E. coli redivivus: Deja vu all over again in the city

Spinach anyone? Or perhaps you would prefer California scallions and green onions, or iceberg lettuce? As of today (12/14/2006), the FDA (citing CDC data) is reporting a total of 71 cases of E. coli infection in five states, with 53 hospitalizations in the latest outbreak. This time, rather than the fresh iceberg lettuce sold in bags at the grocery store, the agency for dissemination appears to have been the prepared entres of the fast food chain Taco Bell.

While not as large or devastating (yet, in terms of death) as the September outbreak in Spinach, this lettuce mess is another reminder that industrialized, centralized food production and distribution is a tragedy waiting to happen...yet again. (See Eric Schlosser's NYTimes editorial, "Has Politics Contaminated the Food Supply?" though his argument for an increase, and yet more centralization, in the bureaucratic regulation, inspection and oversight of our food--instead of a real solution, like returning to highly diversified, local food production--is short sighted.)

For Tumbledown's analysis of the causes and cures for this public health menace, see the previous five entries under "food safety."

Finally, Tumbledown has a bone to pick with the NYTimes guest blogger Steven Johnson (The Link Between Cities and Terror). Tumbledown tried to respond to Johnson's entry, but instead of being edited down, Tumbledown was edited out. So, here's the essence of the response: The solution to the problem posed by Johnson is the same as the solution to the increased industrialization and centralization of food production and distribution. Move (back) to the farm! ...but that's a solution Johnson has already dismissed as impractical or impossible. Too bad it is the only real solution proposed by any reader to Johnson's appeal for conversation.

In an earlier blog, Steven Johnson twice claimed that city dwellers subsidize the existence of farmers. ("[I]t is an undeniable fact that the big cities are footing the bill for the residents of so-called 'real America.' Blue states consistently pay more in taxes than they receive in federal assistance; the opposite is true for the red states." And "[i]t’s another thing for city dwellers to be lectured about urban depravity and the 'heartland' way of life, when cities are partially subsidizing that way of life." Real America, November 20, 2006)

Even if Johnson's numbers are accurate, the statistic lies. (The truth always depends on what you count and what you value.) For example, it does not "cost" much to drive a car, until you start to factor the cost of carbon emissions. (What will be the cost of keeping New York dry--or, more timely, post-Katrina New Orleans--when the waters start to rise from global warming?) Johnson forgets that in a debate about what is "real," food always wins. As Gene Logsdon says, "there's a difference between money growth and biological growth." (Living at Nature's Pace, "Traditional Farming," p. 86.) Crops do not grow at the same (exponential) rate as money. Or, to say it yet another way, real things do not grow at the pace of virtual reality. Real food for city people is subsidized because we do not "count" the costs of rural decline due to the industrialization of food production, or the real cost that "inputs" like fuel and chemical fertilizer extract from our environment. City food today is subsidized to a tune far greater than the difference between tax receipts and the government dole to states. It is subsidized, not by tax receipts from the city, but by borrowing from our future. People who live in cities cannot produce their own food--and they cannot live without it. So, what's the "real" value of stable rural towns and villages?

Let Tumbledown know when you city folk get hungry. Perhaps we country folk will be able to spare a green bean or two. ...just don't all come to dinner at once, please.

Tumbledown Farm

Chocolate Christmas Caramels

Tumbledown just had to have some chocolate caramel with his egg nog this evening, so away he went to try a hundred-year-old chocolate caramel recipe from the 1919 Farm Journal book How to Do Things. OK, so Tumbledown's candy-making skills were a little rusty, but how can you go wrong with a bar of Ghirardelli chocolate (grated),

a pint (2 cups) of sugar, a pint (2 cups) of honey and molasses, a tablespoon of vanilla extract, and a half cup of heavy cream?

Well, for starters, you will need a 4 quart sauce pan. (Tumbledown had only a 3 quart pan.) A candy thermometer is a must if you do not want to check the mixture constantly by dropping it in water until you reach the "soft ball" stage, and you'll need the big baking pans (buttered) to spread the stuff a quarter inch thick.

(Tumbledown's caramel is at least 1/2 inch, which means it cools far too slowly.)

Still, that rich, dark, chocolate taste sets off a glass of egg nog...just right!

mmmmm.

Tumbledown Farm

Giving Thanks

On this Thanksgiving Day, Tumbledown is thankful that he is a sheep of the Lord's pasture (Psalm 100), and not the "Tom Turkey" of the Lord's flock.Mindful of those confined to hospital rooms and nursing homes today across this broad and fecund land, and feeling for all those people who are isolated and separated from the celebrations of family and friends, those deployed in military service, and all those who will eat alone or in institutions, Tumbledown's thanksgiving prayer includes a request that the Great Good Shepherd of us all (John 10) will continue to walk with us and our mourning, lonely, ill and aging friends through their dark and pain-filled valleys toward greener pastures, on peaceable banks alongside restorative waters (Psalm 23).

Tumbledown is sure that the Good Shepherd still wields both rod and staff, though the chaos of war and terror and famine and disease seem to betray some broken fences on the Good Lord's farm. There are thieves and wolves about in the world, and some of them are stealing sheep and turkeys and chickens.

Still, Tumbledown's head is oily and his cup runs over as he gives thanks for frosty, peaceful November sunrises on the in-laws' once-upon-a-time farmestead, the quiet sounds of birds chirping in the trees, the rustles of deer moving through the woods, and the brown still of the rising sun on the pond before the gleaming white of the first deep freeze.

The ground this year still yielded an abundant harvest. For that we can be grateful and thankful as we dig in to the green beans gathered and stored in the heat of summer, and spread the fall raspberry jam on steaming wheat rolls. As the Turkey roasted slowly in the oven this morning, Tumbledown strolled through the pasture gates, giving thanks for neglected apple trees;

blessing the Lord's name for the blue-bird's nest, now abandoned for the winter;

glad for the well that long ago watered the people and animals of this place.

The Psalmist is right. Whatever else may be said about this world, the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endures to all generations. Tumbledown has tasted the goodness and mercy of the Lord. So, to the living generations now gathered--in your house and ours--Tumbledown sends a very heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving!

Tumbledown Farm

Too Dumb to Farm

Is Anyone Today Smart Enough to Farm?

