Ramping up the family farm. Five years ago, Marty Travis and the rest of his family had a request from a cousin to rid his woodlot of ramps - another name for wild leeks, pictured at right - they harvested two tons of the invasive "weeds," which they sold to local chefs.
    That was the beginning of a small-scale family farm effort that blossomed into a still small economic engine. Marty and his wife Kris and their son, Will, have bought back the family's 179-year-old farmstead, which had been sold to developers by Marty's grandmother. This year, in addition to selling ramps to Chicago chefs and local markets, they also sell such oddities as Glapagos tomatoes and 1,500 squash blossoms a week.
     There's a cook in the Windy City who likes, believe it or not, green pine cones. Kickapoo beans have been profitable for the Travises, as have weeds like purslane and stinging nettle. And then there's their most sought-after crop, white iriqouis corn, which they turn into an oak-roasted meal that professional cooks really, really want. 
     The story of the Travis family was recounted in a story by New York Times reporter Christine Muhlke, and you can read it here : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30food-t-000.html


     Speaking of good eats, Lancaster Farming's own Chris Torres traveled to Pennsylvania's Pike County recently to talk to Don and Shirley Coutts and their family about the blueberry business. The Coutttses planted their first blueberry bushes in the late 1960s, and now have a three-generation business not only growing blueberries, but turning them into baked goods, jellies and jams. And there's an ice cream shop next to their bakery where the most popular flavor is...guess what? Chris's story is in our current issue.


     Is that really what you think it is? Is there straw in that Fiat?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhmSVrLX1rc&feature=player_embedded





     

     Cornstarch makes a great gravy, and it seems, also an effective way to hold water in soil. A product called Zeba, made from corn starch and only cornstarch, holds up to 500 times its own weight in water. Absorbent Technologies, Inc., of Beaverton, Oregon, started up in 2002 and has been on the market with Zeba since 2004.
     A Wall Street Journal blog report from today -- http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/08/28/absorbent-technologies-copes-with-vcs-fear-of-the-f-words/
-- recounts the founders' problems with raising money from venture capitalists. VCs don't like the words "farm" or "factory." Seems the company has plans to sell to farmers, and is hoping to construct a factory to make 30 million pounds of the stuff annually.
     The Zeba technology is licensed from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, and is based on a product whose scientific name is saponified starch-graft polyacrylonitrile copolymers. Developed in 1973 and patented in 1976, the ever-playful ARS lab rate nicknamed their discovery "Super Slurper."
     A number of product successes have grown out of Super Slurper. It's been used for packaging, seed coatings, root treatments, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even a filter for gas pumps. But I couldn't find anybody that was planning to make and sell 30 million pounds of the stuff.
     In the perennially parched Southwest, Zeba could drastically reduce the need for irrigation in some crops. Not enough, perhaps, to bring the southernmost reaches of the Colorado back to life, but enough to cut irrigation costs.
     Did anybody in the Lancaster Farming readership area - Maine to Virginia - need Zeba this year to get a good crop of corn or anything else? No. But who knows what next year will be like? 
     Zeba's probably too expensive to spread on land here anyway. But for houseplants, gardens and nursery crops, it might be worth investigating. There's more product information here http://www.friendsofwater.com/Zeba_Quench.html and an interesting history from the ARS here http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/may96/starch0596.htm


     TMDL "consequences" were a topic of discussion earlier this week at a Chesapeake Bay conference held in Lancaster. TMDL is shorthand for total maximum daily load of plant nutrients and sediment allowed to enter waterways bound for the Bay. New rules call for monitoring TMDLs from both point source (e.g., wastewater treatment plants) and non-point (e.g., farms) sources. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres attended the conference and wrote the page one article for the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.

    
     Here's an idea for a new cash crop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyUvNnmFtgI&feature=player_embedded 

   Things are looking up for urban agriculture. Way up. Like the hanging gardens of Babylon, there's new/old thinking about producing food in the neighborhoods where people live.

     An op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times by Dickson Despommier, heralds the day when city-dwellers will be buying their fresh fruits and vegetables from sources just down the block, rather than half a world away. Despommier, it should be noted, is writing a book about vertical farming, and has started a business to promote the concept.

     It's an appealing concept, in many ways. There'd be no hail damage on the 30th floor, for example. Less fuel to harvest, transport and process crops. Bugs? Fuhgedaboudit.

     Despommier likes the climate control, the year-'round growing season, and the fact that, according to his math, every vertically-farmed acre would replace 10 or 20 acres of traditionally farmed earth, which could be allowed to naturally return to forests. Which is something you know actually happens if you've ever travelled to Vermont and New Hampshire.

     The writer doesn't have anything to say about the challenges of growing sunflowers indoor in, say, Seattle, which has approximately two sunny days a year, which is why they drink so much coffee there, which would still have to imported, I guess, from some sunny, tropical outdoor location.

     Nor does he have anything to say about rural ambiance, like birdsong, cows mooing, wind in the rye, and the perfume of freshly cut alfalfa.

     And if you farm with horses? Fuhgedaboudit!

     It's an interesting piece, though, which you can read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/opinion/24Despommier.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1251284710-O1yLVW2Sl3ZSElYNdyMpaQ

     They don't make 'em like they used to. Used to be if you had a model of your John Deere, your Case or your Allis Chalmers tractor, it looked like a tractor. It was made of metal, it had rubber tires and you could go "Brmm-brmm-brmm," 'til your lips felt funny. Models for kids nowadays are plastic, and lot of them make their own noises. "Toys from the Good Old Days" is a story in Section B of the current edition of Lancaster Farming. It was written by New York correspondent Deborah Jeanne Sergeant, and we understand she was making mouth noises as she wrote it.

     Do-se-do. With tractors. Here's something I should have seen earlier. It's from this year's Pennsylvania Farm Show. Next year I understand they'll be doing a salsa routine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmvhCpEKAjY