Healthy Soils, Healthy Foods!

I was asked to write an article for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetic's Food and Nutrition Magazine on soil health and its relationship to food. For me as a dietitian turned farmer, its interesting how much cross over there is between human nutrition and soil and plant nutrition. Looking a soil and plant tissue analyses is very much like reviewing  a patient's bloodwork. Its a snapshot of health and nutritional status. So while I am no longer prescribing diets for people, I do practice nutrition by prescribing diets for the crops we grow.

Click the link below to go to the online article:

Healthy Soils, Healthy Foods

There are also 2 really good videos from USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service that I've linked below.  One covers all the basics about soil and its health. The other is a good video on farmers adopting cover crops. They are both about 30 minutes long but worth the watching if you want to learn more!

Soil Stories - The Whole Story

Under Cover Farmers

Egg Freshness? Read the Carton!

I grew up in Western Massachusetts and have a distinct memory of an egg advertisement whose "jingle" always sang “brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh.”  Now, you probably know that the color of the egg shell is entirely dependent on the breed of hen and not the location where the eggs were laid. But have you ever wondered when you’re shopping for eggs just how fresh those eggs are at the grocery store? Today, you will learn how to find out! For this blog, you either need to grab an empty egg carton or read post this in your kitchen! J Today, we are going to learn about the freshness of your eggs, using the information that can be found on the egg carton. I’m not talking about the nutrition label but am talking about the printed codes on the end of your egg carton. Short of buying your eggs directly from a farmer, you will never know the exact date the eggs at the grocery store were laid, but you can come pretty close by reading the packing code on an egg carton.

All egg cartons have a printed code on the short side of the carton that reflects a “Julian Date”. The Julian calendar is a numerical calendar numbering the days of the year in sequence from 1 to 365. So January 1^st is always day 1 and December 31^st is day 365, except in the instance of leap years, like 2012, there are 366 days. January is easy because today, January 20^th, is always day 20 on the Julian calendar. It’s when you get into the middle of August that you start to lose count. Google “Julian calendar 2012” and you can easily print out a PDF file to make it easier if you are really into this assignment!

So look at your egg carton. What number do you see? Mine says 315, which means the eggs were packed on November 11, 2011. Then there is a number preceded by a “P”. This is the assigned USDA plant number of the egg packing plant where the eggs were packed. After that you will probably see a “use by” date. Hang on - We’ll get to that one later.

OK, so you’ve found the Julian date on your egg carton. Although there is no way to know for sure, it’s likely that the eggs in that carton were either laid the day before it was packed or the day of the actual packing. So the eggs in my carton were probably laid on November 10^th or possibly November 11^th.  How do I know this? Once upon a time, I worked for the “Maryland Ag in the Classroom”, a program that trains teachers to incorporate agriculture into their classrooms, and went on a field trip with a bunch of teachers to an egg packing plant. We watched as area farmers delivered eggs to the plant and then followed those eggs through the washing process, to candling, to grading & sizing, and finally to packing. It was a fascinating process and reassured me that when I am at the grocery store, each and every egg has been inspected and I am buying quality eggs. It also taught me how to determine the freshness of my eggs using the Julian date.

Now you’re asking yourself under your breath – “It’s January and she has eggs from November in her refrigerator?” YIKES! My goodness NO! I buy eggs from a friend whose son has a 4H laying hen project. I know my eggs are not that old, they are in fact, quite fresh. I return my cartons to make his 4H project more cost effective and so my egg carton dates never accurately reflect how fresh they are. But on the occasion that I run out of eggs, I read the Julian date on the carton so I can mentally calculate how old the eggs are.

So now the “use by’ date: A “use by” date on the carton is not required but many egg packers use them. It is not an expiration date. USDA says these dates are “the recommended maximum length of time that the consumer can expect eggs to maintain their quality when stored under ideal conditions”. Typically it is within 30-45 days of being packed. They don’t “expire” after that date, but are probably better for baked goods than they are for breakfast. They probably won’t whisk up a very nice meringue.

Keep in mind that eggs are a perishable food item. How they are handled and stored by also affects their quality and safety. If you go to the grocery on a warm day, buy eggs, put your eggs in the car, do a couple “quick” errands on the way home that turn out to be not so quick, you’ve reduced their shelf life regardless of the date on the egg carton.  Eggs should not go un-refrigerated for more than 2 hours, less if they are in a warm car. Storing eggs properly helps maintain their quality and safety. I always do my grocery shopping last on a list of errands so that my perishables get home quickly and put away.

Hopefully, you found this blog useful. I remember being so tickled after my egg packing field trip to be able to use the Julian date to figure out within 24-48 hours of when my eggs were laid and to meet the farmers who raised the hens.

Also, If you have never heard of “Ag in the Classroom”, I encourage you to Google it for your state and find out more about a very important agricultural training program for teachers.

Healthy Soils, Healthy Foods

One would assume there is little happening on the farm in January but actually quite a bit is happening. Like most farmers, we are passionate about being good stewards of our soil. The soil is our livelihood. Without the highest quality dirt, we cannot grow the highest quality foods or stay in the family business that we love. We spend as much time improving our soils as we do growing crops. We consider that the most sustainable farming practice. Our goal is to leave the soil in better condition that we received it so the next generation can have a healthy, profitable family farm.

To that end, the crop we are growing this winter is “cover crops”. There are several categories of cover crops including: Cereal crops like wheat, barley, oats, rye, and triticale; Brassica crops such as rapeseed and tillage or Daikon radishes; and Legume crops like crimson clover, hairy vetch and Austrian winter peas. Though each are different, cover crops are meant to improve the soil by reducing erosion and nutrient losses, add “green manure” or nutrients and organic matter to the soil, and build soil structure or what we farmers call “tilth”. Basically, we want our ground to feel like your walking on a shag carpet. (yes I know the word “shag” dates me…!)

Since farm equipment is very heavy, it is critical to us to keep our “tilth” by managing our soil. We practice “No-Till” farming on most all our fields. No-till means we do not plow or turn the ground over, but plant the seeds directly into the ground which still has last year’s crop particles (like chopped up corn stalks) all over the ground. No-Till farming not only builds up our soil but also reduces our carbon footprint by reducing the number of times we drive equipment across the field, which reduces the amount of fuel we use.

We use organic fertilizer like manure or chicken litter when its available and only apply what the crop needs for nutrients to grow. Crops, like humans, need “food” that contains vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. Things like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, calcium, boron, iron, magnesium, manganese, sulfur, and many other nutrients are found in the soil and are used by plants for growth, fruit and seed development, photosynthesis, root structure, plant health, and other life-supporting functions for healthy plants.

 A couple of examples:

Boron is a critical nutrient in fruit development. We apply boron to the soil for our grape crop so that the vines produce consistent, uniform berries on a cluster. Boron is critical in what we call “fruit set” or uniform clusters. Have you ever bought a cluster of grapes that isn’t uniform? If so, the soil where it is grown could be deficient in boron.

Plants need potassium, which we apply to the soil in the form of potash. Tomatoes have a high demand for potassium. Potassium is critical in assisting with the movement of water, nutrients and carbohydrates through out all the tissues of the plant. 

Calcium benefits “structure” as in your bones and tissues as well as plant tissues and structure. Soybeans benefit from adequate calcium to promote plant health and produce high quality beans. We apply lime in the fall not only to balance the pH of the soil but also so that calcium is readily available to the spring crops like soybeans.

Soil provides the food source or nutrition for crops to grow. Soil to farmers is like food to you. Much like your doctor (or dietitian!) can look at your lab results and assess your health, so too can we farmers read soil reports and determine the health of our soil. We only apply what the soil tests show is needed. There is no "multi-vitamin" application of nutrients to the soil "just in case". The soil gets "prescribed" exactly what it needs. As I said in my intro blog, being a farmer is being a health care professional for the dirt we are stewards of. It is in our best interest to maintain the health of our soil to grow healthy foods for you to buy as well as to maintain a profitable family farm for future generations.

Healthy soils = Healthy crops = Healthy foods. Your farmer is the one who makes that happen.

Know Your Farmer: Locavore or Globavore?

I love eating. I think a lot about where my food comes from and the farmers who produce it.  

My family predominantly lives on food we grow ourselves or which is grown locally by our neighbors. Our kids raise 4H hogs and one always goes to the freezer each year once the county fair is over. Our other main source of protein is venison, hunted on our own property. I was taught canning and freezing by my mom, and so I continue the tradition of “putting up” food when it is in season for use in our menus in the off season. I buy local peaches, strawberries, blueberries and other produce to can or freeze and use to make yummy dishes all year long. In this sense, I am very much a “locavore”.