Nobel economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006) famously declaimed about an ordinary #2 lead pencil: "Look at this lead pencil. There is not a single person in the world who could make this pencil." (The PBS tv Series, "Free to Choose" [1990, Vol 1 of 5, "The Power of the Market."], available today on YouTube, but who knows for how long. Tumbledown has not quite figured out the relationship of that story to the following: Leaonard E. Read, "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read," December 1958.) Friedman could as easily have said that not a single person in the world today can farm. (Maybe that isn't true world wide, yet, but it is probably safe to say of the U.S.) The extensive, monocrop (or, to be generous, the two-crop rotation) agriculture of today, using genetically modified seed and industrial fertilizers, means that no one person could produce even a corn or soybean crop for two years running without the help of strangers thousands of miles away--and, of course, without the help of the oil-rich. The same can be said of animal raising. No single farmer keeps both boar and gilt, breeds boar to sow, cares for the pregnant pig until she delivers her litter of piglets, farrows, weans, and finishes the litter (much less butchering and preserving the hogs). And absolutely no one raises both crops and animals! That was Friedman's point, of course, that thousands of people across the world had to "cooperate"--but indirectly, with their interactions mediated by a market--to produce a pencil. Friedman celebrated the wondrous ability of the market to enable this faux cooperation (he says we might want to kill the person--of another religion, race, or ethnicity--with whom we cooperate to make a pencil, if we had to work directly with the person).

Tumbledown is not saying that the Nobel winner is wrong. (That would be dumb.) The market is indeed wondrous. But it isn't all good--nor the whole good, nor even the highest good. (See the critiques of Ray and Schaffer, Developing an Alternative to the Chicago School, Daryll E. Ray and Harwood Schaffer, UT, Ag Policy Analysis Center, Org. for Competitive Markets. Kansas City, MO, July 2003.) Markets also allow us to cooperate unwittingly in the creation of world-threatening warming, and to buy oil from the supporters of terrorists.

Just think about it: we can no longer even write--and writing is thinking--without globalization. No local community has the knowledge sufficient to produce it's own writing implements (quill and ink anyone?) much less its own food. Friedman was known as a champion of the individual's freedom to choose.

This is freedom? The dependence on a global market is truly freedom? We supposedly choose, when we are free to do so, what is in our best interest.

So, why will more than 50% of us "choose" to live in cities? According to Steven Johnson, we've gone from 3% of the population in cities (in 1880 at the dawn of the industrial age), to 50% (already, not waiting for 2007). "We are now a 'city planet,'" says Johnson, quoting Stewart Brand.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, why do we (dumb?) city slickers choose to eat fastfood?

And why has the Future Farmers of America become the FFA? (Times Article: Agricultural Mainstay Gets a New, Urban Face.) Because we are too dumb to choose farming. We prefer "agriscience," "biotechnology," and "turf grass management." Call us "farmers" and you may receive an old fashioned haymaker. Friedman was right that the economy is to blame. It is no coincidence that the "FFA" was first formed following the hand wringing of the 1920s to attract and keep farm boys on the farm by countering an inferiority complex. (Logsdon, "Our Hidden Wound," in Living at Nature's Pace, "I'm a hayseed, I'm a hayseed, and my ears are full of pigweed" or the struggle with the romantic opposite in Harvey Wiley's Lure of the Land.) Nor is it any wonder that the FFA name change followed immediately after a time of deep agricultural crisis. (The name changed in 1988; see this economic analysis of the period immediately prior: "Things got much worse when the dollar began to appreciate beginning in 1980. Exports fell in value by nearly one third by 1985, and with high interest rates, land prices could not be sustained. In the ensuing farm financial crisis, supply control interventions and farm program fiscal costs were driven to record levels." "Exchange rate effects on agricultural trade," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Aug 2002. by David Orden.)

Maybe no one today is smart enough to live in the country, or free enough, to farm.

But we cannot end this entry on such a sour note. Maybe some of us are beginning to choose well, to live smart--by choosing and buying locally produced food. The NY Times calls the farmers who produce this food "counterculture farmers." So be it. Tumbledown calls them the real farmers. The farmers who say we can too make this pencil. You bet we can grow our own peppers, Milton, without shipping them from South America.

We will learn the utility of making our own pencils, and choosing to grow our own food and fiber.

We city slickers will have brains enough to farm.

I just know we will, Milton. How's that for confidence?

Tumbledown Farm

The Little Red Hen

Tumbledown is hungry.

Abby McGanney Nolan's review of illustrator Jerry Pinckney's The Little Red Hen reminded Tumbledown this week of all the good things there are to eat down on the farm. The heat of summer is a fading memory; the sweat of scything and bundling sheaves is giving way to long sleeves;

and the aching muscles that once threshed winnowed now rest mostly when they are not shivering.

(See Gene Logsdon's Small Scale Grain Raising for a detailed description of this method of harvesting home-grown garden wheat.)

But there is now wheat to grind and bake for Thanksgiving. There are whole-wheat pancakes to make and smother with butter, and raspberry jam to spread. And Tumbledown has to wonder whether the youngsters will help with the feast, other than with the eating.

But what shall we make? There are so many possibilities. And some are not even that much work. What about No-Knead Bread? Or Kolaches? Or thumbprint cookies?

mmmm! Now there's a lesson that cannot be taught more directly than on the old-time diversified farm. "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat!" (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

Tumbledown Farm

Farming, a Living or a Lifestyle?

According to the profundities of our agriculture professors, these days you can either have farming as a "way of life" or as a "living"--that is, either as a "lifestyle" or as a "profitable business"--but not as both. (Purdue's Michael Boehlje, "From Tractor Driver to Chief Executive," Indianapolis Star, October 29, 2006) Obviously, things have not always been this way. At the turn of the last century, it was assumed that "to a large extent" a farmer's livelihood--food and fuel, and other necessities for living--were taken directly by the farmer from the farm and not gained derivatively through cash from farming. "The country experience" and "rural values" were a part of the "good living" a farmer made, and "the money," 10%, amounted to a return on the farmer's cash investment (5% actual cash profit, if that). Another assumption was that a "farmer" was anyone who had agriculture as the "chief means of livelihood." ("A Good Living and 10%," How to Do Things, p. 254)

As a result, one of the fundamental rural values of 19th and early 20th century farmers was self sufficiency, another was independence. Those are lost to today's "full-time enterprise farm." As Beohlje says, now farmers--as CEOs of a profitable businesses--are contract suppliers who must follow specific production methods and meet targets and deadlines. Targets? Deadlines? Operating "machinery and equipment 24 hours a day"? Sounds like nothing short of slavery to Tumbledown. All the work and none of the lifestyle? Why not punch a clock or sit in an office, if the object is merely money?

