EverGreen Farm

Food Safety Bill

The U.S. Senate is likely to vote on a Food Safety bill (S. 510) when it reconvenes after the election. Unfortunately, as the bill is currently written, small local farms and processing facilities will come under a sweeping new industrial regulatory standard that threatens to put many of them out of the food business. These small producers provide food for our local community through CSAs, farmers markets, local co-ops, and direct sales to consumers.

Sen. Jon Tester (MT), with Sen. Kay Hagan (NC), has an amendment to exempt small, direct-marketing farms and facilities. This amendment is critical to protecting local food systems and giving consumers a choice to buy fresh local products. It would be counter-productive and deeply disturbing if a bill designed to curb the abuses of Big Agribusiness snuffs out local food businesses as an "unintended consequence." Please call your Senators to urge them to vote for the Tester-Hagan amendment.

All of the well-publicized incidents of contamination in recent years – including the recent egg recall – occurred in industrialized food supply chains that span national and even international boundaries.  The food safety problems in this system can and should be addressed without harming the local food systems that provide an alternative for consumers. 

The growing trend toward fresh, local products improves food safety by providing the opportunity for consumers to know their farmers and processors, to choose products on the basis of that relationship, and to readily trace any problems should they occur. 

Farmers and processors who sell directly to consumers and end users have a direct relationship with their customers that ensures quality, safety, transparency and accountability.  For these farmers and processors, new federal requirements are unnecessary and would simply harm both the food producers and their consumers.

Although S. 510 includes some provisions for flexibility for small and diversified producers and processors, the bill still authorizes FDA to impose new hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls on facilities and to dictate growing and harvesting practices for produce.  These requirements will impose significant expenses and burdens on individuals and small businesses.  Please contact Senators Enzi (Toll free: 888-250-1879) and Barrasso (Toll free: 866-235-9553) and voice your support for the Tester/Hagan amendment for The Food Safety Bill (S.510). We need the Tester-Hagan amendment to protect our vulnerable local businesses!

 Shain Saberon

Support Joe The Rancher: One Simple Step To Fix Our Economy

By Shain Saberon

    Here’s some news you already know:  the U.S. economy has collapsed.  Meanwhile, political partisans on either side of the aisle endlessly bicker whether it’s Keynesian or Supply Side Economics that will end our nation’s financial woes.  I say let them debate, and by all means support those representatives whose policies you believe will benefit you and our country most.  However, voting for, calling, and writing an elected official is all most ordinary Americans can do to influence policy at a national level.

    Because of this, I sometimes feel disenfranchised.  But, there is better news!  We, the common and ordinary citizenry, possess more power than our government.  We command a strength that cannot be suppressed—a collective ability to repair this recession.  What is this power?  It is a shared system of wealth that only occurs when we buy local goods and services. In these desperate financial times I believe we must internalize Mahatma Gandhi’s wisdom.  You and I must be the change we desire to see in our communities and world.

    In order to restore stability to our country’s broken economy, we must fundamentally change our ways.  As concerned citizens, you and I must think local, not global, and act so as to benefit our communities by consuming goods and services from our neighbors.

    Carefully consider these six dueling points:

    Point One

• For every dollar spent at a local, independent business as much as sixty-eight cents returns to the community.
• For every dollar spent at a commercial chain store as little as ten cents per dollar remains in the community.

    Point Two

• Joe Nield, a local cattle rancher who sold me one-half of a grass fed beef, drives a Dodge Pick-up and lives in a modest home.
• The CEO from one of our nation’s few corporate beef producers most likely flies in a private jet and has multiple homes that are anything but modest.

    Point Three

• Joe Neild’s beef has traveled around 200 miles from his farm to my fork.  Lower transportation costs and less environmental pollutants all contribute to save us more money.
• The typical American meal travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to fork.  In my situation, supermarket beef should be eight times more expensive than Joe’s.  Government mandated agricultural subsidies falsely make American food “cheap.”  When purchasing typical supermarket foods, we actually pay for them twice—once at the register and again with our tax dollars

    Point Four

• Joe eats my produce, sends his children to the school where I teach, and buys goods and services from my community’s businesses.  In return, his purchases employ more local people who buy more goods in our community.  This spurs a potentially unlimited local recycling of our hard earned money.   
• The CEO running a corporation supplying industrialized beef reduces his work force—not his twenty million dollar annual salary—as demand decreases for his goods.  Then, only after eliminating American jobs, he lobbies for laws that will import cheaper labor or unsafe foods from under regulated foreign markets.  This will, for both obvious and unforeseen reasons, drain even more money from ordinary taxpayer pockets.

    Point Five

• Joe employs environmentally beneficial grazing practices that build soils, sequester carbon, and maintain ecosystems I enjoy viewing and fly-fishing.  Here, money is earned through both tourism and sporting fees and saved by not draining tax dollars to repair damaged landscapes.
• The agribusiness CEO has profit as his principal motivation; necessarily, therefore, said CEO promotes industrialized practices that first-sterilize soils by over reliance on petrochemical inputs and heavy machinery, next-pump millions of tons pollutants into the air we breathe (one/fifth of our country’s petrochemical consumption is for agriculture), and last- crowd cattle on mega-feedlots concentrating their waste which contaminates our aquifers and destroys our nation’s ecosystems.  The expenses required to fix these problems really add-up.

    Point Six

•  Joe’s grass-fed beef has higher amounts of Omega Threes, lower bad cholesterol, less fat, a complete absence of bovine growth hormones, and no accumulated concentrations of feedlot antibiotics.  Needless to say, the healthier we are as a nation the less we will need to spend on health care.
• Industrialized meats are lacking Omega Threes, higher in bad cholesterol and fat, and are repositories for growth hormones and overused antibiotics.  Many of our modern health epidemics (cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity) have been linked to the excessive consumption of industrialized meats.

    I hope my rant reminds each of us of our individual economic responsibilities.  Let us fix that which has been broken by supporting each other.  Through the cooperative power of our local purchases we will bestow upon our posterity not only improved economic well-being, but also physical and ecological health.  Please join me and buy goods and services from a neighbor.  Find and support your own Joe The Rancher!