The “buy local” movement has a lot of momentum and has done great things for local farm economies, not to mention the health benefits of eating food produced in season and from within your own community.

But as I sit here in New England, nearly 400 miles from “home”,  visiting my family for the holidays, and thinking of all the farmers I know around this globe, I’ve decided there are merits to being both a locavore AND a globavore.

I love being a globavore mainly because we know so many farmers in so many countries around this world. My family hosted International 4-H Youth Exchangees (IFYE’s) and young farmers for nearly 30 years. These young farmers and IFYE’s came from over 20 different countries making our connection to “Knowing Your Farmer” very meaningful and personal. In turn, members of our family have been able to travel to visit and spend time with several of these farm families on their farms in foreign lands.  “Know Your Farmer” takes a whole new definition when you’ve lived and worked with farm families around this globe.

I LOVE New England maple syrup, made by my dear friends who still tap trees and boil sap the old fashioned way. I think of them every time I use their syrup on my pancakes or French toast.

A couple of New England ice cream and cheese processors are my favorite brands because I know dairy farmers in the New England area whose milk is in the product.

Our Maryland neighbors milk cows for the Maryland-Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative. Supporting those brands the buy from the cooperative helps our neighbors.

I love pickles. I think of my cucumber-growing, fellow Eastern Shore woman-farmer Hannah who grows for a local pickle company every time I eat pickles.

I can’t count on my fingers and toes the number of friends I have who are poultry farmers. I know how much they care for their chickens and know I am getting a quality product supporting a fellow farmer when I buy the brands for whom they grow chickens.

When our freezer runs low on our own meat, I look for certain brands pork. My friend Jen is a hog farmer. I’ve been to her farm. I know how she operates and look for the brand that buys her hogs.

Distant Schmidt cousins who immigrated from Germany to Chile when our branch of Schmidt’s immigrated to America, are one of the largest table grape growers in that country. I think of them every time I buy Thompson seedless from Chile at my local supermarket. A relative grew those grapes.

We have dear friends who farm paprika peppers in South Africa. I think of them and remember my time in South Africa every time I use paprika as a seasoning.

I was fortunate to travel to Vietnam in January of 2011. I think of the rice and tilapia farmers I met when I consume either of those food items and hope they are doing well. While I don’t “know” them well, a face-to-face meeting with a farmer makes you have a better connection to how your food is produced, regardless of location.

That trip highlighted how food is globally interconnected and how important U.S. agriculture is to so many people outside our borders. Visiting Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Taiwan, I understood the importance of U.S. farm exports to feed people in countries with too little land mass to feed their own population. U.S. farmers support so many people beyond our own farm-gates, supporting globavores by choice and necessity.

On the flip side, the majority of what we grow on our family farm stays within 100 miles of our farm, a well used “rule of thumb” for defining “local” by many who have hitched their wagon to the local food movement. From our farm in MD, 100 miles reaches to PA, NJ, VA, WV, DE and DC. Whether its tomatoes to a cannery, fresh market green beans to a distributor, grapes to a winery, corn to a grain elevator, or soybeans to a tofu-maker, much of what we grow stays “local”. Our family farm supports many other local businesses both as a buyer of items we need to operate our farm, or as a seller of raw food or feed items to another family-owned local business. The fabric of the rural economy is very much a “locavore” economy, not only of food, but of products and services to and from family farms.

Locavore or Globavore, food is about relationships.  “Local” to me can be grown thousands of miles from me, but grown by a friend or distant relative. Knowing your farmer isn’t about distance, it’s about relationships. Consumers can connect their relationship to food by patronizing farmers markets, CSA’s, farm stands, creameries, or wineries, and by looking for local products in the grocery. But don’t lose sight of the fact that my friend Hannah may have grown those pickles you’re crunching, my friend Jen may have raised that bacon you had for breakfast or that my tomatoes may be in the spaghetti sauce you had for dinner last night. Just because our faces are not on the product, or you didn’t buy it direct from one of us, doesn’t mean that item wasn’t grown by a family farmer whose main interest in producing a safe and healthy food for your consumption.

Have a safe and blessed New Year!