Thinking Like a Mountain, A story by Jim Pfitzer
Thinking Like a Mountain
“There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other and the relation of people to the land.” -Aldo Leopold
For ages people have written of ethical dilemmas and responsibilities. Homer dealt with the responsibilities of Odysseus to his household and wife, and vice versa. Kant wrote of a moral imperative to respect each other. Aristotle saw the virtues as dispositions to act in ways that benefit the self and society. Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from the mountain. Then, in 1949, a new thought emerged in ethics.
Not long after his untimely death in 1948, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac was published and in it, Leopold put forth the notion of a land ethic, that we have responsibilities not just to each other and to society, but to the entire biosphere–the air, the water, the plants and other animals, the land. He challenged ranchers to “think like a mountain,” and foresters to value resources in ways other than economic, and all of us to question our very understanding of the “balance of nature.”
As he wrapped up his Almanac, Leopold turned the attention of his land ethics to include with the ecologists and conservationists, the farmers. He wrote of a new vision of “biotic farming” in which “poundage or tonnage is no measure of the food-value of farm crops,” challenging us to measure the products of fertile soil qualitatively as well as quantitatively, that bolstering production through fertilizers was not bolstering value.
Leopold even took a look at organic farmers (and this was in the forties) saying that “while bearing some of the earmarks of a cult” organic farming is heading in a biotic direction in its insistence on the importance of soil flora and fauna, and calls on all farmers to stop looking at the land as an adversary, but to develop an ethical relation to land. This relationship with the land, he says, can only exist with love, respect, admiration, “and a high regard for its value…something far broader than mere economic value…value in the philosophical sense.
“We shall hardly relinquish the shovel, which after all has many good points,” says Leopold in his closing words, “but we are in need of gentler and more objective criteria for its successful use.”
Perhaps this visionary conservationist would be proud of the efforts of farms like Crabtree. I suspect he would applaud the lofty goals of organizations like Gaining Ground. I am certain he would appreciate the community building work of our many farmers’ markets, CSA’s, and burgeoning co-ops. I am equally certain, however, that he would not allow any of us to rest here, but would challenge us to keep pushing forward, to make certain we do more than just develop and hold fast to an ethical relationship to the land, but that we pass on that ethic to our children, that we look at healthy soils and ecosystems not just as they relate to our crops, this season, but at how they can continue to evolve and sustain themselves beyond our vision.
Our time here is short, and vision, especially with objectivity, is difficult to find on such a short scale, but the land’s time is immeasurably long and its perspective hardly fathomable. In his essay Thinking Like a Mountain, Leopold posits that “only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.” This might be true, but with the right land ethic we can at least try to put ourselves in the mountain’s shoes if only for a while.
On Thursday, September 8th at 7 p.m. Gaining Ground will host a screening of Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and New Land Ethic For Our Time. The screening will be free of charge and for those interested, an informal discussion will follow at the Terminal Brewhouse.
Build It and They Will Come, A story by Jim Pfitzer
A year-and-a-half ago Benwood Foundation, through its newly formed Gaining Ground project, awarded a number of grants to local farms, farmers, and market as a first step in supporting local food economy. One of the grant recipients was a newly-formed cooperative hoping to find ways they could share resources to meet needs too great for one small farm alone. One of the issues on the table then and now, is the need for a local USDA processing facility for poultry. This week I sat down with Dave Waters of River Ridge Farm to find out how he manages to provide chicken at local markets in spite of this great need.
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| Dave and Verlinda Waters With a Few of Their Laying Hens |
When Waters speaks of “clean” chickens, he means not only birds raised on organic feed, but pastured birds that are able to forage and hunt insects, birds that aren’t raised in packed warehouses like the organic chicken you find at “health food” stores like Whole Foods and Earth Faire.
Federal laws allow for farms processing fewer than 10,000 birds a year to slaughter and package them on the farm for sale to restaurants and individuals, but Waters questions what farmers have the time and resources to undertake such an endeavor, not to mention that some folks simply get squeamish about that kind of work. Plus, it would take him about a half hour to take one bird from pasture to refrigerator doing it himself and he raises around 350 birds at a time. Pretty easy math puts that total process at about 175 man-hours not including the setup and clean up involved. So Waters makes the eight-hour round trip drive with twelve hours of hard slaughterhouse work in between.
Pitching in saves Waters a little money, keeping the added transportation cost down to two dollars per bird passed on to consumers. Of course the man who does this “to bring clean food to people” does not pass on the cost of his own labor.
With a local processor says Waters, “We could get local chicken in Earth Faire, Whole Foods, and other markets” that currently truck in less responsibly raised chickens from around the country, and bring better food to more people.
I also chatted with Butch Tolley of the Cooperative of Chattanooga Area Sustainable Farmers. Until recently, the farmers co-op was open only to farmers for membership, but according to Tolley, they are now asking non-farmers to join as supporting members. Memberships are inexpensive and support the efforts of these local farms as they work to better serve our community. If you are interested in becoming a member, or are simply curious about what they are up to, please visit their new web site at: www.chattanoogasustainablefarmers.com. You can also contact Butch directly at butch@cloverwreath.com.
Way Down Yonder in The Paw-Paw Patch, A story by Jim Pfitzer
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| Ripe Paw-Paws |
Paw-paws vary in taste and have been bred for flavor characteristics ranging from vanilla to banana to caramel to the variety at Crabtree that is more like a mango in flavor. They are great additions to homemade ice cream or fruit smoothies, or are delicious eaten right out of the skin with a spoon.
