Why You Just Can't Buy Good Horseradish [ earthstuff/ ]
Tomorrow evening sees the start of Pesach (Passover.) The time when Jews1 the world over remember the liberation of their ancestors2 from a life of slavery in Egypt. It is primarily a happy festival, but, intermingled with the happiness of liberation from slavery3, we remember the suffering and hardship, too, and one of the traditions is that we eat bitter herbs to remember the bitter times and tears -- even the tears of the ordinary Egyptians who had to endure the Ten Plagues brought down on them as a result of their political leaders' refusal to negotiate a good faith, mutually satisfactory settlement.
Prime amongst the Bitter Herbs is Horseradish -- "Chrain" in Yiddish ("ch" as in "loch".) Or perhaps that only happens to Jewish descendants of the European diaspora.
For most people, there are only really two ways to lay hands on Chrain in any shape manner or form: Either you buy ready-made Chrain, stained purpley-pink, and tasting about like crunchy cotton-wool, or you buy some Horseradish roots, and suffer tears, agony and pain shredding it up really, really small, adding vinegar, a bit of salt pepper and maybe a touch of sugar, and making your own.
Either way, every year, I hear the same complaint from my father and his brother: "You Just Can't Get Decent Chrain Anymore. It's Just Not The Way Chrain Used To Taste! Weak and Pathetic, I Call It."
And they're right!7
Even home-made from store-bought roots, its just Not As Strong. And finally I've worked out why.
By an amazing coincidence, one of the farmers in the near neighbourhood grows Horseradish, on we can only properly term "Commercial Scale". Last year I bumped into him at the local store, his pickup piled high with bushel-sacks of Horseradish -- merely a sample, he assured me, for the food processors to test for quality. Each year he ships out tonnes and tonnes of Horseradish. My guess is that he probably represents the country's entire Horseradish supply.
He doesn't make a fortune selling Horseradish. Like too many farmers everywhere, he barely scrapes by. I strongly suspect that, like everybody else who has ever grown Horseradish -- anywhere -- he grows it every year simply because, well... he grew it last year. You see, you can never get all the roots out of the ground. They spread in mass profusion, snap at so much as a glance, and the tiniest piece comes up as next year's crown. No wonder Comfrey holds no fears for me!
A few days ago I dug up my Horseradish roots. Grown from supermarket-bought crowns a few years ago, they have Migrated. Now they infest pathways and Real Veggie beds, and generally make a Bloody Nuisance6 of themselves. Got some fine roots out, though, and saved the crowns for planting for next year. My Plan is to fill a wire-bin with stable-sweepings, plant the Horseradish in that, and harvest long, straight, clean, Ready To Shred roots, without all the hassle of deformed, soil-grown roots, next year. I had the same Plan last year...
But here's why Chrain doesn't taste like the olde tyme thinge. IT CAN'T. You see, the characteristic Horseradish flavour comes about in an interesting8 way: The pungent aroma and flavour of Horseradish is a Mustard Oil produced from two separate chemicals that occur in separate cells within Horseradish roots. The Oil in question is only produced when you crush the root, mingling the two components. This oil is highly volatile, escaping easily through through rubber seals of glass jars. It is almost as difficult to contain as Hydrogen gas9, so flavour and odour don't last long once the chrain has been made up.
Now we can understand why Store Bought chrain is but a pale, pathetic imitation of the Real Thing. But how do we explain that chrain made from Store Bought Roots lacks the authority of the Real McCohen?
Warren (my farmer friend across the way) had to deliver his Horseradish samples to the Supermarkets at least three months ago. He had to deliver the Bulk Fresh Produce at least 6 weeks ago. I, on the other hand, harvested my Horseradish root at its very Prime. A mere ten days before Pesach.
Harvested two months before its Prime; Transported across half a continent; cold storaged until Ready For Processing. Pasteurized. Radeurized. God-Knows-What-erized. How the hell could Commercial Horseradish ever taste like the real thing? Thin, straggly, pre-teen Horseradish roots, not yet matured... How can anybody expect them to substitute for True Horseradish?
So the sad, sorry story is that Store Bought just cannot compete with Home Grown. My Dad (and Uncle) are right. "You Just Can't Get Decent Chrain Anymore."
Unless you grow your own.
