Planting an Urban Farm: The Time Is Here

There has been an unrelenting flood of news about land prices lately–moving in opposite directions, up and down at the same time–the momentum and tempo of which has been steadily increasing:

1) Foreclosures and property abandonment in cities and suburbs are at an all time high, while prices for development property/lots and single-family housing are falling (Targeted: Housing Blight ; City to develop own plan to revive neighborhoods).

2) The value of farmland is also at an all time high (largest one-year jump in 30 years, Farmland prices continue to rise; from $3500 to $4000 per acre in the past two years, Grain boom may spark rural revival; Rising prices will boost state’s economy, but consumers will have to pay more for goods).

At the same time that the city is asking “What can we do with all those abandoned homes?” (Olgen Williams, Deputy Mayor for Neighborhoods, to Star reporter Ted Evanoff), farmers are looking for land to buy or rent. As the NYTimes reports, there is big competition for new farm acreage at a time when the rest of the economy seems to be in a tail spin: “[a]t a moment when much of the country is contemplating recession, farmers are flourishing.” The 7000 foreclosures and abandonments in the city of Indianapolis alone are resulting in decreased tax base, a shortage of affordable housing (ironically), health and safety issues, crime and squatting. It seems to me that a better quality of life in city neighborhoods could be had by turning abandoned property into farmland and gardens. The good news is that agribusiness will not be able to even park, much less use, the John Deere 630T, 530 hp, with its 330 gallon fuel tank, on a lot of .1 or .3 acres. Using those city lots for urban farms and gardens would require shovels, hoes, rakes and other sustainable equipment. With “inputs” (chemical fertilizers) doubling in cost this past year, there would probably be less temptation to overuse those too.

I think the confluence of these two economic forces presents an opportunity for the niche urban micro farm.

It seems that I am not alone in thinking this is a good solution to some of our most intractable problems. Purdue Extension-Marion County announced in January that it had received a $10,000 grant from the Efroymson Fund, a CICF fund, for a pilot Urban Farm Project. In addition to problems of urban blight, The Urban Farm Project will address food insecurity on the Indianapolis near-east side. (Not far from Tumbledown Farm.) The community that this urban farm project will serve lost its only neighborhood full-service grocery store in the spring of 2007. Area food pantries have been stretched beyond their limit to respond. (As is also the case in Johnson county.) According to the extension newsletter, The Urban Farm Project “will help provide fresh produce by planting chemical-free urban gardens on two or three vacant neareastside lots. The produce generated from these lot gardens will be donated to a nearby food pantry for distribution to the community’s needy.” At the same time, the project “will also be an apprenticeship program for local high school students.” What a combination! (For more info about the Indy Urban Farm, contact Matthew Jose, Urban Garden Program Asst.)

It seems to me that this sort of model might also work in the “for-profit” world. Muhammad Yunus, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, may show us the way with his banker-to-the-poor ideas about doing good by doing well in a distributed, small-scale way.

With food prices rising because of the spike in the cost of agribusiness commodities, I have been thinking about expanding Tumbledown Farm, ever so slightly. There is a little 40X136 lot (oh, about .13 acres, not enough for the big guys to notice, return on investment too small and too slow) about 9 miles from us that is listed with MIBOR for $2500. I bet it could be had for $2,000 in cash, and in three years could be producing $500 per year in filberts. A soil test, a little manual labor, and all the hazelnuts you can eat. (Or, for a little more time and labor, strawberries or raspberries, or vegetables of all sorts.)

What think you? Time for an urban micro farm? Want a share in this little agricultural and sociological experiment?

Tumbledown Farm

The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living

The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living. Schocken Books, Inc., 1989.




