Josh builds sturdy tomato frames

Last year when Josh, Jessica's and Alex's old friend, AKA "the son I never had", came to visit the farmhouse he was helpful as always; consulting with me on roasting the grass finished beef so it wouldn't turn into shoe leather, unclogging the bathroom sink, moving furniture and a multitude of other jobs. But, clearly a masochist at heart, he proposed another project; to build me sturdy tomato frames that would not only last the whole season but which could be used year after year.

I had been building teepees out of bamboo stakes. Initially they looked somewhat orderly but by the end of the season, burdened by the weight of the vines of the indeterminate heirloom tomatoes, they often collapsed under the weight of the plants.

The frames I had previously fashioned just after the seedlings have been planted

People often propose helpful projects but it always seems best to let them take the lead in following through. A couple weeks ago Josh came over to get a few heirloom tomato and lettuce seeds. While he was here he mentioned the tomato frames so it was time for me to get excited. This past weekend it happened.

Josh came up late afternoon on Friday laden with table saw, appropriate tools and wearing his trusty Carhartt overall. Within minutes of his arrival he had set up in the garage, starting to cut the one inch supports for the tomatoes. He figured after a while that 3/4" would actually be fine. He cut the base of each vertical support into a spike for ease pushing into the ground. By now it was time for dinner; steak, mushrooms and red peppers and asparagus all on the BBQ, roasted blue potatoes and rhubarb crisp and 10% yogurt for desert. Then back to the garage for some after-dark cutting.

The table saw gets a workout. Josh properly outfitted with thick leather work gloves, safety glasses and ear protection

The supports go from being one inch in diameter to 3/4 inch

The pile grows

Each 2 by 4 is cut, initially into 4 pieces, then later 5

Safety first; Josh gives each piece a final push with another piece of wood

Not quite burning the midnight oil but it's definitely dark

On Saturday morning he explained the general design. There would be a vertical support at each end and a crosspiece horizontally laid across the top. Along each side there would be the one inch pieces screwed at an angle into the horizontal piece.

Then it was time to make the prototype in situ. We decided on a length for each frame, the distance between the pieces that would each have a tomato planted at their base and the distance between each frame.

The prototype!

Scylla inspects and gives a nod of approval

I had originally envisioned having the bed in the field dedicated to the tomatoes I am growing for the butcher shop I supply. The other tomatoes would be planted in part of a bed close to the garage. But Josh realized we had enough lumber to make six frames each supporting twelve tomatoes plants. Absolutely perfect because I have started 72 seedlings. And all the tomatoes will be in one spot, with the area by the garage available for more potatoes. Josh had figured it would take about 8 hours and it did. Time for a lingering lunch by the pool and then Josh left to go back in time for a party in the city. The tomatoes are hardening off on the deck this week readying themselves to be planted next weekend.

Halfway there

Done! Six frames each supporting twelve tomato plants

On Sunday morning Charlie dropped by for, as they say, a "chin wag". I took him out to the field to have a look at Josh's handiwork. He was suitably impressed! Josh and I had talked about taking them down each year, both to extend their life and also to accommodate crop rotation. Charlie's idea was to leave them there and rotate the crops using them; tomatoes, then peas and pole beans, finally cucumbers. They are tall enough that even with a little rot at the bottom after overwintering in the ground they could be driven further down each spring a number of times. Of course, while a great idea, that also assumes the willingness of Josh to come up and repeat the effort for next year's tomatoes…..

Not sure Josh will be smiling when I pass on Charlie's thoughts….

Fiddleheads

The triumvirate of spring foraging are ramps, fiddleheads and morels. One year we were blessed with morels simply popping up in the lawn at the foot of a dead elm. In fact, not expecting them, at first glance they looked like pine cones. But they never made a return appearance and I have never found them in the woods.

Fiddleheads appear at the tail end of ramp season. Fiddleheads are the curled frond, croziers, of ostrich ferns. They enjoy very damp ground. Ours are in the "flood plain" of the creek at the outer edge of aspens where they get sun but still a dappled light.

Ostrich ferns just recently unfurled

Another location where the ferns are slightly behind and there are more fiddleheads

Like any foraged treat, timing is of the essence. The fronds for eating need to be tightly curled. Once they appear just a day or two of sun will coax them into opening up into graceful fronds. Fiddleheads come from the ostrich fern, matteuccia struthiopteris. They are characterized by an indented stem.

The clearly indented stem of the ostrich fern fiddlehead

All ferns reproduce by spores, having neither flowers nor seeds. Along the outer edge of the stand of ostrich ferns are the smaller sensitive ferns, onoclea sensibilis.

A stand of sensitive ferns

Sensitive ferns bordering an ostrich fern in the centre

Like other wild greens, fiddleheads are a nutritional powerhouse. Rare in vegetables, they contain Omega 3 fatty acids. They have twice the antioxidants of blueberries and are high in fibre, Vitamin A and C and contain iron and potassium.

