Wink’s Blog

Wednesday evening, October 28, 2009.  The pregnant moon found a hole in the clouds as Max & I trudged up from the barn in deep twilight.  Clearing would give credence to the overnight forecast lows in the 20s.  On the other hand, there is an 80% chance of more snow tonight.  So take your pick.  We awoke this morning to 6″ new snow on the orchards; our first of the season, and it continued to flurry most of the day.  The Wilson boys and I were grateful for work indoors in the barn although it was pretty darn chilly for gripping tools and pounding nails.  The present tasks are to complete the ceiling in the first floor (and other details) in preparation for blowing-in cellulose insulation tomorrow.  The wind still blows through missing windows and doors — but all in due course.

At least we now have a space tempered from the elements for a myriad of farm tasks.  As our readers know, we were grateful for the cool space in which to pack our peaches and apples.  We also crushed and fermented a half-bin of our pinot munier and chambourcin grapes to make our ‘09 vintage wine.  We were, in fact, returning to the house from pressing these grapes when tonight’s moon peered over my shoulder, 78% full.  We had just pressed 70 gallons of wine into a barrel and carboys.

First snow denotes the return of winter.  October, even late October, seems early for winter around here.  True, the snow-level has been creeping down the slopes of Mt Lamborn and the high peaks are well-blanketed.  And, we’ve had a few cold nights, two of which gave rise to the urgent need to pick the grapes before they were truly ready.  With help from our neighbors we managed to pick over six tons of grapes in three days and the chemistry of the juice turned out to be just fine.  We were pleased with this yield for our first commercial wine-grape harvest.  Still, I’m unprepared for winter.  My fire wood supply is meager, there’s holes to be dug and trellis repairs to be affected before the ground freezes.  The trees and vines, though, appreciate a little snow on the ground and if this melts off, as we expect, it’ll help to moisten the soil going into winter.  An all-too-brief Indian Summer enabled us to almost complete the roof on the barn and siding on the East gable end.  Windows are due to be delivered next week.  And, since I am building the doors, I’d better get moving on that part of the project.

A highlight of our post-harvest season was a four-day visit from nine Colorado College students who camped in the orchard and helped us take-in bird netting from the grapes and muck out silt from the pond.  They also helped a friend put his farm to bed for the winter.

So, with snow, cold, and shortened daylight, we wind down the season.  And I have time to write and reflect.  Another harbinger of the coming months of hibernation is the filling of our freezers and shelves of preserves.  Last Friday I picked-up our annual side of locally-grown, grass-finished beef from our friend, neighbor, and rancher, Cynthia Houseweart (see princessbeef.com), for the freezer.  This yearly occasion is a social event as well as nutritional one.  Parked haphazardly in the shade of cottonwoods, cars and pickups clog the ranch driveway.  We’re supposed to load our flats of paper-wrapped frozen beef cuts and get them expeditiously to our home freezer.  But there’s Shirley and Bill and Margaret and Philip and Pam and Steve; folks we haven’t seen since last year’s pick-up or, at least, since the irrigation water was turned-on back in the Spring, all picking-up theirs.  And we finally have a little time to visit with one another; to compare stories on the crop-year just past.

Along with meat, Cynthia customarily hands-out literature intended to remind us that the benefits of local, organic, healthy, nutritious food outweighs the modest additional cost.  We, of course, don’t need to be coached on this.  This year’s handout was a reprint from the Aug 31, 2009 Time magazine.  The sustainable ag conversation has gone mainstream.  The author went to lengths to underscore the hidden costs of “cheap” food and to reinforce the value of food that’s raised in harmony with the natural world.

While I applaud the message and its significance, I want to echo the complaint of our friend, John Cooley, the organic potato farmer:  Why should the crops we raise, and their cost, be compared in any way with what conventional ag produces?  Why indeed?  Ecological farmers cherish and nurture our soils as the first essential of healthy food.  We build soil health and support the intricate web of organisms in the soil using compost, cover crops, and natural fertilizers.  Healthy, well-fed soils produce healthy plants which produce healthy, nutritious, and delicious food which is our passion and our mission.  Industrial ag regards the soil as expendable: kill the life in it along with the weeds and pests, degrade it, mine it, erode it, and when it can no longer provide what the plants need, then apply synthetic fertilizers.  We control pests by supporting a balanced agricultural ecology so that bugs, birds, and the plants themselves are able to combat bad bugs.  I could go on: we support local businesses, a vibrant rural community while industrial ag trades in a national, even global arena.

