4th of July Dinner Recipes #1

Tomato Salad
Erna Pitz, High Amana

6 tomatoes, chopped or quartered                          3 tablespoons sugar
1 large onion, cut into rings                                   3 tablespoons vinegar
1 green or red pepper, coarsely chopped               1/2 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste

Combine vegetables. Stir together sugar, vinegar, salt, and pepper and pour over vegetables. Toss vegetables. Chill well before serving.
Serves six.

Coleslaw

1 2- to 3-pound head white or red cabbage      1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt                                                  1 onion, chopped
3/4 cup vinegar                                                 1 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds
3/4 cup sugar

Remove the cabbage's outer leaves. Cut head into quarters, remove core, and shred. Place in large mixing bowl and add salt. Pound cabbage with a potato masher or mallet until it seems less stiff. Pour off any liquid.

In saucepan mix vinegar, sugar, and oil until sugar is dissolved and bring to boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool. When cool, pour over cabbage and leave standing about 15 minutes. Then add onion and caraway seed and mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate until serving time.
Serves six.

Seasons of Plenty, by Emilie Hoppe

Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 3

Interview with Luke Gran, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 3

Founded in 1985, Practical Farmers of Iowa includes a diverse group of 2,000 farmers and friends of farmers. The organization’s mission is to advance profitable, ecologically sound, and community-enhancing approaches to agriculture through farmer-led investigation and information sharing. Below is part 3 of acquisitions editor Catherine Cocks’s interview with Luke Gran, the coordinator of PFI’s Next Generation program. The first two posts appeared on June 12 and June 19.

Catherine: Who are the people who want to become farmers today?

Luke: Many are the children of farmers, but a growing number are people with no family background in farming. In terms of age (again drawing on that March 2012 survey), about 30 percent are between 19 and 28, another 30 percent are between 29 and 38, about 16 percent are between 39 and 48, and about 15 percent are between 49 and 58, with the remainder older than that. It’s about 50-50 men and women, although in 2012 only 40 percent of the beginning farmers who responded to the survey were female. They bring all levels of skill and experience to farming, and many still have off-farm jobs. Some are immigrants or refugees from other countries, such as Sudan. They are looking for advice on adapting to the Iowa climate and gaining access to markets.

Catherine: What are two or three things ordinary consumers (who are not farmers or planning to become farmers) can do to help establish a new generation of farmers?

Luke: Landowners are instrumental in determining who gets access to land and how it’s farmed. In some parts of Iowa (such as many of the counties in the northwestern part of the state), 75 percent of the farmland is owned by nonresidents, people who don’t live in the county. If you own a farm but are not farming it yourself, take a look at who your tenant is and ask about his or her plans for the next generation. Think about ways you or your tenant could help a beginning farmer get started.

If you don’t own land, you can still help by buying products from beginning farmers—meat, eggs, vegetables, small grains, flowers, you name it—at farmers’ markets and cooperative grocery stores. Spend your food dollar locally; talk to the managers at your favorite restaurants, cooperatives, or grocery stores. Ask for locally grown foods and ask about the farmers who are producing them.

            You can also work with producer cooperatives to buy directly from farmers, or become a member of a CSA (a community-supported agriculture association).

            Another way you can help is by joining PFI—25 percent of our members are “friends of farmers,” not farmers—they are people who support farmers learning from each other.

Catherine: Where can people learn more about farm succession and how to get started in farming?

 Luke: The PFI website (www.practicalfarmers.org) is a good resource. Folks who want to see full details about our beginning farmer network should check out: http://practicalfarmers.org/blog/2012/pfi-beginning-farmer-annual-survey-results.

Also, through PFI or local organizations you can find other farmers and develop a network, whether you’re a new farmer or an established one. Attending PFI events is a good way to build connections.

Some good books include Atina Diffley’s Turn Here Sweet Corn (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). This is a memoir of establishing organic vegetable farm near Twin Cities over the past thirty years.

I also recommend Wes Jackson’s Consulting the Genius of the Place (Counterpoint, 2011). This is a book of philosophy as well a memoir of Jackson’s life and ideas and his vision for the future of agriculture.

