Week 6 on the Farm 2017: Mushrooms, Honeybees, and (hopefully) some planting

Weather Forecast: Tuesday, mid-40s, 60% chance of rain; Wednesday, 60 degrees F, sunny

Ah, this is the Michigan spring weather I know and love! Okay, "love" might be too strong a term. We've had a LOT of rain in Shelbyville since I saw you all last and it sounds like it's going to continue over the next couple of days. I'm hoping that by Wednesday afternoon, we'll have at least one garden bed that is dry enough to plant, since I've been holding back the kale, chard, and spinach seedlings for you to plant this week. I did go ahead and put some of the pac choi and lettuce that you started in soil blocks in the ground last week, along with arugula and mustard greens. They are doing pretty well and I'm sure are going to shoot up after this rain.

It's doubtful that the soil is going to be dry enough to work on Tuesday, which is fine, because we've got some non-soil related projects to attend to!

One thing we need to get done soon is to put together some new frames with beeswax foundation for our honeybees. One of the suggestions I've read about to help keep your honeybees healthy is to remove old darkened wax from the hive and replace it with new foundation, since the old wax can contain pesticide build-up that is harmful to the bees. I'm not sure how big of a problem that is here, since most of the fields around us don't have pesticides being actively applied to them, but it can't hurt. So I'll have you help me clean up some of the old frames and put together new ones.

I'm sure many of you have heard that honeybees are struggling these days. Actually, it's not just honeybees (which aren't native to North America); our native bees (and other pollinators) are having difficulty thriving as well. There's been a lot of research and speculation about Colony Collapse Disorder, but this TED talk by Marla Spivak sums up most clearly my understanding of what it is we're doing that's harming the bees (and ourselves too): http://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing

And from PBS's "Nature", a 2 1/2 minute clip on the symbolic "dance-language" of bees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-8QuBDkkw

Pretty cool, huh? The honeybee gets a lot of the publicity because of its sexy habit of making candy for us out of flower-water, but as I mentioned above, there are lots of cool native bee species in Michigan as well. This pdf from Michigan State University has photos, as well as tips for helping out our native bees: http://www.canr.msu.edu/nativeplants/uploads/files/E2985ConservingNativeBees.pdf.

Another job we've got on our agenda this week is inoculating mushroom logs. Besides the big maple that the power company took down this Spring, a dead ash tree in the woods behind my house took out part of another maple tree that looks just about perfect as a medium for growing mushrooms. So if the weather will break enough to let John get back to the woods with his chainsaw, we'll have you help us with plugging maple logs with shiitake spawn. We bought our mushroom spawn from Paul Stamets' company "Fungi Perfecti". Stamets is doing some super-interesting work with mushrooms, including studying how mushrooms might help bolster bee colony health:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAw_Zzge49c. (The connection with honeybees starts at 9:23. Even if you get bogged down in the science-y middle part of this talk, make sure you watch the last five minutes or so for some really gorgeous shots of mushroom growth and inspiring words.)

Early in his talk, Stamets talks about how networks of mycelium pass messages between plants that help them to survive. From the PBS honeybee video you can see that bees, also, have sophisticated languages. Near the end of his talk, Stamets says, "The task that we face today is to understand the language of Nature." I'd like to hear your thoughts in response to this idea that in order for our species to survive, we need to learn to communicate with the other species with whom we share this planet and to learn from them. Does this seem like a far-fetched idea to you or something that's within the realm of possibility? What experiences of communicating with non-human parts of this world have you had in your own life? How might you go about initiating or deepening such communication?

Week 5 Ruzhen Man's post: Food choice and organic food

Hope everyone is good in 5^th week. This week I would like to tell about food choice and organic food.

After Industrial Revolution, People came out from farms to industries. Our ancestors used to produce food by themselves or had easy access to get food guaranteed safety. Nowadays we are more rely on buying food from markets. We have a bunch of different foods in the market, and sometimes we have many choices in a certain kind of food. As a result, we always spend time to decide which food we should buy.

