Hunting Cattle

After reading through most of Cows Save the Planet and other Improbable ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth by Judith D. Schwartz, my main takeaway is that which the author probably intended by her choice of book title: stop eating beef unless it was grazed rotationally. Through numerous visits to ranchers who take the effort to move their herds to graze intensively one area at a time, Schwartz makes a convincing case that there is no better way to enrich large tracts of soil. If it were possible to increase the cattle population by herding in this fashion, the world would be a better place.

Can they save the planet? Maybe they can get us most of the way there if we also follow through with the 18 other solutions that precede managed grazing on Drawdown's list of 100 things that need to be done. They point out there that managed grazing, "does not address the methane emissions generated by ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.), which ferment cellulose in their digestive systems and break it down with methane-emitting microbes." If you look down the list to #72, however, you can find something that does address that particular biological shortcoming - biochar. There is movement afoot for biochar to be allowed in animal feed in the U.S. Chickens are likely to be given the nod first, but cows should be included not long thereafter. Canada may be leading the U.S. in permitting these changes. Europe is ahead of both.

In cattle, methane is mainly generated in the rumen, i.e. the first bovine stomach. It comes out mostly from the front end. By altering the enzyme and microbe environment in the rumen, a small percentage of biochar in a ruminant's feed can alleviate some of that gas while solving a host of other animal health imbalances. Hey, if cows are going to save the planet, we should do something for them, right?

Either way, managed grazing still pencils out in the black when you do the carbon accounting. With this in mind, I checked out the list of suppliers to my local farmstand, Chesapeake's Bounty, and noticed that at least three (Grand View Farm, Monnett Farm, and P. A. Bowen Farmstead) are holistic grazers. If I don't find what I want at the Bounty, Monnett sells at the California, MD farmers' market April through November.

With the prices for this beef running about double what the grocery stores charge, I am strongly considering buying a side of beef the way Dad used to do. That way you save about 3 to 4 dollars a pound, but you need three big coolers to bring it home and lots of freezer space. The cuts are vacuum packed and last for a year or more. Even as an 8-year-old, I had the sense that buying this much meat at one time was pretty macho. So what if it's the closest I'll ever get to hauling home a kill from the hunt? I imagine the feeling will be pretty much the same.

Retirement in the Time of Cholera

I reached my sabbath decade a couple of years ago. Even before that, my long work history in federal service allowed me to take retirement. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so I work away at things that I believe will be helpful, trying to emulate our Father in Heaven who rests and enjoys the fruits of his labor, while keeping everything on an even keel.

During the final decade of my life-cycle, maintaining an even keel looks like it will require battening down the hatches. Financial collapse looms. Best to turn liquid assets into something more permanent. The Social Security Administration tells me that if I live another 3 years, I have a better than average chance of making it to 83 years. That fails to include the life-threatening risks that accompany hard times and ecological collapse, not to mention the prospects of Social Security insolvency. I think I'll take that bird in my hand.

Financial planning should include short-, medium-, and long-term goals. Those time frames compress in the sunset years. Right now, I see them as 1, 5, and 10 years. These days, financial assets for the medium- and long-term time frames should be kept in gems or precious metals. These should be put to use as the occasion arises to purchase durable goods and property that will have near-term, as well as lasting, value in production or trade.

Working for pay should be low priority. Managing and reducing assets already acquired, i.e. having one's affairs in order, should be emphasized.

Aside from survival, the sabbath decade should be one of enjoyment. Rewards should come from diligent saving. Vacations and hobbies should be undertaken more earnestly, pets and spouses given more time and attention. Luxuries have no place in my budget, but there are some things that money can buy that could make life a bit more enjoyable. Following Ralph Nader's advice, I subscribe to Consumer Reports to know what could be worth buying, though living with less is my m.o.

I've come to put the pleasure of good cooking nearly on par with life itself.  Everything around me can go to Hell, but tasty, wholesome food is my bottom line. When that basic pleasure is gone, I don't think I will last much longer. Could that be why people who lose their sense of smell die within 5 years? Smell and taste are mutual senses.

Nap time is also hugely rewarding. Sleep comes so much easier in the middle of the day, especially when I've been doing physical labor. Many days, a 10- or 15-minute nap brings wonderful relief from the tiredness that comes with age.

Naps and night sleep fill the mind with dreams, which for me have little waking value, but are valuable in and of themselves. Perhaps if food fails, I can find a way to alter my mental state to allow me to endure by consuming raw foods and pharmaceuticals, living out my remaining days with nightdreams and daydreams as a refuge from the waking nightmare of civilization's collapse.

Dining In

Taking the Drawdown list at face value, the 100 measures listed are potential candidates for reducing my family's carbon footprint (including biochar, #71, which occupies so much of my time). Many of the measures do not pertain to someone in my situation. I am owner of only 1 acre, mostly forested, on a hillside in a temperate climate zone. Yet, there are some I can pursue that, right or wrong, are ranked even higher than biochar.

