The Green Market: Week Two

Farmer's markets have such a positive association in my mind - images of abundant and beautiful produce, busy sellers answering questions about price and cooking tips, people laughing and chatting.

We had beautiful produce when we arrived, we really did. Harvested this morning, the kale bunches stood strong, the dill and cilantro sent tantalizing wafts of fragrance, radish bunches gleamed, and salad mix showed its many colors.

Enter the wind. The beach is always breezy, but this wind would have taken away our EZ-Up tent had we not held onto at least one leg at all times. (Note to self: really really remember to bring cinder blocks next week.) By the time we finally managed to secure the tablecloth and all the baskets (in between mopping up water spilled when the sunflower vases kept blowing over), our produce had wilted. We had hardly made one sale before the things-not-in-bags-but-sitting-in-bowls-of-water had shriveled to a mess of green that would have scared away the most earnest of shoppers. We did some hasty tucking away of produce, underneath the table and back into burlap and plastic bags to save what we could. Amazingly, people bought a few things, and even better, we had some repeat customers from last week. But packing up nearly full coolers to go made me wonder if the sunburn on the back of my neck was worth it.

Enter dinner. I didn't think I was going to eat any, too parched and wilted myself (I even drank soda on the way home) to think about cooking, instead semi-satisfying myself with a pesto snack given to us from another vendor. But about an hour before the market closed, a man with a white ponytail, overalls and a "Retired Marine Corps" hat unloaded some pretty magnificent edibles onto the table next to ours: cucumbers, frilly kale, giant hakurei turnips. This was Willie, a local gardener who sent us home with two bunches of turnips, greens included. After lying in bed for half an hour, too tired to read and still hungry, I mustered the energy to cook something, grabbing some (wilted) turnip greens and one turnip. It was exactly what my mouth wanted, and soon I was making a list of things we could do to improve our little market booth, starting with sunscreen.

Farms Not Arms

April 10, 2008

Dear Internal Revenue Service of the United States:

For the tax year 2007, I am withholding a symbolic 51% of the tax that I owe, which is the percent of my tax dollars that are designated for military spending ($1335 Billion of a total $2659 Billion in Fiscal Year 2009). This is a decision of conscience, since my conscience does not allow me to pay for war. Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Luther King, Jr. taught that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. In good conscience and in understanding that this is a willful violation of laws that demand I pay for war, I am withholding $270.00 of the federal taxes that I owe.

I cannot in good conscience support war. I cannot in good conscience buy, with my tax dollars, bombs that kill other people’s children and guns that kill other people’s fathers. I cannot in good conscience let my tax dollars purchase bulldozers that crush homes and olive groves in Palestine and orchards in Iraq. I cannot in good conscience send tax dollars for stealth bombers and torture chambers.

Sixty years ago, State Department planner George Kennan set out the basic framework for understanding United States foreign policy:

[W]e have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. (Quoted in Iraq Under Siege, Anthony Arnove, ed., 2000)

This “position of disparity” is impossible to keep without detriment to our national security, regardless of the enormity of our military spending. Real security will come when we begin to close the wealth gap, and when we stop depending upon the exploitation of other countries' resources for our comfort, convenience, and survival. However, since 1948, our position of wealth has been quite well-maintained, the disparity of wealth between us and most of the world has only grown wider, and the U.S. has indeed concentrated its attention on carrying out its national objectives through use of the military. Today the U.S. is not only the number one military spender in the world, it also spends more on its military than the combined military spending the next 15 countries (including China, Russia, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Saudi Arabia).

Exorbitant military spending is not only immoral but impractical. Nearly twice as many jobs are created when money is invested in education and health care as in the military. One year of nuclear weapons programs ($17 Billion) could provide healthcare for 7 million children. The cost of just one stealth bomber ($2.1 Billion) is enough to pay for the annual salary and benefits for 38,000 elementary teachers. The minimum support to save Amtrak train service is $1.2 Billion; this much was spent in less than four days on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It's time to put our money to moral and practical use.

I am not philosophically opposed to paying taxes; I am opposed to paying taxes that are immoral. Enclosed is a check for $260.00, 49% of the money I owe. I will gladly pay the remaining 51% when it is used to promote health and well-being: things such as comprehensive national health insurance; investments in solar energy sources; public transportation, including city buses and national Amtrak; affordable housing; and grants for the proactive protection of farmland in land trusts. This year I am redirecting $270.00 to Equity Trust, Inc., a nonprofit organization that works with local communities to protect small farms, create affordable housing, and secure low-income access to quality food. I believe that putting money toward efforts like this is a more safe and practical investment than military spending.