Really, there is no comparison in the nutritional value of the food produced sustainably vs industrially just as there is no comparison in the way its produced.  There is no separation.  Wouldn’t you rather feed your family food that builds and supports their health and development?  Wouldn’t you rather support vibrant local communities and open, agricultural landscapes?  For all these values, to spend a little more at your local farm stand, farmers market, or locally-oriented grocery, is a small price to pay.  Especially when you understand that, on average, we spend the smallest share of our disposable income on food of any developed economy and that it’s close to half what US families spent in the 1960s.  Let’s put our money where our mouth (and health) is!

Reminder: it’s not too late to sign up for our fruit CSA.

Another cold front moved across western Colorado yesterday afternoon on the familiar spring winds. From the tractor seat I watched as storm cells skirted around us bringing rain across the valley to the Black Canyon area and up-valley to Paonia. I managed to finish cultivating the east half of Apple Wedge Vineyard in the waning daylight and retreated indoors to warm up. Boy, is that a change! Recently we’ve been grateful for the cooler early evening hours after days reaching into the low 90s. Rain began here about bed time. This morning is still grey and cool and damp.

I’m pleased to report that the fruit all looks good. The peaches and apples have “set” what appears to be a good crop and we’ll be hand-thinning in the not-too-distant-future. Max and Matt are pruning the Pinot Noir grapes which Bennett declares to “look good.” We’re enjoying profuse salads from the kitchen garden and rhubarb crisps, crunches, and cobblers. Aaron and Matt have big plans for the gardens this year and can often be seen planting and hoeing by the light of their headlamps.

The insects are back, of course. Lady bugs can be seen feeding on aphid larvae on the flowering salsify. Lacewings are around in profusion. Wasps are busy predating and siting their nests. Tomorrow morning I will be laying-down the first weekly organic spray against apple coddling moth larvae. We do our best to minimize our use of sprays but so far we still need to rely on the granulosis virus to control the worm in your apple. Fortunately, it is very selective unlike some other broad-spectrum insecticides that might harm our beneficial insects and bees. We hope that some day we’ll be able to rely on birds, insects, and bats to control coddling moth. We believe that you, our customers, our “eaters”, prefer your apples without the worms so, for this season at least, I’ll continue to spray.

The orchards are alive with activity.  The bees are busy delving into the peach blossoms, forcing their bodies between petals barely open and emerging with their pollen sacks bulging.  They especially like the wild plums whose perfume wafts across the farm on the breeze.  Max has planted the kitchen garden.  Today we’ll plant new blackberries and mow the alleys in the vineyard.  Grape pruning is next and apple grafting is soon.

The Pheasants are strutting and crowing; Mallards have returned to the pond where Red Winged Blackbirds have taken up residence in the bull rushes; Meadow Larks serenade.  Yesterday Wink had a FOS sighting of a Kestrel.  FOS is birdwatcher jargon for “first of season”:  We’re enjoying becoming steeped in birder-lore since we joined Black Canyon Audubon and decided to open the farm to birdwatchers for a couple of special events.  (Check the web site for details).  Matt is moving into our worker housing and will be helping us this summer and through the harvest.

The peach orchard shows a brighter pink every day; apples are greening and beginning to show a hint of red.  All this color is highlighted against the high mountains still white in snow.  Cautiously, the old timers agree that the danger of a killing frost isn’t past until May 10.  But with the current succession of bluebird days and temps ranging from 40s to 70s it’s hard to envision the need to crank up the wind machines again.  Knock on wood.  Our fruit survived the cold snaps of the last month better than we had hoped and, so far, we’re looking forward to a full harvest.  So it’s full steam ahead.

April 12, 2009

Dear Mark,

It was good to see you Tuesday night at Talbott’s.  I appreciate very much you reaching out to the western Colorado agriculture community through the Western Colorado Horticulture Society.  No doubt you already knew that you’d encounter a pretty conservative audience.  I found it instructive that the big issues were taxation and immigration; plus an aside about regulation (food safety).  Three traditional right-wing whipping boys that are used to distract and obstruct discussion on issues of real importance.  Please know that not all of the Western Slope or the ag community here are so narrowly focused.  I especially appreciated your defense of President Obama’s economic recovery plan.  Thank you.