2009 Food Legislation

By Shain Saberon

Recently, some of our EverGreen Farm CSA members contacted us about upcoming food legislation. We thank you for your caution and concern.  Your comments brought to mind what Andrew Jackson explained in his farewell address when he argued that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty.

Over the past few weeks I have spent much time researching the information forwarded to us by concerned farm members.  I have become all to aware that the Internet is buzzing with facts, serious concerns, exaggerations, and misrepresentations relating to proposed food safety bills in congress.  Yes, some of the newly proposed legislation deserves our attention and requires action!  However, my experiences with politics have taught me to proceed with caution in an effort to avoid reacting to misinformation. 

The following proposed items demand both our consideration and time:

- HR 875: The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
- HR 759: The Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009
- HR 1332: Safe FEAST Act of 2009
- S 425
- S 510.

I encourage all of you to research these bills and come to your own conclusions.  In addition, please take action by writing and calling our elected representatives in regards to your concerns.  Last of all, inform and motivate others who could be concerned about these critical food issues.

For your convenience I have provided links to some reliable organizations staffed by long-time organic/small family farm experts and activists.  The good people at these institutions research food bills and other related agricultural legislation, are genuine, have honorable intentions, and prove to be correct most of the time.

1.     http://www.cornucopia.org/2009/03/action-alert-critical-pending-food-safety-legislation/ (this is my most trusted source of information regarding federal food and farming policy; the site provides links to specific bills, contact information for elected officials, and a sample letter I feel emphasizes the most critical concerns I have regarding this legislation)
2.    http://farmandranchfreedom.org/content/action-03-16-09 (see action alert #2, this seems to be another reliable source)
3.    http://www.leavemyfoodalone.org/ (this site is new and has no track record; however, it appears to be somewhat objective, and I like the online petition)

A number of our elected officials believe in the principle of democratic representation and are persuaded by citizen activism.  Others tend to see our country better served by promoting corporate interests and are only democratically minded when moved by the tide of overwhelming public outcry.  Either way, it is up to us to protect small farms if we value their existence, sustainability, and continued growth.

Please, be vigilant and take action!

A Farmer’s Journal: Lessons from 2008

by Shain Saberon

April Brings Snow Showers?

   With more than a foot of snow on the ground, twenty thousand dollars of prepaid expectations, and my commitment to deliver the world’s best produce, I panicked when the first week of April arrived.  Through the triangular windows at the south end of my second-story loft, I witnessed the beauty of a cold blue sky pressing down on the plastic coverings of the two greenhouses just south of our home.  Then, I nervously chuckled and quickly turned the pages of last year’s farming journals, desperately scanning for anything to give me hope.  “What was I thinking when I started to farm five years ago?”  I muttered to myself.

May Days

    May brought just enough heat to melt the snow and a little of my pessimism.  After two weeks of dry weather, my garden begged for seed. The ground appeared dark, lightly moist, and not too soggy.  With one pull, my blue BCS Walking Tractor steadily rattled to life.  To imagine this machine, think of a garden tiller on steroids—two eighteen inch diameter tractor tires, a fourteen horsepower motor powering a thirty-inch wide tiller box, and two long handlebars with enough levers and knobs to resemble the cockpit of a World War II fighter plane.  I grasped the clutch, put it into third gear, and made my way to Garden #3 just north of my home.  Approaching our garden, I eased the tractor into low gear and engaged the tiller.  The tines gently churned the soil six inches deep.  It felt just right, loose, fertile with humus and life, and most of all cooperative.

    That day I tilled a fifty-foot wide by three hundred foot long patch of garden.  The ease of cultivation allowed me to pay less attention to guiding the tractor and more to my surroundings.  While working, I surveyed the hills to the east and west hills of my home, each being only a mile in either direction of our 7-acre farm.  We live in a beautiful location—a narrow mountain valley with an exceptional view of the alpine landscapes of the Bridger and Caribou National Forests.  Understandably, my chore was pleasant.
    After working this small section of land, I quickly unrolled several lines of drip-irrigation tape.  Then, I fitted the ends to their valves and secured the tape into long straight lines.  Next, I dusted off my Earthway Seeder, attached the appropriate seed plate, opened a seed envelope, and deposited my hopes into the hopper.  Grasping the handlebars of my human propelled seeder (an aluminum frame with a red box, rubber belts, and plastic wheels—something I imagine appears toy-like to my neighbors) I carefully passed each side of the drip line.  On that first day of planting I sowed lettuce, carrot, beet, pea, cilantro, turnip, radish, and parsley seeds.

 

    Between rainstorms, when the ground hinted that it might possibly be dry enough for transplanting, Tara and some workshares (people just as crazy as we are who will literally work for food) punched holes into the cultivated garden beds with hand-held ironwood dibbles.  Afterwards, they transplanted kale, chard, cabbages, and Bok choi. This is backbreaking work.  Dressed in work pants, gardening gloves, and rain gear they knelt in the dirt, or sometimes mud, all day long carefully sliding into the soil baby seedlings started earlier in the season.  To imagine what they looked like when finished, picture a motocross racer caked in mud.  Then, replace the thrill-seeking grin with a “what-the-hell have I got myself into” expression.

Of May and More Mud

    Mid May continued with a deluge of rain.  Periods of four and five days of heavy, dark grey skies weighed on my hopes of planting our crops on time.  The ground was simply too moist.  So, we spent a lot of time in our four dry greenhouses.  Tara and I transplanted tomatoes and then interplanted them with basil.  This chore has its rewards.  Inhaling the sweet licorice/mint aroma of basil gave me a sensation I can only describe as clean.  The cavity of my entire skull felt as though it had been scrubbed.  Later that very day, rain gently pattered on the greenhouse plastic that protected both us and our plants from our region’s extreme weather.  The clean scent of spring rain filled and cleared my lungs.  Meanwhile, outside clouds blanketed the pines on the West hills and a single beam of sunlight framed my view of Star Valley just right.  At that moment I paused because my heart was full—farm work can be truly idyllic.

