Frijolito Farm Blog

I wanted to share this article with you. Detroit and Flint have been the canaries in the coal mine with regard to industrial collapse and de-urbanization. I’ve been watching with interest what role urban agriculture will play. Mayda and I have talked about how cool it would be if the Mock Park area of Columbus/Mifflin Township were declared an urban agriculture zone as an economic development initiative, but Detroit’s going about it all the wrong way.

Essentially, Detroit is now a sprawling, sparsely populated city. It can’t afford police and fire services for the whole area without the tax base to support it, so it wants to concentrate the remaining population into a few neighborhoods. Some of the people don’t want to go. The city is talking about eminent domain to take these people’s homes away from them.

I have mixed feelings about this. I think shrinking is a good plan for Detroit, but I dislike heavy-handed authoritarianism, especially about something as severe as uprooting people from their homes and seizing something that’s such a major investment for most people. I’m cool with eminent domain for the abandoned houses, but I think the people still residing there should be given the option to stay with the understanding that services will no longer be provided to that area. Disincorporate those areas. Put them under county control. Rezone them as agricultural.

Moreover, give the residents first option to buy the surrounding properties, perhaps with the stipulation that they have to demolish or re-purpose unoccupied houses. If they want to further require that agriculture be practiced there, I suppose they could do that, too, though that might be pushing the envelope just a bit. Why should residents be penalized for hanging in there for so long? If they like living in a less populous place, why should they be forced to live in a densely populated neighborhood just because they used to live in one? It’s ridiculous for them to presume they can tell people where to live just because their treasury has shrunk.

Can you imagine Columbus ordering people in Westerville and Gahanna to move downtown and start paying Columbus taxes so the city can pay for the police budget next year? Maybe Detroit could start snatching people off the interstate highways and forcing them to live in these new communities. Really, what’s the difference? They’re talking about conscripting people to live in their new, smaller city, and coercing them into it with the threat of homelessness. “We’re gonna take your house now. You can come live downtown and pay taxes, or you can beat it.”

That really is what it comes down to, because fair market value–what a government is supposed to compensate a landowner when they exercise eminent domain–is not enough for them to buy a home anywhere else. Detroit will probably offer them a break on a house in the new dense parts of the city, maybe even an even swap. If they don’t take it, well, here’s your fifty bucks (or whatever a house in Detroit is worth these days–I’d heard they were going for as low as ten dollars in some auctions where lots were bundled together).

Let’s see if Detroit can manage to create an appropriately sized, well-designed city that incorporates agriculture without resorting to Machiavellian tactics.

Detroit wants to save itself by shrinking

Continue reading …

Growing food in the city isn’t just a trendy thing to do. Our very survival depends on it. If there are to be cities in the years to come, they must start pulling more of their own weight where resource production is concerned, and food is one of the most basic of resources.

For the time being, let’s set aside the issue of geophysicist M. King Hubbert’s “Peak Oil” theory that postulates that for a given geographical area, oil production follows a bell-shaped curve, and that after that area reaches peak production, efforts to extract oil are both increasingly expensive and decreasingly fruitful, thereby driving the price of oil to the point that it’s no longer profitable to drill. Some of you who slept through Earth Science in Junior High may think that the Earth is like a giant cherry cordial filled with more petroleum than humanity could ever find a use for, while others—the so-called “abiotic oil” theorists—believe that oil just happens, and that the millions of years’ worth of accumulated organic matter from the Carboniferous Period had nothing to do with it. Or, like many, perhaps you’ve simply never given the issue any thought, and you automatically dismiss any topic that makes you uneasy. To all of you, discussion of fossil fuel depletion sounds like the sort of thing brought up by people in tinfoil hats ranting about alien abductions and secret societies, so you tune out. For now, then, we’ll set aside concerns of fossil fuel depletion, despite it being an even greater certainty in the scientific community than global climate change. Instead, let’s talk about something there’s no denying: the economy.
Continue reading Why We Need Urban Agriculture…

Mayda received a letter from the zoning enforcement guy today. (Our Paul Drive house is in her name.) It said we can’t have chickens here, and we have seven days to comply. It was dated Monday. I have less than a week to relocate the hens, disassemble and move the broiler houses, and move all the bags of leaves and sawdust, as well as any other junk in the backyard.