The first is: "#3 - Reduced Food Waste." For our family, there is some room for improvement with this. I am trying to eat what I grow and what I preserve, but sometimes the bounty is too great. I need to give more food away, at least until the quality of my produce will allow me to specialize and sell at farmers' markets. Mushrooms may be the ticket. Oyster mushrooms seem most promising, since I might soon be able to clone great quantities. Foods we don't eat go to composting (#60), so we don't truly waste any of it.

Related to #3 is the next measure on Drawdown's list: "#4 - Plant-Rich Diet." This is a most welcome requirement. I recommend retirement as early as possible, since I have found it allows time for lots of cooking, but even if you can't afford to retire yet, I recommend making cooking a priority. I can hardly stand to eat out anymore; restaurant food is either so disgusting or too expensive, or both.

I say this because last year I discovered a handy feature in some of the cookbooks my wife has purchased over the years, but had never been put to use. The "Taste of Home" annual recipes
have a special index based on ingredients. It makes it easy to find a recipe that contains what you have on hand. No longer do I bother with questionable online recipes which offer such searches. I just grab one of the dozen "Taste of Home" books on our shelf and find a kitchen-tested recipe that gives me something to look forward to every day. Adding any missing ingredients to our shopping list allows us to buy them anytime we happen to be in a supermarket. As the pantry fills with staples, less and less shopping is needed to make whatever recipes are chosen. By selecting recipes containing produce that we grow, we are able to enjoy amazing food at affordable prices while also achieving measure #3.

Who knew that saving the planet could be so enjoyable?!!

A Biochar Breakout Opportunity

Relatively speaking, Scott Pruitt supports efforts to clean up toxic waste in our land. He only wants to cut the superfund budget by $330 million, which is a 30% cut, as opposed to the 34% cut for the EPA overall. To show even more support, he wants to be briefed regularly on the 10 worst superfund sites. The other 1,300 sites are not going to receive as much attention. At the same time, under Pruitt's budget proposal, the states will have 45% less federal grant money to rely on for some of their clean-up efforts.

Since money is tight for these projects, the EPA and PRP's (Potentially Responsible Parties, but let's just call them "perps") should be happy to know that there is a lower cost method available to remediate heavy metal contamination in soils. Heavy metals are elements of high density (> 5 g/cc) and include Cd, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn. These metals are often left in the soil after manufacturing, mining, and disposal operations have moved on and can also be spread far and wide on the wind, especially from stack gases. They make it into the food chain via plants, and easily transform wholesome food into poison or ruin crops altogether. In some projects, activated carbon is used to sorb the heavy metals, but research has found that some less costly biochars do a better job.

CONTAMINATION by luc borell

With the loss to date of 1 billion acres of degraded, abandoned farmland, recovering that land is important for both the climate and public health. Estimates show the global activated carbon market to be growing exponentially due to environmental needs. Biochar made from animal manure, and then steam-activated, could satisfy 35% of worldwide granulated activated carbon (GAC) demand. It is cheaper than regular GAC and recycles another overloaded waste stream to useful ends. Other processes have used different biochar feedstocks and additives and proven helpful, as well, but manure's high phosphorus fraction seems to give it better heavy metal adsorption ability, according to Dr. Isabel Lima. Lead and mercury are adsorbed particularly well by phosphorus functional groups.

With energy companies like Shell dipping their toe into biochar production, there may be a better chance that their man Pruitt and the EPA will look into this solution.

Sonny, Don't Blow Up the Kids!

In my previous post, I referred to rising U.S. food prices and included a link to the latest monthly data as evidence. Critical readers may have questioned whether that supported the idea that we are seeing food price outpace inflation over any significant period of time, rather than just the latest month. You may research it yourself or take my word for it, but I took the PPI data from the BLS pages and compared the cumulative food price rise to core inflation over the 7+ years of data given and determined that food prices have, indeed, risen faster than inflation by 0.2 percent - not enough to even notice, but my statement stands. I could have researched CPI data and come up with slightly different results, but since my initial reference was based on producer prices, PPI should be adequate for this discussion.

The global picture is much more stark. Using data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, it is easy to see from this graph that, since around 2000, food prices have risen faster than inflation by around 25% ! The yellow line factors inflation in and shows that the world has undergone a reversal from decreasing real food prices in the last part of the 20th century to increasing food prices in this century. The gyrations of the past decade very likely correlate to oil price swings.

The near-term effect of more costly food will be a gradual shift to cheaper food, with resultant effects on health. The Blowhard administration is ahead of the curve in cultivating a taste among the less privileged for cheap eats. Early this month they rolled back federal requirements for schools to limit sodium and include more whole grains in their meals. The disingenuous argument from Sonny Perdue that kids won't eat the healthier foods ignores the matter of kids being more malleable than adults, so, compared to other groups, kids are the best candidates for healthy meals. More importantly, experts tell us that "eating behaviors established in childhood lay the foundation for eating habits throughout life, and of course for health."