Fiddleheads ripe for the picking

Fiddleheads just starting to unfurl

When foraging for anything it is always important to pick sustainably. For fiddleheads it is essential to leave at least one crozier on each plant. That is relatively easy because the fiddleheads emerge from different depths over time. The topmost accessible fiddleheads are removed while the lower buried ones can be left to maintain the health of the fern.

One fiddlehead clearly above the others. It can be picked and the others left  

There has been some controversy about the safety of eating fiddleheads. Although it wasn't proven conclusively, fiddleheads were thought possibly to contain a toxin. But they have been a staple of native and country diets for years. The safe approach is not to eat them raw or undercooked. To prepare for eating the brown chaff needs to be rubbed off. Then the fiddleheads are rinsed multiple times in cold water until the water is clear. The ends can be trimmed. Health Canada recommends boiling for 15 minutes or steaming for 12. At this point they can be served simply with a drizzling of olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt. Or used in endless other ways, sautéed, highlighted in a risotto, pizza, quiche… Your imagination is the limit.

Fiddleheads ready to be cooked

"Reading" the Woods

This past weekend I thought that, after this long and cold spring, it might finally be time to go foraging for one of spring's first treats, ramps, or wild leeks. While making my way to see if they were ready yet it occurred to me that, while I knew exactly where to find them, why would they be in that exact spot? I've always thought that a walk in the woods can be a wonderful way to allow one's thoughts the freedom to roam or to have a rambling chat with a friend. But I saw that, rather like the quiet joys of a book, walking in the forest can also be an opportunity to read, to clearly see what the landscape reveals.

I left the house walking along the hedgerow through our hay field. Clearly there would be no ramps here - too exposed and sunny and the grass wouldn't allow for the shallow roots of ramps.

Crossing the hay field by the hedgerow

As I got closer to the woods there was a pussy willow, its feet submerged in water. This site is too wet, perfect for a thirsty willow but not enough drainage for ramps.

The pussy willow in full bloom

The woods as I enter them are predominantly balsam fir and hemlock with some white ash. The character of a forest is determined by the interaction of climate, soils, land form and disturbance. While one can make broad sweeping generalizations of forest regions in Ontario it is also possible to make incredibly small detailed distinctions within those areas.

The woods here are predominantly Balsam Fir and Hemlock

I had to confirm with my non-resident silviculturist, Alex Hume, that this is in fact Hemlock

Our area is on the cusp of the Canadian Shield. In the south the land has fertile, relatively deep soils from shales and limestone, tending to be base and with good tilth. To the north the soil is less fertile, shallower and from Pre Cambrian, more acid granite and gneisses. The surface of the land has been shaped by moving continental ice sheets or covered by river and glaciofluvial (rivers and streams) and lacustrine (lake) deposits. Glacial overburden tends to be deficient in lime. Because glacial overburden was moved, deposited and reworked by ice and water, the character of classification (lithology) of the soil can be quite different from the underlying bedrock.

When there is a hemlock dominated woods the site can accumulate raw humus which does not break down well and form hardpan deposits which are not suitable for hardwoods. The soils in these woods also tend to be more acid. Ferns and moss are interspersed on the forest floor. I found a beautiful patch of white trillium which you would expect to see in more of a hardwoods forest but they are somewhat relaxed in their site requirements tolerating dappled shade to a more open site at the edge of woods. There are also enough deciduous trees to form enough humus for their needs.

Ferns dot the forest floor

A healthy stand of white trillium poised to burst into bloom

As I continue along the path there are more white and yellow birches interspersed among the conifers.

White and Yellow Birch make an appearance

And then I come across the first clump of ramps. Almost like a sign post pointing the way. Now the area is no longer flat and there are small hills and valleys punctuated with rock outcroppings.  Local climate is affected by aspect and slope (which direction it is facing). Ramps tend to like south or west facing slopes in a hardwood forest. The hardwoods allow for dappled sunlight at this time of the year  before they have leafed out. There are sugar maples, red oak and basswood with an understory of shrubs. The slope guarantees good drainage and the hardwoods produce a rich humus soil.

The first sign of ramps, a modest clump

The mixed hardwood forest with its more undulating topography

Ramps enjoy nestling up against fallen logs and on rocks slightly below the surface of the soil. They from dense clumps. Like trilliums they can take five to seven years to mature so it is important to take just a few from each clump.

The farther into the woods the more plentiful the ramps

This clump is wedged between the decaying fallen log and on top of a rock amidst  fallen leaves

Ramps, like so many of the other early spring greens, act as a spring tonic, delivering a high nutritional content, especially Vitamins A, C and E and trace elements selenium, manganese and chromium.

Ramps (wild leeks) cleaned and trimmed

A seasonal treat - ramp pesto

The same conditions that ramps enjoy are perfect for many of the spring ephemerals. An interesting fact about some of the spring ephemerals, notably trilliums and dutchman's breeches, is that their seeds are spread by ants, called myrmecochory.

Dutchman's Breeches, a wild relative of Bleeding Heart in the dicentra family

The relatively rare red Trillium - I saw more of these in one spot than ever before 

Blue Cohosh

A healthy patch of Bloodroot (Sanguinaria)

A thalictrum or meadow rue

And something else I can't identify - a fire engine red fungus

While I was initially tempted to take some wildflowers home, on reflection, I realized that the magic is in coming upon them in their natural habitat, keeping the "wild" in wildflowers.

