Missouri Day Trip: Agricultural Museum

Tumbledown did far too much traveling and far too little gardening this summer. Two of those trips took him home to Northwest Tennessee via Southern Illinois and Southeast Missouri. On one of those trips he was fortunate enough to discover the Southeast Missouri Agricultural Museum in Bertrand, Missouri (Southeast Missouri Bootheel, just north of New Madrid and east of Sikeston).

The museum is conveniently located near the intersection of I-57 and I-55.

Though much of the machinery in the building is poorly labeled, poorly sorted, and unrestored--and none appears to be used even for demonstration purposes--the display is well worth the modest price of admission ($5 per person) for the antique farm machinery enthusiast. The importance of the collection has also come to the attention of the National Park Service, as the listing in the Draft Heritage Study demonstrates.

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Tumbledown hopes that the collection will be made available to persons who are interested in studying, copying and restoring these valuable parts of our heritage and for use at working "living history" farms and demonstration projects.

Address:

Route 1, Box 875

Bertrand, MO 63823

Phone: (573) 471-3945

Hours:

9-4 Mon.-Sat.

1-4 Sun.

The owners boast that they have under one roof "Missouri's largest agricultural museum with over 6,000 pieces of antique farm machinery," in addition to the grounds, where visitors will find two log cabins, one wooden railroad caboose, and a relocated railroad depot.

Readers interested in finding out more about now-antique farm machinery when it was "state of the art," can view sketches and descriptions in the article on crop management in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. Those readers interested in commercial collectors' information about vintage farm equipment, see the Farm Collector.

Tumbledown Farm

Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle

F. Herbert Bormann and Stephen R. Kellert, eds. Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle. Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1991.



In addition to the dated references in a work now 16 years old, this book suffers from the usual shortcomings of academic essay collections. The essays are disconnected and poorly coordinated, being loosely arranged around the three-part theme of ecology, economics, and ethics. The essays are uneven in quality and accessibility; in other words, the book wants the professional editing to be a book. Though most of the authors are notables in the area of ecology and environmental science, few are as well versed in either economics or ethics, so the treatment is often highly technical in its arguments in one of the three areas, but bedeviled by generalities and unfounded assertions in the next. The essays range over a broad swath of issues related to environmental conservation, from biocide (the human-caused mass extinction of thousands of species; the "death of birth") to proposals for financing conservation in five sections: Species Diversity and Extinction, Modern Agriculture, Environmental Values, Pollution and Waste, and Market Mechanisms.

So, why is Tumbledown reviewing the book? First, because a few of the essays are by themselves worth the price of admission. Among these are the essays by Wes Jackson ("Nature as the Measure for a Sustainable Agriculture"; author, Becoming Native to This Place) and David Pimentel ("The Dimensions of the Pesticide Question"; author, CRC Handbook of Pest Management in Agriculture, Second Edition, Volume I). The opening essay, on biodiversity, by Edward O. Wilson (author, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth) also falls into this category, as does Paul H. Connett's "The Disposable Society." The latter, along with sections of the essays on groundwater and wind, had Tumbledown asking whether the next person who unknowingly throws away a flashlight battery be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. (Or is that "crimes against biology"?) Many of the concerns that were front and center in the late 80's have now faded from the public eye (e.g., the landfill crisis and acid rain). That doesn't mean that they have faded from importance. Others have become more glamorous (e.g., global warming, via Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"). This pattern of awareness and response is actually graphed in the essay by Gene Likens (p. 142; author, Long-Term Studies in Ecology: Approaches and Alternatives). Second, Tumbledown would like to see several of the essays updated. Connett's essay on "The Disposable Society," for example, provides model examples of local community and civic initiatives for reuse and repair (reusables), toxic waste exchange (toxics), composting (compostables), separation and upgrading (recyclables), and screening of mixed waste for landfills (the rest). What is the status 16 years later of these model programs? Tumbledown wonders. And are the only effective responses those devised by governments and civic organizations? In Tumbledown's humble opinion all is lost if the response is dependent on governmental action and the will of our political leaders. So is there a place for individual action by those who are convinced of the need to live according to St. Francis of Assisi's way of voluntary poverty? Is there room for "freegans" (dumpster divers) who strive to reduce their "carbon footprint," coordinating their efforts in informal, internet-based communities? Have we eliminated non-reusable packaging yet? (Of course not.) In other words, it would be helpful to have an update of the status quaestionis of this academic debate and another list of best practices and bibliography of works published on this topic in the intervening years.

