Tag: harvest

Obsessing Over Vegetable Gardens

  • Many gardeners feel that there's nothing as satisfying as growing and eating your own vegetables. (Photo by Daniel Wildman)

Not as many people are planting vegetable gardens these days… but the few who do are really passionate about it. And it’s not just because they swear their own vegetables taste better than anything you can get at a store. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explores the obsessions of vegetable gardeners:

Transcript

Not as many people are planting vegetable gardens these days… but the few who do
are really passionate about it, and it’s not just because they swear their own
vegetables taste better than anything you can get at a store. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explores the obsessions of vegetable
gardeners:


In Connie Bank’s former life, she recruited attorneys and engineers. She’d be
on the phone until ten every night. She’d spend entire weekends with clients.
She calls herself a true Type A – working at full speed, making a lot of money,
until she just had enough of it all.


Now vegetable gardening is her whole life.


“You’re controlling a tiny little nourishing world of your own, where the rest
of our world is sort of crazy, politics are crazy, the world is going nuts… it’s
America, it’s fast fast fast fast fast. This vegetable gardening thing is a way to take a
deep breath, slow yourself down, and just watch the garden grow.”


But Bank admits she’s still intense. She throws herself into gardening. She
says if the little plastic labels say to plant things twelve inches apart, she gets
impatient and packs them in six inches apart.


People like Connie Bank are sort of rare. A survey by the National Gardening
Association found that not a lot of people are into vegetable gardening these
days. Compared to five years ago, seven million fewer households are growing
vegetables. You have to weed and water every day and fend off the squirrels.
Most Americans would rather plant flowers or just not bother with any of it.


So these days, instead of recruiting professionals, Connie Bank’s trying to
recruit as many new gardeners as she can. She teaches classes to people on
their lunch breaks. Today, she’s going after daycare kids.


(Sound of watering)


BANK: “Who here likes vegetables? What kind do you like?”


KIDS: “Watermelon! Oranges! Strawberries!”


BANK: “Okay, that’s good you guys, except those are fruits.”


KIDS: “Corn on the cob is good!”


A lot of serious vegetable gardeners got their first taste of it as kids.


(Sound of trowel digging)


Earl Shaffer farmed as a kid in Indiana, and when he left at 17 he swore he’d
never grow anything again. But Earl says twenty years later, his wife Marie
tempted him back into the garden. Today, they’re tending to their lettuce,
tomatoes and zucchini. He says their house is too big for just the two of them
now, but he can’t move and leave his garden behind.


“As you get older, I think some of the things that were a part of your youth
kind of return in importance in some way. I was very fond of my grandparents,
especially my grandmother, and gardening was part of her life, I think that also made it
important to me to return to it.”


Shaffer says farming did give him a feel for growing things, but like everyone
else, he still has to read the plant labels. He says we’re losing the
knowledge of how to live off the land.


For gardeners, growing even just a couple tomato plants can feel like
reconnecting to our farming roots. Ashley Miller curated an exhibit on
vegetable garden history at Cornell University. She says the motives for these
gardens have changed a lot over the last three centuries. Sometimes people have
gardened to make money, sometimes they’ve grown food to support a war effort,
and sometimes people have just done it as a challenging hobby, but there’s one
major thread.


“Growing vegetables is as close as we can get to a seasonal ritual.
There is something primal about putting a seed in the soil and tending it, and
harvesting it and eating it.”


A lot of gardeners agree that growing vegetables is a sensual experience. They
talk about the way the scent of tomato plants fills the whole yard, or the
blue-green color of baby broccoli. Gardener Lee Criss says she can’t wait to
get into her yard in the spring and get her bare hands in the dirt.


“I don’t garden with gloves because I need to feel what the soil feels like, the
texture. You use senses in gardening that you don’t in most everything else
that you do. You feel things, you smell. It’s a different way of sensing the
world around you, I think.”


