Farm Stand Marfa

Every day is a good day to start a garden.  In just a few hours you can prepare a planting bed and seed it. Within a week arugula, radish and lettuces will be up and growing.

Site a bed for growing lettuce and greens in a part of the yard that receives some shade during the day.  Basil enjoys a little shade too. Start another bed in a sunny spot and plant tomatoes and beans.

Here’s How:

PREPARING THE BED
Mark out a planting bed 3ft wide by however long you want to make it.  Using a digging fork, loosen the soil to a depth of about 6 inches. Work backwards down the bed. Never step on turned soil or you will compact it.  Once the soil has been dug, work from the sides and ends of the bed.  Shake the soil from the clods of grass and weeds and put them into a compost bucket.

Next, using a hard rake, prepare the soil by raking back and forth across the width of the bed.  Rake the top 3-6 inches of soil to one side of the bed, then rake it back over to the other side. Finally, rake the bed until it is smooth and level.
Add about 4 inches of composted material to the raked bed and continue raking back and forth until the material is mixed in with the top 6 inches.

Now that the soil is nice and fluffy, using a board, gently tap down the entire surface of the wide bed.  This light firming of the soil will allow the seeds to make contact with the soil when you plant them.  Water the bed with a fine spray.

DRIP IRRIGATION
Lay drip irrigation down the length of the bed.  The hoses can be placed 12 inches apart, depending on which vegetables you are seeding.  If you are planting a cutting mix of lettuces, you will be planting closely and harvesting the leaves young.  In a 3-foot wide bed you can lay 2 lengths of drip irrigation and seed 3 rows of the lettuce mix.

MUCLH
Cover the bare soil with a few inches of mulch. The best mulch is chopped or shredded native plant or tree trimmings mixed with compost.  Straw, alfalfa, and cotton burr work as mulch but may have herbicide residue.

Make sure the mulch does not touch the stems of the plants.
Drip irrigation may be laid under the mulch or on top of it.

SEEDING THE BED
Clear the mulch from the soil where you are going to plant. Make a drill, a shallow depression, down the length of the bed. Read the information on the seed packet to find out how deep to plant the seeds and how far apart to space the seeds.  Sow seeds a little closer than recommended to allow for seedling loss to insects. Sow the seeds in the drill. Cover the seeds with soil and firmly pat the soil down.

When the seedlings have several sets of leaves thin them.  Thin so that the leaves of the mature plants will touch.  This close planting blocks out light and discourages weed growth between the drills. The shade made by the plants conserves water.

Label each drill with a wooden marker.  I use shims, purchased in packages from the hardware store.  On the label record the plant’s name and the date of planting. If it is helpful, record how far apart to thin the seedlings once they are up a few inches.

Water the bed with a watering can fitted with a fine rose nozzle or with a fine spray attachment on your hose.  Water lightly, moving the spray back and forth across the bed until the soil is shiny. If the water puddles, the seeds will wash away.

Don’t let the seedbed dry out.  If the days are warm, the seeds will sprout within a week or a little more.  If they don’t, replant them and be more diligent about keeping the seedbed moist.

FLOATING ROW COVER
Cover the seedbed with a summer weight floating row cover to help maintain an evenly moist bed and to prevent animals from bothering the planting.  You can bury the edges of the cover with soil or you can keep it in place with rocks. This lightweight row cover used by organic growers is water permeable.  It provides even warmth, protects against damaging winds and is an effective form of insect control.  It is so light that the plant lifts up the cover as it grows.  Remove the cover when the plants are flowering.

COMPOST
Composting is the most important aspect of gardening.
The soil can’t feed you unless you feed it.   Compost kitchen and yard waste - bury it or pile it. Do not compost oily cooked food or animal bones.

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER APRIL 25TH

REMEMBERING MARTHA FLORO

In the early years of the life of Farm Stand Marfa I made a weekly trip to visit George and Martha Floro at their goat farm on the western edge of Alpine, just 25 miles from Marfa.

I always looked forward to my visits with these two inspirational figures - they were then in their late eighties and still very much in the forefront of the local, sustainable food movement.

The road off the highway snaked up into the hills and led through a canyon to their gate, Gigantic and tiny rocks in various shades of burnt sienna tumbled down the sides of the mountains, and jagged remnants lay strewn alongside the road or accumulated in jumbled piles.

Hanging near their gate was a little handmade sign - “Floroland,” and immediately the ominous feeling of the canyon was replaced with an aura of peaceful joy and self-referential humor. Locking the gate behind me and driving into the farm, I entered a sun-dappled glade of trees sheltering animal pens.  Goats of all ages, honey-colored and white, grey and black, hurried to the fence of each pen and greeted me in the hopes I would talk to them or bring them food.  The youngest were days old.  George had bred the goats for meat and milk, but from the number of animals tucked into every corner of the farm, it never seemed like many of them were headed for the roasting spit.

