Adaptive Planning for Spring and Summer

As I write this, we're getting our coldest snap yet, this year... in February! We still have some beautiful winter greens in the garden, and they should all be fine, but some of our sage is still blooming(!), or at least was, until last night... and the borage has definitely bit the dust for the season. Despite these losses, the cold weather is so important for balance on the farm: it helps to keep pest insect numbers down (goodbye, flea beetles who ate up our eggplant leaves last year!), it helps us to keep invasive weeds in check (goodbye, bermuda and johnson grasses!), and helps our fruit trees to keep their dormancy, at least a little longer! 

However, in this cold weather we're thinking hard about what's coming: last year was incredibly challenging, even for established farms and farmers, but especially for us newbies! The heat, and the length of the hot season, really did in some of our best-laid plans. We're thinking hard about long term sustainability of the farm under climate conditions, and are trying to plan accordingly.

For example, our root vegetables seem to do pretty well, even when it's hot. Beets, onions, leeks, , parsnips, and daikon radishes are all things that we've had pretty good luck with, even in the heat. That suggests that we might try other roots, such as turnips, rutabagas, and celeriac. These vegetables are healthy for us, with high mineral content and great caloric density, but they're also great for our soil, leaving high levels of organic matter behind, in the soil, when they are picked.

Tomatoes have been terrible producers over the last two years, but peppers have produced quite well, heroically surviving, and even thriving, in the heat! That means that expanding our repertoire of peppers may be a good way to get a wider variety of nutrients from a crop that seems to do well in the extreme heat, and are an equal harbinger of summer in the way that we think of tomatoes.

In addition, we've noticed that our older beds - the ones that we dug in 2013 and 2014 - have hosted some of our hardiest crops. This suggests that growing our own compost, increasing soil tilth through organic matter, and increasing the water holding capacity of our garden beds is an important adaptive action for the coming decades. It also suggests that regular watering is important. We saw this when we left for a few days last September, and a dearth of water on the watermelons - despite our well-meaning farm sitter! - made the aphids move in and the fruit rot on the vine. Note to ourselves: no vacation time in summer!

The FUN part of planning is choosing the vegetables: I'm pulling hard for celeriac this year, though Pedro doesn't always love these "weird" things. We've probably missed the window for fennel, but we might get a few months of cilantro in, yet. I'm also hoping for some new herbs: tarragon, savory, and lavender should do quite well in our hot summers, and I'm hoping that they'll contribute to balancing our pest load in the garden, as well.

We wish you beautiful summer dreams in these cold days!

- Elizabeth

Winter's Flavors... and Vitamins!

I adore winter food. Deep, complex flavors, contrasting textures, and the very vitamins and minerals we need to get through a long, dark season. I love that these fruits take so long to ripen: they absorb all of the goodness of summer, growing and developing over the hottest months and then sweetening as the sun declines. What a beautiful natural poem!

Over Thanksgiving I received about a half-bushel of persimmons from a very generous family friend. These are some of my most favorite fruits ever, but a half bushel was a lot - even for me! - to get through! What to do with these lovely fruits, other than eat out of hand or slice into yogurt? I came up with a gorgeous and delicious salad recipe, perfect for local, seasonal fruits and vegetables this time of year, and exactly what I need to get me through short days and a virus-prone office! 

Luscious winter fruits in sunshine colors, ready for salad making!

Winter Sunshine Salad

1. Cut 1 persimmon in half and remove the leaf cap, then slice into the size segment you want in a salad. I do thinnish slices to the center, so that I can see the body of the fruit in each slice. Put all of these into a medium-sized bowl.
2. Peel 1 mandarin orange and segment (cut segments if you'd rather have smaller pieces). Place in same bowl as persimmons.
3. Take about 1 cup of parsley and chop small. Toss into the bowl with the fruit.
4. Toss in the same bowl about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts.
5. Now, isn't that beautiful? For the finishing touch, drizzle on some basalmic vinegar (I use Skylake Ranch pomegranate basalmic - from our very own rural northern CA!) and freshly-milled Oliview Farm olive oil! Maybe a sprinkle of salt, and you're ready for lunch!

