It feels more like Monsoon season in Kansas these days, but I am looking forward to spending some time with friends this weekend at the 9th Annual Spring Planting Festival at the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company’s farm and Bakersville, the company’s replica pioneer town located near Mansfield, Missouri. All of this is happening on Sunday May 3 and Monday May 4 from 10 AM to 7 PM (both days).

Proprietor and festival founder, Jere Gettle expects that more than 6000 visitors will have the opportunity to visit with at least 100 vendors, listen to the music and humor of more than 60 performers, and have the opportunity to hear a number of gardening personalities speak at this year’s Spring Planting Festival. The lineup of presenters is impressive and includes GRIT editor in chief, KC Compton.

I have been asked to give a presentation on the Oscar H. Will Co. seed and nursery business, which was started by my great grandfather in 1881. I will admit to having an emotional few days of plowing through old family history to put that talk together. But I am proud that my ancestors made a lasting contribution to agriculture and gardening. I am living proof that growing things must be a genetic trait, because I feel compelled to garden every year.

You can find your way to the 9^th Annual Spring Planting Festival by pointing your vehicle to Mansfield, Missouri and following the signs to Bakersville. The company offers free tent and RV camping; no need to register. There are also hotels in the local area. Food will be available at the festival. Admission: $5.00 per person, pay at the event. Children 16 and under are free.

I hope to see you there.

Figure 1. 1770s vintage painting of a warted pumpkin.

In an interesting move in the wholesale garden seed supply industry, Siegers Seed Company in Holland, Michigan has been quietly pushing an all-encompassing patent application through the system that would essentially allow them to own a piece of genetic history in the pumpkin and squash families. Siegers’ move appears to be aimed at owning the rights to virtually all warts on pumpkins and their relatives. And they want to own the rights to all patches in which warted pumpkins appear. Huh? My ancestors grew warted gourds, pumpkins and squashes long before Siegers was even in business, and they received the seed from Native American gardeners who had warted cucurbits in their patches for who knows how long.

Figure 2. Warted pumpkin photo included in the Siegers patent application.

The pumpkin patent application states: In a large commercial field of multiple unknown pumpkin varieties, a single fruit was discovered displaying a greater degree of warting than has ever been observed in prior experience by the inventor [the inventor is listed as the director of marketing for Siegers]. On rare occasions in years prior to this discovery, pumpkin fruits had been observed to possess rumpled or bumpy surfaces as described in FIG. 1. The discovered fruit had a high frequency of bumpy skin as described in FIG. 1, and a lower percentage of warting as described in FIG. 2. The fruit was collected and seed was saved. 

I am surprised that Siegers' inventor seems so unaware of the long warty history of pumpkins, squashes and gourds … at least as I read the patent application. I don’t have an issue with Siegers wanting to protect their investment in a particular pumpkin hybrid, but it bothers me to no end that they seem to be attempting to own the warty history of all members of the squash family.

Read more about this patent application here.

Read the Siegers press release on the new pumpkin family here. 

What do you think? Should Siegers own the warts on a random pumpkin line you develop in your backyard and prevent you from selling it at your farm stand?

The color plate is from: Botanical illustration, ca. 1770, reproduced from H. Paris, “Paintings (1769-1774) by A. N.Duchesne and the History of Cucurbita pepo,” Annals of Botany 85, 2000, p. 820.

The black and white is reproduced from U.S. patent application US20080301830A1.

Kate and I have started garden seed in all manner of haphazard fashion over the years. It used to be in cut-off milk cartons on windowsills. We eventually moved to those same containers on a cobbled up light table in the basement … covered with a sheet of plastic. Eventually, it was in our very own greenhouse, but we sold that along with the farm a couple of moves ago. This year, we decided to buy a proper light cart to start our seeds and nurture the seedlings.

Since we had a window nook in one of our bathrooms, we decided to search for a light cart that would fit the space. Growers Supply has many different styles and sizes of carts, and since they are among the very best out there, we went searching for the best price on their G48 model, which takes up about 9 square feet of floor space in a 3-foot by 3-foot package. The G48 Light Cart has four shelves … each hold a pair of flat-sized trays.  After a bit of searching, we found Robert Crespo’s website … named buyPlantLights.com.

Placing the order online was a breeze and communication with the company was adequate. Growers Supply doesn’t sell to consumers directly, but they do drop ship products such as the G48 Light Cart to consumers on behalf of businesses like buyLightPlants.com.

The Growers Supply Light Cart arrived about a week after we ordered it. Setting up the G48 Light Cart was a joy … I can’t think of the last time I put together such a beautifully engineered product.

The first step in the process was to install the caster anchors and casters in the bottoms of the G48 Light Stand’s legs. This was a matter of pressing pieces together. Next, I used Kate’s Craftsman cordless drill to screw cross members to the legs … it took about 10 minutes to get to (and complete) this step. Next, we installed the light-support rods and the lights … about another 10 minutes of effort. All that was left was to set the trays in place and install the optional plastic cover … we included the cover with our G48 order to keep the humidity and heat in.