Truthfully, they were beloved pets.  And though I have emphasized the peaceful and the playful sense of the farm, it was clear that George and Martha were constantly working and still the work was never done.  How could it be?  It was a farm with animals requiring continuous attention and care.

George and Martha’s life together began when they were very young.  One day during a visit George and I sat on a bench in the sun while he talked about their early years.  He spoke so sweetly and ended by saying that the farm existed because of their commitment to each other and the ideas they shared about living gently with nature and contributing to the community.  “It’s Martha,” he would say, “her good nature makes it possible.”

Surely Martha’s good looks helped too.  I admired her thick creamy white hair she kept cut in a pageboy style.  A row of bangs helped to frame her face and make her seem perennially young.  She had a gleam in her eye, which complimented George’s mischievous personality.  They both seemed well suited for a farm full of frolicking goats.

Martha would always load me up with packages of the cheeses they had made.  Every Saturday for several years I sold the cheese for them at Farm Stand Marfa.  The production of cheese had slowed during the last year, but the care of their goat herd had gone undiminished.

Martha Floro passed away last week.  Like so many others I will miss her dearly, and whenever I am eating goat cheese I will always think of her fondly.

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER DEC 20

Handmade Holidays

Every Saturday from March through December is a “buy local” day at Farm Stand Marfa.

Looking for a gift that is home made, handmade and homegrown and hand raised?  At the market you will find food and goods that preserve the regional culture and keep the imagination of the community active.

Just as important as visiting your local farmers’ market is shopping at your locally owned businesses.  This is another way to give back to your community and to keep the independent businesses open and thriving.  Supporting local businesses stimulates the economic diversity of your community.

When you shop your town’s stores, besides finding gifts that are unique to your area you will be supporting businesses that provide employment and source locally for such services as banking, advertising and accounting.

Just a few purchases by each of us will have an enormous impact on the local economy.  Buy a bag of coffee beans, a book, a t-shirt, a painting, pottery or a gift certificate.

To keep our non-profits and service organizations going during these stringent economic times make a donation in someone’s name.  A small contribution to the radio station, the health clinic, the school art progam or the library will make a big difference to their tightening budgets.

This Saturday enjoy the market, the wares, the food, the producers and your friends.  Know that the gifts you give were made with love.

Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter Dec 16

Do-It-Yourself Nation

Near year’s end it’s natural to reflect on some of the things we’ve learned over the past 12 months and how we can use the new information to solve problems or live a more fulfilling and sustainable life.  The current economic issues facing the nation are forcing all of us to re-think how we live.  Now really is an opportunity to change, experiment and invent.

I frequently recall, for example, an interview I heard last August on Marfa public radio during Ira Flatow’s show, Science Friday, with David Blume, the Executive Director of the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture.

David Blume is an ecological and political activist with a resume that boggles the mind and includes handling the transportation for a substantial amount of the humanitarian aid from peace and solidarity groups to Nicaragua in the 80s. But he is at heart a farmer.  Beginning in the 90s he farmed for ten years in California based on a permaculture system that he designed to sustain a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture program.   CSA operates by selling shares to subscribers who then receive a portion of the weekly harvest of a farm.  Localizing agriculture in this way allows the farmer to know in advance how much food to grow and to be paid upfront, eliminating the worry of how to sell and transport what it is grown.

Flatow’s interview focused on Blume’s book, Alcohol Can Be a Gas! Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century. The book discusses the history of alcohol fuel but is in fact a manual for hands-on fuel production.  His years of experience in farming based on a local food system, which utilized  permaculture principles to design an ethical system of ecological land design, helped to develop his ideas of a self-reliant and sustainable community.

“The point,” he believes, is that although humans are great at creating deserts and poverty, we also have the incredible capacity to design ecological systems that work for everyone.”

Blume envisions community supported alcohol-for-energy plants.

“We can have our fuel and eat it too,” declared Blume in the interview with Flatow.

Although Blume gives workshops sponsored by the American Corn Growers Association, he does not support growing corn for fuel.  Corn is not an efficient crop. It’s not even good for cows which are browsers and would be better off eating brush like their ancestors did.  Blume helps us understand how feeding corn to cows is wasteful.  And points out that they’d gain more weight eating distiller’s grains.

