farm talk

New photos! But even these are out-dated. The beans are already starting to climb and bush, the squash are bursting out all over, and the cauliflowers and broccolis are all gone - waiting for the next planting. And yesterday, we finished pulling the last of 16 beds of garlic out of the ground. All of it is now hanging or laying in the barn, so you can hardly move without bumping into a bundle of garlic and receiving a gentle shower of dust down your back. It will all dry out (it's called curing) in the next couple of weeks, and then we'll start braiding it for sale.



While the farm sometimes seems isolated in this small town island environment, it's surprising how many rich conversations and real world issues are part of our work and conversation - talks over garlic cleaning, dinner, and weeding that stretch my awareness. Luka is 17 and has taught me so much already about animals. Like did you know that goats could be used as pack animals? Her family would take them on hikes and have them carry gear!

But then we also have been talking about genetically modified crops - especially after viewing a film called The Future of Food. Farmer Linda recently purchased a piece of land adjacent to hers because it was being planted with GMO corn, which of course could have affected her organic crop. She wants to get an effort going to keep GMO crops out of the Coupeville area.

So then I'm in Seattle this past weekend, and I went on a tour of the Theo Chocolate Factory in Fremont - the first chocolate factory in the country to be producing organic, fair trade chocolate from bean to bar. As Hershey moves south of the border and genetically modified sugar beets become one of the U.S.'s main sources of sugar, chocolate - like coffee - is becoming a designer commodity that requires consumption with a conscience. Where does Theo import it's sugar from? Thailand. How amazing that to produce organic chocolate, we need to import sugar from the other side of the world.

In all this discussion of GMOs, I find myself thinking more and more about the health impacts of the food we eat - not just obesity and diabetes, but also cancer. Theresa (my fellow intern) has a background in nutrition and a sister who was diagnosed last year with melanoma, so we have been talking more about the links between cancer and the health of our environments. And of course ragging on the shortcomings of western medicine in addressing the cure and not the cause, the band-aids and invasive interventions rather than the preventative measures.

Then we come back to garlic peeling and Caroline talking about her husband who works as a pharmacist at Walgreens and sometimes does double shifts, which means 14 continuous hours on the job, when the other (yes, there are only two) pharmacist is sick or on vacation. So he's hardly taken a vacation in 30 years. And I think of how we'd never ask our pilots to work a double shift. And I think about that poor old pharmacist in It's a Wonderful Life who almost poisons some unsuspecting soul because he's distraught about his son's death and he mixes the wrong ingredients together. But I don't think there's any young George Bailey at Walgreens watching over Caroline's husband when he has a bad day.

So these are the topics of the farm, among others which include how to turn garlic scapes into fashion accessories and weeds into hand puppets.