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Thank you for your patience!

http://touchtheearthfarmblog.blogspot.com/

I’ll also do my best to transfer relevant information from this blog over to there so we don’t lose too much, but best I can tell this needs to be done manually one post at a time, so it may take a while.

I’ll post a link here as well before deleting this blog.

Things are already gearing up here for the 2009 season. Our seed orders have all been placed, we have spring greens growing in the high tunnels, and the sweet potato slips are thriving. Over the next two months we’ll be starting many, many seed flats, and we welcome the return of the sun!

2009 seed order: (We’ll be growing the varieties below in addition to seeds saved from the last two years. You can view those lists by clicking the CSA tab at the top of the page.)
bean, louisiana purple pole

Beet:
bull’s blood
chioggia

Buckwheat (cover crop for high tunnel)

Carrot:
purple dragon

corn, super sweet*

Cucumber:
straight eights
edmonson pickling

edamame, asmara

Eggplant:
listada di gandia
ping tung long

Greens:
bok choi
purple mizuna
red giant mustard

Kale:
lacinato
red russian

Lettuce:
Thai oakleaf
red salad bowl
salad bowl
rouge d’hiver
drunken woman
winter density

Melons:
moon and stars watermelon
strawberry watermelon
hale’s best muskmelon
edisto muskmelon

Onions:
copra*
ruby ring*

Peppers:
Serrano*
Sahuaro anaheim*
Gourmet*
Red Knight*

Potatoes:
Yukon gold
red nordland

cherry belle radish

Squash, summer:
yellow crookneck
early white scallop
costata romanesca
golden bush scallop

Squash, winter:
table queen acorn
Cornell’s bush delicata
waltham butternut
marinia di chioggia
blue ballet
confection*
Galeux d’Eysines
Cinderella pumpkin

Tomatoes:
sungold*
gold nugget
striped German
green zebra
sweet olive*
brandywine

Happy Eating!

Just a reminder that waiting list priority for CSA slots ends the 21st, at which time we’ll begin accepting contracts on a first come, first serve basis. We have just a couple slots still available, and Monday pick ups are just about closed.

Happy holidays and happy eating!

*******

As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”

A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat.

Renaming the department would signal that Mr. Obama seeks to move away from a bankrupt structure of factory farming that squanders energy, exacerbates climate change and makes Americans unhealthy — all while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

“We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket — high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food,” notes Michael Pollan, author of such books as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.”

The Agriculture Department — and the agriculture committees in Congress — have traditionally been handed over to industrial farming interests by Democrats and Republicans alike. The farm lobby uses that perch to inflict unhealthy food on American children in school-lunch programs, exacerbating our national crisis with diabetes and obesity.

But let’s be clear. The problem isn’t farmers. It’s the farm lobby — hijacked by industrial operators — and a bipartisan tradition of kowtowing to it.

I grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Ore., where my family grew cherries and timber and raised sheep and, at times, small numbers of cattle, hogs and geese. One of my regrets is that my kids don’t have the chance to grow up on a farm as well.

Yet the Agriculture Department doesn’t support rural towns like Yamhill; it bolsters industrial operations that have lobbying clout. The result is that family farms have to sell out to larger operators, undermining small towns.

One measure of the absurdity of the system: Every year you, the American taxpayer, send me a check for $588 in exchange for me not growing crops on timberland I own in Oregon (I forward the money to a charity). That’s right. The Agriculture Department pays a New York journalist not to grow crops in a forest in Oregon.

Modern confinement operations are less like farms than like meat assembly lines. They are dazzlingly efficient in some ways, but they use vast amounts of grain, as well as low-level antibiotics to reduce infections — and the result is a public health threat from antibiotic-resistant infections.

An industrial farm with 5,000 hogs produces as much waste as a town with 20,000 people. But while the town is required to have a sewage system, the industrial farm isn’t.

“They look profitable because we’re paying for their wastes,” notes Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. “And then there’s the cost of antibiotic resistance to the economy as a whole.”

One study suggests that these large operations receive, in effect, a $24 subsidy for each hog raised. We face an obesity crisis and a budget crisis, and we subsidize bacon?

The need for change is increasingly obvious, for health, climate and even humanitarian reasons. California voters last month passed a landmark referendum (over the farm lobby’s furious protests) that will require factory farms to give minimum amounts of space to poultry and livestock. Society is becoming concerned not only with little boys who abuse cats but also with tycoons whose business model is abusing farm animals.

An online petition that can be found at www.fooddemocracynow.org calls for a reformist pick for agriculture secretary — and names six terrific candidates, such as Chuck Hassebrook, a reformer in Nebraska. On several occasions in the campaign, Mr. Obama made comments showing a deep understanding of food issues, but the names that people in the food industry say are under consideration for agriculture secretary represent the problem more than the solution.

Change we can believe in?

The most powerful signal Mr. Obama could send would be to name a reformer to a renamed position. A former secretary of agriculture, John Block, said publicly the other day that the agency should be renamed “the Department of Food, Agriculture and Forestry.” And another, Ann Veneman, told me that she believes it should be renamed, “Department of Food and Agriculture.” I’d prefer to see simply “Department of Food,” giving primacy to America’s 300 million eaters.

As Mr. Pollan told me: “Even if you don’t think agriculture is a high priority, given all the other problems we face, we’re not going to make progress on the issues Obama campaigned on — health care, climate change and energy independence — unless we reform agriculture.”

Your move, Mr. President-elect.

“We’re not finding enough oxygen to support life, aquatic life,” said scientist Lora Pride aboard the Pelican, the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium research vessel that studies the Gulf.