    After planting, we hooped the rows of tomatoes and basil with eight-foot sections of heavy gage wire and then blanketed them with thick row covers to prevent the cold, damp nights from stunting their growth or killing the plants all together.  To some our efforts to grow fresh food might seem Herculean—tomatoes grown undercover inside plastic covered cold frames. Nonetheless, this is the only way to grow heat-loving crops in our northern mountain valley.  During these rainy days we also hand sowed fillet beans, transplanted cucumbers and peppers, cultivated and weeded inside our plant shelters, and prayed for dry weather.  When nature permitted, we transplanted squash, broccoli, and cauliflower outside.  At the end of May we planted more crops outside:  beans, 4000 row feet of potatoes, and succession crops of more carrots, beets, and lettuce.

Snow In June

    After another week of constant drizzle, the weather turned colder, and it snowed June!  Not wimpy snow either, but fat, moist snow flakes which plummeted to earth in waves blanketing our farm in several inches of despair.  Normally, I love snow.  It is beautiful, that is unless it’s June when I have people to feed, row covers that will collapse and crush the plants they are intended to protect, and too much work to do in too little time.  In an attempt to prevent all these problems, I dusted the snow off at least a dozen row covers with a broom, straightened the bent hoops supporting them, and re-secured the thin, white fabric made to protect our crops from the extreme cold that usually follows a June snow.  This took all day!

The Other June

    Extremes continued into the middle of June.  As fast as turning on the lights, the heat turned up, and it definitely came too fast!  After one or two minor harvests of radishes, turnips, cabbages, and Asian greens, these crops bolted (bolting is a gardening term used to describe how a cool-weather crop, when triggered by heat, begins to seed, turns bitter, and is no longer suitable to the experienced palate). Remembering a local folk tale, I amused myself by recalling a story of how this area was named.  The long winters, non-existent springs, short-intense summers, and artic-like falls caused some early settlers to starve.  My valley was, therefore, originally called “Starve Alley.”  Sometime later, after a particularly hard winter it was rumored, some optimist cleverly rearranged a few letters and changed the name to Star Valley. I like to imagine it made him feel better about living here.

July, Hope, and, Disappointment

 

    In July our crops sprouted like Jack’s magical bean stock.  Vegetables will grow in Star Valley when it’s warm.  Unfortunately, once the produce began to grow in earnest every caterpillar in Lincoln County, Wyoming seemed to get word of our quality organic food.  I believe the story of one crop, our salad mix, demonstrates the struggles we faced this year.  Please don’t get me wrong; harvesting salad, usually a manageable chore, can be pleasant.  This year it was not.

    In 2008, making our gourmet salad mix went something like this.  First, I searched our fields of salad for sections of greens that appeared to be “bug-free.”  One easily recognizes where an infestation has occurred because lettuce plants look limp and nearly lifeless.  When harvestable greens were found, I carefully cut them.  While carefully brushing the bottoms of the harvested plants, I searched for caterpillars, and once the guilty were discovered I delighted, I must admit, in squishing them between my fingers until they exploded.   Next, I dropped the now presumably bug-free salad into a five-gallon bucket.  I repeated this one handful at a time until I filled my bucket to its brim.  Returning from our salad fields, I handed over the fresh-cut greens to Tara and our workshares.  Their job was to submerge the lettuce leaves in ice-cold water, gently agitate them, and again, one handful at a time, search for bad lettuce and bugs.  They repeated this process twice for every batch.

    After duplicating this procedure another six times with other lettuce varieties, we had enough greens to make our salad mix and hurry to the next job.  With the help of a half-dozen workers we normally harvest and process forty pounds of greens in the course of a single morning.  Add a caterpillar infestation, and the time required to provide quality greens increases to almost an entire day.  In spite of all this hoopla, some bugs still snuck through.  Needless to say, this caused us some anxiety and loss of sleep.

July, The Farmers Market, and Family

 

    In our area farmers markets start in July.  Usually, the beginning of the market season is a happy event for us because we renew friendships with long-time customers and visit with many of our Jackson Hole CSA members.  Their smiles and comments boost my ego.  “Your food is soooooo good that I believe I would have to move if we didn’t have your farm,” one CSA member remarked.  A market client latter pronounced my personal favorite, “Come buy these carrots, they’re addictive as crack!”  She sold a lot of produce for us that day.
    To my dismay, The Jackson Hole Market, which financially is an essential part of our business, began only one day after The Fourth of July.  Consequently, the renewal of our friendships was bittersweet.  We are close to our extended family and use any excuse to get together.  This is even truer on holidays.  Family traditions—swimming in a snow fed lake, fly-fishing, and a big barbeque—were interrupted to accommodate our first market of the year. 

July--Raising Crops and Children

    In regards to raising children, farming is both a blessing and a challenge.  Megan, the most talented and exceptional young lady you’ll meet, is my oldest and just sixteen.  This past summer her schedule was as follows:  Wake up at seven.  Feed and water our pigs, goats, chickens, cats, dogs, and her younger brother. Clean our house for three to four hours so we can farm. Read novels, she typically devours a dozen or more each summer.  Practice classical violin, fiddle music, and bluegrass for two hours plus a day.  And, work another two to three hours daily to pay for her private music lessons and
orchestra camps. She truly is an amazing girl.

    Raising children on a farm is a blessing because, as you can see, our children are busy, so much so there is not a lot of time for them to find any real trouble.  Trouble for children at EverGreen farm is not doing chores correctly.  Trouble for Saberon children is not sufficiently pulling their fare share.  Because of this, I feel they appreciate and relish down time for reading and practicing music.  Megan works hard at school and the violin.  So hard, in fact, my daughter’s violin teachers are sure her college education will be funded by and include a lot of violin.  I see this as another incredible benefit of farming.
    Raising children on a farm also has its challenges. One downside to this arrangement is our lack of time for things deemed important.  This year the weather-related delay put us behind on planting.  While catching-up on seeding and transplanting, we gave the weeds a generous head start.  In fact, we presented them such a large advantage that we never approached catching up.  As a result, conflicts in priorities arose.  First, I made the regrettable choice to miss one Megan’s chamber orchestra performances.  I heard she played beautifully.
    Additionally, I sacrificed opportunities to camp and fish with my son.  On one occasion where I set aside enough time to spend a day and a half with him, I was richly rewarded.  After a short day of work, Eli and I packed and headed for Tin Cup, a small stream north of our home just across the border into Idaho.  On our way, we stopped to stock up with junk food, an exceptionally rare event.  Eli declared, “This is a darn good break from all that healthy farm food.”  Our cooler, I must confess, had nothing healthy in it—pop, chips, brats, and all the ingredients for smores—enough junk I feared to put my body into a sugar induced coma and my son’s into an uncontrollable high.

