Finding The Stockman Grass Farmer Periodical - Rawl Was Right, I Was Wrong

Somewhere in the mid-90's, I came across a farmsy sort of publication called, The Stockman Grass Farmer.  At that point in time, one of the basic lures used to reel people in was the notion that a farmer could graze animals during the Spring through Fall, then take the winter off to vacation, yet still make more money than a farmer who cared for his/her animals year around.  Since my dairy farmer boss, Rawl, used grazing as a method to feed his cows, and he had received an award for it, my interest was piqued.

I recall as a relatively well-read teenager that I questioned Rawls methods.  I thought his cows were underperforming to their potential.  At the time, his herd average annual production was about 14,500 pounds of milk.  Other Holstein herds had production rates in the 17,000 to 18,000 pounds per year at that time.  In my naivette, I was ignoring several critical factors.  The first was cost.  Rawl told me that he made almost all of his money during the grazing season and broke even during the non-grazing season.  He didn't have to pay anyone for the grass that the cows harvested themselves.  He didn't have to hire labor to have his cows graze his grass.  His machinery investment was nominal related to managing his pastures.  Grazing was just plain cost-effective.

Second, Rawl's cows did not get burned out from being pushed to produce fantastical amounts of milk.  His cows lived longer.  His cows lived better.  Because his cows lived longer, he could occassionally sell excess replacement heifers (young cows who have not yet had a calf) to other dairy farmers.  Other dairy farmers were always buying heifers because their cows were being burned out, getting sick, could not rebreed, or dying.  Grazing provided the perfect feed for cows and gave the cows exercise that they critically needed.  Confinement cows receive almost no exercise and are fed on stored feeds year around.  Grazing was just plain healthier for the cows.

Third, since grass is that natural food for cattle, the milk produced by cows on grass was nutritionally superior to cows fed heavily on silage and grain.  This milk, as well as other animal products, is nutritionally superior for both the calves and for the humans that consume dairy products produced by the cows grazing the grass.  More on this in the next blog post.

Stockman Grass Farmer lead me to sources and taught me about the art of Management Intensive Grazing.  (I still have much to learn)  Rawl already understood it, and I observed much of the art without actually understanding the whole of what I was seeing.  When thinking of the idea of management intensive grazing, let's think about the buffalo of the Great Plains.  The buffalo and the grasslands of the Great Plains had a symbiotic relationship.  The buffalo required the grass and the grass required the buffalo. They both helped each other.  Predators also helped to shape the behavior of the buffalo in ways also aided the symbiosis between the buffalo and the grass.

Buffalo would move across the plains in tightly bunched herds and eat two to three feet tall grass down to six inches, then move to the next spot to each the next bunch of grass.  Predators, like wolves and humans, helped to create the tight bunching behavior of the buffalo herd.  While the buffalo were grazing, they also did as all animals do and they pooped ant pee'd on the grass, then they moved on.  They would not return to the same place for several weeks, maybe even a couple of months.  What was happening here?

The buffalo eating the grass, stalled the grass going to seed and encouraged it to create new succelant growth.  When the buffalo ate the grass, part of the roots sloughed off, adding to the organic matter content of the underlying soil.  Worms and other macro and micro biotic life consumed the roots, manure, and urine, increasing the soil fertility.  The buffalo got the perfect food for them, and by constantly moving they did not destroy the grass.  They set the stage for the grass to regrow and for fertility to constantly increase in the soil.  This is why the Great Plains had topsoil that was four to eight feet deep when people started plowing it.  Now the topsoil that remains is just a few inches deep.  Management intensive rotational grazing mimics the action of the buffalo and builds soils.  Standard farming practices deplete soils.

In addition to ruminants like cows, sheep, and goats, I also learned about the benefits of pasture for poultry and hogs.  While grass is not the perfect food for poultry and hogs, it can provide up to about 15% of nutrient needs and also provides the environment to harvest other nutrients like bugs, worms, minerals, etc.

In management intensive grazing, the grazing stock represent the buffalo.  An electric fence represents the predators, keeping the animals tightly bunched.  The grass is the grass.  The farmer's job is to make sure that the cows are moved frequently enough so they do not damage the grass and that they are kept away from the grass until the grass recovers adequately to be grazed again.