I recently received an email from your office in which you made the point that you are trying to bridge the divide that separates the parties and that has produced gridlock in Washington.  As a mediator, I appreciate the willingness of a party to reach out.  I also realize that resolution requires that both parties be motivated to settle. The Republicans demonstrate time and again that they are not so motivated.  They make no secret that the only thing they can agree on is obstruction.  The party of “No”.

The vast majority of Americans, including your constituents, reject the Republican Party, their ideas, and their tactics.  We need look no further than their behavior on the stimulus package to recognize their game plan: exact concessions, such as the middle-class tax cut, and then vote against it anyway.  With such an adversary it is a mistake, even dangerous, to try to find compromise.  And “adversary” they clearly are as they show no interest whatever in collaborating to solve the problems that their ideas created.  They are intent on seeing us fail regardless of the pain and cost to the Nation.

Thus, while continuing to seek a collaborative outcome remains a worthy and ethical effort, please be careful not to surrender the values that got you elected.  Max and I urge you to focus on getting the important work done and forget about trying to work with the other side.

We also want to weigh-in on the issue of food safety:  Certainly there is reason to be concerned when people die or are sickened by the food they eat.  The appropriate legislative response, however, is not to create new regulations which shift the cost of enforcement to farmers.  Rather, the FDA should be adequately funded to perform the inspections and enforcement that it is already empowered to do.  The recent rash of food-related scares can be linked to the trend to deregulation and “starving the beast” that has brought calamity on so
many levels.  Let’s restore a more responsible level of utilization of existing regulation before creating a whole new bureaucracy.

At the dedication of the Jerry Ahlberg Outdoor Education Center at CC, you enjoyed one of our delicious certified organic Gala apples. Remember?  As organic, small farm operators Max and I feel that the true threat to food safety comes from the industrialization of agriculture; from the concentration of market power in the hands of just a few large corporations, who are intent on extending their control by monopolizing access to seeds, and subjecting us to GMOs. It is important to remember that their overriding reason to exist is to produce ever-increasing returns for their shareholders.  This is in stark contrast to the small farm community that values diversity, quality, cooperation, and sustainability in addition to a reasonable return for our labors.  Our customers buy directly from us; they know we care about their health and well-being, we care about the health and well-being of our soils and of our rural communities, and we care about our workers and their families.  And our customers reciprocate the connection.

This is what Dr John Ikerd calls “The New American Agricultural Economy” (http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/). We urge you to pay attention to his ideas because we consider it a model for how the US can move beyond the collapsing unsustainable corporatist system toward a sustainable future; a future that values community, cooperation, health, peace, nutrition as opposed to just corporate profits.  This movement is well underway right here in western Colorado’s North Fork Valley.  If you’d like to experience it first-hand, we invite you (and Maggie) to pay us a visit here at Mesa Winds Farm.  We’ll show you models of the New American Agriculture, and I can assure you that we’ll turn out a bigger crowd, and actual supporters to boot, than last Tuesday.  In the mean time, please check out what we’re up to by visiting our web site at www.mesawindsfarm.com.  We’re looking forward to it.

With best wishes,

Wink & Max

Speaking of “fleece,” we’ve got plenty of it.  Black Welch Mountain sheep fleece, that is.  A week ago Max and Aaron and I went to a nearby sheep ranch to lend a hand wrangling sheep for a day of shearing a couple of hundred head.  For more on these fuzzies go to Desert Weyr’s website.

The day was clear and cold with a biting wind.  But the work, on the whole, kept us warm and moving.  Max and I have recently been warming to the idea of grazing sheep in our orchards and vineyards to keep the cover crop mowed and to add manure to the soil as well as meat to our table and wool for whatever one does with raw fleeces.

Max has done considerable research and has learned a lot about this proposition.  So we took advantage of our neighbors’ shearing to get hands-on with the subject matter.  It was a treat and an education to observe a real Welch sheep shearer at his work.  Aaron crowded the fuzzy black critters toward the shearing floor which Max and I kept tidy.  We moved the shorn sheep back into the paddocks and admired the fresh fleeces as Oogie extolled their relative virtues and shortcomings.  Nothing is wasted; even the “junk” fleeces are salvaged for garden mulch.

The deep, soft, warm, slightly greasy black fleeces were seductive.  Max brought home one of lamb’s wool that is sheer delight (no pun intended) to caress.  All week she has been washing and cleaning and cleaning and washing the wool.  Then drying it on the rack by the wood stove.  Finally tonight the clean fleece is stored in moth-proof sacks awaiting the next phase and we have use of our dining table again.  She admits to being obsessed:  a beginner flock will definitely be on site at the Farm next spring.

