The Wisdom of the Radish

by Lynda Browning

  A new round of research revealed two new categories of pest control. The first, I’ll call “wacky home brews.” The second, “biological control.”

  As far as I could tell, for every problem in farming, there is at least one wacky home brew out there. This is what one might call the homeopathic approach to farming. For instance, I’d been advised to spread onionskins around the base of my plants to repel cucumber beetles. Or, if that didn’t work, I could blend one ounce of wood ashes, one ounce of hydrated lime, and one gallon of water and then spray the mixture on the foliage. Alternatively, a combination of hot peppers, garlic, and water might do the trick.

  For all I knew, these remedies could get the job done. Just because something doesn’t come in a jug with a fancy label doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. But my dilemma had more to do with the practicality of the solution. Spreading onionskins or making wood ash brew sounded twice as tedious as spraying Spinosad on every leaf. (Besides, where would I get two hundred row feet of onionskins?) And the Spinosad experiment had been just barely within my tolerance level—there just weren’t enough hours in the day for anything more complicated. Although they were probably worth a try on the home garden, I’m afraid I lacked the patience for wacky home brews on a market scale.

  So I turned to biological control. It might sound like this method would involve a hazmat suit and radon detectors, but biological control can actually be quite a friendly, gentle approach to farming. The basic idea is to use natural predators to control your pests.

  Although the concept sounds very hippie-dippie ecofriendly, the truth is that biological control can be used for good or for evil. If it’s botched, the introduction of a foreign predator can wreak serious havoc. For example, in 1935, the Australians brought three thousand cane toads into their country to try to control the greyback cane beetle that was ravaging their sugarcane crops. To put it mildly, the strategy backfired. The grotesque toads didn’t bring the beetle population into check; instead, they spread across the country, crowding out native frogs, eating honeybees, and poisoning household pets and native mammals with toxins exuded from their warts.18 That’s biological control at its worst.

  So lesson number one was that we didn’t want to introduce some slimy, spiky creature from across the globe to our vegetable patch with the unfounded hope that it might eat our cucumber beetles and flea beetles, because it might also eat our salad greens and poison our cat.

  But we could consider something more benign and timetested, like unleashing half a million ladybugs to gobble up all the Diabrotica eggs. Or perhaps we could release a fleet of soldier beetles to kill the cucumber beetles. The list of potential predators sounds like warriors plucked from a 1970s sci-fi novel: tachnid flies, parasitic nematodes, braconid wasps.

  Every time I see those clear plastic boxes of live ladybugs for sale at the checkout stand of the hardware store, I’m tempted to buy one and crack the lid to watch the ladies parachute across the store on their little red wings, settling on green garden hose coils and bright red rakes, yellow seed packets and dark sacks of compost, carabiner key chains and Mars Bars. Now that I had a pest problem, maybe I had a good excuse to live out my fantasy.

  Trouble is, when you release one thousand ladybugs into an unbalanced ecosystem like my field (or a hardware store, for that matter), you’re lucky if one or two stick around long enough to have a light aphid snack before fluttering on to greener pastures. The bugs-in-a-box miracle I’d been eyeing was nothing more than an agricultural placebo—designed to make the home gardener feel better without actually doing anything.

  But rumor has it that if you create a habitat for ladybugs—and other friendly predators—and draw them in from your surroundings, then you’ve got a long-term solution. (Pre-packaged predators do better when released into this setting as well.) To create a predator-friendly habitat, some farmers let wilderness thrive on the edges of their fields; some plant hedgerows of native plants in swaths that divide their fields; some design insectaries to attract good bugs with a carnival of colorful flowers. Similarly, some farmers will mix repellent plants in with their crops to keep the bad bugs away. Broccoli, calendula, catnip, goldenrod, nasturtiums, radishes, rue, and tansy are all said to fend off cucumber beetles. An alternative to the repellant crop is the trap crop: a tasty plant that draws pests away from your real market crops. For instance, an abundant row of sacrificial radishes can keep flea beetles occupied while a nearby row of cabbages matures.