This salad is packed full of fiber, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and ready to bust your winter blues and bring sunshine to your table and your tummy! Enjoy the beauty and bounty of winter!

- Elizabeth

Winter Sunshine Salad ready for tomorrow's potluck!

Poultry Health in Fall

What a season! Since late September, we have:

1. Taken out summer vegetation in the garden for compost, turned/aerated beds, and planted winter vegetables or (mostly) cover crops;
2. Tested our entire flock of poultry for salmonella and avian influenza (more about that later!);
3. Picked and milled our 2017 olive oil - always an amazing experience! And;
4. Stopped watering!

I know that last one doesn't sound too interesting, but it's a huge event on the farm! This is the most dramatic sign of a changing season for me. Watering costs money, takes time, and the water we use - as demonstrated with the 50% cutbacks of 2015 and 2016! - isn't as sure of a resource as we all thought, pre-2014... Also, a number of winters since we've started the farm have required that we continue to water due to a lack of rain. This is a double jeopardy, as we're not only receiving less than normal precipitation, but because of this we're using up a stored resource that usually should be saved for summertime - yikes! But we're not there - yet - this year. Fingers are still crossed.

But this wasn't supposed to be a post about water (farming talk often tends that direction!). I wanted to share our poultry testing regime. We are members of the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP), established in the 1930s to address some recurring issues in poultry health that were, at the time, affecting local and regional economies, as well as human health. The program initially focused exclusively on Pullorum disease, a consequence of poultry contracting the Salmonella bacteria - which can also infect humans. It has expanded, however, to include avian influenza and other poultry diseases. Our membership in the program requires us to pay an annual fee of $100, in exchange for which they test our flock twice a year. Once, in the spring, they test a small percentage of our flock, and every fall they test our entire flock. Any positive hit requires a second test which, if positive, requires destruction and testing of the bird.

The process of testing is as follows: Art, who has tested our birds for the last four years, comes up from Turlock and usually arrives around 8 or 9 in the morning. He and his assistant pull into our driveway and, upon exiting their vehicle, immediately suit up into protective clothing so that they don't contaminate our birds from their visit to other farms, or other farms' birds from ours! Art pulls out a small table, plus a set of syringes, vials, rubbing alcohol, and gloves, and we get to work. In the fall testing, we do each bird. I keep them in their coop until we start, then pull out one at a time, handing them over to Art for a little prick under the wing to collect a small bit of blood, and then back into the pen. After a little fluffing, they're back to normal! Sometimes we try to do other things at the same time: maybe dusting for mites/lice or weighing to determine growth rates. Art brings the blood samples - all labeled with each hen's or cockerel's number and flock - to a laboratory in Turlock for testing, and we receive the results within 2-3 weeks.

You'll have noticed that $100 seems like a smokin' deal for a twice yearly visit and testing - in a laboratory - each of our birds! This program is subsidized by the federal government in support of agricultural communities. This is not something I would expect our government to even notice in current times, but because the program began in the 30s, when poultry was always raised in small flocks by local farmers, it has been grandfathered in to continue serving our rural agricultural communities (though it also serves the large poultry houses, of course; I imagine they're on a different payment program, but don't know). The program, of course, doesn't have all of the resources it needs: they have a long waiting list! But it exists, at least, and is an amazing opportunity for us to be sure that you're getting the healthiest product possible!

We participate in the program to protect the health of our flock, but also - and primarily - to protect our consumers! We eat our eggs raw all the time - in mayonnaise, Hollandaise sauce, soft-cooked eggs for breakfast, etcetera - and want you to feel comfortable doing so, as well. If you have questions about this program, our eggs, our participation, or other poultry-related queries, please let us know! We love having chickens, and would love to help in making it approachable for you, too!

Here's to healthy eggs!

 - Elizabeth 

While not related to poultry, this sage is just too pretty not to photograph!

Autumn Glory!

Ahhhhh. The first few weeks of cool weather have rejuvenated herbs, flowers, and farmers alike!

Zinnias, peppers, and sunflowers: oh, my!