    After arriving at our destination, we set up camp, started a fire, ate, and then began to have some “manly” fun.  Empty Grape Shasta pop cans are reusable in many ways.  Before sending them to the recycler, I suggest hanging them from tree limbs as targets.  I loaded Eli’s Red Rider BB-Gun with more than one hundred rounds (surely enough, I incorrectly presumed, to last the evening).  He shot those pop cans in every conceivable way—point blank, from five paces, then ten, and stacked two-high to see if one could be knocked off without tipping the other.  For more than an hour I lounged in my camp chair nursing a junk food hangover while I observed the amusing phenomena of a boy with his first gun.
    After it was too dark to shoot, we retired to the campfire, and I indulged Eli with more eight-year-old talk.  Our topics ranged from coarse bodily functions to a synopsis of the Lord of The Rings Trilogy which my son had recently finished reading for the second time.  And then, we paid a price for his sugar high.  I warned my son of the dangers posed by a hot fire ring.  Needless to say, my advice was for not.  While running around the fire, he stumbled, reached out to avoid the flames, and touched the superheated campfire ring.  His burn was not serious enough for an emergency room visit, but it definitely warranted ending the trip early and returning home for some motherly medical attention.  As we drove home, I distinctly remember him not sobbing because of his burn; instead, Eli innocently bemoaned the end of what he informed me was, “without a doubt the best day of my life.”

August, September, October, Moonlighting, and Fatigue

 

    The months of August, September, and October are both bountiful and complicated for us.  It’s the end of summer, the beginning of school, and the commencement of fall.  This fall there was a lot food to harvest, a lot of market demand, a lot of personal food preservation, and a lot of hard work.  Like many farmers, I have another full-time job.  I teach eighth grade English and love that profession as much as farming.  Wearing many hats—that of the farmer, the teacher, the father, the husband—is not impossible for me.  But, my ambitions to make a real difference in this world push my wife, sometimes to her limits.  I love and admire her.  Tara is beautiful, humble, hardworking, talented, and family centered.  My perfect mate.

    This is what I know of her day.  Wake-up at six a.m., prepare breakfast for Eli while he and I practice piano, review our plans for the day, and send the family off to school.  Next, milk goats, organize and complete farm work for more than fifty CSA shares, harvest food for multiple grocery store and restaurant accounts, prepare for the farmers market, deliver produce, sell produce at the farmers market, maintain a farm blog, research farm related business news and laws, and manage the farm and family finances.  Then, help Eli with homework when he returns from school, wash laundry, eat dinner with the family, manage children and a husband, maintain contact with her parents and siblings, write letters to my grandparents because this means so much to them, take time to attend violin and piano recitals, read, and pay some attention to her husband so we can maintain our relationship.  That’s quite a list!

Insight

    This year has taken a toll on Tara’s physical and emotional well being, my patience, and our children’s needs.  I do not consider either of us to be old.  But, judging by our aches and pains we are, I must admit, aging. What we sometimes see as the hardships of farming can also be considered insights, and this only happens when we choose to look at life through an optimistic lens.  These discoveries are pearls of wisdom that steer us to reshape our plans and designs for a better future.  Hopefully, this will allow us to be more healthy and happy.
    So, like one of the original settlers of my valley, I will change the “Starve” to “Star” and a fool and optimist be.  Some changes as to how we operate our farm have to come.  Stay-tuned for more information!   

Soil Fertility

By Shain Saberon

    "Can mankind regulate its affairs so that its chief possession—the fertility of the soil—is preserved?  On the answer to this question the future of civilization lies."                                                        -Sir Albert Howard, An Agricultural Testament

   
One of our primary concerns at EverGreen Farm is soil fertility.  We feed the soil, the soil feeds the plants, the plants feed the animals, both plants and animals feed the soil and mankind, and the farmer strives to orchestrate the whole process.  It is an endless interdependent cycle—a dance with nature! 

Our program consists of the following eco-friendly principles:

• Composting with a medium containing animal manures and plant residues
• Manuring
• Cover cropping
• Crop rotation
• Management Intensive Grazing
• No/low till growing.

Compost

    I have witnessed first hand the miraculous effects of compost as described in An Agricultural Testament by Sir Albert Howard.  In this book Howard claims compost is the key to healthy, nutritious, and pest/disease resistant plants.  I agree.
    For soils of average fertility, like ours, compost made from animal manures and plant residues has quickly and substantially improved its quality and health.  This is why I believe a farm without animals cannot be “organic.”  By keeping goats, a few pigs, and chickens we are able to combine their waste with our vegetable leftovers to co-create with nature rich compost.

     Because we are only able to make a limited supply of compost, we choose to apply it where it will provide the greatest benefit, in our greenhouses.  I am continually amazed at the difference in the vitality, flavor, and resistance to pests and diseases the plants in my greenhouses exhibit compared to the crops in the fields not receiving this natural fertilizer.  Needless to say, we plan to increase the amount of compost we generate on our farm.

Making Compost

    Except for our pigs, we pasture and free-range our animals in season (in Star Valley this only about six months).

However, wintertime forces our goats and chickens to seek a more confined shelter, allowing us to accumulate their waste and make a compost heap.  First, we muck our goat barns and chicken coop.  This waste is composed of several tons of hay and straw that is used for bedding and as a medium to neutralize the animal's dung and urine.

Next, we use our tractor to clear out the contents of the pigpens.  (All season long we feed our pigs a substantial amount of garden leftovers which gets mixed with old hay, straw, and their waste.)  By combining the contents of our open-air pigpens and what is collected from our goats and chickens, we form a large compost heap.  The heap is repeatedly turned with the help of a tractor.  It is also moistened and allowed to age.  In time nature will thoroughly break down all plant and animal residues, while simultaneously eliminating dangerous pathogens.  The end result is a dark, crumbly, sweet-smelling heap of soil that is amazingly different from it's coarse beginnings.  The finished compost is then spread in the greenhouses each fall and spring.