It’s hard to walk away from these people’s backyards and shake off their
enthusiasm. Every single gardener I talked to told me to call them when I
started my own garden. And if they think you’re considering gardening at all,
watch out: they’ll fill your head with visions of their juiciest cherry
tomatoes, they’ll try to fill your car with seedlings, anything to get you
hooked.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Dairy Farmers Keeping Milk Close to Home

  • When people drink a tall glass of milk, they seldom think of how much energy it takes to produce the milk they consume. (Photo by Adrian Becerra)

A dairy farmer who got tired of shipping his milk to far away dairies is now processing it on the farm. By not trucking it away, he’s reducing the amount of energy used to produce milk and giving local customers different kinds of dairy products. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:

Transcript

A dairy farmer who got tired of shipping his milk to far away dairies is now processing it on the farm. By not trucking it away, he’s reducing the amount of energy used to produce milk and giving local customers different kinds of dairy products. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:


(sound of glass clinking)


Recycled glass bottles are banging around inside a giant dish washer.


“Bottles just are put in here in rows and they go through a soap tank for 3 to 4 minutes and they come through a few rinse cycles and a chlorine rinse, down the belt down to the filler.”


After they’re washed, the bottles are filled with milk and capped. Crates of fat-free, 2 percent, whole and chocolate milk are stacked into a cooler.


Sally and George Shetler set up this bottling plant on their farm 5 years ago. They say for a pretty small investment, they’re reaping more profits. They’re also saving energy because they don’t ship their milk somewhere else for processing. Their 38 cows are just a few feet away in their barn, so the milk’s journey from cows udders to containers is short.


George Shetler used to just sell his raw milk to a company that would pump it out of his tank and into their truck. But he says – like milk everywhere – the first trip was only the beginning of a long trip for his cows’ milk.


“Now some of the larger dairies, it goes through one or two transfer stations where it’s transferred from one truck to another truck to another truck to a milk plant. I’ve got a cousin that used to drive for a milk company out west where he was hauling milk from New Mexico up to North Dakota for processing then some of it goes from North Dakota to Wisconsin for processing.”


And so a lot of fuel is wasted getting the milk from cow to jug. George Shetler says he’s also saving energy at the beginning of the process. Instead of trucking in grain, or burning fuel to plant and harvest grain to feed the cows, he’s letting his cows eat grass.


Brian Halweil is with the WorldWatch Institute in Washington DC. He has written a book on local agriculture called “Eat Here.” He says the grass-fed cows require less energy to produce milk than do cows on modern farms.


“The feed that the cows eat needs to be brought in, driven in, which consumes a lot of energy, the production of that grain takes a lot of energy, there’s water pumping and cleaning that’s associated with factory farmed dairy cows and in contrast to that the grass-fed farms essentially runs on sunlight.”


Sunlight is the only energy grass needs to grow. But despite all the savings in energy costs, the Shetlers’ milk is more expensive. That’s because the huge system in place to distribute milk works on economies of scale. The big dairies can balance production and distribution. Milk reaches just the right place at the right time in the right amount. The dairies also get huge government subsidies to keep the price of milk lower.


“It’s kind of a fake price that we pay in the supermarket.”


Brian Halweil says that the price should not be the only reason to buy a locally produced gallon. Burning extra diesel fuel and gasoline should also be considered.


“It’s a price that doesn’t include the cost of shipping, that doesn’t include all the pollution associated with that shipping and it doesn’t include all the health and environmental and social impact of factory-raised animals versus a local grass-fed dairy.”


And many people would rather buy the milk from cows that don’t receive as much antibiotic medicines and hormone injections that make the cows produce more milk.


Inside their pasteurizing vat the milk is heated to a lower temperature. This allows some of the enzymes to stay alive, which some people believe is healthier. One customer says she comes to the store right on the farm because she wants to connect with the people and animals that make what she drinks.


“It’s much better. That’s all I can say. It’s wonderful milk.”