It will be interesting to see the carrying capacity of our orchards, as the goal is to do away with fossil-fuel-powered mowing.  The variety she has settled on is Southdown Babydoll; a relatively smaller heritage variety said to have exceptional wool, excellent meat, and a quizzical grin for a fixed expression.   An Extension Service researcher in our area has been experimenting with training this variety to graze in vineyards without harming the vines and we aim to learn from her.

Rain rode in on the winds of yet another cold front yesterday afternoon.  Our west windows are splattered with mud — fertile topsoil from the corn fields around Delta, presumably.  It rained over night but we’re still expecting snow and another night of deep cold temps.  Max claims this could be the last cold weather for a while, so I’m tuning up the sprayer and preparing to sally forth into the apple orchards as soon as the weather warms to spray against powdery mildew.

April 2.  I’m up early again this morning, awakened once again by the roar and throb of our neighbors’ wind machines and the question whether to add ours to the chorus.  For over a week now it’s been an early-morning routine: either our alarm thermometer goes off or we hear someone else’s machine start up.  Usually both.  The thermometer tells us that temperatures are heading into the critical range where damage to the tender fruit buds will occur.  The neighbors’ wind machine tells us that he thinks there’s enough warm air above and that by mixing it with the cold air trapped near the ground he may be able to stave off some damage.  I phone the CSU Extension Service Experiment Station to connect to their reporting thermometers, one at fruit level and one at 40 feet above, and see whether there is a temperature “inversion” — one mile away.  My neighbor (one-half mile distant) also has an elevated thermometer.  But also has a couple of machines that turn on automatically.  Has he made a calculated decision or not?

So the deliberation narrows: how localized is the inversion?  How severe is the frost?  How steeply is the temperature declining?  Is there any cloud blanket?  Any wind?  How soon will the sun be up?  One thing’s for sure — I’m up and not likely to get back to sleep with all those questions and machines stirring around.  So far, we haven’t turned on our machine a single time this year.  But maybe I’d better call the station again…

Up to last week we were headed into an early spring.  Day after day of warm, dry, bluebird days.  The fruit trees awakened almost a month ahead of average: buds were swelling and showed hints of pink blossoms.  The further advanced the bud development the more vulnerable to frost damage.  We monitor the bud stages and correlate to charts depicting temps where 10% bud kill is expected all the way down to 90% bud kill.  We set the alarm thermometer accordingly.

Then came the first cold front — roaring in on 50 mph winds and sending the mercury plunging to 13 degrees.  We welcomed the snow that followed but worried for the fruit.  A succession of fronts, wind-events, snows, and storms has followed.  It’s winter again, time to break out the fleeces and boots again.  But try telling that to the trees: they can’t go back to sleep.  So we engage in early morning deliberations that reduce to weighing whether the cold is due to a cold-air-mass that we can’t do anything about or radiational cooling that we can temper by turning on the big fans.  A morning like today where the temp is hovering around 20 degrees (well into the critical zone) is actually a relief from recent mornings when it just keeps sliding into the teens.

So, what are our prospects for the fruit season?  After the first two cold nights we clipped a few representative peach branches and brought them inside to dissect the buds in search of the tell-tale brown of freeze damage.  Before we accomplished this, though, we had another very cold night, and our earlier results were obsolete.  Now those buds are swelling to beautiful pink blossoms in a vase in our living room.  We’re not without prospects to report, however.  Our friends at the Experiment Station have been diligently dissecting bud samples and their reports are far more encouraging than our fears had been.  We still have at least a month of exposure to potential frost events, so prognostications remain premature but we’re again optimistic for a bountiful harvest.

Just to be sure, I phone again for the temps at the Experiment Station…  No change…  I can continue to peck at my keyboard, and sip morning tea by the warm fire, and listen to my neighbor’s wind machine and wonder what he knows that I don’t…

I awoke about 2 this morning to the tick of rainwater dripping from the eaves.  Overnight low about 37.  I asked the thaw question a week ago and since then nights have been in the teens and highs in the 40s.  Warm for January; snow blanket slowly disappearing, the mud even drying in a few spots.  But today the five-day forecast is for rain, rain, rain with temps between 30 and 45.  Good time to get back to wrenching indoors.