The Green Party cares about our children possibly more than any other political party. While fighting hard to preserve an external environment where future generations can hope to survive and thrive after us elders have departed, Greens also want to give those children a healthy internal start. In their platform, the Green Party calls for more regulation of school meals:

Provide healthy school meals that are rich in vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber, and offer plant-based vegetarian options. Support Farm-to-School programs that provide food from local family farms and educational opportunities. 

Ban the sale of soda pop and junk food in schools. Junk food is defined as food or beverages that are relatively high in saturated or trans fat, added sugars or salt, and relatively low in vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber.

So it costs a little more. Soon, probably a lot more. Good nutrition now will give our kids the strong bodies they need to handle a future with physical demands far greater than in the days of ubiquitous fossil-fueled assistants.

Before Letting the GeNe Out of the Bottle...

Applying the Precautionary Principle to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), we support a moratorium until safety can be demonstrated by independent (non-corporate funded), long-term tests for food safety, genetic drift, resistance, soil health, effects on non-target organisms, and cumulative interactions. - Green Party Platform (Agriculture)

The Green Party would probably like to idle CRISPR until we better understand all of the ramifications of making changes to an organism's DNA, but its inventors have come out with a benign version that can be used just to detect a particular disease. It does this through matching RNA of the virus or other pathogen, typically from a blood, urine, or saliva sample. The fact that the new system, named SHERLOCK, can be impregnated into paper and stored there until needed makes it very cheap to produce by the millions for bedside detection of communicable diseases, cancers, and other urgent conditions. Each unique RNA sequence being checked (Zika virus, for instance) could have a SHERLOCK produced within a few days and it would be 1,000 times more sensitive to detecting the virus than the most common tool now in use (ELISA).

Photo by Ricardo Hurtubia

This looks like a biotech development that should sail through FDA approval and soon be in the hands of clinics worldwide. That will be a huge boon to the Broad Institute of MIT and its spinoffs, giving them and CRISPR great publicity and more of a chance of approval for wider application. Regulators and lawmakers should move quickly to set limits on genetic engineering. The extent to which the food industry has already taken liberties with biological pollution is disconcerting to many and now can be expected to accelerate unless authorities step in.

The Green Party  is calling for a federal Technology Assessment Office to examine how technology fits with life on Earth, with our neighborhoods, and with the quality of our daily lives. There was such an office for a short while until Congress decided they could politic just fine without looking into risks and unintended consequences. SHERLOCK looks like a wonderful tool to prevent diseases from spreading. While celebrating, let's make sure to look hard at CRISPR and other related technologies before we let that surge of optimism carry us away.

The Solution to Pollution is Economic Revolution

It may have escaped most people's notice that availability of the earth's resources has been swiftly declining for decades. This will soon be reflected in a declining rate of goods available to the average world citizen, including food. Widespread hunger will be a faithful witness that we lack the basic necessities to sustain a growing world population. Those of seared conscience will begin to take notice when they sense it in their gut, if not in the food line.

This predicament simplifies decision-making considerably. When decisions deal with feeding a starving population in the interest of the common good, choices that improve food production and distribution should receive highest consideration. Problems that weren't formerly seen in those terms are brought into stark relief when recast in the context of famine.

Many issues could be boiled down to how well the possible solutions improve food availability, but one salient example in my neck of the woods is the health of the Chesapeake Bay. There are many eco-services that a vibrant Chesapeake Bay watershed offers to the economy (most currently valued more than food), but food production alone is more than enough to justify government expenditures toward restoring the watershed.

A 2014 peer-reviewed study for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation determined that the natural capital of the watershed offers a high economic return on our restoration dollars spent. Of the billions of dollars of benefits we reap from this unique ecosystem, only about 10% comes in the form of food production, e.g. seafood and agriculture. Nevertheless, a 10% increase in baseline food production, which could be expected from cleaning up the bay, is of sufficient economic value alone to pay for administering those cleanup efforts. On the other hand, if President Blowhard's proposed elimination of the program is approved and we go back to the old way where states were not accountable for making progress, there would be an estimated 11% loss of food production. That is an annual loss of $1.3 billion in food production as opposed to last year's cost of $73 million for the EPA to run the cleanup program.

Even if we discount the value of improved aesthetics, climate, recreation, waste treatment, and air and water quality (should those criteria become less important in the coming decades than putting food on the table) we would be money ahead by continuing the federally administered program to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.  However, while we are in transition to a sustenance economy, these other affected sectors will initially reap 90% of the multifarious economic benefits. Among the beneficiaries would be real estate, tourism and hospitality, outdoor recreation, and public health; and with the increase in our food supply, there are starving nations today who could use our surplus.