You see, in their youth, the only Chrain available at Pesach was what Uncle Scholem grew. In their memory of Pesach Past; in their recollection of childhood seders, in the tears they cried from for our Ancestors Freed from Slavery In Egypt, my Dad (and Uncle) were right. Chrain Ain't What It Was. It can't be! Nothing harvested months ago can be!
I suspect that this story is all too true for far too many foodstuffs eaten in good faith by masses of people everywhere. People who believe they're eating Real Food. The truth is that they're eating Prematurely Harvested Crap. It is not any single body's fault. Not the Farmer's -- he just grows the stuff and ships what the supermarkets are willing to buy. Not the Supermarket's fault -- they just buy it in, ship it out (usually about as fast as it's being offloaded from the truck at the back of the store.) And certainly not the consumer's fault -- they just wanna buy Horseradish Root.
How many flavours are lost to the mass of humanity? How many wonderful tastes will most people never know? Simply because they cannot or will not grow their own?
[1] and atheists of Jewish descent...
[2] well... somebody's ancestors, anyway!
[3] Particularly poignant for Jews4 who grew-up in Apartheid South Africa.
[4] and atheists of Jewish descent who have an functioning conscience...
[5] There was a "5"? Give me anothe Scothc!
[6] Been watching too much of the Black Books series lately... You supply the voices.
[7] OK, admittedly some of that is just old men remembering their youth through rose-tinted specs.
[8] ...for some value of "interesting"...
[9] I exaggerate!10
[10] ... but only slightly.
Technorati Tags: horseradish, chrain, pesach, passover, food-quality
Sunset [ braamekraal/ ]
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Plan Be Unplugged [ liff/ ]
Fit the FirstUnless you're living in South Africa, you're probably unaware that the country is in the midst of an Energy Crisis. Rolling blackouts are the order of the day; even the mines -- traditionally the mainstay of the economy[1] -- are having to deal with major power-cuts. Stories abound of commuter trains stranded, traffic snarl-ups due to non-funtioning traffic lights, hospital patients dependent on breathing machines having to be "breathed" by manual labour, telephones and network connections that stop working because the local telephone exchange exhausts its backup power. Nobody is untouched. Every one of us has a story of somebody we know being affected in a life- or income-threatening way.
My youngest brother, Richard, owns a factory that produces sugar sticks -- great lumps of crystalised sugar at the end of a stick, for stirring into coffee (or even -- ugh, gods forbid! -- tea!) Signpost to the pointymost peak of Peak Everything Civilisation, I suppose, but there it is. Trouble is, the process of producing a sugar stick takes 3 days. Three days of pernickity temperature differentials, maddeningly-critical evaporation rates and inexplicably unstable solution-flow rates. Three days. Unless the power fails. Then you get to throw away an entire batch -- 5 tonnes -- of sugar solution, and start again, hoping against hope that the power stays up long enough to make a living. It would be one thing if the business were a well-established one, with a stable, understanding and patient customer base, but it's not. They're still a startup. They produce the best quality sugar sticks in the world, at one third the price of their closest competitors, but they're The New Kids on the Block. They've signed some great customers. But those customers will evaporate if they can't deliver the goods. The fact of power-cuts every second day will produce sympathy from the individuals involved who understand the whys and wherefores; but the fact remains... the customers will go away.
The "current" energy problems are totally the responsibility of the government. Despite the public anger at Eskom, the state-owned-and-run electricity monopoly. More than ten years ago (in 1998, to be exact,) Eskom was warning government that, given government's economic growth targets, Eskom would need to build several more baseload power stations to meet the demand. Given that it takes about ten years to build a significant baseload power-station -- not to mention the getting through all the Environmental Impact Assessments and Community Consultation and Planning requirements. At the time, it was Not Politically Convenient to hear this message, so Mbeki's cabinet ignored it. So we sit with Economically Significant Power Cuts.
Recently some government schmuck tried to suggest that the power shortage was a result of Apartheid-Era Planning -- The Usual Scapegoat. Oh how we laugh! (I'll bet it was my "friend" Arshole Alec, the Arithmetically Challenged Minister Who Has Shot His Bolt. Whilst the apartheid regime certainly left us with lots of horrible legacy, this particular clusterfuck came about on the ANC's watch. The Old Nats (may they rot in hell) would never have permitted such sloppy planning! (whatever else they may have turned a blind-eye to...)
Premonition of the Great Unwinding. We South Africans are the Pathfinders. We are the first to glimpse the course of Energy Descent. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, we go.