Blume teaches farmers how to diversify and grow crops that are better than corn at producing alcohol.  The byproducts are more valuable too.  He explains how sugar beets and sweet sorghum produce better animal feed than corn does and need fewer inputs, such as water and fertilizers.  Even cattails are a superior animal feed; can grow in marshes; don’t have to be replanted and can act as filters to keep the rivers clean.

In the radio interview, Blume reported that his book gives details about how to use community-based agriculture as a model.

“Now, we can do the same thing with energy. If a group of drivers gets together and starts a local alcohol station, then contracts with the farmer to produce the million gallons a year needed by that station, that could be a really direct linkage between the producer and the user.  And the farmer has a sustainable income, and the users get the best price possible on the fuel….not trying to go at the big scale, but doing it at the community scale, the entrepreneurial scale, and start producing alcohol and food locally and cleaning up our environment at the same time we produce fuel.”

The humble Jerusalem artichoke produces more alcohol than corn – 1200 gallons per acre compared to 200 produced by corn.  It’s exciting to think about towns producing what they need and protecting the natural resources at the same time.  The farmers’ market has been a good place to start.  But a small meat processing plant and a local alcohol distillery for fueling our vehicles make a self-reliant paradise seem possible. If indeed this period of uncertainty and hardship fosters an intense period of creativity, the desert will flower as our imaginations do and carbon-free roadways will be fresh with cleaner air.

Workshop sponsored by the American Corn Growers Association http://www.acga.org/index.php?option=com_civicrm&Itemid=64
Austin, Texas $149 January 31, 2009
Alcohol Can Be a Gas! Workshop
hands-on fuel production, and vehicle conversion

Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter Dec 6

To Eat Them Is To Save Them

Good bread and good drink, a good fire in the hall; Braun, pudding and sauce, and good mustard withal; Beef, mutton and pork, shred pies of the best; Pig, veal, goose and capon, and turkey well drest; Cheese, apples and nuts; jolly carols to hear; All these in the country are counted good cheer.
Thomas Tusser, 1573

Bourbon Red, Narragansett, Royal Palm Bronze - names of excited and tense thoroughbreds waiting at the gate to do what they were bred to do?  No, not the names of prized race horses, but breeds of turkeys recognized by the American Poultry Association in its 1874 Standard of Perfection.  Today these breeds are designated heritage turkeys, once popular domesticated barnyard animals in the late 1880s, driven to near extinction by the industrial rise of the Broad Breasted Whites, and now making a comeback.

Bred to be fat and large-breasted, with tiny legs that are so shortened by the commercial breeding program that it is impossible for them to mate or even stand - the Broad Breasted White turkey dominates the turkey market by as much as 99%.  Yet this bird, which spends its fortunately brief unhappy life 3-4 months in a shed along with thousands of other ones just like it, shares a common ancestor with the heritage turkeys – the wild turkey, a native of the Americas.

The ten million year old turkey, found domesticated in the Aztec culture, was grabbed up by the Spanish in Mexico and like the tomato and the potato were taken to Europe where the three natives traveled around the world before returning to America several hundred years later, whe,n English colonists arrived carrying their favorite domesticated turkey, the Norfolk Black, from which the Narragansett is descended.

In England the fowl was a popular dish large enough to feed a household on a festive occasion, though at an average of 10 pounds per bird not the massive creature weighing down the modern holiday dinner table.  Immortalized by Dickens in his 1843 work, A Christmas Carol, the turkey was the gift the transformed Scrooge presented to the Cratchit family.

Long before Dickens secured the literary importance of the bird, the turkey had been a member of the country barnyard along with ducks and geese and chickens. In the summer the bird was eaten young at 5 pounds when its beaks and toes were still soft. Later in the fall and early winter the pasture-raised birds were butchered to avoid being wintered over on an expensive grain fed diet.

Like the peacock and the pheasant and countless other species of birds, the male turkey is far more beautiful and magnificent than the hen.  The tom as he is called displays his tail feathers much like the fan-shaped headdress of a Native American costume. When the tom is courting to attract a mate, or mates really - he is polygamous and looks after a flock of females - his wattles and snood inflate and turn bright red. And he has spurs for fighting to protect his territory.  He thrusts his neck out to gobble, while the hen clicks and clucks.  The gobbles are used for attracting females but also for warning of danger or a change in the weather.

The Rio Grande turkey - one of the 5 recognized subspecies of the wild turkey - lives on acorns, elm seeds, Texas persimmons, prickly pears, mesquite beans and the berries of the agarito and the hackberry.  Poults, as young turkeys are called, fatten on insects.  The flocks spend their days foraging and hunting small amphibians.  They can fly short distances and just before sunset they roost in trees.  Their eyesight is exceptionally keen during the day, but not at night so the trees provide a protection for the birds.

When the first settlers arrived wild turkeys ranged from Canada to southern Mexico.  Even though the settlers carried their tame turkeys with them, the clearing of the forests for farmland destroyed the wild bird’s habitat.  By 1812 for example there were no wild turkeys left in Connecticut.  The only birds surviving into the twentieth century were in isolated, sparsely inhabited forests such as the Ozarks and the Appalachians.

With the beginning of the conservation movement and the resulting focus on wildlife management, the trap and transplant programs - which wild-trapped turkeys using nets and moved them to de-populated areas where the species had once thrived - proved immensely successful.  Wild turkeys thus reclaimed their natural ranges in North America.

The domesticated heritage breeds were valued for their meat, eggs and pest control until the 1950s and 60s when George Nichols’ Broad-Breasted White breed created such a successful industry that the heritage turkeys almost disappeared.  The turkey industry has now consolidated to the point that three corporations control the breeding stock ― Hybrid Turkeys, British United Turkeys and Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms.

By the late 1990s the heritage birds were nearly extinct. In 2001 the Narragansett and the Bourbon Red were placed on the Slow Food U.S.A. Ark of Taste,  “a catalog of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction. By promoting and eating Ark products we help ensure they remain in production and on our plates.”
http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/ark_of_taste/

“One of the things we say is you have to eat them to save them,” says Marjorie Bender of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. “If we can give them their jobs back, then they’re not museum artifacts.”

It is easier to buy heirloom seeds and grow them in our backyards than it is to raise turkeys.  But the heirloom breeds will survive for the same reasons the heirloom plants do - consumer education that leads to consumer demand and subsequent protection of the threatened animal.  Heritage turkeys take twice as long to raise as the commercial ones.  The best turkeys are pasture-raised.  Raising a turkey humanely and naturally costs the farmer more, so the price of the heritage is $4 a pound and up.  These turkeys can be found in large cities at farmers’ markets and through mail order companies.

Heritage Farms USA, a mail order company begun four years ago by Patrick Martins, preserves rare breeds by providing a market for the farmer. The first farmer to sell through Heritage Farms was
Frank Reese, a poultry preservationist farmer in Kansas whose Good Shepherd Ranch raises turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese.

“Governments haven’t been very effective at preventing the loss of livestock breeds,” says Danielle Nierenberg, a livestock specialist with the Humane Society of the United States.  “Heritage Farms created a market for saving them.”

“Patrick is not just attentive to genetics,” says Michael Pollan.  “He has elevated animal welfare, fair wages for farmers.  He’s building a market for sustainably raised, very carefully grown meat.”

You can start your own turkey family by ordering poults from Ideal Poultry or McMurray Hatchery in March and April. http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/category/turkeys.html
Midget, Bourbon Red, Narragansett, Royal Palm Bronze
Broad Breasted Bronze and Giant White turkeys are available March through June, all others are available March through August.

Last week I cooked a heritage turkey.  It was a mere 8 ½ pounds. The bird was slender and fit nicely in the sink when I washed it and was easy to handle as I rubbed it inside and out with salt.  I wrapped it in parchment paper and left it to sit in the refrigerator, which unlike its industrial version, it did not dominate.

When it came time to cook the bird, I lightly filled the cavity with cornbread and sausage stuffing and poured broth over it.  I wrapped it in fresh parchment paper and put it in a hot oven.  After a few hours, I removed the paper and let the turkey brown.

Did the heritage turkey taste different?  Yes. The flavor is not gamey, but rich, the meat is not stringy or watery or tough.  The cooking juices made an aromatic, woodsy gravy.  I thought about the specialized farm and the heritage turkey’s pals.  I tasted the animal’s wild turkey ancestors and imagined the nuts and seeds and small creatures the birds like to eat.  And I heard the turkey’s song.

The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.

ENTERTAINING SOURCES

American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC)
www.albc-usa.org
A member-supported organization dedicated to the preservation of genetic diversity in livestock poultry species.

http://www.ideal-poultry.com/contactus.htm
poults available March and April

a short video of the courtship and mating of wild turkeys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMPlUw7J0N4&feature=related

a short video of pheasants displaying their feathers for females
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqsMTZQ-pmE
David Attenborough

A short video of the “turkey trot” danced by a couple keeping the 1900s dance alive http://bluesuedesouls.blogspot.com/2008/11/turkey-trot.html

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER NOV 29

MARKET FOOD

Since the enjoyment of food is a national custom this week, keep it local, organic and seasonal as much as possible.  Visit the farmers’ markets nearest to wherever your travels take you and savor the season’s bounty.