Organic food is food produced by organic farming. Organic farming described as “the farm as organism”, ecologically balanced approach to farming. Organic food arose in response to the industrialization of agriculture since 1940s. The standard of organic food varies worldwide. In U.S., organic production is managed according to the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA) and regulations in Title 7, Part 205 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Here is a video offers specific introduction of Organic Food:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxFQEdI3XvU

Organic food supposed to be healthier because the process of growth is natural. However, it is a controversial topic, some research proves that organic food is not absolutely better.

This current report includes video and article, argues that Organic food does not mean “good food”

Deena Shanker “How Organic Produce Can Make America Less Healthy”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-09/how-organic-produce-can-make-america-less-healthy

Researchers from Stanford University takes a serious research on organic food, here is the summary:

http://www.eufic.org/en/food-production/article/are-organic-foods-safer-or-healthier-than-conventional-alternatives

If you want to read the whole academic journal article you can find it on American College of Physicians  

Liu, H., Bravata, D. M., Smith-Spangler, C., Brandeau, M. L., E, H. G., Bavinger, C., . . . M, P. (2012). Correction: Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives? Annals of Internal Medicine, 157(7), 532. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-157-7-201210020-00021

For the discussion in class, I would like you think about these questions.

What factors affect you a lot on your food choices in markets? It can be any kinds of food like fresh food, snacks, frozen food and etc.

Compare to conventional food, how do you think about organic food?

Personal Reflection

            For me, it really depends on circumstances. I used to buy food looks really nice and now I do not do it. For fruits and vegetables, I always prefer organic if it has organic choice. If there is an OFPA certification on the food package, I tend to think that is good. I always take a few seconds to check fruits, vegetables and meats, then decide to get it or not. As my grocery shopping experiences accumulating, I recognize myself well-experience on “checking food”. For snacks and frozen food, the ingredients are always on package, and in most of time I take a look on it even though I do not have any standard of it. I refuse to get any food with the mark low-sugar. In my opinion, low-sugar means more fat. If the food does not have enough sugar, the food producers probably choose to add fat in it to balance the tastes.

            Through my personal experience of buying organic food and conventional food. I feel that organic food is better in general, maybe part of the reason is psychological effects. Sometimes organic food tastes better and sometimes it tastes same as conventional food. Conventional food always looks good. Organic food expires faster than Conventional food. I remember once I buy a package of organic pears and forgot to put it in refrigerator. After a day it became obviously worse, while it never happens on conventional food. I believe that there is no certain evidence proves that Organic Food is healthy based on the statistical data I have seen. I am not good on either Biology and Chemistry so I am not able to think it in academic aspects. Looking forward to see your response of it.

             

Week 5 2017 Practicum: Community Food Forests and Gardens

Weather Forecast: Highs in the 70s, mostly cloudy


This week you'll to have the opportunity to explore models for community gardening and food forests through lending a hand in a developing food forest/community garden in the Kalamazoo area. If you've never heard of a "food forest" before, you are probably not alone. The first time I saw a food forest was when I traveled to Prague in the summer of 2011. Many of the public parks in the part of the city I was in were filled with productive fruit trees, with the fruit just hanging there, free for the picking. Wow, I thought, why don't we do that in the US? Imagine the possibilities for fresh, local, organic fruit available freely to everyone!

Well, turns out some people are working on it. Here are some examples:

These "guerrilla grafters" are breaking the law by turning ornamental fruit trees along city streets (fruit trees like pears that have been bred to produce pretty flowers but no fruit) into fruit-bearing trees by grafting wood from fruit-bearing varieties onto them: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/04/07/150142001/guerrilla-grafters-bring-forbidden-fruit-back-to-city-trees

In Bloomington, Indiana, one undergraduate's senior thesis sparked a community orchard project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=racgmc_l1jw

Bloomington Community Orchard 5 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBg-gDnmOxM

In LA, Ron Finley has created a food forest in a food desert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dhdAgLPMUQ

And there are many more community gardens and food forests being cultivated across the US.

