Whatever Works
(There are no rules)
This was my summer of anarchy.
I liberated my tomatoes, letting them vine along the ground as is their natural habit. Infant butternut squash plants came up from the compost between the sprawling tomato vines and took off. I left them. Entangled in front of the house in early October, vines growing over vines, the tomatoes are still producing abundant fruit; something unthinkable in industrial agriculture. We are told to tie tomatoes to the stake (who decided that?) removing all the lateral shoots, leaving only the apical stem, which will then be more productive. I have yet to see one single staked stem out-produce the ten or more vining lateral stems (of one plant) which are always loaded with tomatoes. And because this summer was one of intense heat and drought, the tomatoes left to cover the earth were more productive because they covered the entire surface of the soil, holding the moisture in.
This summer I turned my back on all conventional farm and garden wisdom. I did not let myself get crazy about the newspaper articles on the threats to our food supply, the climate crisis or even the latest in agricultural news. (Well, maybe a little crazy.) I ignored the garden columns (“How to plan next spring's flower garden...”) The biodynamic planting calendar went into the compost. Instead, I subscribed to Nature Briefings and read the recent publications on climate, weather systems, and biodiversity. I did little beyond irrigate when necessary. I left the plants and the bugs and slugs to fight among themselves. For the most part, I allowed the plants and animals to respond to the heat without my interference. I planted the zucchini in sunken pits (to hold the water) rather than the recommended mounds. Same with the potatoes. The sweet potatoes were thriving in the heat, stampeding over the upper gardens, invading the medicinal herbs. Their vines were everywhere. The motherwort, feverfew, and echinacea fought back by growing more vigorously through the vines. In late summer artichoke leaves emerged among the just planted cauliflower with no one the worse for wear. Everyone was the more prolific for the association they chose. With each novel partnership—brought on by self-seeding and surprising survival instincts—I became curious as to what would happen. So I left it to the wisdom of the plants and animals to chose with whom they wished to hang out... and where.
This summer there was no invasion of insects. In fact, there were scarcely any stink bugs. The snails went on vacation until the rains returned. I watched as the chickens dug trenches under the laurel bushes and burrowed in during the hottest part of the day. The ducks and the donkeys went off into the woods staying until the day cooled off. I never dug a weed (no longer sure what constitutes a weed anyway). Half of the encroaching herd of invasive scotch broom simply dried up and died. Cucumbers grew on the garden's edge, up a fence, in four hours of sun between the blackberry bushes. Self-seeded parsley and celery arrived on the scene and later, chickweed moved in-between them all. Everyone seemed happy. And again, the surface of the earth was completely covered by the low plants and the soil stayed moist. I replanted last years' pepper plants (they had been growing in a sunny kitchen window); they are verging on becoming trees. After several generations of planting out saved seed perhaps they have reverted to their perennial heritage. And they too are still pumping out fruit in late October.
Now with fall looking more like late summer monsoon season, I am even ignoring my own rules. I preach no-till agriculture and perennial crops. But after months of no rain, some of the beds in the lower gardens were underwater. We left the dying plants and dumped manure mixed with bedding straw directly onto the beds, turning it all into the soil. We dug down to the rocky strata of subsoil to aerate as much as possible. I planted a variety of greens first and they went wild, sucking up the residual moisture. Then the fall cruciferous vegetables went in among them. All are content.
And yes, some things did not prosper. The local Roma tomatoes, laden with fruit in May and June, withered and died in July. The rest of the tomatoes just hung around until the heat subsided. Now, much like last fall, the blacks and yellows and green-striped heirloom plants are robust and full. Some have sprouted an amazing amount of green growth at the base of the stem. I cut those plants off above the growth in early September, potted them up, and they are flowering now.
We are overwhelmed with news, information, opinions, courses, costly machines, agricultural expos, and an amazing number of plastic-covered structures and automatic devices which steal our time, our money, and our health. Cognitive dissonance reigns. There is no manual, machine, philosophy, or course to follow for agriculture now, no one size fits all. Other than the desire to do no harm and my personal mania to not buy any inputs—to keep the farm a relatively closed system—there are no guidelines when it comes to farming. I am not partial to any one agricultural dogma; not permaculture nor biodynamics nor indigenous traditions. I borrow from everywhere when applicable to my specific ecosystem, to my area and for the current weather. And though our world has changed, is changing rapidly, when it comes to weather, there were never any rules, just devisive camps fighting over our money.
There is no way of knowing what will happen next. Will it be hotter and drier as we pump more gases and debris into our atmosphere? Or have the melting glaciers shut down the Atlantic current and put us on track for the next ice age? Or will some brilliant technological fix blot out the sunlight altogether? This is a frightening time and also a time of immense opportunity. I am choosing to find freedom in not knowing and in the knowledge that not only are there no rules but that NO ONE KNOWS.