In Marfa the market promises delectable regional food – tamales made with hand-ground corn, breakfast burritos, fresh tortillas and green and red salsas.  The best of the diner is always represented at the market in the form of a pie.  Socorro has an obsession with preserving the tradition of the diner pie and reproduces it weekly in every imaginable flavor and color. Her key lime pie, topped with a thick cloud of meringue, is Caribbean green. The pecan pie is authentically made with corn syrup, and the buttermilk pie is more sweet than sour.

Magda’s table of homemade foods and hand-sewn bags and dishtowels always has little surprises, but the secret treasure wrapped discreetly in a cellophane bag is peanut brittle.  Hers is the best peanut brittle you will ever taste.  If you grew up in a Southern household as I did, the smell and sweet stickiness of the confection will make you feel like a child again and remind you of the candy cook in your family.  How my mother made fudge, divinity and peanut brittle without a thermometer will always be a mystery to me.  Though our diets and our teeth prevent most of us from eating brittle, a little bag of it given as a simple gift to the right household is a delicious seasonal indulgence.

Each week one table at the market is overflowing with baked goods and breakfast foods made with strictly organic ingredients.  Ganka, always dressed in a long denim skirt and glowing with a nurturing smile, sends her customers home with baskets full of fruit tarts and chocolate cakes draped with linen towels.  The buyer returns the baskets and towels the following week and goes home with new selections.  Sourdough and multi-grain breads fill long wooden bowls and croissants peek out of baskets lined with baking parchment.  Last week’s surprise dessert was a pumpkin cheesecake the color of the Painted Desert.

Breakfast is not breakfast without something hot to drink.  LeAna from the Brown Recluse brings coffee and tea and cocoa made with melted chocolate and homemade marshmallows.  Muffins and cookies fill her baking tins.  But she always has some savory pastries still warm made with spinach and feta or chicken and mushrooms.

If you like tamales or think you like them or only like them when they are really good, try Elma’s tamales made with hand-ground corn.  They are delicious.  Eat them on the spot when they are warm or take them home and freeze them for a quick meal anytime.

As one happy regular announced a few weeks ago, “I got some bread, a tomato, ate a burrito, bummed a cigarette and saw my friends!”

The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.

Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter Nov 22

Putting the Garden to Bed

A warm day following a chilly night is a glorious time to be out in the garden, soaking up the sun and putting the garden to bed.

Even a chore as simple sounding as cleaning up the garden has more than one school of thought.  One involves pulling up the now-dead annuals, composting them, burning the diseased plants and covering the beds with thick layers of manure and leaves.  Since composts require water to break down and we live in a dry land, I don’t build compost heaps.  I layer the deceased annuals in the paths between the beds and throw manure and leaves on top of them.  The springy path breaks down naturally over the winter and the extra padding in the paths prevents the soil from compaction.

Emilia Hazelip, a Spaniard, who found her way into Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters during the Sixties, spent the last decades of her life gardening in the Languedoc region of southwest France. Her chapter there began in 1977 after reading Masanobu Fukuoka’s On Straw Revolution, a story of no-till farming.  Hazelip developed a growing system she called “Synergistic Agriculture.”  While the language may sound dated, the synergistic garden, an ecosystem consisting of wildlife, wild plants and edible plants, is timeless.

In this Mediterranean garden, weeds were called “spontaneous plants.” These natives were mostly left where they grew since their genetic coding attracted beneficial insects and interacted chemically and optimally with the soil.  Hazelip taught that the plant and the soil were a single organism.  How did she clean up her garden?  Not by pulling out the annuals.  Instead she cut the dying plants, laid them down as mulch and left the roots in the soil to decompose.  This is how she kept the soil wild with friendly bacteria and fungi.

You can watch a delightful video of her garden methods on youtube.com, A Fukuoka Inspired Permaculture Garden.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugFd1JdFaE0

Clean up the vegetable garden
Whether you pull out the annuals or cut them down to their bases, clean up is much the same. Use the dead and drying material as mulch and compost.

Clean up the perennial garden
Wait until the tops of the perennial plants have died before cutting them.  Use the tops as mulch or compost.  Leave the ornamental grasses until late winter or early spring when new growth starts.  Don’t prune perennial herbs before winter.  Pruning now will encourage tender growth. Wait until March.
Mulch the perennial plants with organic material.  Shredded leaves make a good mulch.  To avoid using polluting machines to chop the leaves, invite children to jump and play in your leaf piles until the leaves are pulverized enough to spread without blowing away.

Rake leaves and use as mulch.  Do not send your leaves to a landfill.

