And as evidence for these changing seasons this morning I awoke to the first frost of 2011. Admittedly it was a fairly light frost, but it does highlight the inevitable march towards the quiet of winter. It’s now time to begin making preparations for the cooler months such as ensuring that the under cover beds are ready to go, where they can take advantage of the warmer microclimate, as well as potting up any species which are likely to need some assistance over this period. The main species that comes to mind at the moment is my lemongrass clump.

This weekend we will begin preparations by redesigning the greenhouse, and setting up a few new watering systems under the verandah.

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The reason I’m so glad is this morning I awoke to the oddest site… snow at Mulloon. In fact I had been lying in bed listening to the rain on the roof for a while, but then there was no sound. I could see the ‘rain’ falling, but in my sleep induced haze, didn’t put 2 + 2 together. In fact by the time I took the video below it began to be mixed with sleet.

Needless to say that snow at Mulloon isn’t a common occurrence, even in the dead of winter, so to have snow in mid-October is something of a treat. Unless, of course, those summer vegetables are already in the garden….

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48k49BhXRA

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The weather page is connected to a sensor at TSH which electronically measures the temperature, humidity and rainfall on the property. At a later stage it’ll also measure wind speed and direction, but at this stage the anemometer isn’t working as well as it should.

The dials on the page will provide you with updates of the current weather, well a few minutes behind the current weather anyhow. There is also a graphs button that will allow you to choose graphs of historical information (when there is some historical information) and a page of records for the site. You can also change the units to any units that make you feel most comfortable. Finally there is an option to go into full screen mode to make it easier to read.

Please check out the weather page and let me know what you think.

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And they said it couldn’t be done…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWEfcLMdZn0

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A couple of months ago I decided to revegetate a sacrificial paddock. A sacrificial paddock is one in which the animals are maintained for longer than would normally be prudent.  This would normally be a landcare nightmare but in this case a small area was chosen, which was already significantly degraded, which could be intensively revegetated following the animals.

I chose to build 2 sacrificial paddocks near the front gate for this purpose as the soil in that location was already bare hardpan, and their location would be ideal for quarantine/holding/calving paddocks moving forward. They are approx. 0.2 acres in size each.

A pair of the mischevious maruaders...

The plan to revegetate was to cover the soil with straw to a depth of about 1-2cm, and then broadcast sow a mixture of forage brassica, plantain and clover into that mix. The hope was that the straw would help retain moisture and provide some protection for the seed, and it would grow through. Unfortunately I didn’t consider the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos…

The practical upshot was that the Cockatoos had a GRAND time eating my carefully sown seed, and tearing up a few nearby plants to boot. Now that some of the remaining seed has germinated, I can see the patchy growth pattern that is the result of their stirling efforts. Bless them!

However it isn’t all bad, and I have recently discovered a ‘blessing’ in their arrival…

Recently I have noticed that the ‘paddies’ of cow manure haven’t had their usual shape, and were in fact being broken up and spread. At first I thought it might be the action of dung beetles, as spring is almost upon us, but that didn’t really ring true as it seems to be a little too cold still for dung beetles. But the other day I noticed the Cockatoos in the paddock tearing apart the dung. Why?

Well it would appear that they are looking for undigested grain. I have recently changed the diet of my cattle to include a small amount of barley grain. Most of the grain is digested by the cattle, but some ‘goes through’ undigested. The Cockatoos have learnt that the grain is ripe for the picking (in more ways than one) and are therefore spreading the manure for me. They are doing a great job.

So the next step will be to find a bird scarer that I can erect over the paddocks for short periods of time (to allow germination and initial growth) which will work amongst the trees. The first attempt was an artificial hawk, but so far this has proven not to be terribly effective (mostly due to tree cover). However this apparatus will be relocated and its effectiveness reassessed. Otherwise some other steps will need to be taken.

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The point of this post is the raft of beaurucratically inspired idiocy that seems to pervade the ‘lucky country’. This is all the legislation, guidelines, audits, notifications, regulations, inspections, disallowable instruments, and general silliness by which the paternal state ‘protects’ our food supply. But who is this really protecting? The Consumer? Or vested interests in the industry? I am beginning to think it is the latter rather than the former.