Moreover, every area is different. Every ecosystem, field, garden, backyard depends on a wide range of variables—from wind blocks and topography, to what was put into the soil last week or the last decade. In the winter, I can see snow on the ridge above us but there is no snow here. Just fifty meters of additional elevation and the climate is different—wind, temperature, rainfall, soil type. The farmer up on the ridge above our land cut his trees down eight years ago to create fields for growing grains. When there are winds, they are far stronger through his fields than in my valley. Just having a small but ancient forest in the northern part of my backyard means I can grow all my food when my neighbor just above me cannot. Fifty meters and flat land make all the difference. So why would I follow any farming dictates in The Guardian with a cold wet climate? Certainly not the New York Times which is many more time zones distant and at sea level. I am curious to read it all, to have many ideas for different situations but only the people who live in my valley have the same soil type, the same trees, the same river and wind and elevation and predators that I have. And even then, our conditions are often somewhat different.
What this means for me is that when it comes to farming I can try anything. And I intend to. I grow a wide variety of crops in an equally wide variety of ways from a collection of seeds from everywhere. And small farms can do this, can grow with far more genetic and species diversity than the vast chemically-addicted fields of industrial monoculture. For small farmers, especially those on wild land, the possibilities are endless. But then, they always were.
Small farmers can easily interplant for controlling pests and creating community robustness. Our animals can roam the orchards and fields after the harvest, eliminating the leftovers while fertilizing as they go. Our hedgerows house a variety of critters who just love to gobble up the insects and snails. We can plant fast growing trees which shelter the crops from the violent winds and provide another habitat. Many can provide us with fruit and nuts. And there are always options; when one species is not thriving, it is never our only source of food or income. It can always be turned into the soil to nurture another species. And we can immediately replant with something else. Change is is not just an option - it is a given.
But without rules, how can we know what to do? Firstly, observation is critical. Farmers need to spend quality time talking with the plants and animals. (It was always so.) We must listen to what they are saying. And again, it is only possible on a small farm. I begin my morning with a cup of tea to greet the sunrise. Most days I sit outside surrounded by plants and observing the early morning weather report. When it is pouring rain, I perch in a window, still under the sky. Each morning I start over. Blank slate. That's also what no rules means—that each day I can begin again. I am not committed to anything, except cultivating nutritious food. Then I walk the land. Perhaps I will make some changes but more often I just note something new happening and become watchful. I look under plant leaves to see if insect eggs have been laid. I look for leaf spots and blight. I read the local weeds. They tell me about the current soil conditons. It helps to know the deep history of the land, not just what happened last season. And to know how that is changing. I read the sky, the wind, the type of clouds. I note any change in the behavior of our animal companions.
We now grow plants from all over the world. We have altered many of the seeds but I still want to know, need to know about the plants with which I am working: their country of origin, their original habitat and habit, their preferences, their predators and their predators' predators. An old edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (purchased for 14 dollars at a thrift shop) tells me all. It is always fascinating to learn these things but the information is also practical and essential. To know that cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers were perennial in their native country and that basil is a tropical rainforest plant has changed my entire approach to cultivating them. Next summer, I will not grow tomatoes if it as hot (or hotter) than last July and August. But I am growing them now, in the fall—from September through November. And hope to get the same harvest as past summers. Just later. Perhaps I will try to grow them in the spring too. That is not advice. It is just an example, my ruminations. Perhaps your tomatoes were great this past summer. The point is simply: there are no rules.
And I welcome all the advice and opinions of my neighbors, even the advice I will never follow. It is a wealth of experienced information I can use as a starting point. From the neighbors I have learned to read the sky, sense the direction and change of the wind, note the humidity, listen to the animal chatter that precedes a change in the weather rather than look at an app on the phone. But I also listen to their worries and prepare. And I have backup ideas. Mostly I pay attention to what is changing. I have the time to to do this because I am dealing with a few hectares of cultivated land, not miles of Kansas corn.
And this is always my underlying message: we need small local farms. We need farmers who love what they are doing, who cannot imagine doing anything else. We need backyard farmers, allotment farmers, window and balcony farmers, and folks who want to rent or purchase a few hectares, alone or with a group. We need farmers who just want to feed their families and those with a commitment to feeding others: people who can grow food and beauty and health through the enormous swings in our weather system. The work of providing for our most basic needs in a way which guarantees that future generations will have the resources to provide for their needs—the very definition of sustainability—is critical to our life and the continuation of most life on earth. But above all, we need famers who will pay attention to the natural world. That requires being imaginative, resourceful, not wedded to previous experience or a manual of instructions. It involves constant re-evaluation, the ability to change plans as the weather changes. Farming is a science but it is also an art. There is no one book, one philosophy, one six-week course which can teach that. We need observant people to produce our food, hands on - not robots, not directives from the main office. Working with inevitable change is critical. There are no rules now which cover farming. But really, there never were.
© www.thesubversivefarmer.net October 2024
In a previous lifetime, Zia Gallina worked as a botanist for the National Parks Service, on the C&O Canal outside of Washington D.C. (lecturing on wild indigenous and naturalized medicinal and culinary plants). She was also an adjunct professor teaching biology and environmental science at American University, Washington D.C. But she has always been a champion of small-scale biointensive farming, tagging behind Mother Nature, trying to stay as close as she can get.
