Debunking Myths about the Farmer

Posted on by
1

On the farm there is a lot of quality time spent with your co-workers, especially at a farm with an intimate setting, such as the one at Duke’s Campus Farm.  There is a lot of story exchanging and reminiscing.  It is not rare to come out on the other end of a tomato patch (or lettuce patch- depending on the season), baskets full of tomatoes, and feeling as if you have just divulged to your co-worker many of your most profound life ponderings.  It is one of the many beautiful realities of working on a farm.  On one such day in August, Emily (farm manager) told me a humorous story about an event she had just attended the week before.  At this event she was tabling for the farm, and about an hour into the event a pair of older women approached her to ask some questions.  The first question:  Where is the farmer for the Duke Campus Farm?  Emily proceeded to tell the women that she was the farmer.  The women politely laughed and then asked again:  But really where and who is the farmer for Duke Campus Farm?  Confused, Emily said to the women, “No, but really I am the farmer.”  The women, apparently displeased with Emily’s responses, said some pleasantries and left.  When Emily told me this story, she said, “What did these women expect? A middle-aged man?”

This story made me realize that yes, indeed most people think of farmers as middle-aged, uneducated white men with beer bellies that appear large enough to give birth to a case of PBR.  (I do not write this narrative to discriminate against middle-aged white farmers.  For one there are a lot of wonderful middle-aged white farmers in the world to which we owe a great amount of gratitude for growing our food.  And secondly, a good beer belly is nothing to be ashamed of).  My point here is that most people don’t think of Emily Sloss, liberal arts graduate and white woman from the Miami area, when they think of “farmer.”

I write to challenge the way we think of farmers and debunk the stereotypes. If we continue to give credence to farmer stereotypes, particularly negative ones, we will not be able to move forward with our food ethic as a nation. So let us start with debunking Myth #1.

Myth 1:  Farmers are Middle-Aged

According to data from the national agricultural census to date 40% of America’s farmers are 55 years of age or older.  I dug into this information further to find this table published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2002.  As you can see in Table 1 the average age of farmers has increased from 51.7 years of age in 1974 to 55.3 years of age in 2002.  Additionally, the percentage of farmers (older than 65) has continued to increase, and the percentage of younger farmers (under the age of 35) has decreased.  Therefore, rather than having a majority of middle-aged farmers in the United States, in actuality we have a majority of aging farmers.

Although the average age of farmers is increasing overall, there is a small growing contingent of young beginning farmers entering the mix.  In 1992, out of worry about the growing number of older farmers, Congress and the USDA created loan programs and Federal/State financing partnerships for beginning farmers and ranchers in the Agricultural Credit Improvement Act.  The reason for supporting beginning farmers and ranchers was to support younger people entering into U.S. agriculture.  Studies presented to Congress and the USDA showed that beginning farmers and ranchers tended to be younger than established farmers.  By supporting beginning farmers, the U.S. would also be supporting younger farmers.  After the 1992 Act Congress supported the Farm Security and Rural Infrastructure Act of 2002, which provided payments to beginning farmers participating in conservation.  Later in 2008, Congress supported the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act, which increased support for beginning farmers and ranchers.  The combination of all of these loan programs and grants has aided in bringing in younger, beginning farmers into the U.S. agricultural system over the past decade.

In conclusion, although our farmers are aging, there is hope that the influx of new younger farmers may ensure the security of food production in generations to come.

Myth #2: Farmers are White

In the United States, there has been historically a large contingent of African American farmers.  I grew up in a renovated sharecropper house in Stockbridge, Georgia, where 2 miles down the road Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s grandparents, former farmers, are buried.  According to a recently aired PBS story, 1 in every 7 farmers in 1920 was black.  Unfortunately, that number has decreased in the last several decades, as a result of the unfolding of a series of controversial events.  Therefore, to date there are not as many African American farmers, as their once used to be.

However, currently an increasing number of Latinos are getting involved in farming.  In order to explain this statement in more detail, it is important to make the distinction between farm operator and farmworker.  Farm operators are what most people think of as the “farmer.”  Farm operators own the land and usually the farm business.  Farmworkers, on the other hand, are the field workers, who are oftentimes working more closely with the land on a day-to-day basis.  Are farmworkers any less farmer than their farm operators?  I suppose that is a question worth asking yourself.  However, they both are “growers.”  Without one or the other our food system is non-existent.  Now thinking in terms of farmworker, the demographics of farming changes.  According to 1995 data from the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration 69% of farmworkers in the U.S. were foreign-born.  The majority of foreign-born farmworkers came from Mexico.  Additionally, farmworkers unlike their respective farm operators were younger in 1995, with approximately two-thirds of the farmworker population under the age of 35.  This 1995 data is dated, but it does give a sense of the more current demographic trends in U.S. agriculture.  Many Latinos are also entering into farming as primary farm operators. Although I was unable to locate specific statistics addressing this trend, it is important to note that a contingent of Latino farm operators exists in the U.S. as well.

In conclusion, the traditional image of the white middle-aged farmer is not only false, but it is also actively changing as more and more different kinds of poeple are trying to make careers out of growing food.