Fit the Second
For the couple of years I've had DSL internet service, it has been great. In the face of country-wide complaints (verging on rioting, mayhem and life-threats to Telkom's management) about the Totally Fucking Useless National Telco I have been a lone voice in the wilderness saying what a great DSL service I get. Well
Fit the Future
So this is the face of the powerdown. Not in a cataclysmic implosion, does our civilization die, but little piece by little piece. Some things will undoubtedly get better even as other parts of the technological iceberg disintegrate. Not a single all-in-one unravelling of the Jersey of Warm Fuzziness, but one loose thread at a time.
Even as cellphone service improves and prices fall, fixed-line service goes down the toilet. Even as our air-force's latest toys scream by overhead, petrol prices are at an all-time high, and people are wondering why food prices seem to have skyrocketted, too. Can there really be such a disconnect in peoples' understanding?
'Tis the season for Growing Corn in Rheenendal, and never before have I seen as much acreage[2] dedicated to growing Maize. Most of it, I am guessing, contracted to American biofuel companies. Why do I not feel Warm and Fuzzy like this is a reasonable and sustainable way to provide the energy needs of 6 or 10 or 12 billion people striving to live a first-world lifestyle, driving their Hummers to collect the kids from school[4], annual holidays in another hemisphere and fresh Canadian Salmon for Summer Snacks?
The Unterste Schürer[5]
In a low-energy future -- and we're going to have one, whether we like it or not -- the planet cannot sustainably support so many of us. I realise that I risk the wrath of feminists everywhere (and The Pope[7]) but we face simple choice: reduce our numbers in a managed way, or have Gaia reduce them in an unmanaged way.
What's your choice?
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[1] South Africa still produces something like 50% of the world's gold each year, not to mention a host of rare and obscure minerals that turn out to be totally essential to modern industry. Stuff like Cadmium and Tantalum, Vanadium, Ytterbium[3]. In recent years, though, tourism has generated more jobs and revenue to than even gold mining.
[2] Somehow "hectarage" just doesn't sound the same.
[3] http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html
[4] I couldn't make it up if I tried. Not to mention that home and school are the daunting distance of some 800m apart! I sure that Little Darling's legs would break if they walked that far.
[5] Yiddish[6]. "The Bottom Line".
[6] Spelling optional.
[7] Not noted for his Feminist sympathies, I'll note[8].
[8] "A note? A-Flat[9], I'm sure. My Mother gave the gift of perfect pitch, you know!"
[9] ...or, given the state of the electrically-disconnected South African gold mines, A-Flat-Minor!
Technorati Tags: south-africa, power, electricity, peak-oil, descent, eskom, telkom, kakistocracy, kakistos
Everything I Learned About Tethering Goats I Got From A Blog Comment [ braamekraal/ ]
Stuart and Gabrielle write a lovely post on their blog about their beginning adventures with goats. I was particularly interested as we've also been thinking about acquiring a couple of goats, and I know too little about them. I left a small comment on their blog, asking them to follow-up, and mentioning some of my own musings on Matters Goaty.With no warning, all of my questions were answered1 in depth, breadth and heighth, to a degree unexpected on a blog's comments, by Val Grainger (who has immediately been added to my reading-list!) Stuff worthy of an entire article in its own right.
If there's anything you want to know about keeping goats on a tether, go and read it there -- there's no point in me regurgitating it here; I could only detract from Val's exposition.
But, to (briefly) address some of the gotchas mention by Val, in thinking about tethering, I have only ever considered a running tether to make sure that the animal have a sufficiently large area to roam. The other possible solution for confining them is an electric fence -- a solution that has worked well for me with horses and cows. For goats, though, I will have to get better poles for supporting the electric fence...
Technorati Tags: self-sufficiency, goats, tethering
[1] Well... all my questions about Goat Tethering, anyway.
Animal Farm [ braamekraal/ ]
Small apology to the shade of George OrwellStonehead hits the nail on the head with his characteristic pragmatism, asking "Should you keep chickens?" and trying to inject a note of realism into what look set to become a new fashion wave in the UK.
We've seen too many people, over the years, acquiring various animals simply as Wandering Lawn Ornaments. Sometimes in appalling ignorance of the animals' needs, and with predictably disastrous consequences.
One neighbour acquired a small calf: The idea of a cow wandering about the place, peacefully mowing the lawn, painted a pastoral watercolour in his city-habituated imagination... The calf was very young, and still needed milk supplements. A few days later it was dead from starvation.