This book is a combination of Living the Good Life (1954, 1970, 1982) and Continuing the Good Life (1979), with a new introduction by Helen Nearing. The first book is an accounting for 20 years (from 1932) lived in the backwoods of Vermont. The second book (bound in this instance together with the first) is an accounting from 1952 on of a similar experiment in living on a farm in Harborside, Maine (Cape Rosier). It is clear from the beginning that these are not "simple folk" forced into a simpler life of necessity (at least not physical necessity), but a couple who are seeking together a way of removing themselves from the larger society marked by World War and a rise in fascism to practice pacifism, vegetarianism, and collectivism. These are "professors" out to teach as much as they are to live well. They sought a life that would be 50% subsistence provision of their needs directly through their own physical "labor" and 50% "leisure" ("research, travelling, writing, speaking and teaching"). Obviously, their goals were more complicated than mine. I am simply interested in the parts of their experiment that show The Good Life to be also the sustainable, small-scale life, by which I mean something more like Duane Elgin's voluntary simplicity. (Voluntary Simplicity, Revised Edition: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich) I am interested in their goal to eat from the work of their own hands, and to escape the traps of economic complicity in a high-consumption culture. I am less interested in the Nearings' social experiment (the collectivism), and more interested in their vegetable garden. My life is such that I'll not be able to escape the suburban landscape any time soon, so I'll not have the Nearings' 65 acres with which to experiment in living the good life. And even if I could, I would do it differently. The Nearings didn't keep animals for any purpose, especially not for eating, so I am loathe to call what they did traditional, small-scale farming. But I am interested in their techniques for subsistence "farming" without the use of chemical fertilizers or animals and animal products. (What?! No manure? Is it really possible to "improve" the soil without chemicals or animal manures?)

Should I ever be in the position to start from scratch on new land, I will certainly consult their chapters on building a house. And already, I have benefitted from their advice for extending the gardening year and for preserving garden produce. And almost they have persuaded me that vegetarianism is the way to go. Perhaps we should say that my farm will be less animal-intensive and animal centric for having read their work. But their chapters on living in community do little for me. I wonder whether they were simply too "serious" and "intentional" to recognize the community that already exists in churches, civic organizations, gardening organizations and the like. It seems to me that what they desired in the way of community was too confining, certainly for free-spirited Vermonters, but for anyone with a sense of individuality and independence. Though I do not go in for total withdrawal from society and complete self-sufficiency (undesirable and impossible), I do think that the indepence of spirit that marks citizens of the U.S. is a good thing that can be encouraged for the sake of many of the ideals that the Nearings embrace for living the good life.

In short, I recommend the book for its chapters on homestead buildings and construction, for its sections on gardening and diet, and for its overall spirit of voluntary living, its voluntary simplicity.

Gardening Economy and Non-Cooperation

A Gardening Economy: The Cost of Non-Cooperation

I’ve been reading a little too much of Mahatma Gandhi lately, especially his Freedom’s Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation, which is available on the Kindle for $.99 (free on the internet). It struck me as I read again Gandhi’s advocacy of “non-cooperation” as an alternative to surrender or complicity, that non-cooperation may be our best and only option against the multinational agricultural corporations, the behemoth colonial powers of our day. Agribusiness requires our cooperation to survive. ADM and the others require our cooperation to maintain their near monopoly status. Their power is truly dependent on our continuous cooperation with them in the purchase of processed foods.

And unless I’m very much mistaken, gardening is truly our most natural and most effective expedient for refusing to maintain their rule. We must simply refuse our cooperation; withdraw it. We can start by reducing or eliminating processed foods from our diet and buying whole foods from local farmers. Some fear that, if we were to succeed (and they very much doubt that we will), this would produce the total collapse of the farm economy. But as Gandhi predicted of Indian self-government, long before there could be a total collapse, we would have forged strong ties with local producers and robust local means of distribution. Others protest that this sort of non-cooperation is a negative path, that it will destroy the cheap food on which our high standard of living is based. But, as Gandhi pointed out, non-cooperation with the multinational corporation means greater cooperation among ourselves and “greater mutual dependence.”

So, what will non-cooperation cost me this year? Besides some time and labor, it has already cost $77.20. (Watch the garden budget this year to see what I purchase and what the garden yields are. We’ll weigh everything as we harvest and record the value of the produce by comparison to the cost of fruit and vegetables at the local Meier Supermarket.)