WMU's Gibbs House has a food forest (though not a public one), plus a nice diagram on their website that shows how inter-planting fosters sustainable ecology in a permaculture food forest: https://wmich.edu/sustainability/projects/gibbs/food-forest

Finally, here are links to descriptions of the project we'll be working with this week:

http://www.vankalpermaculture.org/winchell-neighborhood-public-forest-garden-project/

http://www.vankalpermaculture.org/large-garden-space-available-in-kalamazoo/

Tuesday group, meet me at Fac Man at 12:40pm; Wednesday group, meet me at Fac Man at 1:40pm. You can follow me over to the land where we'll be working.

For your responses this week, I'd like you to imagine you were going to start a community garden or food forest in a neighborhood that you've lived in for at least one year of your life. This could be a neighborhood that you grew up in or a neighborhood in which you currently live. What problems could this community project help to solve? How might it enrich the lives of neighborhood residents? What challenges might the project encounter? What would it take for a community food forest or garden project to succeed and be sustainable in your particular neighborhood? What might be the first steps toward initiating such a project and ensuring its success?

Week 5 Megan Rigney's Post: Actions to a Sustainable Food System

Topic

How we, as every day citizens, can take actions to a more sustainable food system.

Supplemental Materials

Roger Doiron: My subversive (garden) plot (20 minute Tedx Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezuz_-eZTMI&feature=player_embedded

The United States food industry makes access to healthy nutritious food somewhat difficult. Roger Doiron proposes a revolution to the food supply industry through backyard gardens and their power to increase access to foods that are healthy for the planet and us.

The New York Times: “Pollan Cooks!” by Mark Bittman (ET 10 minutes to read article)

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/pollan-cooks/?hp&_r=0

We have become disconnected to food. Today, more college students eat out than cook their own food. Michael Pollan highlights the importance of shifting our lifestyle prioritizations so that we may place a higher priority on cooking food and its potential to make those who cook not only examine their relationship with food differently, but have a deeper relationship with it.

Reflection: (ET 10 minutes for reflection)

Before our meeting in class on Thursday, please consider the following questions.

1)    What does sustainability and a sustainable food system mean to you?

2)    What is an action that an individual person or a community could take to have a more sustainable food system on any level (household/individual, local, or national)?

In the space provided below, please write about the action you have thought of and respond to the supplemental materials in either question or comment form.

Thank you for spending time considering these materials and responding, it is greatly appreciated and will help give depth to our discussion on Thursday!

Personal Reflection
Sustainability is about having a system that uses resources in an efficient and good intentions so that it maintains an ecological balance for the health of humans, other animals, and the environment in which they live in. A sustainable food system would be one that uses natural resources efficiently so that there is a low amount of waste in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food. The food industry would also work to provide its consumers with food that is good for the body. To work towards a more sustainable food system, one thing individual actors could do is to invest, create, or work for a program that promotes education about healthy food choices and gardening.

Food poverty

Food poverty is when people of a certain socioeconomic background have the worse diet and worse access to food. There are many areas in Kalamazoo that do not have access to groceries stores or do not have access to healthy foods. Many children also rely on the food provided by their schools as their only reliable source of a hot meal. With budget cuts to programs that provide meals to people who need them there is a great concern on how to not only stop food hunger but also provide a way for more people to gain access to nutrients and foods they need.  

For this post I want to discuss how we could improve our food industry systems as a whole. We produce so much food and waste just as much of it. Is there a way to balance these out so that everyone can have access to food? These videos discuss the problems of the food industry and its implications in America.

Going to Bed Hungry: The Changing Face of Child Hunger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hROIwULP914

Kid President Needs Your Help to Fight Child Hunger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzpj4M2fBsU

A recipe for cutting food waste | Peter Lehner | TEDxManhattan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwOHpWTRsbE

Ke's Post: Agriculture and Economic Policies

Hi All,

Hope you all enjoyed the sunshine in last weekend. For the topic of this coming Thursday, I would like to discuss how do policies on agriculture affect people’s life. Even though these policies are determined by politicians and economists, which seems not related to us at all, but the impact is huge on various perspective. For example, the one of the reason for President Trump to win the votes in rural area is that, he claimed to remove some policies and associations that restrict the agriculture industries. For consumers, the price of food in the supermarket is associated with the cost of the food production, and cost of the food production would be affected by agriculture policies, like subsidies. For producers, like farmers, their income is also associated with whether they are grow a subsidized crops, which is more profitable than others. What’s more, maybe a surprise, government also consider agriculture policy as a tool to fix poverty issues. By reading the supplementary materials, I would like you to think about is US currently doing a great job on agriculture policies, who are the winners and losers in the effect of these policies, and how can these problems be fixed.