Myth 3:  Farmers are Uneducated

This latter of the myths was the one that encouraged me to write this blog.  Having helped Emily on the farm now for 6 months, I have realized that farming takes a lot of smarts.  To farm you have to know soil science, microbiology, ecology, chemistry, business, social science, the list goes on and on.  Farming also requires knowing hard skills, such as carpentry, forestry, and engineering.  The farmer is likely the most underrated person in our society.  He or she has to know a little bit of everything!  I suppose most farmers cannot quote to you from the literary classics, nor could they calculate the trajectory of a rocket, but they can tell you how to build a greenhouse, how to harness the sun’s light to your advantage, and how to know when your crops need more calcium in the soil.  In order to see farming differently, in a new and brighter light, we have to question what types of knowledge we value.  If I were to guess, I would say that our society favors the kind of knowledge produced by liberal arts institutions, rather than the kind passed down from generation-to-generation on the farm.  There is no harm in valuing liberal arts education. I, for one, am a big proponent.  However, we do not have to discard other types of knowledge as less valid.  Should we continue to devalue farming knowledge we will be lacking sorely in farmers to grow food for our children and our grandchildren.  Already we suffer from a lack of farmers willing to step up and take over the family farm.  Until we value farming knowledge again, young people will continue to go to the city after college rather than back to the farm.  It is up to us to see them for the intelligent, valued members of society that they are.

With that let us all give thanks to our farmers, white, black, Latino, male, female, old, and young.

Happy Cow Creamery

Posted on by
1

This year, I spent the last few days of October attending the 27th Annual Sustainable Agriculture Conference in Greenville, SC.  For three cool Autumnal days hundreds of farmers, scholars, educators, and food enthusiasts gathered beneath the banner of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA) to reflect on the progress food has made in the past year.  After devouring an actual feast of local food, members fanned out to learn and discuss their preferred food and farming topics.  The crispness of late fall with Halloween just a few days away reminded me that there is a something out there to fear… Mega-Ag.  But not a single individual at the conference feared it; instead they remained poised at the challenge.

On Saturday, I was given the last minute opportunity to visit a chemical-free pasture grazed dairy in Pelzer, SC.  When I received the invitation I was on the phone with my boyfriend, “I have to go right away,” I said, “they’re leaving in a few minutes.” “Go now, go see some happy cows,” he said, fully aware of my extreme fondness for bovines and sunshine.

At that time he could not have known how choice his words were, because when we arrived this is what we saw:

We were greeted and treated to a Neapolitan array of Happy Cow milk as well as buttermilk and cheese then toured the bottling room, milk parlor, and pastures.  The bottling room was actually the remodeled feed silo used to store corn when the dairy first opened.  Our group looked into the barn where cows exiting the milking parlor meandered back and forth, taking a rest in some hay and relishing in the “udder relief” of being milked.

The owners Tom Trantham and his wife began farming in 1968 and purchased their 100 acre site in 1978, planning to open a dairy.  He managed the farm exactly the way he was expected to, spreading fertilizer and herbicides to grow grain to feed his cows that were confined to a concrete pad.  Despite his repeated efforts though, the dairy farm slowly crept toward bank foreclosure.

Then in 1987, the year of my birth, his confined dairy gals made a daring escape into an adjoining field, ravenously devouring the tastiest leafy tops.  At their next milking, he noticed that their milk output started rising by the pound.  And what did he owe this increase to? Not chemicals or hormones, it was the nutrition provided by the diversity of grasses the ladies had feasted upon, those pesky grasses that encroached upon his carefully fertilized and planted grain fields.  By 1988, his farm was chemical free and he had begun a rotational grazing system with small fields and daily herd moves.  The future of food had become a bit brighter for my infant self, now 25 years old and striving to ensure the happiness of every cow, chicken, and pig.

The Happy Cows

Mr. Trantham took rotational grazing to a new height with the “Twelve Aprils” pasture management approach.  Twelve Aprils grazing, now internationally recognized, posits that with thoughtful management and grass species selection pastures can be green and lush with springtime-like growth every month of the year.

Happy Cow Creamery is now a booming local business, attracting customers from all along the southern coast and beyond.  A small market operates in the former grain barn, selling Happy Cow dairy products and other independent farmers’ goods like sausage and salsa. 

During my time at the a Soil and Water Conservation District I worked with an array of livestock and poultry farmers and during the height of the recession saw more dairy farmers hang up their coveralls than any other group (proportionally).  Even with monthly government subsidy checks dairy farmers could not afford to keep their farms operating.  Why? Because in AR dairy farmers grazed their cows, milked them, and sold the milk to a processing plant who then distributed it to grocery stores.  A generally small carbon footprint, but the price farmers received for milk wasn’t enough to stay open.  Again, why? Because dairy operations that milk twice a day then turn their girls out to pasture can’t compete with the production from industrial milk barns where cows remain in individual pens their entire lives, eating a strict grain and oftentimes hormone laced diet.

Happy Cow Creamery continues to flourish, despite “going against the grain” with a pasture grazing system because they are able to pasteurize and market their own product, not to mention the Trantham family’s dedication to sustainable use of their land.  51% of Happy Cow milk is sold wholesale to nearby grocery stores and the remaining 49% is sold retail in their on-farm store.  Retail sales mean a much better price for the farmer, a price so good they can stay in business.

