DAILY PHOTO: Farmland on the Blue Ridge
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Category Archives: Farming
Patchwork Lands [Free Verse]
patchwork in shades of green, beige, and rust-red clay geometries formed of odd angles spreading ahead to the edge of sight & imagination so many fields in so many states - yet, all in one time & place there, I felt a tad bit infinite, being stretched from a stable center in all directions as time sprawled first to last in no particular order
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Harvest Cycle [Common Meter]
The field is neat; the stalks are baled; the grain sits in baskets to be carried back home to dry on thin sheets of plastic. The chaff will be cracked from the grain so that it can be ground into flour, and baked into bread that I'll eat sans a sound as I enjoy the view.
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POEM: Fallow Field Heroics [Ottava Rima]
I wander though the fallow field.
The weeds and unintended plants
are stealing food of increased yield,
but soil is churned by worms and ants
whose labors stay subtly concealed.
It looks like nothing at a glance,
but bold heroics are afoot
to till the soil for fine output.
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Agriculture & Nature Haiku
grazing sheep,
loitering head down;
what awes them?
rice terraces,
disguising man’s order
in nature’s green
ripe wheat,
bobbing in a breeze —
sea-like moves
on a range
that stretches beyond sight
but not mind
tea plantation,
a snake slithers through
amid the pickers
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BOOK REVIEW: Food: A Very Short Introduction by John Krebs
Food: A Very Short Introduction by John R. Krebs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This volume in the Oxford University Press AVSI series examines human eating habits. The first chapter puts the human diet in the context of evolution, reflecting upon how we got where we did in terms of food consumption. Here one gains insight into where the Paleo-diet fad is flawed, and one learns how cooking had a huge influence on human evolution.
The second chapter delves into the issue of likes and dislikes in food. We see that there are species-wide commonalities, but there are also differences both at an individual and cultural group level. e.g. Why is spice so common in the tropics and so rare in the great white north?
The third chapter looks at the ways food can do us in and what we’ve done – besides [and including] the aforementioned cooking – to reduce the threat of food gone awry. The penultimate chapter examines nutrition and how we get what we need from food.
The last chapter takes a bit of a turn, but investigates the fascinating topic of how (and whether) we will continue to feed our species. Readers will likely remember the name Malthus from either history or economics classes. He was an economist who suggested humanity was in dire straits, vis-à-vis food. Malthus noticed that population was growing geometrically while agricultural output grew arithmetically, and he reasonably noted that this was unsustainable. Of course, Malthus failed to foresee the huge technological advances from fertilizer to mechanization. However, that doesn’t make his concerns forever moot – perhaps just tardy. It remains far from clear whether the limited land space and resources can take billions more humans – especially without killing off all the other species. (Especially, if we aren’t willing to give up eating resource-intensive foods like cow in favor of less intensive one’s like grasshopper.)
The book has some graphics as well as both a “references” and a “further reading” section.
If you’re interested in food in a general sense, I’d recommend this as a great way to take in the outline of the topic.
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Five Farm Haiku
gleaming steel
plow blade turns the dirt, but
dirt taxes the blade
a weed pulled
in due time, beats one hundred
plucked too late
stalk stubble,
the haggard mourning face
of the field
mile high crazy quilt
viewed by climbing passengers,
brooding nature’s mood
when light is short,
but field days are marathon
harvest gloom
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POEM: A Mythical Child of the Corn
Whenever I tell anyone that I grew up on a farm,
I get a certain reaction,
“REALLY?”
As if, of all the lies I could tell, that’s the one I’d pick.
You believed me when I told you I’d met the original Hamburglar,
but not that I grew up on a farm?
[Incidentally, I did meet A Hamburglar, but I’m pretty sure it was a sweaty teenager with limited job prospects.]
I don’t really think these people think I’m a liar.
Perhaps they thought farms are like Conestoga wagons and cave paintings,
quaint reflections of simpler bye-gone days.
