I looked at once again had Monsanto featured as one of the bad guys. Monsanto is pushing to discredit organics and raise the need for biotech crops. “The commercial industrial technologies that are used in agriculture today to feed the world… are not inherently sustainable,” Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro told the Greenpeace Business Conference recently. “They have not worked well to promote either self-sufficiency or food security in developing countries.” Feeding the world sustainably “is out of the question with current agricultural practice,” Shapiro told the Society of Environmental Journalists in 1995. “Loss of topsoil, of salinity of soil as a result of irrigation, and ultimate reliance on petrochemicals … are, obviously, not renewable. That clearly isn’t sustainable.” This sounds like Monsanto wants to change their previous techniques for better ones, but actually this is just a prelude to enforcing the need for biotech agriculture. This article pointed out that technology hasn’t worked too well in the past and so maybe its time to look elsewhere for economically and ecologically sustainable crop systems. http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html
I checked several sites that stated that it might take four to five years to offset the original cost of changing to organic from industrial farming. This is mainly due to the fact that there aren’t enough government subsidies for organics in this country. Despite the lack of support from government and university extension services in the US, consumer demand for organic products is driving the organic movement ahead at a 20% annual rate of market growth. It looks like there might be something to this movement.

In several European countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, farmers get government support during their conversion to organic and continue to receive support for environmental services that they provide to their communities, such the elimination of toxic runoffs which contaminate underground water sources. These programs helped foster an almost 100-fold increase in organically farmed land in Europe, from 29,000 acres in 1986 to 2.4 million acres in 1996. Similar programs in the U.S. could help the conversion of more farms to organic methods. These price supports do not have to be subsidies, rather a compensation to organic farmers for each of the ecological and social services that they provide.

Although there is a lack of governmental funding, the USDA states that organic farming is one of the fastest growing segments in agriculture in the US today. This web site offers data on organic farming in the US if anyone is interested: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Organic/

I will examine specific prices on my yard when I get into the planning and layout of the yard. Although, from what I’ve seen it looks like it might take awhile to be profitable, that may not be the case since I am mainly interested in growing my own food. If I have any left over I will sell it, but making money isn’t my primary goal.

My Yard: An Organic Farm?

MY Yard: An Organic Farm?
This week I looked into organic farming and politics and the big concern on the organic farming front at this time seems to be large corporations taking over the actual farming process and the seed production and distribution. This again takes profits away from small farmers and choices away from individual growers. I looked at sites from the US, Canada, the UK, Nigeria and Australia.
In the US and Canada, large corporations along with the Congress and the USDA are organizing to force anyone raising organic food to purchase their seeds from certain certified producers. This might even include genetically altered seeds. Monsanto was once again mentioned. Does this ring a bell? Although this type of legislation is behind some of the European nations such as the UK, once again big business in conjunction with government seems to be undermining equitable farming practices and the environment.
In Australia, they are seeing the same emergence of big business taking over organic practices, the outcome being the same problems of traditional agricultural practices such as: pesticides, nitrates, depletion of soil, and irrigation with the result in some instances large areas of land ruined by salt tables rising. The argument is that organic farming then is no longer a sustainable process. This defeats one of the main purposes.
In Nigeria, the country is pushing to become industrialized and the industrialization of agriculture is an issue. The use of fertilizers is of concern to many. There is a push to return to organic farming to promote health, not only of people but of the environment. Over exploitation of the land causes a disruption of natural processes and encourages inequitable practices for man and nature.
It looks to me like the only way to know if my food is organic is to grow it myself. Most of the sites I went to advocated growing your own food, community gardens, rooftop gardens, or coops and farmers markets as the only alternative to the growing interference of companies and the government in our seed gathering, and food production and consumption. I didn’t find anything directly relating to women in the political field, but we know women such a Warren and Shiva are active in that area. I know from experience in this country that most home gardening has traditionally been performed by women. I found a lot of sites on this material and I’ll just list a few: http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=543
http://www.organicconsumers.org/btc.cfm
http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2001/10/lyons.html
http://www.ifoam.org/organic_facts/food/Africa_Fertilizer_Summit.html

My Yard: An Organic Garden?