Manuring

Since we cannot make enough compost, we also use tons of horse manure.  Each spring and fall we haul in multiple dump truck loads of this natural fertilizer.  With the use of our tractor and manure spreader we cover the fields with aged horse dung.  Immediately after spreading, I disc or harrow the fields to mix the manure with the soil.  Obviously, many hidden dangers exist when purchasing inputs from external sources, so we are careful to ask questions before purchasing horse dung.  This practice fills the void left by our existing capacity to make compost.

Cover Crops

Cover crops, also known as green manures, also build soil fertility.  Market gardeners who do not keep animals or live in an area where quality stable manures are available rely on cover crops for soil fertility.  The idea of cover cropping is to seed plant varieties capable of adding organic matter and nitrogen into the soil and rest it for a season from growing vegetable crops.  Typically grasses, like rye grass in colder regions like ours, are well suited to grow a substantial amount of organic material to feed back to the earth.  Many grains and other plants are also good at adding organic mass.  But, the organic matter provided by these plants alone is not enough.  Legumes are also needed—clovers, vetches, field peas, and alfalfa.  These special plants posses the ability to fix nitrogen in the soil with the help of natural and beneficial bacteria.

    After planting a cover crop, farmers typically mow it several times in a season to prevent the plant from seeding and becoming a weed itself.  In the fall cover crops are plowed and left in the field over winter.  The following spring these fields are cultivated again, rested to allow more decomposition, and then finally planted to a vegetable crop.
    To solely rely on cover crops for soil fertility requires approximately three times the amount of land planted for market crops.  Since our farm is merely 7 acres, relying only on cover cropping to improve our soil fertility is not an option.  However, anytime the opportunity presents itself I cover crop our land.  For example, immediately after garlic is harvested I like to plant rye grass and vetch.  Also, late in the fall just before our first serious snows, I seed some of our farm to cereal rye and field peas.  These hardy plants actually germinate under the snow early in the spring and are visibly growing as soon as the snow is gone.  Through the use of cover crops our farm attempts to mimic natural processes of soil building, not unlike those that built our nation’s rich prairie soils in the Midwest.

Crop Rotation

    Crop rotation is the agricultural practice of avoidance.  I strive to avoid planting the same crop in the same location for multiple years.  Different crops possess different root structures and require distinct nutritional needs.  In general, the longer a farmer can rest the land from growing the same crop, the healthier the soil.
    For example, lettuce plants are mostly shallow rooted.  If lettuce were planted in the same field for several years, it would soon deplete only the shallower soil levels of their nutrients.  By planting a deeper-rooted crop in succession to a shallower rooted crop, carrots after lettuce for instance, nutrients are extracted from deeper levels not taxing the soil as much as when monoculture is practiced.  This practice also helps reduce soil pests and diseases because pathogens that thrive with root crops don’t necessarily infest leaf crops. These are just two obvious benefits of this good agricultural practice.
    The ideal crop rotation includes a complete period of rest by planting a leguminous cover crop.  Deep-rooted cover crops, like alfalfa or certain clovers, are extremely beneficial.  By growing these crops for a year their roots are able to extract and then redeposit nutrients from deeper soil levels more near to the surface, making them once again available to shallow rooted crops.
    Crop rotation is a serious practice at EverGreen farm.  I keep annual records of where crops were planted.  This information allows me to plan and intentionally plant different crops in different areas of our farm from year to year.  Each year my crop rotations become more refined.  I believe we are seeing the benefits of this critical practice.

Management Intensive Grazing

    Management Intensive Grazing is typically associated with an agriculturally pastured food operation, such as a pastured beef, poultry, or dairy farm.  This practice consists of confining animals for a short period of time in a small section of a pasture and then moving them on a regular basis.  Short intense periods of grazing are actually beneficial for the pasture and, therefore, the animal too.  With a short intense grazing the pasture is not overgrazed and the animal does not over fertilize the ground.  For detailed information on this practice read Joel Salatin’s Salad Bar Beef or You Can Farm.
    This year I plan to practice a modified form of Management Intensive Grazing in our market garden.  This practice, I believe, will further increase our farm’s soil fertility.  The vehicle for this addition to our soil fertility program is called a chicken tractor—a small moveable chicken coop and pen that I have specially designed to be applied to our spent salad green beds.
    After a salad bed has been harvested, a chicken tractor with its occupants will be moved down the row.  Each day chickens will dine on the same gourmet greens you previously enjoyed. The chickens will also provide some extra labor by removing the old greens from the garden.  Additionally, chickens will eat and help control some of the insects infesting the greens while simultaneously fertilizing the ground.  These tractors will be moved once a day, which I believe will be just enough time to overgraze and kill the salad while leaving its roots and a small quantity of fertilizer in the ground.  Obviously we get other benefits too, eggs and meat.  I’m excited to try this!  I believe chicken tractors promise to be a simple, low-cost, and high-benefit addition to our soil fertility program.

No/Low Tillage

    Farmers increasingly study, refine, and apply no till farming. This practice consists of planting a cover crop, like a grain, harvesting it, allowing it to winter kill, leaving it, and ultimately planting a vegetable that will thrive in the mulch (planting potatoes after barley, for instance). The primary benefit derived from reduced tillage is an increase in beneficial soil organisms. 
    Perhaps the most important organism to benefit from this practice is mycelium, a beneficial fungus whose fruit is the mushroom.  Mycelium thrives in soils rich in both flora and fauna.  This life-filled soil is typically absent in industrially farmed soils dependent on chemical fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides. Crop friendly fungi are present in healthy soils and take the form of a mycelial web, a filamentous web-like structure that sometimes extend for thousands of acres in undisturbed forests.
    Why is mycelium important?  Because it connects with the root structure of plants to form a symbiotic partnership.  When intertwined with plant roots, mycelium extends the crops roots system making more moisture and soil nutrients available to the crop.  The mycelium benefits from the plants ability to photosynthesize sunlight and produce sugars.  Many studies document double the plant growth in soils rich in mycelium compared to those devoid of it.  Other plant positive organisms are more abundant in no till soils such as earthworms and bacteria that work with legumes to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere.
    I have been unable to fully employ no-till farming methods here at EverGreen Farm.  However, I take every opportunity possible to reduce tillage.  I have purchased and use old-world tools like the broadfork, which allow me to gently lift and aerate soil without turning it.  Furthermore, I am planning crop rotations where fields are purposely not tilled having been planted with a mulching crop.  This crop will be mowed and farmed with garlic, potatoes, and other plants that tolerate transplanting.