The Stockman Grass Farmer taught me important lessons about raising livestock in a healthy and humane way that provided superior nutrition to people who ate the livestock products, and building healthier, more fertile and productive soils at the same time.  I'm still reading it.  I received my February issue yesterday, and started reading it at the end of the day.

How to Grow Good Food - Extensions from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

As I read and absorbed the implications of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the question, "But how do I actually grow good food?" popped into my mind over and over.  I had become increasingly informed on the issues associated with foods raised using currently conventional methods.  These things along with Price's work clarified several things that were intuitive to me.  The best foods for people were foods that people traditionally ate that were raised the way people traditionally raised foods.  The next question is, "How were foods traditionally raised?"  Part of that is easy, part of that is not so easy.

Price's work showed that traditional diets included both wild harvested and agriculturally produced foods.  The wild harvested foods included plant based foods, fish, game, insects, and other animal based products.  Like wild harvested foods, agriculturally produced foods were based upon both plants and animals.

The wild harvested foods varied significantly by geography.  The closer to the equator, the greater the percentage of wild harvested foods that were plant based.  The farther from the equator, the greater the percentage of animal based foods.  Plant foods included leaves, tubers, fruits, roots, and to a lesser degree, seeds.  Animal based foods included fish, shellfish, roe, insects, and game of all sorts, from small to large.  Animal organ meats and fats were highly prized.  All of these foods were "naturally" raised.  The plants and animals were not influenced by man-made chemicals.  The soils where the wild harvested plants that humans consumed and the plants that animals consumed were largely virgin soils with natural sources of fertility, including original mineral materials and naturally occuring organic matter, either deposited directly or added upon through either wind or water based sedimentation.  Mother nature did not use petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, nor laboratory based hormones, antibiotics, or other pharmaceuticals.

The agriculturally produced foods that were part of traditional diets were raised in either a cultivated, or semi-wild environment, depending on the type of food and the geography of the people.  Animals for the animal based products were raised in different ways and on different diets that were in alignment with the natural diet of the animals.  For example, ruminants like cattle, sheep, and goats were grazed on grass and other browse, where they had a wide diversity of plant materials to eat.  The ruminants were not fed grain or other animal sources of food.  Omnivores like poultry and swine were largely scavengers, eating leftovers from human food consumption, fresh plant foods, seeds, nuts, insects, and animal sources of food as well.  None of these animals received hormones, antibiotics, or other pharmaceuticals.  The animals either deposited the manure as they grazed and wandered, or the people involved with caretaking used the animal manure as a source of fertility for the raising of food.  These animals were not raised in large confinement operations with extreme animal, animal waste, and animal disease concentration.

Agriculturally produced plant foods were either grown as perennials - trees and bushes, or annuals in cultivated ground.  In either case, fertility came from the natural fertility of the soil, augmented by decomposition of organic matter, periodic deposition of silt through flooding or wind, and by otherwise manuring from animal and even human sources or manure.  People knew that plants grew better in rich soil and located their agriculture in areas where fertility would be most easily maintained, or they rotated their plantings to new ground periodically to maintain production.  What these plants did not have were inputs in the forms of petroleum based fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc.

Traditional plants foods and animal foods were nutrient dense, due to both their genetics and the richly mineralized soils that were their foundation.  They were not contaminated by endocrine disrupting and cancer causing chemicals.  The soils were mineralized not only in the macro nutrient spectrum, but also broadly across a range of trace minerals.  In other words, the foods were good foods without all of the damaging tagalongs common to current conventionally raised foods.

So how do you raise good food?  It starts with the soil.  Both soil mineralization and the soil biology that supports soil mineralization are key.  That is for soils that grow human food directly and that grow feedstuff for animals that produce foods for humans (e.g. eggs, dairy) or animals that are consumed directly.  In addition to agriculturally raised foods, wild harvested foods like fish, game and other wild plant materials can provide the foundation for nutrient dense foods that are good for humans to eat and will optimize their health and extend life.

Inflection Point - Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Up to a certain point in my life, the idea of farming or homesteading was primarily about self-sufficiency and lifestyle.  After all, who wouldn't want to be self sufficient?  Who wouldn't prefer a country lifestyle over an urban or suburban lifestyle?  No need to answer that, I am well-aware of my own biases and preferences.