What began this tirade was that a friend of mine recently told me of a free-range egg production business that closed due to changes in legislation. It was your standard ‘Mum and Dad’ business producing small numbers of eggs for retail sale through selected butchers. There was no long term storage of eggs and there was no processing of egg products. Rather they produced healthy local produce sold promptly in the local community… The best of the locavore approach.

However recently the laws in NSW were changed to add an extra layer of regulation to this ‘perfect’ little business, causing them to shut up shop. Under the new regime they were required to keep excessive records, be licensed by the NSW food authority, develop a food safety plan, and be subjected to regular audits. Of course, at first glance, most of these measures seem very reasonable however it’s a case of the devil being in the detail. For example, when they purchase new egg cartons (it has been illegal for sometime to recycle egg cartons) the supplier of their egg cartons needs to produce certification that the cardboard cartons are safe for contact with food stuffs. OK! But correct me if I am wrong, but don’t eggs come in shells which, if kept clean and dry, protect the contents and are in contact with the food stuffs? Do we really need to produce, and keep, certificates for each batch of cardboard boxes? Does this prevent salmonella in eggs?

Or what about “adequately pest-proof hen enclosures to prevent the entry of wild animals and birds, vermin, and domestic animals”? Doesn’t this mean that we need to cage or barn house all the birds, making true free-ranged birds impossible? (for more info on the free-range standards, and more absurdities, see this article)

Is this the future for all our chickens? No fresh air, bare contaminated earth, no life?

And let’s not forget to mention the fact that eggs cannot be sold to the public unless they have undergone ‘crack detection’. Performing crack detection puts you in the same category as a a full food handling business (meaning additional regulation beyond the producer level) and requires sophisticated machinery or significant amounts of skilled human grader time. The practical upshot is that the latter costs you significant dollars, the former means more paperwork and even more rigid standards.

All of these ‘public safety initiatives’ are easy for a large battery hen producer as they have a large enough throughput of eggs to offset the huge costs. They can implement document management systems to link batches of packaging with egg batches; they can employ specialists to run the expensive grading, washing and crack detection machines; they can justify employing a policy officer to write and maintain the hundreds of pages of policy required; they are big enough to apply political leverage to create a government enforced monopoly.

What they can’t do is produce genuine farm eggs produced by hens who aren’t forced into a slaves life, churning out egg after egg, but have the opportunity to be hens, to flap, sqwark, run around, eat real grass, forage for food. All of the values that are driving the locavore/free-range movement are subsumed into the industrial food machine.

Sir Humphrey, of Yes Minister fame, would be proud!

Perhaps idyllic, but this is what it is really about. Which do you prefer?

The other thing to realise about the new rules is that very small egg producers, ie small volumes not small eggs, are also included. This means that if you have a backyard flock of birds, selling the occasional dozen eggs to a neighbour, then the new standards also apply to you. If you don’t follow them, then fines of up to $55,000 (or more if you are set up as a company) can be applied. However the rules for small egg producers are less onerous (and can be found here) but it still includes notification of your ‘business’ to the NSW Food Authority.

To my mind this idiocy is truly a case of the industry protecting itself through the paternal hand of government. It is big industry who would have seen the consumers push to ‘actual free-range’ over ‘pretend free-range’ and the potential lose of market share. And it is the big producers who were already doing these things and saw the opportunity to have them applied to smaller producers.

Let us not forget that it is the big producers who largely create the public health concerns. It is the sheds if thousands of birds that pollute and toxify the environment encouraging the ‘bugs’ to grow. It is the large producers of ‘free-range’ birds that leave carcasses of dead birds to rot, and be eaten, amongst their shed fellows. And it is the large producers who may wash up to 30,000

eggs in contaminated water releasing those eggs onto the market.

As a people we are right to question the big producers. We are right to ask them if they are, by virtue of their scale, putting us at risk. But is it right to ask a small producer (producing say 300 eggs per week) to meet the same requirements of a producer churning out 60,000 per week? How can those small producers survive?