This week I’m exploring the spiritual aspect of organic farming. As I stated, I believe everything evolves from the spiritual. But I also believe that humans have grown away from the spiritual aspect of our being, especially here in the US. At one time, humans prayed for fertility, and performed spiritual rites to God(s) for abundant harvests, which connected them to the earth. Now, US citizens go to a store and throw food in a basket, which disconnects us from the earth that nourishes us. I looked into how organic farming could be considered, spiritually, from the perspective of four different viewpoints: my faith, which is the Baha’i Faith, Christianity, Islam and the spiritual side of Ecofeminism.
Later on, I will get into the scientific side of organic farming; why it is beneficial from both a health and environmental outlook. For now, as a basis for the spiritual, political, economic, and cultural discussions, my hypothesis is that organic farming is beneficial.
According to the Baha’i Faith, God’s messenger for this time, Baha’u’llah, has declared the equality of women and men, so everything in the Faith applies equally to men and women. The age old question, “Why do I exist”, has been answered by Baha’u’llah, he avows, “the purpose for which mortal men have, from utter nothingness, stepped into the realm of being, is that they may work for the betterment of the world and live together in accord and harmony.” This should be taken literally. It states the world, not people in the US, or people in general, not animals, plants, or even natural resources, but THE WORLD. To me, this means that the task of women, is to “work for the betterment”, and “live together in accord and harmony” with everything on this earth. A specific project of women in the Faith today is designed to promote agricultural practices, literacy, domestic science and rural technology, through the cooperation of the New Era Development Institute (NEDI) in India and a project with the Norwegian Agency for International Development Cooperation (NORAD). This information can be found on the Baha’i web site: http://www.info.bahai.org/article-1-8-1-6.html
For Christianity I went back to the beginning; in the first chapter of Genesis it states that God created plants and seed bearing trees to be our food (in some versions) or our meat ( in some versions). It mentions the importance of seeds in plant bearing and how each is to its own kind, several times. This stresses the intake of plants as the intended nourishment of humans and I take this to mean that the growing of food should be a natural process of earth. In Genesis, it also states that God gave humans “stewardship” over plants and animals. Some people interpret this as “using”, but it in fact means to manage, serve, guard and conserve. And further stated in Genesis he gave this stewardship to both male and female. There are specific examples of conservative farming practices in the Bible, such as in Exodus and Leviticus. This information can be found in the Bible or on-line at Biblegateway.com or many other Bible sites.
Although the following passage doesn’t have anything to do with organic farming, it establishes the principle of the equality of women set forth the by Muhammad,
“For his day, the Prophet Muhammad was a feminist. The doctrine he laid out as the revealed word of God considerably improved the status of women in 7th century Arabia. In local pagan society, it was the custom to bury alive unwanted female newborns; Islam prohibited the practice. Women had been treated as possessions of their husbands; Islamic law made the education of girls a sacred duty and gave women the right to own and inherit property. Muhammad even decreed that sexual satisfaction was a woman’s entitlement (Lisa Beyer).”
Unfortunately, many laws decreed by Muhammad didn’t favor women and eventually were incorporated into the Koran as Islamic law, known as Shari’ a. Many countries in the Mideast and Asia are predominately Islamic countries, and in spite of the low status of many women in these countries, women play an essential role in agriculture. Their main tasks are gardening and homestead food production. Instead of changing these roles, I believe the roles should be exalted and raised to the status deserving of nourishers. The information from Beyer listed above can be found at:, and information concerning many countries in the global south can be found at:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,185647-1,00.html and http://www.fao.org/sd/wpdirect/WPre0112.htm.
Finally, Ecofeminism has a spiritual side. According to Mary Radford Reuther, a prominent feminist, “We are the parasites on the food chain of life, consuming more and more, and putting too little back to restore and maintain the life system that supports us.” Many women worship “Gaia” or earth as a goddess, but a controversy exists as to whether this is liberating or dominating. One thought is that this enforces duality such as male/ female and nature/culture, and associates women with nature as a commodity to be dominated. Another view is that spirituality can also challenge mainstream concepts of humans and nature and can be seen as the same as ethical views regarding nature and the Earth. Accepting the premise that organic gardening is beneficial to both humans and nature, organic gardening can be perceived as being both an ecofeminist and a spiritual pursuit. If women accept the earth as “goddess” then she should be treated with respect. There are many web sites on spiritual ecofeminism such as www.thegreenfuse.org/ecofem.htm or http://eve.enviroweb.org/; just enter those two words into any search.
I know this is long, but once I got started there was so much information I didn’t even know where to start. So, I narrowed it down as much as I could. I firmly believe women, spiritualism and the earth are interconnected and no matter what a woman’s beliefs (even if they don’t believe in a God) they should go back to having a close association with the earth.