We spent inauguration day and evening with friends in Colorado Springs; it was a joyous event.  We also met with contacts to plan the growing season and fruit distribution.  Our friend Susan Gordon of Venetucci Farm (http://venetuccifarm.org/CSA.html) is helping us to plan a Fruit “CSA” (Community Supported Agriculture).  In the CSA model, a member buys, in the Spring and for a fixed cost, a share of the summer produce of the farm.  By purchasing the share in advance, the member helps the farmer afford the season start-up costs and each week receives a basket containing a pro rata share of that week’s harvest.  If the harvest is prolific, the basket overflows; should it falter, the member shares the loss with the farmer.  A personal relationship deepens; the member develops a sense of ownership in the farm and the farmer appreciates sharing the risks inherent in farming.  Originally applied in vegetable growing, the concept has recently been expanded to encompass meat, fruit, and even prepared foods.  We look forward to knowing our CSA members and welcoming their visits to the farm.

Stay tuned for news and updates.

This morning the mercury stands at 17 F.  Four or five warm days in a row and it feels like Spring.  Likely just a January thaw but with the rattle of orchard ladders in the apples next door and the voices of workers, the orchards are reawakening after an all-too-brief rest.  I’m restless to get back outside myself after two days indoors at the annual convention of the Western Colorado Horticultural Society in Grand Junction while the snows melted.

The highlight of the WCHS conference was three impassioned addresses by Dr John Ikerd on the “New American Agriculture” and the “New American Farmer” both of which could be summarized by the term “sustainable agriculture.”  The kick-off was a showing of the new film “Broken Limbs” (which Max and I have ordered for the Farm library; www.brokenlimbs.org); the story of a farm family who are struggling to keep farming despite devastating competition from China and South America as they raise apples in Washington’s fertile Columbia River Valley.  With the smoke from the decimation of their neighbors’ razed orchards as the back drop, the film depicts how these folks apply Dr Ikerd’s message in their effort to continue in the way of life they love.

In person, Dr Ikerd told us that the days of industrial agriculture, including industrial organic, are over.  That the New American Agriculture produces food ethically, for local communities, that is nutritious, delicious, and healthy.  In order to be “sustainable” the New American Farmer stewards the land and preserves and improves the soil; (s)he treats workers and the community alike with respect, kindness, and equitably; and, equally important, finds ways to produce reasonable profits.

This is not a new message to our friends who have been following this blog and web site and who have been purchasing our fruit.  You know that we are working on improving our soils and stewarding our farm ecology.  We acknowledge that we have room for improvement in paying our workers a living wage — a priority for us.  So much of what we can put back into the farm and our workers depends on securing an adequate income.  It is a process of continual improvement.  We have declared this to be the year that we will see if we, and the farm, together can realize the promise of the New American Farm economy.

It was on this last point that we heard Dr Ikerd’s message most powerfully.  And this is where you, the “eater” of food comes in.  He works with sustainable ag groups all over the country and he sees that people want to know where there food comes from; want to know and trust their farmers; and want to know that their food dollar is going to support farmers who care about the land, the quality of the food they produce, and the ethics they live while growing it.  They understand that by supporting local farmers they are supporting rural communities and the health of the society to which they belong.  Through this wholistic understanding, they are willing to pay more for food grown in this way because they know where those dollars are going and that they are supporting values that they respect.

We came away not only reinvigorated in our commitment to making this happen but with references and resources to help turn the vision into food on your table.  So, if you’re in our “food-shed” and want to be part of this movement, don’t hesitate to email (wink@mesawindsfarm.com).  If you’re already part of our network, you’ll be hearing from us directly.  If you’re in another local food region, look for farmers markets, CSAs, farm stands, and u-picks.  Make friends with a farmer who cares about you, your family, and your community.

In recent days Max and I have agreed to serve on the Board of the Western Colorado Horticulture Society (http://www.coloradofruit.org/). We are pleased and honored. Our friend, an organic orchardist and the outgoing President, who made the offer said he expects us to be a progressive voice on the Board. We’re pleased to be viewed in this light and pleased that the Board values a diversity of perspectives. We’ll do our best to be a worthy. As far as this blog is concerned, this role ups the ante; I don’t want to be dismissed as a kook. I’ve begun to regard this blog is a conversation with myself — I’m about the only one who contributes — that I let the rest of the world in on. I’m tasting ruminations that I’ve been chewing-on. I hope you find them worth digesting.