There is a cost to all of this ecological restoration beyond the amounts in EPA and state budgets. It is embedded in industry compliance with stormwater and sewer regulations, mainly in connection with property development and agriculture (mostly carried by Department of Agriculture subsidies). There are also municipal wastewater treatment costs. All these costs may offset the various GDP increases from the restoration and that will continue to be the case until we learn that failing to account for externalities in choosing how we coexist with nature will always come back to bite us. The way to avoid this unhappy result in the future is to adopt a different economic motive that prioritizes permaculture principles. As Richard Heinberg explains,

'Village 1860' by Stuart Williams

"growth is ending anyway: we need to restructure the economy so it can provide what we really need (food, basic services) without the expectation of continual expansion."

Maximizing Health Benefits from Cultivated Crops

Many of  mushrooms' medicinal properties come from agents they use to protect themselves from pathogens in their environment. Mycelial hyphae are only one cell wall thick, so they must be well armed to fight off whatever threats come their way.

Plants behave similarly to mycelium by manufacturing chemical agents to stave off invaders. It would seem that these special chemicals would also be of use to humans who cook and consume their hosts, just as when they eat mushrooms.

Without going into a plant by plant breakdown of these medicinal compounds, we can still consider what it takes to maximize their presence in our food. Just growing and cooking your own food is the most important step to improving nutritional and pharmacological content in your diet.

Some vegetables lose a large percentage of their nutrients in the transition from farm to table. Considering those from the list of important nutrient sources in my last post,

• Produce items to eat ASAP after harvesting include strawberries, mushrooms, parsley, snap beans, and spinach. 
• Tomatoes are best ripened on the vine. Grocery store tomatoes are often picked green and ripened on the way to market, but are not as nutritious as vine-ripened tomatoes.
• Darker tomatoes have more lycopene than light colored varieties. 
• Garlic should be left uncooked for 10 minutes after cutting or pressing to allow a chemical reaction that creates allicin to occur.

Plants get the majority of their chemical constituents from the surrounding soil, so rich soil is the key to maximizing plant food and medicinal value. Healthy plants, grown in healthy soil have a richer store of medicinal agents, since they did not need to expend them all fighting off soil-borne foes. Healthy soil is, principally, deep topsoil with good structural, textural, mineral, hydrological, and biological properties. Organic matter is a key component of healthy soil. Biochar and earthworms multiply and stabilize the effects of added organic matter.

Photo by Charles Wiriawan

Organic gardening and farming are not only good for the environment, but also a path to High Performance Agriculture, producing the most nutrition, yield, and pharmacological benefit.

The most healthy plants, according to Amish farmer +John Kempf, are those that have attained the pinnacle in his plant's version of Maslow's hierarchy, going beyond microbial resistance to being able to chemically fend off attacks by insects through manufacturing of plant secondary metabolites (PSM's). I think a good test of how well my soil and plants are doing on this score is to see how disease free they are when grown at our community garden surrounded by other plots whose owners often ignore organic principles, leading to an external environment rife with biological threats. Progress was made this year, but we still have a long way to go.

Help Yourself

Before alleviating injuries and prolonged neglect with herbal remedies, an even more fundamental step is giving our bodies their best fighting chance by supplying them with all the resources they need. Following the general rules prescribed by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is important, but if people are like plants, then something akin to Liebig's Law of the Minimum also pertains. The Law of the Minimum states that the overall health of a plant is limited by scarcity of the nutrient(s) that it most lacks.

The Dietary Guidelines tells us which nutrients tend toward deficiency in American diets. These include potassium, dietary fiber, choline, magnesium, calcium, and vitamins A, D, E, and C. Two others, iron and folate, are important for women. Limiting the amount of meat in one's diet makes access to these nutrients even more challenging, but I believe that the crops and poultry I raise now or in the near future on a relatively small area will be sufficient to satisfy all of my nutritional demands. Here's how I hope to get my victuals:

• Calcium (for nerve transmission and cardiovascular system) - dark leafy greens
• Potassium (prevent bone loss) - potatoes (sweet or regular), beet greens, white beans
• Fiber (lower heart disease risk) - beans
• Choline (prevent muscle & liver damage) - eggs
• Magnesium (regulate diverse biochemical reactions in the body, including protein synthesis, muscle and nerve function, blood glucose control, and blood pressure regulation; essential for energy) - green leafy vegetables, nuts, legumes, potatoes
• Vitamin A (eyes, skin, immune system) - darkly colored orange or green vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and kale; and orange fruits such as cantaloupe and peaches
• Vitamin C (wound healing, brain function) - strawberries, kiwi, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, and spinach
• Vitamin D (strong bones) - sun-dried shiitake mushrooms, other mushrooms, eggs
• Vitamin E (antioxidant) - nuts, green leafy vegetables

Photo by Olearys

For staples, calorie dense crops like grain corn, peanuts, cabbage and winter squash will also be important. The only thing to add is watermelon, which is also a staple (since it is 95% water). At this point, lacking nut and egg production, I will continue to rely on purchased products to satisfy some of these requirements, but dietary self-sufficiency appears to be coming into reach. 

