Tag: Kentucky

Rain, raccoons and books to look forward to.

This week has come with a lot of rain, which has restricted what we can do in the garden, but saves me from running irrigation systems. It means the weeds are growing too well, and there is no chance to hoe: the soil is too wet, the weeds won’t die, just re-root. We’re about 40% down our 265′ long carrot rows (15 of them), weeding, but the weeds are now bigger than the carrots. Meanwhile, other timely tasks are going begging. probably we’ll have to draw a line in the mud and give up on the lower part of the carrot patch. Too bad.

Farming is completely non-linear! You don’t finish one task, then start another. Every day involves a juggling of priorities. At this time of year, harvesting takes a lot of time. And naturally, it’s very important to do it! After all, why grow food if you don’t harvest it? An added challenge this year is that for most of the summer crops (tomatoes, beans, eggplant, squash, cucumbers), it’s better not to touch the plants while the leaves are wet. Fungal diseases spread easily when it’s warm and wet. Many mornings the dew is heavy, so we start our shifts with some hoeing (if the soil and the forecast are dry enough), or carrot weeding (most days). Our next priority, after harvesting, is planting. “Prioritize planting during the planting season!” is one of our mantras.Here in central Virginia, the planting season runs from mid-February to the end of September (ignoring the garlic planting in November).

Yesterday we caught our eleventh raccoon in the sweet corn. We’ve probably lost close to 2000 ears of corn to these pests this year. (Two whole sections 6 rows x 60ft with a plant every 8 inches, plus serious inroads in three other sections.) We’re looking at installing an electric fence, but several crew are unenthusiastic, foreseeing problems with the fence shorting out on the grass, and inconvenience working around it. We need to do something different. This morning both raccoon traps had the bait eaten, but no captives. One trap was open and on its side – have the beasts figured out how to turn the trap and get the food out without springing the trap? The other was closed but emptied. Perhaps we have a giant raccoon that uses its butt to keep the door from closing while it eats the bait?

On a more cheery note, here’s two books to look forward to before next season. (People looking for gifts for gardening friends, take note).

51E7ayNJ7IL._SX260_Ira Wallace, from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Acorn Community, has written the Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast. It will be published in December 2013. The write-up says “Growing vegetables requires regionally specific information—what to plant, when to plant it, and when to harvest are based on climate, weather, and first frost. The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast tackles this need head on, with regionally specific growing information written by local gardening expert, Ira Wallace. This region includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.”

Ira’s book is for new vegetable gardeners, or ones relocating to the southeast. It includes month-by-month planting recommendations, skill-building tips, a primer for beginners and an A-Z meet-the-vegetables section. Paperback, 256 pp., 7½ x 9 in. (230 x 190 mm.), ISBN: 9781604693713.  It will sell for $19.95 and I recommend you support your local writers in the same way and for the same reasons we support our local farmers – buy direct from them and don’t line the pockets of the big corporations. Those places that sell books at big discounts don’t contribute much to writers and publishers! Southern Exposure will be selling the book through their catalog and at events where they have a booth.

bookcover

Cindy Connor has written Grow a Sustainable Diet, which will be published by New Society in Spring 2014. Read what she has to say to introduce it on her blog Homeplace Earth. Cindy says: ” This book is for folks who want to grow all, or a substantial amount, of their food and do it in a way that has a small ecological footprint. Particular attention would need to be paid to crop choices for your diet and for feeding back the soil . . . If you wanted, you could use the information from this book to plan a complete diet of homegrown foods.” Or you could choose which bits best fit your life and use her worksheets, diet planning, garden planning and information on cover crops, livestock, food storage and preservation, sheds and fences to help you provide more of your own food. And you can enjoy her stories.

I haven’t yet got the price for Cindy’s book, or the ISBN, or a firm date, but check her website regularly or subscribe to her blog (which is always packed with good information). I will post more information as I get it. You can bet Cindy will be selling the book directly, and that SESE will also carry it.

Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste: Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia, Bill Best

9780821420492Book Review June 2013 by Pam Dawling

Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste: Heirloom Seed Savers in Appalachia,  Bill Best         Ohio University Press April 2013. ISBN 978-0-8214-2049-2 (paperback) $22.95 (212p)

This book is an encouraging read. First I’ll say what it’s not: it’s not a How to Save Seeds Manual. So, what is it? A local history of seed saving and the people involved in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina mainly, and some of South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Georgia and Alabama. It’s about the whole traditional culture of trading and co-operation among mountain people who don’t buy all their seeds from a catalog. These people cultivate varieties that grow well and taste good, and they select for desirable traits to develop better varieties.