I don't remember exactly what turned me to it, but I suspect it may have been in about 2000, and it had something to do with ACRES, USA, an ecologically minded monthly farming publication, but I ran into a book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Weston Price.  This book, along with many other thoughts and ideas I had previously had, created an inflection point in how I viewed the world relative to food and food production techniques.  This post is primarily about learning what foods are good to eat.  There will be a post at a later time about gaining perspective and insights into food production techniques.

Price was a dentist at the turn of the century in Canada.  About the turn of the century he started noticing a change in his patients.  There was a marked increase in the number of cavities his patients, particularly his younger patients, were having.  Additionally, for the first time ever, his young patients had started to develop crooked teeth.  What?!  I thought crooked teeth were a genetic phenomenon.  Wouldn't the parents of children with crooked teeth most likely have crooked teeth?  Apparently not.

Price hypothesized that the source of both the increase in dental caries and the newly emerging crooked teeth were related to a change in the dietary patterns that were occurring in Canada at the time.  For a period of years, he laid out a plan to investigate this phenomenon.

After his retirement in the late '20's, he and his wife set out on several years' worth of investigative travel, armed with a new-fangled 35mm camera, notepads, and pencils.  He sought out populations that had been isolated from modern foods, that also had a correlary population that had easy access to modern foods.  A most common scenario was where a harbor existed where there was easy access to modern foods, but there was an isolated population with the same genetic base up over a treacherous mountain pass.  In this situation, Price could effectively test the same genetic base with the only real difference being those eating traditional diets for their region vs. those eating a modern diet.

What he found, with remarkable consistency, was stunning.  People eating a traditional diet for their region had well developed facial bones, straight and beautiful teeth, few if any cavities, and overall excellent health.  People of the same genetic base eating a more modern diet, with an emphasis on white flour, sugar, canned goods, etc. had a marked tendency towards narrowly developed facial bones, crooked teeth, many cavities, and relatively poorer health.  Price traveled the world to many places and peoples, including, but not limited to Switzerland, Seminole Native Americans, Africa, Inuit of Canada, Polynesia, Australia (Aboriginies), Peru, etc.  He found the same thing wherever he went.

So what foods are good?  Traditional foods.  Think back 150 years ago or more.  In the 1890's, the annual per capita sugar consumption was about 7 pounds.  Today it approaches 170 pounds.  170 pounds!  In other words, he found people who ate vegetables, game, whole grains, whole dairy, eggs, fish, fruits, insects, etc.  Related to grains and dairy in particular, he saw certain preparation techniques that were used related to lacto-fermentation.  What he didn't see was Coke, Twinkies, TV dinners, McDonalds, Cocoa Puffs, Wonder Bread, etc.  Traditional diets are the good ones. 

The good news is that traditional diets can be largely grown and produced on a homestead or farm, which fits very nicely into my overall idea of farming, and actually pushed forward the idea that it can be extermely beneficial to one's health to have access to well-grown, traditional foods.  The next post will explore some of the key things related to production techniques and processes to ensure that the foods that you may choose to eat are as nutrient dense and healthy as possible.

I would suggest that you take a look at the book, read it, study it, and develop your own opinion about the approach Price took and his reporting of his findings.

Buying Property in Idaho - Hoping for a Farm

Before we even purchased our first house, I was looking for any reasonable opportunity to buy property for my long-sought-after farm.  A few years after we bought our first house, my sister, Penny, called me with an intriguing opportunity.  She and her husband, Kelly, were building a new house in Blackfoot, Idaho, and there was an adjacent five acre parcel that was available as well.  She set the wheels in motion for us to consider and to evenutally purchase that five acre parcel.

Blackfoot was a quaint, semi-rural town in my estimation.  The town was inviting.  It had farming as its economic foundation, but had supporting economic input from the neighboring cities of Pocatello and Idaho Falls.  I imagined I could find meaningful, gainful employment between the two cities.

In southeast Idaho, Blackfoot may very well be known for being the home of the Idaho Potato Muesum.  Potato farming is big business in Idaho, with the foundation of that business being the volcanic soils and low humidity, coupled with adequate irrigation water.  If you live in the western United States and have eaten potatoes, you have probably eaten Idaho potatoes.

To me, five acres, with irrigation was just about perfect.  With five acres, one could have a nice sized yard, grow a garden, have an orchard and berry patch, have pasture for two or three cows, raise pigs, chickens, and turkeys, maybe even a little fast growing firewood.  The thought of growing a small amount of feed corn also crossed my mind.  Five acres would also be big enough for a wood shop and a place to chop, stack, and store firewood.