Here’s what we’ve bought so far: Goliath Hybrid Pepper Seed (pkt-30, $2.60), Big Beef Hybrid Tomato Seed (pkt-30, $2.10), Early Girl Hybrid Tomato Seed (pkt-30, $2.20), Besweet 2020 Edible Soybean Seed (pkt-2 oz., $1.95), Red Ace Hybrid Beet Seed (pkt-300, $1.90), Super Blend Hybrid Broccoli Seed (pkt-200, $1.80, 33% each of Liberty, Pirate, and Major), Alchiban Hybrid Eggplant Seed (pkt-30, $2.00), Sweet Basil Seed (pkt-100, $1.50, Italian Large Leaf Basil), Long Standing Cilantro or Coriander Seed (pkt-100, $1.50), Kossak Giant Hybrid Kohlrabi Seed (pkt-50, $2.25), Paris White Cos Lettuce Seed (pkt-5 grams, $1.55, Romaine Lettuce), Evergreen Bunching Scallions Seed (pkt-250, $1.55, White Bunching Onion), Hungarian Yellow Wax Pepper Seed (pkt-25, $1.55, Hot Banana Pepper), Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach Seed (pkt-7 grams, $1.50), Dwarf American Hazelnut Plant (4 plants, $18.50), Sparkle Strawberry (25 plants, $8.75), Nugget Hops Plant (1 plant, $8.25), Thuricide (8 oz concentrate, $8.25, Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki), Early Bird Garden Tomato Seed (pkt-25, $0.00), Early Bird Garden Pea Seed (pkt-1 oz, $0.00, medium-vined garden pea variety), Early Bird Garden Cucumber Seed (pkt-25, $0.00, Fancy Green Slicer), Early Bird Garden Bean (pkt-1 oz, $0.00), Early Bird Garden Sweet Corn (pkt-1 oz., $0.00, hybrid yellow sweet). The last few, the ones labeled “early bird,” are “experimental varieties” included in the R.H. Shumway’s shipment as a reward for ordering early and ordering more than a minimal number of items. This year I bought the whole lot from Shumway. I’ll report later how their seeds and plants performed. Shipping was $7.50.

A few of these items require explanation. First, the Thuricide. I hate to put any sort of pesticide on the garden, but Bt appears to be, by every account, organic and environmentally friendly.

It has a very narrow use–the destruction of cabbage moth caterpillars–and will be used by me only to take care of extreme cases, where total vegetable loss is a possibility. Think I’m kidding? Look at the photos below of my first attempt a few years back to grow broccoli. And our family loves broccoli!

Another oddity is the hops plant. With the hops I intend to make my own dried yeast for bread baking. And, of course, Hazelnuts (or Filberts) are about the only nuts that can be grown on a small suburban lot and still allow room for all the strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries and a vegetable garden! So, stay tuned, we have a lot of growing to do on this non-cooperative micro-farm in 2008!

Tumbledown Farm

Farming for Self-Sufficiency: Independence on a Five-Acre Farm

Farming for Self-Sufficiency Independence on a 5 Acre Farm, John and Sally Seymour (Introduction by Mildred Loomis, The School of Living, Freeland, Maryland). Schocken Books, NY 1973.

"Give any man, anywhere in the world, his fair share of earth's surface, and--if he survives one harvest--he and family need never be hungry again." (p. 14)

In 1973, only seven years after I was born, already the basic structural problems for early 21st century society from industrial farming had been mostly identified and articulated: "depletion and erosion and disease were resulting from the chemical-pesticide regime and the commercial, mono-crop agriculture, sometimes called agri-business." (p. 2) As Loomis says, the Seymours offer a report on twenty years of living differently, organically and sustainably, locally, what "in the 1920s, Ralph Borsodis had christened 'modern homesteading.'" (p. 12) The strength of the book is the depth of experience shared in it; there is a "lived-with" feel, in which the rougher bumps and hard edges of life have been worn down and softened by apprenticeship and long practice, so that knowledge and experience have yielded a weathered wisdom. There is much of common sense, age, and hard work here, the results of which are freely and graciously shared with good humor.