Is it really impossible to earn a full-time living and still keep the farming lifestyle? According to the good professor, the full-time farm comprises "5,000 or more acres or 10,000 or more hogs"--and is "more a business than a way of life." According to the professor, some mid-size farm families "choose" to both farm and have an off-farm job. Even so, it is "technology" that allows these farmers to manage "1,000 acres or more." Tumbledown wonders whether working two jobs really leaves time for the farming lifestyle. And when the second job is a result of the "choice" between losing the farm or adding an off-farm job to support the farming "lifestyle," Tumbledown figures the professor should have said these farmers "are forced" to both farm and work an off-farm job. Even so, these mid-sized farmers do not keep it up long, as their decreasing numbers demonstrate. That leaves the "lifestyle" farmer, whose numbers are growing. Maybe we should call these farmers "farming reenactors," weekend preservers of a "lifestyle" that no longer really exists. Artificial farmers.

Tumbledown suspects that these "lifestyle" farmers sometimes do harbor dreams of farms that "warrant the entire attention of at least one [person]" (another assumption in How to Do Things).

According to the same Star article, "65 percent, or 15 million acres," of Indiana land is dedicated to farming today. At the time of the 1900 census, the number was 21,619,623 (out of the total area of 22,982,400) acres, or 94%. (Cyclopedia of American Agriculture) According to the 2005 USDA stats, the number of farms in Indiana today is 59,000--at the 1900 census it was 221,897. Today the average farm size is 254 acres, then--if Tumbledown's calculator works--it was 97. The only statistic that seems to move in a favorable direction is the total cash value of the "agricultural products"--$5.5 billion last year, $203 million in 1900.

Have we taken the farming "lifestyle" out of farming in favor of cash? Do we really prefer dependent city living as the paradigm and independent country living as the exception?

Tumbledown somehow has the same dream as Harvey Wiley (The Lure of the Land) did:

"Theoretically, my idea of humanity would be a scattered population, all of the productive industries taken out of the cities and place in the country to which they properly belong, and the city left only as a place of exchange. Meanwhile, let us make the best of things as they are. ...intend to be real farmers, to live upon the farm and gain [...] livelihood therefrom,--and by farm I do not mean simply fields of wheat and corn, but I mean orchards and dairies and gardens and forests, in fact all the various activities by means of which Mother Earth yields her treasures of grain and fruit and flowers to her tenants."

Or as Gene Logsdon says (from his lips to God's ears), "The Future: More Farmers, Not Fewer." (Living at Nature's Pace) More real, diversified farms. Don't call what Tumbledown does a hobby; it's a good way of living. Now if he could just make a little cash at it--maybe 10%?

Tumbledown Farm

One Seed of Hope? Ag Land Trusts

Tumbledown just this week learned about land trusts (see Land Trust Alliance, an umbrella organization). Tumbledown's interest is agricultural land trusts, the kind that work to save groups of farms on the edges of development. Maybe Tumbledown has been asleep, or maybe just ignorant, or maybe too much oriented east of the Mississippi (most of the existing trusts seem to be a western, even Californian phenomenon), but this seems to be a way of preserving the quickly passing culture of small farm communities. An individual with the hankering to become a farmer, would be well advised to do it where a community is actively seeking to preserve the way of life--donating to preserve land from development for farming--than to tempt fate by playing the Lone Ranger.

The first ag land trust, as self reported on their web site, was the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), established in 1980. (The crest of a recent farming financial crisis in which many small farms were sold or lost.) According to the MALT web site, the trust acquires voluntary "agricultural conservation easements" on farmland, "encourages public policies that support and enhance agriculture," and has "so far permanently protected 38,000 acres of land on 57 family farms and ranches." 57 family farms and ranches sounds to Tumbledown like a small, but vital, agricultural community, the kind of community that is absolutely necessary to support the individual family entering farming for the first time, the kind of community that hardly exists anywhere any more.

A little closer to home, the American Farmland Trust and Farmland Information Center report that "more than 100,000 acres of Indiana farmland is converted to non-farm uses" every year. Tumbledown has publicly mourned this loss before. But AFT also reports that "Evelyn Parker Chambers and Mary F. Parker have donated an agricultural conservation easement on the Parker Farm, located in Sand Creek Township [Bartholomew County, Indiana], to the Sycamore Land Trust. So, even in Indiana, momentum may be building for this movement.

For Tumbledown, hope springs eternal. Perhaps even now the seed for many small farms is being planted.

Tumbledown Farm

Food Wants to be Free (like the network)

Today's NYT editorial touting the consolidation of food safety from 15 federal agencies to 1 is short sighted. It is precisely the sort of bureaucratic (and administrative, and technological) short term fix that addresses the symptom ("The single source of our food has been contaminated, so how do we stop the contaminated batch of spinach before it reaches everyone in the U.S.?") rather than targeting the real source and root cause of the problem (and the larger issue--"Why is there only one source of U.S. spinach, when spinach can be grown across the U.S.?"--i.e., the consolidation and specialization of industrial food production). A single federal agency with real POWER (in the language of the editorial, "the powers and authority it needs to control the American food supply"; emphasis mine), is a nightmare waiting to happen to small, diverse, local producers of farm food. Already, they are marginalized. Already, the only voices being heard in Washington are the voices that can pay to play. They are the large, consolidated agribusinesses. Their motive is profit and congress is all too willing to take their money and do their bidding. Tumbledown is not too happy with the way things are now, but consolidation of the bureaucracy into a single, powerful agency seems a singularly bad way to address these problems. It could lead to greater, not less, consolidation among food producers (only those large enough to comply--or to pay to write the regs--will survive). And it in no way addresses the fundamentals of the situation.

Where does the heavy hand of government regulation need to be felt today? Tumbledown thinks he knows: in the support of net neutrality. In other words, in insuring that the big boys stay out of the way of the little guy. Insuring that the little guy's voice continues to be heard and that the fees for the infrastructure are neutral, rather than advantageous to the big guy.

If food neutrality were the only aim of the one (1) proposed food safety bureaucracy, food might become both safe and free, and locally grown.

Naaah! It will never happen. But for a second, Tumbledown was living in a dream world!

Finger Prints on the Smoking Cow?

Yesterday Tumbledown learned that the FDA and State of California have now confirmed test-positive that samples of cattle feces gathered from a ranch some 2 miles from the farm where contaminated spinach was grown contains E. coli with "matching genetic fingerprints" for the same strain of E.coli O157:H7 that earlier sickened 199 people. Officials continue to caution against jumping to conclusions, but it is becoming more difficult to escape the obvious: the cow did it. With its poop print on the murder weapon, it'll be hard for the defense to make its case. The question for Tumbledown is now whether these were pasture-fed cows (doubtful) or whether they were cows of the grain-fed, manure-lagoon-producing type (more likely). It is encouraging to hear health officials admit that the growing history of "outbreaks linked to leafy greens indicates an ongoing problem," but Tumbledown is not sanguine that our state and federal officials will produce solutions that move beyond technological quick fixes. (See yesterday's post.) Not likely that nature's counterintuitive (to industrial agriculture) and permanent fix--to place more, diverse, animals (and more poop, more widely scattered) on farms that also grow a greater diversity of plants--will attract a following. After all, that would require farmers who are generalists and officials who are localists. And everyone today is a specialist and internationalist. And we like it that way. (Not T.!)