  Although I would have loved to plant some trap crops, or raise a hedgerow, or create an insectary, none of these would solve my short-term problem. I had too many Diabrotica and flea beetles eating my greens right then, and building up a reservoir of predators can take years. I didn’t even know if we’d be on this property a year from now. And we certainly wouldn’t be growing vegetables on the exact same spot; our field was destined to be replanted in grapes next spring. So, like roughly 30 percent of young farmers in the United States, we couldn’t plan very well for the future because we didn’t control the land we were cultivating. 19

  Back to square one. Squishing the bastards didn’t work. Spraying organic pesticides only slowed them a little. We determined wacky home brews to be too time-consuming and biological control too long-term. We wracked our brains for a magic bullet.

  When we finally come to a solution, it was painfully obvious what we should do—and what we should have done all along.

  “It says it right on the seed packet,” Emmett said woefully.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We were busy.”

  “We’re always busy. That’s no excuse.”

  With Emmett’s discovery, we stopped thinking like Americans and started acting like Russians: we retreated and hid under blankets of white.

  Obviously, there was no snow involved in a Sonoma County summer. But a floating row cover helped us disappear in the midst of a siege. Translucent enough to let 75 percent of light through while providing a physical and visual barrier to invaders, the only downside to this polyester fabric was its cost (and the fact that it would start to disintegrate after a couple of months of sun). We coughed up $40.65 at the local agriculture store for a 6-by-250-foot roll and squeezed the awkward package into our station wagon, shimmying it between the driver and passenger seats. (On our long-term wish list: a pickup truck.)

  Back at the farm, we threaded a length of PVC pipe through the cardboard center. We jammed one end into the ground; Emmett held the other end while I ran the length of the field. The lightweight white row cover unspooled behind me like a giant roll of toilet paper, rising and falling in the breeze. When I reached the end, Emmett cut the row cover; we sidestepped over the brassica row and laid the white cloth down. I jogged back to Emmett, grabbed a handful of hooked j-stakes. Walking on either side of the row cover, we pierced the fabric and pressed the metal stakes into the ground, sealing the plants within—and, we hoped, the pests without.

  Through retreat, we won. And confirmation of our victory came not from thousands of little beetles waving tiny white flags—although that would have been deeply, deeply satisfying—but from piles of whole, hole-free greens. Approximately one month after our first day hawking holey greens behind a tiny card table, we pulled into our market parking space with heads held high.

  First things first: we murmured thanks to the goddess of knots and ropes, which had once again miraculously kept our makeshift table safely affixed to the roof of the station wagon through the curvy, pothole-pocked country roads. Then we pulled the combination of daisy chain knots (Emmett) and bowlines (me) free, set up our little stand, and made ready to present our produce.

  Out of the harvest bins and onto the table came big, radiant bunches of Bright Lights Swiss chard; deep green stacks of Lacinato kale; bags full of crisp, clean bok choy and tender young arugula. All clean, hole-free, shining examples of local sustainable agriculture. In the final few minutes before market time, we ran down a mental checklist: labels out, starting cash accounted for
, misting bottle handy. We were ready to sell.

  As the morning wore on, we were heaped with praise for our young, tender chard—even Grumpy Man tried some, totally raw—but the crowning compliment of the day came from a customer about four feet tall, still in the Velcro shoe stage of life.

  The kid was tugging on his dad’s leg and ogling our basket of pristine baby bok choy. “Can we get some bok choy?” he asked.

  “We can get big bok choy at the supermarket,” the dad replied, eying the six dollars per pound price tag and trying to move his son onward.

  But the boy would not be moved. “Pleeease,” he begged, yanking harder. “I love bok choy!”

  The dad looked half-embarrassed, half-proud as he retrieved his wallet. Emmett and I looked at each other without even a hint of embarrassment. The little bulbs of bok choy palely glistened. The Lacinato kale gleamed a deep shade of blue-green, unblemished and primordial.

  Our greens were growing up, and somehow our shortlived farm had already gained a sense of history, or what history should be—one generation learning from the previous generation’s mistakes.