Another neighbour has a partner who "loves animals" and can't help herself acquiring ever more. Fortunately she is quite clued-up on their care and keeping, but cannot bring herself to control the inevitable population-bomb, nor will she allow anyone else to do it for her, being too distressed by the thoughts of somebody eating her beloved animals. So they have several-dozen Guinea Fowl (which happily escape into the wild when their numbers become too great,) 3 or 4 horses, unknown numbers of ducks, geese and chickens, two goats, a couple of dogs, and one vastly-overweight Pig. All simply as "pets". The feed bill each month is staggering. And he is kept pretty busy building and maintaining animal housing and enclosures. Oh! In fairness, they do milk the goats and eat some eggs.
All this is apropos, as I am thinking of acquiring some more animals to help around here.
I have in mind a couple of goats to help manage the rank, weedy grass-bramble-and-alien-tree infestations in various parts of the farm, to be followed by a couple of pigs to clean the soil of roots and weed tubers as a prelude to a planting of grains or beans, then following-up with fodder crops again to close the circle and bring the animals round again for the next cycle. Fortunately a neighbourhood friend (as opposed to a mere "neighbour") has great experience with goats, and has been considering getting a small herd for herself again, so we'll probably try and find some way to work together on that, pooling our knowledge, resources and energy. Another local farmer keeps a herd of pigs as part of his (commercial) farming, so I have a local source of expertise (and animals.) I freely confess my ignorance of both goats' and pigs' habits and needs, but will make sure I cure that deficiency before taking any concrete steps in this.
Then, too, I'm thinking about adding a couple of sheep to keep the grass around the houses under control...
One of the catches in this Grand Scheme is that we are "mostly-vegetarians". We still eat some poultry and seafood, but not Pork/Beef/Mutton -- mainly because we feel physically better than if we ate as much meat as most people. So what to do with a healthy, growing population of various animals? I could just sell them on to a local butcher, but frankly I don't trust the man's methods, animal-handling practices nor hygiene. This is probably the single biggest problem for me to solve before acquiring more animals. I will not abdicate the responsibility for closing the circle.
A local friend, Don, made the comment (having kept goats himself) that animals tie you down a lot. You can't just pack up, lock the door and go on holiday -- or even out for an evening -- without making provision for the animals to be fed, watered, shut-in at night, checked for accidents,... But then that's true already with our Chickens and Dogs. Not to mention the delights of cleaning the Chook House in the pissing rain.
I do have one nit to pick with Stoney's post, though: "Chickens are not dumb"? What other animal, upon laying an egg, spends the next half-hour announcing the availability of fresh food to every predator in the neighbourhood? I'm often led to wonder how the hell the species has survived this long!
Technorati Tags: self-sufficiency, animals, chickens, goats, pigs
Best Laid Plans, Plins, Plons, Ploons [ braamekraal/ ]
So the Summer garden is suffering badly from neglect, the brewing project is going much, much slower than desired, and I've left this blog alone for far too long. In part I can blame the weather: its been quite wet so far this season. Not that we're complaining about having plenty of water...After the very early start this Spring, everything ran to a standstill for quite a while. I thought perhaps it was just me doing something odd, but after a couple of other local gardeners made similar comments I have to conclude that there's been something odd going on with the weather.
But the excuses aside! I've been hacking away in front of a computer. I landed some paying development work, and decided to take it on in the interests of Earning Money -- something of a novelty after almost three years of Living By Our Wits! There are a few things I'd like to do that will benefit from some cash injection from the Evil Empire... solar panels, (electrical ones -- we're already more-than-well set up with hot water panels!) paying for Dale's University Sojourns, (so far he's doing it in far better time than I did, so I'm not in a position to criticise!) fixing the Rotovator so that I can nail the Kikuyu and get going with grains, wire bins for more compost heaps, plus some for mushrooms, a wood stove... there's A List.
We've been reaping the benefit of earlier work -- scapes and giant "Garlic", beautiful Cabbages and Kohlrabi, beans ready to be harvested for drying,... but some of the harvest is certainly going to take a knock!
Oh well, Needle, Nardle, Noo, and on we Goo...