I generally feel that whether I can explain something, even to myself, succinctly and briefly is a measure of how much I understand of it. By this measure I have a lot to learn about soils. Since my last effort to describe what goes on in the soil I’ve been trying to take this discussion further; to review, for my own sake, what I’ve been observing, studying, deducing and intuiting. I find I can’t simplify. It’s not just that there’s a lot of different perspectives and different commentators formulating the challenges differently. Perhaps it also discloses how little is really known about soils. It reminds us that every soil sample is different, every agro-ecosystem is different, every farmer has a different outlook. Moreover, much of what is going on down there takes place in the microscopic realm and is more about relationships, synergies, and competitions than about the indivisible parts.

If we’re going to intervene in our soils, how are we going to measure the results? Size and quantity of fruit? Taste? Resistance to disease and pest pressures? Believers say “yes” to all of the above. These results are hard to quantify and are largely subjective. Maybe we can perceive success in the size and hue of the leaves, the appearance of the trees and the overall orchard. The bottom line results aren’t in until harvest when we can measure fruit size and tonnage. But even this is, at best, an indirect measure of the health of the soil. What about the confounding variables such weather, irrigation skills and challenges, pruning and thinning, pest cycles, the progressive maturation of the plants, climate change, phases of the moon, and my own mood? Our scientist friends can try to tease apart the interconnections of the subterranean world; but as far as I can tell, we do what we do less on the basis of empirical data, than on what seems to us to most closely comport with our observations and what feels right: Our belief system.

So, what do we believe? We believe in helping Mother Nature succeed. We try to work in harmony with the ecology of the farm to produce delicious, healthful fruit. This does not necessarily mean the biggest or most tonnage. We also believe that, by reducing the interventions and off-farm inputs, any potential loss of quantity can be compensated by reduced costs. And that fewer tractor trips into the orchard the better for the soil ecology. We’re focussed more on quality, health and flavor than on sheer quantity.

Consistent with our beliefs, we are moving to use cover crops exclusively to provide the nutrients our trees and vines need. Certainly we won’t accomplish this in one year; it is a transition that will take at least a few years and thereafter it will be a way of life. Beginning in the vineyards, in the vine-rows, we’ll plant a mixture of low-growing (so we don’t need to mow them and they don’t overly compete with the vines) plants including dwarf white clover for nitrogen, alyssum and other flowering plants for the beneficial insects, etc. This ground cover will out-compete the weeds and eliminate the costly and time-consuming tilling we now do with the Weed Badger. It will help hold moisture, reduce erosion, and lower summer soil temperatures. The beneficial insects which predate on the pests will have a supportive home right next to our valuable plants. Next, using a no-till seed drill, we’ll plant the alleyways with a mixture (yet to be determined) of buckwheat, hairy vetch, etc to produce a lot of organic matter. This we’ll mow or simply knock down according to Bob Shaffer’s theories to provide organic matter and lignin.

We’ll do pretty much the same in the peaches: We’ll apply commercial organic nitrogen this year because the trees need it. And we may have to shallow rototill in the tree rows in order to control the existing orchard grasses and enable the cover crops to get established. By tilling we run the risk of damaging the tender, shallow, feeder roots from the trees, breaking down soil aggregates, and disrupting the live flora and fauna of our soils. But we probably have to break that egg on our way to an omelet. In an alive soil, these qualities will reestablish themselves. And the critical thing will be to beat the weeds by seeding the cover crop immediately. Also, similarly, we’ll establish a more diverse cover crop in the alleys as time and resources permit.

Likely, by the time we get all that accomplished, the apples, which seem hardier than the peaches and appear plenty healthy at this point, will speak up for their share of the attention. By then I may have refined my belief system with more understanding of the capacity of healthy trees to repel insects and disease simply by virtue of being strong and healthy. This is an attitude that I can appreciate, in that I apply it to myself, so I’m predisposed to apply it to our friends, the trees. More on that in the future.

Too much palaver! By now you’ve likely concluded that these ideas are hopelessly naive, far too simplistic, that I’m out of my mind, or all of the above. Possibly all true. Please weigh-in with anything you care to share so we can all benefit the better.

Friends Nancy and Alan remind me that I’ve not been upholding the promise of keeping “in touch” through Wink’s blog.  Thanks for the nudge; it’s great to know that folks out there are watching!  We are back on the farm after a ten-day post-Thanksgiving road trip to Saint Louis to attend the Acres USA (”the voice of eco-agriculture”) annual conference and trade show and a visit with our new grandson, Roman, his parents Nik and Julie, and aunty “Cioca” Aniela.

