Johnson's Backyard Garden

I had a full work day at Johnson's Backyard Garden yesterday. This is currently a 15 acre organic vegetable farm that has an 800 member CSA program. It started as a small personal garden in Brenton's backyard about 5 years ago, and is now the largest CSA in the southeastern United States. They have plans to expand and just recently purchased a new plot of land.
During my work day we separated garlic, sorted tomatoes and transplanted cabbage. To transplant we sat on a tractor attachment similar to this one with a rotor in front of us that we dropped the seedlings into. It was pretty bizarre. Pictured above are pipes for their irrigation system.

I brought home one of the seedlings that got left behind when we planted. I think this is a russian red kale.
The interns and several of the workers were twenty-something college graduates. They were listening to the Decemberists and other hipster music. The other workers were all Hispanic (most likely Mexican) men in the 30-50 age range.

This is the first time I have seen okra plants. They look a lot like hollyhocks, because they are both in the Mallow family.

Oak Hill Farm and John Lash

Saludos desde Tejas !
After a summer working in a garden in Colorado I'm still left wanting, so here I am trying to find a job as a farmer (kind of). A week ago I visited Cora Lamar at Oak Hill Farm in Poteet, the Strawberry capital of Texas. Oak Hill (10-15 acres?) sells the majority of its produce to Central Market and other grocery stores. The farm is known for its spinach, which I have yet to try. Cora showed me around her farm where her dogs were running around peeing on lettuce (don't worry it gets washed, but you should probably wash it too). John Lash, of Farm to Table, was there picking up lettuce and offered to help me find a farm to work at. Farm to Table finds and delivers produce, meat, cheese, etc. from local organic farms and distributes them to restaurants and grocery stores. He was an interesting guy, always on his cell phone trying to make arrangements and very curious about whatever new produce Cora was growing. Cora introduced me around the farmers market but I didn't have much luck making connections there.

Food aid refused

CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, is dropping its financial aid that comes from selling American agribusiness crops in the African countries it is assisting. Read the article here. "CARE’s idea is that a profitable business is more likely than a charitable venture to survive when foreign aid runs out." This raises the question, how can you effectively support developing communities/countries without harming them? A major component is supporting local businesses in a way that allows them to become self sustainable.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving all! If you're eating turkey tomorrow I would recommend getting a Heritage turkey from a good family farm (it's a little late for tomorrow but for next year). The best way to support diversity and regrow the disappearing breeds of vegetables and livestock is to eat them. Yay! I thought I would leave you with a recipe that I made for our feast tomorrow.

Food Security

Here's a fun little animation video about food security in Japan, found Treehugger. "While the stats are specific to Japan, the concepts are universal."

Michael Pollan at Wash U

Michael Pollan will be speaking at Washington University in the Graham Chapel on November 20th. Pollan has authored several books about food, including the very popular Omnivore's Dilemma. Can't wait!

Election Day

As we are making decisions about who we will vote for in the upcoming election, if you follow this blog you should consider the presidential candidates stances on farm policies. Sounds like the candidates will have to be kicked in the face before they seriously consider that our food system needs revolutionary changes. Starting with dropping subsidies and laying down the law on pollution. On another note, I thought it was strange that the author still thinks that ethanol was the sole cause of the food shortages in the past year. It really was not a substantial cause, as I noted in an earlier article. Food shortages were linked directly with the increasing cost of transportation, or fuel prices, and increased demand for food with decreased production.

The Second Green Revolution

I found an article proposing the scientific approach to the global issue of static food production in a ever multiplying population. This article states that we need a second green revolution that is based on a freer distribution of GM crops. The first revolution created from the development of technologies including pesticides, irrigation projects, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. These developments seemed like a boon to society at the time. They made food production double in some developing countries. There were unforeseen costs such as massive water pollution from chemical drainage into streams. Also these technologies are allowing farmers to use the land in an unsustainable way, degrading the soil, so it may produce more food now, but at what costs? We didn't know what the downside of the massive jump in food production would be then, and we don't know how GM crops could be harmful now. Developing crops resistant to certain disease strains could make the strains develop into more harmful diseases.