I have high hopes for America’s remaining grass-fed dairies.  If buyers have the option to buy any sort of local food, milk is a top choice.  The local marketing potential is through the roof if they can break free of corporate buyers the same way Mr. Tratham’s cows broke free of their concrete pad.  Many would compare getting a small business loan to purchase a pasteurizing and bottling system to tearing through a barbed wire fence, so if you as an individual are wondering what you can do, I recommend you encourage a Farm Bill and USDA staff that provide many small loans to many small farmers, instead of single giant loans to build a mega-milkplex.

For the future of farming, the more direct marketing farmers can access, the better.  Companies used to profit by skimming cream off the top, but now they control everything but the cow.  Milk is a commodity, a necessary product that the government has taken steps to ensure remains at a falsely low cost.  But the inclusion of another link in the sales and distribution chain has put too much strain on those at the beginning end.

As always, we at Duke Campus Farms encourage everyone to buy food that is from local and sustainable farms, farms like Happy Cow Creamery whose product travels a total of 48 ft from cow to bottle and is still going strong, even though they haven’t applied chemicals since Reagan was in office.

How to make a low tunnel in pictures

Posted on by
Reply

Low tunnels are important in the late fall, winter, and early spring to protect plants from the harsh winter elements.  According to UMass Amherst, low tunnels can be used to overwinter some of the hardier late fall crops, such as “those crops of the Brassica [e.g. broccoli, cabbage, etc], allium [e.g. onions, garlic], Chenopodia [e.g. spinach], and umbel [e.g. carrots, dill, fennel, etc] families.”  In our climate here in North Carolina, USDA plant hardiness zone 7b, root crop vegetables, such as garlic and onions tend to survive well without the need for low tunnels.  A heavy mulch on onions and garlic help them survive throughout the winter.  Low tunnels in North Carolina, however, are especially important for some other root crops and leafy greens.  Low tunnels are a particularly useful tool for farmers, because they help the farmer grow throughout the year.  Hoop houses, which are larger in scale, serve this same purpose.  (For more details on hoop houses check out this earlier post by Lee Miller on how to build a hoop house at a low cost).  By extending the season with low tunnels or hoop houses, a farmer can generate more profit and have a steady supply of produce throughout the year.  For us here at Duke Campus Farm, low tunnels and hoop houses are especially important, because we want to provide the dining halls on campus with produce throughout the school year while students are on campus.

The great news… low tunnels are very easy to make AND cheap!  At the Duke Campus Farm we recently constructed low tunnels for our asian greens and our parsnips.  The winter is coming soon, so we have to be prepared.  Check out these easy steps on how to make a low tunnel, and – if you haven’t already- put up your low tunnels soon!

Materials

1/2” PVC cut into 5 feet pieces.  We bought “Charlotte Pipe 1/2-in x 10ft 600PSI Schedule 40 PVC Pressure Pipe” from Lowes.  You want to space each “hoop” of the low tunnel about 6 feet apart.  Therefore, for our 100ft rows we needed about 17 pieces.  Because we bought 10ft pipe, we only needed 9 pipes for a 100ft row.  At Lowes this cost us a total of $16.11.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/2-in x 2ft steel rebar pins.  You will need 2 rebar pieces per “hoop.”  For example, for our 17 “hoops” for our 100ft row, we needed 34 pieces.  At Lowes each pin is $2.04.  Therefore, for a 100 ft row and 17 pins it costs us a total of  $69.36.

 

 

Spunbonded row cover.  This is the material you will lay over the hoops to protect the plants from the winter elements.  For our rows we needed 100 feet of row cover.  You generally want the row cover to be a little longer and a little wider than the row is long and wide. This will allow you to drape the row cover over the hoops.  Our row covers were about 105ft long and about 7.5ft wide.  This may be a special order you have to make online, unless you have a specialty sustainable farm supply store in your area.  At our local specialty sustainable farm supply store it cost us $65 for a 250ft roll.  The row cover we ordered was called AgroFabric 34 (90″ width).

TOTAL COST FOR A 100ft LOW TUNNEL = $150.47

Directions

 

Place each rebar piece in the ground at about a 35-45 degree angle inward.  For each hoop there are 2 rebar pieces that will face each other.

 

 

 

Space the rebar pieces 6 feet apart along the row.

 

 

 

                                                         Bend pvc pipe over slanted rebar pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cover with row cover and weigh down the row cover with weights on either side of low tunnel.  Rocks work very well.

 

 

 

 

Now your plants are protected from the cold winter elements, and you can keep growing into the the winter months!

 

 

 

Meat and Greet

Posted on by
Reply

Sara E. Overton, Duke Campus Farm Graduate Assistant

 

Chickens have always been prominent in my life. In 1991 a poultry farmer sold my father a five acre pasture next to his broiler houses so he could pay to replace one house’s collapsed roof. That pasture was where we built our house and where I lived for the next 14 years. When I was in early elementary school my sister and I even liberated a rooster and a hen from his houses and kept them as pets for a time.

After college I worked for two and half years with the 250 poultry farmers in Washington County, AR, where I visited their operations for nutrient management planning, inspections, and regulatory compliance. Each year I submitted their production numbers to Little Rock, reporting weights and ages of tens of millions of chickens and turkeys that went to slaughter. Despite my ample experience in and around chickens, I had never actually killed one. On October 2, 2012, that changed.