With our ecological footprint in mind, and after determining that the Amtrak schedule simply wouldn’t work, we chose to drive.  Our aging Volvo (220K miles) ran like a top and averaged better than 30 mpg, but more important, the enforced sociability gave us a chance to talk, dream, and plan for Mesa Winds Farm’s year ahead and beyond.  The conference provided a lot of nutrients for the soil of this conversation.

We had already resolved that 2009 is to be our year to focus on farming better.  It is propitious that, in our fourth season on the farm, we give our trees, vines, and garden the attention they deserve.  We are focused on understanding and improving the health of our soils.  An axiom that was oft repeated at the conference is that the farmer’s job is to nourish the soil and the soil will take care of the plants.  You, dear reader, will appreciate the departure this represents from the “cheap food” mentality that has predominated wherein the soil is regarded as no more than a matrix to hold the roots while the farmer adds petroleum-based synthetic “nutrients” the plant requires.

Ecological agriculture understands that nutrition and human health, as well as quality and delicious flavor, start in the soil.  Soil, microbes, water, sun, and air work in concert to create the vitamins and minerals that are transferred to the grains, vegetables, and fruits we eat.  When soils are rich with life through this beautiful and complex process they support good health and disease resistance for land, plants, and people.

We followed a “track” of lectures and workshops that helped us refine our understanding of a healthy soil.  It’s an incredibly fascinating study that defies full explication here (or anywhere):  Soils vary with the locality and the history, both geologic and human, of every shovel-full of soil we turn.  It is written that there are more organisms in a half-cup of organic soil than there are human beings on the entire earth.  The synergies, competition, cooperation, and ecologies of this teeming mass is what we mean by “soil life.”

It has also been said that we know more about the soil on the moon than we know about soils here on Earth.  I don’t know about that but, clearly, important discoveries are still being made and yet to be made.  Within the complexities and variability there are, nevertheless, broadly applicable principles and similarities, so study and discussion remain relevant.  One division represented at the conference is between those who believe that, for the plants to get all they need, farmers need to help by providing external additives and those who would rely on the soil itself to “grow” these crucial attributes.

We arrived with this very question on our tongues.  Most of our organic fruit-growing neighbors apply some kind of fertilizer to their orchards.  And they till the plant rows to reduce weed competition and open the soil to accept the organic matter.  They admonish us to do likewise.  In our first year we applied organic nitrogen pellets, composted chicken manure, and natural sulfur (to lower pH and release minerals bound up in our alkaline soils) — external, off-farm additives all.  We kept an open mind on tilling even though we didn’t actually put the rototiller to work in the orchards.

Miro’s eco-agriculture class took up the question and designed a survey protocol and tests that they applied to our orchards and to those of our neighbors.  The conclusions were incontrovertible: tilling breaks down the hard-won soil structure and soil aggregates which, in turn, reduces the soil’s permeability to oxygen (soil organisms breathe, too) and water, and soil life is impoverished as a result.  What was a true surprise is how many more earth worms we have.  Worms do much of the heavy lifting in building soil organic matter and are an accepted measure of soil health.  We shelved our thoughts of tilling.

Last year we didn’t apply the nitrogen, sulfur, and compost — but for reasons unrelated to the needs of the trees — and our Crest Haven peaches were disappointing.  Why?  Was it the hot, dry summer (driest on record)?  Was it the lack of nutrients?  The expert opinion is that the trees “ran out of gas” and need nitrogen fertilizer.  We have a lot of the stuff left over, so we’d already decided to give ‘em another “fix” in hopes of a better crop this year.  That’s fine for this year.  But what about the future?

Can we grow the nutrients and organic matter the peaches need right there next to the trees?  Our vision is to nurture cover crops that feed the soil and its denizens and provide, from below, all that the trees and vines need and, from above, the flowers and habitat for our bees and beneficial insects.  After sitting through any number of presentations by consultants bent on selling their services and proprietary products, at the very last session I finally heard a spirited presentation that confirmed that this is not only possible but ideal.  Bob Shaffer put it all together for us.  Plus he was applying these principles to perennial crops, especially grapevines, applicable to Mesa Winds Farm.

That’s more than enough for today’s bloggage.  I hope to further explicate Shaffer’s teachings next time I find the impulse to write.