LittleField Notes

text and photos by Ryan Foxley of Arlington, WA

Obituary

I begin this column by noting the sad news that our Suffolk stallion, that great gentlemen of a horse Donald has died. Long time readers may recall some of his stories (exploits), which have graced this column over the years. Donald came to us as a yearling from Eagle Ridge Suffolks in Louis Creek, British Columbia. His grandfather on his mother’s side was perhaps the most impressive specimen of a workhorse I’ve ever seen, an imported British stallion appropriately named Kingsland Royal. The B-Bar ranch brought Royal from the old country to the new, and I had the chance to admire him on a couple of occasions when I made the trip to Montana shopping for colts.

Donald was a smart, clever, stubborn, independent, funny, handsome, intelligent, big-hearted, sweet trickster of a horse. If he could just overcome the language barrier, I always felt he would have had a lot to say: an opinion about my hat, how I really should give up on that sad old floppy thing; or a comment about the way the rain overnight had freshened things up after a dry spell; maybe now and then he would offer a joke, some witty thing he’d thought up overnight, something about a horse with a long face. At times he’d greet me more seriously, with a touch of melancholy, for the life of a stallion, despite its perks, is mostly solitary.

For my part, I often greeted him in some language I was fooling around with, “Salut mon ami, ça va?” or “Ciao mio amico, come stai?” Slipping his halter on for our short walk to the pasture for his morning graze, and him being an old soul, I supposed Latin might be more to his liking, “Salve amice, quomodo te habes?” No matter the language, he was always eager to greet me, not actually so much interested in my linguistic pleasantries, but more in getting down to the business of breakfast.

His color was chesnut of course, like all Suffolks, his a shade of beautiful red that shone all the year round, bulking up almost imperceptibly in winter, fairly glistening in summer.

He worked some, though not as much as I would have liked. With a steady stream of colts coming up, there was always some youngster that needed the time in harness. At hay time he would often work single pulling the side delivery rake or tedder, and he worked the rope at the barn pulling load after load of loose hay up into the hay mow. And sometimes when need arose, after a brief discussion about expectations and the necessity of completing the work at hand, I would hitch him with another horse and set him to mowing. He could be an absolute gentleman at times.

He died suddenly, probably of an aneurysm, on a beautiful late summer morning out in his beloved pasture about an hour after I had taken him out to graze. That morning he greeted me as usual; nothing was amiss. When I slipped his halter off he loped on down into the field twisting his head and neck about as usual in the sheer joy of being alive. A short while later that big, exuberant life was extinguished.

Winter Notes

It has been at once the coldest and warmest winter I have experienced in the 18 years I have lived in the Pacific northwest. A quick tour of the winter garden starts to tell the story. Normally at this time of year, mid February, the garden would still be abundant with overwintering leaks, cabbage, collard greens, kale, carrots, and parsnips. Yet now, aside from a few of the more hardy leaks, all is grey and brown. Lifeless brassica stocks with blackened, shriveled leaves droop down like soggy old newspapers. Only the carrots, parsnips, and about half of the leaks survived. I saved the carrots by covering them with straw against the oncoming chill, and parsnips can take just about any cold. Everything else was killed off by a week of unusually severe (for our region) single-digit temperatures. Aside from the over-wintered plot, the rest of the garden this time of year would normally be a brilliant green with a lovely mixed legume and grain cover crop protecting the soil from incessant winter rains. This year, however, the cover crops, too, were completely winter-killed. The residues still protect the soil, but a brown cover is not nearly so attractive as a green one. Normally, at this time of year there would be some assortment of salad greens in the movable greenhouses, including lettuces, mustards, arugula. They would just now be breaking out of winter dormancy and beginning to grow again with the lengthening days. But this year, as in the outdoor garden, nothing survived, 4 mils of clear plastic just wasn’t enough. The garden this year more closely resembles a garden from the interior north of the country, where winters are more severe than the mild ones we are accustomed to here on the temperate, maritime west side of the Cascade mountains.

All that cold was back in January, but now, as I write these words on 15 February, I am taken aback by a rapid and early onset of spring-like temperatures. With the sudden warmth, the frogs are singing their hearts out in the marsh in the lower field, and the hundreds of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths that I planted last fall are pushing up through the warming soil in various beds around the house. The three lovely rows of garlic in the garden are already four inches tall, the new growth a vibrant green against the dead brown of last fall’s leaf mulch. Perhaps most surprising of all is that the grass is starting to grow. The lawn is close to needing mowed, and the pastures are greening and thickening.

It has been an El Niño year, which features a warmer-than-normal Pacific Ocean. This has undoubtedly contributed to the warm temperatures and relative lack of rain this season. I’m definitely enjoying the mild weather, and am excited to start scratching in the soil and getting some seeds planted in the greenhouses in the next few days. As pleasant as these mild conditions are though, I can’t help being uneasy with this easy life, knowing that the planet’s climatic fundamentals are no longer fundamental. The climate is going haywire. We who live it, know it, feel it, sense it in the upside down cycles of our farming lives. I remind myself that wailing and gnashing of teeth is for nought, so I look out the window at the current weather, grab the appropriate hat (felt or wool) and boots (leather or rubber) and go—out to my work, whatever that may be, in whatever sun or snow, or wind and rain awaits me on this particular day, in this particular corner of the world.

