Yep, I’m inside in the middle of the day, on a really good day for planting. I just had to close up the greenhouse and drive all the chicks and momas into the barn because here it came again. We knew it was coming, just hoped it would miss us today. At least a 1/2″ maybe 1″. But the trees need it. If everything washes away, we can plant again. But we can’t grow new trees in a season. And although popular belief is different, you can’t farm without trees. They keep the water close to the source of the soil in times of drought and protect the gardens and fields from the stress from the sun, wind, and other elements.
Bluebird field (the one in the back) was TWICE to THREE times as productive as Swallow field last year, during the drought. I also had to irrigate Swallow TWICE as much as Bluebird. The difference? Trees.
Don’t worry, Swallow already has some trees planted and a little orchard is coming soon. But it will take some time. “One generation plants the trees and another enjoys the shade” and I can’t remember who said that. A good book on the beauty of trees is The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.
Luckily, we got our first few little strawberries picked before it turns to quicksand in there again. You would not believe how wet the gardens are. Some plants are past waterlogged.
But all in all, considering we’ve had 10″ of rain in the past week or so, we’re fairing pretty well.
We hope to have even more variety coming in soon and we appreciate everyone’s patience as this season gets off to an extremely slow start.
We will be launching our new website soon and we are really excited about it. The logo is almost finished and it is great. But I do need something from our loyal, generous, and wonderful supporters. If you have some words, just a few to a paragraph, that you’d like to say about our farm so that we can include it on our website, we’d really appreciate it. You can post them as a comment here or email them to me at breann@cloverwreath.com
Our best advertisement is you. And seeing how Bradley County was just ranked #2 in the State of TN for agriculture just because of all the commerical chicken houses (that’s right, folks, factory farming at it’s nastiest) we have a lot of minds to change. There are a lot of good, intelligent people around here who are afraid we are all going to starve if we don’t have industrial farming. Well, I’m not starving. I’m skinny but that’s because I have to chase Evie.
I read that in the Cleveland Daily Banner last night and I cringed. I cringed because I know the families and I know the farms. They are selling off large parts of their fertile, beautiful farms because the fields are not profitable. The land turns into a subdivision or trailer park and then the family erects these huge chicken houses. These folks are just trying to keep farming, trying to hold on to part of their land and make a living. There is just not enough organic, diversified education. Shoot, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if Sequatchie Cove Farm had not convinced me it was possible.
Well, when factory farming causes the pandemic that is is forecasted to do, and none of us can eat stuff out of these chicken houses anymore, what is going to happen to these family farms? They won’t have enough land to do anything else. And remember these chicken houses are getting all their conventional feed from the midwest. Acreage that could be used for organic grain production or better yet, the grassland that nature intended so that we could all, not just the financially secure, enjoy grass-fed meat.
Instead, these family farms will be turned into houses or trailers that no one can afford anymore. (There are many of these subdivisions that began development only to abandon it when the economy crashed. You can see the land torn up, and the bare foundations along with piles of water-logged lumber.) And the pollution from these chicken houses will end up in our beautiful county and you can imagine the nice things that come out of chicken houses.
We can’t feed the world with small farms. But we can feed part of it with small farms. And the large farms can diversify, so that they create all their own fertility inputs, i.e. poop, so they can feed the rest of the world. Where do you think Cal-Organic gets it’s compost and manure? From factory farms, of course. Nasty. Do you want factory farms fertilizing the fields? I don’t.
So let’s raise some animals and some gardens. It’s not easy but it sure beats “bailing hay for something that I can’t see.” -Hootie and the Blowfish.
Peace,
Breann
