I never was too impressed with the
term “organic.” Like “new and
improved,” “lite,” “authentic,” “life-time,” “limited,” and now, “gluten free,”
the term organic seemed tagged to a product simply as a marketing ploy. At least that’s the way I saw it. My spouse would buy organic vegetables
and fruits and eggs, paying a little more, but when I went to the store,
because of my built in cynicism and the fact at chemicals hadn’t killed me yet,
I didn’t.
Recently, we ventured up California’s State Route 16 into
the luscious Capay Valley. It
seems the first weekend in spring, or thereabouts, the Full Belly Farm has an
open house. Berkeley friends are subscribers to a program called Community
Supported Agriculture (CSA) wherein Full Belly offers neighborhood delivery of
fresh organic produce to customers in the Bay Area and Sacramento. We plan a rendezvous with our friends
at the farm.
Springtime in the Capay Valley is what God must have had in
mind when Eden was created.
Rolling green hills are dotted with blue oaks and mantled in poppies and
lupine. Row upon row of blossoming stone fruit trees - almonds, peaches, plums - provide spring's signature fragrance while, against an azure sky, the
sun plays hide-n-seek through puffy, fair weather clouds.
The highway twists through farmlands and pastures and into
and out of bergs with populations that can be enumerated with merely two
digits.
I’ve ridden the road many
times in all seasons of the year, always wanting to linger longer and dig
deeper. This day, I’d get to.
The Full Belly Farm is roughly 400
acres backing up to Cache Creek. Salvaged
from an aging almond orchard in the ‘80s, its four partner/owners employ 60
people year round. Almost unheard
of in agriculture, this employment model is only one of the enlightened
possibilities availed by the philosophy of the ownership group:
sustainability. The walking
tour with co-owner Paul explains it all.
We stroll past an apple orchard where Fujis are in blossom.
“Other apples do better in this heat,” we are told….
…and a strawberry field. Paul lifts the deer fence to let the children crawl
under. “Grab yourself a
strawberry, but please be careful not to step on the plants”…
…on the way to a seven-acre plot of garlic.
“Small, diversified croplands,” he says. “We can produce so much more and care
for the land so much better.”
A flock of hens is penned by a temporary fence. Inside the enclosure is a rolling hen
house. The hens scratch at the
land by day repairing to the henhouse at night. At regular intervals the fence and henhouse is moved to a
new plot leaving behind the natural fertilizer than chickens produce.
In another area, sheep graze down tall grasses using their
natural digestive processes to return nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil.
Beyond the rows of garlic, a field of lettuce varieties
grows uniformly. Seeds are planted
between furrows. When weeds
sprout, “we smother them with dirt keeping the non-favored plant from getting
sunlight.”
Natural oils are used to discourage some pest insects, but
swaths of land with lush growth are reserved as insect havens. “If you stop and look, you’ll soon see
a lot of movement, hear a lot of sound.
“Too many in agriculture treat honey bees like farm workers
– and we shouldn’t treat our farm workers this way. Traditionally we’d use the bees in the almonds, then put ‘em
in a box and ship ‘em to the next job."
Paul points to a section of tousled, knee-high weeds and
grasses. “Here, we don’t have
honey bee hives, but honey bees and other pollinators live here because we’ve
set up environments in which they thrive.”
Among the mixed tangle of weed-like plants grows a variety
with blue flowers. “Flax,” we are
told. “We are experimenting with
growing the plant for its fiber.”
And about that year-round employment? “Because of how we do things - planting, harvesting and planting again, spring summer and fall, we have
to have people here all the time.” Then he adds: "Bees, too."
As we walk along, I begin to think
of Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999) a preeminent educational thinker of the mid-twentieth
century. His taxonomy of learning processes
is something we all studied as teachers.
But finding examples of his theory actually put into practice
are elusive. Alongside farmer
Paul, I suddenly realize I am walking alongside a real, live Benjamin Bloom.
The success of this organic endeavor rests squarely in the
farmer knowing how to employ Bloom’s hierarchy of thought. Here’s what I saw:
Recall (or knowledge):
The farmer knows the soil. He
knows the seed, the water, the exposure to sun, the heat, the cold, the
seasons. And the market.
Grasp (or
understanding): The farmer understands what crops will be successful in
which corner of the property. He
understands the strengths and weaknesses of a plant or variety.
Application: The
farmer makes decisions about what goes where in concert with that grasp.
Analysis: The
farmer gathers data, which may be as simple as measuring the yield of a
particular product on a particular plot.
Synthesis: The farmer marries what he’s learned
about yields with what he’s learned about the natural benefits of sheep grazing
and chicken scratching or reserving space for insects or allowing weed cover to
mature in order to conserve moisture to enhance the chances for greater results
in subsequent efforts.
Judge or conclude: Experimenting with new combinations of
exposure, water retention, micro-climates and poop, the farmer allows less
productive practices to slip away to be replaced by those practices he judges
to be more successful.
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| Perfunctory Old Truck Picture |
Walking back to the farmhouse, I tell
Paul he should be a teacher “…you know, if this farming thing doesn’t work
out.” Clearly there’s educational
practice stuff he gets, I’m thinking.
He chuckles, offering a very modest reply and then says something to this effect: It’s relatively simple to engage in all of those levels of thinking when you’re working with your hands in the soil day by day. Our livelihood depends on it. “Schools, I suppose, can’t do this too effectively because of cost, logistics…”
He chuckles, offering a very modest reply and then says something to this effect: It’s relatively simple to engage in all of those levels of thinking when you’re working with your hands in the soil day by day. Our livelihood depends on it. “Schools, I suppose, can’t do this too effectively because of cost, logistics…”
He’s right, of course. Our
students could receive a much more hands on – much better grounded – experience
if schools could somehow be more like farms. They would graduate with a less sterile but far more
heightened sense of how things work and how those things work together.
It’d be organic.
o0o
Full Belly Farm is located just on County Road 43, off
Highway 16 about a mile and a half north of Guinda. They are open to the public on select days (see their
website) and offer organic produce and fiber through farmer’s markets and their
Community Supported Agriculture program.
Internships are available, school field trips are encouraged
and there’s a summer camp for kids.
Check out their website for coming events and to learn more:
http://fullbellyfarm.com/
© 2015
Church of the Open Road
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