Well, my permaculture class at Mark Shepard’s farm in Viola, Wisconsin was excellent.  We covered everything from the philosophy of permaculture to the challenges that real people were facing as they started farms/businesses with permaculture approaches.

Our first tour was of Mark’s own farm.  He has approximately 100 acres of ground that he has swaled (small water retaining terraces) and planted in hazelnuts, chestnuts, cider apples, berries, annuals and more.  He is testing various intercropping approaches and trialing numerous varieties.  He has created a non-profit foundation and developed a hazelnut cracking machine.  He will soon have hard cider available for sale.

Another of our tour stops was at The Trout Palace Fish Farm.  We saw how Jim Pierce is making the best use of his site conditions with trout aquaculture and how he used a discarded whey tank as the basis of his root cellar inserted into his hillside.  While many aquaculturists attempt to maximize their profits by adding electrically powered aerators, Jim is limiting his production levels to what his natural spring water flow can support.

Dave and Erin Varney started One-Sun Farm and Bakery five years ago.  They are intercropping garlic, raspberries, annuals, and hazelnuts.  We heard first hand the struggles that a small farmer can go through… the Varneys had their income slashed this February when the State Department of Inspections notified them that they can’t wholesale the meat pizzas that they have been producing in their licensed food processing kitchen without a meat processing license.  They are struggling to make up that income with their veggie pizzas, bakery items, berries and other crops. 

I have many more photos to share, I’ll soon be putting them on my Flickr page at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bburnett71

So have you heard of permaculture?

Wikipedia describes permaculture as a “moral and ethical design system applicable to food production and land use,” as well as community design. It seeks the creation of productive and sustainable ways of living by integrating ecology, landscape, organic gardening, architecture, agroforestry, green or ecological economics, and social systems. The focus is not on these elements themselves, but rather on the relationships created among them by the way they are placed together; the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts.”  Here is a good book written by one of Permaculture’s creators Bill Mollison: Introduction to Permaculture.

Permaculture can be applied to a tiny yard to a large farm.  I am lucky enough to be signed up for a permaculture class at Mark Shepard’s farm in Viola, Wisconsin this June.  It is being put on by my friends at Midwest Permaculture.

I am planning to post photos and info from the class.

If you are reading my blog about local food then you have probably already heard about Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s year of eating food solely produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver 1 bedroom apartment.  They have a web site at: www.100milediet.org

They were featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning (you can listen online): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10219029

You might be interested in their book: Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally (if you buy it through this link you’ll be supporting this site).

One thing I’ve discovered with Mesclun mixes is that some of the varieties frequently outcompete the other varieties; I’ve run into this with some Botanical Interest Sassy Salad Mesclun (2005 seed) that I started in my coldframe early this spring… the mustard greens got themselves established before the other seeds.  It is also probably a case of the other seeds not storing as well.  Another issue I’ve run into with mixes is trying to identify what is a seedling and what is a weed…  Botanical Interest’s lovely illustration of full sized specimens on the seed packet helps, but it’s still challenging.  I may start to limit myself to planting varieties seperately and mixing them as they are cut.

I also lucked out and one of my neighbors shared some morels she had found.  I wasn’t in the mood to dig out the breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, milk, so when I went looking for something to pair up with the morels, those abundant mustard greens came to mind.  

This was a simple experimental dish: melt some butter, add the morels (sliced in half, submerged in water, rinsed well and drained) and saute them for 3-4 minutes.  As the morels neared completion, I added about a quarter cup of chopped mustard greens and then a little sherry cooking wine and sea salt.  I ended up with morels in a light sauce with a nice touch of spicy greens. Yum. 

Hey and wouldn’t that make a nice picture — that’s how the current web site header photograph came to be.

This web site is an attempt to bring together a variety of my passions: lessening my impact on our Earth, gardening, cooking, photography, web development, teaching, learning, sharing, and entrepreneurism.

I hope this will be a resource where you can:

• Find out about Iowa farmers and purchase from them
• Discover restaurants that serve seasonal, locally produced food
• Find seasonal recipes
• Learn from my successes and failures growing food as locally as it can get (our backyard)

Check back soon for posts on these subjects: 

• Why Think Global Eat Local? What does it mean?
• Why start with a blog?
• Big plans, future phases

Contact me at brandon@thinkglobaleatlocal.com to be added to our email list to be notified of changes.  Subscribe to our our RSS feed which will be coming soon.

Thanks for visiting!