Still, if you can find it, this book is worth the read. It isn't quick or easy going, but it is definitely provocative.

Honeybee Update: Pesticides

We arrive at the end of June and Tumbledown has not seen more than a few honeybees in the garden--and those only on a couple of different occasions this whole season--despite continuing efforts to attract them with sugar-water syrup, honey, and swarm catch attractors--and despite the constant provision of fresh water and flowering plants. The blackberry and raspberry blooms, which are hardly ever absent a honeybee in an average year, have hardly been visited at all in 2007.

You have no doubt followed the various news updates of the investigation into Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the results of which (for now) seem to point increasingly toward a complex syndrom rather than a single factor, chemical, pathogen, pest or otherwise. The use of pesticides is often cited as a contributor to the CCD syndrom, especially pesticides in the Neonicotinoid class. Bayer and other producers deny (of course) that their products are the cause, even a contributing cause, and claim that nonchemical causes are to blame.

Maybe the causes of CCD are nonchemical, but the question still remains, why are we addicted to pesticides?--especially when the current chemical regime has proven ineffective? Tumbledown has been reading an essay by David Pimentel ("The Pesticide Question," Ecology, Economics, Ethics) that makes the point: "Corn and cotton account for about 60 percent of the total insecticide use in agriculture" (1991). For Indiana, make that corn, almost exclusively. "During the 1940s, little or no insecticide was applied to corn, and crop losses to insects were only 3.5 percent.... Since then insecticide use on corn has grown more than a thousandfold, and losses due to insects have increased to 12 percent." The major reason for the increase seems to be the abandonment of an important (vital?) aspect of traditional farming, crop rotation (p. 64).

What does this have to do with Colony Collapse Disorder and the bee die off? Maybe nothing. But in the concluding table, Pimentel estimates the unintended cost of pesticide use at $955 million (1980), $150 million of that due to honeybee poisonings and reduced pollination. Hmmm. Maybe that should be increased a thousand fold this year?

Meanwhile, with no chance of a swarm on the horizon, Tumbledown has decided to buy his bees next year. Maybe they'll survive the pesticides poured onto the fields that lie just beyond the suburban sprawl--and survive the pesticides poured onto suburban lawns. ...or maybe they'll suffer from Colony Collapse Disorder, even though he plans to keep them according to the ancient instructions of Varro (On Agriculture, III, XVI). Tumbledown recently discovered a blog that suggested CCD may be nothing new and appears in fact to have plagued the ancient Romans, based on a description of ancient hive disruptions found in Virgil's Georgics. Or maybe it is entirely new--a twenty-first century problem; maybe all those cell phone signals are playing the Pied Piper to our honeybees. If that's the case, Tumbledown's bees should fare well. He doesn't own a cell phone.

Tumbledown Farm

Melamine Cuisine: If Pet Food be Poison, What of Human Food?

OK, you didn't hear it here first, but you knew Tumbledown couldn't let this topic go without comment, especially as the evidence for potential food contamination piled up. First, there was the epidemic of pet deaths. Then, on March 30, the FDA cleared the pet food companies of augmenting their pet food with rat poison (aminopterin), and charged them instead with using contaminated wheat flour (mistakenly identified as wheat gluten) to make their doggy biscuits. The flour (a.k.a. gluten) had been supplemented with a melamine additive, a "food supplement" if you will, by crooked Chinese providers who were trying to spike the protein and nitrogen content of their product. (See Brenda Goodman's March 31 NYTimes article, "Pet Food Contained Chemical Found in Plastic, F.D.A. Says." Cyanuric acid has also been identified as a possible culprit.) But pardon my ignorance, aren't "doggy bones," ...well, bones? Ok, maybe dogs like biscuits and donuts too. And don't dogs eat chopped meat? In Tumbledown's humble opinion (ITHO), the whole fiasco is the end result of seeing food--either for humans or for our pets--as "simply" a combination of the various chemicals known to be necessary for life. (The source of those chemicals? ...who really cares?) Of course, chemistry will always be important to farming and gardening, and to food production, preparation, and consumption, but food should always be more than the sum of its chemical parts. Cooking should always be more than mere chemistry. (Don't worry, Tumbledown does get the importance of soil chemistry for growing nutritious food.)