Herbs - Medicine for the Rest of Us

When I took up growing mushrooms, the thing that most attracted me to them was their potential health benefits, i.e. their medicinal value. My preferred delivery path is eating or drinking, often in combination with other tasty ingredients, rather than pill form.

Now that our reishi mushrooms are growing on log totems, I'm looking forward to drinking plenty of reishi tea. While I'm at it, dropping a green tea bag into the pot will be an easy way double the immunity boosting power of the brew and help ensure against prostate cancer. Drinking several cups a day will be easy in this climate.

After realizing the magic in mushrooms to cure and prevent major ailments, I also realized that I've foregone potentially significant benefits from herbs as well, merely because our FDA and medical establishment steers us down the prescription drug path. It would be great if my wife and I could cut our pharmacy bill by growing medicinal herbs and cook at least part of our medicine into meals we eat.

Photo by Eugene Birchall

There is a new continuing education class being offered by the College of Southern Maryland this October on using medicinal herbs. I'm hoping to enroll. You pay $100+ for lab fees, but get to take home maybe ten herbal potions that they help you to concoct.

Self Preservation

The University of Maryland Extension has me doing a lot these days. The little commitments you make to get into these volunteer roles turn out to require big allotments of time when you count all the self-directed projects and tasks that come from knowing how to do something. Even the free classes, given under the banner of "Garden Smarter," can alter your lifestyle by launching you into home-based activities you may have never undertaken otherwise.

In my case, it was the Garden Smarter series that acquainted me with the Master Gardener program and also taught me how to safely can produce. Prior to taking the free class on Home Food Preservation by our local extension educator, I was on pretty shaky ground with canning (though I still managed to win a blue ribbon in the Calvert County Fair for bread and butter pickles). Now, in our second year of canning per the Ball Blue Book (available at many hardware and farm goods stores), we are becoming somewhat proficient, having already canned homemade barbecue sauce, ketchup, tomato paste, and taco sauce using our bounty of biochar-farmed tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Even with all the canning, I've been picking more than enough to sell 15 lbs of heirloom tomatoes per week to a local restaurant. Our green beans are doing so well this year that, just to keep up with the harvest, we are freezing instead of canning them.

When you put so much work into growing your own food, you darn sure aren't going to let it go to waste. The reward comes when you get to savor all the real food flavor that the corn syrup laden commercial versions leave out. There is also the assurance that you are getting more nutrition and avoiding harmful chemicals with each mouthful. If you need convincing, I would encourage you to try home canned items bought from a farm stand, made yourself, or here at our place. We have a good year of eatin' to look forward to.

Losing Native Naivety

Our walk to the Elms Environmental Education Center's pond last week was preceded by a slide talk about the importance of using native plants in watershed protection projects. The point was made by +Kurt Reitz, our gracious host, that the reason we want native plants is for the insects.

Photo by Tim Hynes

It takes a while to pull that thread, but what it amounts to is that plants feed insects and insects feed animals and native plants are evolutionarily adapted to the food chain of their area.

I become a little indifferent to the native plant appeals when I recall that I have a food chain that currently doesn't rely on foraging and hunting. In the expectation that this could change rather quickly, I am endeavoring to establish a food forest around my home, but not strictly using natives. Planting natives is a very helpful environmental practice, but environmentmental restoration still takes a back-seat to survival. However, as our fossil-fueled supply chain falters, rejoining the local food chain may become essential to survival.

The more I garden, the more I take pleasure in growing ornamentals. Yet, future reliance on agroforestry for a multitude of resources that will no longer be derived from or made using fossil fuels deters me from planting lots of native ornamentals mainly for environmental preservation.

There are some edible natives, however, that deserve a place in my forest garden. These include: Paw-paw, persimmon, gooseberry, black raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, and elderberry. I already have everything but the first and last of these. They aren't all that I wish to grow in the way of edibles, so non-natives will be in the mix. Then there are the less edible plants that provide other key functions in support of cultivated trees, including the insectary role. The time it takes to harvest, preserve, and consume or distribute the perennial bounty will ultimately determine where my forest farming ends and ornamental gardening begins.

No Free Lunch

Here in the 19th wealthiest county in the nation, we are without a metropolitan area unless you count the piece where I live, which is lumped together with part of St. Mary's county. We have a lot of farms in either county, so there should be no lack of wholesome food.

That being the case, what is behind the long-standing campaigns to grow and distribute free food to the "hunger community" in our area? Do such organized efforts alleviate long-term poverty? Do they invite outsiders desperate for food?

Two programs that stand out most are Farming4Hunger and End Hunger in Calvert County. Farming4Hunger appears to have the more honest appellation, since hunger might be a product of their efforts. Ending hunger is, of course, impossible and disingenuous as a campaign name.

The phrase "hunger community" is used in the annual report of Farming4Hunger and smacks of a caste system that implies separation of persons who rely on handouts for food. Joining the hunger community could enable a person to leave aside at least some of their struggle for basic necessities and enjoy some of the finer pleasures of life such as a home, a car, and pets.