There’s also a certified letter that’ll be at the Post Office tomorrow. We’re guessing that’s from him, too.

We slaughtered the last of the broilers and don’t have any more chicks ordered, so that’s one thing out of the way. I’m just going to move everything over to Woodland.

The problem is that while the section of code he’s citing only prohibits agriculture on properties less than one acre, there’s another point he could use against us at Woodland. If you have between one and five acres, agriculture is prohibited if your subdivision is at least 35% developed. Nobody’s actually ordered us not to farm there, but we haven’t started yet. The code is very clear that we can’t do it. Even just having an acre of apple trees would be illegal there. Any kind of natural resource harvesting other than a garden attached to a residence counts as “agriculture” and is prohibited. This is wrong, and we’ll take up the fight to get that changed on at least the county level, if not the state. But first thing’s first. We need to take care of our own survival before starting any crusades.

I’m thinking the best thing to do is to not fight it here at Paul Drive. Just comply (though that is a hardship with the hens.) Before he gets a chance to nail us at Woodland, I want to request a variance from the Mifflin Township Board of Trustees to allow me to practice agriculture there. They can do that by a resolution. If they won’t do that, the next step is to try for a variance through the county. I’m not sure how best to approach that.

I’m feeling caught between two levels of government here. I need to get caught up on my child support before the end of the year so we can declare one of the kids I’m paying support on as a dependent on our tax return. Makes a big difference–the difference between getting money and owing it. But to earn the money to do that, I either need to go do paying work, or produce stuff on the farm and sell it. But if I go work for money, I’m not here cleaning up and moving stuff for Code Enforcement and the Health Department. And if I actually comply fully with Zoning and quit raising chickens, I’m severely restricted in how much money I can earn at farmers markets, especially over the winter.

We have the land, though, and a few freezers full of chicken, and outlaw hens laying about a dozen eggs a day, and a couple big boxes of egg cartons. We have jars to sprout beans in, and an oven for baking stuff. I’m paid up to do two days a week at the farmers market downtown through December. And I’m sure that at least a few people in either the township or county government must see farms as something other than a dirty embarrassment that all the shiny urbanites have to be sheltered from. We’ll get through this somehow, but I’m not sure we’ll still have animals by the time we get to the other end of the tunnel.

I find it ironic that a Department of ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT & Planning would be going into a blighted neighborhood and trying to make people poorer. They went after one of my neighbors and gave him a huge list of things to alter that aren’t even visible from the street. They told him the color of his garage has to match his house. This isn’t a homeowners association, it’s the county government telling him this. They said they’re trying to “clean up” (ie, gentrify) the neighborhood. Now they’re trying to put me out of work while I hear scores of people telling me that more people need to be doing what I’m doing. Local magazines praise my work while the local government criminalizes it.

Another thing that troubles me about this is that if I just built a large building and raised the chickens indoors, that would probably be fine. There’d be no evidence visible from the property line that there’s any agriculture going on. My customers pay more, though, because I don’t do it that way. The fact that the chickens are allowed to scratch around out where people can see them–the very thing that makes them more desirable and trusted as food–is exactly what Zoning finds objectionable.

I’m seriously wondering about the market for rabbits. Quieter than chickens, I could breed my own stock instead of having to buy them, and they can eat mostly grass. They have about the same grow-out time and feed conversion rate as broilers. I could do that completely clandestinely by clearing a spot back in the woods and keeping them in movable pens that I can stash in the garage or an underground shed or something when the revenuers show up. But Americans don’t eat bunnies like they eat chicken or eggs. Otherwise, I’m not sure what my backup plan would be.