After months of ignoring the weeds - it was just too hot! - we've had a chance to get in there and tackle them. Pedro's new MO is to use his wheeled hoe from Valley Oak Tool Company (they're in Chico!) to clear the pathways between the garden beds, then edge the beds with a spade, and then weed (ugh!), and then loosen and compost. It's a LOT of work, but we're making up for NOT doing it for three months, so I guess it all evens out...

And on the point of autumn, our wonderful Rick Bonetti reminded me of the Autumnal Equinox in his Redding Voice blog, yesterday. It's a beautiful season to celebrate fruit and vegetable reproduction - and the edible part they produce as a bonus! - as well as begin to think about preparation for cooler weather. I've begun trimming some of my leggier perennials (I'm looking at you, white sage and wormwood!) and thinking about spring bulbs.

We have some really fun winter squash coming on:

1. Pipian, which is a dish that Pedro grew up with (one of his favorites, with chicken cooked in a sauce made of the squash seeds - totally relish!), is also a species of squash. It's really lovely, all white and stripey, and the vines just continue to get larger and larger (see August 26 summer update for their size last month...), and
2. Australian Butter Squash, one that I chose for it's lovely color... and we haven't yet used, so are looking forward to baking with (yes! squash pie! veggies for dessert... or dessert for dinner!).

We aren't getting too many of the Aussie squash, so we'll see if those get out to the CSA, but the Pipian seems to be doing well. Pedro mother did let us know that we shouldn't look at the little baby squash, as they formed - they're evidently quite shy and just fall off the vine if you look at them when they're too small!

It's lovely weather like this, with beautiful and rewarding work to be done, that operating a farm is the most wonderful thing in the world!

Many autumnal wishes to you all.

- Elizabeth

Heirloom Expo 2017

The annual Heirloom Expo has been a destination for us since we moved to Shasta County, in 2011 - conveniently, the year they began the Expo, as well! It is a mad celebration of heirloom seeds, heritage-breed livestock, and traditional - for all cultures, over millennia - food preparation methods. It's a unique and valuable opportunity for us to learn about "new" (usually newly-discovered!) vegetable and fruit strains, hear about food and agricultural policy changes, and meet people who are trying to do similar things with building community around food and earth. It's a blast of exciting-exhausting-inspirational-challenging-limitess-beautiful work and passion.

One of the things we look forward to some years is hearing Vandana Shiva speak. She comes to the Expo just about every year, and seems to be close friends with the main organizers, the owners of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. This year she spoke to the incredible and brilliant self-organization of nature ("autopoiesis"), the concept of scarcity and its impossibility in nature (one seed becoming 1,000, the 200,000 varieties of rice in India - amazing!), and the unity of all living things. As we always do, we truly enjoyed the 40 minutes she spent with us, speaking with many hundreds of people crammed into one of the largest - echoey! - buildings at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. 

One of the stories woven through her theme was the concept of violence against life in the form of genetic seed modification and the use of single-purpose chemicals. This is violence against nature through modification of seeds with toxins embedded, terminator technology (they don't self-propagate), and death of all "weeds" but the objective crop. This is violence against human communities through the dependance of farmers and consumers on multi-national corporations for something that should be free: the abundance of nature, and associated food crops ("a byproduct of seed", and Dr. Shiva reminds us!). The violence of patenting seeds, even non-genetically engineered versions, in order to gain control over the genetic material. What she didn't say, but was embedded in her lecture and in the core values of the Heirloom Expo, is that we, as consumers, participate in this cycle of violence. What choices do we make at the grocery store? Where do we go to celebrate with our families? How do we landscape our yards?

She extended her lecture to cover the actions that we choose to take, independently. The world is interconnected, and divisions that we see do not, in fact, exist. Connections exist between all of us, between us and nature, and between and within natural systems. We, as humans, are part of the system, and co-creators with the seed, with the pollinators, and with the consumer - an essential component of this system! As we always are reminded here on Oliview Farm (as if we could forget!), we are not in control of the system in which we operate, we don't understand how the system is organized, and we can only make an effort to be a productive and positive part of the system - our small role in it - through gentle growing practices, emphasizing diversity in all things, and trying to weave empathy and affection - Wendell Berry's word - in all of our actions. 

All of this beauty and diversity naturally, through a single strain of "wild" tomatoes in Central/South America!