I truly believe that if we, as consumers of the said products, don’t start to ask our legislators important questions such as ‘WHY?’ then the only version of natural living our children can ever understand is one of hermetically sealed farms with animals living an artificial life. A future in which our livestock won’t be animals, but will just be organic cogs in the gaping maws of the industrial machine.

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A decision that had to be made in this instance was to burn or not to burn….

Traditionally a farmer would get all this scrappy stuff together and set it on fire. This would turn most of the wood to gas (releasing it to the atmosphere) and the remaining ash would be scattered over the paddock area. Doing this has the advantage of dealing with this debris rapidly, leaving a nice clear paddock.

However I feel it has two important disadvantages, the carbon that has been locked up by the plants is lost to the atmosphere (rather than being broken down for inclusion in the soil) and this material offers some very useful ‘stuff’ to form a mulch layer.

So at TSH the majority of this debris has been put to use as a mulch in the tree corridors between the paddocks.

The video below explains the concepts involved, and provides a sneak peek into how these paddocks will be managed. Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEPKS9PjhmI

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For example, over the 20th century, the US Department of Agriculture’s seed storage bank reduced the varieties of fruits and vegetables held. For example 544 varieties of cabbage became just 28; 287 varieties of carrot was reduced to 21; and most staggeringly of all, 2,683 varieties of pear was reduced to approx 300.

Of course the practical upshot of these losses is the fact that the majority of our food crops, both in agriculture & the home garden, are genetically narrow.

What is the risk of sameness??

Well the most publicized risk is the fact that many of our pests and diseases may find ‘chinks’ in the armour of these crops leading to massive losses. This, due to the lack of genetic diversity, then leads the need to apply prodigious amounts of fertilisers and ‘cides (herbicides & pesticides) to keep production up. Of course, as we apply more of the ‘cides, the pest species (which are genetically diverse) begin to adapt making themselves resistant. This creates a feedback loop requiring more ‘cides, creating stronger bugs, more ‘cides, stronger bugs, more ‘cides… etc.

The alternative, which according to Darwinian theory worked for almost all of earth’s history, is to utilize genetic diversity to beat the bugs. This works because not all plants in the population will have the same chink that the bugs find. Those that do are destroyed/damaged, but those that don’t survive. The survivors then become the forefathers of the new generation, and in time the bugs ability to exploit the chink is lessened.

Of course as all this is going on the bugs are also evolving and trying to outwit the plants.

This is evolution at work!!

For this positive feedback loop to work, evolution only needs a single tool… diversity!

Which leads us back to the concerns around the increasing lack of diversity amongst our food crops.

What can we do?

Well the simpliest thing we can do, whether we are a farmer or a gardener, is to encourage genetic diversity. For example, instead of planting only ‘Derwent Globe’ beetroots in our gardens this year we might plant Derwent Globe, Chioogga, Bulls Blood, and Burpees Golden. In this way we have increased the genetic diversity in our gardens by 4, as well as making for much more interesting salads due to colour, taste and texture.

As we do this we are also encouraging the seed houses to hold more varieties, and the growers to grow the seeds.

For the home gardener there are a number of really good suppliers of heritage seeds (see the links page) but for the farmer things are a little more difficult.

Things are more difficult for the farmer as most of the seeds that can be purchased in bulk are not available in a ‘wide range’ of varieties. In fact, the established agricultural systems discourage planting a range of varieties, and encourage the planting of vast monocultures.

However even farmers can make a difference. You could for example;

• encourage your seed supplier to provide you with greater diversity
• encourage more cross pollination on the farm, and save seed wherever possible
• encourage weeds and other endemic species (tricky one due to laws around weed control)

The key point is that we need to start considering the genetic diversity of our food crops, and doing whatever we can to increase that diversity.

Our future depends on it!!

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Whilst she is here, a little more than a month or so, we will also finish the chicken dome, acquire a couple of new cows (perhaps) and fence a couple of new paddocks.

For more information on the WWOOF scheme, please go to the links page.

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This new ‘dual’ site layout will see most of the fact sheet type content being stored at Green Phoenix and general information about the TSH project here.

Please let me know what you think of the new layout by filling out the survey below.

Cheers
Shane

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