Nobody owes me a job, but I have a responsibility to earn a living. For those two facts to co-exist, there must be a possibility of working for myself. If I can’t do it by farming, I don’t know what else I could do that I can just jump right into and start earning enough money without investing a whole lot up front. Art? Woodworking? Soap? Candles? They all seem so much more speculative than food.

Maybe I could learn Somali and start a new career as a pirate.

While I was at Pearl Market yesterday, two county officials showed up at my house and spoke with Mayda. Continue reading It’s official: We’re outlaws…

The note attached to the box of dead chickens I left in front of my neighbors’ house: Continue reading Dealing With Urban Predators…

Saturday at the Clintonville Farmers’ Market, one of my customers said she was surprised to see so many yard signs in Clintonville in support of Issue 2. She reached the same conclusion I did: most of these people have probably fallen prey to the misleading advertisements in support of Issue 2. I’d like to clear up some of the confusion by responding to some of the talking points I’ve heard from supporters.

Issue 2 would establish a Livestock Care Standards Board. It’s about time we had some standards for livestock care! Do you know what horrible things they do to animals on those factory farms?

That’s just the point. It’s those factory farms that want Issue 2 to pass. They’ve seen voters in California and elsewhere outlaw the use of battery cages so small that the laying hens in them can’t spread their wings and gestation crates that prohibit a hog from turning around for the entire duration of her pregnancy. Factory farms in Ohio don’t want to have to abide by rules like these, so they’re seeking to preemptively cut off the ability of the voters or the legislature to make any such rules. They hope to do this by creating a board of non-elected political appointees who will have absolute power to make rules related to agriculture in Ohio.

I’m not exaggerating when I say “absolute power.” This board would be established by our state constitution. This means that no Ohio court could judge their rules to be unconstitutional. They’d have no direct oversight by the legislature, and the Ohio Department of Agriculture would be obliged to enforce whatever rules this board comes up with. Issue 2 doesn’t say how the Board is to come up with its rules. It does say that they shall consider certain things, like food safety and disease prevention, but it doesn’t say that those are the only considerations, or that the stated considerations should supersede all others. That is to say, the Board could declare, “Yes, battery cages probably cause some stress to the hens inside them, but requiring that cages be roomier would increase the cost of producing eggs, and that’s simply unacceptable.”

The board wouldn’t have absolute power. All their regulations would have to be approved by the General Assembly.
Issue 2 doesn’t say that. (Here’s a link to the actual text of the Joint Resolution from the General Assembly.) It says, “The Board shall have authority to establish standards governing the care and well-being of livestock and poultry in this state, subject to the authority of the General Assembly.” That doesn’t mean that each regulation that comes out of the Board would have to be submitted for approval from the Assembly. It just means that the Board has authority to make these rules so long as the Assembly says they do. In other words, it’s not the standards that are subject to the Assembly’s authority. It’s the Board’s authority that’s subject to the Assembly’s authority. Presumably, if the Board started making rules that resulted in really egregious human rights abuses or something along that line, the Assembly could step in and establish some guidelines. Still, the existence of the Board would be constitutionally mandated, and the members would be appointed as stated. There’s nothing the assembly could do to change that. Basically, if we vote this Board into existence and decide we don’t like some of the rules they’re passing, the only way to do anything about it is for the Ohio voters to pass another constitutional amendment repealing this one.

Besides that, even if the Board did have to get approval from the Assembly for any new agriculture regulations, what’s the likelihood the Assembly would contradict them? This board will be regarded as “the experts” in agriculture in Ohio. If they–veterinarians and industry bigwigs–say that something is a good practice, how reasonable is it to think that a majority of the General Assembly is going to oppose them? It’s true that elected politicians like to get re-elected, and that legislators need to be responsive to voters. They’re not going to want to get caught between the voters and the Board, though, so it’s easier for the legislature to skirt the whole dilemma by giving the Board blanket authority from the outset. Then, if voters protest to their Representative about a new Board regulation, the legislator can say, “I share your concerns, but this isn’t a legislative matter. It’s the Board that makes these rules. You should appeal to the Board directly.”