One result of this pet food scare has been an increase in home cooking for pets. So, riddle me this: if the food you are cooking for your favorite pet (or for yourself) comes from Brazil, or China, or California, how is that a whole lot better than buying the manufactured food? But forget the harm to Fido and Snowflake (16 deaths? 32? hundreds?) caused by the "manufacture" of their food, how about trying these newly fabricated tasty people-treats: Anyone hungry for Melamine-roasted Capon? or Chicken Breasts with Creamy Melamine Gravy? Not hungry for chicken? What about pork? I could recommend Ham Steak Melamine or Spicy Melamine Sausage or a nicely breaded Melamine Pork Tenderloin. Yummy! Prefer fish? What about Catfish with Melamine Sauce? or what about a good ole Southern-Style Melamine-encrusted Fish Fry? (See Sarah Abruzzese's New York Times article, April 25, 2007. "F.D.A. Says Livestock Were Fed Pet Food With Suspect Chemical," for a plausible summary of how the melamine-tainted pet food could have entered the human food chain, as the tainted pet food was treated in a "business as usual" fashion: they take "pet food that does not meet quality standards and reconstitute it into livestock feed." Now, that must be reassuring to anyone who was hoping that better [consolidated] government oversight and inspection might protect our food supply. According to a New York Times article by Barboza, the F.D.A. thinks that the levels of toxins in farm-fresh fish fed meal with melamine and other contaminants, "was probably too low to harm anyone who ate the fish." "Probably," now there's confidence!)

Melamine has been used in the manufacture of eating utensils and some fertilizers, without knowing or caring about its potential toxicity, so it shouldn't surprise us when it shows up in food. Tumbledown knows that the adage "you are what you eat" doesn't mean we'll all become melamine cereal bowls. (Remember those? Melmac, all the rage in the 50's and 60's; indestructible, until the microwave warped and burned and chipped them. They were hardly "microwave safe"! Tumbledown still remembers with pleasure and more than a little nostalgia those bowls filled with fresh peaches or strawberries and cream or homemade ice cream during the halcyon days of youth.) But maybe you'll forgive Tumbledown if he doesn't trust the green light now being offered by the food safety police. Is it really OK now to eat animals who have ingested melamine-laced feed? The assurances of the food protectors ring hollow. But (I know what you'll say), Tumbledown, they've been so right on everything else, you should probably just trust them on this one. (NOT!)

The F.D.A. assured the public quickly--too quickly?--that "they did not believe the contaminated wheat gluten had entered the human food supply," despite the fact that 13% of the U.S. supply of wheat gluten now comes (or did until the scare) from the country where the melamine-laced flour (alias, gluten) originated. Other food safety police hastened to add that melamine is not a "known toxin." (See Goodman.) Such assurances are belied by the limits of human knowledge, and the problem is not just human ignorance, but even moreso human greed and duplicity. The Chinese manufacturer knew that he was cheating, gaming the system at least, by adding melamine to gluten.

So, what is the solution? Tumbledown repeats: localized, diversified production of food. Grow your own, eat what is in season (or will store) in your locale, get to know and support a local farmer. Can a suburbanite on one acre support feed a whole family this way? Maybe not, but you would be surprised what can be grown and eaten from one acre without provoking a riot by the neighborhood association. (Maybe pork or mutton would be too much to ask!) Does it mean eating dandylion greens, or a fresh dandelion and chive salad in March and April in Indiana?