Irrigation water rights was essential in Blackfoot.  Property without irrigation water was basically desert.  If you stretched your imagination, you may be able to use it as range for cattle, but the typical acreage of range required to support one cow in the region was between 20 and 40 acres.  While five acres may not be trivial in the scheme of feeding one cow, the fact remained that you could not even feed one cow of five unirrigated acres in Blackfoot.

This five acres had water rights on a ditch that ran on one side of the property.  There would be enough water to provide the property with water.  The total amount alotted for the year was roughly 2 1/2 acre feet per acre.  If all put on at one time, it would amount to 2 1/2 feet deep water on the whole property.  Of course, you would only put on the amount that would equal approximately two inches per week.  From the ditch, flood irrigation was possible with the gently sloped land.  It would also have been possible to use a pump and pressurize irrigation lines.  I imagined eventually installing a fixed underground irrigation structure so irrigation could have been done largely on a semi-automated basis.

The volcanic soils were generally quite well mineralized.  Blackfoot, essentially being in the ancestral river bottom of Blackfoot River had also accumulated a fair amount of silt.  Additionally, for being in the desert it had accumulated a modest amount of organic matter as well.  In my mind, the soils had great potential, particularly if the organic matter were to be built up over time and minor adjustments made to the soil mineral structure.  I was quite optimistic.

I recall talking to Kelly about doing green manure crops to help build the soil organic matter.  One of the problems was that I was not there.  I couldn't participate in the processes and observe and interact with the environment.  While I appreciated having the property, I longed to be there and actually be involved with the property and with the work on the property.

We had purchased the property and were making payments.  Those payments were quite significant to us.  We purchased the property knowing that while we hoped to move their and build our house and future, there was a very real possibility that we might not.  We figured real estate was generally a good investment.  If we could make it work, it would be nice to be located next to my sister in a town that we had generally positive feelings about.  Time would tell....

Canning and Preserving Food - A Family Affair

As a child, one of the memories etched in my mind was the late summer and early fall canning of ripe peaches and pears, and the later fall canning of chunky applesauce.  Sometimes there was late summer canning of tomato juice or stewed tomatoes.  Occassionally there was the making and canning of fragrant, deep purple grape juice, made from Concord grapes.  My Mom was in charge, and did this annual food preservation well and with skill.  The results were outstanding.  Come the end of fall, the fruit room in the basement was lined with jars of preserved food, to be eaten through the fall, winter and often into the next summer.

There is a serious question to be asked of why someone would actually go through the process of canning, or otherwise preserving food, when satisfactory food can be easily purchased at a grocery store.  The answer to that question is intensely personal, and not the same for each individual.  Some would say that it is simply not worth the time and effort, or other priorities trump the ideal of home food preservation.

My answer to that question is multi-faceted.  First, I put food away in order to know how to do it and to know how to care for myself and my family.  I put food away because I can control the ingredients and the recipes toward the ends of a better, more healthy, more tasty outcome.  I also put food away to be prepared.  The preparedness is along a number of dimensions, including easily preparing a meal from food on hand, having food on hand for weather or other natural "emergencies," and having food on hand to be prepared in the event of economic issues.  Those economic issues can relate to my direct family, or the families of my children as they spread their wings and make their way in this journey of life.  I don't do it because someone told me to.  I do it because it makes sense to me to do it.  And if you didn't catch it already, it simply tastes better.

I learned to can at my Mom's side.  I mostly watched, but sometimes I got my hands in on the action and clumsily tried to peel peaches and pears, while halving and pitting or coring them.  I always worried that I was destroying these fragile, delicious fruits, but Mom was always, always patient.  The water bath canner would hold seven quart jars.  I would get one jar done and Mom would get six jars done.  She was better at this than I was or am.

I was lucky enough to have my Mom hand write her recipe for peaches, pears, and applesauce.  She has the most beautiful handwriting.  This scanned recipe was written probably 25 years ago.  The paper is yellowed and there are food spots and other things on the recipe.  It is precious to me.  I hope you will treasure it as well.  For peaches and pears, this is a very light syrup, which lets the natural flavor of the fruit shine.  For those of you concerned about glycemic index and the potential impact of syrup packed fruit, my experience is that eating one or two halves of a peach or pear, without the syrup, canned this way has no perceptible impact on blood sugar.