To get to the flesh, simply cut through the paw-paw to the seeds and work your way around the fruit as if you were halving an avocado. Pull the halves apart and use a spoon to scrape the flesh and seeds out of the shell. You can clean the seeds in your mouth, then spit them out if you are eating them “straight” or pick the seeds out first if you are adding them to a tasty treat.
In spite of their delicious meat, the paw-paw fruit has never taken root commercially largely because it isn’t ripe until it falls off tree, and it only has a two to three day shelf life-maybe a up to a week if harvested right away and refrigerated immediately. The trees are also difficult to transplant, so growing paw-paw orchards would be difficult.
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| Young Paw-Paw Patch |
Turtle Whisperer, A story by Jim Pfitzer
“They knew I had cared for baby animals before and knew I’d be good at it,” the young Fazio told me when I inquired as to why she was chosen to take on the huge task of caring for turtles that should still be in their eggs and incubating in the ground. Fazio’s history of caring for animals in need includes two bunnies, birds, and one squirrel, but prematurely hatched turtles is another story.
According to Farm Manager Jennie Bartoletti, they were digging the last of the potatoes with the tractor. “The big metal trencher…basically digs a trench into the ground and unearths the potatoes. This time around we also unearthed a turtle nest.”
One egg was still in tact, but unfortunately the trencher broke the other, leaving a baby turtle that in Jennies words was “very rudely introduced to life.” The baby was still attached to a yolk sac, but without the protection of its shell, the nutrient-packed sac would surely dry up.
Fazio didn’t think the premature turtle would survive, but she kept it on a damp paper towel to keep the yolk hydrated and in a day the sac shrank by more than half. One more day and the sac was almost gone. The turtle was getting the nutrients it needed.
Meanwhile, the turtle in the egg still had some challenges of its own. Fazio put it in 
some dirt, but unfortunately, a chicken got to it and severely damaged the eggshell. Seeing that the first turtle was doing well outside its egg, Fazio carefully opened up the second one and removed the turtle. This one was larger than its sibling and looked healthy.
Fortunately, this young wildlife rehabilitator had some turtle food on hand from a previous patient so she began feeding. The larger one began eating pretty quickly and the smaller one, now done with her yolk, is eating as well. “We are feeding them dried shrimp,” says Fazio, “They seem to like that.”
Fazio admitted to not being a turtle expert but said that with her mom’s help, they found a lot of information online. They determined the species of their patients to be red-eared sliders-common semi-aquatic turtles.
Concerned that if she took them back to the farm when they were old enough to be released, they might end up back in the field laying their own eggs and subject their offspring to the same fate, Fazio plans to take the turtles to the swamp on Williams Island. And when will that be? “When they have lost their egg sacs and they’re eating and big enough to not be eaten,” she said.
Fazio wants to study animals around the world when she grows up. “Ocean stuff would be cool-fish…but I want to work in the wild, when they are in their natural habitat, not in an aquarium or zoo or something like that.”
In the mean time, she’s doing a great job sharpening her turtle whispering skills right here at home.
Crabtree’s got a new sign post!
Special thanks to Volunteer Extraordinaire, Ron Bohrer, for making the signs! 
Adding Value, A story by Jim Pfitzer
Often in farming we are faced with feast or famine. Crops come in with a vengeance in summer and we struggle to stay caught up. There is no time for weeding, tying up tomatoes, planning the next season, or hardly anything other than harvesting. The yield can be so big and so fast that vegetables over-ripen or fall to pests before we can get them in the barn, and even if we do manage to get most of crop in, we may have more than we can handle before it becomes too soft or attacked by fruit flies.
On the flip side, when the harvest is over, it is over, leaving us with weeks or months with very little coming in-a few greens maybe.
Of course canning and dehydrating are great ways to take that huge summer bounty and preserve it for the leaner winter months, but until recently state law didn’t allow for farms without certified kitchens to sell these value-added products at farm stands and markets. Now, thanks to a newly amended Tennessee Code, we can.
Mike Barron and Joel Houser have loaned their home dehydrators to Crabtree and are beginning to experiment.
Mike says that he has “no idea yet when we will have products available for market or CSA,” but he expects there to be something available in the next couple months. “We want to test it ourselves to make sure we have good products. We have to get the moisture level right and make sure it works.”
As for the types of products they have in mind, the obvious “sun dried” tomatoes was the first product that came up in our conversation, but Mike says they aren’t stopping there. Italian-style seasoning mixes, grape leaves for stuffing, and flavored teas were just a few of the more surprising possibilities we might see on the horizon.
These new products will do more than just make extra dollars at the farm stand, they could go a long way to improve the CSA boxes which admittedly can get pretty darn thin at times. Imagine late in the season finding dried mushrooms, tomato powder, and basil salt in your box along with the seven winter squashes you are faced with cooking! Or suppose you are headed to the Smokies for a little backpacking, so you stop by Crabtree for some potato-based dehydrated backpacking meals! The possibilities are endless.
It also may provide opportunities for all those folks out there who have always wanted to preserve at home but were a little leery of the risks or simply didn’t know how to get started. As with most operations at Crabtree, this new endeavor will have to rely at least in part on volunteers and work shares, giving the community a great opportunity to help out and gain new skills and confidence to take back to their own kitchen.
For now, Mike says they will used the loaned equipment and put any revenues from the products back into the project to eventually purchase higher capacity, more industrial dehydrators. In the mean time he says he wouldn’t mind collecting a little “rent” in the form of tasty treats.
As with any new endeavor, there is no telling where it this will lead, but as Mike said, “diversity in business is always good,” and in this case it sounds quite tasty as well!