  

Why does Vandana Shiva care more about Canada's Bill C18 than we do?

In the natural world systems are closely aligned, interdependent and often symbiotic. A good example is the relationship between pollinators and seed regeneration.

In December 2013 Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz introduced Bill C18, the Agricultural Growth Act. It is before committee awaiting second reading. Buried in section 50 is the recommendation that Canada support the 1991 version of UPOV, the convention of International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. This means companies that grow and sell seeds would be allowed to collect royalties from farmers who store, harvest and replant their seeds. The Act is strongly supported by the Canadian Seed Trade Association which includes in its membership Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow and Dupont. The Act is just as strenuously opposed by the National Farmers Union. They say the Act will restrict farmers' ability to save seed for replanting and will allow seed companies to collect royalties based on harvests.

Why should we care? It is about answering basic questions of human rights and the definition of life. Is it a right or a privilege to save seed? Is a seed a life form?

Vandana Shiva's three definitions of seeds in her keynote address to Public Interest Alberta in April;
“It’s part of a global movement to reclaim seed as a commons. To reclaim seed freedom, which for me is three things: the freedom of the seed itself, as a living being, in its diversity, integrity and evolutionary potential; the freedom of the farmer to save and exchange seed, and to have their contribution to breeding recognized; and the freedom of the eater to get good food, because without good seed, there is no good food."

At its simplest her premise is that a life form is not patentable and therefore can not be owned. If seeds become patentable then 'ownership' of seeds becomes a privilege, not a right and subject to laws of the land.

When individual farmers have incurred the wrath of corporate agriculture the story has played out predictably - no victory of the underdog here (notwithstanding Malcolm Gladwell's new book, David and Goliath). Think of Canada's Percy Schmeiser. He is a third generation Saskatchewan farmer who invoked the ire of Monsanto. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Biotechnology history was made when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Schmeiser had violated the patent held by Monsanto on their genetically engineered canola seeds.

Farmers in the bread basket of Africa endured unprecedented drought in 2009. If that wasn't bad enough, they had another problem. Many were using genetically modified corn seed which included in its genome a protein from a bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis, commonly known as Bt. The leaves and stems of Bt Maize produce a toxin whose intention is to destroy the gut  of any moth larvae eating the plant. But in Africa the insects developed a resistance to the Bt pesticide and in fact, the resistant insects proliferated and decimated the crop.

There has been wide reporting of the suicides of Indian farmers. The official report is 270,000 since 1995. While there is controversy over whether these deaths reflect a change from the tradition of farmers planting seed they had saved to buying GMO seeds there is no question that changes to farming practices in India have been detrimental to the small subsistence farmer.

In all parts of the globe bees, one of most important pollinators, are at risk. According to Sierra Club Canada, the presence of neonicotinoid pesticides have been found in 90% of dead bees. Neonicotinoid pesticides were developed to replace insecticides like DDT and were supposed to be ‘better for the environment’. Manufacturers claimed the new pesticides would be more targeted, fatal only to specific insects. Health Canada approved neonicotinoids in 2004 allowing companies to bypass testing.  The "conditional approval" has been renewed ever since. 

Around the world, and in Canada too, government policy supports corporate agriculture, often at the expense of the small family farm. This means that because of "economies of scale", monoculture and use of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers trump practices of sustainability, biodiversity and protecting and nourishing our agricultural soil. Farmers who save seed and encourage and protect pollinators become victims of agricultural policy.

I wonder why every newspaper doesn't have a reporter on the Ag beat? Sounds ludicrous, I know. But, considering food is one of the few things all people have in common multiple times each day, why not? It seems as justifiable an inclusion in our daily read as Celebrity Star Gazing, Deals in Wheels and My Lie (the personal ads).

While I am attracted to the idea of a little subversion every once in a while, the notion of becoming a criminal - and a petty one at that - is not top on my list of wanna-do's. I imagine a future where
"Eileen Fawcett, hereby known as the Defendant, is charged with saving and possession of 7 ounces of Heirloom Jacob's Cattle beans seeds (Exhibit A),  13 Heirloom Tomato Seeds -variety Aida (Exhibit B) and 9 ounces of Heirloom Lettuce Seeds - both red and green varieties (Exhibit C)".

Exhibit A; Saved seeds of the heirloom bean, Jacob's Cattle

Exhibit B; Saved seeds of Heirloom Tomato - Aida

Exhibit C; Saved seeds of Heirloom Lettuces

In this, the International Year of the Family Farm (who knew? really?), it is time to put the "culture" back in agriculture. Farmers' markets and CSAs, where there is a  relationship between producer and consumer, are good signs. But more is needed. It is time for each and every one of us to write our local MP to stand up for our food security, our agricultural land and our pollinators; we need to protest Bill C18.

Kale gone to seed is used as an ornamental in one of the 9 Smithsonian Gardens