Wait..., did I just say that a home, car, and pets are not necessities? Millions of Syrians and other migrants have come to that conclusion. The pets actually were probably temporary necessities for a meal or two, but the home and car were left behind, becoming aspirations once again as raw survival became the prime motivator.

The struggles of these refugees will go on for decades,

Photo by Stu Mayhew (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

mainly so their children may enjoy a better life. The irony is that many of them have a better chance of dealing with the economic turmoil ahead than the staid classes among whom they have infiltrated. What of those here in the 19th richest county in the USA who are insulated from those hardships. Will their children know how to dig themselves out?

Stasis. That is what is behind food giveaways. We want big ag to continue, so we have programs like Farming4Hunger that says the way to get food is through farming as we know it, and supports farmers who can't sell part of their crop on the market. We want people to think well of our charity, either as churches or corporations, so we sponsor programs like End Hunger in Calvert County which should be looking for ways to put themselves out of business, but seem interested in endless growth.

This stasis will not bring stability. Our current food system and growth paradigm is unsustainable. People need to be taught how to grow food and protect the soil. Those things, in themselves, are a struggle for anyone, but there's really no free lunch.

Avoiding Poison Mushrooms (at the Market)

Not all edible organic mushrooms are safe to eat.  As +Paul Stamets points out in Mycelium Running - How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, some mushrooms from China, for example, might have accumulated heavy metals from the high degree of ambient pollution where they were grown, yet still be considered organic. The draft standards for Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) mushrooms should mitigate this problem, as hyperaccumulation of heavy metals is built into its safeguards. To wit:

• Substrate may not be directly placed on any surface contaminated with heavy metals or other synthetic pollutants. 

For growers, CNG offers a clearer path to producing wholesome mushrooms than the organic program followed by most other agricultural producers. The National Organic Program (NOP) requirements may take measures beyond what should reasonably be applied to an organic mushroom farm, since fungi are nourished and cared for differently than plants and animals. However, if a beginning grower could convince themselves that they comply with the CNG standard, and try to align that with the NOP requirements, as long as they are not grossing over $5,000 of organic product sales per year, then they should self-certify as "organic." 

Beyond $5K in sales, official certification is required. At that point, I would probably opt for the CNG certification, rather than organic. After an inspection by one of the incumbent experts (possibly +Tradd Cotter, himself), as the only CNG grower in my area (the closest is vegetable grower, Working Over Thyme Farm in Brandywine), I could then be an inspector of new mushroom farms seeking the CNG label.

As far as buying mushrooms, my advice is to try to buy organic mushrooms, and when the certified naturally grown label for mushrooms becomes available, opt for that. In either case, you'll be safeguarding yourself from pesticides and other poisons that you could get in mushrooms which seem to eat about anything fed to them.

I Wannabe the Fungi Guy

Mark Jones of Sharondale Farm in Virginia talks about his vision for the relationship of towns and communities to fungi. This whimsical vision includes the idea that every place will one day have its own mushroom cultivator, just as today every place has its own McDonald's. In the appropriate tech future that we are about to enter, this should be one of its finer elements. Since I may be the most advanced cultivator in my neighborhood, I might well look to be the Papa Smurf of Calvert Shores (aka Chesapeake Ranch Estates).

Before venturing into a business, knowing your market is key. One of my favorite things about Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation, by +Tradd Cotter, is the back matter regarding the various species worth cultivating. I particularly appreciate the information on marketing each type of mushroom. +Paul Stamets has a similar section in Mycelium Running - How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, which also contains information that can be used to connect with customers. Together, they give prospective growers many good choices beyond the usual shiitake, oyster, garden giant trio.

Depending on how many of my new logs fruit this year, we may start selling shiitakes next year at the farmer's market. Oysters shouldn't be difficult, either. I hope to see the golden oyster mushroom logs begin to fruit this year, and Sharondale Farms has supplied useful tips for ways to grow oysters indoors on agricultural waste. My two beds of garden giants are also primed for the season and could proliferate this year with a little help from Papa Smurf. And there are sundry small batches of other species we hope to harvest for our own consumption. Almond portobellos are one of the more exotic species we will be trying soon.

That should be plenty to get us into the mushroom business around here. The question is, what would be a big seller? Almond portobellos and garden giants will be a new sight to many shoppers here. What should we consider adding to the line of exotic species that we offer in the future?  The following table summarizes some of the information from Cotter's book that could help in this decision.