Will the Real Farmer Please Stand Up?

Tumbledown was incensed again to read Lew Middleton's comment that "Today's farmers are specialists, not generalists." (The Hoosier Farmer, Fall 2006, p. 1) When Middleton went on to claim that such specialization is "all aimed at creating the safest" and "healthiest" environment for the livestock, Tumbledown nearly let loose an expletive. Specialization is driven by corporate insatiability, by the profit motive. Specialization in livestock farming is not "friendly to the environment." It is the most likely source of the E. coli in our spinach, just ask Michael Pollan. (Op ed in today's NYT Magazine, "The Vegetable-Industrial Complex," joined a growing chorus of people who are refusing to ignore the obvious.) Pollan quotes Wendell Berry's old saw that we have taken nature's elegant solution in which "crops feed animals and animals’ waste feeds crops" and, by becoming specialists in either crop production or animal production (but never proficient in both), we have turned nature's solution into two very real problems: "a fertility problem on the farm, and a pollution problem on the feedlot."

The solution that is eventually proposed for our E. coli problem is not likely to be a real solution (that is, a radical solution, that fixes the root problem of specialization) like nature's solution, but a technological quick fix, like the "high-tech" agriculture touted in the most recent Hoosier Farmer. (The irony is, of course, that the magazine cover sported dairy cows on pasture, not beef cattle and sows in confined operations.) At any rate, Pollan is right, look for the politicos and their trough-filling K-street fat cats to start touting programs to irradiate the entire food supply. Don't look anytime soon for a return to real farms where everyone raises, "some corn, some wheat, some soybeans, a few milk cows, a few pigs, maybe some beef cows. And, of course, a big garden to help feed a growing family." (Hoosier Farmer)

Tumbledown did get a little good news this week in the story about Denise O’Brien, the organic farmer and Democratic candidate to become Iowa's secretary of agriculture. Denise is a real farmer. For Iowa's sake, and for ours, Tumbledown is praying that she wins.

Lawn Humble, Like a Bad Neighbor

Tumbledown is a bad neighbor. He does not employ the ubiquitous (in suburban Indiana) orange-green-white trucks from LawnPride to apply their tank full of "treatments" to his lawn. He does not ask whether the products are "safe" for his rabbits to eat or his children to play on. He sees the man in the truck don elbow-length (green!) latex gloves to handle the stuff. He knows that it is designed to keep his home free of ants (kill them dead), and spiders, and other "pests." (Oh, my!) He knows the chemicals kill the worms and the grubs. And he does not have to ask what happens to the nitrogen from the excess fertilizer when it rains. He sees the street drains, and knows they run to the White River, and on into the Ohio, and the Mississippi, and down into the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone."

How does Tumbledown keep his lawn green? He welcomes the jumble of life. (But he squashes spiders that make their way inside.) He lets the larger eight-legged ones go free to spin their webs under the eaves. He enjoys the chirp of the crickets in early October, and the mantis as she makes lunch of the other pests.

What is the result of not spraying weed killer or chemical fertilizer? The result is dandy-lion greens and jelly in the spring. White clover (and fixed nitrogen, nature's fertilizer!) run amok with white flowers in mid-summer. And bugs everywhere. Tumbledown's aeration comes from plants (a.k.a., weeds) with deep roots. They break up the deadpan clay that the construction company left (hardly soil at all, more like concrete), making paths for air and water to get to the roots of the grass. And the grass? It grows tall and lush without watering, even through the longest, hottest part of our mild Indiana summers.

Tumbledown's lawn is such a tragedy. (No, really!)

Problem is, Tumbledown will not be molified by corporate promises that the poisons are "approved for use on residential turf and landscapes." Approved? By whom? Rather than say "O.K." and "that must make it right and safe," Tumbledown asks why the government has the right to "approve" the spread of poison on every lawn in suburbia?

If that is LawnPride (tm), Tumbledown is glad to remain LawnHumble. If that makes him a bad neighbor, so be it.

No Real Farmers

On the heels of yesterday's news about the likely source of the E. coli outbreak--manure lagoons from massive dairy and cattle operations (see previous post)--Tumbledown learned today that "real" farmers (the "janitors in confinement barns") are about to increase their presence in the "industry" again, as Smithfield Foods buys Premium Standard Farms. (NYTimes editorial, September 23, 2006, "The Ultimate Efficiency") Independent farmers, already squeezed, are about to have even fewer places to market their hogs. It may seem a small thing that pigs are no longer slaughtered and butchered close to home, where both the farmer and butcher are resident members of the community who will eat the pork. And it may seem that the threats to food safety from producer consolidation (single source) and massive warehousing of animals can be managed and regulated. But regulations to "protect our health" make it extremely difficult for the small farmer or butcher to stay in business, and in effect the regulations that now exist simply "protect the wealth" of the large corporations. Every effort should be made to encourage local production (raising and packaging) of food. Regulation should be simplified and compliance made easy for local producers. We had monopolies once, to very grave effect. Why would we want to travel that road again?

E. coli in California. Why Sick in Indiana? (And Why Must Immigrants Pick Pears?)

Tumbledown thinks it only obvious that there must be a better way.

According to the FDA today (09/21/2006), "157 cases of illness due to E. coli infection have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including 27 cases of Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), 83 hospitalizations, and one death." Eight (8) of these illnesses were reported in Indiana. Though the FDA continues to investigate the source of the outbreak, this much is already clear: these eight (8) Indiana residents did not contract the illness from spinach grown in Indiana. In fact, the "fresh" spinach in question was grown, picked and packed in California. ("The FDA, in working closely with the CDC and the State of California, has determined that the spinach implicated in the outbreak was grown in the following California counties: Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Clara.")

Why does our spinach come from California? Is Indiana not suitable for growing spinach this time of year? Can Indiana not produce its own "fresh" spinach in sufficient quantities to feed its own population in mid- to late September? Of course it could. Tumbledown has mixed greens ready for picking in his own garden at this very moment, and none of it is infected with E. coli O157:H7.