CNN traveled aboard the ship August 14-15 as consortium researchers sent sensors to the bottom of the sea, scooped up sediment and collected water samples for analysis at nine testing stations in the Gulf.

As an oxygen meter sank far below the Pelican, Pride pointed to an onboard computer screen displaying the meter’s findings in real time.

“This green line is the oxygen right here and at the bottom it’s reading less than 2 milligrams per liter,” Pride said.

Six of the nine stations revealed such oxygen-deprived, hypoxic water, compared to a normal reading of 6 milligrams per liter.

As Pride and her crew aboard the Pelican monitored the Gulf waters, the journal Science last week published a study that reveals there are more than 400 dead zones around the globe, double the number found by the United Nations two years ago.

One of the major dead zones is in the Gulf of Mexico. It is 8,000 square miles, nearly the size of New Jersey, according to the marine consortium’s annual measurement completed in July.

“There’s no oxygen in the water for shrimp, crabs, fish to live,” said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the consortium.

Fish and shrimp “can sense that and they start to move out of the area. Otherwise they would die. The animals that still remain in the sediments have to keep breathing. There is not enough oxygen and eventually they will die off,” Rabalais said.

Scientists have been studying the Gulf’s dead zone for about 20 years, although its existence has been known for decades. So why is oxygen disappearing from fishing waters in the Gulf of Mexico? The answer, scientists say, is found hundreds of miles to the north, up the Mississippi River in corn country.

Farmers in Iowa and across the Midwest use tons of nitrogen and phosphorous to make their cornfields more productive, which allows the farmers to take advantage of high corn prices resulting from growing demand from ethanol factories and developing countries.

Rain always causes some fertilizer to run off farmland, but this summer’s historic flooding caused even more runoff into rivers that flow into the Mississippi.

“That’s the primary source of the nutrients that go to the Gulf of Mexico,” said Rabalais. “And so the size of the low-oxygen zone has increased in proportion to these nutrients reaching the Gulf.”

Fertilizer flowing into the Gulf of Mexico triggers an overgrowth of microscopic algae, which eventually die and fall to the bottom.

“When they die, they decompose, and decomposition requires oxygen,” said Pride. “So these things will fall to the bottom and as they decompose they consume oxygen.”

So much oxygen is taken from the water that slow-moving sea life like clams, small crabs, starfish and snails suffocate….

With demand for corn growing, scientists say the dead zone could expand in coming years.

I’ve place the 2008 seed order, and together with the seeds left from ‘07, we have quite a line up:

Seeds left from last year:

• artichoke (saved seeds)
• arugula
• bean: royal burgundy snap, isar French fillet, genuine cornfield pole, Kentucky wonder pole (saved)
• bok choi
• broccoli: calabrese
• brussels sprouts: catskill
• cabbage: early jersey wakefield
• carrot: red core chantenay
• cauliflower: snowbell
• celery: conquistador
• chervil
• chives: garlic, purly
• cilantro
• cucumber: Boston pickling
• dill: bouquet (saved), hercules
• green onion
• kale: Hanover spring, vates
• kohlrabi: purple
• leek: American flag, blue solaize (very few)
• lettuce: black seeded simpson, parris island cos, sweet valentine, red salad bowl, green salad bowl, speckled bibb, oakleaf, Thai oakleaf, winter density, forellenschuss, anuenue, slo-bolt, ermosa, buttercrunch, jericho
• michihli
• muskmelon: Hale’s best, hearts of gold, old time Tennessee (4 seeds)
• parsley: curled, flat leaf
• parsnip: hollow crown
• peas: Amish snap, Little Marvel, Wando
• pepper: California wonder, serrano hot
• pumpkin: little pam pie, jack-o-lantern
• raab
• sage
• salsify: sandwich island mammoth
• sorrel
• spinach: long standing bloomsdale
• sweet potato: beauregard (gift from Nicolas)
• swiss chard: bright lights, ruby
• radicchio: verona red
• tatsoi
• tomato: (very few of each) sweet olive, gold nugget, sun gold, Amish paste, German red strawberry, Brandywine, green zebra, sweetie
• turnip: seven top foliage, purple top
• upland cress
• zucchini: black beauty

This year’s seed order:

• basil: sweet genovese
• bean: Louisiana purple pole, genuine cornfield pole, Cherokee cornfield, rodcor butter bean, provider, flagrano French bean
• bean, soup: Taylor’s dwarf, black valentine, sulphur
• beet: lutz, chioggia
• broccoli: di cicco
• carrot: Belgian white, purple dragon
• Chinese cabbage: bilko
• chives
• corn: double standard (old fashioned sweet, open pollinated), robust (popcorn—we tried “Tom thumb” and didn’t like it)
• cucumber: yamato, marketmore
• dandelion: clio
• eggplant: rosa bianca
• endive: totem, eros, rhodos
• escarole: pancalieri grado
• gourd: green apple, mixed small
• kale: vates
• kohlrabi: winner
• lettuce: dark lollo rossa, natividad (both reds)
• marjoram
• onions: cortland, redwing, purplette
• peppers: ace, sahuaro hot
• potatoes: red nordland, yukon gold, Russian banana
• radish: black Spanish, d’Avignon
• squash, summer: golden bush scallop, early prolific straightneck, costata romanesca,
• squash, winter: seminole pumpkin, cinderella pumpkin, sweet meat squash, winter luxury pie, table queen vine acorn, delicata, Waltham butternut, marina di chioggia
• swiss chard: rainbow
• tomato: Amish paste, Brandywine, striped German, green zebra, sweet olive, red grape, sun gold, gold nugget
• turnip: hakurei
• watermelon: Amish moon and stars, strawberry

For those who missed a slot this year, email us to be put on the waiting list and for notification of any extra share availability throughout the season.