Genus	Ease of Cultivation	Market Connection
Agaricus	Intermediate	Have some cooking to entice buyers
Agrocybe	Easy	Bundle in paper, exposing only caps
Auricularia	Easy	Demonstrate rehydration method
Calocybe	Intermediate	Tropical
Chlorophyllum	Intermediate	Fruits in the fall
Clitocybe	Intermediate	Good in soups and gumbos
Coprinus	Easy	Extremely short shelf-life
Fistulina	Intermediate	A summer favorite; meat substitute
Flammulina	Intermediate	Ice/water bath; salad/soup topper
Fomes	Advanced	Powder or water extract - medicinal
Ganoderma	Easy	Medicinal orientation of display
Grifola	Intermediate	Sold locally; Cook for aroma; Medicinal delicacy
Hericium	Intermediate	Sold locally; Novelty for some; Seafood substitute
Hypholoma	Easy	Wrap in bundles/clusters
Hypsizygus	Easy	Help customers appreciate differences between species
Laetiporus	Advanced	Chicken substitute
Lentinula	Easy	Sold locally; the superstars; sell caps (mix stems in dog food)
Lepiota	Intermediate	Sell caps (eat stems or put in dog food)
Macrocybe	Intermediate	Tropical
Macrolepiota	Intermediate	Sell caps (eat stems or put in dog food)
Pholiota	Easy	Sell to Asian markets or restaurants, esp. Japanese
Piptoporus	Advanced	Powder or water extract - medicinal
Pleurotus	Easy	Sold locally; Explain differences in flavors of strains sold
Sparassis	Advanced	Crunchy, even when sauteed
Stropharia	Easy	Pre-sell to restaurants - does not store well
Trametes	Easy	Powder or water extract - medicinal
Volvariella	Intermediate	Tastes better than button; Sell to Asian markets; Sell primordia

Oyster Gardening

I was sold on the garden plot that we began renting last year after spotting a bouquet of oyster mushrooms growing out of an old stump at ground level directly adjacent the gate. Since then, in addition to the tremendous amount of vegetables we've reaped from the garden, oyster mushrooms have been a frequent enhancement to our meals.

My garden there consists of several raised beds, separated with sunken paths that are filled with wood chips. These wood chips eventually break down and provide nutritious mulch for the following year's plantings. I was very happy to see one particularly deep path of wood chips thick with mycelium when I dug it up early this year. It's possible that the oyster mushroom mycelium had run over to the path, as it was only about 10 feet away from the stump. If oyster mushrooms come up in that vicinity later this year, that will be the most likely cause.

In any case, I aim to get oyster mushrooms from this garden path, even if I have to inoculate the wood chips myself. According to +Tradd Cotter, oyster mushrooms will grow on wood chips, though they are traditionally cultivated on logs. They are not rhizomorphic, so their rate of growth through the shady path won't be as fast as, say, garden giants. Myceliated logs buried in a bed of wood chips would be ideal. In his book, Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation, Cotter shows how to use cardboard spawn to inoculate logs. If my bunker spawn from oyster inoculated coffee grounds produces mushrooms, that could be another route to getting oysters into my paths.

Oysters are supposed to be the easiest mushrooms to grow. I have had minimal success, so far. However, since my shiitakes are all doing great, I think it's just a matter of time before I master cultivating this species.

Morel Dilemma

+Paul Stamets, in Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, gives tentative support to using wood ash as an ingredient for the growing medium on an outdoor morel mushroom patch. +Tradd Cotter, author of Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation, says that Eastern U.S. morels found in the wild don't seem to have a preference for burnt areas. Tradd's research points to use of nonnutritive media for morel sclerotia to form and an underlying nutritive zone for hyphae to grow into. I am thinking that uncharged biochar (as opposed to wood ash) could act as the nonnutritive medium instead of the peat or coir Cotter recommends. After all, biochar would be a lot more native than peat from Canada or coir from the tropics.

I have a tulip poplar in my backyard, conveniently near my log spawn run area where I could make a morel rain garden by berming around the dripline and directing overflow from my rain barrel into the depression. There I could set up two plots, one with coir and one with biochar.  Then, using a slurry from a single morel species, I could inoculate the beds and see what grows. This, of course, means that I have to find time in the coming weeks to hunt for morels.

I wish it were as easy as this video makes homegrowing morels out to be, but you can get a general idea of how slurries are used to inoculate and how much fun it would be to harvest the mushrooms. Stamets and Cotter both cover spore mass slurries in their books.

Pharmaceutical Fungi

Mushrooms are like insects - there are some that can cause disease, but the vast majority are beneficial. The proof of whether many of the mushrooms I started cultivating last year will emerge will begin soon. I am very confident of having a good crop of shiitakes, as the few logs I started in early 2015 are already wanting to explode with mushrooms. The lion's mane, hen of the woods, reishi, and three types of oyster mushroom are still in question. I am getting turkey tail, but I can also find natives quite easily.

The turkey tail tea I am sipping while composing this may ward off prostate cancer, should it darken my backdoor. Paul Stamets devotes a page-and-a-half to the medicinal value of turkey tail in his book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. In my upcoming talk to Calvert Eats Local, I plan to concentrate on the medicinal value of gourmet mushrooms that are often available commercially in our area. These include those just mentioned and two others, almond portobello and garden giant, which I am also attempting to grow. Their medicinal value ranges from helping the immune, cardiovascular, and/or digestive system to fighting cancer.