Sincerely,

Bronwyn Shiffer

Cc: Green Bay Press Gazette, Representative Steve Kagan, Representative Russel Feingold, Senator Herbert Kohl, President George Bush, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, Equity Trust, Inc.

The best way to make Olivia sing

Olivia requested to go outside today. (How did she do that, you ask, since she isn't talking yet?) Recently her favorite trick is to grab your hands, pull herself up to stand, and start walking, pulling you along with her. This morning she did this, then walked to the window and pointed out to Brian, who was out in the field, then walked past the cat food (one of her favorite stops) and straight to the back door. I don't think you can get much clearer than that.

We watched Brian transplant Swiss Chard for a bit and then stuck our faces in the honeysuckle.

Planting

The carrots are perking up a bit after a solid weeding; squash, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are beginning to flower. The drip irrigation is giving solid waterings to the entire south field, and the big news is that almost everything has been transplanted! All flowers, tomatoes, peppers, and quinoa (yes, we have quinoa) are in the field, tucked in with some 8-5-5 Nature Safe fertilizer pellets. Planting has got to be one of my favorite activities. Good close-up, unadulterated contact with soil, stems, and water. Fabulous.

First Harvest

Crisp, colorful, delicious salad mix. (And we grew it!) Red and green romaine, baby kale, peppery arugula, wispy mizuna, and the tiniest bit of lovely tatsoi. Harvest with a pocket knife into the bright red pickle buckets; double-rinse before tossing onto the wire mesh table and drying in the Zygliss salad spinner.

35 five-oz. bags of this amazing wonder, five bunches of cilantro, and seven of dill. (And by the way, I have mentioned this before and will mention it again, but if you harvest cilantro in the morning, your hands will still smell like it in the evening. Marvelous.) Ten bags of salad mix will go to friends of the farm who have done things like change the oil on the tractor, work on the farm on their day off, install a new pump for the well, and babysit Olivia. The rest we sold at Brian and Kristin's Unitarian church.

Next week: the Green Market.

Weeding

This morning I heard Kristin call out from across the field, something about weeding. "What was that?" I asked. She had been hand-weeding for at least 45 minutes, in the broccoli and lettuce mix. I was pretty sure she would say she was done with the weeding already.

"Weeding must be God's greatest gift," she called back.

I think they've chosen the right path.

A Full Quarter Acre

Somewhere between late February and now, we sat down and recalculated our field space needs based on how many seedlings we had growing. It turned out that in addition to the 800 bedfeet we'd planned on, we needed over 900 more. (Bedfeet refers to the number of raised beds that vegetables will be planted on. Beds range in size, and ours are about 32" wide, meaning that we can plant 3-4 rows of salad mix, 2 rows of carrots, and one row of tomatoes, etc.) Fortunately we could accommodate that need by tilling up the north half of the field that we'd hoped to leave in rye grass all spring. Brian got back on the Kubota and tilled up the rest of the field.

Yesterday we did some market investigating, visiting first the Fernandina market to the north, and then back down to the Jax Beach Green Market on Atlantic Boulevard (so new they are still selling in a strip mall parking lot). Cookies, herbs, homemade baskets and cracker spreads are the main attraction, with a few backyard produce bunches, and one bonafide farm stand. Hopefully we'll have enough salad mix in two weeks to make a showing.

The field looks like a real farm now - all the beds have been formed in the south field, and Provider and Royal Burgunday beans, Red Ace beets, cilantro, dill, Encore lettuce mix, broccoli, Spock Red Romaine lettuce, Forest Green parsley, Red Russian kale, red and yellow potatoes, Easter Egg radishes, and sunflowers are all growing happily. Nectar and Purple Haze carrots, as well as spinach, are growing, but not so happily, and the cucurbits (melons, zucchini, pattypan, and cucumbers) are so freshly transplanted I don't want to speak too soon.

Tasks this week will include: install the drip irrigation system, buy remay (a covering for plants that adds 4-6degrees of heat while letting in air, light, and rain), week and hoe all beds, apply lime to the north field and more chicken manure to the flower beds, till the north field and make the beds, and start preparing for market by getting twisties, plastic bags, baskets, 3x5 cards, a tablecloth and tent.

And, of course, raising Olivia.