News from the Mini
Farm, Friends and Colleagues
Carol Vesecky sent us a report on
an "Afternoon of Solar Cooking," that
was given July 17 by her organization Biointensive
for Russia. This is a shortened and slightly revised
version of her report:
Temperatures of up to 90°F were forecast, but
they stayed much cooler as my housemate, Abhishek,
and I finished our last outdoor preparations. We
cleared more garden paths between beds, swept walkways
and deck, spread mulch (dried biomass from the winter
crops of fava beans, vetch, and wheat) on the growing
beds lying fallow due to the disruption of the Russia
trip, and began to organize the setup for the afternoon.
My dish to cook was fava beans and potatoes stir-fried
with onions, garlic and ginger, served over brown
rice, so I put the frozen favas in a Sun Toy to
thaw, dug up the potatoes from one of the veggie
beds and started the rice cooking in a Sun Oven
by noon. I also picked the last peaches from my
tree to serve in a "crumble" recipe.
Volunteers, including the main presenters, Julia
Paul and Julie Lovins, began arriving by one o'clock.
Julia Paul had driven from Sacramento where she
is on the staff of Solar Cookers International (www.solarcookers.org),
which has provided 30,000 ovens to households in
Africa. Julia set up her displays, while Julie Lovins
ensured that all the ovens with "Graniteware"
(old-fashioned black enamel cooking pots) inside
had their place in the sun. Two more solar chefs,
Michael Mora and Don Larson, arrived with ovens
and dishes partly prepared. By about three, we had
16 guests and chefs and began the program.
Julia Paul explained how important solar ovens
are to families in Kenya, where women and children
typically spend eight hours walking for miles to
collect wood to cook with. Not only does burning
wood cause deforestation, but the inhalation of
wood smoke causes respiratory infections that are
a major cause of death in children. Solar cooking
frees up time for women to start businesses that
bring material improvements to the family welfare
and which often enable their children to go to school
for the first time.
Julie Lovins described the proper placement of
pots for cooking in two types of solar ovens: those
enclosed with a glass or plexiglass cover through
which solar radiation passes, and those that fold
out to gather solar radiation and reflect it toward
the pot enclosed in a plastic bag and set on a trivet.
The sun's angle being important, most solar chefs
in our area [south of San Francisco] cook with the
sun mainly from spring to fall, between 9 a.m. and
3 p.m. While the food was still cooking, I conducted
a brief tour of my GROW BIOINTENSIVE veggie gardens.
Finally, the various dishes were enjoyed from the
picnic table and duly praised by the assembled group.
The following got fully or mostly cooked-by the
sun-in several hours and all tasted great: cheese
strata, baked tofu cutlets, frozen gyozas, fusion
rice, ratatouille, fava bean/potato dish, brown
rice, root-veggie medley, banana bread and peach
crumble.
This is an edited version of a
paper written by Fausto Moran Salazar from Ecuador,
currently an intern at Ecology Action:
Many people die every year in my country because
of accidental poisoning with agricultural chemical
products. The levels of pesticide residues in potatoes
offered in markets are usually high.
I train farmers to reduce the excessive use of
pesticides for potato production. Pesticide residues
in the soil have reached massive proportions. Our
efforts to grow potatoes in an organic way generally
fail because of soil infertility, insect or disease
attacks and low frost resistance of the plants.
However, in best cases we have reduced the number
of pesticide applications from the usual four to
ten a season down to just two.
Now in Willits, I was deeply surprised seeing how
potatoes using the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method produce
higher yields than conventional methods used in
my country. Plant spacing is very close. This reduces
water evaporation and the amount of organic fertilizer
needed. It also allows continuous soil improvement,
and the high biodiversity used in the GROW BIOINTENSIVE
method contributes to a decrease in insect attacks
and plant diseases. My experience at the Ecology
Action mini-farm is like receiving a valuable inheritance.
The 5th and 6th "team" at Shutesbury Elementary
School in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, recently donated
$200 to Ecology Action. The children earned the
money by selling baked goods and Newman's chocolate
bars and took part in choosing the organizations
to receive their donations. They wrote: “Your
organization makes a difference because it is researching
renewable food sources. We thought it would be a
generous gesture to give to you so that we would
feel that we were helping research farming efficiently
too." We are grateful for this thoughtful gift.
We received a letter and thank you card from the
gardeners in a women's detention facility in Ysilanti,
Michigan. They were very appreciative of materials
sent to them by Ecology Action and have designated
four beds in the garden as a GROW BIOINTENSIVE demonstration
area.
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