Okra, seeds, and liberty

Column for the DeKalb County Times
by Karley

I have noticed that many gardening books are written by people who grow in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest. I can usually tell in just a few pages without the author stating implicitly that the book is written by a gardener in one of those two places. Some dead giveaways include anything about concentrating on early maturing tomatoes to ensure enough growing season to ripen or harvesting bumper crops of lettuce and kale in July or August. Here we have so much growing season that we can succession sow our okra, and if we're organized and motivated, we can grow two subsequent crops of tomatoes. A farmer from Vermont with whom I recently had the pleasure of gushing about gardening told me he's never even grown okra.

You can start okra in pots for transplants, but most gardeners and farmers in our area don't bother. Okra came to this country through the slave trade out of Africa, so it's a warm-weather loving plant. There's no point in rushing to get its seeds in the ground while spring is still up to its antics. A couple local growers have said their rule of thumb is to plant after Mother's Day. That goes for beans, melons, cucumbers, and tomato and pepper transplants, too. Okra is an enthusiastic grower and can reach over seven feet tall in one season. The more you pick the pods, the more the plant will produce.

It's very easy to save your own okra seed. All you need to do is leave a few pods on the plants at the end of the season until the pods are hard and dry but before the first frost or they crack open and drop all the seeds. It's easy to open the dried pods and shake out the hard, small round seeds. Pick out any deformed or discolored seeds. You can keep the seeds in a glass jar in a cool, dark dry place. The seed will start to lose viability in its second year, so it's best to save new seed each season.

Okra varieties will readily cross so if you want to maintain a variety, you should grow it alone. However, we grow a mix of red, white, and green okra that has been maintained by a neighbor. The varieties mingle together, so some plants produce pure red, white, or green pods, and others produce pods that are mottled.

Our neighbor started saving her okra seeds when she first moved here over twenty years ago. This has resulted in a variety that is well suited to this specific area. The seeds have been saved from plants that have tolerated the pest pressure and variable summer growing conditions that plants and farmers trying to make a living here have to deal with.

The practices and techniques of saving seeds are skills that every farmer had 100 years ago. This is how we've ended up with the huge array of heirloom varieties that are making a resurgence in popularity. A gardener might notice a particularly strong volunteer tomato plant, save the seed from its fruit, and continue saving seed from strong plants in subsequent growing seasons. That's all it really takes to develop a genetic line that's adapted to your specific growing conditions.

The future of the future food supply is wholly dependent upon the ability of producers to save their own seeds. This does not necessarily mean that each farmer needs to save all of the seed for the next season, but it is essential that networks of farmers and gardeners be able to distribute seeds to one another.

When the genetic material contained in the seed is patented, it becomes the property of the patent holder. This means that subsequent generations of that variety are also owned by the patent holder, since the genetic material is passed down. The patenting of seeds disrupts the cycle of saving, trading, and regrowth that has sustained the human race since we stopped hunting and gathering 10,000 years ago.

Even more insidious is the situation regarding genetic drift. If I wish to grow an open pollinated variety of corn, beet, or rapeseed, and my neighbor wishes to grow a patented variety of corn, beet, or rapeseed, all which readily cross pollinate by the wind, I have absolutely means to enforce my own right to the choice of whether or not to grow a patented variety. Conversely, my choice to grow an open pollinated variety bears no consequence on my neighbor's crop.

If my corn, beet, or rapeseed is indeed cross pollinated by my neighbor's patented planting, the patented genetic material will appear in my seed crop, which then places me in violation of the patent holder's intellectual property rights. If I am not allowed to save my seed from year to year, I am beholden to the company from which I must purchase the seed.

All vegetables and grains come from seed. Much of the meat we eat in this country is fed grain. This means that seeds are the underpinning of our entire food supply. Whoever is in control of the seed supply is in charge of the food supply.

In a democracy it is the people who are supposed to hold the power--not an exploitive, monolithic juggernaut. When individual farmers and gardeners save and exchange seeds, the genetic material in the seeds is the equivalent of the user-generated content that makes the internet so powerful. A seed saved by your neighbor for decades is like a message board connecting you to someone facing the same growing challenges. Regional favorites, like the beautiful Cushaw winter squash, are the equivalent of a Facebook or Youtube meme.