Maybe, but only if you really like dandelions better than melamine. And in late May or early June, there is already an abundance! Spinach, lettuce, radishes and rhubarb, onions and berries!

Oh, my, my, my! Fresh garden berries. Where are those "melamac" cereal bowls when you need them?

Tumbledown Farm

Top Bar Beehive: A Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary for Disappearing Honey Bees

Save the vanishing honeybees! Tumbledown acted quickly on his decision to create a honeybee haven. As promised, here's the story of how he constructed a top bar beehive for his back yard in the form of simple instructions and construction plans, so you can do the same. Let's lessen the impact of colony collapse disorder by creating a sustainable network of localized and diversified apiculture.

Here's a start.

Parts list:

1 1X6 -71" standard pine ($2.59)

2 1X12 -8' standard pine ($8.49 each)

2 8"X8"X16" concrete blocks ($1.34 each)

1 19"X47" plywood cover (from leftover scrap)

8D siding split galvanized nails ($.50?)

2" deck screws ($.50?)

1 lb. cake/block of yellow beeswax ($4.61)

Total: $27.86 + tax

Tumbledown's beehive construction plan is an adaptation of the Kenya style (sloped sides) hive detailed at the Bush Farms site.

Step One: Board Cuts

Cut the 1X6 to 47 1/4" (bottom).

Cut each 1X12 into one 47 1/4" length (a side) and one 15" length (an end piece).

Cut the remaining sections into top bars for brood nest (1" X 1 1/4" X 15") and top bars for honey (1" X 1 1/2" X 15").

Step Two: Assembly of Beehive Body

Nail the sides of the hive to the bottom board.

Center the bottom edge of the 15" hive ends on the bottom board of the hive body and attach each end to the hive body at the center point with a deck screw.

Spread the sides until the top corner of each side touches the top corner of each end. Attach each corner with a deck screw, then add screws at intervals sufficient to secure the ends to the sides.

Fully assembled top bar beehive body:

Step Three: Finishing Top Bars

Tumbledown took the easy way out (again) with the creation of his top bars. Rather than deal with the complications of inserting, gluing, and nailing a "beveled comb guide," Tumbledown simply measured 1 1/2" from the end of each 15" top bar and marked these points as the outer limits for a 12" center cut with a keystone shaped 1/4" router bit.

Into these center cuts Tumbledown poured beeswax melted in a makeshift double boiler (a 4 quart pot filled 1/8-1/4 with water heated to the low boiling point, enough to float a coffee can that has been squeezed to make a pouring spout).

Below is a view of the top bars with one layer of wax poured into the center. Another layer is added after the first layer cools so that the finished bar includes a line of beeswax embedded in the top bar, but also extending well above the surface of the bar (to provide a guide for the bees as to the direction for constructing the comb).

Step Four: Placing the Beehive

This is perhaps the greatest challenge, finding a suitable place well out of the line of human traffic. The results will be monitored closely and the hive moved if the bees prove too great a challenge. Tumbledown chose the least busy corner of his back yard and fenced the area completely with a temporary fence to prevent inadvertent visits by the merely curious. (Climbing over a 4-foot fence is not inadvertent. If you do that, you deserve to get stung.) Notice in the photo how the blocks have been coated with a 3"-4" band of used motor oil all around (to discourage ants). The ground all around the hive has been planted in grasses and clovers. Peas and other climbing vines will provide a screen around two sides.

Tumbledown also provided a ready water source.

Tumbledown also purchased two vials of "swarm catch" with Nasonov from the Dadant company ($6.75 for two) that's where the beeswax also originated). These are fixed to the inside of the hive on the end that serves as the entrance. The entrance to the beehive is created by placing the first bar (the bar nearest the end) at least 3/8" from the end. This creates a gap of approximately 3/8" wide X 3/4" high at two sides on one end for the bees to use as an entrance.