And many of the customers who buy the locally-produced milk from nearby stores say they prefer it. Just like farmers markets, local dairy products are becoming popular. Environmentalists believe that’s good for the local economy and for saving fuel.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

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Wind Turbines Stir Up Neighbors (Part 2)

Most people think renewable energy is a good idea. It’s better
than burning fossil fuel to create electricity. But “green energy”
alternatives
can be controversial. Windmill farms are springing up all across the
nation.
Some people think the windmills are eyesores. But others say windmill farms
can help preserve the agricultural landscape by supplementing the income of
farmers. In the second of a two-part series on wind energy, the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Linda Stephan reports:

Transcript

Most people think renewable energy is a good idea. It’s better than burning fossil
fuel to create
electricity. But “green energy” alternatives can be controversial. Windmill farms
are springing
up all across the nation. Some people think the windmills are eyesores. But others
say windmill
farms can help preserve the agricultural landscape by supplementing the income of
farmers.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Linda Stephan reports:


For 30 years, Matt Mauer raised crops and livestock on his farm about 10 miles from
the Lake
Michigan shoreline. Today, he’s in his backyard looking at the land now farmed by
his daughter
and son-in-law. Standing there, he feels a crop they’re not harvesting.


“The good Lord makes it windy all the time for us, so let’s use it, you know.
Because I’m like
everybody else. When I get up in the morning, I want lights.”


Mauer’s hoping to put four wind turbines on his family’s farm near Ludington,
Michigan. That
would power about 24-hundred homes. Nearby, a renewable energy company’s working with
other farmers to build a hundred turbines in the area. Mauer says many of his
neighbors want in
on the deal because they think wind energy could help save their farms.


“It’s hard to make a living just farming right now. And I consider the wind one of
the crops that
we could harvest. It will help keep farmers on the land. Like if, in this place, if
we could get
seven–thousand dollars a year, six-thousand dollars a year for four of them, that’d
make it a hell
of a lot easier to keep the people here and farm.”


The state government’s backing similar projects. It’s training financial advisors
to show farmers
how they can turn a profit with windmills.


But not everyone likes the idea. Some people who live in the area around the
planned windmills
say they’re worried the towers would destroy the region’s charm. That’s linked to
property values
and to tourism. And they don’t like the size of the proposed windmills. Each one
would be four-
hundred feet tall. The blades would have a diameter nearly as long as a football
field.


It’s a story that’s heard in many places. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the prairies of
Illinois, and
around the Great Lakes. For example, a Michigan couple who wanted large-scale
turbines on
their property ended up losing a court-battle against local government that opposed
the plan. And
two turbines already in place in Mackinaw City – between Lake Michigan and Lake
Huron –
have some unhappy neighbors as well.


Thomas and Virginia Alexander’s home is about 15-hundred feet away from the windmills.
They’re in their eighties and they both wear hearing aids… but even without them,
they say the
windmills are loud…


Tom Alexander: “There’s things about it we don’t appreciate, at times the noise –
not always –
depending upon the wind and the direction.
Virginia Alexander: “Yesterday. Very noisy yesterday. The wind was high and they,
you could
really hear them.”
Tom Alexander: “Just a continual swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.”


Windmill developers say the sound is no louder than normal speech. But this noise is
different. It
goes beyond the frequencies of normal speech. The sound can travel long distances
through both
the ground and the air. They keep Virginia Alexander awake some nights.


Tom and Virginia Alexander’s son Kelly lives next door with his family. He calls
himself a
windmill victim. He has this advice for others:


“Don’t let them go in your backyard. There are places they can go. You don’t just
put those in
somebody’s backyard. I don’t think it’s right.”


A lot of people agree with the Alexanders. Even wind energy boosters concede that
location is
key to successful projects. David Johnson heads up the program for the state of
Michigan that’s
encouraging farmers to allow windmills on their land. He says turbines should be
constructed
where there’s lots of wind and few neighbors. But he says when people say ‘no’ to
windmills,
they should consider the alternative.


