More Urban Agriculture

Not too long ago, I commented in these pages on an interesting piece in The New York Times about urban gardening. Now The New Yorker, that most urbane of all periodicals, is getting in on the act. Their staff writer, Susan Orlean, has an article in a recent issue about -- are you ready? -- raising chickens. Technically, Orlean does not live in the city, but in a more rural setting where having a few hens (and a rooster by mistake) does not scandalize the neighbors. But she writes for people with a lot less green space. Even real city folks, she says, can (and maybe should) raise their own poultry.

There are some cities in the U.S. that have ordinances against keeping chickens. And it's not always easy to figure out, or learn, what the rules are where you might live.

Urban chickens need the right equipment, and perhaps the ideal place to start is the Eglu. I don't keep chickens, and I don't plan to, but if I did I would start with an Eglu--simply because it looks like something out of The Jetsons. I'm more interested in raising quail, so I might investigate whether an Eglu can be modified for those much smaller birds. (If I try that, you'll read about it here!)

There must be some kind of urban poultry movement starting, because there are blogs devoted to the subject. (Okay, I know that there are blogs devoted to every subject! My point is--chickens!? in cities!? Who knew?) You can check out TheCityChicken.com, or UrbanChickens.net, or CityChickens.com if you think I'm kidding.

Why would anybody want chickens in the tiny backyard of an Manhattan brownstone, or elsewhere in the concrete jungle? Well, for one thing, they lay eggs, and a couple of nice, fresh eggs every day is not a bad thing. But some people are attracted to these birds as pets: as objects of affection and companions. In other words, we humans seem to have a connection to other living creatures. We enjoy their company, and we care for them and feel affection for them, even if they provide us with no tangible benefits. A couple of hens, scratching at bugs and clucking contentedly in the backyard, renew that connection for us even when our lives are largely alienated from the earth we live on.

Orchard Dreams

"I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods." (Wendell Berry)

I've commented here before that I'd like to plant an orchard on The Farm. Nothing grandiose or industrial in scale: perhaps five or six apple trees, as many cherry trees and perhaps some pears. Planting an orchard is a sign of hope, an act of confidence and optimism about a future unseen. He who plants an orchard makes a long-term commitment to a specific piece of ground. He gives a gift to his children and his children's children.

The Farm--this Farm--is a little patch of rolling hills, where the natural state of the landscape is a patchwork of woods and grassland. To plant an orchard would woo the nature of that particular place, cultivation most in harmony with the character of the land itself, and therefore holds the promise of being both fruitful and happy. No sense trying to grow what the land doesn't want to bear, or planting against the grain of the soil.

Besides, I like apples, and almost everything made from apples. Ditto cherries. Less wild about pears, but one needs variety, right? I dream of getting a cider press and bottling fresh juices on a crisp October day. As a dabbling homebrewer, this could put me in touch with cultures around the world where cider fills the culinary niche occupied by beer in other places. Brittany, Normandy, and southwestern England, in particular, cherish the venerable art of cider making, as do the Basques and the hill tribes of Rhineland-Pfalz.

Getting from here to there is another matter. Choosing, buying, and planting trees is the easy part. The little saplings won't survive long if we don't protect them somehow from the ravenous local whitetail population.

My first thought was to fence the whole orchard area with 7- or 8-foot deer fencing. Nice idea -- until a little research put a pricetag on that project. It turns out it's pretty easy to spend over a thousand dollars to protect a dozen fruit trees, and that is just too much (unless we're aiming at commercial production, of course; then we could recoup the investment over several years of profits).

I think we'll have to settle for improvised solutions, using whatever old fencing and posts we can find around The Farm. And this does not diminish the pleasure of dreaming hopefully toward my orchard. The art of cultivating with the nature of the land instead of against it involves compromise between what we want and what the land can provide. And there is another kind of compromise to learn: between a theoretical ideal and the affordable.

The Farm in The City

I saw this column while very far from The Farm, on a plane from Philadelphia to Zurich to be exact. It's not that often that my agricultural leanings are fed from the venerable pages of The Gray Lady. This may be another sign of something -- I'm not sure what! -- or a clue to the puzzle of this thing we call popular culture. It might mean something like this:

The line between urban and rural is not sharp and clear. Because we live on the earth, even in those densely packed, overbuilt, and artificial environments we call cities, the earth has away of breaking through and re-asserting itself. Our technology and our architecture lay a thin crust over the ground, and given the chhance, the ground will do what the ground does best: send seedlings up through cracks in the pavement.

I suppose someone will quibble that the New York Times piece on tomatoes in Brooklyn is not really about farming but about "gardening," as if the two are clearly distinguishable. But what is a city garden but a farm painted on a very small canvas, and what is a farm but a garden that got out of hand? Both share the same media, the same instincts, the same struggles, the same culture. My favorite little magazine Hobby Farms is launching a new publication called Urban Farm, which sounds like an oxymoron, but is really just another clue in this puzzle i'm trying to work out.