SCAN OF MOM'S RECIPE

Michelle and I have both taken the lead at times in canning and other food preservation.  Sometimes we do it together.  Sometimes we do it with the kids.  Sometimes we do it with friends.  Sometimes we do it alone.  The key is that we do it.  Simply doing it hits on my first point of why I can and preserve foods.  I know how to do it and I keep my skills honed.  There is virtue in knowing how to do stuff.  We are losing our ability to do stuff.  Learn how to do stuff and teach your kids, teach your friends, and teach the friends of your kids and your friends.

When canning peaches and pears, we always use my Mom's recipe.  It works well, the kids like it, and we like it.  Enough said.

Canning in the kitchen in August and September is a hot affair.  The idea that the pioneers had of a summer kitchen makes a lot of sense.  Keep the heat out of the kitchen where you live.  An ideal is to have an outdoor kitchen that can be used in part for summer and fall canning.

Michelle has canned spaghetti sauce and salsa with her friends using a pressure canner, which is required for low acid foods.  Whoever thought of spaghetti sauce and salsa as low acid?  Well, it's on the margin because of all of the non-tomato content in these foods.  For safety's sake use a pressure canner.  In those events, Michelle and her friends would gather together and prepare and can these foods.  Canning as friends is a great way to learn, teach, build skills, have fun, and make some good food.

For grape juice, we have used a steam juicer as part of the processing.  It makes much of the process easier, and yields tasty, wonderful grape juice that may or may not require other processing, depending on which recipe you are following and the care taken.

A favorite at our house is freezer jam.  Oregon strawberries are the best.  None of those California grown flint stone strawberries for our jam.  Raspberry jam is a favorite.  We have dabbled in Marionberry jam as well.  Marionberries are a locally developed trailing blackberry variety.  They are incredibly delicious.  Sometimes I call them "crack berries" because they are so addictive.  All of the deliciousness may be called into question when you read the recipe for freezer jam, but only momentarily.  The sugar content is outrageous.  Our freezers are generally very well stocked with freezer jam, which are delicious above and beyond anything, I repeat, anything you can find at the store.

Another serious question is whether or not canning is an optimal, or even good form of food preservation.  As a teen, I started to wonder whether or not the sugar often used in canning was good for you, not that I cared much, but I wondered.  Learning about the adverse health impacts of what Dr. Weston Price called, the "foods of commerce," which included canned goods, sugar, white flour, I wondered about the place of canned goods in a healthy diet.  I determined that fresh foods were better and that lacto-fermented foods (e.g. real pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi) were oustanding as well.  I have learned that properly dehyrated foods had an important place in food storage as well.  I have determined that there is a real and important place in a healthy diet for canned foods, particularly if you can control the recipes.  It is reassuring to look at the canned goods on the shelf and realize they will be there if you have unexpected guests, if the power goes out, or if you just want to reach back and taste that delicious peach or pear of summer.

Back to the Portland Area - Sequent, an Apartment, and Our First House

As is often the case with startup companies, my adventure at Proficiency did not end with long term employment.  Lack of traction in the marketplace and an increasingly reluctant funding source led to the reorganization and closure of the company.  There was good news on the horizon at the time.  The manager, that hired me at Tektronix, John Jonez, had moved to a different company in Beaverton, Sequent Computer Systems.  When he was aware that I was looking for work, he pulled out all the stops and helped me land a job back in the Portland area.  In a very real sense, we felt like we were heading home.

We found an apartment in Hillsboro that we liked very much.  When we moved in, we were three.  When we moved out, we were four.  The apartment had nice amenities like a swimming pool, which Michelle and Kirsten used regularly.  We had a washer and dryer in the apartment.  It was located convenient to the grocery store, the library, and other things.  But, like most people, we wanted a house.

We moved into our first house in the summer of 1992.  That year, drought had hit the Willamette Valley.  There were watering restrictions on the watering of lawns.  The lawns went dormant during that summer.  We were allowed to water trees, bushes and flowers.  Related to the watering restrictions, there was one thing that I learned, which would become more important over time.  In the brown fescue and ryegrass lawn, there were bright green plants.  I wondered why the lawn went dormant but there were three plants in particular that stayed green, even in the heat and dryness of the summer.  I know two of the plants, I don't know the third.  The two that I know are dandelion and chickory.  The third looks like a close relative of dandelion.  All three had deep tap roots.  They could reach one to two feet down in the soil to find moisture, whereas the grass was limited to about three or four inches of root depth.  This became relevant as I considered pasture plants for non-irrigated pastured in the Willamette Valley.