Victory Gardens

In this op-ed article in the New York Times, Ms. Arieff talks about various land reclamation projects that use new innovative spaces for growing food. These projects are popping up all over cities, including St. Louis. For example, on my first expedition to the botanical gardens, I discovered that there is a entire section devoted to food crops. Funny that we have to visit the botanical gardens to know what plants look like before they reach our table. I'm curious where these crops will end up when they are ready to be used.

Amy Franchesni started a Victory Garden project in San Francisco (mentioned in the article) part of her art work was designing fun tools for gardening such as this awesome bike.


Franchesni convinced San Francisco City Hall to transform their lawn into a giant garden. Most of the food will be "donated to those with limited access to healthy, organic produce through a partnership with local food banks and meal programs."

Tower Grove

Hello avid readers! I know you must have been wilting away while I was on hiatus. Never fear for I have returned! Better yet, I'll be here for another year. Aren't you lucky.

SO, have you been to Local Harvest Grocery? It is a tiny little shop in the Tower Grove South Area on Morganford. I make an effort to not buy eggs unless I'm in the area for some Local Harvest eggs. They have so much more flavor, and they are from local farmers. They carry a range of locally grown and produced foods, including food from the urban farms like City Seeds. All of their local products are labeled with a green tag. Their other products are "wholesome and healthful foods that are produced in organic and sustainable methods." They recently opened a cafe down the street. I cannot rate it for you yet because I still haven't eaten there, but I look forward to it!

The Tower Grove Farmers' Market is located next to the kiddy pool fountain in the middle of Tower Grove Park. It's great because all of the vendors are local businesses. It is smaller and has less variety than Soulard, but at Soulard you can't tell where the food is coming from. If I remember correctly it isn't even labeled by farm. Extra double plus bonus is if you are buying from vendors here or at Local Harvest, you are getting food that is in season.

People's Grocery

Two very inspiring projects called the People's Grocery in Brooklyn and The Greenhouse Project in Johannesburg. They address how to make a community in need more self-sustainable by creating jobs, reusing waste, and producing food within the community.

Seed Saving

A short video about a seed saving project in India.

"Each civilization was based on agriculture and collapsed at a certain time in history. They collapsed because their environment collapsed, because there was no more arable land, because they cut all the forest around. And somewhere, now in the 21st century the same thing is repeating but on a larger scale, on a big, large global scale."

Stephan Fayon

Managing needs versus demand

I found this article in which Mike Coupe director of Sainsbury's, one of the UK's leading grocery stores, in response to a statement about reducing consumption as the only viable way to cut carbon emissions said "Managing needs versus demand seems like a form of communism," he said. "It's something the world we are living in isn't ready for." This statement is not surprising coming from someone who makes his money off of people buying surpluses of food that they never use. How true is this? Are people not ready to reduce their consumption?

Just from the recent price jumps in gas, people are in mass finally shying away from excessively large cars and getting on waiting lists for hybrids. So, how far do you have to push people before they reduce their consumption? The world didn't have the problem of extreme excess production 200 years ago. When food was industrialized in the early 20th century produced in extreme excess, we provided too much food for the consumer. This made obesity eventually a national epidemic. I can't see why it should be a problem to reduce food consumption. People lived perfectly happily for thousands of years before they had the choice of Cheetos or Fritos or Doritos or Tostitos. At what point will we realize that maybe the health of the nation and the environment is more important that making this crap food that helps line the corporations pockets. It's a natural response to eat what is in front of you, and with this lining our shelves, how are we supposed to resist?

Ok, so it's viable to say maybe people are not ready to reduce consumption. But I firmly believe that mass production, leads to mass consumption.

Veg out

Some new of my favorite vegetarian eateries for when I get sick of eating the same sandwich everyday.