Maybe they thought their corn chips were grown in petri dishes in a subterranean factory.
[Bad example. Maybe corn chips are manufactured that way, but I’m pretty sure somewhere there is a hose through which good old Hoosier-grown corn is fed in; maybe it’s just defective kernels that weren’t salable to the makers of feed for hulking Angus cattle, but still…]
Anyhow, I suspect they are just excited to come across someone so rare — if in a workaday way.
It’s nothing like meeting Neil Armstrong or Beyoncé,
but rather like meeting the guy who did Neil Armstrong’s tire alignment or who cleans Beyoncé’s fish tanks.
A mundane superstar.
A mythical child of the corn.
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BOOK REVIEW: Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide by O.T. Oss & O.N. Oeric
Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide: A Handbook for Psilocybin Enthusiasts by O.T. Oss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This booklet, at around 80 pages, offers step-by-step guidance about how to grow mushrooms – specifically psilocybe cubensis, which are referred to as stropharia cubensis throughout this book. (The book was published in the 1970’s and the mushroom has since been reclassified.) This species is known to induce hallucinations, euphoria, and altered perception in those who ingest it because of the presence of psilocybin, which – converted to psilocin — interacts with serotonin receptors. Most of the information presented could be applied to cultivation of any mushroom (excepting information about identification in Ch. 1, which applies to that one species, and the information about dosage in Ch. 5 that doesn’t matter for edible mushrooms.) The authors did specifically develop this process, but I think that had more to do with the need for a process in between the vagaries of foraging and the large-scale agricultural approach that couldn’t be exploited for the “hobbyist,” than it had to do with the specific needs of this fungi.
The body of the book is divided into five chapters, which follow the progression of steps required to cultivate mushrooms. The first chapter covers locating and identifying psilocybe cubensis as well as how to collect and germinate the spores. The second chapter is about growing mycelial cultures on sterile agar. One of the major challenges presented in the book is keeping mold and other undesirable species from growing on or amongst one’s mushrooms. In the third chapter one learns how to grow the mycelia on sterilized rye. The penultimate chapter explores covering the mycelia infused rye with soil in a process that commercial fungi agriculture calls “casing,” which ultimately results in the generation of the fruiting bodies that we traditionally think of as mushrooms (though in the wild most of the organism is below ground.) The last chapter is about harvesting the mushrooms, preserving them, and determining dosage.
There is a substantial amount of front and back matter book-ending the aforementioned chapters. The front matter gives the reader some history of psychedelic mushrooms as well some insight into their effects. (The Preface and Forward are explicitly written by Terrence McKenna, but it’s said that the entire book is written by McKenna and his brother, Dennis.) The Forward and Introduction are where the book feels less like an agricultural how-to manual, and more like a guide to psychedelics, but the reader should be aware that this book is – first and foremost – a how-to guide. The back matter includes a range of helpful appended sections including a glossary, a bibliography, a timeline of psilocybin mushroom happenings, and a section to help one make conversions — particularly between volume and weights for various materials that are used in cultivation.
There are many graphics employed throughout the book. Most importantly, there are several series of black-and-white photos that help clarify the process being described textually. There are also some line-drawn artworks that depict psychedelic mushroom in their cultural context – both in the ancient shamanic tradition and the more recent wave of use.
This is a quick read that gets into all the processes needed to cultivate mushrooms. The authors compare it to canning preserves in terms of the degree of complexity. (That rings true as both processes rely heavily on sterilization.) It is a how-to guide, and if one isn’t interested in the process of cultivation, one might find the book a bit dry. I found it interesting to learn about the cultivation process as well as the information from the Forward, Introduction, and Chronology about psychedelics, specifically. If you’re interested in cultivating mushrooms or are very curious about fungi, I’d recommend this book.
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DAILY PHOTO: Khonoma Terraces
Taken in May of 2017 in Khonoma, Nagaland
This is actually Dzuleke Village, the next village down from Khonoma.
the !n(tro)verted yogi 