my thoughts

 arugula pops up like a weed in the furrows, so tuesday i decided to harvest some to take home and cook. added it with some other veggies to cook down with mirin and shoyu and eat with udon noodles. yummy stuff!

been thinking a lot about the connections between agriculture and the military industrial complex, as we drive through salinas and see large tractors and machinery that feels pretty war-like. there are actual ties between machinery, as well as chemical inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, nitrate haber bosch stuff) that are used in industrial ag. beyond these physical components i am also thinking about the ideological 'man vs nature' warfare mindset that can be part of agriculture –how do we fight the gophers or the weeds or the climate and control it in order to produce food? talking to my hosts i've definitely learned that there is a lot of animosity towards wildlife that is a potential threat to crops, such as birds, and that farmers will take measures to scare them away or try to eliminate their habitat. for me, agroecology is the counterpoint to the war mindset because it situates agriculture within ecosystems and either attempts to replicate natural relationships and cycles in the constructed agroecosystem, or works with the existing ecosystem to reap benefits. 

i have also been thinking a lot about cooperative models, because in first learning about ALBA i definitely had idealistic visions of shared labor and community practices on shared land. this is not really the case, and talking to my host is interesting because we are both inspired by Global South movements such as la via campesina and the MST, but she doesn't think that the US could ever do it because people's mindsets are too ingrained against it -individualism and profit are the hegemonic culture here! but i am 30+ years younger so i still have hope for radical imagination to get us out of this mess! one transformative idea that my other host does like to entertain but i dont think believes will actually happen is building wildlife corridors along the agricultural valley, converting all the cropland into more agroforestry systems that can support wildlife, and building a train system to transport produce as opposed to all the trucks.

garlic is one of the most notable things we grow, and their garlic is delicious! i have learned that garlic is very temperature sensitive, and needs cold air above to contrast warmer temperatures below in order to grow -so you need to plant in winter. we will be prepping the garlic soon, you plant individual cloves and then those cloves grow and then form into a new head with clove divisions. harvesting at the right time also is crucial, so that the garlic isnt starting to get soft and there are sufficient layers of skin for best storage.

other bits of garden wisdom. as we prepare to plant some new things, ive learned a crop rotation chant: greens, beans, roots, fruits. the last things of the year will be planted in the next few weeks, and should last into december and the end of the csa season. in addition to the last vegetable crops, it will also be time for the ginger, turmeric, garlic, and some more flowers to go in! today we took out the current flower bulbs to save for next year.

in the class realm, the theme of the week is beverages. on wednesday we learned all about creative uses for whey, the biproduct of oh so many dairy things. a small yogurt producer in brooklyn who makes 'old world style yogurt' (they are immigrants from iran) has made it her mission to use the whey and market it, and they wont scale up their yogurt production bc they dont want to waste the way. some creative uses include: pickling, brining turkey, baking, probiotic drinks, fruit popsicles...so fun! todays class was on cocktails and using local ingredients to concoct all sorts of drinks...also fascinating! there is a hay-infused apple thing that he mentioned, sounds very fall

in other news, i sleep a lot. as in, last night i went to bed around 930 and then didnt get out of bed until 7 this morning. HA