Supplementary Materials:

Milking taxpayers

by The Economists

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21643191-crop-prices-fall-farmers-grow-subsidies-instead-milking-taxpayers?zid=309&ah=80dcf288b8561b012f603b9fd9577f0e

This is an article introducing the fact that some some farmers are receiving subsidies by growing less crops.

Poverty, Hunger, and US Agricultural Policy: Do Farm Programs Affect the Nutrition of Poor Americans?

by American Boondoggle

https://www.aei.org/publication/poverty-hunger-and-us-agricultural-policy-do-farm-programs-affect-the-nutrition-of-poor-americans/

This is a report evaluating the effect of agricultural subsidy on food price, poverty and income distribution.

The Luckiest Nut In The World

by Emily James

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtlYyuJjACw&t=42s

This is a amusing eight minutes video showing how policy affect the fate of two different nuts.

Please share any thoughts or stories that are related to agricultural market and policies (domestic policy like tax and subsidy, trade policy like tariff and quota).

(Acknowledgement: the post structure is based on Francisco’s Post.)

Week 4 on the Farm: Vegetables, Fruit, and Foraging

Weather Forecast: Tuesday, sunny, 70 degrees F; Wednesday, 65 degrees F

Sounds like the Tuesday group may hit the weather jackpot this week! But if there's one thing I know for sure after farming for so many years, it's that weather forecasts are frequently wrong. So, we'll just need to be flexible and roll with whatever Nature sends our way.

Last week we split you up into groups, with half of you learning about soil biology management in the orchard and the other half working with the annual vegetable beds. This week (weather permitting) we'll take everyone over to the orchard to do a little scouting. Then those of you who didn't get over there last week will have the opportunity to work on improving the orchard's soil biology while those that worked in the orchard last week will come back to the vegetable gardens to work on bed preparation and planting.

The rain and warmth we've had during the past two weeks has really pushed bud development along on all of the fruit trees. John and I have been working hard to try to finish up pruning before the buds get too tender for us to continue that work. John has also been applying "holistic" sprays to the trees, to support the health of the trees and disrupt insect and disease cycles. We'll tell you a bit about those this week, as well as another kind of "disruption" we use to cut down on predation from certain types of pests like Oriental Fruit Moth and Codling Moth. It's called "mating disruption" and it works by flooding the orchard with the pheromone emitted by the female moths, making it a lot harder for the males to find them to mate. Less mating = less egg laying = fewer worms in my apples!


You don't need to read this entire article, but the first graphic ("Mating Disruption") is a nice visual aid to help you understand how this process works: http://jenny.tfrec.wsu.edu/opm/displaySpecies.php?pn=-80 . See those twist-tie like things in the trees in section B of the graphic? Those are the pheromone dispensers that I'm going to have to put in every tree in the orchard. It's quite a job! I hope to have it done by the time the Tuesday group comes out, but if I don't, maybe some of you can help me finish it up.

If we get a rainy day this week I will keep my promise to teach you vermi-composting. This 9 minute video explains how vermi-compost can be a powerful tool in building soil biology that protects and nurtures healthy plant growth: http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/vermicompost.htm. Watching this video always makes me wonder what could happen if every neighborhood had a worm farm to compost its food waste!

If the weather is at least relatively dry, we'll take a detour from the gardens and head into the woods to do some foraging. And we'll talk about the role of foraging in the local foods movement. This article gives a good example of what can happen when a marketplace mentality is applied to wild foods: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-urban-foraging-wild-onions-met-20150510-story.html. 

So that you will be prepared to forage with good intentions, your assignment before coming to the farm is to do a little research to get to know the plant we'll be looking for: "ramps" or "wild leeks". Search online and see what else you can find out about this plant. Post one "fun fact" plus a link to a recipe that you plan to make with the ramps you harvest.