PLANT
_Plant garlic cloves 3 inches apart and cover with mulch.  The     garlic will grow right up through the mulch.
_Plant cold hardy vegetables.  Seed carrots, parsley, beets, chard, arugula and kale.  Water and keep covered with floating row covers.  Here’s a tip from gardener, Lisa Copeland: she plants her lettuce seeds on Thanksgiving.  They come up in the spring.

CLEAN GARDEN TOOLS
Clean the dirt off your tools with a wire brush, oil them and store them inside.

SAVE SEEDS
Collect seeds, label them and store in a dry place.

The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER NOV 15

BOOK, AN ARTISTS’ BOOK SHOW

Jonathan Mergele, untitled, mixed media

As a child I preferred poetry to storybooks.   I don’t recall when I first saw William Blake’s book, Song of Innocence and Experience, but I vividly remember being fascinated by the images and how they swirled in and around the text, merging my senses in a mystical way just as the artist intended.

My parents were painters so I thought of Blake’s drawings as paintings.  I thought he had drawn and colored each page by hand, pages that I touched and turned until they were worn and smudged by my soiled child’s hands.  I didn’t know that he had etched the lines with a small camel’s hair brush and inked each copper plate then printed using a rolling press.  Only recently did I learn that he along with his wife, Catherine Sophia Boucher, hand-colored each page with watercolors.

Blake’s book of illuminated printing is my earliest memory of an artists’ book.  In museums I had seen centuries old gilded manuscripts presented to the public in glass coffins to protect the priceless artifacts from hot humid breaths, but Blake’s book was mine to hold in my lap as I fell asleep.

This week in Marfa as the town celebrates Good Read Week by reading the novel Fahrenheit 451, “Book,” An Artists’ Book Show, opens. More than forty artists from Texas to New York have contributed works, the sales of which benefit community-reading programs sponsored by the Friends of the Marfa Public Library.

While the Bradbury book deals with the meaning of books to our culture, the epigraph he chose is one about intellectual freedom written by the Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”

The 80 pieces in the show play with “the idea of book.”
Some describe “book” literally taking the form of pages bound between a front and a back cover, but many escape the traditional format and take other forms – a scarf, a bottle with a tiny book inside, a glass tree hung with words from the Baudelaire poem, “Les Fleurs du mal.”

Clive Phillpot in his essay “Books by Artists and Books as Art” describes the art form:

“Artists’ books are distinguished by the fact that they sit provocatively at the juncture where art, documentation, and literature all come together. Indeed, one of the characteristics of the field is its mongrel nature. … What really characterizes artists’ books is that they reflect and emerge from the preoccupations and sensibilities of artists, as makers and as citizens.”

Mary Walling Blackburn, untitled, silk scarf

One of the artists in the show, Mary Walling Blackburn, suggests, “The artist book can be an empty vessel that provides an opportunity for viewers to pause and reflect.”

When I was a child I never saw angels in trees as the nine-year-old William Blake did, but I was transported by his work.  And so I am today as I “pause and reflect” over each piece in the artists’ book show, some of which illicit smiles, all of which provoke thought.

Kristin Bonkemeyer, Whitebook, mixed media

The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.

IMAGES

first image, Jonathan Mergele, untitled, mixed media

second image, Mary Walling Blackburn, silk scarf, screened text reads, “The Head is better for using than losing.”

third image, Kristin Bonkemeyer, Whitebook, mixed media

fourth image, Takako Tanabe, untitled, mixed media

fifth image, Jim Martinez, untitled, mixed media

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER NOV 8

The Waters Effect, Alice Waters Talks About What is Important

A recent visit to Boston to see my youngest daughters at school luckily coincided with the golden turning of the leaves and an encounter with Alice Waters. Alice was in town to discuss the world food crises and the need to promote local and seasonal agriculture with august members of the Harvard intelligentsia.

Alice reported that Michael Pollan’s article, Farmer In Chief, What the Next President Can and Should Do to Remake the Way We Grow and Eat Our Food (New York Times Magazine, October 12) was much quoted at the Harvard gathering and helped to carry the debate from crises to vision through to practical solutions.  If you have not yet read Pollan’s piece, you are in for a treat. In the writing you will find a voice for your questions about the future of food.
www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

The morning I accompanied my husband, Ham, and to collect Alice from her Hotel, she was dressed lightly and comfortably in mysterious layers of deep purple varied colored silks inspired by the cultures of Asia. The occasion of our meeting and the day spent together revolved around an event being hosted by our friends at Gaining Ground a sprawling organic farm in Concord, Massachusetts. Situated on property that declares itself the birthplace of Thoreau, the 17-acre farm is managed by gardener, Verena Weiloch. With the help of more than a thousand volunteers, Gaining Ground donates its produce to area meal programs, food pantries and families in need.