Kaldi's - I'm sure most of you have heard this name, and with good reason. Kaldis is a small coffee coffee chain in St. Louis with completely vegetarian menu. They serve quiche, smoothies, salads, etc. People usually look at me like I'm crazy when I mention that my favorite breakfast is a bacon (sans bacon now) and egg taco with a healthy dose of salsa. Try Kaldi's breakfast burrito and you might understand, but you will have to eat one from Las Palapas in San Antonio, Texas to really get it. Kaldi's has several locations including the DeMun neighborhood, Chesterfield, Kirkwood, Columbia, Springfeld, and downtown Clayton. 7am-11pm daily (Sunday open till 9)

OR Juice & Smoothie - This place has awesome smoothies and healthy non-fried spring rolls and tofu wraps. They cater to vegans too. They seem to be pretty serious about the organic pledge, you aren't even supposed to use your cell phone next to the food. (right...) It's nice to have a place that substitutes some protein full tofu for meat instead of just veggies all the time. If you mention an ailment to them, such as "I'm feeling tired and restless at work" they will suggest something for you to eat. I don't know how much I buy into it, but their food is delicious. They are located in the Schnucks shopping center on Clayton and Big Bend.

Mark Bittman on "What's wrong with what we eat"

In this video Mark Bittman, a famous cookbook author and journalist for the NY Times, recommends reducing our meat consumption by at least 50%, and raising our consumption of plants. Basically he recommends increasing our investment in food, by increasing home cooking and reducing junk food. He briefly summarizes the extreme makeover of food from 100 years ago to today. This video is a great introductory into understanding the food that we eat.

World food crisis

There have been several articles in the past few months about drastic food price climbs putting more people in a hunger crisis situation all over the world. Riots resulting in casualties have broken out in Haiti and Africa due to the food prices. Price increases are related to the increased cost of petroleum, Here are two articles about the situation.
CNN video
CNN article
TIME article

"In a single day in February, global wheat prices jumped 25% after Kazakhstan's government announced plans to restrict exports of its giant wheat crop for fear that its own citizens might go hungry." - TIME

Interestingly as prices continue to increase, this process of withholding crops will become more beneficial than selling them for countries concerned with starvation. This is a perfect example of the necessity for communities to be sustainable, in other words able to provide basic necessities such as food for themselves.

Eckert's Pick-Your-Own

I'm reluctant to post this, because I don't want people stealing my berries. But Eckert's family farm in Belville, IL is open for strawberry picking season this week, so get there if you want some fresh strawberries straight from the bush. Be sure to check before driving out to make sure they have strawberries still available. If you miss the strawberries, peaches are coming at the end of the month.

baby radishes!

At the first summer Kumquat workday, we harvested about 25 sell-able radishes, here are some of the babies that were quite tangy.

Greenwood Farms

I took a day trip today out to Greenwood Farms, a small family farm near Rolla, Missouri (about 2 hours southwest of St. Louis). They raise sheep (above), Jersey dairy cows (below), beef cattle (bottom), and pigs. Their Amish neighbor raises chickens for them also. They raise their animals mostly on grass, with a little extra grain supplements (for the dairy cows to make sure they get enough nutrients for producing milk.) They bottle-feed calves and lambs when necessary.
If you are looking for a meat provider that values keeping his animals healthy and well-cared-for, then this is the place to go. They were very happy to answer any questions we had about how they raise their animals. They will be selling their meat and raw milk in person at the Tower Grove Farmers' Market this summer at very reasonable prices. Also, they sell their meat to a few restaurants in town; Niche was the one they mentioned.

Where are the mid-size farms?

In an article from Grist, Hole in the Middle, Tom Philpott suggests that the insignificance of real sustainable food available in the US is due to a lack of a market for mid-size farms, that could conceivably provide a reasonable amount of food that small farms simply cannot produce. This was an interesting article, but I wish the author had speculated more about how to possibly create this market that was an alternative between farmer's markets and corporate national grocery chains. He suggested that local movements are the main efforts attempting to salvage these farms. Because the mid-size farms already lose money on the production of their food crops, they do not have the means to invest in restaurants etc. What if there were governmental policies that supported these farms instead of massively subsidizing corn, depleting any revenue for mid-scale farmers?

Thank you Zach S. for the article.