On a warm October afternoon, a group of Duke poultry enthusiasts ventured to Coon Rock Farm outside of Hillsborough, NC for a chicken processing workshop. It was completely hands-on (and later hands-in), as we were paired together to select a rooster to kill, clean, and disembowel into a bird ready to eat, just add heat. I paired with my friend Kim, who selected a choice clucker who was placed upside down in a metal cone on a fencepost. Turning chickens upside down leaves them calm and passive because it incites sleep instincts, and they can then die without being overwhelmed by panic and fear (in theory). To kill the chicken, a practiced hand can use a knife to remove the head sticking out of the bottom of the cone.

Regrettably, I do not have a practiced hand. I tried my hardest to make a swift kill but it did take a bit longer than I had hoped. After the kill, we scalded the body in hot water to loosen feathers, then tossed him into the aptly named “Mother Plucker” which stripped him of his feathers in a matter of seconds. After chilling awhile in some cold water we pulled him out to remove the innards. This was actually the most surreal part of the experience for me because the innards were still warm and steamy. It was this moment that secured the connection in my brain that an animal that was alive roughly 20 minutes ago was now being deconstructed for the choicest bits. Our Rhode Island Red had officially become meat.

We took our bird back to Durham and Kim later made a tasty improvised chicken pho for the Farmhand Fall Festival. When eating the meat, I can’t say I felt any guilt or remorse toward the rooster that just a few days earlier had been wandering about the barnyard, scratching in the dirt and mackin’ on the lady chickens. He had a good life, a considerably long and happy life compared to the chickens I was accustomed to working with. But our chicken was different than the hundreds of thousands of chickens I’d waded through in Arkansas’ factory-farm chicken houses. Our bird was smarter; he had a look about him that he could survive on his own for a short time, knowing how to graze and when to seek shelter. The birds I had worked with in the poultry industry were intricately bred to be ideal for American eating with lots of muscle, just enough fat, and absolutely no survival instinct or degree of intelligence.

The chickens my sister and I had emancipated as children were similar: stupid and helpless. After my chicken destroyed my mom’s flowerbeds, we took them to a small farm nearby that grazed birds. The farmer and her husband reluctantly accepted our chickens into their flock and even as a child I could tell they had very low expectations. Commercial broilers are not bred to live long, their tiny hearts can’t sustain their rapid growth or high muscle density.

My feelings about eating meat have not changed. Even at the small local scale, Coon Rock Farm is still a business, and at their age and gender the roosters were more valuable dead than alive. In my view, tending animals is part of the human identity. We enjoy taking care of living things and I can’t say the same for any other member of the animal kingdom. I consent that there are many ways to care for living creatures that don’t result in their killing for consumption, but chickens were domesticated from the tropical rainforest to be eaten, either as embryos or animals. Farming poultry is a tradition in my eyes and is embedded in our culture. I have had a few moments of sadness in the past week, mostly because I wished I had been able to kill him quickly so his last thoughts would be of the sunny day with lush grass and plenty to eat, but I fear he felt panic in the end and for that I feel terrible. In the end, I realized how much skill is involved in chicken processing, just like the skills the farmers at Coon Rock use to let their birds live contentedly and humanely.

From Bird to Meat: Chicken Processing 101

Posted on by
Reply

This past Wednesday we hosted our first Chicken Processing Workshop in collaboration with Brock Phillips and Mary Beth Miller at Coon Rock Farm. Currently at the Campus Farm we don’t have any livestock, but this workshop is at the heart of what we want to teach the Duke community. Even if we aren’t raising our own chickens for use in the dining halls, without a doubt students are eating chicken every day without knowledge of how the animal became the grilled chicken breast on their plate. We aim to be a  “learning laboratory” at the Duke Campus Farm, and this workshop is a prime example of that.

By far this has been our most “controversial,” relevant, and popular workshop offered. When publicizing the event to all my friends and classmates, one student responded “Am I a better person if I want to or don’t want to do this?.” My answer: both. One of the unique qualities of this workshop was the option to be either a participant or an observer. As an avid vegetarian, mainly because I think I am incapable of killing an animal, killing a chicken was not an appealing thought.  But I have to recognize that chicken eating is a stable in American food, and because of that knowing the practice of processing a chicken makes me a more informed foodie, so I chose to be an observer. If you are a meat eater, this workshop showed you how to process sustainable, ethically raised chickens.

Brock Phillips and Mary Beth Miller, local farmers at Coon Rock, led the workshop at their location in Hillsborough. We were unable to host the event at the Duke Farm in part because our lack of equipment, but also in North Carolina all chickens must be processed at the farm at which they are raised. Duke undergrads, Nicholas School students, Duke nurses, professors, and Durham community members were amongst the mix of twenty people who came to the event. The participants broke into seven pairs, leaving six observers. First each pair killed their chicken, a Rhode Island Red, by placing it upside down in an inverted steel cone, exposing their head.

While holding the chicken’s head just above the neck, the participant used a knife to saw through the neck. This was a relatively quick cut, taking no more than a minute. The chicken was left in the cone to drain for about ten minutes. We then took the bird and dipped it in almost boiling water for two minutes to loosen the feathers.

Phillips gave us the option of plucking by hand, but we opted for the “mother plucker” a large steel bin with plastic fingers all around the bottom and sides. While cold water is sprayed inside the bottom rotates, kicking the chicken all around so the plastic fingers can remove the feathers. In just a minute the entire bird was featherless, a normally tedious job by hand. All these feathers are saved and turned into feather meal, an important fertilizer we use at the Campus Farm to add nitrogen to the soil. Similar to other animal byproducts like manure, feather meal is an easy way to get nitrogen is essential for crop growth.