Bill Best spent 40 years teaching and administering at Berea College, Kentucky. In his retirement he directs the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center near Berea, and gathers and passes on heirloom seeds. The author holds a Best Family Farm one-day seed swap each year in October. As a market farmer in the Berea area, Bill was featured in an article about heirloom beans and tomatoes. This led to 86 letters in 6 months from people wanting heirloom vegetables! Bill became a focus for developing a seed bank of local heirloom beans (and other vegetables). Every bag of seed came with a story! Here we get the stories as well as careful descriptions of the many types of bean.

The first third of the book is about beans, which reflects the importance of growing supplies of protein and flavor when independent from stores. I’ve long puzzled about the various terms used for beans, and I am grateful to Bill Best for his lexicon. If you too are confused about greasy beans, cut-shorts, half-runners, and leather britches, then I recommend his clear descriptions. Lovers of heirloom beans tend to prefer pole beans for flavor over bush beans. Heirloom greasy beans (named for the slick shells, and famed for the tenderness and flavor) command a much higher price at markets than commercially grown beans. Cornfield beans are pole beans, traditionally grown with corn as the poles. Cut-short beans are varieties where the bean “outgrows’ the shell, so the beans are cramped into square shapes. They have high protein content. Field peas are southern peas or cowpeas originating in the Deep South. Crowder peas are the pea equivalent of cut-short beans. Butter beans are small speckled limas.

Full beans (when the seed is fully mature) – is the traditional stage for harvesting beans whether to be used fresh, canned, pickled or dried as “leather britches” or shelled out. Leather britches (aka shuck beans) are full beans broken into lengths, strung up and dried in the shell, to provide meals in winter and early spring. Beans with immature seeds were not much eaten – why not wait for the protein? Shelly beans are beans shelled out before the pods dry, then dried. They cook without the soaking needed by beans from dried pods. Half-runner beans have runners 3-10 feet long. Their popularity led to commercialization, which sadly included the tough gene being incorporated into the seed line (to withstand mechanical harvesting without breaking). It is hard to find non-tough half-runners now.

Stringless bush (or bunch) beans are all I grow. These old-timers are sure stringless beans have less flavor. Modern stringless beans have to be picked before the seed appears, because they include the tough gene. The downside of stringlessness is toughness – what irony!

People who grew their own beans developed varieties for each growing season: ones with good cold soil emergence for spring, ones for hot summer months, shade-tolerant ones for growing in cornfields, and fall or October beans that do well going into cooler weather. Some beans are named after the time of year they are planted, others after one of the people involved in growing them.

Some growers would trade their bean seed at the local hardware store for other seeds or for supplies. So hardware stores, rather than feed stores, were the place to buy local heirloom seeds. The author discusses the cultural context that has made the Appalachians a fertile ground for maintaining heirloom beans. Families farmed to support themselves, and survived and thrived according to their talents at producing food, and products to trade. During the Great Depression, beans were a very important source of food. The author takes us on a tour of several farms and their bean varieties. “Haywood County’s past can be found in more than old records and photo albums. Try the bean patch.” As more people discover the flavors of heirloom varieties, demand and enjoyment is increasing.

Unlike beans, tomatoes were not prominent historically in the diet of Southern Appalachian people, but they came to be important and an enormous range of flavors, shapes, sizes and colors has been developed. There are at least 34 sugars and acids involved in tomato flavors. Many people have heard of Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, but few know the Vinson Watts Tomato, developed over 50 years of careful work. The author has grown this tomato and 450 others during a 49 year period, and reports that this is the most disease-resistant he has found, with no compromise on flavor. It’s available from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

After 20 pages on tomatoes, there are short sections on heirloom apples, cucumbers and milling corn (the US became dependent on hybrid corns and in 1970 the Southern corn leaf blight devastated 15% of the corn crop. Much of the genetic diversity and resilience had been lost). Candy Roasters are the type of winter squash most favored in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Little known elsewhere, this big storage squash (which possibly originated with the Cherokees) is used for pies, breads, butters, generally with sugar.

Next we dive into the last third of this book: stories about individual seed savers the author met or corresponded with. This is the ethnography part of the book – a descriptive study of this particular human society. The farmers and gardeners here are of the older generations. Seed saving seems a very life-enhancing activity! The final photo is of 100-year old Judith Whitehead Patteson, sitting outdoors, holding a jar of Ardelia’s Speckled Butter Beans, which she has grown for many years.

Read this book for an inspiration into the difference it is possible to make, by choosing good vegetable varieties, growing your own and buying local.