According to the FDA, the "major source of microbial contamination with fresh produce is associated with human or animal feces." Worker hygiene is clearly a concern, as is any unsafe or malfunctioning septic system. But such human contamination is far less likely the culprit in this instance, especially direct contact with human or animal feces. More likely, the spinach (or other fruit, vegetable, or leafy green) has come into contact with contaminated water. And the source of that contaminated water may be "factory farms" and their "manure lagoons." (See Nina Planck's September 21 NYTimes Op-Ed, Leafy Green Sewage. Note: Tumbledown is not convinced [yet] about Planck's animal chemistry connection, acidic stomach and all that. The author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why may have her own axe to grind, but pasture farming on more, smaller, diversified, local farms is certainly an all around better--not more efficient, because efficiency is not the highest good--way of producing food.) The FDA urges the industry to "manage closely" the storage and use of animal manure and biosolid wastes, but accepts the status quo of animal finishing in humongous feedlots--and monstrously large dairies--and their concentrations of feces as a necessary price of food production. Meanwhile the local sale of raw milk is prohibited or overregulated beyond reason.

Is it really necessary to produce spinach (and beef and dairy) in California for sale 2281.7 miles away in Indiana? Tell that to eight (8) sick hoosiers, in a state that could produce its own, easily, safely. (BTW: Indiana has its own manure lagoons. And as long as they exist, they will overflow.) Or tell it to the people of Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Iceland, who also eat "fresh" Californian spinach.

A seemingly unrelated story also says a lot about what's wrong with "real farming" today. (Gene Logsdon, "I'm Glad I'm Not a 'Real' Farmer," in Living at Nature's Pace.) And in this case, a picture shouts a thousand words. Julia Preston's September 22, 2006, NYTimes article, "Pickers are Few, and Growers Blame Congress," is headed by a photo of a dejected farmer, Toni Sculli, standing in front of tons of perishing Northern California pears. Perishing for lack of pickers. Labor has always been the #1 problem faced by farmers, but that problem is now exacerbated by monocrop farming in huge quantities. Surplus fruit on a diversified farm--even unpicked, falling off the trees--can be eaten by sheep grazing below, or used to supplement a hog's diet. But on a farm that grows only pears, and in quantities too great for the community to pick, to send to Indiana (where pears grow just fine, thank you) and to India, and Japan, the surplus is catastrophic.

There must be a better way. And there is, if we will but take it. And to take it, we must teach the majority of our children to farm. The growing, picking, and packing cannot be left to those outside our local communities.

"Crikey!" A Season of Creation?

It is appropriate as our Aussie brothers and sisters mourn the death of Steve Irwin (Crocodilehunter.com), to consider a less flamboyant, more understated, but nevertheless significant contribution from "the land down under." Norman Habel and the Uniting Church in Australia have challenged christians to take seriously their worship of God as creator by establishing a season within the church year to be known as the Season of Creation. Of course, christians who read the Psalms ( like Psalm 8 ) have long known that the "heavens declare the glory of God," but it takes an Aussie to name this Sunday (September 17) "Sky Sunday," the "Third Sunday in Creation." (The proposed calendar, appropriately, celebrates only six Sundays in Creation. One assumes both we and God rest on the seventh.) Tumbledown likes that the season begins with "Creation Day" (September 1), rather than Earth Day. Tumbledown is also particularly pleased to see an invitation to Protestants to follow the example of their Roman Catholic friends in honoring St. Francis of Assisi. So, for example, the proposed "Season of Creation" calls for the "Blessing of the Animals" on October 1, followed by St. Francis of Assisi Day on October 4. Too bad the animals will mostly be dogs and cats. Tumbledown has nothing against them, but would like to see a procession of goats, sheep, pigs, and the like. Maybe even a croc or a ray. THAT would be blessing the animals!

Tumbledown Goes Downwardly Mobile

Tumbledown noticed the spate of articles and editorials today bemoaning the latest census data:

"More Hoosiers sink into poverty, Indianapolis Star, Wednesday, August 30, page 1 above the fold.

"Downward Mobility," New York Times editorial.

"Census Reports Slight Increase in '05 Incomes," New York Times article.

What got Tumbledown's attention was the generalizing nature of the editorials, the hidden assumptions about wealth and poverty (the altogether goodness of one and the wholly unmitigated badness of the other). Especially when Tumbledown hears statistics about the top fifth of earners living in metropolitan areas (90.8 percent vs 9.2 percent rural) and the bottom fifth of earners living in rural areas (21.2 percent rural vs. suburban or city), Tumbledown begins to ask "what were we measuring?" Just cash? What about the bounty of life lived "at nature's pace" (Logsdon), cordoned by sunrise and sunset, shared with a strong community, sustained by fresh produce from one's own place? Doesn't anyone in the census bureau remember Jesus' comment about serving mammon?

The mindless repetition of such statistical claptrap reinforces a stereotype and prejudice that is destructive of rural culture, the most valuable assets of which are not measured in cash. The inability to ask more subtle questions of the census data means that we will continue to offer "strong support for public education, a progressive income tax, affordable health care, a higher minimum wage and other labor protections" (NYT editorial; none of which Tumbledown opposes) as the cure-all remedies for rural and urban poor alike, when what is needed in rural areas is simply a right valuation of rural life and produce.

Such bandying of blunted statistics perpetuates what Gene Logsdon, following Wendell Berry, calls "our hidden wound"--the opposite pole of which is the suburban invention of a "divine right to be mindlessly rich" (emphasis mine; Berry, The Long-Legged House, "The Tyranny of Charity," p. 5; Logsdon, Living at Nature's Pace, p. 50).

Want to feed some country bumpkins with food stamps (with food stamps?) and give them MRIs and CATscans? Fine. But dealing with rural poverty in the abstract, as Berry says, will simply "encourage the exceptional to become ordinary" (p. 10). Let's not follow governmental thievery and neglect with cultural destruction, if there is still a rural culture that can be nourished, celebrated, justly compensated, and protected.

Let's do good and do a good accounting of the things that matter most--so that we may all be enriched--rural, urban and suburban.

Animal Farm

Tumbledown would be remiss if he failed to mention the 61st anniversary of George Orwell's classic farming handbook, first published after a year and a half delay (to satisfy the publisher, and perhaps also some British censors, that Russia would not be unduly offended) in August 1945. It should be some small comfort that the satire is still required reading in the U.S., along with Nineteen Eighty-Four, in many High School and college literature classes. Mostly, with the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, we've exorcised our "communist" demons. But totalitarianism of all sorts is still with us, especially the sort that says "if you are not with us, you are against us" (in the words of The Seven Commandments, "whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy"; "whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend"). In other words, the sort of totalitarianism that gives rise to animal revolutions in the first place is still all too much with us. After all, Eric Blair begins his classic "fairy tale" with Mr. Jones and his last glass of beer, not with the comrade pigs.