Your Benefit

    Industrialized agriculture commits the sin of oversimplification.  By assuming that nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (NPK) are all that plants require today’s industrial agriculturalist grossly oversimplifies plant, animal, and human nutritional needs.  For instance depending on the “expert” you ask, humans need between 50 and 100 different nutrients.
    Because at EverGreen Farm we care for, maintain, and even improve our soil’s fertility, you can be assured that your produce is the healthiest available—this is true because it is infused with a broad spectrum of micronutrients.  Practices leading to better soil fertility combined with no tolerance for industrial chemical applications grow the best food.  This is not philosophy.  Scientists and Journalists like Sir Albert Howard, Michael Pollen, Dr. Weston Price, and a dozen others have documented this.
    Eat our dirt!  It will heal you.

The Politics of Farming: An Agrarian Perspective

by Shain Saberon

Am I a dreamer and a fool because I dare to believe good farming can save our country?  I have been told by many, “You work too hard, too long, for too little," and "Our country and its people are too far gone down the industrial path for you to stop it now.”   I fully understand that industrialism and the corporatists have a lot of momentum.  However, Lynn Miller, the editor of The Small Farmers‘ Journal, recently shared a perspective that eliminated my pessimism.  His thoughts give me hope.

The more farms we have, the greater the opportunity of success for each.  The landscape will heal, the countryside will welcome the return of vibrant small farm communities, the economy will strengthen, the capacity to feed people will increase in quantity and health, the immune systems of an ever growing number of people will improve, governments will move offshore, the moral base will once again rise up from the truths of actual working, and the ranks of the hungry will shrink day by day.

This is a big boast—improved national ecology, economy, nutrition, health, and morality.  Both historical accounts and mounting agricultural research support Miller’s proposal.  With the passing of time I am certain his perspective will been seen as undeniably true.  I believe history will judge us according to how soon and to what degree we understood and acted upon this ideal.

Millers’ model is nothing new.  Thomas Jefferson argued, financed, negotiated, and legislated this very idea.  It is known as the agrarian view, and it stretches far beyond our shortsighted material horizons.  Unfortunately, the narcotic of greed fueled by the radical industrial practice of extracting and mining local goods and services, in other words, the practice of globalization as implemented by supranational corporations, has prevailed and taken us to the brink.  As a result, we now face a convergence of nutritional, ecological, economical, political, and moral crisis.

Where am I going with all this?  Follow me to a very different political perspective; one I hope you will take with you through our 2008 election cycle.  Friends please understand this—from an agrarian point of view both the Republican and Democratic parties have failed small family farms, businesses, and our respective communities.  For evidence, consider how our elected politicians have cast their votes for a global economy.  Their endorsements (of NAFTA, GATT, numerous other “free-trade agreements,” and another subsidized farm bill giving yet more corporate welfare to the largest and wealthiest agribusinesses in human history) prove this point.  Their voting records in regards to this critical issue are dismal!  We, the small farmers and producers of life-sustaining goods, simply cannot compete with cheaply, hazardously, irresponsibly, and immorally produced foods and products forced upon us through slave labor and extractive industrialized processes.  This crime has been perpetrated across borders and oceans to conceal it from our sight.  What is our government’s crime? Outsourcing!  And inasmuch as we are the government, we share the blame.

I concede that our adversaries—in this instance the supranational corporate globalists who have destroyed our health, land, souls, and nation—have the upper hand.  So, what can we do?  Consider and act on the following plan to take back our communities and country:

I.    Educate yourself.  Visit websites like Cornucopia, The Rodale Institute,  The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance,  and Slow Food.  Also, read the works of Thomas Jefferson, Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Michael Pollen, Barbra Kingsolver, Sir Albert Howard, Robert Rodale, Rudolph Steiner and Lynn Miller.  In their words reside the seeds for change.

Thomas Jefferson:  read his original letters found on line at The Library of Congress by clicking here.

Wendell Berry:  read The Unsettling of America, Home Economics, Citizenship Papers, Another Turn of The Crank, and The Gift of Good Land.

Joel Salatin:  read Holy Cows and Hog Heaven.

Michael Pollen:  read The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food.

Barbara Kingsolver:  read Small Wonders and Vegetable, Animal, Miracle.

Sir Albert Howard:  read An Agricultural Testament and The Soul of Soil.

Robert Rodale:  read Save Three Lives.

Rudolph Steiner:  read The Rudolph Steiner Archive online here.

Lynn Miller:  read The Small Farmers’ Journal (subscribe or read selected articles online here).

II.    Buy local goods, especially foods, and support local people.  This, above all, has gained the most momentum and has the greatest and most lasting impacts.

III.    Seek out, compliment, support, and when possible vote for the few uncorrupted local and national representatives that support agrarian views.

IV.    Flood your unsympathetic politicians with letters and calls demanding favorable agrarian reforms.  To find them go to this website.

V.    Find, encourage, support, and elect true representatives, especially those more sympathetic to agrarian views (positions that are anti-globalist and supportive of local empowerment, production, self-reliance).

In Another Turn of The Crank, Wendell Berry argues that the only hope we have for turning around our current convergence of crisis is through the power of LOVE.  Specifically, he explains that by caring—about ourselves, each other, local landscapes, the agricultural and natural soils that sustain us, the plants and animals upon which we depend, the air we breath, water we drink, and most of all the communities to which we owe our existence—we will save both ourselves and our world.

With more at risk, arguably greater than at any other time in human history, our choices are becoming increasingly more consequential.  We can choose to ignore our situation or to care and take action.  I choose to care.   

Ten Rules of Biodynamic Farming

Ten Rules of Biodynamic Farming
As Presented by Trauger Groh

Summary by Shain Saberon

In Farms of Tomorrow Revisited by Trauger Groh, the author summarizes Rudolph Steiner’s writings on agriculture.  His approach to agriculture is broadly characterized as biodynamic farming.  I believe in many tenants of this method; therefore, it is useful for you, the consumer, to understand some of these ideas.