The writing is strong. Chapter titles are mostly simple, one-word affairs: "Horse," "Cow," "Pig," and the like. What the internet now has the potential to provide--a resource for reporting and exchange of information with others who are engaged in a similar way of living--was once the purview of journals and newspapers and paper journals like The Interpreter and books like this one by the Seymours. The problem with paper publishing is its limited availability. And the problem with a book is that it carries a single perspective and limited experience, however relevant and important that particular perspective may be. It takes many books of this sort to provide a truly ample view of the self-sufficient life as it might be lived in suburban central Indiana, for example. But the Seymours' books are out of print, available only at the library or via used book sales at Amazon and the like. The good news is that there is an explosion of such writing and sharing going on now in blogs, on websites, and via sharing of online videos (with gardening and farming "how to's"); it merely needs some coordination and careful vetting to be more useful. I suspect that we are on the verge of forming a network of small-scale, diversified, suburban "experiment stations," designing and carrying out tests, and reporting results. Together we can discover what works, what is sustainable, and what flops.

Most of all, the book is a guide book, a "how-to-live-on-the-land" book. As such, it offers complete instructions for every crop and livestock project imaginable (and some that aren't imaginable for people with an acre or less in the suburbs)--and offers recipes for cooking and preserving the food produced on the farm. There are some difficulties for the U.S./North American reader caused mainly by the difference in locale. The Seymours were British farmers, meaning that there are climatic, historical, social, and legal (then U.K., now EU) differences on the two sides of the pond. ...not to mention linguistic differences, especially in using the Queen's English. It is not insignificant that John Seymour had lived in both African and Indian villages at one time or another. Seymour draws on this cross-cultural experience to provide context for a "post-industrial self-sufficiency." What he intends is a partial self-sufficiency. John and Sally both worked for cash (but only a little cash) , thus not contributing much to "the development of the atom bomb," etc. I think this taking of matters into one's own life and hands is necessary in a world when it is so difficult to have a meaningful impact as an individual on such things as the 2007 Farm Bill. It is better to plant and grow and eat your own vegetables--and to buy them from local farmers' markets--than to wait for the Farm Bill to stop subsidizing industrial corn and soybean production. Seymour suggests that for periods of time, for two years perhaps, and with a severely restricted diet (all beans all the time!) one could, like Thoreau at Walden, approach self-sufficiency more nearly even than the Seymours or the Nearings or others of the more recent vintage of self-reliant individuals and couples.

Partly, the case for self-sufficiency is one of anticipated necessity. (See the 1970s Resources and Men, W.H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco; National Academy of Science and National Research Council of the U.S.) Fossil fuels will eventually be used up. Today we might add that Global Warming will catch up with us. But the case for self-sufficiency is also a case for enjoying life. It is enjoyable and rewarding and the diversity it enforces on the production of what we eat is more interesting and less boring--or can be--than industrial corn and soybeans (or Thoreau's all-bean diet). For the purpose of the book, it is clear that for the Seymours and their children, a "fair share of the earth's surface" was five acres for a family of six. Another part of self-sufficiency, even on as many as five acres, is managing one's affairs carefully. There are also, obviously, dietary restrictions. For example, in Indiana it will mean eating a substantial number of root crops in the winter. It wouldn't necessarily mean that in California.

There were some disappointments in the book for me. For example, Cobbett (a favorite of Seymour) says that you can keep a cow alive and productive on half an acre with Swedish turnips and cabbages--but Seymour recommends two acres per cow. I guess that rules me out of the cow business--even if the neighborhood association would grant me the livestock exception. And it is somewhat ironic in a book on self-sufficiency to find--as in books by the Nearings and others of similar genre--the nearly universal praise and high veneration of community. The desired community is defined usually as like-minded neighbors living in a similar manner. Of course I live in a community of like-minded neighbors, they just aren't minds like mine. There is too little land (1/2 acre or less usually) in a suburban lot and the community is like-minded in its consumerist focus, a way of living that is diametrically opposed to the values of self-sufficiency.

