LETTERS December 2010

Really fresh corn
RD: In the October 2010 Rural Delivery there was a letter from Leslie Sike with an answer by KK. I found it interesting that only the price was mentioned. No one compared the taste. I would have liked to have known how the taste compared, especially in the corn.
Awhile back we sold excess vegetables directly from our garden. Quite often, just before it was time to sit down to the supper table, someone would show up to get corn for supper. They said, "You put the pot on the stove, then go get the corn." Also back then when we traveled, we were in the corn-growing area of Ontario and the state of Iowa and we found the same thing. I'm betting the corn on the farmer's truck was the sweetest.
We raise our own tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and cucumbers, and my daughter works in a greenhouse that grows the same things. From early spring to late fall when we do not need lights, we grow and use these vegetables. Then we mostly go without because these vegetables from our big box stores are hard, tasteless, and stale.
E. Irene Varty
Winlaw, B.C.

Farming for the future
RD: In response to Leslie Sike and "Greedy Farmers" (October 2010 Letters to RD), this attitude is quite prevalent in our society today. Many people are quite removed it seems from knowledge of where their food comes from or what it takes to produce it.
Much of our chain store food comes from far away, and is produced with methods that are not sustainable. Mono-cropping is destroying the soil, irrigating is lowering the water table, and greenhouses use vast amounts of fossil fuels.
Many of those who labor on these factory farms work in deplorable conditions, but what we can't see tends to be easier to push from our conscience.
We are doing much of our farming with horses. We don't use chemicals. I work off the farm 37 1/2 hours per week. If I could make $8 for each hour that I work on the farm, this would not be necessary.
Farms are disappearing daily across this nation and the day may not be far away when Sobeys' shelves may not be full. If this happens in your lifetime, I think you will find your money neither tasteful, nor nutritious.
As for me, I intend to continue to farm sustainably, take care of the soil I use, and enjoy the satisfaction that goes with farming. I am content to let the big box CEOs and shareholders have the money. We need to eat locally and in season and endeavor to save this planet for future generations.
David Rennick
Hoyt, N.B.

Incensed reader
RD: Cheapest is never the best. It's very rare that I get incensed enough by a letter in RD to make me write in, but Leslie Sike's letter in October's issue entitled "Greedy Farmers" certainly did just that.
I have this response to the comments about the price of sweet corn and the fact the Co-op has all kinds of overheads, while the roadside vendor has none. What about the vendor's farm? His seeds? His planting and harvesting costs? His fertilizer, be it chemicals or manure? His truck? And dare I mention, his living wage? Does Leslie think the farmer foraged the corn from the side of the road?
And the buying public, earning only $8 an hour, believe me, if we added anything like that as our wage to the cost of our produce, it would be way more expensive than $5 for a dozen corn cobs!
Among other things, we raise free-range meat birds, and with buying the day-old chicks, feeding them and slaughter, then pricing our labor, gas, and buildings as ZERO, we reckon we are making about $1 per pound when we sell, or about $5-$7 a bird. Having housed and fed them for eight to 10 weeks, fetched and carried for them, and delivered them to our customers; the high-end restaurants on Prince Edward Island.
By cutting out the middleman we are getting a better price per chicken than farmers who factory farm and are contracted in to the corporations, so I dread to think what their profit margin might be.
You stick to the big box stores Leslie, way better to support a big, faceless corporation, whose profits and taxes are spent in another province, who is exploiting some poor farmer somewhere, but not in your line of sight. Out of sight, out of mind eh?
I hope Leslie read the October issue with the excellent article about Nature's Route Farm and the commitment and hours the Coates family put in. I raise my hat to them.
More townies should get themselves out to a real farm sometime to see how it is done, preferably on a cold day in January.
Rhonda Lloyd
Dundas Heritage Farm
Cardigan, P.E.I.

Swallows in Alma
RD: I have seen swallows in Alma, N.B. There were two nests right over the entrance to the activity centre. About the number of young, I can't tell. I was just pleased to see them. I have not noticed any in Sussex.
Kathleen Campbell
Sussex, N.B.

How good is it?
RD: We have been burning wood for years using a Newmac Wood Chief space heater. Now we are looking at the new EPA rated model. We would be interested in hearing comments on how this new concept works. Does it work half as well as the older model has?
Charles Jess
Yarmouth, N.S.

(Charles, there are a number of improved wood heat stoves, space heaters, and furnaces coming on the market each year and we welcome positive comments from readers about their "new and improved" units. We intend in a future issue to write about new generation outdoor boilers that are answering criticisms leveled at them in recent years by putting hugely more efficient furnaces on the market. DvL)

"Miracle worker"
RD: I read with great interest in your September Rural Delivery about the cow down with Milk fever. When I was but a child (well, really in my early teens. . .) back in the early 1950s on the farm in Ohio, I recall one of our cows going down with it. The vet came and like a miracle man, gave our cow the IV calcium solution. I somehow recall being told that Milk fever was only a problem for high-milk producers, which is not true as I learned years later while working in Mexico.
I was doing agriculture and community development south of Mexico City in the state of Puebla and we lived in the state capital, the city of Puebla. One day while I was in some village somewhere a peasant farmer came to our house and told my wife, Casey, that he had a sick cow and would the "Inginiero" (that's what they called me) come help. Casey asked the important question, had she recently had a calf, and the answer was yes.
When I got home later that day she told me, so I went by a vet "farmacía" and bought some calcium to inject in case it was Milk fever. Sure enough, this skinny cow had all the classic signs. I did not know how to do the intravenous injection, but I knew that injecting it into the muscles would do the job, only more slowly. I was right and this man thought I was a miracle worker!
Punch Woods
Tucson, Ariz.

Great suggestion, but. . .
RD: In the October issue Barb McLaughlin suggests a "symphony of swallows" as the collective noun for these wondrous and joyful birds. This is a great suggestion but according to "An Exaltation of Larks" by James Lipton (a book of collectives), the term in use is a "flight of swallows."
Ruth Richman
DeGros Marsh, P.E.I.

Local buys
RD: I am a fourth year student at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and I'm writing in response to a comment that was made about the NSAC cafeteria "doubtfully" buying local products (Local markets, Vol. 35, #2, July/Aug issue). Well, I would like to lift that cloud of doubt today by assuring you that the company (Chartwells) running the on-campus cafeteria and coffee shops does in fact use local foods as often as they can.
At the beginning of this school year Chartwells introduced a "buy nine local apples, get the 10th free." These local apples come from our very own campus apple orchard when they are in season. After our orchard is finished, the apples come from the Annapolis Valley. The company also uses and stores potatoes grown right here on campus. It uses donair meat from Antigonish, paper plates from a company in Nova Scotia, and wine (for catering) from Jost produced in vineyards around Nova Scotia.
I would also like to inform you of an ongoing project called "The Chefs Garden." This garden has been tilled and is ready and waiting to be seeded in May. The plan is that the garden will provide the cafeteria with around 10 different high-demand vegetables, with the main focus being on root crops that can be stored and used over the winter (carrots, potatoes, Sweet potatoes, turnips, squash, etc.).
The company also recently went completely trayless at the on-campus cafeteria because of the success proven by "Trayless Tuesdays" (introduced a couple of years ago). This was an initiative that successfully cut down the amount of liquid waste on that particular day in half, from 22.8 L to 11.4 L.
Over the last few years I have been very satisfied with the service Chartwells has provided our school. They are always open for suggestions and will entertain any ideas for change.
Elizabeth Moses
N.S. Agricultural College
Bible Hill, N.S.

(This is wonderful, Elizabeth, and thank you for sharing the information. DvL)