Wink’s Blog

Another couple of nights with low temps in the single digits. The air has that metalic flavor that suggests deep cold and the snow crunches loudly under foot. Hibernation is the appropriate response. And eating — Max calls it: “Putting on winter fat.” A warm fire in the wood stove, a couple of good books, and there’s no tire tracks out the gate for days at a time.
Finally Maggie and Derek arrived to share our coziness, bring us out of our solitude, and prolong our season of giving. Good conversation, more good books, and more great cooking ensues. Last night’s desert, for instance, was a delicious pumpkin creme broulee by M&D from a recipe Max found on line. It called for melting the sugar crust using a kitchen blow torch. Since we have “bumpkins” in the larder and I have a torch in my plumbing kit, we decided to give it a try. It was a resounding success except it was also considerably more of the winter fat than any of us needs at this point. Today a hike is planned and gathering more firewood.

Last night was magical and conducive to insomnia: winter sky was clear and cold; the moon, at 97%-full, amplified by a dusting of new snow, turned the night to almost-day. The coyotes sure thought it was a good night to report on their adventures; perhaps singing Sun back from his southward migration. About half-an-hour ago (6:28 AM) Earth began her tilt back toward summer; the days are beginning to lengthen even without help from the moon.

Thus it is the first official day of winter; it will be a couple of months before Sun gathers enough intensity to overcome the accumulated chill and snow-reflection to bring Spring. It feels like winter this morning: outside temp is 8 degrees; and colder as I rounded the corner of the cabin into in the down-slope breeze from the high country. Returning with the ash bucket, I emptied last week’s accumulation, and now a cheery fire in the stove is taking off the chill. We have been living in the proximity of the wood stove: Max is finishing a quilt for son Nik and I have moved my desk work to a warm corner and am clearing accumulated piles of the years’ paper work.

Sun rose while I was in the shower. The point on the horizon from which the rays first reach us will now begin to slowly progress northward, describing the crest of the West Elk mountains. The exact time of dawn’s first rays is determined as much by the height of the peak it is scaling as by the lengthening of the calendar day. Today, at the Winter Solstice, it emerges from the southerly end of the range where the ridge trails off toward Black Canyon. Tomorrow it will be incrementally north, climbing the ridge of Land’s End, and, paradoxically, we may experience the sun a little bit later than we did today. And so it will go into Spring. Dawn will slide easily along the saddle between Lands End and Mt Lamborn and then struggle to arise in time to surmount Lamborn. Eventually, at Summer’s first day it will have traversed the entire ridge and show up from behind a low point in the horizon, the more distant, though taller, 14,000-foot peaks of the Elk Range.

Nonetheless, we are grateful for the promise of longer days to come. Happy Solstice to all!

There’s a lovely story about compassion, humor, and group decision-making at the end of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html.
The article itself discloses how government fertilizer subsidies, together with good rains, have produced bumper harvests of corn in Malawi this year after years of severe famine. Recent starvation was the result of strict World Bank-imposed “free market” policies intended to force farmers to grow food for export and to buy food for their families with the proceeds. The government fertilizer and seed subsidies enable farmers to grow food to feed their families first and export the rest. It is a graphic example of the failure of heartless free market globalization policies that the developed countries seek to impose on poor countries.
I am reminded, as I often am, of John Nichols, New Mexico trilogy (”The Magic Journey”, “Milagro Beanfield War, “Nirvana Blues.” I recommend we reread them for a dissection of the ways the powerful undermine local, self-sufficient, economies; force them to incur debt; and thereby turn proud people into wage slaves — all for the financial advantage of the rich and powerful.

