New Ecotone Sheep: Dorpers

On Wednesday, Jasper and I went up to Ben Binkley's house to pick up four young Dorper ewes, born this January. We're going to keep them in the barn at night until they're used to us so as not to be as skittish as our last flock. Here are a few photos Jessica took last night; while I'll try to get more detailed shots soon, you can also see the newly installed garden fence -- after five years of planning!

Jasper's Orchard 2

Every year since its initial planting to commemorate Jasper's birth, I've added to the orchard. This year was the largest addition since 2011. Here's what was added, as well as those earlier unreported:

Flying Dragon Citrus (x4) - 2013

Sweet Lifeberry Gogi (x1)

Big Lifeberry Gogi (x1)

Rosehips (x1) - 2013

Cornelian Cherry (x2)

Bush Cherry (x2)

Goumi (x3)

Pucimol Medlar (x1)

Supermol Medlar (x1)

Regent Juneberry (x2) - 2013

Celeste Fig (x1)

Chicago Hardy Fig (x1)

Taytwo  Pawpaw (x1) - 2013

Pennsylvania Golden PawPaw (x1)

Starking Delicious Plum (x1)

Wilson Delicious Apricot (x1)

Redhaven Peach (x1)

Hardy Giant Pecan (x1)

Stark Surecrop Pecan (x1)

Hardy Illinois Pecan (x3) - 2013

Fingerlakes Filbert Hazelnut (x1)

Chinese Chestnut (x2)

Carpathian English Walnut (x2)

Hall's Hardy Almond (x2) - 2013

Arapaho Thornless Blackberry (x6)

Natchez Thornless Blackberry (x6)

Bristol Black Raspberry (x6)

Allen Black Raspberry (x6)

Latham Red Raspberry (x6)

Heritage Red Raspberry (x6)

Pink Champagne Currant (x1)

Red Lake Currant (x1)

Black Consort Currant (x1)

Anna Hardy Kiwi (x2)

Issai Hardy Kiwi (x1)

Hardy Kiwi Pollinator (x1)

Native Persimmon - Male (x1)

From Liberal Arts to Liberal Artisans 1

In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, Scott Samuelson - a philosopher at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa - captures perfectly the aim of a liberal arts education: the enrichment of experience:

"Thinking of the value of the humanities predominately in terms of earnings and employment is to miss the point. America should strive to be a society of free people deeply engaged in "the pursuit of happiness," not simply one of decently compensated and well-behaved employees.

A true liberal-arts education furnishes the mind with great art and ideas, empowers us to think for ourselves and appreciate the world in all its complexity and grandeur. Is there anyone who doesn't feel a pang of desire for a meaning that goes beyond work and politics, for a meaning that confronts the mysteries of life, love, suffering and death?

I once had a student, a factory worker, who read all of Schopenhauer just to find a few lines that I quoted in class. An ex-con wrote a searing essay for me about the injustice of mandatory minimum sentencing, arguing that it fails miserably to live up to either the retributive or utilitarian standards that he had studied in Introduction to Ethics. I watched a preschool music teacher light up at Plato's "Republic," a recovering alcoholic become obsessed by Stoicism, and a wayward vet fall in love with logic (he's now finishing law school at Berkeley). A Sudanese refugee asked me, trembling, if we could study arguments concerning religious freedom. Never more has John Locke—or, for that matter, the liberal arts—seemed so vital to me.

I'm glad that students who major in disciplines like philosophy may eventually make as much as or more than a business major. But that's far from the main reason I think we should invest in the humanities."

I'm going to continue posting passages and photos that attempt to capture these and similar sentiments.

New Equitable Food Certification

Food, Farming and Education

If you know me or have eaten food from Ecotone, you probably have noticed how I avoid the terms producer, consumer, and customer. I find the abstract, commercial nature of such words inadequate to the relationship between farmers, eaters and food. I feel similarly about education, philosophy and the liberal arts, which is said well here.

Plato and Progress

As someone who came across philosophy first through Plato, I found this piece nice.

Remembering and Forgetting 1

“As a society, we live with the unbearable by pressuring those who have been traumatized to forget and by rejecting the testimonies of those who are forced by fate to remember. As individuals and as cultures, we impose arbitrary term limits on memory and on recovery from trauma: a century, say, for slavery, fifty years, perhaps, for the Holocaust, a decade or two for Vietnam, several months for mass rape or serial murder…

In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera writes that ‘The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ Whether the power is a fascist state or an internalized trauma, surviving the present requires the courage to confront the past, reexamine it, retell it, and thereby remaster its traumatic aspects… to the extent that bearing witness reestablishes the survivor’s identity, the empathetic other is essential to the continuation of a self.” 