Before making the short drive to Concord, Alice had a few stops to make in Boston. First we visited Sofra, an Eastern Mediterranean bakery and café opened recently by Ana Sortun, chef and owner of the celebrated Oleana, an Arabic restaurant that also emphasizes Turkish fare.  Hot and cold mezze provide the lunchtime temptations at Sofra, but mornings find the bakery decorated with pastries -flaky, creamy, and sweet - that shimmer in their own honey-colored light. We left laden with bags stacked with kunefe, Palace bread, Egyptian shortbread, herbal croissants and more unknown, unpronounceable delights.

Preferring the savory to the sweet, Alice claimed only a small tub of baba ganoush and pita bread. Ham and I were left with all the breakfast treats to taste, which I hoarded and sampled before sharing them with my husband, since he was driving.  After eating a few pastries and tasting the rest, I was reminded that I am better off as a gardener amidst raw vegetables and fruits, than as a chef or a food maven whose consumption would require constant vigilance.

Our next stop was just around the corner in Cambridge - Mount Auburn’s Cemetery.  Walks in old cemeteries always calmed her, Alice told us.  Something she does before giving talks, I noted to myself, and hurried after her. She was standing in a pool of gilded leaves, looking up at a tree at least a century old. As the three of us toured the lush, garden-like cemetery founded in 1831 and read the names on the blackened and pitted gravestones, the early morning October sunlight filtered through the canopy of yellow and red leafed trees towering above us.

Then we were off to the luncheon event in nearby Concord. Beforehand we visited the farm at Gaining Ground with Stona Fitch, a writer of dark political novels who had until recently been the long-time president of the non-profit. Gaining Ground serves a dozen meal programs, operates a weekly direct donation of fresh produce to 25+ local families and administers Read for Seeds, a third grade read-athon in which the children raise 10% of the organization’s yearly budget.

At the farm we met the current president of Gaining Ground, Lisa Troy, a nutritionist, with an understanding of the food and hunger issues facing local, national and global populations. The garden by now had largely been harvested and was being put to bed for the winter. Still, a row of fat cabbages, spread out as large as lily pads, greeted us near the entrance. The perennial herb garden was decorated with footstones made by schoolchildren.  Along with dried stalks of sunflowers, a stand of amaranth had been left to feed the birds. We watched an excited third grade class make dolls from cornhusks. Some of the young students tackled a wheelbarrow of red corn and began to remove the dried ruby-like kernels of the ancient seed from its cob.  Leaving, we picked raspberries from fall bearing canes and ate them before they could disintegrate in our warm hands.

The luncheon hosted by Gaining Ground was held in a newly constructed barn on Fairhaven Hill.  The view from the barn looked onto Fairhaven Bay, whose footpaths and marshy edges had been tramped by Thoreau. Fifteen miles further east the city of Boston sat in a coastal mist that softened the steel and glass verticals, and made timeless the turn of the century brick structures and industrial stacks.

Ham had helped to arrange for Alice to visit Concord to celebrate the work of Gaining Ground and to encourage its supporters to advocate for healthy school lunches.  As strong as the sugar maple dropping its leaves around us and as delicate as a rose in bloom, Waters easily persuaded us to become disciples for change in the schools.  What better place to begin than the school cafeterias with their institutional ingredients and smelly steam tables, where the best lunches consist of hamburgers, pizza and macaroni and cheese.  “Why not fresh cucumbers and carrots on the tables,” declared Alice, “and roasted chicken resting on a warm bed of polenta served on a china plate.”

While we listened to Alice talk, we were served a meal by the young chef, Jho Kokubo, whose restaurant, Kitchen on Common, in nearby Belmont, MA, serves mostly fresh, locally grown food.  We dined on white bean croquettes with Ancho chile remoulade and pickled shallots, a subtly curried dish of fall vegetables and roasted beets encircled in their greens. A meal like this reminds you how good seasonal food tastes and how it is possible to prepare this kind of food at home.

Because Waters has worked for many years delivering her message of eating locally grown, seasonal, organic food, everyone in attendance knew a little something about her. The gathering gave us all the chance to spend some time with this legend and to experience the Waters Effect in person.

Long a devotee of the writer and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol , in 1971 Alice named her new Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, after a Pagnol character. In the forward to the 1986 English translation of Pagnol’s My Father’s Glory and My Mother’s Castle, she describes the concept of the restaurant as a way of life:

“My partners and I decided to name our new restaurant after the widower Panisse, a compassionate, placid, and slightly ridiculous marine outfitter in the Marseille trilogy, so as to evoke the sunny good feelings of another world that contained so much that was incomplete or missing in our own—the simple wholesome good food of Provence, the atmosphere of tolerant camaraderie and great lifelong friendships, and a respect for both the old folks and their pleasures and for the young and their passions.”