I remember sitting in a classroom in western Kenya while my students scribbled away on their final exams. Looking out the window I savored the sight of the lush Kisii hill country in the distance and the bountiful vegetation surrounding the building. Vines had found their way in through one of the windows, and seemed to be flourishing happily inside the room. I got the impression that, in Africa at least, all our development and building amounts to little more than a temporary clearing of the natural growth on the hills. As soon as we turn our backs, the vines are in at the windows and start their work of reclaiming this little patch of earth.

Yes, You Can

"The only rules that really matter," said Captain Jack Sparrow, "are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do."

Until recently, I would have thought that one of the things a man can do is drive an ATV pretty much anywhere through mud and brush. Surely, I thought, one of the things a man can't do is get a 40-hp, six-wheel-drive Polaris Ranger stuck. Turns out I was wrong about that.

I had learned from the hard soils lesson with my brother's Jeep (see previous post!). We waited several days after the rains to give the place a chance to dry out. There was just one little creek-bed to cross, through a bramble of brush and vines, to get to the place I've started calling the Lost Acre. There was some water in the creek, but not much. It was steep, and steepest at the very bottom, so that the Polaris pitched forward at a thrilling angle as I drove down. I stopped to check for hidden holes or logs, and to check my exit route on the other side of the creek. Confident that this was doable, I drove powerfully through the ditch. No problem!

The Lost Acre isn't really lost and it actually measures 1.77 acres. It's bounded by two steep, densely brush-filled drainage creeks and a tight, gateless barbed wire fence between The Farm and our neighbor's manicured pasture. The steep, tricky spot where I drove the Polaris through the creek is the only way to get any kind of vehicle in or out of this particular patch of tall grass and volunteer cedars. It's not part of our CRP contract, so I dream of ways to make it productive. But if we can't drive the ATV in and out, it's going to be hard to put the Lost Acre to good use.

So, as I said, driving in was not such a problem. Driving out of the Lost Acre was another story. The alarming angles were just a little different coming from the other side. The trail took a turn to the right on the way out of the creek. Maybe I hesitated just slightly at just the wrong moment. Whatever it was, the game was over. Six wheels spinning in the muddy, wet weeds were suddenly but definitely worthless. The Polaris spent that night in the creek-bed, sheltered with a blue plastic tarp in case it rained. We pulled it out the next day with a borrowed 4wd pickup.

Captain Jack Sparrow was right. What a man can do, and what a man can't do are rules that matter. You certainly can get that 6x6 40hp Polaris stuck. We don't move at will through the world. Even on our own small patch of ground, the land itself sets boundaries and limits which we cannot cross, even when we wield all our horsepower and technology. Living with and caring for this land means accepting limits rather than fighting against them. Wendell Berry, a wise man who knows a thing or two about living with the land, said "A man with a machine and inadequate culture . . . is a pestilence. He shakes more than he can hold."

"Know Your Soils"

The soil on The Farm ranges from Armstrong clay loam to Gorim silt loam. If that doesn't mean much to you, don't worry. It's a foreign language to me, too.

Everything I know about our soils comes from two sources. The first is the detailed conservation management report prepared for us by the local NRCS office. Each field--and even the distinct parts of each field--is carefully described and analyzed. Turns out we do not have any Menfro, which is the Missouri state soil. (I bet you didn't even know Missouri had a state soil!)

My second source of soil knowledge is first-hand. A couple of weeks ago, my brother and his overweight Labrador named Hagrid came for a weekend visit in their Jeep. When the drizzle on Saturday morning ruled out golf, we decided to head for The Farm (which he hadn't yet seen).

We had only been there about 30 minutes when our combined supply of good sense -- which is never as great when we're together as either of us can manage on our own -- ran out completely. I opened the wire gate to the pasture across the road from the house, and he drove the Jeep in. To get a better view, I opened the next gate, too, and he drove through that.

And then he was stuck. The drizzle-saturated clay suddenly seemed the consistency of pancake batter, and all four wheels of the Jeep were spinning uselessly. No matter which direction the Jeep was pointed, or which direction we spun the wheels, the vehicle only moved one direction: downhill. And downhill was not helpful, since at the bottom of the hill was a soggy creek and cow-trodden mud.

We took turns pushing and driving. We chopped branches to stuff under the wheels in an effort to grab some traction. We rocked the Jeep back and forth. We dragged big scraps of old carpet from the trash heap across the road, and stuck them under the wheels of the Jeep. That last one actually kind of worked, until the carpet was soaked with water and slimy clay mud; after that the carpet gave as much traction as shaving cream, and weighed about a hundred pounds a square yard.

The story has a long, sad ending, which involves cold wind and sleet, a tow-truck which got stuck worse than we were, and a drive home in the wee hours of the morning. Only Hagrid seemed to be enjoying himself: wind and freezing drizzle is a Labrador's natural habitat. We consoled ourselves next day with breakfast at Denny's. My brother's email when he got home summed it up pretty well: "had a great time. Hope we never do it again."

The NRCS soils report appeals to me in a kind of techy, cerebral way. I've always enjoyed learning foreign languages. But getting my brother's Jeep profoundly stuck in that wet patch of "Bevier silty clay loam" just north of the road was my real education about our soil.