Now we were ready to clean the chicken for cooking. First to go are the feet, the neck, and a small oil sac located right above the tail (this is full of fat and is not tasty). Then we opened up the bird from the bottom, grabbing all the insides and pulling them out (the intestines, heart, kidneys, testes, and stomach).

Once the inside cavity was mostly clean we scraped the back wall for the lungs, small pink spongy organs that stick right to the flesh. We checked for the esophagus and trachea in the neck area, strong skinny tubes and removed them as well. Each pair left with the full chicken along with any organs they wanted to keep: kidney for pâté, hearts for skewering and grilling, and feet and neck for flavoring broths. All the other organs were composted.

Melissa Chieffe, Trinity 2015, says she took this workshop “because she wanted to know where her food came from. But further, if you can’t kill it, you shouldn’t eat it.” Not only were we taught an ecologically sound and humane to kill chickens, but we also learned about the importance of community-based produce. Even though we encounter meat on a multi-daily basis, our day out at Coon Rock Farm was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity for most. You can see the disconnect. We hope to continue hosting workshops like this one to teach about and invite discussion around food and the current food system. Special thanks to everyone at Coon Rock for facilitating this workshop!

 

Watch this video of one of the kills!

From Chicken Workshop

 

Build a 1200 sq ft High Tunnel for $1500

Posted on by
1

What This Is

I wrote this post with the hope of helping small-scale farmers build a large, sturdy and economical high tunnel. This design is perfect for winter growing, and can also be used (with a shade cloth replacing the poly skin) for season extension in the summer.

Our high tunnels are 100’ long and 12’ wide, to suit our 100-foot bed length and 3’ bed width with 1.5’ aisles (3 beds per tunnel). The total cost is about $1500, which is a steal for a high tunnel this size (even if it is a few bucks more than the designs it’s based on, for reasons we’ll discuss down the page). Better yet, this is a project that three people could easily manage in a day, even on the first try.

With a little practice you and your two friends could pop up three of these in a good day.

This post relies on two links, in particular: first, Johnny’s excellent 27-page guide to building a high tunnel; and second, Mother Earth News’ diagram of a high tunnel end wall frame.

What To Do

If you want to build our high tunnel, here’s what you do. First, check out the materials list and order what you need (but don’t actually do this first–go ahead and read through everything). Second, proceed as if you were going to build Johnny’s high tunnel, until you get to page 17, where they tie off the plastic in an unsightly and ungainly ponytail and wedge it between two T-posts. Don’t do that.

Instead, follow Johnny’s high tunnel construction plans about 80%. Basically, we build the tunnel according to Johnny’s excellent plans until the very end, when it comes time to tie off the plastic on the end walls. For this step, we use a simple framing approach recommended by Mother Earth News (MEN) and many others.

The advantage of Johnny’s plans is that they are geared toward a simple, strong and highly economical structure. For example, where MEN uses PVC pipe to construct the bows, Johnny’s uses steel fence rail. And instead of requiring hundreds of feet of wiggle wire/track, Johnny’s uses a nifty lacing of parachute cord (total cost: $50) to hold the plastic in place while allowing for easy adjustment up and down.

The disadvantage of Johnny’s plans, as far as we’re concerned, is the absence of a door (or doors). Instead, the ends of the poly skin are simply tied off and staked down. Users crawl in and out under the liftable poly cover on the sides. There’s nothing wrong with this approach. However, there are two disadvantages that led us to build proper end walls with working doors.

First, Johnny’s design assumes two extra aisles inside the high tunnel, one on each side. We prefer to maximize the growing space and run our beds to within inches of the side. In so doing, we actually get a lower cost/square-foot of growing space as compared to Johnny’s design, despite the extra $150 or so it costs to build the end walls. Second, it seems truly inconvenient to slide under the poly skin every time you want to get in or out, especially if you are toting tools/harvest bins/wheel barrows with you. It just seems like a really easy way to put a hole in the (expensive) poly siding.

Enter the MEN’s plans. Many people have built a simple frame for their end walls, but we chose to highlight the MEN diagram for its simplicity. The end wall frame is constructed of treated 2×4’s, with a bottom end board of treated 2×6. You can easily adjust the dimensions to suit the particular widths of your high tunnel and, especially, your door.

Now for our own design touch. We then run dual-track wiggle-wire channel along the top arc of 2×4 frame, and a single-track channel along the doorframe and the 2×6 on the ground. This allows us to attach the large poly skin to the top of the double-track, and then cut pieces of poly to fit on either side of the door.

Materials

This greenhouse materials spreadsheet (including links to all the materials) should get you started. (If you decide to lengthen/shorten your high tunnel, check out Johnny’s helpful worksheet, which customizes most of the material list depending on the length you’re trying to build).

Note that some of the materials for this project are from Johnny’s. Their pole-bender is a good investment at $60 even if you’re only planning to build one high tunnel, because it allows you to make near-perfect bends in any standard 1-3/8” top rail fencing. The first time we built a high tunnel, we bent all of the bows by hand using a jig we rigged up from two T-posts and a telephone pole (the result was impressive considering, but the time and stress were nothing near worth it). Johnny’s also sells a nice piece of poly cover (24’ x 125’) that will work very nicely for this 100’x12’ design, including enough extra material on the ends to cover the end walls. If you’re looking to save a little money, these plans replace Johnny’s film with good stuff from littlegreenhouse.com, which shaves about $50 off the total cost. Finally, Johnny’s sells the appropriate cross-connectors that will attach the bows to the ridgeline. These can be hard to find elsewhere in the proper dimensions, and again, they are reasonably priced at $5 for two.