Sorting Seeds

Along about the beginning of February every year I panic at the onset of rapidly lengthening days and realize I need to order seeds for the coming season. Yes, I could have ordered back in late November when the new crop of seed catalogs started dropping in the mailbox, but I never do. I’m usually too occupied with wrapping up last season to think already about the next.

When I do finally decide to sit still for a couple of hours and place my orders, I realize the need to figure out what I need: how much of last years seed do I still have on hand? How much has passed its viable storage window? Which varieties did well last year, which ones not so well?

I gather up all of last year’s seed packets, collect assorted jars and baggies of home saved seed, and sit down at the bench in my garden-shed-office and take inventory. I try to be somewhat organized about the whole affair. I keep most garden seeds in a small repurposed metal tool box just the width of a seed packet. I place labeled cardboard dividers between each of four general categories. There are, I suppose, any number of ways one could organize seeds, but for simplicity I chose to catalog them in accordance with the four crop families of the biodynamic planting calendar: leaves, roots, fruits, and flowers. When I want to do a succession planting of optima butterhead lettuce in the middle of July, it’s nice to not have to dig through a box of 100 miscellaneous seed packets to find the exact one I need.

For taking inventory, I grab a seed pack and check the year for which it was packaged. If it is more than a couple of years old I will consult my tattered copy of Susan Ashworth’s fine and useful book Seed to Seed and check the storage viability of the seed in question. If it’s past the date at which the germination rate starts to fall off, I pour the seed into a container in which I collect all the old seed, one variety right on top of another. After an hour or so it becomes a beautiful mosaic of texture and color, what with plump red and purple corn on top of round pale peas, mixed with the earthy flat brown of dill and parsnips, the creamy teardrops of squashes, and all garnished with accents of tiny white lettuces and brownish-reddish brassicas. The job becomes a bit difficult, unsettling in a way, when I have to dispose of all that lovely seed, turning my back on its potentiality, denying it the opportunity to become its beautiful actualized vegetal self.

When it is hard and dry, seed has a distinctly inert appearance, but it is actually very much alive. A seed is, to my mind, one of the most incredible, beautiful, mysterious, and beguiling objects in all the world; and our lives utterly and quite literally depend upon it. A seed is like a biological micro-chip containing the formula and the code for the plant that will eventually grow from it. A pumpkin seed is not at all an inert object, but a potential pumpkin pie on the Thanksgiving table; a tomato seed will become part of the pizza rolling out of my wood fired oven on a pleasant summer evening. Knowing the latent power and importance nestled in each and every seed, I always feel a bit of trepidation and doubt as I’m emptying out all the expired seed packs. It is not easy to pour out old seed, tossing into a common seed cemetery. Yet it must be so. Seed is alive, and it is imperative that it be put down into moist earth and be allowed to grow, bloom, and fruit in order to remake itself. And so I, seed steward that I am, must hedge my bets by planting only the most viable seed. The rest must go—to the chickens, in my case. If I must toss it out, what more fitting end for a seed that doesn’t get a chance to grow than to become food for a bird, and in turn an egg for my table. All is not lost.

But why, you may rightly inquire, would you have every year so much seed to dispose of? Why not buy or save the correct amount to begin with? And what about holding on to that seed against future hard times, for when the grid goes down, the roads are impassable, when doomsday finally arrives?

The first and simplest answer relates to something my good friend and market gardening mentor Ted Wells told me some twenty-five years ago when I asked him how to know how much seed to order. He said simply, “Seed is cheap, running out is not.” So I always have ordered plenty, and even though I no longer grow for market, I still keep more than enough on hand for my needs.

As for saving seed for an unknown future — yes, food security most certainly rests in the careful storage of seeds. However, most of us do not have access to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, where seeds are stored in a low oxygen, low temperature environment to delay degeneration. Therefore our own seeds cannot be saved on a shelf indefinitely; they must be grown out from time to time (an interval that varies significantly between varieties) and the seed re-saved in order to maintain its viability. Take the lowly and under appreciated parsnip for example. Its seed remains viable for only one year, and even at that, it’s a sketchy germinator. You can’t simply tuck some seed away for a few years and wait for the hard times to come. Instead you must go to the garden, as I do every spring, spade in hand, and dig up several roots, and choosing a couple of the biggest and best, replant them. By August you’ll be harvesting the seed for next year. Some seeds are fine to save every two, three or even four years depending upon the variety. Not so with parsnips; they will make an honest gardener out of you.

The best defense against an unknown future is not to be found in any high tech storage solution, but rather in a decidedly low tech, centuries old practice that has been the basis of agriculture since it’s beginning: plant your crop, save your seed; repeat. Gardens and the seeds to grow them have meant security for centuries, and that fundamental has not changed. As we know, the industrial food complex is about as secure as a crystal wine glass balanced on the bumper of my pickup as I drive to town. A solid agricultural future rests in the seeds under our purview. Let them be planted and replanted, adapted and re-adapted, starting with our own saved seeds and those of our neighbors, and next, by using the seeds of local and regional seed companies.

