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Farming & Food Production
Organic vs Commercial Foods Sustainability Machinery Soil
Location Supervision Storage Vegetarian vs Omnivore
The goal of the farming efforts at the Coop Village will be to be self-sustaining in food, allowing the village to survive through an environmental or genetic catastrophe, or an economic crisis affecting the food supply. We would ultimately seek to produce an excess of some food products which could be traded for other needed supplies. We would also seek to store food sufficient to sustain the community for as long as a year.
Because food production is so vital to survival, and because we have culturally become so estranged from the source of our food, we will require a minimum number of hours from each member in production or preparation of food. We hope that this does not mean that all the women work in the kitchen, while the men drive the tractor, but that each member gain an appreciation for food production and preparation at each level.
It is recognized that many food products may be purchased for less money than they may be grown in small scale garden plots, but the value of learning how to produce food outbalances the convenience and lower cost of buying it. Still, initially it will be necessary to purchase fresh and preserved foods on the open market. We hope that we will be able to produce and store almost all of our food when we reach full production, in 4 years or so.
Members will have equal claim on the products of food production and preparation efforts. In the case that health concerns or preference shift a member’s need from some items to others, every effort will be made to provide for this altered requirement. Every effort will be made to insure that the diet provided in each food service area will be healthy, varied, and will provide for individual differences in taste.
Members or families who wish to cook at home or in small groups, ie, a barbecue or social event, will be able to draw on community food resources, as they are available.
Organic vs Commercial Foods Back to Top
The goal of the community will be to produce organic foods of as many types as needed to feed the community. It is recognized that commercial farming makes lower cost, lower taste, lower nutrition foods available. These foods have health drawbacks, as many people are becoming intolerant of the pesticides and herbicides necessary for large scale commercial production. The nutrient density and taste of commercial products also make organic foods a more acceptable choice. Furthermore, commercially produced foods are often of a lower spiritual vibration, leading to lower consciousness levels in our members. Since raising consciousness is a goal of this community, we will tend to avoid foods high in pesticides and low in nutritive value. While we will probably not require 100% of our purchased foods to be produced organically, we plan on all on-site food production to follow organic or biodynamic practices.
Sustainability Back to Top
The use of sustainable agriculture techniques will be utilized to reduce the amount of labor and other energy consumed in food production. These techniques include co-cropping nitrogen fixing and nitrogen using plants, planting perennial plants such as fruit and nut trees and shrubs, mulching techniques, and others. Use of insect-repellant plants such as marigold to keep insects away from more susceptible plants, and animals such as geese as selective weeders, would also fall under this category.
Machinery Back to Top
Garden beds and compost piles will be of such a configuration as to make them easily accessible by a small tractor with a tiller attachment. In this way, hand weeding and soil moving might be kept to a minimum.
Soil Back to Top
The Findhorn community in Scotland has shown that virtually any soil may be converted into healthy, productive, organic soil. While we hope that there will exist on our property some healthy, productive soil for farming, if there is not, we will use biodynamic and composting techniques to create it. When we choose the site for our farm and gardens, it will be necessary to avoid overtly contaminated soil, though biodynamic techniques are likely to be able to overcome this problem. When an aerial survey of the region around Kiev, Ukraine after Chernobl revealed scattered green patches in the surrounding brown, radiation-killed vegetation, further exploration revealed that these viable gardens were biodynamic farms.
Findhorn also pioneered the modern use of intercropping, and of consulting the local plant spirits, or “devas”, for guidance in growing crops. We would be wise to avail ourselves of such practices. The use of duplicate plots “for the bugs” has been useful for some gardeners in attracting pests from the main food gardens.
Sonic Bloom is an organic seaweed extract which, when combined with certain sounds, has been proven to cause increased growth and health of plants. Fruits and vegetables are produced with 30 to 100% increases in yield, with up to 50 times the vitamins, and many times the minerals of ordinary crops. Crop maturation is also improved, and the increased vitality and produce improvement carries on for several generations. We intend to use such innovations in our gardens.
Location Back to Top
The Angel’s Nest concept uses two gardens inside of the house to recycle waste water. The middle shell uses grey water to grow temperature-sensitive food crops, such as lettuce, tomatoes, bananas and citrus. The outer shell uses septic tank effluent to grow non-food plants that clean and scent the air. We could duplicate this system, or use the grey water for outside gardens. It has been suggested that each cluster have a small produce and herb garden located nearby. The bulk of the vegetable, fruit and staple production, however, will be consolidated in an agricultural belt outside of the housing zone. It is estimated that about 30 acres under organic cultivation may be sufficient to provide the calories and foods necessary for a 500 member village.
Supervision Back to Top
While all community members will be expected to work a few hours in the gardens each week, we expect to find and train a few individuals to plan and supervise our farm. Having more than one or two individuals involved will allow these valuable members time off for their own outside interests.
Storage Back to Top
Given the likely instability of the economy in the near future, it will be wise for us to systematically store food for the future. At the least, it would be wise to seek to ultimately have a year’s worth of food for our community. This food might be used to bridge small gaps in our ability to purchase food for budgetary reasons, or gaps in our ability to produce food for climactic or biological reasons. It might also provide us with the ability to feed persons outside our community, which we might not otherwise be able to do.
During food harvest, we should establish a regular system of canning, freezing, or drying (dehydrating) food. We may also choose to invest in freeze-drying equipment. We should provide for underground, controlled environment storage of staple foods such as wheat, oats, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. We may use a nitrogen or carbon-dioxide packing system to increase storage time. This controlled storage might also make our canned or bottled foods last longer. A regular rotation system must be used to provide for using the stored foods before they lose their nutritive value.