We’ve listed Farm Tec as a good supplier for wiggle wire and the wiggle wire track. This stuff is not cheap at over $1/ft, but good luck finding it cheaper anywhere else. If you do, get in touch!

Just for kicks, I’ve linked to Bolt Depot for all of the (literal) nuts and bolts required for the project. They are a great resource for any kind of fastener, and they have excellent prices. But please note that these (or comparable) materials could be picked up at just about any home improvement store. Ditto for the parachute cord from parachutecord.com—you could find it a lot of places, but $54 is cheap for 1000’ of quality cord.

We’ve included links to Lowe’s for the remaining materials. They could be acquired just as easily at any home improvement store.

What it doesn’t include:

Doors (you can usually find used glass doors at places like the Habitat Re-Store or other used building supply stores). You’ll want to buy your doors before you go about framing the walls, since the dimensions will depend on the door.

Hinges, if the doors you buy don’t have them.

Wood Screws, since you’ll probably have some laying around.

Duct Tape. Duh. Especially useful for wrapping around the joint between the bow pole and the post pole, to prevent tearing on the poly. Similarly, for buffering the end of the ridgepole so that it doesn’t tear at the poly.

Good Drill Bit. ¼” for drilling into metal.

AND…Basic tools, including a drill, a heavy mallet, measuring tape, a hacksaw or reciprocating saw to cut the posts (or have the home improvement store do it, as we did), and a plumb line if you’re super anal.

 

BEETS

Posted on by
1

Its been a while since I posted a song, but the DCF Beet Festival is less than three weeks away, and I couldn’t contain myself.

Beets
By Damon Cory-Watson

Some people turn their nose up at the dirt
But how can you get your beets without the Earth?
Full of that sweet, sweet sugar
I put my beets in the oven to release that complex flavor

I’m talking about beets
Oooooooo
Beets
Oooooo

In the family amaranthacanceae
The genus is betus and the species vulgaris, hey
But you don’t have to know their taxonomy
To sit at the table and have a bowl of beets with me

I’m talking about beets
Oooooooo
Beets
Oooooo
Beeeets

A relative of spinach
But a tuber in the ground
Full of betacyanins
They’ll never let you down
They come in different colors
Red, yellow, white, or candy striped
Pickled, boiled, roasted, braised, shredded, juiced, in marinade
You’ll always get them right

Looking at their seeds their kind of spiny
How can something so good come from something so tiny
Green on the top and red on the bottom
Full of vitamin C so everybody wants ‘em

I’m talking about beets
Oooooooo
Beets
Oooooo

Iron, phosphorus, magnesium, copper
They got lots of micro-nutrients and fiber
37% of daily folate
I can’t remember what that is, but I think its great

I’m talking about beets
Oooooooo
Beets
Oooooo

A relative of spinach
But a tuber in the ground
Full of betacyanins
they’ll never let you down
They come in different colors
Red, yellow, white, or candy striped
Pickled, boiled, roasted, braised, shredded, juiced, in marinade
You’ll always get them right

Charlotte’s Web Wanes

Posted on by
Reply

I remember the first time I had to prep the earth for a new season.  I was 23, and I had big plans for my family’s spring garden.  I had just bought seeds to plant all the summer favorites, squash, beans, cucumber, and tomatoes.  We were ready to go big.  My dad and I made plans to till under the soil in March.  Tilling would involve turning under all the early spring crops we had planted, arugula, spinach, radishes, and the like.  To some, tilling may not be a big deal.  But when you put your heart and soul into planting the crops that are about to be tilled under, then tilling takes on a whole new meaning, particularly when you are tilling under your first garden.  I prepped myself for the solemnity that would accompany the tilling.  The next morning I woke up, drank my coffee, and walked outside, ready to till.  When I got to the garden plot, however, dad was already outside with the rent-a-rototiller tilling under the whole garden.

“Dad!”  I yelled over the rototiller.  “Stop!”

“What?” Dad said.  “What I do?  Did I do something wrong?“

“I didn’t get to say goodbye” I exclaimed pitifully.

Dad, a man who had been through a war and a recession or two, and who was apparently confused and somewhat mildly amused by my distress over these dying plants, stopped the rototiller and let me have my moment with the plants.

I do not want you to think that the scene that then unfolded was something out of Greek tragedy, tears, a ripping of the shirt, and a pounding of the chest.  No, it was maybe closer to the movie, When Harry Met Sally, when Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal have finally agreed to be friends after a few initial, annoying encounters and are saying “Goodbye, until next time” for maybe the fifth or sixth time in the movie.  I experienced the type of goodbye with those plants, that a friend says to another friend when they know they probably will not see her again until next Christmas.  There is sadness and grief, but there is also hope and an appreciation for having experienced that friend in your life for just that moment.  So my time with the plants after that first till, was like that, saying goodbye to a friend until next time.