Another thing I learned at our first house related to the cycling of nutrients through the grasses and soil of the lawn.  Most people bag their lawn clippings, and along with it, their soil fertility, and send them off to the dump or yard debris recycling center.  The process of bagging the lawn clippings and sending soil nutrients away created the necessity of bringing in soil nutrients from elsewhere.  This is why people who send their lawn clippings away have to bring in fertilizer in order to maintain vigor in their lawns.  I learned that using a mulching lawn mower cycles the soil nutrients right in place, greatly diminishing the need to fertilize your lawn. The soil nutrients move into the grass plants, then are chopped up and decompose, returing to the soil to be utilized again by the grass.  That is quite an oversimplification, but you get the general idea.  I read about natural lawn care and how a long cut lawn would be rewarded with deeper penetrating roots, which would allow for the use of less frequent watering and potentially less overall water applied.  Additionally, long cut grasses, would shade out some of the plants that would normally be considered weeds.  In effect, I learned several important unorthodox principles.  Use a mulching mower instead of sending your lawn clippings away.  The lawn clippings feed to soil life and biology, ultimately cycling back to the grass.  Minimize your offsite fertilizer inputs.  Cut your grass long to minimize weeds.  Minimize, or don't use herbicides to protect your kids and pets, as well as that soil life that recycles your lawn clipplings.  Herbicides kill the soil bacteria and fungi.  These are things you don't learn from the Scott's or Ortho marketing materials.  I had become a lawn heretic.

The lot that the house was on was small.  The entire back yard was maybe 20' by 50'.  Nearly a quarter of that was a patio and perhaps another quarter was covered with 1-2" river rock.  The front yard was larger than the back yard.  There was a nice red maple in the front yard.  In the back yard, there were two Asian pear trees.  I was delighted by the Asian pear trees.

I was introduced to Asian pears during my time in Korea.  I had never seen or tasted one prior to going to Korea.  I found the Asian pears to have a mixture of characteristics between an apple and a pear, as I knew them.  They were sweet like a Bartlett pear, and crisp like an apple.  Aside from the crispness, the texture seemed to be a cross of an apple and a pear.  In Korea, people would usually peel the Asian pears, prior to eating.  I found that it really depended on the variety.  Some varieties had thick skins that were not that enjoyable to eat.  Others had thinner skins that were fine to eat.  You see similar variations in apples.  The Asian pear trees were a wonderful novelty, but soon outgrew the small backyard.  Reluctantly I took them down after a few years.  It seemed like a sin.  In retrospect, it probably was a sin.  I didn't know enough about taking care of fruit trees to know what I could have done differently at the time.

The size of the backyard, dictated no real room for a garden.  I could have put two or three raised beds in the front yard, but at the time, I thought that no one would put vegetables in the front yard.  The conformist thinking of my previous experiences told me that was unacceptable.  Walt Whitman said, "Re-examine all you have been told.  Dismiss what insults your soul."  I suppose the idea of keeping vegetables out of the front yard, in order to be "proper," insults my soul, so I reject that idea now as a valid construct.  Later I found that many of the "Victory Gardens" of the World War II era were kept right in the front yards of the suburbs.  Now many Home Owner Associations prohibit the vile deed of planting vegetables in your front yard.  I have heard said that Home Owners Associations are for people who just don't have enough government in their lives.

Our first house was a wonderful house.  It got us through our Sequent years.  We have many fond memories from that house, but it was limited in space, both inside and out.

Moving to Farmington - Growing a Garden

After spending two years at Tektronix, I was tempted to change jobs.  My decision to change jobs was part fear, part dream chasing, part familial connection, and part a return to my roots.  During the two years I had at Tektronix, I saw four layoffs.  I kept thinking, "I am next."  I felt insecure in my job as I saw people leave as the company continued to shrink.  I also wanted very much to be part of a small business and have a significant impact on that small business.  I had what I perceived as that opportunity with Proficiency.  My brother, Todd, contacted me about the potential opportunity at Proficiency.  I interviewed there and after some consideration, decided it would be a good fit for me.  It also gave my family a chance to move back closer to where our extended family lived.  The move back to Farmington was filled with optimism and hope.