“So, does that mean that you should build another big coal-fired plant? Is that the
preferable way
of doing it with the global warming impacts and the mercury pollution and so on that
go with
that? Is that the choice that the public wants to make?


States across the nation are struggling to find the right balance between clean
energy and the
beauty of an uncluttered landscape. Few regulations are in place right now. More
and more,
communities will be facing the decision of whether clean energy and keeping farmers
on the land
is worth the price of adding wind turbines to the scenery.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Linda Stephan.

Related Links

Winemakers Bugged by Asian Beetle

  • The Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle was introduced in 1916 to control aphids. It has since established populations around the country. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Many people in North America have already met the multicolored Asian lady beetle. It looks like an ordinary ladybug, but it has some bad habits. It stinks, it bites and it invades homes when the winter approaches and stays there until spring. And not only is it a pest in our houses, it has decided that it likes wine too. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Victoria Fenner has the story:

Transcript

Many people in North America have already met the multicolored Asian lady beetle. It
looks like an ordinary ladybug, but it has some bad habits. It stinks, it bites and it
invades homes when the winter approaches and stays there until spring. And not only is
it a pest in our houses, it has decided that it likes wine too. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Victoria Fenner has the story:


Ann Sperling goes out to the vineyards every day to check for bugs. She’s the vintner
with Malivoire Winery. Malivoire is a small organic winery in the Niagara Peninsula in
Southern Ontario, just north of the New York State border. There’s one kind of bug in
particular that Ann is hoping she doesn’t see – the multicolored Asian lady beetle.


It was introduced to North American in 1916 to control help aphids on plants. In 1988 in
Louisiana, the ladybug population suddenly started to grow. Scientists still don’t know
what happened to make them reproduce so fast at that time. But in only six years, it
spread as far as the northern states and southern Canada.


The spread of the bug has been very bad for the grape and wine industry. Sperling is
nervous about these ladybugs because she was caught by surprise a few years back. She
didn’t know anything about the problems they would cause to her wine at the time.


“Typically there is a certain number of insects including wasps and things like that that
are harvested with the fruit and it doesn’t cause any problems in the processing. And in
2001 there were these Asian lady beetles and they infected, or affected, the flavor of the
wine, so that there were many wines from that vintage throughout the Niagara peninsula
that had the characteristic flavor and were not saleable.”


The big problem is that Asian ladybugs are the skunks of the insect world. Just like
skunks, they give off a bad smell to discourage predators. And they release a sticky
brown substance from the joints in their body when they’re stressed and they make a real
mess.


At harvest time, there’s a lot of commotion in the vineyards. That’s when the bugs get
really upset, and they leak all over the grapes. They also hang on to the grape clusters
and are pressed into the wine along with the fruit. Sperling says they had to dump half of
their 2001 vintage because it had a bitter taste and a bouquet of raw peanuts.


Because of this, the multicolored Asian Ladybug has become a big problem for wineries
in the Great Lakes region and in the Midwest. It’s such a pressing problem for the wine
industry that the Ontario Grape Growers Association has set up a special task force to
figure out what to do. Gerry Walker is heading up the task force. He says the ladybug
isn’t a problem this time of year, but the populations are being monitored to head off
potential problems during the harvest season.


“First of all, the bug usually is outside the vineyard for most of the season. It’s usually
located in soybean fields or forested areas. It has a wide host range in terms of what
aphid species it will feed on. It primarily feeds on aphids during the growing season,
populations build up and at the end of the growing season when cool temperatures occur
it cues the bug to look for hibernating wintering sites and also to fill up on sugars in order
to hibernate. And so they move to the vineyards as the grapes begin to ripen.”


Asian ladybugs are found across most of the southern part of North America –
everywhere that there is an aphid population.