Now having grown gardens almost every season since 23, I have experienced this feeling many many times.  It’s a familiar feeling.  And now at Duke Campus Farm, it is time to experience that feeling again.

I knew it would be time to experience that feeling again, when the web of “La Reina de los Tomates”  (The Queen of the Tomatoes) began to fall in disrepair.   As you can see in this picture here, La Reina, was an Orb Weaver Spider.  Some call her the Common Garden Spider.  And we loved her!  La Reina caught large numbers of stinkbugs, and a number of other harmful farm pests, in her web.  She was a super star!  But then the air started to turn cool, the tomato blight, which overcomes most all tomato plants at the season’s end, started to take over, and La Reina’s web started to fall.  And then one day, La Reina was nowhere to be found.  Her time had come, and the tomato crop’s time was to come soon thereafter.

The natural movie/book parallel to draw here is Charlotte’s Web.  As little kids, we all loved Charlotte’s web.  Sometimes I think cases of arachnophobia would be significantly higher in this country if it were not for our beloved Charlotte’s Web.  We all rooted for Charlotte and Wilber, the great spider and pig team.  As children, they helped us learn about friendship and selflessness.  However, for many of us in my generation, we missed a couple of lessons in that movie, which I did not discover until recently.  Unlike generations before us, my generation and the generations after me, were brought up in a world that was predominately urban.  For the first time in history, more of the world’s population resided in urban areas rather than in rural areas.  And with that transition came a transition in the way we perceived the world. Charlotte’s Web became a story more about human relations than nature-human relations.  Where my generation saw a story about friendship and selflessness, the generations before us learned about the truths that are nature and the farm.  The generations before us may have learned about friendship from Charlotte’s Web, but they also learned that spiders were beneficial creatures on the farm and in the garden.  They learned that seasons change and with them come the death of one life for the rebirth of another.  The generations before us more profoundly understood the reality that Wilbur faced, the reality that if Wilbur didn’t fatten up and look pretty for the fair he would have been dinner for the family the next day.

Now having farmed, and grown, I am seeing the story of Charlotte’s Web in a whole new light, and I am seeing it play out before me now as we watch La Reina’s web wane.  I am reliving a world that generations before me lived.  A world, wherein I have to say goodbye to this season and welcome the next… a world wherein I have to take down the tomatoes to make room for lettuce…  a world wherein I have to be ready for the change that is to come, and I have to do so with grace and compassion for the new lives that change will bring. 

So with that I say goodbye Charlotte’s web, goodbye La Reina, goodbye tomatoes… until next time.  Blessings in your going and blessings for your return.

 

Speed Weeding and a Reflection on Weeds

Posted on by
Reply

As we get ready for our “speed weeding” mixer this Friday, the staff and volunteers at Duke Campus Farm have become rather reflective on the topic of weeds. Who would have thought weeds could be such a topic of conversation and debate?  But oh they are!  In order to shine a light on this topic of weeds, it may first be beneficial to define the term “weed.”  What is a weed?

In his book Second Nature, Michael Pollan went on an in-depth search to try to find the true meaning behind weeds and explore why a weed is a weed[i].  As he discovered, a weed has many definitions, depending on your audience.  Emerson, the purist and naturalist at heart, defined a weed as a human construct and a “defect of our perceptioni.” This definition of a weed makes sense in a “think therefore I am”-kind-of-way.  We say it is a weed, so it’s a weed.  We, as humans, determine what is a weed and what is not.  Pollan on his quest then went on to compare Emerson’s weed definition to botanical definitions.  The two definitions he highlighted were:  “A weed is any plant in the wrong place,” and “a weed is an especially aggressive plant that competes successfully against cultivated plants” – both subjective human constructs if you ask mei. 

What I have found in my limited botanical training is very similar to what Pollan discovered…  Weeds, and the definition of them are subjective.  My botany professor in college loved to point out what I thought to be “weeds” on the side of the road and exclaim, “oh how beautiful!”  One man’s weed is a botanist’s beloved native wildflower.  In more technical terms, weeds are generally the opportunistic plants that grow in disturbed soils.  We see weeds, not only on farms and in gardens, but on roadsides and meadows, all places that have usually been disturbed by human hands.  What Pollan discovers in Second Nature is similar to what I have discovered in my years as a botany student, a gardener, and a farmer…  the evolution of weeds and their seeming omnipresence in the world are the result of humans.  Humans have not only aided in the evolution of corn, but they have simultaneously aided in the evolution of the weed.  Because wherever there is a corn plant in disturbed soil, there is also a weed.  On gardens and farms everywhere we have created the ideal conditions for the weed, and it will never go away… unless…

Unless we genetically modify our corn (insert desired commodity crop vegetable here), so that it is resistant to herbicides we spray on our fields.  That way… when we spray herbicides on the fields we only kill the weeds and not the corn!  This logic has been shared by chemical companies since the 1990’s and it continues today.  The problem with this logic, however, is that the evolution of weeds and plants happens rather quickly.  Therefore, eventually resistant individuals of weed plants will thrive and reproduce to create resistant varieties of weeds, which this BBC story calls “superweeds![ii]”

Farmers across the U.S. are beginning to see resistant varieties of weeds growing in their fields and taking over.  This phenomenon has decreased production and profit for many farmersii.  However, instead of trying to find new methods to fight weeds, many agricultural companies are investing in research that focuses on the genetic modification of other corn varieties that are resistant to more potent herbicidesii.  The reality, however, is that in a few years, weeds will develop yet more resistant varieties.  As one Weed Scientist from the University of Nebraska said in this BBC report, “There is going to be a problem down the road if we become a one-chemistry agriculture.  Nature always finds a way to win.”  “We need to diversify our tools for weed controlii.”  We cannot rely on one method of weed control.  We need a comprehensive, integrative approach…  For as long as there is farmland and soils disturbed by human hands, there will be weeds.