As we headed back to Farmington, one of the things I really wanted to do was to grow a garden out at my parents' "farm" in west Farmington.  We moved back to Utah in early spring, the perfect time for planning a garden and starting to plant a garden.

Since I had been out of school for a couple of years, I had had more time for reading and studying about new gardening techniques and approaches.  I had spent time at the Vancouver library, looking at magazines, checking out books, and learning.  I had pulled my few old books out of storage and re-read about techniques for efficient and effective gardening.  I had a few things I wanted to try.  I wanted to try cover crops.  I wanted to add organic matter to the alkaline, clay soils of west Farmington to improve the tilth and productivity of the soil.  I wanted to mulch under the tomato plants to minimize the growth of weeds, and also to keep the tomatoes off the ground.  I also had a few ideas for companion planting I wanted to try.  It was time to put some of my theoretical learnings to practical use.

One of the techniques I had learned about was a companion planting of corn and pumpkins.  This is somewhat akin to the historical "Three Sisters" planting technique used by Native Americans, but different and more limited.  Working for Rawl, and also growing sweet corn in a garden before, I was aware of the destructive neighbor, the racoon.  You see, racoons love sweet corn, especially the day before you planned on picking it.  Racoons will walk through a patch of sweet corn, pull down the ears of corn, strip the husks back, and have a sample of the sweet, tender kernels.  I have seen dozens of ears stripped down in a single corn patch.  I had read that racoons really do not like to walk through corn where pumpkin vines criss crossed the rows of pumpkins.  It was difficult for them to navigate, and the small prickly spines on the pumpkin vines hurt their legs.  Supposedly, planting pumpkins in with the sweet corn would greatly deter the racoons from eating the precious sweet corn.  I wanted to give it a try.  So I did.  

The pumpkins in the corn was a great success.  The pumpkins got a great start and the vines did not spill over into the space between the rows until the corn was waist high.  I was able to easily cultivate the corn until the corn shaded the ground and prevented any further weed growth.  The pumpkin vines continued to spread as the corn canopy closed.  Down the rows, the pumpkin vines spread.  The vines set fruit that began to grow and to mature.  As the corn tassled and the silks came out on the corn, I wondered if these criss-crossed pumpkin vines would really prevent the racoons from chowing down on the longed-for sweet corn.  Whether it was the pumpkins or some other fluke of nature, I do not know, but we had hardly any racoon damage that summer.  The technique appeared to work.  I became convinced that it was a technique worth trying again, and perhaps adopting for the long-term.

In addition to the sweet corn, we harvested tons of pumpkins.  We picked many of the best Jack-o-Lantern specimens, kept them in our garage, and gave them away to friends and family.  Halloween came and went, and we still have a few dozen pumpkins in the garage.  With the cold weather, they started to freeze and to rot.  The extra pumpkins had to go to the garbage.  If only we had had a couple of pigs to eat the extras....

Other aspects of the garden were a success as well.  We grew a great crop of tomatoes, beans, onions, etc.  We had more than we could use.  We gave some away and composted the rest.

One of the things that became very clear to me related to the importance of proximity of the garden to the kitchen.  The garden in West Farmington was probably about 2 1/2 miles from our house.  While that is not an extraordinarly long distance away from the house, it made it inconvenient to go grab a few things for dinner.  The idea of a "kitchen garden," just outside of the door started to germinate in my mind.  I wondered if it made sense to have a small garden that was very close to the kitchen for a few things for fresh eating, in season.  That might include things like one tomato plant, ten feet of pole beans, salad greens, green onions, one zuchinni plant, culinary herbs, a few feet of radishes, maybe a slicing cucumber plant, and a few feet of onions.  To me it made sense to incorporate convenience.  If it took more than 30 seconds to pop out to the garden, I was likely to just not pop out to the garden to get something for dinner.  It seemed to make sense to have a small kitchen garden, and a larger "production" garden for freezing, canning, and other storage techniques.  My thoughts about this garden provided foreshadowing of a series of ideas and concepts relating to gardening efficiency and ease of use.

The time in Farmington, was only one year.  We only had one season with this garden, but it was an impactful and memorable year.