Red Fife and a Rant

Besides gardening, one of my many passions (some would say obsessions) is baking bread.  It’s such a simple, relaxing activity that not only saves money but creates an intrinsic connection with your food.  Like plants, it’s a magical transformation seeing wheat, water, yeast and salt become a rich delicious bread with pronounced ears and an open crust just waiting to be dipped in a good olive oil or savoured with a strong, rich cheese.  Especially after discovering the joy of using freshly milled, stone ground red fife wheat.  It’s transformed a wonderful food into a distinctly unique culinary experience, even more so when paired with a raw washed rind goat cheese.  Pure heaven, that is if you can get past the pungent smell of the cheese, which some definitely can’t.  I’m ok with that as it’s all the more for me…

Unfortunately the wheat I’ve been using is four times more expensive then the normal whole wheat.  Which should be more accurately called a reconstituted wheat as roller milled wheat is separated and then put back together, that’s a rant for another day though…

I try to limit myself to one rant a day, otherwise people start to think you’re crazy.

The advantage of the high cost of this magical heritage wheat is that it’s motivated me to start growing my own, not that I’ll make money off of it.  The goal is to have a deeper connection to my food as well as a valuable addition to soil fertility.  By that I mean as a compost crop, one grown equally to provide calories and compost material.  When I first read John Jeavons “how to grow more vegetables” last summer I was thrilled with the idea of feeding the soil, to feed ourselves.  Through conscious selection of crops and creating the right balance, you’ll provide not only the necessary nutrients for yourself but also the soil.

So with that in mind, I sourced 100lbs of Red Fife grain seed and committed to growing an acre up in New Liskeard.  Which will pose a unique set of problems but will also be a wonderful chance to test Steve Solomon’s views on balancing the minerals in the soil.  Which nicely segways into my rant about organic dogma, a seemingly growing problem creating a fundamental disconnection in the food world.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully value producing healthy food in a sustainable model.  To me though that’s an integrated system that constantly strives to minimize the inputs, not a series of rules that need to be followed religiously.  I don’t believe that strictly following any path is the best course of action, independent thinking means veering off into the woods sometimes.  Hopefully you don’t get lost too often, of course sometimes being lost is the best way to make new discoveries.

Solomon talks about the value of intelligent gardening, being as aware as possible of the interactions in the soil and guiding them to be as productive as possible.  If you stick to solely organic techniques, it may take a long time to achieve a good balance in the soil chemistry.  On the other hand a limited application of mineral fertilizers can balance the soil in short order.  Creating the opportunity for plants to flourish and maintain that balance through responsible stewardship.  The key is not becoming dependent on using quick fixes as a means of production, I think that’s where our industrial food chain falls apart.  Instead of seeing them as a temporary solution to help resolve a underlying issue, we’ve turned them into the central aspect of cultivation.  It be like treating obesity caused by lifestyle choices with pills instead of changing the diet and exercising more.  A false world may work in the short term, but the issues always find a way of bubbling to the surface, no matter how pretty the veneer.

The other falsity of organics is that they’re inherently safe, which definitely isn’t true when looking at pesticides/fungicides.  To be clear I feel cultural practices are the best route to achieving a healthy garden, but if needed I’ll consider all inputs and their respective benefits/harms.  A poison is a poison, to me it’s choosing the safest, most effective one possible that can be used as little as possible is the best solution.  The other important consideration is how it’s applied to be as selective as possible, minimizing the impact on pollinators and other beneficial insects is equally important to me.

The problem I see developing in the foodie world is a growing hierarchy of food, with people using more and more adjectives to market their food.  It use to be free range and organic, now there’s a bewildering array of hooks; ethically raised, biodynamic, landrace, wild foraged, etc.   The issue for me is the growing distance between good quality food and it’s availability to the average family, even better if it’s affordable for low income families.  My personal goal is to grow as much food, that’s as nutrient dense and safe, at the lowest possible cost.  How to get there will be a long road with many twist’s and turns I’m sure, most likely all uphill but there’s value in taking the harder path.  At least that’s what I keep telling myself…

Although not everything is uphill, I started 117 tomato seedlings a couple days ago and noticed the first seedlings popping their heads up this morning when I took their domes off to exchange the air.  Which is a good little tip for novice gardeners, when starting seeds under a humidity dome it’s important to take it off at least once a day to let fresh air in, otherwise you’ll create stagnant conditions that can lead to damping off and dead seedlings.

There ya go, if you made it to the end of yet another long rambling rant at least this time you got a useful tip out of it all.