Rule 1:  No Non-organics On The Farm

I believe the most important idea presented in this work is that “Gardeners and farmers should remain in the realm of the living with all measures and applications.”  In my opinion, this excludes most applications of minerals, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and mineral substances in animal feed.  At EverGreen farm we follow this advice.

Further it is explained, “The only exceptions to these rules would be lime for amending soil and salt for animal consumption.  If these items are used, it is best to remain as close to the realm of living as possible.”  This leads me to believe that greensand and ground oyster shell are also acceptable.  Many organic farmers I know liberally apply these mineral amendments to their compost and soil.  I believe our soil will most benefit from the trace amounts of several minerals available in greensand.  Greensand is the mineralized remains of ancient seabeds and is clearly from the “realm of the living.”

Last of all Steiner recommends, “ For animal, especially ruminants, shrubs should be available as a forage (herbal plants of the families labieate, compoitae, and umbelliferae).  Pigs can be kept free of supplements if they are allowed contact with living soil.”   Currently we have a few shrubs that our goats and horses both graze, but improvements need to be made in this realm on our farm.  We absolutely follow the advice given on the keeping of swine.

Rule 2:  Keep Animals on the Farm to Supply Animal Manure

Another of Rudolph Steiner’s observations was to supply the necessary amount of animal manure “necessary for healthy plant growth by keeping on the farm a sufficient number of animals in the right harmonious combination.”  Later Groh states, “It is best to have a mixed population of animals.  Most important, the farm should have chickens, pigs, horses, and goats.  Cows are also a healthy addition but are secondary to the first set of animals mentioned.”  At EverGreen farm we follow these principles.  Each year we continue to better understand the benefits of keeping animals and then using the compost from their manures to feed the soil that in turn feeds them with rich grasses and leftover crops.

Rule 3:  Feed Your Animals From Your Farm

Another principle presented by Steiner is that animals on your farm should be nurtured with feeds that are grown on your farm.  He argues that animals, plants, and macrobiotic life forms in the soil adapt to each other raising the level of health for all through a symbiotic process.  At EverGreen Farm chickens, goats, pigs, and horses are feed from pasture and left over vegetables not meeting our standards for sale.  Although this only is possible for one-half the year, we feel it is a giant step in the right direction.

Rule 4:  Grow a Great Diversity of Cash and Cover Crops

Steiner believed in diversity, not the monoculture that dominates the American agricultural landscape of today.  Modern industrialized agricultural practices require ever increasing amounts of chemical inputs to combat various infestations that arise when agriculturist plant only one crop.
Steiner declared, “Aim for as great of a diversity of plants on the farm as possible in combination with, and as part of the crop rotation.”  Later he explained, “Fertility and productivity in nature arise out of diversity.”  Besides cash crops, a well-managed farm is abundant with grasses, clovers, and deep-rooting plants like alfalfa.”

At EverGreen Farm we grow over thirty vegetable varieties.  Whenever possible, we follow these crops with a fall or spring planting of rye grass and field peas.  Not only do we advocate a multiplicity of crops, but we also rotate the plants we grow to combat the negative natural consequences caused by uniformity.

Rule 5:  Fertilize Fields with Animal and Plant Manures

Steiner pushed for farmers to “Recognize that the circulation of carbon, or organic substance, throughout the soil, plants, and the air is the basis of permanent fertility.  This circulation expresses itself in the creation and breakdown of humus substance in the soil.”  To achieve this we apply both animal manures and plant based compost to our fields at EverGreen Farm.

Rule 6:  Encourage Silica by Encouraging Living Soils

Another tenant of biodynamics argued was to “Strengthen silica circulation in the soil by encouraging microbiotic processes.”  At our farm we achieve this by applying animal and plant manures, avoiding synthetic substances (especially petrochemical fertilizers) and tilling the ground as little as possible.

Silica is primarily a product of living organism found in living soils.  The application of green and animal manures and the avoidance of the application of synthetic substances has already been thoroughly discussed. However, the last part of this rule touches on another important principle—no/low till farming.  At our farm we are continually tinkering with rotations and systems that will allow us to reduce the amount of tillage on our farm.  Admittedly, we have room to improve in this area 

Rule 7:  Create a Balance Among all Living Things

“Create a harmonious balance in the soil, plants, animals, and the landscape. This should include a balance between field, pasture, and wetland.”   I believe we have made significant improvement in the last few years in our balance of field and pasture.  At this moment, regrettably, we have no wetland.  In spite of our limited space, this is a concern and an issue we plan to address.

Rule 8:  A Natural Environment-Hedgerows and Ponds

“Restore the destroyed natural environment.”  This is primarily achieved by encouraging natural hedgerows and wetlands.  Steiner admonished us to cultivate variety of trees and shrubs in hedgerows that create windbreaks to control soil erosion and provide habitat for beneficial animals.  Also, he advocated the creations of ponds to encourage the formation of dew and provide habitat for other beneficial animals and insects unique to wetlands.  This is another weakness of our farm, and we hope to correct this imperfection too.

Rule 9:  Biological Weed and Pest Controls-Crop/Animal Rotations

“Implement biological weed and pest controls.  Specifically, practice rotating crops, fields, pastures, and consequently animals.”  We follow this practice religiously.

Rule 10:  Follow Natural Rhythms

“Reestablish a rhythmical natural order in animal husbandry and field care that is connected to the rhythms of the earth and its cosmic environment of the sun, moon, and other planets.”  This is where biodynamics loses me.  However, I have an open mind.  If this principle can be proven beneficial to me in a logical and observable form, I will embrace it.

Help Needed For More Local Food Providers

By Shain Saberon

(Photo above:  New York style steak from local beef producer Joe Nield.)

Congratulations!  I applaud each and every one of you for supporting EverGreen Farm.  However, more has to be done for the organic/buy-local movement to reach its potential.  I offer seven more suggestions that I believe will encourage more local food production.

#1.  Obtain as much of your daily food from local farmers as possible.  If you eat meat, seek a local organic rancher first.  If a purist does not exist, I believe it is more beneficial to buy from a local rancher who is mostly “organic” than to buy factory farmed organic from the supermarket.