Tumbledown thinks we still have a few things to learn from Mr. Orwell's farm--and not just to use a lantern, shut the popholes on the hen-houses, and mow and rake with Boxer and Clover. Some animals are still "more equal than others." Too many farms are still Manor Farm and too many farmers still rulers less-than-entirely great.

Haven't read it in a while? Check out Animal Farm,The 50th Anniversary Edition. And while you are at it, listen to NPR's Day to Day, with Alex Chadwick's tribute to the book, August 17, 2005.

Fuel Farming = Big Corn = Big Oil & Bad Farming

Tumbledown gulped with great pride and appreciation as the Indianapolis Star devoted a whole section (OK, it wasn't section A,B,C,D,E, or even F; it was section "G"...for green; Thursday, August 17, 2006) to farming. Hey, there was even a red barn on a cover page that was otherwise the color of growing corn (but some of that green was from weeds, despite the chemical and mechanical perfection of the picture. I guess no one on that farm has heard of an invention called the cultivator...or the hoe, for that matter. (And, of course, there isn't an animal in sight.)

But I digress. The Friday (August 18) edition of the Star included an editorial entitled "Pumped up about ethanol" in which the Star took the position that "ethanol could be one soure of helping nation reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil." The editor did at least start with the caveat that "much work remains"...fantasy about what "could be" is not yet passing entirely as reality. What about the arguments attributed to Senator Richard Lugar and Purdue University President Martin Jischke? Let's take them in turn:

1) It is in our national interest to reduce dependence on imported oil. Let's see, last time I checked, most of the corn grown in Indiana was planted in fields prepared by tractors burning oil, in planters burning oil, dressed with chemical fertilizers and oil-based herbicides and pesticides, and, of course, harvested with huge machines chugging oil. The manufacture of all of the machinery and the storage facilities requires the use of oil...and that's all before we get to the production of the ethanol from the corn. Can the Star be so confident that ethanol production actually reduces dependence on foreign oil when a comprehensive accounting is done of the way the corn is produced and shipped for ethanol? Perhaps if our current corn "surplus" had been produced by horse-drawn plows, using manure as the primary fertilizer, then we could talk about a real reduction of dependence on foreign oil. But without the consumption of all that foreign oil, we wouldn't have the surplus to turn into E85.

2) The Star's list of "solutions" to the crisis of dependence on foreign oil is laudable in the main, especially the call to conservation and mass transit (in Indianapolis?), but the exaltation of E85 to an "important" answer to the nation's energy needs is a bit much. Bravado, really.

3) The recognition that something other than corn (e.g., the President's infamous "switchgrass") might be made into ethanol is comforting, especially given corn's drain on the soil (requiring more pesticides and herbicides to grow, and still more loss of soil fertility than with other crops)...and the temptation for farmers to "squeeze as much corn production as agronomics will allow" from every acre. (Tom Holloway Jr., as quoted by Jeff Swiatek in his Thursday article, "Fuel of the Future?") If Swiatek's reporting is correct, Holloway intends to abandon even the modicum of a two-year rotation (classic corn/soybean) for "continuous corn year after year." That's what Tumbledown means by a partial accounting of the cost of Ethanol. A full accounting would include acres of land ruined by such monocrop greed. ...not to mention the genetic modification of all those non-corn candidates for ethanol production, some of which are naturally occuring grasses that will not easily be confined to the plots where they are grown.Tumbledown was not entirely negative about the reporting (cheerleading). Vasanth Sridharan's report, "Environmental Benefit: It's open to discussion," was both "fair and balanced" (to borrow a trademark).

A Good Walk Spoiled by Monsanto

John Feinstein's well-known chronicle of golfing's challenges (A Good Walk Spoiled) should be warning enough that difficult pursuits are often accompanied by painful failure. But it is one thing to miss a hole-in-one, and something else altogether to misjudge the risk that genetic modifications now introduced into plants (and animals) will remain benign or entirely beneficial. It is one thing to spoil a game, another to despoil the landscape for greener ($$$) greens. So it was with melancholy that Tumbledown learned on the same morning that Monsanto would acquire the Delta and Pine Land Company, maker of "Roundup ready" (herbicide glyphosate) and "pest-resistant" cotton and soybean seed, and that ecologists at the EPA had confirmed the common sense notion that genetically modified grass will escape the neat little test plots where it is supposedly confined. Not only will grass pollen spread 13 miles downwind, but the seeds will leak out of bags in transit, be knocked off spreaders into areas not usually maintained by a golf course (will go to seed in the coarser highways and byways--the rougher rough on the edges of a course) and be washed and blown every which way but Sunday. Monsanto isn't the only troublemaker in this instance. Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, supposed friend of gardeners (the high class dealer for chemical gardening addicts), is the manufacturer of the genetically modified bentgrass variety.

Tumbledown sighed and gave thanks that he does not use roundup to control his grass and weeds (there is something to be said for old-fashioned mechanical cultivation), then prayed that Monsanto would find a more honorable and less profitable line of work.

Now, time to drown our troubles in a bowl of oat cereal and berries.

Yum!

References: (NY Times) Monsanto Buys Delta; Engineered Grass Found Growing in Wild; Grass Created in Lab is Found in the Wild

A Visit to the Indiana State Fair

Tumbledown and family attended the sesquicentennial (150th) celebration of the Indiana State Fair

on Friday and was pleased to see that farming--especially the raising of animals (poultry and rabbits, cattle, horses [especially draft horses], sheep and goats, and swine) and the history of farming--are still central to the event.

Tumbledown always enjoys a visit to the Pioneer Village, with its array of antique tractors and its focus on demonstrating traditional arts and crafts. But he was disappointed as usual to see most of the equipment (threshers, shellers, plows, and the like) sitting on the floor gathering dust or hanging from the rafters like so many "objects de art."

One area certainly worth the effort of a visit is the art exhibition entitled "Painting Indiana II: The Changing Face of Agriculture," a collection of 40 paintings on the third floor of the Clarian Health Home & Family Arts builiding. The exhibit is a collaborative effort of The Barn (The Center for Agricultural Science & Heritage; contact Justin Armstrong, jarmstrong@indianastatefair.com; and see the article in the Indianapolis Star) at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and the Indiana Plein Air Painters Association. The work of these ten "plein air" painters is certainly worth seeing "life size" as well as in the book by the same title. Of course, Tumbledown appreciated the paintings based on "the family farm" and nearly choked on the one that showed a space-age hovercraft harvesting corn. "Just sayin', 't'aint nat'ral."

Another highlight was the blarny spun by a young lady from "Barn Tours" of Granbury, TX.

But most of all, it was and always is the animals that grab Tumbledown's attention, especially the "World's Largest Boar"

and the Grand Champion and Reserve Champion Sows with their litters.

Enjoy the menagerie.

Why Farming is Worship...and GM is Sin

It probably isn't a shock that Tumbledown reads his Bible. Or that he has finally discovered the verse that says "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." (He didn't have to read that far, just to Genesis 2:15, NRSV.) But it may surprise you to find out that Tumbledown is something of a Hebrew scholar. The Hebrew words for "till" and "keep" in Genesis 2 are "`abad" (often translated "to worship" as in Exodus 3:12) and "shamar" ("keep" as in "keep the 10 Commandments, Exodus 20:6). In other words, the Lord's first plan for humankind was that we fulfill our religious duty by farming!

When Tumbledown read that "the LORD God planted a garden in Eden," he figured that God would surely understand his recent prayers about pesky rabbits, voracious bugs, and bouts of blight. ...but I digress.

As everyone knows, the first couple sinned by crossing willy nilly into God's domain. They crossed another gardener's fence, so to speak, and stole some of his fruit. They did it to "be like God, knowing good from bad." (Or maybe because God's tomatoes were looking better than theirs.) And, as a result, they had to leave the garden.

And that brings me to genetically modified (GM) seeds. I have two reasons for thinking that GM is sin, and the first is perhaps the most significant: 1) GM results in fewer farmers and 2) GM substitutes human wisdom for divine. The first concern is known to GM supporters like Deroy Murdock ("Down on the biotech farm," Indianapolis Star, January 21, 2005): this technology "likely will displace superfluous agricultural laborers." Perhaps worship is superfluous and perhaps we are content to continue driving ourselves out of Eden, but for much of human history we have understood this state of affairs as tragic and sinful. Even the Greeks understood the second point: GM is hubris. Again, GM supporters sometimes recognize the human potential to err (our inability to "be like God," always knowing "good from bad"), but their counsel is like that of the serpent, "you ssssshall not cccccccertainly die." (Murdock, quoting one African approvingly, "If it creates problems, we can stop using it.) If? Try when. We do all know by now that we will die, right? (The headline above the article printed on the verso page from Murdock's reads: "Human error botches experiment on Saturn mission." The AP article begins, "David Atkinson spent 18 years designing an experiment for the unmanned space mission to Saturn. Now some pieces of it are lost in space.")

Tumbledown knows that there is no magical boundary beyond which, when we step, will result diabolical "Frankenfoods" that "unleash unimaginable horrors." But he also knows the human propensity for self deception, error, and...well, sin. In other words, he sees the irony of an opinion piece advocating the renewed use of nuclear power (Jack Corpuz, "Boost state's energy supply with nuclear power," July 23, 2006) in the same paper that runs a story about massive "structural flaws" in the design and construction of a library. Better a library than a nuclear power plant. ("Blueprint for Failure: $153 Million Mess") Better local, low tech mistakes with a horse and plow or a shovel and hoe, than the escape of air born pollen from GM food. That's all Tumbledown is saying.

So, let's stay in the garden a little longer and find a way to tell Monsanto that we prefer to worship another Lord. ("Lord of the seeds," The Economist, January 29, 2005; "Monsanto Co. to Pay $1 Billion For Produce-Seed Firm Seminis," Wall Street Journal)

Put the Romance Back in Farming

Tumbledown agrees with Jonah Goldberg that agricultural subsidies to U.S. farmers and tariffs (and other trade barriers) should stop. ("Welfare kings ride high on their tractors," Indianapolis Star, Saturday, August 5, 2006; see National Review.) However, Mr. Goldberg is wrong about several of the details with which he supports his argument. First, it is wrong to say that agricultural subsidies "prop up the last of the horse-and-buggy industries." The "hugely energy intensive" industry ("immoral agricultural corporatism") against which Goldberg rails is neither mom-and-pop nor horse-and-buggy.

If the farmers about whom Goldberg writes are plowing with horses, Tumbledown will eat his straw hat.

Secondly, while it is true that fewer than 1 in 100 workers today is employed in agriculture (down from 9/10 of workers in 1776), this factoid causes Tumbledown great consternation, while Goldberg sees farming as a "luxury" that developed nations can easily afford to do without. Tumbledown is not alarmist, because there are signs of a revival among small farms. And today's small-scale farmers will feed Goldberg well enough when an unforseen event prevents foreign imports of food from arriving to his table in a timely manner.

I guess the difference between Tumbledown and Goldberg is that Tumbledown thinks the romance about family farms is justified and that a community of small farms has benefits that warrant support for family farming as a bedrock of our culture, while Goldberg is willing to throw them out with the bathwater that passes for farming today. Goldberg is only "in favor of farming when it's economically feasible." (emphasis added)

Tumbledown is in favor of farming. (Period!) By all means, let us farm sustainably, organically, without the environmental degredation that Goldberg decries. But for heaven's sake, let's farm! Tumbledown is such a romantic.

A Good Farmer?

Tumbledown Farmer is pleased that the Star continues to publish stories that question the sale of farmland. But that was not the emphasis on the front page of the Business Section this Sunday ("Attached to the Land," Indianapolis Star, July 30, 2006). Sure, farming is business, but for the better farmers it is also a calling, so there was much with which to argue. Tumbledown Farmer found especially aggravating the assumption by Roger DuMond (Kova Fertilizer agronomist) trumpeted by Norm Heikens (reporter) that "good farmers...farm a lot of acres in a mechanized manner." The implication drawn by the reporter is that "poorer soils...breed a less prosperous, more cautious farmer." The statement could have been accepted as merely descriptive (perhaps even received with some literary approbation if the article had approached the classic descriptiveness of, say, James Agee's and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; see August 25, 2006, NY Times article on the artistry of Walker Evans), except that it was paired so closely with the previous statement as to castigate the farmers with small holdings of lesser quality land as "bad farmers" (not directly stated, but certainly implied).

Tumbledown has to ask, do "good farmers" really "lunge" at the chance to sell the most fertile soils and "bad farmers" hesitate to sell poorer soils?

Again, the too prevalent assumption that "the exclusive function of the farmer is production and that his major discipline is economics" goes unchallenged. (Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony, "Discipline and Hope," p. 127) Perhaps that is excusable in a business page article, but I hope not. The article betrayed a commitment to efficiency and specialization in agriculture (another word for a destructive exploitation of the land) that exalts annual production and industrial degredation of the land over the maintenance of fertility. The article applauds the quick courage of a few big farmers whose lack of attachment to the land they farm is evident. And diminishes the courage of the small farmers "whose allegiance to their land, continuing and deepening in association from one generation to another, would be the motive and guarantee of good care." (ibid., p. 93; see also pp. 91-92). It takes courage to farm poor land well.

