Thanks are due as well to Gary Luke, Rachelle Longé, and Erin Riggio, whom I got to know through phone, e-mail, and Word’s Track Changes, respectively. (Erin: Sorry for the excess parentheticals. Also, at first I thought your initials were A.U.) I have come to appreciate that publishing a book takes a village, and I’m grateful to have had such inspired, independent villagers supporting mine. Thank you all for taking a chance on me, guiding me through the process, and crafting this into a story fit to move from an endless series of Word files to a real, honestto-goodness, dead-tree book. I still can’t believe it happened.
Teachers, like farmers, should be thanked more often. So I’d like to mention some of the teachers who taught me to write, and more important, to think: Julie Kennedy, Marvin Diogenes, Rick Barot and Malena Watrous, Ms. Zedalis, Mr. Goss, Mr. Up, and Dr. Hennessey. Deana Fabbro-Johnston, you are one of the most wonderful people in the world.
And of course, Emmett: my first reader, chief cheerleader, research assistant, rooster wrangler, love, and husband. It’s fitting that this book begins and ends with you, and I hope that you think of the entire thing as a first chapter with many more to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lynda Hopkins was born and raised in suburban San Diego, then moved north to study Earth Systems and Creative Writing at Stanford University. After graduating with a BS, BA, and MS, she traveled around New Zealand in a camper van with her boyfriend, working on homesteads, market farms, and a dairy. Late one night, the delusional duo decided to start a farm of their own.
Lynda published her first written work in third grade, and has written for local and regional newspapers and magazines since college. This is her first book. She currently lives and works on Foggy River Farm in Healdsburg, California, where she can be found fulfilling the duties of a produce farmer, milkmaid, livestock midwife, writer, and community journalist—which is to say, she’s not sleeping much but is sleeping very soundly indeed.
a A young farmer featured in the New York Times was an Amherst graduate from the Upper East Side; his father is a foundation executive and his mother a writer. We’d later meet young farmers in our area with degrees in archaeology, English literature, and architecture.
b To be fair to Emmett’s level of common sense, we were supposed to be living in the small house that belonged to the spigot. Had we been living in the house (which Emmett’s parents own), the salad bed would have been justified. But after I arrived, we learned that the fixer-upper house wouldn’t be livable for several months, during which time we’d spend approximately one hour every day making out-of-the-way trips to water a fourby-eight-foot salad and carrot bed by hand. This tiny bed would take up an inordinate amount of our time, but despite repeated suggestions that we just let it die, we never could bring ourselves to do it in—especially since it seemed to inexplicably thrive while everything else on the farm struggled to survive.
c The Spinosad organic pesticide—along with others—has been approved for use on brassica and lettuce crops as little as one day before harvest.
d The recoverability of these nutrients from human waste is debatable. For a while, the New York City metropolitan area functioned as one great closed-loop agricultural system. Long Island was the farm belt that provided New York City with its food; the city, in turn, provided the farms with what was delicately termed “night soil.” “Night soil”—composted human waste—is no longer considered appropriate for growing food, although some farmers use it to fertilize non-edible shrubbery around the farm.
e Impossibly, a neighbor found a second survivor the following afternoon—a Rhode Island Red, christened L.C. or Lucky Chicken, who wandered outside for twenty-four hours before being found several hundred yards from the coop.
f Santa also probably would have been killed simply because he was a male chick, making him much less valuable than egg-laying hens. The culling of rooster chicks is common industry practice in commercial egg operations—and also hatcheries, such as the one from which I purchased my chicks.
g Mason was not the real surname of the family, but rather the name used by the reporter who covered the story in the 1965 May edition of the New Yorker.
h If eggs (mentioned in Chapter 3) are more expensive than grocery store eggs, it is because the price reflects a humane standard for the hen as well as the cost of locally purchased, organic feed—money that goes to support local feed stores and employees. As excited as I was about earning money from eggs, our flock essentially breaks even.
i In Healdsburg, the farmers’ market is a regular stop for several local chefs who pay full market price for produce.
j Interestingly, termites—which subsist on a nitrogen-poor diet of dead wood—have established a parallel relationship with nitrogen-fixing diazotrophs that live in their guts.
k WWOOF is also referred to as World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, a name that developed to avoid confusion in immigration offices as to whether wwoofers were migrant workers or tourists on holiday.
l The compacted soil holds the moisture in and the loose, dry soil prevents a hard crust from forming on top. Some call the powdery cover a “dust mulch.”
m The Buff Chanticleer was another example of my knack for beating the sex-ratio odds: out of three “straight run” chicks I picked up from a local chicken fancier—which should have had about a 50:50 male-female ratio—I got all roosters.
Copyright © 2011 by Lynda Hopkins
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hopkins, Lynda.
The wisdom of the radish and other lessons learned on a small farm / Lynda Hopkins. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN : 978-1-570-61774-4
1. Farm life—California—Healdsburg. 2. Country life—California—
Healdsburg. I. Title.
S521.5.C2H67 2011
630.9794—dc22
2010047955
Sasquatch Books
119 South Main Street, Suite 400
Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 467-4300
www.sasquatchbooks.com
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The Wisdom of the Radish Page 22