There are lots of things that can't be learnt from books or web sites, and plowing with a horse is one of them, but Seymour recommends a tome anyway. (George Ewart Evans, "The Horse in the Furrow," Faber and Faber) But, of course, it will be a blue moon--and hades frozen over besides--before I get a horse. Seymour points out the difficulty of finding implements for sale for horse plowing and harness for sale. In this country it is good to start your search in Amish country, where you'll have not only the opportunity to buy but also the opportunity to observe and learn.

Perhaps my favorite recipe, and one I'll try this summer (stay tuned to the website and Tumbledown Farmer's Blog) is the one for dried yeast. The yeast is used to make either bread or beer and appears on p. 148.

3 oz. hops
3 1/2 lbs rye flour
7 lbs corn or barley meal
1 gallon water

"Rub the hops and boil them in the water for half an hour. Strain. Stir in rye flour, then corn or barley meal. Knead and roll out very thin. Cut into circles with a tumbler and leave to dry hard in the sun. Wild yeast will infect the biscuits. To use it, crumble a biscuit and soak in warm water with sugar and salt in it and next day use as yeast."

Already familiar with the Seymour book? Why not try this one?

Planning the 2008 Garden

It appears that I’ll be a Master Gardener eventually. But for now, I’m just an intern, donating the occasional day to worthy gardening causes and learning as I volunteer about other people’s garden questions in a hands-on, dirt-turning setting, but with the help of those who have been at this much longer. At any rate, I passed my MG test back in December, so I guess that means I can mostly be trusted not to kill too many plants.

But enough of all that. Time’s-a-wasting, and the 2008 gardening catalogs are on the table and I’m anxious to use some of what I’ve learned. It’s time to plan the 2008 garden! Stay tuned for the next few weeks and I’ll tell you what I ordered and why…and what it cost and I’ll post the photos as the seeds begin to sprout. You may notice this year that I’ve gone mostly for hybrids with a few heirlooms to supplement the lot, rather than plant all heirlooms. Why? Because I’ve begun to think that Integrated Pest Management (IPM) makes a heck of a lot of sense. That doesn’t mean that I’ll begin using a lot of chemical pesticides or go gangbusters with chemical fertilizers; it just means that I’ll pay attention to the disease resistance of some hybrids as one of many tools to use in a balanced way in the garden. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll let you know what I use and when and most importantly WHY and what precautions I’ve taken. And we’ll see whether you think I’ve jumped on the industrial production, super-veggy bandwagon.

I’ll not stop using organic methods, especially composting and crop rotation and the like. These just make sense. In fact, the research just keeps getting stronger. Take my strawberry patch, for example. I’ve been using a rotation for several years that was suggested by Gene Logsdon that includes corn in the rotation. However, this year I’ve discovered that broccoli planted in the rotation prior to strawberries leaves a natural fungicide (glucosinolate) that keeps verticillium in check. (Krishna Subbarao, University of California, plant pathologist; see Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew, Samuel Fromartz)

Our family loves broccoli, so guess what we’ll plant instead of corn in that strawberry rotation for 2008? It never hurts to try a little experimenting of our own, especially the edible kind.

While you are planning your own garden, check out our new Indianapolis Gardening Calendar. I think you’ll like it.

Tumbledown Farm

The Gardener's Guide to Better Soil

The Gardener's Guide to Better Soil by Gene Logsdon and the editors of Organic Gardening and Farming. 1975. Rodale Press.

The thing is, the most important thing to know about a book is whether the author writes well. That goes double for non-fiction writing. I really don't care whether Mr. Logsdon knows how to garden if he doesn't know how to write. Thankfully, he knows how to do both well. And the book holds up well for its age, written in the 1970s, during the last oil (and chemical fertilizer) crisis. While most of us conveniently forgot for the intervening 30 years about the limits of fossil fuels, a small cadre of organic gardeners and farmers continued to ask how to produce food in sufficient quality and quantity when (not if) the oil runs out.