And there is a connection between soybean fields and vineyards. Here’s why – aphids
like to eat soybeans, and the multicolored Asian ladybeetle likes to eat aphids. When the
soybeans are harvested, the beetles look for new food and move to the vineyards.


Mark Sears is an environmental biologist at the University of Guelph. He’s beginning a
study to find out the movement patterns of the ladybug. He says we can’t get rid of them.
All we can do is control them.


“This beetle’s been here long enough that there’s no way we’re going to eliminate it. We
just want to suppress its numbers so that it isn’t a problem, in this case, in the vineyards.
If we do a good job of suppressing aphids – we’re not going to eliminate them either, but
if we keep them at lower numbers then there’s less food available for beetle populations,
there will be fewer of them to move to vineyards. And therefore we should be able to
contain the problem, not the insect itself.”


Ann Sperling is one of many winemakers who’s happy to see that this major study of the
ladybug is being done. But the invasion of 2001 was also a valuable learning experience.
Sperling says they’re ready if it happens again. Malivoire Winery has bought a shaker
table to dislodge the bugs from the bunches of grapes. They’ll also hire more people to
sort the grapes by hand.


Some people in the wine industry don’t like to talk about the multicolored Asian ladybug.
They’re afraid of tainting the reputation of their wines. Ann Sperling agreed to talk about
it because she thinks there wouldn’t have been as much damage to their 2001 vintage if
they had been better prepared. They haven’t had any big problems since then.


If another large invasion happens now, Malvoire Winery is ready. Ann Sperling hopes
other wineries will learn from their experience.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Victoria Fenner.

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“24 Carrot” Farmers

According to the USDA, the number of farmers’ markets in the United States has increased nearly 80 percent in the past decade, with roughly 3,100 in operation. Like many other Midwesterners, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King buys much of her warm-weather produce from local growers. But King thinks those farmers grow something else that might be just as important as food:

Transcript

According to the USDA, the number of farmers’ markets in the United States has
increased nearly 80 percent in the past decade, with roughly 3,100 in operation. Like
many other Midwesterners, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King buys
much of her warm-weather produce from local growers. But King thinks those farmers
grow something else that might be just as important as food…


Not long ago, my ten-year-old daughter gathered her allowance, dropped her coins into a
see-through, polka-dot plastic purse and journeyed with me to our local farmers’ market.
Inside the old warehouse-turned-emporium, we strolled up and down the aisles. She
sniffed bars of soap and fragrant candles, poked bags of cheese bread and gazed at
almond croissants. But it was a large butternut squash that finally caught her eye.


She smiled and pointed at the unusual treasure. The farmer behind the counter called out
a price and I watched from a distance as she dug into her little plastic purse, pulling out a
quarter here, a dime there. As she calculated the numbers, her smile faded; she was fifty
cents shy of the total.


“Oh, you go ahead and take it anyway,” he told her. “It’s a little bit old, really.”


She paused, uncertain. I stepped into view and offered a dollar to the farmer, but he
stood his ground. He wanted to sell the squash to my daughter for the price she could
afford. He said it was a fair exchange. We thanked him repeatedly and my daughter took
the big pear-shaped vegetable in her arms like it was a baby doll.


It was not the first time one of the market’s farmers had put kindness before cash. Shop
there long enough and someone is bound to say, “Oh, take two, they’re small” or “This
one’s a little bruised; I’ll throw it in for free.”


These aren’t “blue light specials” or “supersaver sales;” they’re gifts from people who
never tire of the magic that springs from the earth. In a year of Saturdays, I’ve been
invited to marvel at the shape of a carrot, to behold the size of a potato, to delight in the
beauty of a snapdragon.


In a nation of box stores and billionaire wannabes, a nation where “excess” is master, the
men and women who labor in the soil offer a glimpse of something different. It’s a
commerce measured not only by what they gain, but also by what they give.


John Greenleaf Whittier put it best in his poem, “Song of Harvest”:


Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.