Mushrooms offer some unique compounds that you probably won't get from eating plants. Since I have eaten plants all my life, but few mushrooms, chances are that my body hasn't received its due from the fungal kingdom. Common ways to get these compounds are by either cooking the mushrooms at low temperature (< 220 F) or by extracting them with alcohol. Some of the compounds that come out with alcohol won't be extracted through cooking, and visa-versa. Since taking a homemade alcohol extract of shiitake, I've instantly enjoyed what seems to be better digestion and sounder sleep.

The medicinal benefits from shiitake also extend to helping the immune system, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and cardiovascular system.  They are anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic and they suppress many cancer cell types, e.g. breast, prostate, colorectal. They are also delicious. One cannot eat enough mushrooms to get the full range of unique benefits found in each species, but extracts and teas could supplement your diet to help. If you have a particular medical concern, then there is probably a mushroom that you can benefit by eating a lot of, while supplementing with others.

One mushroom that many people would like to eat a lot of is the morel, mainly for its special flavor, but also for immunity support. I don't cultivate them yet, but finding them this year should be easier with the help of guidance from one of our area's premier mycophiles. Things to look for are stands of tulip poplar in areas where moisture collects. Searching should begin for black morels when average night air temperature is above 50 F. Morels appear for about 6 weeks in early spring.

Cornucopia

The idea of scarcity, when it comes to food, seems a long ways off these days. Even the unemployed and destitute have free kitchens and food banks to avoid starvation. I imagine that starvation these days is mostly on the level of particular nutrients. Food deserts exist where nutrient deficient food is the norm.

The immediately obvious way to ensure a more nutrient dense diet is to grow your own produce, and if food ever does become grossly scarce, that choice brings a little more security along with it. Since I really dig gardening, that's my chosen solution, but it's really not an option for those whose schedules are already crammed to bursting.

If you can't afford the time, transportation, trepidation, and toll of routinely dining out, cooking your own food is a good way to go. According to Michael Pollan, the most important thing we can do for our health is to cook our own meals. I've found that I can make just about any produce on hand taste good with the help of recipes available online, using tools such as the Perfect Produce app.

If you find grocery shopping difficult, and don't mind a little adventure in your diet, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) arrangement may be for you. The type that will save you some time at the grocery store offers pre-packaged items from the local harvest and might include meal kits and processed items such as breads. Here, we have Taste of Southern Maryland offering in-season, locally grown, nutrient dense foods delivered by priority mail with weekly plans scaled to your needs. Like growing your own, this approach seems like a good way to make your meals more veggie-centric.

If the chore of cooking is too much to handle, Calvert County (and many others) host Meals on Wheels to eligible (invalid or shut-in) persons. If you don't qualify for that free service, you can drive a short distance and get the same menu by signing up for lunch at one of the local Senior Centers for $3 to $5, depending on your age.

Our next local food outing will be tonight's Calvert Eats Local meeting, which is a pot-luck this month. There is usually a presentation, with next month's to be given by your's truly on the topic of gourmet mushrooms.

Off the Beaten Path

When we first came to Maryland, it wasn't long before we decided to pay a visit to some local farms which surround us. Driving until we saw a welcoming sign, we tentatively approached what turned out to be a ramshackle farm with goats scrounging amidst the junk heaps. Before we could quietly turn around and leave unnoticed, we encountered the Amish owner, with whom we held a brief, polite exchange of pleasantries and then departed, a little unnerved by the messy reality of farm life. I am sure today, that any visitors I bring to my 'mini-farm' have similar troubling reactions after trying to mentally screen out whole sections of the landscape that contain industrial detritus (which I employ for making biochar). It's slowly improving, as I landscape the area and shift the production into more hidden parts of the property, but it's a multi-year project.

For the farms in the Maryland Governor's Agriculture Hall of Fame, refinements are often multi-generational projects. The Hall of Fame, established in 1991, includes 46 farm families from 23 counties who have been honored for their high standards of conduct; personal values; contributions to their community; and performance, leadership, innovation, and achievement in agriculture. Calvert County has been honored to host more than their share of these stellar farms, including Taney Place, belonging to the late Y.D. Hance, Maryland's first Secretary of Agriculture. The latest addition to the list is Swann Farms out near the end of Chaneyville Road in Owings. All of these farms have something to offer to those interested in various aspects of agriculture or who just want wholesome food. +Swann Farms, for instance, offers u-pick produce of various types throughout the year.

Our first (faltered) foray into agri-tourism could have been better informed had we initially found the Hall of Fame or one of the local guides put out by the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission. I would hope that all of these farms exemplify the ideals expressed in the documentary film, "Out to Pasture: The Future of Farming?" put together by students in the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The film lauds deindustrialization of farming, especially with regard to animal husbandry.