Tumbledown also asks how can it be "good" for the richest Indiana farmland to be underneath a Honda plant? How "good" can a community remain that not only allows, but welcomes and applauds, the sale of the richest farmland not to the best farmers, but to manufacturing plants? Are there not urban wastelands in Indianapolis that are good enough to pave over for such factories? (Or sports arenas?)

Tumbledown Farmer thinks the reporter should have quoted Confucius to the fertilizer salesman: "The best fertilizer on any farm is the footsteps of the owner." Bad soil can be made better with the addition of humus. Give "good" farmers, the kind who become "attached" to their land and reluctant to sell, time and a supportive community and their "bad" land will improve. "On the other hand, if shiftless greedy men have exploited it [or sold it to Honda], there will be little left that is any longer worth anything either to the owner or to the nation." (Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley, "The World within the Earth," p. 156)

"A good farmer, a 'live' farmer is not one who goes into the field simply to get the job of plowing completed because he must first turn over the soil in order to plant the crops that will bring him in a little money." Instead, he walks the ground and "sees the humus in his good earth and counts the earthworms...[and] knows that out of the soil comes everything." (ibid., pp. 157-158).

The "good" farmer is firmly attached to the land she farms.

Tumbledown Farmer Receives an Education

Tumbledown Farmer visited the not-so-tumbledown farms at Conner Prairie today with his family. Here the skills so necessary to life in the 19th and early 20th centuries are learned not from the study of books but from the daily practice of staff and volunteers. (OK, yes, ultimately these practices must be teased from research into that past, which can only come from the study of documents and artifacts, but they are experienced by the visitor as living practices.)

The visit reminded Tumbledown of Gene Logsdon's (The Contrary Farmer's) contention that farms and farmers of the traditional type, with diversity of crops and livestock, require "many other cottage industries" (mechanics, welders, and the like) in order to survive (p. 34). It does indeed "take a village"--represented at Conner Prairie by a pottery, a blacksmith's shop, a general store, a doctor, a carpenter, a weaver, a school, an inn, and a meeting house-- and a whole host of "cooperative" skills to support a small farm. Where is that support today? Logsdon contends that "back-to-the-land" moves most often fail not because the farmers are stupid or incompetent, but because "their homesteads [are] islands in an alien culture" (Living at Nature's Pace, p. 99). The community and skill sets represented by the living history museum (living/museum, isn't that a contradiction in terms?) at Conner Prairie are deemed quaint and easily quarantined onto tracts of land where they may be visited like an amusement park. The skills are there to be observed, but not to be learned and taken home for implementation. Perhaps if we went to school at Conner Prairie, we could rebuild our Tumbledown Farm.

Tumbledown Hunter-Gatherer

Tumbledown Farmer spilled blood (his own) and gathered blackberries (his own) this morning in a pre-dawn battle with the mosquitoes. [Image: Blackberry Picking] His ears swilled the shrill hum of these millenia-old dive bombers as he threaded his arm into the serrated teeth of the bramble branches. (They aren't vines, I tell you.) Each dew laden, pinot thirst quencher plucked from the maw of the red-red religious thief (cardinal) popped into his mouth. Taste the sweet-tart fruit of a stolen moment after ten thousands of years of progress...if you still can. [Image: Blackberry Picking]

Rural Indiana: America's #1 Target (for terror and "progress")

Two Indiana stories have grabbed the attention of the Tumbledown Farmer in the past few weeks. The first contained the news that an Amish popcorn plant sits atop the government's watch list of state terror sites. (The National Asset Database. Perhaps the list was alphabetized? See the front page article in the Indianapolis Star, July 13, 2006.) Brian Lehman, the astonished owner of the popcorn concern, said "I don't have a clue why we're on the list. We're on a gravel road, not even blacktop. We're nowhere" (ibid.) The second story percolated for months in the news, at first merely as a rumor, then as a competition between small towns in Indiana and Ohio to land the next auto manufacturing plant. The reward for selling farms that had been in families for 5 generations was the promise of 750 manufacturing jobs (and millions of dollars, many times the going rate per acre for agricultural land). "Indiana lost 93,000 acres of farmland a year from 1997 through 2002, accelerating a decline stretching back 60 years" (Indianapolis Star, "Green Acres," April 30, 2006; 165 square miles between 1978 and 1992, a chunk the size of Blackford County, ibid., editorial, "State must protect precious farmland"). "Progress" in the form of a Honda plant has put rural Southeastern Indiana in the crosshairs in a way that no terrorist could ever hope to do. And Hoosiers have been complicit in the paving over of the farmland. Is it any wonder that we have inherited a Tumbledown Farm?

Papa's Farm

As a boy of five or six years old, I lived near Papa Walker's "farm"-

-I used the outhouse, helped "slop" the pigs, pumped water from the well. I watched Papa sharpen a hoe and tend a large garden while he sang old gospel songs. I ate the green beans, black-eyed peas, and the tomatoes that grew in that garden, while I sat weary from the heat at a tiny kitchen table next to an enormous window fan. I drank in Papa's values with the cold water he offered from the tin dipper. I want to return there now, but a highway has paved over the place where the sharecropper's house once sat. The terrain is so changed that the exact location is nearly impossible to spot. Corn fields (for fuel?) clothe the landscape with uniformity from ditch to ditch. There are no fence rows, few gardens, no diversity of livestock kept for food. I didn't realize that my childhood eyes were watching the disappearance of that green haven forever.

And if I cannot return, I want to see it again in my mind, clearly, as it was. I want to experience it momentarily, by practicing the skills that made it possible, even in a place as unlike it as night from day.

The farm industry says:

"Keep in mind that on grandpa's farm, the cows and pigs walked in creeks and streams and rain water washed manure off of open lots." (Don Villwock, President, Indiana Farm Bureau, The Hoosier Farmer, Summer 2006)

But I say, "Not on Papa Walker's farm!"

The farm industry says:

"Unfortunately that farm doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for some time." (ibid.)

But I say, "If the way grandpa farmed was harmful, why is its disappearance unfortunate? And if grandpa's way of farming was beneficial, its forced disappearance (by economics) sounds like a capitulation to the worst sort of tyrrany."

Tumbledown Farm is a virtual haven, a place to learn and explore 19th and early 20th century farms. ...a place to sow and grow "contrary" dreams.