The G48 Light Cart’s lights are independently operable, so you can turn off any that are not needed. We placed Kate’s basil plant and herb seedlings in the Growers Supply G48 Light Cart, and I can tell you that several days later they look much happier than they did on windowsill in the kitchen.

So far, the G48 Light Cart has motivated us to choose more seed for the garden than ever before. It is really fun to have a beautiful, clean, convenient, and easy to use and move seed starting station in the house. This is one of the best gifts we have given each other ever.

Since we've had this wonderful downtime in which to recoup and collect ourselves, there have been a lot of ideas floating through my [Becky's] head. This post will try to capture a few.

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We recently finished reading a great book lent to us by a great friend. Thanks, Jill! A free dozen goes out to you! It's called: Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party), by Rod Dreher. Whew, long title. I guess there has been a reprint and the subtitle is changed to: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots.

Whatever. The point is that this book defines just about every viewpoint that Andy and I hold dear. It was amazing to listen to Rod Dreher speak in each chapter because we just kept looking at each other (we read it out loud over the course of a month) and saying, "I KNOW!!" An excerpt from his intro gives a basic analysis of what the book is about:

A Crunchy Con Manifesto

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

9. We share Russell Kirk's conviction that "the institution most essential to conserve is the family."

If you have the time, check it out from your local library. We highly endorse!

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When we went to Colorado in November, we listened to a book on tape that we'd heard much about and knew a basic premise for. You may be very familiar with Michael Pollan or you may never have heard of him. The book he wrote is called The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. This edified our choice to grow sustainable, organic and slow foods for ourselves and our community. It was eye opening about the modern food industry and how deceived the American public is about what they eat. He carries a relatively objective view, though. We even learned how to capture and grow yeast for bread making! This is another great winter read. Please check it out!

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Back on the farmstead, we are planning our gardens for next season. We have poured over at least a dozen different seed catalogs and have a few more in the mail. We ordered over a hundred dollars of seed last year and I think every seed company in the nation caught wind of it. Haha, joke's on them; they don't know that this year we're poor! (Just kidding ... sort of.) But seriously, we are doing our research about what types of heirloom varieties grow best in our Zone 5/Zone 4 climate. And they don't have to be heirlooms as a rule. We just want varieties that we can save the seed from. That means no hybrids. We'll keep you up to date on what fun tomatoes, peppers, onions and corn we find.

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I've been reading a book called You Can Farm by Joel Salatin (of famed Polyface Farm) and he has a lot of great, sustainable and money-pinching ideas for beginning farmers. One of his ideas has stuck in my head and I can't shake it. He advocates using animal power in place of people power whenever possible. He's not talking using horses instead of tractors. He speaks about the natural inclinations of animals on the farm and how to utilize that for the farm's (or your) benefit. For example, this year we let the hens roam free in our front and back yard and they cleaned up a ton of bugs and even dethatched our lawn! A great side effect. But, the more I think about the possibility, the more I just gotta do it! I want to fence in our large back yard/orchard and run our ewes in there once a week to mow, fertilize and clean up the apple orchard and drainage ditch.

Crazy you say? This is what's crazy: Running a riding lawnmower for two hours a day, twice a week (in peak grass season) and burning gas. Then, hand picking and raking up windfall apples, loading them in a wheel-barrow and hauling them to the sheep paddock 400 yards away. Finally, taking a gas powered Brush Hog-type weed whacker and cleaning out all the areas a large mower can't reach (i.e., under pine trees, the drainage ditch and near tree trunks). All in all, a general yard pruning session can run up to four hours! THAT is what I call crazy. Of course, this is not every time we mow, but it must be done every couple weeks in order to keep the appearance of "ship-shape."

Enter the sheep. Naturally built to eat grass down to an inch or two and amazingly agile when eating around objects projecting vertically from the ground (trees, posts, bushes), these guys LOVE fresh grass! They love tart apples and the interesting plants that spring up from ditches. Suddenly, we have a hired crew that can browse picturesque beside the house all afternoon leaving Andy or I two hours to accomplish other projects. Best of all? They don't gripe about overtime and at the end of the day, you've got a freshly fertilized lawn for FREE. No gas expense, just the cost of heating that electric fence for a few hours, then shepherding the ewes back home and shutting it down.

Sounds like the perfect set up to me. Now, if only my parents (who own the yard) will agree to this plan...