#2.  I have personally learned that support, praise, and encouragement are strong motivators that encourage food producers to change.  This grows the movement.  So whenever local farmers exist that are not “organic,” mention to them that if they would convert you would support them with even more of your purse.  Would one of our local dairies convert to organic if one hundred locals signed and sent them a petition requesting they change some of their practices?

#3.  When you cannot purchase local or regional foods, buy organic.  This, at least, reduces the toxic toll of industrialized agriculture on our planet.

#4.  Write your local and state representatives demanding legislation that strengthens small farms and local economies.

#5.  Demand a farm bill from local, state, and federal representatives that limits the power of factory farms.  These mega-farms are mostly extensions of multi-national corporations.  Petition your representatives for the elimination of undue influence from corporate lobbyist on food legislation. 

#6.  Demand a farm bill that encourages a transition from factory to small farms. This was the original mandate of the USDA before it was corrupted and taken over by multinational agricultural, pharmaceutical, electronic, chemical, and other industrial corporations (the biggest multinational players are Monsanto, ADM, Cargill, Tyson Foods, Kraft Foods, Wal-Mart, Physer, Dupont, and Digital-Angel Electronics).  Watch the movie The Future of Food for detailed information on this topic.

#7.  Find and bookmark the following organizations on the Internet that are active in this cause:  Cornucopia, The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Stop Animal Id.Org, The Organic Food Institute, Slow Foods, and Bioneers.  Each of the listed organizations is an excellent resource in its own distinct food domain.

Why I Farm

By Shain Saberon

Some don’t believe that people and the earth are in jeopardy.  Many who do believe we are at risk cannot see beyond their chosen cause or focus; be it greenhouse gases, environmental pollution, animal rights, food safety, farmland preservation, religious interpretation, endangered species, hunger, war, pestilence, disease, corporate malfeasance, or moral degradation.  In each and every case the fight has often been to treat the symptoms and not the cause.  This seriously aggravates the problems.  For example, biodeisel will not save us from global warming; it will hasten it as it speeds the poisoning and depletion of our soil resources.  A centralized data base maintaining the whereabouts of every small farmer’s poultry and goats (with colored asterisks for locations of feedlots and pig factories) will not protect the food supply from pandemic diseases, bacterial infestation, or terrorist infiltration.  It, instead, will increase the likelihood of these problems by providing dangerous exemptions for industrial producers and creating a readily available computerized road map of our food system frailties.  Setting farmlands aside in park-like mode does not preserve them as farmlands.  Instead it adds to the net loss.  And yelling and screaming that the fighting must stop while refusing to see that our economy thrives on war profits is like facing a household fan into a high wind . . . the more farms we have, the greater the opportunity of success for each.  The landscape will heal, the countryside will welcome the return of vibrant small farm communities, the economy will strengthen, the capacity to feed people will increase in quantity and health, the immune systems of an ever growing number of people will improve, governments will move offshore, the moral base will once again rise up from the truths of actual working, and the ranks of the hungry will shrink day by day.

Lynn Miller, editor/publisher of The Small Farmers Journal, Winter 2007, Volume 31.  Lynn Miller is a horse farmer, writer, publisher, small farmer activist, and painter.  His tireless works have breathed life into the current organic small farm movement for more than thirty years.

I cannot articulate better than Lynn Miller the reasons I farm and choose to support as many local food producers as possible.  Many of our world’s problems can be solved with the simple acts of farming and supporting those brave enough to advance the cause.

My personal evolution from a recovering suburbanite to a local food producer is neither complex nor peculiar.  Two decades ago as part of my undergraduate honors coursework, I studied eastern philosophy under the guidance of Brahman Hindu priestess.  As I consumed the writings and philosophy of Gandhi, I determined then to make the world a better place.  He eloquently stated, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  After reading that declaration, I decided my calling would be to teach literature to our nation’s youth; in them I saw more hope than in my own generation.  Furthermore, I am passionate about flyfishing, so I also supported Trout Unlimited to protect local ecosystems.  Then, while buying some local organic produce, I met Ryan Foxley.  A friendship germinated and a new journey began for me.  The rest is history.  EverGreen farm was born, and small scale farming in Star Valley continues.  We are excited to play a small but hopefully significant role in our local community.

Thank you for sharing our dream!

Farmers Pledge

AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO USDA ORGANIC CERTIFICATION EVERGREEN FARM WILL PARTICIPATE IN THE NOFA (NORTH EAST ORGANIC FARMERS ASSOCIATION) FARMERS PLEDGE.

WE PLEDGE THAT IN OUR FARMING, PROCESSING, AND MARKETING WE WILL:

Serve the health of soil, people and nature by rejecting the use of synthetic insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers;

reject the use of GMOs, chemically treated seeds, synthetic toxic materials, irradiation, and sewage sludge in our farming, and all synthetic substances in post harvest handling;

treat livestock humanely by providing pasture for ruminants, access to outdoors and fresh air for all livestock, banning cruel alterations, and using no hormones, GMOs or antibiotics in feed;

support agricultural markets and infrastructures that enable small farms to thrive;

maintain and build healthy soils by farming practices that include rotating crops annually, using compost, cover crops, green manures, and reducing tillage;

conserve natural resources by reducing erosion and pollution of air, soil and water through responsible farming practices;

maximize the nutritional value of food and feed by practicing careful post harvest handling;

practice minimal processing for all food products to preserve the natural nutritional value of food: NO use of irradiation, ultra-pasteurization, excessive heat, synthetic preservatives, or GMO processing agents or additives and include all ingredients on labels;

reduce the ecological footprint of farms and homes by limiting energy use and converting to renewable sources of energy;

reduce food miles by selling produce locally and regionally;

create beneficial habitat for wildlife and encourage biodiversity;

help preserve farmland and farming know-how;

ensure food safety by using potable water for washing crops;

handle raw manure and soil amendments with care;

use ethical business practices;

pay a living wage to all farm workers and acknowledge their freedom of association and their right to collective bargaining;

treat family members and farm workers with respect, and ensure their safety on the farm;

work in cooperation with other farmers and with the neighboring community to create a more sustainable way of life;

encourage the distribution of unsold but edible food to people who need it;

sustain the land in healthy condition for future generations.