  Chapter 3:

  DARLING DODOS

  Pre-Eggs

  At 7:35 a.m. on our one-day “weekend”—a shovel-free Thursday that I’d demanded from Emmett after several weeks of nonstop work—I rolled out of bed and snapped open my cell phone mid-ring. Restricted number.

  “Hello.”

  “Lynda?” a woman’s voice inquired.

  “Yes?”

  “Your birds are here. You can come around back.”

  “Great! Thanks so much!”

  I was so excited that not only did my words come out as a rather embarrassing girlish squeak, but I also hung up the phone right then and there without entirely intending to. Damn—restricted number; couldn’t call back.

  “They’re here,” I informed Emmett. “Let’s go.”

  “Here where?” he asked. “Which post office?”

  “There’s more than one?” He nodded. “Crap.”

  That appropriate four-letter word was, perhaps, the final punctuation on a long-standing should-we-or-shouldn’t-we debate. From the very first time we visited the farmers’ markets as customers and prospective vendors—when the Windsor market manager casually mentioned a local shortage of farm-fresh eggs—my mind had been made up. We should raise chickens—thirty of them. Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, and Ameraucanas, starting with day-old chicks.

  Emmett’s main resistance to my idea had to do with our status as rootless—if not outright itinerant—farmers. What would we do with a flock of thirty chickens once we found our own land to farm? We couldn’t just administer a sedative and toss them in a suitcase when moving day came. In contrast to our stoic, seasonal vegetables, these moving, breathing creatures could live upwards of ten years. And our ability to keep a future flock with us would depend on whether we ultimately settled nearby or somewhere across the country. It wasn’t just the birds themselves that would require a substantial investment of time and money either. There were also the coop, yard, and fence, none of which would be easily transferable. Why put in all the work now, Emmett wondered, if we’re just going to have to do it all over again a few years down the road?

  It was this risk of loss that made Emmett hesitant to invest his time, money, and emotions in my poultry idea. He had a point, but when push comes to shove, I’m just not particularly risk averse. I prefer to plow ahead and deal with the consequences later—a personality trait that becomes particularly prominent when cute baby animals are involved.

  After the market manager planted the idea in my head, I quickly became a pro-chicken pest, badgering Emmett with a variety of arguments to convince him that chickens would be integral and irreplaceable members of our farm. My lines of attack were manifold.

  First, there was market demand. In Healdsburg, farm-fresh eggs sold for six dollars a dozen—and even at that rather appalling (to customers) price, there were never enough. The primary egg vendor would often sell out in the first hour or two. Only a few other farmers offered a small number of eggs from backyard flocks. Some, lacking the proper egg-vending permit, even sold them under the table. Eggs were so popular that they functioned as an effective marketing strategy, drawing customers to the produce stand. While customers were admiring the multicolored eggs and chatting up the farmer about her chickens, heck, they might as well pick up some tomatoes and onions for an all-local omelet. The rainbow assortments of eggs offered by local farmers were especially popular, and they were not something a person could find at the grocery store. Hence my choice of chicken breeds: White Leghorns for white eggs, Rhode Island Reds for brown, and hatchery Ameraucanas (a.k.a. Easter Eggers) to lay the much-coveted blue and green eggs. And if we bought day-old chicks—as opposed to laying hens or started pullets—we’d only be out about two dollars per bird, rather than the twenty dollars per bird that quality laying-age hens cost. Never mind that baby chicks are a hell of a lot cuter than big chickens, and are also more likely to bond with their owners.

  So marketing was my first line of argument. Then there was the concept of a closed-loop agricultural system: a farm that requires no additional inputs (specifically in the form of fertilizers) in order to maintain productivity from year to year. This sustainable ideal is a particularly difficult thing to achieve because every farm, with every harvest, exports nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium. Drawn from the soil, contained in beet bulbs, chard leaves, broccoli heads, and green beans, these essential elements are destined for customers’ bellies. And what doesn’t go into bone, muscle, and nervous system function ends up in the john, not back on the field.d

  So how does a farmer ensure continued productivity of his soil? Although nitrogen may be replenished with the help of legumes—which snatch nitrogen from the air and deposit it into the soil through a process known as nitrogen fixation—the other elements necessary for plant growth are trickier.

