I just came across White House Farmer…

The sub-line for this interesting blog  is “We’ve always had a White House chef…now is the time for a White House Farmer”.

The site was developed soon after Michael Pollan (one of my favorite authors) of

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

and

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

suggested the White House develop five south acres for growing fruits and vegetables for the First Family and staff. Farmer in Chief was an open letter to the then President-Elect, published in the New York Times Magazine.

There is no way that I can do justice to the article by writing a synopsis, so I will include a very small exerpt…..

“After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.”

Would you support a National Backyard Farming Movement? This morning I have read two articles about how the Philipines Department of Agriculture is promoting their national vegetable program to help improve productions and consumption of homegrown goods.  Their Dept. of Ag “will provide seeds, technology, and greenhouses, as well as help market linkages”.

Read the GMANews.tv story HERE.

Perusing further, I came across a poll from the Bahamas asking participants if they would support a National Backyard Farming Project and a news article, Home Garden Flourishing,  at thebahamasweekly.com–which displays a few photos of a backyard farming project.

To me, this is an interesting consideration and I am certain I will fill many hours with further research on the topic, but meanwhile, would YOU support a National Movement toward this kind of sustainability?

easy-poll.com: free online surveys

	Would you support a National Backyard Farming Project?
	SIGN ME UP!
	Hmmm…Gotta’ think about it….
	Definitely NO!
	Who cares?

With the weather being cool one week, then blistering the next, my garden (and I) are confused. The only things that are prolific at the moment are the grasshoppers.

Can anyone tell me to what plant this flower belongs? I have two small plants in a long planter with my zuchini (won’t do that again) that never grew very tall, but there are now large blossoms.

My squash took off with the greenery all of a sudden after not producing much for a week and now I have four small squashes to look forward to
eating.


The watermelon planted next to the squash started out like gang-busters and had three melons, but only one reached any size at all…then the vines died. We cut it open last night to find a wonderful aroma, lots of adult seeds, but not much in the meat department.



 Most of my floral hanging baskets are in fair shape….



My pepper ring produced well. This photo was taken just after DD picked all of the bells off of the front pepper plant.

But…this is what most of the rest of my “garden” looks like…

As I started to respond to comments, I realized I was writing an entire post, so I decided to move it here.

Thus far, I would not consider my garden a success by any stretch of the imagination.

I water daily, sometimes twice, at the base of the plants. Never overhead. I water by hand with a long handled sprayer that can reach down under the canopy of the plants.
We have combated much….Round-Up being sprayed within 20 feet of all of my plants on a windy day…grasshoppers ~of all sizes~ have taken over my entire yard and garden. My huge tansy plants were destroyed, as well as some of my ornamentals. I think wind and pollination issues are responsible for the lack of cucumbers…two pathetic deformed specimens…but both were eaten. My zuchini has only produced 4 zukes. I had 4 watermelon on the vine, but I am now down to only one.
None of my beans have produces more than 3 pods.
We use a combination of compost for fertilizer… worm castings, chicken manure compost (small amts) and cow compost.
We have loads of toads and birds, but yet the army of grasshoppers seem to grow exponentially. As I was checking for cukes or blossoms yesterday, I found about 50 HUGE hoppers chomping away. They had no fear factor either….I had to practically “beat” them off of the vines…not really, but they were difficult to budge. Even my lovely sweet potato vines are lacy from their wrath. In my ornamental pots surrounding our front porch, everything but the geraniums are being eaten away.
The bell peppers have been prolific, however, on most there are “bad spots” that have to be cut away.

The few cherry tomatoes and romas that are now coming in now are very tasty, however, I have a few plants that have yet to produce even one bloom…much less any fruit.

I had thought about a fall garden, but am almost out of time.

At the moment, there are many other “pressing” matters at hand here at our place…each that takes precedence over gardening. 

Okay…here it comes…a pity party….and know that my ego is fragile at the moment….but I am feeling a bit as though nothing I do is successful. It feels as though I have to do twice the work, no matter what it is (ie.-attempting the Seal-A-Mealed corn over and over and over again) and yet, I still have terrible failures.

One decision that I have made is that until my kitchen is in order nothing good is going to happen. My kitchen is unmanageable. Little storage space…almost non-existent counter space, a stove/oven that needs to be leveled, linoleum flooring with holes worn through to the sub-flooring, kitchen cabinets that will not stay shut, poor lighting, and a layout that does nothing for productivity. I had said that the kitchen would be the last room we would rennovate in this %*#@ 100 year old house, but I think I am fed up and at the ropes end.

Goodness, so I started out grinching about the garden and I have moved indoors to my kitchen. Like I said, it is a pity party..for “one”. Tomorrow will be a better day and after my “projects” are completed, maybe that will improve my attitude.
 

♥

I just ate my first tomato off my very own vine in a late lunch salad. Cooking in the slow cooker on my kitchen counter is a pork roast purchased from a farmer only 3 miles from me….HOW MUCH MORE LOCAL CAN YOU GET?

All morning the aroma of the roast has whifted through the entire house, downstairs and up….and it is all meat aroma…no seasonings, no gravies, no anything except water and pork. I just sneaked a tiny…yes, yes, I’ll say that… a tiny, little bite. It was a monumental mistake! Now I am going to have to keep myself soo, sooooo, soooooo busy, so I do not return to the lovely little pork roast…the darling porky roast that so subtly calls my name.

This evening I will make a call to my new favorite farmer to thank him for allowing us to purchase Abby the pig in the first place.

♥