So now you can see how weeds can be a topic of both debate and reflection.  And now you can also see why it is so important that we not only manage weeds at Duke Campus Farm, but that we manage them in a comprehensive way, i.e. speed weeding cover cropping, mulching, and the like.  So come on out to Duke Campus Farm on Friday from 5-7pm, and help us in our battle against pigweed and ragweed.  Be a part of the story that is the weed-human evolution story, and find “your match in the weed patch” while you’re at it!

[i] Pollan, Michael.  Second Nature:  A Gardener’s Education.  Grove Press, New York:

1991.

[ii] McGrath, Matt and Franz Strasser.  “Superweeds pose GM-resistant challenge for

farmers.”  BBC News.  Accessed September 19, 2012.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19594335.

A Room of One’s Own

Posted on by
2

Since Emily and I sowed the inaugural bed of romaine lettuce in March, 2011, hundreds upon hundreds of community members have graced the Duke Campus Farm with their toiling hands and sweating brows and triumphant laughter.  Our workdays, festivals and workshops have attracted students, faculty, media, chefs, out-of-towners, and top-level University administrators.

Through it all, we’ve tried to foster a community space that evokes a modernized version of the Jeffersonian ideal. As Jefferson wrote in 1781, “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.”

Alas, it seems that while the Duke Community is eager to tap DCF’s deposit of “substantial and genuine virtue”, while they are keen to “keep alive the sacred fire,” while they willingly toil in this little square of paradise on the edge of the Duke Forest, sometimes nature calls them back into her bosom. That is, sometimes they have to pee and poop.

Until recently, Farm staff had few answers to the squeamish pleadings for a place to find relief. We meagerly pointed to the nearby forest in what amounted to an apology more than a solution.

Today, I am pleased to write, we can do a whole lot better. Thanks to Green Grant funding from the Sustainability Office, and the patient work of many hands, the Farm celebrates the opening of its very own outhouse. It is, to quote one user, “certainly the nicest outhouse in Orange County.”

If you’d like to take a virtual tour, Bryan Roth over at the Duke Communications shop has prepared a lovely little video.

Since the outhouse project began, I’ve had a lot of questions about its purpose, design and construction. I’ll try to answer a few common questions here. Feel free to add your own in the comments, and I’ll do my best to respond.

Why build a pit privy instead of a composting toilet or an artificial wetland?

I’ve gotten this question many times, including from one disgruntled reader on Duke Today who expressed her “shock” and “disappointment” that we would build such a primitive structure. The simple answer is that we tried—really tried—to convince Orange County to permit a composting toilet. After all, the Duke Campus Farm strives to minimize our external inputs and, to be blunt, poop can be an excellent and safe source of plant nutrients. We wouldn’t have used the compost (aka “humanure”) on any vegetables, but we could have used it to grow a rainbow of zinnias and sunflowers. Alas, the gods that be in Orange County were having none of it. So much for a progressive county, huh?

As far as artificial wetlands go, I think it’s a great idea. I helped design the artificial wetland that processes the brown water at the Montessori School of Raleigh Middle School in rural Durham County. It’s a lovely system, complete with plant-lined berms, a UV-light and a constructed wetland. It also cost about $100,000 to build, or about 10X the annual operating budget of the Farm. If anyone is looking to cement their legacy, the Farm is happy to offer naming rights for the wetland successor to the outhouse. Email emilysloss@duke.edu.

 

Why did you build such a nice structure? Isn’t it just a hole in the ground?

Another common question. It’s true that the outhouse cost $1,000 in materials alone, not to mention over $600 in permitting fees and non-negligible labor costs. It has ample space inside, two sliding windows, a Dutch door, and a small library.

The answer is several-fold.

First, I’m out at the Farm a lot. Emily, Sarah, Damon, Anna, and others are out there even more. I want a pleasant place to do my business and I imagine that they do, too. While I’m “busy” I like to watch the deer that mosey on the edge of the Duke Forest, and watch the sunset out the window as I catch up on the latest issue of Mother Jones.

Second, there is a growing perception of farming as a second-class occupation, dirty work, even uncivilized (ironic enough given agriculture’s leading role in the birth of settled society). The Duke Campus Farm exists to, among other things, renew the image of farming as a rewarding, attainable and, yes Mr. Jefferson, virtuous occupation. Even—ahem—for young people with a world-class education. Farmers should not be relegated to a dark cramped putrid bathroom any more than they should not go to the opera or enjoy world-class healthcare.

Finally, the Farm is a center of community. Beauty inspires community. Comfort facilitates community. If we can’t be proud of what we build together, with our hands, we will surely struggle to build something worthy in the intangible dimensions of community space. Or, as Emerson wrote, “I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls…to teach us manners, and abolish hurry.” Indeed.

What qualified you to build this thing in the first place?

Stubborn patience, an abundance of time, and really well-written and specific building plans.