Technorati Tags: garden, self-sufficiency, money
Storming-up a Brew [ earthstuff/ ]
For a while, now, I've been planning to start brewing beer again, as I did until some years ago. Remember that one of our self-sufficiency goals is Pizza dinner made completely from self-produced ingredients, baked in a self-built oven. And a critical part of any self-respecting Pizza dinner has to be the beer!As ever, the challenge is in getting all the ingredients and equipment needed. Despite homebrewing being quite popular in SA, it is not like more civilized parts of the world where there are plenty of homebrew shops that can supply the necessary. The tiny handful of suppliers that exist are hard-to-find, carry very limited ranges of ingredients, and are generally not very useful.
It is the harvest season. The road was fraught with grain trucks carting the harvest to silos. Wheat, barley, wheat, oats, wheat,
I made a stop in Swellendam, to buy some stone-ground whole flour for breadmaking; there is an old watermill at the local museum where they mill a small quantity of wheat every week. Swellendam is also in the very heart of Grain Country, and sports a very large grain-storage facility. As I drove out of town, at least 3-dozen grain trucks were lined up at the silos to offload their precious harvest. It's been a nerve-wracking time for the farmers. Millions of Rands tied up in getting the seed into the ground. Less than perfect rainfall during the growing season, and too much rain a mere fortnight before the harvest. But at last the harvest is in, safely stored in a silo. The nation eats.
I detoured off the usual route to Gansbaai, travelling via Caledon -- another major grain-handling town about an hour-and-a-half from Cape Town. The town is dominated by massive grain silos and the railway tracks that run through them, ready to transport the grain to Gauteng. My reason for the detour is that Caledon is also home to a very large maltings: SAB Maltings. The same SAB -- previously South African Breweries -- now SABMiller, that is one of the largest beer conglomerates in the world. The maltings was a fascinating and entertaining diversion. They produce something like 220000 tonnes of malt a year! But they're still happy to deal with homebrewers wanting only a tiny, little, insignificant 50kg sack of pale malt. A very helpful, friendly lady named Estelle was wonderful in helping me get my malt. For them a tiny little drop in an ocean of beer. For me a rather large1 quantity. Had to park the car on a weighbridge long enough to weigh a small train so that they could weigh my purchase. 50kg on the nose!
I'd have taken a picture of my little Corolla pimpmobile on the weighbridge, but, after my single pic of the maltings, the security guy on the gate came running over to tell me, "No, no! You're not allowed to take pictures!" Say what? It's not like this is a weapons factory. They make malt! We've known how to make malt for thousand of years! WTF?
"What would happen if I just stood outside the gate, across the road and took a picture?" I asked him. "You couldn't stop me then."
"Yes," he agreed, "It's a stupid rule, but its more than my job's worth!"2
I promised him that I would delete the picture from my phone. Faithless liar.
The Nation's Beer
Much of the drive is along the N2 -- the National Road that runs from Cape Town all the way to Durban. Driving along the smaller roads between Caledon and Gansbaai gave me a better appreciation of the vastness of the grainlands. I was quite surprised at the humbleness of the machinery still used to gather in the harvest. I expected to see lines of giant combines, four abreast, followed by large tractor-trailers catching the grain. What I saw was simple mowers, cutting down the grain and gathering it into windrows, ready for the thresher in a few days, followed by the bailer to make those gigantic round hay-bales that need a tractor with a forklift attachment to move them.
There was a logic to the old-style balers that made rectangular bales. Bales were still small enough for a man to lift. These huge round things? Never!
What would happen to these farmers if you took their diesel away?
They plough, disk and plant their multi-million-rand seedbed using massive four-wheel-drive tractors, four to six wheels per axle. They spray, spray, spray, poison upon poison, using aeroplanes and wide-boom sprayers aback their tractors. They harvest -- be it with the very large all-in-one combine-harvester mobile grainfactories (and there were some) or with the humbler, simpler and cheaper machinery -- and load their harvest onto 22m long trucks to be transported hundreds of kilometres to a silo. From there the grain gets trucked -- mostly trucked, since the rail network no longer finds it economic to transport grain -- to the millers. The industrial mills that tear the grain apart into its smallest usable components, to be reconstituted into computer-managed maximum-profit product, stuffed with additives to enhance the colour, smell, and, mostly, shelf-life.
What happens when you take the oil away?
What happens when diesel is too expensive?
How do the millions eat?
Let alone drink beer...
The simple truth is, "They don't!" The Elephant In The Room That Nobody Wants To Talk About: there are simply too many of us humans in an energy poor future. I am not suggesting a catastrophic starvation scenario -- those are more usually politically engendered than arising from natural consequence. But I don't see how to feed upwards of 6½-billion people without cheap and abundant energy.