TOMATOES, TOMATOES, TOMATOES

TOMATOES FOR THE MASSES!

I don’t know how many of the masses we will be able to feed with the fruit of our labor, hopefully there will be enough of a harvest prior to the end of the semester for us to feed the class Italian Heirloom and Black Krim tomatoes from the expected bounty.

As you can probably tell from the first line of this first blog entry I am going to do a Lived Experience for my class research project. I have decided to see if it is possible to grow my own tomatoes indoors and do it in an organic manner and in the long run save money over the prices that are charged in the grocery stores for produce.

I will be joined by a good friend of mine and advised by two of my neighbors on this project. My friend has grown plants indoors before and already had on hand the necessary organic fertilizers and the grow lights that are required so those expenses will not be an initial cost of the project but I will have to take into account the wear and tear on the lights and cost out the amount of fertilizer actually used.

As of today I have spent approximately thirty dollars on planting trays, soil, seeds, and miscellaneous items needed to start the growing. I will have a further breakdown of costs in following blog entries. Hopefully this will be an endeavour that not only provides great tomatoes but does it at a price that beats the market price when we harvest.

The literature that I have tells me that I will be able to harvest tomatoes around seventy days after transplanting the plants from the seedling trays to their pots. Since we are growing tomatoes I thought that a good compliment to them would be some herbs to accompany them at harvest time. We decided to grow some Rosemary, Sage, and Thyme at the same time in the indoor grow area. With any luck we will feast on all of these items with some fresh mozzarella cheese, olive oil, and fresh baked bread prior to the end of our class!

MY MISSION STATEMENT: Grow organic tomatoes at a better price than that available in the local area stores.

My specific goals for this project are;

<!–[if !supportLists]–>1. <!–[endif]–>Grow indoor tomatoes and not kill them in the process.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>2. <!–[endif]–>See if it is possible to grow my own produce so as to make a smaller footprint on the ecology.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>3. <!–[endif]–>Find out if I have the ability to do on my own what I have always taken for granted, that these types of produce are always available, so why worry.

<!–[if !supportLists]–>4. <!–[endif]–>Find a guinea pig to try out the fruits of my labor to ensure it is edible for me!

Pictures to follow so you can keep up with the progress of tomatoes in action…

My Yard: An Organic Farm?

As the title implies, I am going to explore the possibility of turning my yard into an organic farm. I would eventually like to grow most of my own food. This may not be doable until I get out of school, because it involves is a lot of time and energy, two things I don’t have a lot of right now. At this point, as my project, I am going to research the feasibility of growing my own organic food in my own yard, and I am going to look at it from five different perspectives: spiritual, political, economic, cultural and scientific.
The first week will be devoted to spiritual, because I believe everything develops from the spiritual. I am a Baha’i and the Faith is my way of life. So, I propose showing how organic farming connects to the Faith. Furthermore, I aim to present information concerning organic farming, and how it relates to women, from the two major world religions: Christianity and Islam. I will also look at the “woman as Goddess” aspect of eco-feminism. My feelings tell me that the earth, the spiritual and the scientific shouldn’t be separated.
Next, I plan on delving into what ever politics may be concerned with organic farming, especially those involving women; I intend to check into getting tax credits, and how much legislation supports the organic issue on the home front. But, I think there might be some useful information from some of the developing nations (like the work of Vandana Shiva), since the major concerns for these countries includes food supplies: how to grow healthy food and the most economic methods.
The third week, money, or the economics of this venture for me personally, will be the focus: Specifically, how much will it take to get started and how much to maintain. In other words will this benefit me financially? Although my major rationale for doing this project is not financial, it would be nice to think that not buying food at a store might save me some money.
I plan on devoting the last three weeks to the science of organic farming, or the nuts and bolts of my enterprise. I’m going to look into preparing the soil. This in itself presents some problems, because I have moles living under my yard. This natural habitat will have to be preserved. Next, I have the prospect of finding the right plants and seeds: to do this I might look around locally to see who works with organics, specifically women. Finally, I think most importantly, success necessitates the proper layout of the farm. Many factors become critical, such as: which plants need to be rotated, which plants will stave off which insects, where to place perennial and annual plants for best results, and which plants require more water and where to place them(I have a well on my property).
This research project seems daunting right now, but I am going to use this opportunity to build a bridge to achieving a personal goal. Through this exploration I am going to become an organic farmer.