Rats Again

A few years ago we converted a spare room on one end of the old farm shop/garage behind the farm house into a nice little guest room which we call the Cottage. We have had problems at various times over the years with rats making a comfortable home for themselves in the rafters of the building. A few weeks ago our son Aidan was home for the weekend and staying out in the Cottage. He reported the news: “Dad, you’ve got rats again.” There is nothing so disquieting as trying to fall asleep with the sound of 10,000 rodent feet scratching and shuffling about over your head. When we converted the spare room we tried to seal up all possible rodent entry points. This game of chess between man and rat is an old one, and if I thought I had found checkmate with my hardware cloth and spray foam, I was wrong. They countered my check with one of their own. They engaged with everything they had: rooks, bishops and little rat knights, with their queen close by for protection. The rafters of the guest cottage were once again full and completely occupied by the enemy.

First I searched out and sealed (resealed) any possible points of incursion. I set traps around the perimeter of the building, and even though I made a tunnel with a board to prevent such incidents, the first night all I caught was a bird, a sweet little song sparrow just trying to get through another northern winter. Poor thing. Boy did I feel bad.

I immediately removed the perimeter snap traps and got out my live trap. The Ratinator is a long, low cage with a spring door that allows for a rat, or hopefully multiple rats, to enter but not exit. Per the instructions, I wired the door open for several nights, liberally baiting the trap with corn, oats and barley from the grain bin. I placed the trap in the attic space above the garage portion of the building where I knew the rats were traveling freely. Here it would be impossible to accidentally catch a bird or some other innocent.

After a few days during which I could clearly see that the rats were coming and going at will, I sprung the door, setting the trap. The next morning I eagerly anticipated the dozen or so rats that would surely be crammed into the cage. There was one. When I opened the attic door I saw about eleven rats scurrying away into the shadows sniggering and thumbing their noses at me. One is better than none I thought, as I called my little dogs Nelson and Scout. I brought the cage down and set it in the driveway while the dogs danced around it, giddy with excitement. I opened the release door and “set free” the rat. At the same time I “loosed the hounds” and the hunt was on. It was over in moments. Ah nature…how is it that my little Nelson, who is only 4 inches tall and 16 inches long, knows how to grab a rat in his jaws and shake it with such violence that death is almost instant. I marvel that the hunting instinct is so alive and well in these most domesticated of animals, who eat kibbles and sleep deep under my covers at night.

One rat was great, but it really made no dent in the colony that had established itself in the attic. I did catch a couple of rats in snap traps, but they quickly learned to avoid them like the imminent danger they were. I turned my attention back to the live trap. Over the next week or so, I would leave the trap open for two or three days, allowing the rats to feed freely on my offering of corn, oats and barley. Then I would set the trapdoor in hopes of catching a few, but they were too clever for me. Somehow they knew that when the trapdoor was set, they could eat my bait grain right up to it, but not beyond, and when the door was wired up, it was free and easy pickings. Instead of eliminating the rats, I was feeding and nourishing them!

Finally, after a couple of weeks of being completely outsmarted, I climbed the ladder, opened the attic door, and peeked in as usual expecting to see the same old empty trap. But this time when I peeked in, immediately someone dashed to the back of the cage. Finally, a rat! I thought. I went a couple of steps higher and what I thought was a rat came dashing towards me. I about fell backwards off the ladder as I realized I was being stared down not by a rat, but by a weasel, lithe, sleek, and dark brown. With his little round ears and black pinpoint eyes we regarded intently one another. He didn’t know if I was friend or foe, but I knew right away that he was going to be a very, very good friend to me. I carefully brought the cage down, which is a bit unnerving while navigating the ladder with a wiry weasel desperately trying to find a way out. I set the trap down in the driveway and saw something astonishing: in one corner of the cage, as tidy as you please, was the meticulously dismembered body of a rat. Clearly some of the rat had been eaten while the rest had been stored away in a sort of weasel larder for future use. I greatly admired the thrift and care with which the job was done. Apparently the weasel had followed the unsuspecting rat right into the trap and made short work of him.

This time I made sure the dogs were locked in the house when I opened the escape door. The weasel shot out of the cage and with blinding speed disappeared under the nearby hydrangea bushes next to the house. I climbed back up the ladder and into the attic to see what I could learn about current conditions vis-à-vis rats and weasels. Crouching and walking along the boardwalk nailed to the rafters with my headlamp showing the way, a movement off to my left caught my eye. I shone my light into a two inch perfectly round knot hole in an old cedar shingle, and there peeking out at me, was another weasel, just the head this time, same round ears and tiny jet black eyes. I knew it could not be the same weasel I had just released, since he went off in the opposite direction, and I returned immediately to the attic. Two weasels working the rat colony, what great fortune! And indeed, only a week or so later, Aidan came home for the weekend and was again staying out in the Cottage. He reported that all was quiet, not the slightest sound of scurrying and scampering.

Sometimes the best solutions are found completely outside of ourselves and in the very nature of nature herself.