The freedom to exchange information with one another is the foundation of human liberty, and the freedom to save and exchange seed is the foundation of our global food supply.

Goats, moats, greenhouses, gardens, opossums and chickens

***From the foot bridge, Kevin reporting with the goats...

Mildred, the unfortunate looking goat with an equally unfortunate name, fell off the foot bridge this morning...and into the creek! Ha ha. The ungracefully erect position of her ears and wideness of eyes at the moment of stumble suggested at first a surprise, but nanoseconds later, her face seemed to morph into the look of a goat going through a complete existential crises of her spacial existence. Old Newton strikes again...sure footed goat, yeah "my foot," as your author's late Grandma-O would put it. Words would not do the hilarious event justice, so we won't even attempt to describe her teetering grasp for balance and a brief grunt of impact that would have required some combination of circular breathing, rumination and a burp...all in imperfect harmony! Certainly, it could not be duplicated on command. We only wish our eyes could have been your lens.

We have had great success containing the goats by simply tying Dolly...or ah hem, Amanda when she is acting as a stubborn female dog...to a rock with about 25' of rope and moving the rock when we feel we should. Dolly is the head goat, so as long as she stays in one place then Mildred and the Kids seem to do the same within 50'...mostly.

A neighbor up the hill from us, Jim Church, suggested the idea when we explained our series of unfortunate fencing affairs. Now, we move the rope once a day and sometimes twice...somebody is always around to keep an eye out for hang ups around trees. Nevertheless, a well placed rock, attached to a rope seems to be doing the job our fence and patience could not. Stay tuned. We're going to have to trim their hooves soon, but don't know how.

As far as the goats preference of palate, we have observed that Honeysuckle is first, followed by anything we don't want them to eat; of course, then grass, blackberry brambles, American beauty berries, cedar, moss and whatever they want. As near as we can tell, they will eat more grass than anything else. They simply love it. Since our goats are supremely spoiled, we must wait to let them out until the sun melts the lightly frosted morning grass. We would never dare to put them in a place the sun has not hit yet, because they won't let us. We know, we've tried it and then somehow, one way or another, they'd end up in our neighbor's chicken coop, chock-full of grain and corn.

Many a frosty morning has been spent chasing goats out of unwanted areas and looking like a complete fool. Gee wiz, you give a mouse a cookie...and then he will want a glass of milk too. These are allegedly wild, inbred BRUSH GOATS. We literally had to catch them and transport them. Upon arrival, Mildred took off and we had to catch her again...

Tell me, have you ever tried to catch a wild goat before? We won't elaborate, but if you haven't you're better off. There is no hazard pay. And now they are broken; only, we can't take em back. Although, we will probably end up putting a couple in our freezer. What has happened is that they tricked us. As it turns out, we are the goats who are trained and domesticated. You should see the flaming hoops we jump through. Thus, the capitulation and now, we wait until the morning conditions are right...entailing that they are scratched until satisfied, baby goats are cuddled, harassed and sometimes massaged just so that they will stay where we put them. And they do...mostly.

***From the garden...

Speaking of people looking like complete fools and chasing animals out of areas that they should not be, Kevin was high-tailing it through the garden after the chickens who were eating a smorgasboard of earthworms we've been trying so hard to keep in the garden. Remarkably, he has only done this once before about 9 months ago. The display must have put a 9 month impression on them as they have not entered since. Then, as now, he raced after them like a flying spaghetti monster, flailing his arms about `in a disturbing manner and screeching as a pterodactyl. When asked what his secret was, he replied: "Well, when I told Diane about how the chickens were gittin' in ther garden, she told me to giv em a good 'talkin to.' So, I sure done did...didn't I? They haven't been back. For the sake of his pride, we hope it will be another 18 months before anyone has to do it again.

Most of the garden is cleaned up and ready to be planted in, although, there is still much to do. And some of the garden has already been planted in. Karley and Marie planted shallots, onions and carrot seeds with several beautiful warm sunny days before us.

***From the greenhouse, Karley and Marie with babies... the ones green with chlorophyll...

Marie has been transplanting cabbage, kale, lettuce, arugula, swiss chard, broccoli. Most of them have their first true leaves budding out. We've notice a few of the cotyledons are a bit misshapen, but we are keeping them moist and planting a few extra. Karley and Marie have been busy as bees in greenhouse and we now have 36 trays full.

The greenhouse is getting pretty full too. But we still haven't used the bottom shelf either. There is also ample room for additional shelving...but only so much time. The days are getting longer...we've noticed.

***From the farm...

It has been raining, unseasonably warm, mostly cloudy, then sunny with temperature readings from highs up to 74 to a low of 8. In the evening, we noticed moths beating themselves ritually against the barn lights. During the day, there is an imperceptible hum and sporadic insect activity hovering about 6' off the ground. All Purple Maize Farm can think of is a swarm of coming summer bugs. Echk.

Last year, Kevin helped ol' Louie Frazier...an 85ish year old farmer who free ranges his cows up and down Henley Hollow Rd....split wood last February. The man has more tricks up his sleeve than a magician and at 85 stacked a rack of wood at least 7' high and 20' long...by himself! Kevin was helping him split up an old maple that was brought low by a wind storm and finished off with Louie's chainsaw. They were 3/4 of the way through when they were rained out. They went inside to take cover and Ol' Louie forewarn us that: "If it thunders in February, then it will frost in May."

May 3rd, Marie and our dear friend Evan were covering last year's tomato plants, for the coming frost.

Here at Purple Maize Farm we know that correlation does not imply causation, but Ol' Louie knew something that we didn't. He had to; the weather is his living. So, we watch, we wait...and wonder. What do these tenacious, stalwart old timers know? What secrets from the past do they possess? What whispers of yesteryear adheres to their Great Grandparents, upbringing, hand hewed, mortised and tenoned, wood pegged Chestnut barns and cabins, can we all learn from? What have we all forgotten and have become so disconnected from? As usual, we don't know. Still, we ask...listen...and try to remember.

The gods were bowling at least three times this February. We do not wish to challenge them or invite their wrath. Will Ol' Louie call it again?

***From the Chicken Tractor...

In other news, we are down one chicken and the builder of the chicken tractor is no smarter than a opossum. Kevin built a movable chicken coop complete with nest boxes accessible from the outside, a jungle gym of roosting poles and lentils; plus, 8'' solid rubber white-walled wheels. It has been in the horse and donkey pasture in an effort to rehabilitate it.

Biologically, historically and naturally, fowls follow livestock. (For instance, the great plains at one time had six feet of top soil, because the buffalo would migrate thousands of miles from the northern plains to the southern plains...fertilizing the entire journey. Then, the turkeys, pheasants and a myriad of other fowls would follow suit, working the fertilizer into the soil and adding some more of their own; thus, completing the nutrient cycle.)

The chicken tractor moves in style and it has worked magnificently until Saturday night when Kevin received a telephone call at 10:30pm from the other end of the pasture from our dear friends and neighbors, Benjy and Sterling.

"Hello?"

"Yes, Kevin, I wanted to let you know that there are screeching sounds coming from your chicken tractor and you might want to check it out."

"Oh, thank you for informing me. It is a pretty sweet looking chicken tractor. You know I was thinking about installing a stereo that played Marvin Gay during the night. I wouldn't worry, though, they are probably mating...you know, they have to make those eggs somehow..."

"What? I thought you had six laying hens...and no roosters!?"

"Oh dear, you're right...I'm on my way!"

Naturally, all the flashlight batteries were dead. So we hustled out there with fury and a Bic lighter, only to find an opossum glaring at us and right in our way. "EEHHH!" We gave it a boot, then several good stomps in the head and it played opossum until Benji met us in the pasture with a gun and a flashlight. We were happy that the dark figure advancing towards us in the field with a gun was actually Benjy and that he was on our side.

Like capital punishment is to murder, it is always difficult to tell when a opossum is dead. They are very clever in that way and the stomping we gave it surely didn't assist its health in a positive manner, so Benji took aim; his heart racing and palms sweating, "Man...this really sucks," Benjy remarked. Those words pretty much said it all. And then fired.

The Wyandotte chicken was still inside in the corner of the chicken coop. We lifted the chicken tractor up and over the poor chicken to see the damage. Most of the hind end of the chicken was a red fleshy mess of blood, raw meat and intestines, yet the chicken was still hanging on to a thread of life. We asked Benjy for the rifle, silently thanked the chicken for its mitochondrial energy, color, chickeness and life it had given us, took aim and shot.

The next day, upon inspection, we noticed several staples loose in our chicken tractor. One, by the front door could be pulled back almost 10''. We untied the tarp roof and pulled it back, and then wire-tied any loose parts closed. Then tied the roof back on. We disposed of the opossum and chicken in our humanure compost pile. Only later, another neighbor suggested leaving the opossum out for the chickens to eat. After all they are carnivores and it would have been poetic justice for the rest of the flock. Hopefully, we won't have to do it again.

Your ever humble, goat wrangling, opossum stomping, garden growing, correspondent,
Kevin

and we're off!

The arugula is up first and ready to go! You can direct sow arugula quite successfully, but the weed pressure here is so extreme, we prefer to transplant and use heavy mulch. We do this for many greens that can be planted directly in the garden, like kales, mustards, and lettuce. There is more labor involved up front, but the mulch is so effective at keeping weeds down, moisture in, and building up the soil that we feel in the end the benefits far outweigh the extra "cost".

The Rainbow Lacinato is also starting to unfurl its cotyledons. We're really excited about this variety. None of our fall planting made it to the market or the baskets because the bug pressure was so intense. We're going to try regular sprayings with Basic H and using coarse salt to kill the caterpillars this season. Hand picking the cabbage moth caterpillars was miserable (and ineffective), much as the chickens loved the windfall.

These are little kale cotyledons (seed leaves), but everything from tomatoes and peppers to cabbage, beets, and turnips all look very similar. Some plants have more slender cotelydons, and some plants, like squash, have comparatively enormous cotyledons. But they are all astonishingly diminutive compared to the mature plants they morph into. It's inexpressibly humbling to be allowed to usher the plants through their growth process.

The garden begins!

From such humble beginnings will come delicious delights! We have invited chard, arugula, cabbages, kales, and lettuces to awaken from their slumber. They have acquiesced, and there are tiny taproots beginning to crack through the testa.

Marie and I have been busy in the garden; we've been forking, hauling, mulching, forking, hauling and mulching. Kevin has been building us a greenhouse so we can start more of our own bedding plants and passively heat our house, too.

The winter has been unusually accommodating this year, so we are done with almost all of the beds. We're going to put carrot seeds in the ground after the cold spell this weekend.

We're really excited about this year's garden. We're doing several more varieties of tomatoes this year--35 to be exact. We're also adding two new varieties of cucumbers, but we won't be trying Hmong Red cucumbers again, as they were a total flop. We have a new Yard Long (Chinese Noodle) bean--Purple Podded, which should look stunning with the Red Yard Long beans we grew last year. We're hoping for significantly more pole beans this year--yellow, purple, green, and striped.

The greens bunches will be mind boggling. We're adding Pink Lettucey mustard and Green Wave mustard, as well as a new mix of kales from FedCo. On the lettuce front, we've added the Freedom Mix.

The mustards and lettuce are all from Wild Garden Seed. They are one of the producers involved in the lawsuit against Monsanto. We are proud to support many of the producers fighting for our liberty and the future of our food supply.

We are months ahead of where we were this time last year. This year we're armed with our broadfork and a full season's experience. We're also getting an above ground pool to use as a cistern.

God willing and the creek don't rise, 2012 should be a fantastic year here at Purple Maize Farm.