I'm planning to get into small-scale grains over the next year or so. Even if its just for making my own beer :-)
[Pics taken with cellphone camera. Please excuse the pathetic quality.]
[1] Nearly typed "a very lager quantity" there... Freudian ship?
[2] Not in those words. Poetic license. This is a Xhosa-speaking man for whom English is a third or fourth language. You get the gist. (May I one day speak Xhosa half as well as he speaks English!)
Technorati Tags: beer, grain, food, food-supply, peak-oil, farming, agriculture
Flood Update [ braamekraal/ ]
Well, the rain has stopped for a little while, though there's a reasonable chance we'll get some more today. 304mm so far, in a span of about 36 hours! It's stuff like this that really screws-up the averages.The N2 (national road) is/was blocked in at least two places nearby. Over 1000 people have had to be airlifted to safety. More rain forecast for Monday.
Our road is very badly damaged, but people seem to be getting in and out. Several people in the neighbourhood have been asking the district roads people to fix the culvert for a long time, now, to no avail. My guess is that they'll get around to fixing it just in time for the next floods!
Technorati Tags: rain, floods, south-cape
A Rain Of Fish [ braamekraal/ ]
One of my very first posts when I started this blog was about a Big Rain – the Floods of '06, a little over a year ago. Well, brace yourself for The Sequel!
After a drizzly day, yesterday, the heavens opened in the late afternoon, and have not yet shut. At about 8 this morning the rain-guage was showing a guesstimated 102mm overnight. The scale ends at 100mm. All the dams in the area are overflowing with ummm... interesting... results for the roads. I think we'll be unable to get to town for a while, even after the rain stops. And it's showing no signs of letting-up yet.
There's a river down the middle of the veggie garden, since the small dam beside the house overflows that way. No serious harm to anything, though, since it was designed and the earth carefully shaped to channel the overflow between veg beds. It's only the odd mole-tunnels that can cause some small washouts. Pity the poor Moles, though.
In other parts of the region people are being helicoptered to safety. We're pretty safe; just helicopter in some Scotch and we'll be fine for quite awhile ;-)
Many more pics at Photobucket for the interested. Including the Rain of Fish. (A bunch of freshly-dead fish lying around where they've been washed out of some dam or other. Great amusement and yummies for the Dogs!) Sadly Photobucket seems to lack any way of putting the pictures in any kind of sensible order... :-(
Congratulations to Kevin and Becky, and a big Welcome to Owen! We wish you much happiness, learning and fun!
Chicken Hygeine [ braamekraal/ ]
The Cottage Smallholder » "How do I keep my chickens clean?" is a great post about Chicken Hygiene! Chickens are simply not very clean animals. It's OK up to a point to justify some of their habits by rationalising, "Well, there's no sense applying human standards to other animals." Mountain Gorillas, for instance, die if they don't eat each others' shit, since that's how they share certain enzymes vital to their digestive systems.1Chicken Mites are a real bugger and get out of hand really fast in warm weather. I detest using poisons, so dealing with Mites was a real dilemma for me for a long time, until The Lightbulb Moment a few years ago. Now, about four times a year, I clear out the bedding and crap from the chookhouse, and then take a blowtorch to all the surfaces (especially perches.) Works like a bomb2 and kills all bugs and their egss, provided I play the flame back and forth over each area for a while and let it get good and hot. Occasionally I get a bit too enthusiastic and manage to scorch the wood a little, but usually there's no problem.
Speaking of which, its probably time I cleaned out the chicken house again this weekend...
----
[1] I read it somewhere. What is this? Wikipedia? The Spanish Inquisition?
[2] ...visions of broken bits of chookhouse flying through the air...
Technorati Tags: chickens, chicken-hygiene, mites
Crop Rotations [ research/ ]
Much can be said and written about crop rotation, and much is. Most gardening books I've seen1 seem to recommend one or other variation on a four-year rotation: Legumes-Brassicas-Roots-Everthing else.Mike of Tiny Farm Blog mentioned in passing that he uses a 7-year rotation scheme. It caught my eye because I, too, use a 7-year plan, and such a long rotation plan is pretty unusual, I think. My reason for it is this: We like Tomatoes, and lots of them. We really, really like Chillis. We like Potatoes, although they're quite a challenge here, being a favourite snack for Porcupine. Let us not mention Eggplant, due to my ongoing conspicuous lack of success...