HOST TAG: Julia King lives and writes in Goshen, Indiana. She comes to us by way of
the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

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Preserving World-Class Walleye Fishery

  • Walleye (image courtesy of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission)

Conservation officials say there need to be new restrictions on walleye fishing. Lake Erie is a world-class destination for walleye fishing. But officials say without better conservation, it won’t be in the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Aileo Weinmann reports:

Transcript

Conservation officials say there need to be new restrictions on walleye
fishing. Lake Erie is a world-class destination for walleye fishing. But
officials say without better conservation, it won’t be in the future. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Aileo Weinmann reports:


The Canadian province of Ontario and the states around Lake Erie plan to cut
this year’s walleye harvest by 30 percent. Conservation officials say
lowering the catch of the popular sport fish is necessary because the
walleye population is down.


Jim Barta runs charter fishing trips for walleye. He says rough weather in
recent years has damaged a lot of the fish nests of the walleye.


“Cold weather, storms in the Spring, about the time the walleye
are depositing their eggs on the sandbars and in the various reefs where
they spawn — you lose a lot of these nests, a good many of these nests.”


Even with the reduction in the number of walleye fished from the lakes,
conservation officials say the walleye population will still go down during
the next two years. They hope the plan begins to help walleye bounce
back after that.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Aileo Weinmann.

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Apples Alone Not Enough for Many Orchard Owners

  • Apples have become just part of the attraction to going to the orchard. Most offer carnival-like attractions to draw big crowds. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The fall season brings with it celebrations of the harvest. Pumpkins and gourds show up at the grocery store. And for many families, fall means a trip to the apple orchard. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham observes that often that traditional celebration of the harvest just ain’t what it used to be:

Transcript

The fall season brings with it celebrations of the harvest. Pumpkins and gourds show up at the
grocery store. And for many families, fall means a trip to the apple orchard. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham observes that often that traditional celebration of the harvest just ain’t
what it used to be:


When I was a kid, autumn meant going to the apple orchard. There was a old barn there. I don’t
think it had ever been painted and the wood planks were weathered gray.


The barn smelled of apples, of course, but not just the fresh ones. There was also the sweet-sour
smell of apples fermenting on the dirt floor, rejects that didn’t make it to the bushel baskets for sale.
Bees were always hovering over the bruised and brown skin of the slightly rotting fruit.


After my Dad paid the old guy who owned the orchard I would ask for one of the newly picked
apples. That first bite of the hard, sweet little apple would bring such a rush of flavor reminding me
of the autumn before. This was harvest, the essence of fall for me. This was the celebration, the
taste of that apple. Today, it’s a different story.


(sound of train and crowds)


Today, a trip to the apple orchard is much like a trip to a carnival. A little train circles the orchard,
kids crawl through a rainbow-colored inflatable worm, there’s a corral of little tractors that the kids
pedal in circles, draft horses draw wagons through the fruit trees, and, oh, yeah, the orchard sells
apples.


I wondered if some of the folks my age or thereabouts longed for the simpler times when
celebrating fall meant that first bite of apple. I wondered if they thought the kids today,
mesmerized by gimmicks, games and glitz might be missing something.


“Well, when we were little, we didn’t have anything even like this. It was just the apple cider and
the doughnut. So, now you have this wonderful place with the pumpkins and the train rides and the
skeletons and the doughnuts and all the fun things to bring the grandkids and the kids too. I think
it’s a lot more fun now and they appreciate it more. We do this as a family, so it’s being together
as a family.”


“Well I think its good for the kids who live in the city to get out and walk around and get some
fresh air out here in the country.”


“I mean with our grandchildren, I mean it’s just been beautiful. The atmosphere is nice and I mean
it’s just lovely. That’s all I can say.”


Well, okay, so, I guess the visitors to a place like this would be enthusiastic or they wouldn’t be
here, right? But, what about the owners? I mean, here they are, growing a good product, working
through the year to produce this fruit and they’ve had to resort to this circus to get people to come
in? What’s wrong with just selling apples?