I’ve already asserted in a previous blog that there is a link between food, diet, and health. At Mesa Winds Farm we raise organic food because it’s the only food we would want to eat — and we wouldn’t sell food to our customers that we wouldn’t eat ourselves. Max and I are presently visiting family in St Louis and, having driven across Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri to get here we have had ample opportunities to reflect on the US attitude toward food. A sampling:
1. We hear that the “Farm” Bill is dead until at least next year. Michael Pollan urges us to think of it as a “Food Bill” since it has such an impact on the food choices we are likely to see for at least the next five years. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/opinion/04pollan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) The Bill’s difficulties are an indication that Congress may actually be paying attention to this legislation for a change thanks to agitation by Pollan, the Organic Consumers Association (http://www.organicconsumers.org/), our own VOGA (www.vogaco.org), and others. They, and we, urge that the final legislation allocate an appropriate proportion of support for choices that will be healthy for the American people, for rural communities, and for the earth herself. Please get informed and help keep the pressure on Congress.
2. We are reminded of the comment by our organic potato farmer friend that commercial potato farmers don’t feed their families on potatoes from their fields; they have a kitchen garden for their own consumption. He makes this point to underscore the conclusion that farmers know the potatoes they send to the market aren’t fit to eat. I remember an event, when we lived near Bozeman, MT, when an entire neighborhood was evacuated because a drum of chemical fell off a semi on the highway — a known carcinogen with which commercial potatoes are fumigated to retard sprouting.
3. I’ve been looking for an analogy to putting something as vital as our food system in the hands of commercial interests: health care? legal defense? transportation safety? school systems? Hmmm. Maybe we now think our interests are adequately protected in all these arenas despite, or even because of, low initial cost. But ask practitioners in those fields and they’ll tell you that low cost is a poor way to choose quality. Maybe that’s why we are living through erosion in all those services: we’ve been willing to accept the free-marketeers’ doctrine that low cost is the most important element in choice.
Maybe the analogy works the other way around: cheap food policy is instructive of what’s wrong with reliance on the so-called market system to provide both low cost and quality in essential commodities and services. First, I challenge the notion that there is such a thing as a true market system. As in any unfettered “market” those with the greatest market power use their position to undermine the power of lesser players — thereby violating the essential proposition. A corrupted market is just that: corrupted. If you notice, those who try to hardest to convince us of the sanctity of any market are those who have a market advantage to protect.
Consider the food system: Markets rely on price competition among vendors and buyers. Farmers have few buyers from which to choose (a point ably explicated by Michael Pollan in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”); prices commanded by farmers stay low — hardly enough to cover the cost of production; and a state of affairs perpetuated by the Farm Bill. In the mythical pure system, this would cause producers to reduce supply, thereby driving prices up. Instead, farmers typically increase production in an effort to squeeze enough profit to stay in business out of their acres and equipment. Conventional farmers are encouraged to apply more artificial fertilizers and questionable pesticides and herbicides hoping that yields will off-set the cost of additional inputs. Maybe they hope their neighbor will go bankrupt first and thereby incrementally reduce overall supply. In any event this state of affairs is just fine with the pesticide dealers, the bankers, fuel suppliers, agribusiness buyers (ADM, Cargill, etc). And consumers — as long as they don’t consider whether the cheap food is healthy, nutritious, and delicious. It is not about good food.
The fact that we are organic, family farmers doesn’t relieve us of these pressures. The system that has prevailed for decades on our farm, and those of our neighbors, is the same: one buyer, lowest prices, pressure to over-produce, apple prices held low by competition from China. Our response, though, is different. We seek to connect directly with the people who eat the food we grow: who value the exceptional quality of organic, tree-ripened fruit, who value knowing the farms and farmers from whom their food comes; who value the survival of healthy rural agricultural communities, and who understand that if they want such values to continue (and grow) that their farmers need and deserve to receive a reasonable income. Together we are part of a revolution in agriculture.
4. We are grateful for all those who have joined hands with us in this mission: our Organic Food Club customers, our friends who take advantage of our Farm Stay opportunities to vacation and work on Mesa Winds Farm, and our workers whose labor, generously given despite low wages, helps bring our fruit to market. Thank you all. And, if you would like to know more about these opportunities, visit the web site… and welcome!