So I'm stuck with trying to grow a hell of a lot of Solanums, all more-or-less related, all prone to a common basket of diseases. And I just couldn't make it work in a four-year rotation scheme. After much reading, thinking and experimentation, I came up with the following rotation plan:
- Lime well (and compost if it's a new bed) then plant Legumes.
- Compost well with very good compost2, planting Brassicas.
- Compost if the bed needs it, and plant Onions, Leeks, Celery, Fennel.
- Supplementary compost, lime or gypsum if needed, to support The Tomatoes.
- Roots -- Carrots, Turnips, Beets. By now all that compost is very well broken down, leaving the soil deep and soft.
- Lime/gypsum according to pH, and then The Leaves: Endive, Lettuce, Chicory, Chard. Also Radishes and Rocket.
- Good compost to support the Chillis.
The glaring omission are the Squash tribe; usually they get squeezed into the Brassica bed, since the Squashes are strictly a Summer thing, when Brassicas (which are Winter-proof here) tend to get neglected in favour of Summers Orgy of Flavours. Otherwise I get some of the bush varieties into the Roots bed.
Although I've managed to keep the Tomatoes/Potatoes as far apart as possible from the Chillis, I am finding that I still don't have enough space for either of them! Its challenging when you're trying to grow a dozen different Tomato varieties in quantities large enough to feed yourselves for a year.
Then, too, I've lately ramped-up on Lettuces and Asian greens (Pak Choi, Tatsoi, Mustard) to the point where one bed every seven years is just not enough. I don't sweat too much over using beds out of order for Lettuces, since they're in and out so quickly, and harbour so few pests and diseases, and demand so little of the soil, that I think it is very unlikely to cause any problems, but I already have problems with overwintering Brassica pests.
There are also a few "other things" -- Tomatillos, (we love Mexican food!) Artichokes, Parsley, Dhanya and Basil, (we use quite a bit of that trio for Pesto) seed-crops needing beds for much longer timespans -- that cause disruptions to this idealised plan, but it seems to work pretty well. The next challenge will be to work grains into the plan, and I would like to get the seed-crops better separated from the food rotation.
What's your scheme?
[1] Not so very many gardening books. I'm more inclined to watch the plants themselves for the lessons I need to learn.
[2] Not all composts are created equal. Some are mere courtesy calls on Mr Soil Structure, adding little in the nutrition department. Others are something special and deserve due reverence.
Technorati Tags: rotation, gardening
The White Lions of Timbavati [ earthstuff/ ]
That's three times, now! Three times that I've been tagged as a "Blogger for Positive Global Change". First by Sarah at Farming Friends, who tagged me months ago1, then, just in the past couple of days by James of "The Good Life" and Robbyn on "The Back Forty". Wow! Thank you all!2 I'll take the opportunity to act on something that has bothered me for a while, now: Reading this blog it would be easy to think that the whole "self-sufficiency, sustainable future, post-peak-everything" idea is, for us, mostly about gardening. It can never be that simple.Africa's Most Sacred People
Last night we went to a fascinating, shocking, terrible, wonderful talk/video/fundraiser in Plettenberg Bay (a schlep -- about a 50 minute drive away) presented by Linda Tucker, to raise funds and awareness of the plight of the White Lions of Timbavati. Linda (who was at school for a while together with J) wrote an incredible book, "Mystery of the White Lions: Children of the Sun God", which we are lucky enough to own in its first edition. Her book documents her incredible, 15-year spiritual journey from international model to being named "Protector of the White Lions" by no lesser a person than the Lion Queen of Timbavati.White Lions are considered by the High-Shamans of many tribes to be Africa's most sacred animals. According to sacred tradition they were sent by God to teach us how to become human. It is said that if ever the White Lions disappear from the Timbavati, all Africa will die.
Science and Business
The White Lions are a genetic variation on ordinary tawny Lions, their white (and they really are snowey-white, not merely some lighter shade of brown) colouring results from a recessive gene present in the Timbavati lion population, exactly like blue eyes in humans results from a recessive gene. They are not albinos; they are a true white colour.