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Finally, we are looking into buying some heritage breed hens next spring. Heritage breeds are similar to heirloom species in gardens. Farm animals have been bred for efficiency in factory settings and many breeds are on the verge of extinction. We already have 13 Milking Shorthorn dairy cows, who are on the endangered list (we didn't actually know that at the time of purchase, we just knew that they weren't Holsteins and that was good enough). The hens we currently have are a mix of several common industrial egg farm varieties. That doesn't make them bad hens or that we've bought into the industrial model. We just want to look for a bird that knows how to forage for herself and free-ranges more productively than the ones we have. A heritage hen will probably be multi-purposed in that it can give eggs AND meat. You may not have been aware that modern laying hens leave a lot to be desired in the slow cooker because they've been bred to put all their energy into egg production. They are very thin stewing hens. A multi-purpose breed will give eggs (though certainly not as prolifically) throughout her life and then give a family a nice meal at the end. And we are all about not pushing our hens to the limit ...

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... which reminds me: Our layers have been steadily declining in egg production since we combined flocks in mid-December. We were averaging over 100 eggs a day in late November and now we are in the middle 40s. Andy and I were concerned at first and tried giving them more food, more access to grit (what they need to digest food) and deeper nesting bedding. But as we read about it, we realized that they are in their winter slump. It's amazingly common with layers. As the nights outlast the days, they sort of shut down. (Though they still eat like they were laying!) This is when a lot of folks break out the extra lighting in the coop to give the illusion of daytime and encourage more eggs. We discussed this option, but after reading more of Joel Salatin, we opted against it. Why? Because all animals need a sort of downtime in which to recoup from the previous year's events and production. This gives their bodies a chance to focus on repair and rest, instead of always producing and putting energies into that. "Let's give the hens a break," I said earlier this week. They earned it. Soon it will be lighter later and they'll pick up again. Right now, they are enjoying "Chicken Downtime."

 The numbers are in for 2008 and they look good for the seed industry. They look even better for folks who want to grow vegetables from seed and save money in 2009.

By some estimates, garden seed, especially vegetable seed sales, were up by anywhere from 40 percent to well over 100 percent compared with recent years. In fact, some industry watchdog organizations suggest that seed companies in North America and much of Europe experienced their best year ever in 2008. We’re talking record seed sales … AND they project another record for 2009.

So, what is the fuss all about?

Easy, people are looking for a safer food supply, while adapting to a tighter economic outlook. If you have never grown a vegetable garden, or started your own garden plants, there’s still plenty of time to save money in 2009 by growing your vegetables from seed. If you are like me, you will be amazed, and thrilled, by all the different varieties of vegetable species from which to choose. If you are looking for that little early-maturing tomato called Bison from your youth, you can find seed and save money by growing your own in 2009.

 

Even the American government recognized the value that a garden-growing public could offer to a war-embroiled and slow economy. They no doubt also recognized the community building value in making it easy for folks to grow with one another in the garden patch. At those times, it was much more important to feed the folks at home and share the excess with others than to worry about E. coli-infested spinach … oh, that’s right, we hadn’t pushed our agricultural production models so far, back then, that E. coli and other fairly benign microbes had yet to figure out how to be pathogenic.

Our government called those programs War Gardens during World War I and Victory Gardens during World War II. I don’t know what to call the new wave of gardening frenzy, but I do know that it is exciting, and will, no doubt, play a role in healing our culture.

When you consider that a package of tomato seed might set you back a couple of bucks, and that you might get 50 viable seeds in that pack, it doesn’t take much math to figure out that you can grow hundreds of pounds of tomato fruit from that $2 pack of seeds. Even if you factor in the value of a little labor (it can be hand labor, mind you), a small piece of ground, a source of supplemental water and a few miscellaneous supplies, those tomatoes will be cheaper than cheap. But more importantly, the growing, nurturing, eating and processing will pay that elusive dividend of extreme satisfaction; no amount of store-bought or farm-stand-bought tomatoes CAN EVER bring that. Farm-stand tomatoes, when grown locally, do have added value in the dividend department, because at least you are supporting the local economy at its root level.

 

Add the pleasure you will receive from spending time AT HOME and WITH FRIENDS and LOVED ONES working in, marveling at, and generally enjoying your garden, and those tomatoes pay even more. And if you happen to have an extra-giant bounty, think of the joy those tomatoes will bring as you share them with others in need … or sell to pay for that tank of propane when winter arrives.

The way I see it, if the pleasure from that $2 pack of tomato seed replaced the pleasure of just one latte at the local coffee shop and the fuel needed to drive there and back, you are at least $10 ahead. That’s right, folks, vegetable gardens can pay big time if you only let them.

If you are skeptical of my analysis, check out Paul Gardener’s personal blog and follow his annual fresh food tally. He and his family produce a significant dollar-value of crops in minimal growing space. And they don’t factor the weight of family fun, joy, etc., into the formula to inflate those numbers.

Look for all kinds of gardening resources on this website and at Mother Earth News for everything you need to know about how to prepare for and plant a vegetable garden from seed that will save you money in 2009.