I figured Michael Beck, one of the owners of this orchard would understand what I was asking
about.


“Our return on fruit in the wholesale sector was horrendous and it’s still is horrendous for other
growers. So we wanted a way to actually profit from our fruit and selling retail, and doing fun
things for people at a farm was the best way to get that crop moved.”


“Now, to a person, everyone I’ve asked thinks this is great and so much better than when they
were kids. But, I’m wondering, you know, for me, the apple was the big celebration. And a little
bit of cider, maybe if you’re really lucky a caramel apple. Do you think the kids today are so
wrapped up in the carnival aspect that they miss that kind of celebration of the harvest?”


“Well, I don’t know. We sure do sell a lot of cider and caramel apples and apples and I see a lot of
families taking home apple products. And, I think they still get the enjoyment of the good food plus
we offer that fun atmosphere.”


Alright, so he’s still selling apples, and he’s making a buck. That’s admirable considering the
competition of imported apples. But surely there’s someone who remembers the simpler days of
being happy just because of the taste of that crisp bite of apple. Somewhere.


I did find someone, finally. Tom Kilgore was standing, waiting for the return of the train. He sort
of had that look of someone who was, well, trying to be patient. You know, a parent or a
grandparent who was sacrificing a beautiful day to make someone else happy.


“People like fresh apples, so they’ll go to an orchard and get the fresh apples without this stuff.”


“So, you could take it or leave it?”


“I could leave it, yeah. I came because of the grandkids, so, that’s the only reason I’m here.”


Kilgore says back home he just goes to a quiet little orchard to buy his apples and maybe sip some
cider. But, you know, as I was strolling around the grounds reading the signs that directed RV
traffic – RVs! At an apple orchard. As I was looking around, it dawned on me. For most of the
people here, this was more about family than it was about fruit. Maybe the carnival atmosphere of
today’s apple orchard will be the precious memories of autumn for these kids when they’re my age.
Maybe.


For me, (sound of apple crunch), I’ll stick with that first bite of apple.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium. This is Lester Graham.


(“Wow, sweet.”)

War’s Lasting Harvest

President Bush has declared that the war in Iraq is over. But from the vantage point of his garden, recent National Guard retiree and Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator, Tom Springer, wonders what the lasting harvest of this conflict will be:

Transcript

President Bush has declared that the war in Iraq is over. But from the vantage point of his
garden, recent National Guard retiree and Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator, Tom
Springer, wonders what the lasting harvest of this conflict will be:


When I retired from the Army National Guard last December, I was looking forward to having
more free time. To commemorate my 22 years of service, I decided to plant my biggest vegetable
garden ever.


But even with more leisure time, I still hate to pull weeds. So I’ve covered my garden with
newspapers and straw. After the fall rains, I’ll till this organic matter back into the soil to prepare
for another growing season.


However, my usually peaceful garden conceals a litany of troubles. That’s because the
newspapers I’m using for a weed barrier read like an almanac of the recent war. Beneath my
cherry tomatoes, there’s breaking news of the early fights for Umm Qasr and Basra. Under the
green peppers, I can follow the 7th Marines on their river campaign up the Tigris and Euphrates.
Near my Spanish onions – and I’m sure the Spanish prime minister would approve – Saddam’s
statue falls to a cheering crowd in Baghdad.


Yet this guns-and-butter irony is a bit unsettling. Like many Americans, I am still ambivalent
about the war. Initially, I was against it. Then once it began, I believed the best course was to
win decisively. And as a veteran, I deeply respect the American men and women who so ably
proved themselves in Iraq.


Regardless of your viewpoint, on this much we can agree: Those who fought the war have seen
horrors and faced dangers that we civilians can scarcely imagine. Here, at home, the war may
already be old news. But for our returning veterans, its impact will last a lifetime.