Seed catalogs

There's a special, splendid kind of torture a gardener experiences when the splashy seed catalogs full of lush pictures of perfect produce start piling up in the mailbox. Nothing insulates against a cold, gray morning better than a gardener's growing fantasies, fertilized by the promise of flowers that will make your eyes pop, tomatoes that will make your neighbors' mouths water, okra with pods that can grow three feet long and stay tender, a clematis that will grow 35 feet in a year. All things are possible in the throes of a February delirium.

Right now the bare branches of the trees allow us to admire the dramatic intricacy of arboreal sculpture. The silhouettes of the naked trees trace a lacy outline of the lay of the hills against the neon winter sunsets. Only now, while the weeds are planning this year's ambush, can you fully appreciate the enormity of the rocks that lay strewn beneath the trees. Now is the time for hiking without the threat of ticks. The ridge tops offer beautiful views of hollows that are usually hidden behind a profusion of green, red or orange, or brown.

There is plenty of beauty to be appreciated in the dormant season, but a gardener's heart longs for the chaotic explosion of green, the pops of electric reds, fluttering oranges, floods of yellow, purple, blue. Right now I'm anxiously anticipating the time to start my early cabbages and kales, mustards, lettuces, and soon after that, the tomatoes. I'm tingling with excitement to watch the determined taproots explode from tiny, dry seeds and dive into the dirt, to see the delicate cotyledons break through the surface of the soil. There is nothing so satisfying as see your squash and been plants double in size in a day.

Many seed catalogs that focus their offerings on hybrid varieties have begun featuring heirloom and open pollinated varieties. There are also a number of fantastic catalogs that focus exclusively on collecting, maintaining, and offering such varieties.

The Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog is as beautiful as it is informative. Its pages are filled glossy photographs so vivid you can almost smell the sunshine in the striped tomatoes. The descriptions for the varieties include stories about where the seeds were collected, from South America or India or Afghanistan. They have pink bananas, striped melons, red lettuce, green zinnias, and everything in between.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange also offers a fantastic collection of open pollinated varieties. Their description of the cucumber leaf sunflower they offer says that birds prefer the seeds this drought-tolerant, Gulf Coast native to other sunflower varieties. The catalog has great planting tips and directions. They offer a large collection of herbs, flowers, vegetables, potatoes, garlic, grains, and even cover crops.

Seed Savers Exchange maintains thousands of varieties of different food plants, ranging from grains like quinoa and amaranth to garden familiars like tomatoes and watermelons. They manage one of the largest seeds banks of its kind in the United States. They are able to maintain this level of diversity through participatory preservation. As stated on their website, seedsavers.org, “Each year thousands of seed varieties are exchanged among backyard preservationists through the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook for diverse reasons such as connecting to our garden heritage, finding varieties suited to a particular region, enjoying the diversity of heirloom varieties, and sourcing material to use in localized breeding projects.”

These are just a very few of the many fantastic seed companies fighting diligently to maintain our access to the genetic variety that generations of growers have cultivated. Many small seed companies in this country have gone the way of the small family farm and small family business; they have been bought out or bumped out by megalithic corporations.

There is a trend in agribusiness towards seeds that farmers cannot save from year to year, putting them at the mercy of the company that owns the seeds. There is another, more insidious trend toward the patenting of the genetic content of seeds.

Like open source software, which is offered free for public use and can be improved upon by subsequent innovation, open pollinated seeds offer genetic material to farmers and gardeners freely. They are legally free to make improvements to and selections from these varieties, which they can then offer back to the seed saving community.

Maintaining a robust supply of genetic information, or a variety of adaptations, makes for a resilient food supply. If you grow several bean varieties, one that does well in drought, one that tolerates hot and humid weather, and another that will flourish in cooler weather, you're more likely to have a good crop of beans, even if the weather isn't ideal that season. In contrast if you have 100 acres of plants with exactly the same genetics, if you encounter a condition to which one plant is susceptible, you're more likely to lose your whole crop.

The mind boggling diversity of open pollinated varieties will keep you reeling for weeks as you thumb through all the catalogs, trying to decide which Italian sweet pepper, French cucumber, or Russian tomato to try this year. No matter where you get your seeds, the beauty of spring in the garden is made of endless possibility, infinite potential, and the promise of sun drenched culinary delight.