Susan J. Brison

Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self, pp. 57-9

Time and Images: Year in Review

The Philosopher Is In

I think this may be the answer to supplemental farm income: philosophical therapist.

Southern SAWG 2014 Conference

Well, it's that time of year again! The Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) is proud to announce its 23rd annual Practical Tools & Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference. This year and next the conference will be in Mobile, Alabama - in part to help the regional economic recovery after the oil spill, but also because it's a chance to go to the beach in the winter! - and will be on January 15-18. 

For nearly a quarter of a century the Southern SAWG Annual Conference has provided the practical tools and solutions you've needed and built the necessary bridges between farmers, marketers, ag professionals and local food system advocates. This year the conference will be at the coast, in Mobile, Alabama, with more great program offerings!

If your interest is commercial vegetable production, specialty crop production, livestock production, farm to school, urban agriculture, marketing, food hubs, farm business management, food and farm policy, or community food systems, and sustainability is important to you, then this is the conference for you! You'll get cutting edge lessons in: 

Sustainable and organic production, in fields and in high tunnels 

Grazing and holistic livestock management 

Direct and cooperative marketing 

Farm and food policy 

Enterprise and business management 

Local food systems 

Check out the program and you'll see you can't miss this one. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Every year attendees at Southern SAWG's Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference come for the practical information and go home with so much more. While over 90% of past attendees reported they learned something they would use immediately, even higher numbers say meeting so many folks doing so many great things around the South was a highlight. With the high-rated practical sessions and pre-conference offerings and the great networking opportunities, this event attracts over 1,200 farmers and advocates every year.  

The popular pre-conference events begin on Wednesday and include a great line-up of  one-and-a-half day intensive short courses, and on Thursday, several exciting half-day field trips and mini courses. Each of these pre-conference activities requires separate registration. To learn more click here.

The general conference, to be held on Friday and Saturday, offers more than sixty 1.5 hour sessions on a broad range of topics. These sessions will provide organic and sustainable production and marketing information for commercial horticultural and livestock producers, enterprise management and farm profitability lessons, farm policy education and community food systems development information. 

This conference is an absolute must-attend event for those serious about sustainable and organic farming and creating more vibrant community food systems! 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE

Testimony from someone attending this year's conference:

“My husband and I cannot wait to attend the SAWG conference. We are young farmers, XX is 28, I am 26 with a serious passion for providing our family and our community with fresh, sustainable and organic produce. My husband has been growing food on a small scale for a number of years. Last year we began farming on a larger scale, growing enough to sell at local markets, to a couple restaurants and a small CSA. Our goal is to own a small, family farm where we provide our family and our community with good, whole foods. We are self- taught farmers and we NEED to attend this conference!

XX is the farm manager, head grower, market manager and our “big thinker” rolled into one. He also works a full-time job, off the farm!!!  We need our farm to be profitable enough that he can quit his non-farming job.  When he is not working, XX has his nose in a book. His passion for growing organic produce is boundless. This conference would be beneficial for XX in countless ways. Specifically, he wants to learn how to extend the growing season year-round. He wants to decrease crop failure by knowing more about organic pest control. XX wants to establish a profitable and manageable CSA to foster ties to our community.  He's excited to learn about planning vegetable production to keep his market stand bountiful and beautiful year-round. He wants to learn about keeping livestock, specifically goats. Above all, he wants to provide for our family by doing what he loves.

My job in this operation is to manage the business aspects. My problem is, I have no idea what I'm doing! I was so excited to see that this conference covers all aspects of agriculture, because I need help with marketing, record keeping, budgeting and accounting. I would also like to learn about farm to school programs, as it is important to us for our daughter to have real, nutritious food in her school. I would love to establish a garden at her future school and teach the children how to grow food. I am also in charge of growing flowers, which is just about my favorite thing to do! I can't wait to talk with others in the "Innovations with Cut Flowers" exchange.

We are planning to buy a small farm next year. The "Young and Beginning Farmers" exchange sounds like the answer to our prayers! This conference will literally change our lives! Trial and error has worked okay for us so far, but we need to move forward in a big way. We need the knowledge to make our dreams into reality. We need practical and sustainable solutions to achieve our idealistic goals. We need to attend the Southern SAWG conference!”