Rock & Roll Farm

Sunday! Mar 26 2006 // 9:11 pm // permalink

News Updates

Website: Eat Wild the Clearinghouse for Information About Pasture-based Farming

Articles:

1. My Saudi Arabian Breakfast at TomDispatch.com

According to researchers at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of over seven calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400 calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have “consumed” 2,800 calories of fossil-fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio to be as high as ten to one.)

2. In Thursday’s New York Times, an article about the guest worker program and its relation to United States agriculture.

…according to farmers’ own estimates, about 70 percent of the 1.2 million hired workers tilling fields and picking crops are illegal immigrants….

“If not for Mexican workers,” he adds, “this country would be in chaos.”

…But the guest worker program has failed to bridge the gap between the farmers and the workers. Farmers complain that the program is simply too expensive. It sets a floor for pay ‘a regional average of the wages in several farm occupations’ that will rise this year to $8.51 an hour from $8.24 in 2005. Farmers must also house the workers and pay workers’ compensation…

For many farmers, then, illegal immigrants simply provide a cheaper alternative that involves far less bother than the guest worker program. North Carolina farmers can harvest their crops paying $6 to $6.50 an hour no workers comp, no recruitment fees to “green card” workers or “otherwise documented” workers. Those are euphemisms for immigrants unlawfully in the United States, who typically show up with a fake green card to get a job.

3. Project for Public Spaces, Funding Resources for Public Markets.

As the number of farmers markets in the U.S. increases, more funding opportunities to support them are being created. PPS is working with private and public funders to further develop grant programs for markets. Below are resources for markets that PPS has either helped to create or that have been created independently.

Tuesday! Mar 21 2006 // 8:30 pm // permalink

Hello, Alaska

In three weeks or so I’ll be leaving for Ester, Alaska. I’ve accepted the position of EATinG Supervisor at Calypso Farm and Ecology Center. The EATinG program made Calypso Farm my first choice for the summer. I’ll write more about the area, the farm, etc. soon. Following is a description of the EATinG program from Calypso’s website.

Calypso Farm and Ecology Center (Calypso) created the Employing Alaskan Teens in Gardening (EATinG) program in 2003 as a way to educate and empower students to grow food for themselves and the community. This program provides students with an innovative way to connect education, employment, food and community. The EATinG Program facilitates the development of a network of youth run gardens in the Fairbanks schools, where students are paid to grow food and operate a small Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) program.

The pilot garden was established at Howard Luke Academy in 2003. In partnership with elementary, middle and high schools in the FNSBSD the program will create 3 school gardens by 2008. Operating these gardens as student-run CSA’s ensures that the gardens are maintained during the summer and contributes significantly to the financial sustainability of the EATinG program. The EATinG program establishes a mutually beneficial relationship where schools have gardens, youth have meaningful employment and hands-on education opportunities and the community has access to locally grown food.

p.s. if you know anyone who is selling a car anywhere between here and Fairbanks - and you think it could make the trip there - let me know.

Sunday! Mar 19 2006 // 2:34 pm // permalink

Choosing an experience

This past week I had phone interviews with my top three choices of farms for this summer. They could not be more different from each other and I’m having a hard time deciding which would be the most beneficial to my training. The interviews went very well with all three, and I’m confident that in each case I’d be a good match with the personalities in charge. But that is where the similarities end.

Geographically speaking, they are spread across the US. The farm in Wisconsin would be quite similar to where I was the past two years. Maine seems like it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch as far as climate but I think the area would be a little mountainous. Fairbanks, Alaska is exotic when compared to my previous farming experience and the two other farms under consideration. According to Explore Fairbanks, the sun is up for around 20 hours a day in July. I’ve seen some photos of vegetables grown with that much light input, and they get big. Really, really big.

The living situations are drastically different - yet when compared to the experience of most Americans the differences seem negligible. Communal living is so outside the realm of acceptability for almost every person I talk to about it. I happen to like it and I think it’s because of this affinity that I see striking differences where others may not. At one farm I’d live in a massive, ancient farm house, where I’d have my own bedroom but share a bathroom with one or two other people. We’d eat most meals together and share cooking/cleaning responsibilities. At another farm I’d be sleeping in a tent, and sharing common living spaces with other people on the land. As it was explained to me, “you’d be sleeping in a tent, but there’s more than enough living space in the buildings.” I find this distinction interesting and endearing. At the third I’d have my own sleeping space, possibly in a platformed, canvas-walled tent, and share a kitchen with another intern. I’d have a hard time deciding which of these is most appealing. None present any major problems for me.

Socially speaking, they also represent drastically different areas on the spectrum of farmers. One is a nice-sized CSA, run by a couple who support themselves entirely with the farming operation. They like farming, they are seeking to train new farmers, and seemed like they’d be a good couple for me to learn a lot from. The second is a collective, in the building stage (what collective isn’t?), that grows food expressly for their own consumption. They do a lot preserving and share food with their neighbors. They run a community gardening program in a nearby city and I’d spend a lot of time there with community members. The third is a CSA farm that also runs an ecology center and a small gardening/CSA program at a local alternative high school. Part of the work would be at the farm, and part at the garden working with students in an after school program. The social environment here seems the most “formal” or “professional.” but subtly so.

In terms of learning experience, it’s hard for me to say which would teach me the most about farming. And I’m not even certain that’s what I’m setting out to learn at this point. All three represent a blend of different skills I’m interested in learning, and have nearly balanced positive points when compared to each other. The experience I’d have specific to learning style would be as strikingly different as the operations themselves. In the case of the collective, I think there would be a lot of room for experimentation (in terms of gardening technique) without a great deal of supervision. This is not to say that there wouldn’t be supervision - but it seems like the most “anything goes” of the three. This seems like an opportunity to learn more about communal living and functional collectives. At the CSA farm I’d be working alongside the farmers in a very production oriented environment, and would perhaps learn the most about the mechanics of a farm that size - equipment, variety selection, soil preparation, etc. The farm and ecology center would be a risk/support relationship that would allow for experiment while being supported in a semi-formal or organized way by the other farmers.

This latter example is the most attractive to me because of this risk/support environment. I feel that it suits my current skills well, and would expose me to the right set of problem solving situations and information resources, providing a rich and effective learning experience. This is not to say that the other two wouldn’t bring me to a new level of skill or knowledge, and I am hesitant to say that this analysis is final.

Sometime in the next few days I should know where I’ll be farming and living and I’ll write a follow-up to this post outlining the specifics of my new home and place of employment.

Wednesday! Mar 15 2006 // 10:00 pm // permalink

Round 2

I never did know when to quit.

The past few months working indoors has made it absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt clear to me that farming has me by the throat. So Rock & Roll Farm is back. For now.

Here’s the update. I’ve applied for 15 apprenticeships across the US, and have done a few phone interviews so far. I expect to know in the next week or so where I’ll be for the rest of the summer. Here’s a few of the options: Maine, Wisconsin, Ohio, Alaska.

My criteria for choosing the next farm I’ll work at is pretty simple. I’d like to learn more about how to integrate my interest in community development into farming. The CSA is a seemingly perfect framework for that, and I’d like to see some of the methods being used across the country. More than one of the farms to which I’ve applied have some kind of youth program, and those are the farms I’m most excited about.

It’s likely that I’ll be gone from Southeast Michigan by late April, not to return until September or October (or November!). So if you wanted to hang out with me, you’d better make plans.

As for Rock & Roll Farm, I’ll be back to posting information about sustainable farming, food systems, food security, and community development. Comments are welcome!