The commercial said a Yes vote will ensure safe, locally grown food, and that livestock are well treated.

Big Ag isn’t clueless. They know consumers prefer safe, locally grown food, and that consumers want livestock to be well treated. In other words, they know that the public objects to the way they do business. This is why they fought so hard to prohibit natural dairy farmers from advertising their hormone-free milk as being hormone-free. (The compromise the courts came up with is that labels can say that milk is rGBH free, but they also have to say that rGBH-free milk is no different than milk from cows on steroids.) They know that if consumers get to choose between safe, ethical, locally grown food from a small, family farm, or scary, questionable stuff produced by a multinational corporation, they’re going to go for the former, often even if it costs more.

To stay in the game, they’ve co-opted these buzz words to push public opinion in favor of a constitutional amendment that can protect them. Really, it’s a bold move. Big Ag is trying to win the support of the people who hate them most, because they know that if Issue 2 passes, they don’t have to do anything to please anybody ever again. The Board can give a free pass to factory farm abuses and outlaw anything that gives small farmers a market advantage. Things like the milk labeling issue wouldn’t be settled in court anymore. The Board would decide.

Did they lie? Not exactly. It’s not lying if you believe it yourself. In the opinion of the industry, industrial food is safe. In their opinion, factory farms are humane. If a facility in Ohio is raising cattle in a confined feeding operation to sell to Japan, it’s still an Ohio farm. That makes it local food, right? If a family owns a farm with several hundred acres, millions of dollars in assets, and several employees, and it raises half a million chickens a year on contract for Tyson, it’s still a family farm, isn’t it? In their view, what they’re doing is providing safe, local food from family farms. What farmers like me are doing–raising animals naturally and selling directly to the people in our own communities–doesn’t even count.

If you talk to the farmers at your local farmers’ market, most of them will tell you they oppose Issue 2–assuming they’ve researched the matter. The reasons vary, but the bottom line is the same: whether it will hurt us or not, changing the constitution to establish the Livestock Care Standards Board will not do anything to help us. Having a bunch of corporate lobbyists get together to make rules–whether they favor Big Ag or not–is not going to make my animals happier, me wealthier, or you healthier. It could possibly have the opposite result, but it can’t improve on what I’m already doing.

Actually, I guess that’s not exactly true. With this enormous amount of power they’d be given, the Board could issue an edict that rules null and void all prohibitions against livestock. They could see to it that chickens, pigs, and dairy goats are welcome in every city, subdivision, and gated community across Ohio, even if clotheslines and non-conforming house colors are not. Yeah…that’ll happen. I’m sure that’s exactly why it’s being supported by all the factory farm organizations–because they want people to raise their own food in their own communities. More likely, if we see a loosening of these restrictions come to pass, it’ll be because they want to allow a hog factory to be built in a place where the zoning prohibits it.

Election day is tomorrow. If you haven’t already voted, please go vote NO on Issue 2. A local, free-range farmer asked you nicely.

(cross-posted to Local Food Columbus)

For those who are interested, here’s the full transcript of the morning half of the NAIS listening session I went to in Harrisburg in May. There’s a lot there to read–54 pages. I don’t intend to wade through it all myself. (I heard it the first time, after all.) I would encourage you, though, to search (Ctrl + F) Daryl Dickinson. His comments were the highlight of the day for me.

Oh, and here’s the transcript from the afternoon breakout session I was in, too. I noticed they made a few errors in transcribing my comments, but nothing that changes the basic message.

Monsanto makes buyers of their seeds sign a user agreement. Included in this agreement is a clause that the user agrees not to do any studies on Monsanto seed or publish the results without Monsanto’s approval. They’ve been approving studies favorable to them and suppressing ones that turn out to be unfavorable or that they suspect might be unfriendly to their interests. As the article points out, could you imagine a car manufacturer trying to stop Consumer Reports from publishing side-by-side comparisons of collision studies? Monsanto has been suppressing studies relevant to the effect of their products on human health.

Here’s Mayda’s post on it at Local Food Columbus.