Already, in early April, bees were seen buzzing near the hive. (On 70-80 degree days. But, of course, for the last few days, we've had an unusually late and hard freeze with low temps in the teens and 20s and the daytime highs barely climbing above freezing. ...so, no bees to be seen and worries aplenty about newly planted fruit trees and the like.)

Tumbledown hopes to see a swarm take up residence in his beehive this spring. He would like to see a remarkable increase in the pollination of his garden, and in a year or three to take a bit of honey from the hive. Stay tuned to the blog for occasional updates on the whole adventure--and when "success" is finally within grasp, Tumbledown will add a bee page to his "how to" list on the web site.

In the meantime, visit the historic bee page at Tumbledown Farm ("Bees in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, vol. III) and here's hoping for a "resurrection" of the honeybees on this Good Friday 2007.

Tumbledown Farm

Where Have All the Bees Gone?

My father-in-law once asked me if I had noticed that the bees were all disappearing. At first I thought he had lost his mind. Later, I thought that the "difference" I notice could be attributed to the difference between playing outside--among the bees--all day and sitting inside at a desk in front of the computer screen. Of course the bees had disappeared from my view. But my father-in-law worked outside a lot, and he had read the National Geographic Magazine (authorities on such things), and he had a longer view of the past (as a WWII veteran pilot) than I have. So, before you laugh at Tubledown for reviving his father-in-law's question--or for thinking that there should be bees buzzing around in March in Indiana, take a look at what the New York Times has been saying ("Losing their Buzz," by May R. Berenbaum, Dept. of Entomology, U of Illinois, March 2, 2007; "Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril," by Alexei Barrionuevo, February 27, 2007). Berenbuam, Barrionuevo, and many other news outlets have begun to report at length about the "sudden" (since fall 2006) disappearance of millions of bees: "This winter, in more than 20 states, beekeepers have noticed that their honeybees have mysteriously vanished, leaving behind no clues as to their whereabouts. There are no tell-tale dead bodies either inside colonies or out in front of hives, where bees typically deposit corpses of dead nestmates. What’s more, the afflicted colonies tend to be full of honey, pollen and larvae, as if all of the workers in the nest precipitously decamped on some prearranged signal" (Berenbaum). They are calling it "colony collapse disorder" (though it was previously termed Fall-Dwindle Disease). As of today (03/17/2007), Tumbledown's Google search returns 76,300 hits for the new term--there's plenty of buzz alright.

But not to fear! The feds and the academic community are all over the disaster like honey sauce on chicken strips. A CCD working group has been formed to get at the heart of the swarm (or lack thereof; see the very informative Purdue page and related links). And guess what, as hinted by the Times coverage, the preliminary report is pointing a finger at the "business" end of "agribusiness"--the beekeeping "industry." In interviews with affected beekeepers, the working group discovered that "All were migratory beekeepers. All had moved their colonies at least 2 times in the 2006 season, with some colonies being moved as many as five times." The report then states the obvious: moving stresses bees (10%-30% die), and spreads disease, and the pollination of some monocrops (e.g., blueberries) is insufficient to sustain a colony.

Who knows what the working group will recommend in its final report, but Tumbledown would wager that the recommendation will NOT be to increase the number and diversity of beekeepers, nor to stop moving the hives cross country--twice, five times--just to polinate monocrops on huge farms and orchards.

But that should be the recommendation. Fix the root of the problem, the unsustainable agricultural economy. Sustainable agriculture, sustainable apiculture, means local agriculture and local apiculture. In other words, it means beekeeping without diesel trucking. It means beekeeping without moving the hives. (And thus without transporting the pests--the mites and beetles--that require apiary registration and inspections by the Department of Natural Resources.) It means that farmers--not just the "bee farmers," but every farmer, and perhaps every significant landholder--is a beekeeper. In other words, sustainable farming is diversified farming. It is local and decentralized.

Where have all the bees gone? They are being carted around the country by fewer and fewer beekeepers, carrying diseases and pests with them every poluting, energy consuming, globe-warming mile. The've gone the way of the woodlots, eliminated by the tens and hundreds of acres at a time to make way for houses so close together that there isn't room for the flowers it would take to support the bees and their hives (if there were hives). The bees are killed by insecticidal overspray, and by mosquito control.