If you want to know more about PFI, you might take a look at Michael Bell’s Farming for Us All (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).







More information: Farming's New Faces

Excerpt from Esther's Town

Lewis Paulson would long remember the miserable journey he made as postman in February 1861 when during a raging blizzard it took him five days to make the forty-five mile trip from Estherville to Algona. The public rewarded him with a $9 contribution for the trip he made on snowshoes. At one point he was temporarily blinded by the snow, lost his way, and wandered in virtually a circle for one whole night. He didn't stop to rest for fear of freezing to death. Stumbling accidentally near a cabin when he thought he heard someone calling hogs, he found hospitality that saved his life.

Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Birds are arguably Iowa’s most conspicuous and best-known animals. If invertebrates are excluded, birds dominate our state’s wildlife in sheer number and diversity, comprising about 60 percent of all vertebrates known from Iowa. About 150 birds now nest regularly in the state. In all, around 200 species have nested here between 1840 and 2000. Including migrants over 400 bird species have been observed in Iowa—nearly half of the roughly 900 birds known to North America.

Cornelia F. Mutel, The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa

Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 2

Interview with Luke Gran, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Part 2

Founded in 1985, Practical Farmers of Iowa includes a diverse group of 2,000 farmers and friends of farmers. The organization’s mission is to advance profitable, ecologically sound, and community-enhancing approaches to agriculture through farmer-led investigation and information sharing. Below is part 2 of acquisitions editor Catherine Cocks’s interview with Luke Gran, the coordinator of PFI’s Next Generation program. In our first post on this interview (June 12), Luke Gran said that marketing and production are the two biggest challenges facing new farmers.

Catherine: What are the marketing challenges?

Luke: Folks in the PFI beginning farmer network grow diverse crops and target diverse markets, from farmers’ markets to community-supported agriculture to grocers to brokers on the Chicago Board of Trade. All of them want to know how to build or maintain their customer base or how to make prudent selling decisions in commodity markets.

Catherine: And the production challenges?

Luke: In terms of production, 33 percent of our beginning farmers are focused on horticulture, but the knowledge of how to produce highly productive, diverse vegetable crops of high quality is lacking in Iowa because of the dominance of investments in research and market infrastructure for corn and soybeans over the past several decades. So this is knowledge that farmers are reacquiring now through experience and networking with other farmers. Another 20 percent of our beginning farmers are growing grain and raising livestock in integrated farm systems, and 15 percent of them are grazing livestock on grass-based systems. The knowledge of these systems also has also been lost as markets shifted and support in Iowa for these practices dwindled over the past half century.

            In general, new farmers face challenges in getting access to capital and land, developing comprehensive business plans, and finding or building adequate infrastructure for livestock and processing. 

More information: Farming's New Faces

Excerpt from Esther's Town

My mother regarded father as a dangerous man at the wheel. But she also was accustomed to horse-and-buggy tempo. One time while driving north on Sixth Street, he stepped the Hudson up to forty miles an hour. He suggested it might be discreet not to relate this foolishness to Maude. But he took pride on our annual trip to Des Moines that we needed only two hours to reach a country schoolhouse south of Algona, sixty miles from home. We always stopped there to use the two outdoor privies. On the Des Moines jaunt, we invariably had to bring out the side curtains and button them on to keep us dry. It always rained. Our route was identified by markings on telephone poles that pointed out the Lincoln Highway, the AYP, the Daniel Boone trail, and other competing traveled ways. Whenever the telephone company replaced a key marked pole at a highway intersection, we were in trouble: to turn or not to turn. Muddy roads sent my nervous mother into spasms of fear. But we always made it out without disaster.

Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

I was leery of walking under the great rookery, having an awe of herons that’s akin to my respect for skunks, buzzards and carsick puppies.

For nothing on earth can equal the cosmic, monumental defecation of a startled heron. Several times, while canoeing close-in riverbanks, I have been almost beneath perching herons before they saw me. As the startled birds lumbered into the air they voided incredible ropes of excrement that could have whitewashed an entire fleet of canoes. One startled heron is bad enough; a whole heronry could be a catastrophe.

John Madson, Stories from Under the Sky