Freezing is a high-cost method of food storage. If freezing is to be used for large amounts of food, or high cost food such as meat, then we should be sure to have sufficient back-up of power or refrigeration capability to prevent significant loss of food during a power glitch.
Vegetarian vs Omnivore Back to Top
While the production of animal food products requires about 5 times the resources as the production of vegetarian foods, it is unlikely that there will be an initial consensus to forego having meat and animal products in the diet. We will therefore plan on including some animal products in the menu, and making arrangements for those who wish to exclude these foods from their own personal diet.
The vegetable garden will be the source for most of the nutrients in the diet. It should provide most of the vitamins and minerals, much of the protein, and at least 60% of the calories. It will concentrate on green leafy vegetables, root crops (turnips, carrots, beets), as well as those fruits (peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes) which are generally eaten as “vegetables”.
Larger fields outside the vegetable garden will be more available for production of the carbohydrate-rich foods which will provide the balance of our calories. We will explore methods of intercropping or rotation which will avoid the problems of prolonged monoculture. Some of the crops that we will probably produce include: Oats, wheat, corn (maize), potatoes, yams (sweet potatoes), peanuts, and soybeans. Many of these crops also have a significant amount of protein as well as the carbohydrates. Soy and peanuts are useful in fixing nitrogen in the soil. The phytic acid in unfermented soybeans interfere with the assimilation of minerals in the diet. We will therefore plan to produce some fermented soybean products, such as miso, tempeh, and natto, which are excellent meat substitutes, and possibly soy sauce as a condiment.
Tree crops have the advantage of producing year after year. They also produce ecological niches useful for other sustainable crops, such as hazelnuts. In our area, these can include peaches, citrus (especially with Sonic Bloom, which speeds maturity and shortens growing seasons), pecans, chestnuts, persimmons, grapes, apricots, nectarines, and possibly others. Dan Carlson is producing pecans in Wisconsin, due to the early maturation induced by Sonic Bloom. This might allow such foods as bananas and oranges to reach fruition. The Paulownia tree is used by Angel’s Nest http://www.worldsnest.com/html/tree.html to clean the air in the house, and is also a source of leaves for feeding tilapia and rabbits and poultry. Paulownia logs can be used for prime hardwood, for furniture, structures, or veneer logs. They can also be used for biomass for hydrogen or ethanol production.
Oil crops can include the soybeans and peanuts. Rapeseed (canola) oil is commonly used in cooking, and can be used to make biodiesel. The plant is an excellent tasting and nutritive vegetable. The seed is high in protein, and makes a good animal feed. Sunflower fields require little cultivation, and castor bean oil is being used commercially for diesel fuel (“Willie Fuel”). All of these would be good crops for us to grow, for our own fuel and food use.
We are aware of a world-wide plan by Monsanto, Cargill and other world agribusinesses to buy up and control the world seed supply. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E1DA153DF933A15750C0A962958260&sec=health&pagewanted=2 Use of commercially available hybrid seeds requires purchase of the seeds from the seed company every season. Saved seeds from the crop of the year before will not produce the same quality of plants, and may be implanted with a so-called “death gene”, which prevents even the germination of any saved seeds. In order to insure that we will be able to have a continued food supply, regardless of the state of the world agri-giants, and to preserve the gene pool of our food supply, we will therefore seek to use heirloom seeds, those seeds which have been used for years or centuries, and which will breed true, year after year. We will establish a program to save seeds from each years crop, to provide enough viable seed for one or more years’ crop. Cool temperature nitrogen storage of seeds, and purchase of a variety of heirloom seeds may be part of this plan.
Edible fungi provide a tasty addition to the diet, as well as a potential cash crop. Many are also useful as medicines. Shitake grows well on oak logs, plentiful in the area, and is a very good cash crop. It can also be stored. Portabello, the common meadow mushroom, and oyster mushrooms are all commercially cultivated. Recently, the much sought after morel mushroom has become available for production. Mushroom compost is an excellent addition to the organic garden.
Animal foods which are amenable to the small community farm include dairy cows and goats. Raw milk is much healthier and less allergenic than commercial, pasteurized milk. Meat animals could include rabbits (readily raised on the clippings and waste from our gardens), beef cattle, and sheep and goats. Poultry production would be easier for our community. We could raise chickens, ducks, and turkeys for our own production. Geese, mentioned above, can be excellent weeders for some crops. Quail are also popular in the south. We have access to an expert in raising quail and pheasants for commercial production. There is a demonstrated market in Pensacola for smoked pheasant at $15 each. Peacocks are another fowl that is fairly easy to raise, and makes for a beautiful addition to the community. Peacocks and guineas are also excellent guard birds!
Eggs are likely to be a significant protein source. Due to familiarity, chickens would be the main source of eggs, but ducks, geese and quail also produce eggs in sustainable quantities. Game, such as wild turkey and deer, could be plentiful on or around our property, and could be harvested.
Fish are likely to be another significant source of protein for our community. Wild harvesting (“fishin’ “) would be one source. A reasonable community investment would be a commercial fishing license for a few individuals. Raising fish is another source that we will use. The easiest method would be to build a small pond, and stock it with crappie, bream and bass. A second pond could be stocked with catfish. These could be left to themselves, or the catfish pond could be fed, to increase production. Crayfish is another aquaculture crop which would be simple to do, and for which a ready market exists. Tilapia is an African fish now raised all over the world, because of its fine flavor and efficient conversion of food to flesh. There is a ready market for this fish, also, but it tastes so good that we may not want to sell much of it!