Scientific estimates place the number of White Lions at less than 300 individuals. Not one White Lion is left in the wild. The Global White Lion Protection Trust is engaged in efforts to reintroduce White Lions into the wild, and things are looking hopeful. The trouble is that, in the wild, the lions become vulnerable to criminal "hunters" who have no compunction in illegally selling a kill to some rich first-worlder3. So, ironically, keeping a lion free turns out to be quite expensive. The Trust is also trying to get various legislative measures, CITES listings and other pushed through to protect these unique Spirit Guides. Sadly the battle is made difficult because the White Lions are not a genetically distinct species from ordinary tawny lions; they are "simply" a variety of Panthera leo. And, because Lions are not an endangered species, trade in Lions is permitted between zoos, parks, private collectors all around the world. Sadly, this means that trade in White Lions thrives, too, since they are afforded no special protection, despite the deep spiritual significance they hold.
The Timbavati lies in the Eastern part of the country, bordering the Kruger National Park. Besides being famous for the White Lions, the area is infamous for what has become known as the "Canned Hunting Industry." Wealthy landowners "farm" animals for trophy hunting. The White Lions are the most prized of these trophies, fetching upwards of US$70,000 a head. They are bred and raised in captivity, never knowing freedom, never knowing the hunt, denied the freedom of their natural homeland. They are tranquilized and constrained in tiny compounds. And then shot dead by some Brave Hunter standing safe outside the fence, to become a stuffed trophy.
The video showed several lions being "hunted" in this manner. A mature lioness, majestic in her power, awesome in her might, her beauty, confused, dazed and frightened by drugs and strangeness, tethered to a truck. Leaps into the air, screaming and twisting as shot after shot after shot after shot hammer into her... Her cubs paw at her dead body...
I cannot imagine the worldview of a person who is comfortable with this travesty. I cannot comprehend the soul sickness that must attend such depravity. It would be all too easy to fall into the trap of hating the people who run canned hunting operations and their customers. But really I think they're no more than a manifestation of a sickness that runs deep in our western-mode society (and the whole world lives to a greater degree in that western-mode society.) The sickness that starts with us seeing ourselves as distinct from the natural world, somehow superior to it and aloof. The sickness that results in our believing that "it is up to us to save the planet" -- from the global climate change we have induced, from the poverty of the strip-mall culture, from the soul-sucking aggression of the money system, from the poisons we've spewed into our air, soil and water.
The Earth exists quite happily without us. The Earth has been self-correcting against all manner of disaster for billions of years. The Earth and her people need us big-headed monkies not at all. The only thing that needs saving is humanity itself.
Take Action
Please click over to the Global White Lion Protection Trust website for more information than I can reasonably fit here. Make a donation while you're there, or, better yet, become a member of the Trust. Your Dollars, Euros and Yen are more powerful currencies than ours; what is a small amount for you is a large amount in Rands, and packs a correspondingly powerful punch.I highly recommend Linda's book as a fascinating insight into the spiritual heart of Africa. Proceeds all go towards saving White Lions and reintroducing them into the wild.
Please blog about this, write about this, shout about this, talk, sing, dance about this. Help us get the word out to more and more people. Help us celebrate the fact of the White Lions. Marketers and business-people, politicians and the bloggeratti, all are saying how powerful is this new mode of conversation, how quickly and viral a message can become. Let us prove that power now.
As an African I beseech you to help us save our spirit guides. As an apprentice human being, I tell you that we are lost if we cannot save these White Lions -- our guardians.
They were sent here to teach us our humanity. It seems they're not done teaching us yet.
[1] I'm practicing hard to make the SA Olympic Procrastination Squad, but am being outcompeted by the bureaucrats in the Dept. Environmental Affairs and Tourism. I don't think it is fair that government employees should be allowed to compete for Olympic Teams.
[2] I'll tag some other blogs as Bloggers for Positive Global Change in a separate post. I don't want to stray too far from the desperate, urgent, terrifying, heart-rending message of the White Lions.
[3] Just so you don't get the wrong picture: the people running these canned-hunting operations are not impoverished AK47-wielding third-worlders trying to eke out a living anyway they can. They are extremely wealthy, powerful, well organised business people who will stop at nothing to keep their multi-million dollar a year business intact. The government is set to finally enact legislation (it's been years in the making) in February next year to ban canned hunting. The canned-hunting industry has already made it clear that they will spend whatever it takes to fight the legislation through the courts, all the way to the Constitutional Court. Meanwhile, I am certain, they will simply bribe their way around the law -- just another business expense -- so I doubt the law will have any real effect.
Technorati Tags: lions, white-lions, canned-hunting, hunting, trophy-hunting, cites, timbavati, linda-tucker, spirit, humanity
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