I forgot to mention this earlier. Last week we got our first “big” order–but not so big it didn’t fit in a few coolers stuffed into our hatchback. (We’re still a small operation, after all.) Our chicken leg quarters were used to cater the American Community Garden Association’s 30th Annual Conference at Franklin Park Conservatory this year. Local Matters recommended us to Two Caterers, and they bought every pack of leg quarters we had in stock (except for the two packs reserved for a CSA customer).

Don’t worry, though. We’re processing another batch of chickens on August 20th. We still have plenty of drumsticks and possibly a few packs of thighs left for this week’s market.

For those of you who don’t receive our newsletter (and before you read further, go get on our mailing list now), here’s an excerpt from our last one.

In other news, Frijolito Farm is expanding! We’re presently in contract on a nearly five-acre property just a couple blocks away, and should be closing in the next few weeks. [Edit: Make that this Thursday.] This land is mostly surrounded by woods, making it much more private than our current location. Both the extra space and the added privacy will allow us to expand our operations without disturbing our neighbors.

We’ll be adding many, many more laying hens so as to keep up with demand for our eggs, and we’ll be raising somewhat larger flocks of broilers so we can add chicken sausage to our offerings in addition to having a steadier supply of breast meat. We’ll be raising turkeys next year as well, and we’re looking into the possibility of doing a few pigs. I’d like to get started raising honeybees, too, having attended a class on it last year through the OSU extension office. If there’s enough interest, I could also raise some meat rabbits. From there…who knows? Quail? Pheasants? Goats? We’ll see.

My plan is to offer the turkey, rabbit, and pork as options in our CSA next year. I’ll share the details as I figure them out.

Also, since we’ll have a permanent place with a bit of sun, we’ll be doing some perennial planting. In future years, look for us to have asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, and other kinds of fruit. Oh, and mushrooms.

Finally, as our customers from the Westerville Farmers Market may have noticed, we’re not there anymore. You can still find us at the Clintonville Farmers Market (all season this year) and the Jefferson Township Farmers Market on Saturdays from nine to noon. We’ll also be open on Fridays from 3:00 to 7:00 through November 20th. As usual, if you need to catch us at home at some other time, please call ahead.

We have big dreams for this place. The property has a 4-bedroom house on it that’s been terribly neglected. The roof has been leaking for the past three years, so the inside is pretty much a total wreck. Professionals have assured us, though, that the structure is sound. I’ll be working on it in bits and pieces over the next few years whenever I have time to work on it and money for materials. There’s an addition to the kitchen that was never completed. We’ve been thinking of trying to outfit this to be used as a commercial kitchen. If we did that, we could make processed foods (sauces, pot pies, frozen dinners, frozen pizza, etc.) right at home. We’d also be interested in hosting social/educational events like canning parties, cheese making classes, pig roasts, or whatever else we think up. That’s a long way off, though. The house is presently uninhabitable. I’ve dubbed it “the Fight Club House.” (If you’ve seen the movie Fight Club, you have some idea what I’m talking about.)

The house has an attached, heated garage and a pole barn attached to that. My plan is to turn the pole barn into a hen house. I’ll be able to walk out to the hen house, gather eggs, pack them and put them in the fridge all without ever having to go outside. The hens will still have access to the outdoors, of course. My current plan is to expand our flock of about 45 layers to about 175 or 200.

That’s going to be implemented right away, as it requires the least infrastructure improvement. In a few months when the layers start laying (or sooner if I can find close-to-mature pullets at an affordable price and with no de-beaking), I should be earning enough money from eggs to make the payment on the land.

Over the winter, I’d like to build some bee hives so I can introduce bees in the spring. Their principle source of pollen will be the woods until I plant gardens there. I’ve been thinking I’d like to put a little campsite far back into the woods, too. This would just be a recreational thing for us and our friends at first, but later, if I build a small cabin back there, I might be able to rent it out as a Bed & Breakfast. Again, this is a long, long way off. I won’t be worrying about building a cabin back in the woods until the house is rehabilitated.