The Final Conversation With My Dad

My father passed away a year ago, March 30, 2014.

I wrote down the conversation I had with my father about an hour before he died. My daughter Andrea Petersen read this for my father's funeral. It is entitled, “A Conversation With My Dad”. I was very thankful I had this opportunity.

I had about a half hour alone with Dad the morning he died. So I'm thinking what do you say to your father in the few hours before he goes to Heaven to meet Jesus? As was characteristic of our conversations in those last few hours, he was sleeping comfortably and I did all the talking.

A number of possible topics of conversation crossed my mind, I'm going to let you in on the ones I chose for a very intimate father-son communication.

Symptoms of Soil Degradation

I went to the organic farming conference in LaCrosse, WI a few weeks ago. One of the speakers was talking about the symptoms of degraded soils.

It is worth measuring our soils against this list.

Turning Hostile in to Habitat

Spring in Minnesota can be wild and unpredictable. You won't be able to do any serious tillage until middle to end of April. So what do you do if you want to get a jump on the growing season and get things planted as early as possible?

Change How You See Things

A smart farmer named Don Cambell said, " If you want to make small changes, change how you do things. When you want to make major changes, change how you see things."

Gabe Brown a farm innovator says, "The greatest road block in solving problems is the human mind."

In farming we are prone to impose our will on the natural processes at work on the farm. Instead we should...

"Practice Resurrection"

I (Reed) read through many publications in any given month, but one of my favorites is Cardus' Comment Magazine. They're amazing exemplars of writing, photography, and thorough thinking. With their permission, I'm reposting a bit from their Fall 2014 Edition. I thought it applied well to the nature of this blog, as many of you can relate to the experiences of this family that patronizes a market in Grand Rapids.

"The Fulton Street Farmer's Market is a hallowed place for our family. For a decade, the market was pretty much our front yard, so we easily fell into almost daily rhythms that incorporated the market. Having moved just a mile away hasn't made much difference: visiting the market is a nonnegotiable liturgy in our house. In fact, if you ever visit the refurbished Fulton Street Market in Grand Rapids, peruse the memorial bricks that line the upper square and look for a brick that simply exhorts, "Practice resurrection." That's ours.

Market Menu for Saturday, March 21, 2015

Candy carrots with great flavor and sweetness. Just before the great freeze-up we had several hard frosts and that is just what the doctor ordered to turn normally sweet carrots into something magical. We will have a few bags of juicing carrots each week during the late fall and winter.

The squash varieties available this week:  Acorn, Carnival. Spaghetti, and Pie Pumpkins. 

Market Table this Summer (photo cred: Reed Petersen)

We will have the following items at the Farmers Market for Saturday, March 21, 2015 (New items are in Bold Print)

Chipolini Onions
Sweet Spanish Onions
Red Onions

Salsa: an array of different kinds
Pickles - Sweet, Dill and Relish
Slawsa - Something New

Candy Carrots
Parsnips

Cabbage - Fresh Green, good for slaw, kraut or kimchi (see 8 delicious recipes on our website.)

Shallots
Cipotle Smoked Peppers

Garlic

Charcoal (home grown, home made)
Potting Mix with our compost

Keep Your Fork

Back in the day, when I was growing up, when mom said, "Keep your fork", that meant there was some really good desert to come. Might be cherry pie (one of Dad's favorites) or might be Danish pastry (one of my grandmother's specialities.)

We are just coming out of the winter cycle for vegetables. A time when selection of vegetables is limited.

However, let me recommend that you "Keep your fork" and here is why.

The Banker

Mark Twain said, "A Banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

What does this mean?

My Blue Ferrari

I had a friend who recently bought a brand new cherry red Corvette. It is a beafutiful machine and he was giving rides yesterday. Talk about new car smell.

I hated getting into a competition on vehicles but I could have told him about my cobalt blue Ferrari.

Chemical Agriculture 205: Pharm

Did you know that glyphosate the main ingredient in Round-Up, a herbicide that works with GMO crops to kill weeds, was patented in 2010 as an antibiotic.

Turns out it is a very effective antibiotic at that...

Chemical Agriculture 204: Monoculture Failures

There are a number of examples of dismal failures of monoculture in agriculture.

Let's discuss three notable examples.

Market Menu for March 7, 2015

Candy carrots with great flavor and sweetness. Just before the great freeze-up we had several hard frosts and that is just what the doctor ordered to turn normally sweet carrots into something magical. We will have a few bags of juicing carrots each week during the late fall and winter.

The squash varieties available this week:  Acorn, Carnival. Spaghetti, and Pie Pumpkins. 

Market Table this Summer (photo cred: Reed Petersen)

We will have the following items at the Farmers Market for Saturday, March 7, 2015 (New items are in Bold Print)

Chipolini Onions
Sweet Spanish Onions
Red Onions

Salsa: an array of different kinds
Pickles
Slawsa

Candy Carrots
Parsnips

Cabbage - Fresh Green, good for slaw, kraut or kimchi (see 8 delicious recipes on our website.)

Shallots
Cipotle Smoked Peppers

Garlic

Charcoal (home grown, home made)

Chemical Agriculture 203: Ecological Diseases

A number of ecoloogical diseases have lead to undesirable consequences in agriculture. This was a surprise to some as it was thought that monocultures would not negatively affect society.

The technical terms for these diseases are "diseases of the ecotope" and "diseases of the biocoenosis".

Chemical Agricuture 202: Monoculture - Limited Crop Rotation

A monoculture is the human agricultural practice of growing a single species crop over a wide area and for many consecutive years. The most common monoculture is field corn, where millions of acres per year are grown and sometimes in the same place for many years.

At face value this would seem very efficient as specialized corn planting and harvesting equipment can allow one farmer to grow thousands of acres per year. However the monoculture has a dark side which we will explore in this post.