Soil, seeds and water are key components to growing any plant. It was no surprise to see my younger brother putting this thought to practice by eating some dirt, swallowing a watermelon seed and washing it down with some water. Pretty clever for a little kid growing up on an organic farm — but then, he also choked down a couple spoonfuls of compost as fertilizer.
Prime location to plant a seed
By Thaddeus Barsotti
Published: January, 2007
My brother is married now and probably would abstain from that performing that act again for various reasons, including the realization that his stomach didn’t have any sunlight and that harvesting watermelon size objects from humans is generally reserved for pregnant women. Nevertheless, kids who grow up on farms understand the importance of the combination of soil, water, sunlight and seeds.
While sunlight, water and seeds are fairly standardized within a region, soil remains the key component to farms. Entire university degrees revolve around the science of soil, but the crucial point to be understood about soils is that they change drastically within a hundred feet.
Soils hold different amounts of water, contain different nutrients and microorganisms and foster different root systems or pathogens. The result of the variation in soils drastically affects yields of a given crop and even the ability to grow or not to grow a specific crop.
To a farmer, the type of soil drastically changes the value of a given piece of land. I can’t help but realize that farmers may be the only people who take this into consideration when thinking about land. It is obvious that developers and government planning agencies pay little to no attention to soil quality. The short term economic gains created by developing land hide the long-term loss of highly productive soil — even a farmer makes more money selling prime soil to developers than can be made by growing food on it.
It can be argued that we have more food that we know what to do with, which hides the importance of the most highly productive soils in our communities. The real question is: What are the long-term effects of permanently taking great soil out of production? Perhaps one day, it’ll be answered if the value of producing food increases so drastically that farmers can make money by buying back subdivisions and returning them to agricultural land.
Steamed Carrots
1 bunch medium Nantes carrots
2 tablespoons butter
Salt
Herbes de Provence (or a mixture of rosmary, thyme, lavender, basil and orgegano)
Wash carrots well. Leave 1/2 inch of the stems on (for looks)
Cut the tips of the carrots off; do not peel if extra fresh.
Steam carrots until tender enough to easily insert a fork into them
Put the butter, herbs and salt in with the carrots and serve warm
Thaddeus Barsotti is a second generation organic farmer, and an owner of Capay Organic, a 240 organic farm in the Capay Valley, which was started in 1976. Farm Fresh to You is his organic produce delivery service that serves 2,000 customers in the Bay Area. Capay Organic and Farm Fresh to You retail stores can be found in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Thaddeus welcomes your comments. Thaddeus17@gmail.com . www.farmfreshtoyou.com