When asked after lunch how she chose the life she leads, Waters began,” I was looking for taste. And this led me to the sustainable growers.  We serve 500 people a day at Chez Panisse and we know where everything comes from.  Simply, we support the local farms.

I don’t like to compromise around the preciousness of food.  It’s a way of life for me.”

She described how when she became a mother she realized that the world she had created at Chez Panisse  “couldn’t be an island unto ourselves.”  She added, “The public school is the only place you can teach every child.  If we can give them an experience that is lasting we change the world.”

Ten years ago the students at the Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Berkeley were eating micro waved food from a shack in the parking lot, which surrounded the school in a hot molten sea of black asphalt.  Working with the principal, Alice created The Edible Schoolyard, a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen classroom with a cafeteria in the works. The Edible Schoolyard program has not only transformed the landscape of the school but has also swept up the children in its revolutionary way of teaching. The journey they are on and the curriculum are beautifully described on their website. A book, The Edible Schoolyard, will soon be available in bookstores.
http://www.edibleschoolyard.org

“We have a responsibility to teach children about what they are eating.” Alice continued.  “We need to feed them real food.  Kids need to know what food is doing to the world.”

Vote, join the school board, visit the principal, insist on change – use your voice and act, Alice told us.  Many schools are failing; the emphasis on test scores is not saving the school or its children. Inter-curriculum studies introduced through the garden provide a healthier and more successful learning environment.  Plant it, grow it, harvest it, cook it and serve it.  Science, math, English and nutrition are at work in the garden. Using the hands-on learning experience to teach academics opens the child’s mind and lets the information in.

On the four and half-hour drive back to New York, I dozed in the back of our car while Alice and Ham talked about life, daughters and politics.  We arrived home just in time to race upstairs and see the last of the 2008 Presidential Debates between McCain and Obama.

Needless to say the debate was not nearly as inspiring as a day spent with Alice Waters.  But our hopes were with the theme of change that was the underpinning of the Obama message.  Whether he will be inclined to lend a serious ear to the idea of revolutionizing the public schools through the introduction of gardening and food consciousness will have to wait for another day.  But as this day ended I was still basking in the Waters‘ Effect, convinced that her ideas could helpfully be applied to global food issues, to the quandary of domestic health and to the crisis of our failing public schools.

SOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY

www.gainingground.org/ organic farm serving the community

www.ecoliteracy.org/ dedicated to education for sustainable living

www.lunchlessons.org/ changing the way we feed our children a useful site and book
Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children, by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes

www.farmtoschool.org/ connects farms to schools, some in Texas

The Edible Schoolyard by Alice Waters, available soon at bookstores

Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment provides a conceptual framework for integrated learning in these important areas in K-12 classrooms. With a global food crisis, rising environmental concerns, and America’s children facing epidemic levels of diet-related diseases, how can educators positively engage students in understanding the connections among these topics?

Films of Marcel Pagnol: The Baker’s Wife and Harvest, taken from novels by Jean Giono
Books by Marcel Pagnol: Jean de Florette, Manon of the Springs, The House of My Mother and the Marseille trilogy—Marius, Fanny, and César,

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER NOV 1

Farmers Markets Define a New Food System

First thing Saturday morning, visit your local Farmers’ Market.  Here in Marfa you can have a delicious breakfast of baked goods or Mexican food with hot coffee or tea. Take home tamales, frittatas or soup for lunch and a pie or tart for dinner.

Later when you sit down at your computer look at the Declaration of Healthy Food and Agriculture. Initiated by Roots of Change, http://www.rocfund.org/, an organization committed to achieving a sustainable farm system in California, the declaration calls for a “radically different approach to food and agriculture.”

The document declares:

“We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, for people, for animals, and for the natural world.  The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture…Governments have a duty to protect people from malnutrition, unsafe food, and exploitation, and to protect the land and water on which we depend from degradation.”

For the full text go to: http://fooddeclaration.org/

Some of the original framers of the declaration are Keith Bolin, American Corn Growers Assocation, Michael Pollan, author and journalist, and Alice Waters, chef and activist.  Wendell Berry, poet, author and farmer is a contributing editor.

Farmers’ markets are on the rise across the country.  These markets support our local economies and keep the small farmers and food producers in business.  Looking at the growth of our own weekly market and the exciting community gathering it generates, makes me understand how we can change our food system.  Start local and shout loudly for national attention to this fundamental issue of how we grow our food.

The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.