Tumbledown has decided to do his part for localized beekeeping, in part because Tumbledown has embraced Cobbett's truism about "every farmer"--"he ought to pay for nothing in money, which he can pay for in anything but money" (As quoted by John Seymour, Farming for Self-Sufficiency : Independence on a 5-acre Farm). If nature (the bees and flowers) will provide sugar (or honey, which is better for you than the processed stuff) for free for the taking, who is Tumbledown to argue? And what about the exorbitant cost of hives and beekeeping paraphernalia? Tumbledown has decided that there must be a way to raise a hive of bees without filing for bankruptcy. So, perhaps a Top Bar Hive is the way to go. Tumbledown has done the math. A hobby kit from Dadant for $125 (the way Tumbledown would have started a few years ago) or a "do it yourself" experiment with 1X6 and 1X12 boards from the local lumberyard (less than $25 if Tumbledown's math is right). Keep an eye on the blog for a recounting of the adventure!

[Illustration from "Bees" in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, vol. III]

Where have all the bees gone? Tumbledown hopes that the answer to that question is "to my back yard" this summer. So, I guess I need to build a hive and find some sugar. What's that old saying, something about attracting more bees with honey than vinegar?

Tumbledown Farm

George Washington Carver: Scientist & Symbol

McMurry, Linda O. George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.



Tumbledown was a little annoyed by the adoring tone that sometimes seemed to permeate the descriptions of Carver in the early sections of the book, thinking they sometimes veared toward hagiography. This perception changed when, on closer inspection, it was obvious that the assessments that annoyed most were contemporary with the man. The sweeping generalizations--that Carver was a genius, a great teacher, a great lecturer, and the like--were for the most part embodied in numerous quotes from Booker T. Washington, James Wilson (former teacher at Iowa, and Secretary of Agriculture, head of USDA), and correspondence from Carver's students. Careful reading of this George Washington Carver biography reveals that the author, though sympathetic with the subject, is also critically aware of Carver's weaknesses. The refrain (also from Carver) that he was a starter and a dreamer, not a finisher, an inspirer of others and a popularizer, not a groundbreaker or highly original Tuskegee scientist (which is not to diminish the significance of his innovations on and original applications of already formulated ideas, especially, as McMurry suggests, in the direction of aiding those "fartherest down") is proof enough of a somewhat fair and balanced treatment. This, alongside descriptions of Carver's at times stormy relations with Bridgeforth and Washington, are enough to put thoughts of hagiography to rest. (The idea of Carver as symbol, especially of the New South, seems to be reaching a bit far. But even here the treatment is not unremittingly positive.)

Why would Tumbledown read and recommend this biography of a scientist and academic? Because Carver's life's work was dedicated to the improvement of small, diversified farms and their habitants at precisely the time that "most agricultural researchers were heading in another direction. Increasing amounts of federal and state funds were piped into mechanization and efficiency projects that aided the big agribusiness units, not the small farmer" (p. 92). Carver, as everyone knows, taught farmers to grow more than one crop--to supplement cotton with peanuts and sweet potatoes. (Though less famously, Carver also experimented with and recommended soybeans and alfalfa and the raising of animals on Southern farms.) Though the Tuskegee web site hardly mentions Carver (Booker T., the other "Washington" is everywhere lauded), the title of this year's Annual Farmers Conference is a continuing tribute to Carver's interests and influence: "Sustainable Small-Scale Family Farms in the Southern Black Belt: Nurturing the Land and its people."

Overall, an excellent introduction into an important subject--and an easy read for an academic title. Though the book does not provide the details (peanut recipes or specific crop recommendations) of Carver's work, it is well documented and therefore provides a beginning point for further research into this important contributor to the welfare of small, diversified farms. And what could be better for Black History Month?

Additional Reading:
Holt, Rackham. George Washington Carver: An American Biography. Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1943.