Logsdon's genius for spinning a yarn is evident on nearly every page. The book contains everything a gardener would ever want to know about the soil, and then some. But it also drops other gems of gardening knowledge and lore along the way. For example, chapter 2 begins with a "conversation" between two gardeners on a road trip and continues with a recommendation for (and description of) a cross-country "Soilwatching Trip" from the Pine Barrens to the mountains and deserts of the West. And the itinerary includes a short course in the basics: soil types, soil maps, soil texture, soil tests, nutrients (N-P-K), micronutrients, organic matter, humus, drainage, pH, mulching, composting, organic fertilizers, and green manures. And somewhere along the way, Logsdon finds the time to talk about buying good farmland and to explain such gardening essentials as crop rotation, even offering examples of useful rotations and gardening tool recommendations.

There are a few caveats. One is that the dichotomy between "chemical" and "organic" fertilizers is too starkly drawn. The gardener worthy the name will neither dump chemicals willy-nilly on the garden nor avoid them altogether. Chemical fertilizers will have their place in growing vegetables so long as they are inexpensively available. (That they will not be available indefinitely is a reason to know and begin to use the alternatives.) Another example is Logsdon's east-Ohio centric vision of farming and gardening. When he approves without reservation most things that raise the pH of the soil, it is fairly clear that he has usually gardened and farmed an acid soil. Gardeners in central Indiana will want to approach with caution any soil emendation that raises a pH that is probably already too high for optimum plant growth. But these are really quibbles with a great literary romp through what every gardener should know about the ground under his feet.

Master Gardener Class Begins

Is it possible to turn a Tumbledown Farmer into a Master Gardener? I guess we’ll find out.

Tumbledown paid his $95 and is taking his chances. This past Tuesday, he spent all day in class at Purdue Extension-Marion County learning all he could about “plant science” and “horticulture” and “entomology” and “insect pests” and “weeds.” We began class with a pretest, which Tumbledown almost certainly flunked. The day then followed with lecture, aided by PowerPoint outline, photos, and physical examples (field samples). So far the experience is both exhilarating and daunting. If you enjoyed High School biology and wanted to go deeper, and if you love gardening, this may be the place for you. Tumbledown will keep you posted about what he’s learning and how it is going. If there are veteran Master Gardeners out there who would like to share their advice and experiences with Tumbledown readers, just register with the blog (see the link on the side bar) and leave us a comment. Share a note of encouragement or a note of caution, whichever fits.

Wondering what the Master Gardener Program is all about? Check out the Purdue Extension-Marion County Master Gardener page. Have a gardening question? E-mail it for an answer to the Master Gardeners who are standing by at marionmg@purdue.edu. Or call 317-275-9292.

There is a moral dilemma for Tumbledown, of course, given his natural suspicion of government programs and industrial agriculture (pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and the like). It is clear from day one (and from the agreement potential Master Gardeners are required to sign in order to enroll) that the course will include information about the proper use of pesticides and fertilizers, and to provide that information at the conclusion of the course to those who ask questions about how to garden.

Tumbledown has decided that he will take the Master Gardener course with his eyes wide open, hoping to discern where the information provided by the Extension Service educator can be used within the context of traditional (late 19th, early 20th century), diversified, sustainable small farms and gardens. He’ll take notes and report about those aspects of the course that tend to support and exhibit indebtedness to industrial agriculture and those that tend to support local, small farms.

Already it is possible to see some of the biases that so annoy Gene Logsdon and Wendell Berry. For example, the whole program falls under the rubric “Consumer Horticulture” (the only recognized alternative being “Commercial Agriculture”). Commercial ag produces; consumer ag consumes. Thus the economic engine revs. Still, the overall impression after the first day is of an Extension program with significant balance, able to hear and respond to the criticisms that have been leveled at it for some time. Not always altogether fair in its assessment of some “traditional wisdom,” but less strident in its opposition, and more willing to consider “organic” and biological controls than Tumbledown thought the purveyors of un-sustainable industrial agriculture might be.

Tumbledown will be listening to hear whether the things being taught are able to be fit into an emphasis on “genetic diversity, local adaptation, and conservation of energy.” (Berry, The Way of Ignorance) Tumbledown will be listening, in short, to improve his bottom line (the improvement of his garden.

Tumbledown Farm