  Which is where chickens come in.

  Foraging poultry can help narrow the gap, if not close the loop entirely. Chickens are extremely effective composters—and they’re willing to compost things that wouldn’t end up in a typical farm compost pile, thus providing a net influx of nutrients. Chickens are more than happy to forage for weeds, weed seeds, and bugs, turning them into mineral-rich manure. They enjoy dairy products, baked goods, and oily cooked leftovers that would normally spoil the compost pile. They’ll also gulp down thinned seedlings and leftover market produce. Although chickens burn off and use up some of the compost’s value through digestion, this loss is balanced by the farmer’s satisfaction in feeding leftover market produce to a live, hungry creature (one who’ll turn it into an egg, no less). The alternative can be disheartening: tossing beautiful bouquets of chard and kale on the ground to wilt, wither, and rot.

  There are other benefits to chicken composting: it can provide a nitrogen boost midseason. While nitrogen-fixing legumes are usually planted in winter as a cover crop—and a backyard compost pile might take a year to fully mature—chickens miraculously crap year-round. For market growers like us, who easily plant eight lettuce successions in a given growing season, it’s useful to have a quick, easy soil pick-meup on hand—one that you can add anytime, anywhere.

  Another chicken benefit I pointed to: effective pest control. Chickens love bugs. And although they’re not particularly discriminating creatures—they’re not about to pass up a beneficial insect like a ladybug or mantis for the greater benefit of the farm—they can prevent insect populations from exploding. Besides, our farm (like most small farms that find themselves growing in the middle of a monoculture) possessed an abundance of evil insects and a paucity of good ones. If I couldn’t find any ladybugs, but brushed dozens of cucumber beetles off my clothing by day’s end, I guessed that the chickens would dine primarily on the green, gooey cucumber beetles.

  Finally, I had a bit of a moral and culinary imperative. Emmett and I had both been vegan for a number of
years. His primary reason related to health; mine, ethical treatment of animals. But while I had stopped eating eggs, I never stopped craving them. And I had a hunch that perhaps I could find a moral, ethical way to produce eggs that would satisfy both my conscience and my cravings. With a Foggy River flock, we could demonstrate to ourselves and our community the feasibility of local egg production—a model system in which chickens would roam a large yard; eat a healthy diet of organic produce, organic grains, and foraged foods; and consequently produce healthy, tasty eggs. I started salivating just picturing it: guilt-free scrambled eggs and tofu sausage on multigrain toast with Earth Balance faux-butter spread. Yum.

  And so I was able to convince my farming partner that Foggy River Farm really, truly needed chickens. We set aside the challenge of what to do if we were to move to another property, and invited poultry into our current, transient lives.

  The number of chickens—thirty—was partly thanks to back-of-the-envelope calculations, and partly thanks to chick shipping requirements. If thirty hens laid eggs six out of seven days, I’d have fifteen dozen eggs to sell at market, netting me ninety dollars per week. That, plus the advertising value for our market stand, would make chickens worth my time. And if we wanted to order day-old chicks from a hatchery we had to order at least twenty-five birds anyway.

  For the record, I’m not the only Greenhorn farmer who became enamored with the idea of chickens. It turns out it’s a common theme on start-up farms all across the country, from Oregon to Vermont to Missouri.20

  It’s not just professional farmers who raise broiler chickens and egg layers, either. Even suburbanites and city-dwellers are getting in on the action. Historically speaking, livestock is no stranger to the city. Nineteenth-century New York City streets were home to thousands of pigs that roamed the alleys and avenues eating trash.21 Families commonly kept hogs, milk cows, and chickens for home consumption. In other words, it wasn’t unusual for non-farming Americans to have one foot in the world of agriculture. But urban livestock fell out of fashion in the tidy, techno-savvy cities and suburbs of post-war America. Backyard bevies came to be considered filthy, unhealthy, and definitely not in vogue. Personally, my parents drew the line at a dog or cat. Anything bigger belonged on a farm.