I think about that as I read my garden newspapers. I think about how the sun and rain will
transform this violent news into food for the plants and nourishment for my body. And I think
about the life-changing nature of war – how it leaves some people broken, but gives others a new
sense of purpose and vocation.


Without question, our veterans deserve all the parades, yellow ribbons and happy homecomings
we can give them. But after the brass bands die down, I hope our newest heroes find something
equally valuable. I hope they find quiet, blissful places where they can heal their jangled nerves.
I hope they find a peaceful garden, where the fears and angers of war will melt away beneath the
cloudless skies of summer.


Tom Springer is a freelance writer from Three Rivers, Michigan.

Distancing Ourselves From Our Food

Not too long ago, the fall harvest season was celebrated for its bounty of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Thanks to the globalization of our food system, we can now buy fresh produce 365 days of the year. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston says the end result is that most of us have no idea where our food actually comes from:

Transcript

Not too long ago, the fall harvest season was celebrated for its
bounty of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Thanks to the
globalization of our food system we can now buy fresh produce 365
days of the year. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne
Elston says the end result is that most of us have no idea where our
food actually comes from.

As a kid I grew up near the Okanagan Valley near Canada’s west coast.
The area was famous for its fruit trees. During harvest time, my
parents would stop at a roadside stand and buy a basket of cherries
and put then in the back seat for my sister and I to entertain
ourselves with. The first thing we’d do is look for double hung
cherries to hang over our ears like drop earrings. Then we’d bite one
of the cherries and use the sweet juice to paint our lips and cheeks.
We’d throw back our heads and do our very best Marilyn Monroe
impression before diving into the remaining fruit. We’d fill our
mouths to the point of bursting, and then spit the pits at each
other, giggling and laughing in a fit of harvest bliss.


This delicious ritual remains carefully etched in my mind because
it’s so rare today. My kids can eat fresh fruits and vegetables from
around the world on virtually any day of the year. They’ve already
tasted things that I didn’t even know existed when I was a kid –
kiwis from New Zealand, exotic star fruits and Jamaican plantain for
example.


On the surface, this seems like a good thing. Thanks to international
trade and modern storage technologies, we are no longer restricted by
local growing seasons and soil conditions. But in having so much,
we’ve actually lost sight of the process of growing food. Most of us
are about three generations away from having to go to the henhouse to
pick up the eggs on the family farm. And if our ancestors didn’t
actually grow their own food, they purchased it from a neighbor who
did.


Today instead of going out in the back garden and picking a tomato
for dinner, the tomato that ends up on your supper plate may have
traveled thousands of miles by truck. It’s then delivered to a
distribution center, shipped by yet another vehicle to your local
supermarket, and then given a ride home in the back of the family
van. This idea of being removed from our food source is something
called distancing.


Distancing not only adds to the cost of food, but it also places a
heavy toll on the environment. Trucking fresh produce across vast
distances burns a whole lot of fossil fuel – a major contributor to
both global warming and smog. Some of the countries that we import
produce from don’t have the same strict guidelines that we do about
pesticides. The result is that along with fruits and vegetables, in
some cases we’re also importing chemicals such as DDT that we banned
decades ago.


And then there’s the produce itself. Although it’s technically fresh,
it has to be picked long before it’s ripe in order to survive the
journey. Then it spends several days – or perhaps even weeks – before
it shows up on store shelves. Sure it looks great, but for those of
us who have experienced the taste of freshly picked fruit, it’s not
even in the same ballpark.


Which is perhaps why cherry is now my least favorite flavor. It’s so
far removed from the delicious cherries of my childhood, that I’d
rather not taste it.

Forest Service to Stabilize Payments

The U.S. Forest Service gives 25% of its forest revenues back to the states.
These revenues primarily come from timber harvest sales. But now the Forest
Service wants to change the way it makes these payments. And that could
mean a loss of revenue for some Great Lakes states. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Todd Witter has more: