Sunday, March 1, 2015

Book Review: Cows Save the Planet

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble
Judith D Schwartz © 2013

Are you picturing cows in a blue spandex suit with an S on the front and flowing red cape? You are now… Moo.

Turns out that cows can, in fact, save the planet by doing what cows do best, eating, tramping the ground, and crapping everywhere. The by-product of such activity is rich top-soil, beef, milk, leather, clean air, and prosperous farmers and ranchers.

Wait, what?  I thought cows were bad for the environment.

This book primarily focuses on soil structure, retaining fresh water on land, and sequestering atmospheric CO2 in the soil where it supercharges microbiology. It is bursting with hope for our environment that doesn't require shutting down our economy and trading in cars for bicycles.

So what’s the beef?
Soil, herbivores and predators all evolved together. We need all three elements (or a close facsimile of predators) for grasslands (and farmlands) to thrive. Throughout earth's history, soil microbiology and fungi have worked together to provide anchorage, water, and liberated minerals and nutrients to plants.

In return, perennial plants with extensive root systems keep the soil aerated, protected, and—this was new to me—pump liquid carbon compounds deep into the soil. Whereas in bare soil, the water evaporates, the topsoil blows away in the wind or washes away with heavy rain, and sequestered carbon oxidizes and returns the atmosphere as CO2. Carbon is the basis for all organic life transactions and soil needs lots of it. Lucky for soil and plants there's billions of tons of it hanging around the atmosphere.

Herbivores mow the grass, (preventing chaff from drying and shading the younger plants, stimulating root growth, et.al.). Their hooves stomp seeds into the soil and crush plants which feed the microbes and provide deep hoof prints for retaining rainwater. (Have you ever ran around in a cow pasture? If you need your ankles sprained, it's a good way to go about it.) They also are walking composters, breaking down foliage and casting it off, rich with gut bacteria, feeding the soil.

Predators keep the herds bunched up and on the move. The bunching breaks up the soil just right, ensures an even mowing (instead of just nibbling on favorites) and then moves the herd to prevent overgrazing and degradation to the area.

How can we use this to save the planet—we can’t set packs of wolves on our cows. How does this help farmlands?

Excellent questions. These observations sparked the development of Holistic Management. This method of land management uses the above principles to restore degraded (in some cases desertified) farmlands and grasslands. Nature can take hundreds of years to add a measly inch or two of topsoil, whereas lands under Holistic Management can add several inches a year. Under HM, soil is covered year round with plants and, since we can't set wolves on our livestock to keep them bunched, they are kept in small temporary fences and moved on a schedule customized for conditions of that area.

Pasture crop harvesting at Winona farm in Australia.
In one example, an Australian farm/ranch called Winona was able to add fourteen inches of topsoil in ten years, despite the less than average rainfall during this time. They primarily used pasture cropping, where oats were “drilled” into a pasture of native grasses, rather than tilling the land. At harvest time, oats are standing tall among a field of perennial green pasture grasses—there is no visible bare soil. The herbivore of choice on the Winona farm/ranch is sheep, which graze the pasture on a strict schedule. Colin Seis is the fifth generation of his family to farm there and thanks to his regenerative (and profitable) farming methods he needn’t be the last.

There are many positive effects of Holistic Management, here are a few:

No chemicals and more nutrient dense food.
A healthy soil structure means fewer inputs (or none) in the forms of fertilizers and assorted ‘cides. Holistic crops are naturally disease resistance because they aren't nutrient deprived, (e.g. powdery mildew can be treated chemically but good bio-available calcium in the soil will prevent infection), they aren't mono-cropped so pests won't ravage an entire field because of the buffering provided by other plants and the presence of a healthy eco-system including predatory insects that keep the invaders in check. Also because of the plentiful minerals in healthy soil (liberated by our microscopic friends) foods contain higher quantities of vitamins and minerals. Did you know it is possible to eat an orange today that is completely devoid of Vitamin C and apples devoid of calcium? Yeah - I didn't either.

Water Concerns
Water is of the essence. Holistically managed land makes the most of rainfall, keeping it in the soil where it feeds crops, amasses soil humus, and replenishes aquifers. Sequestering rainfall has many positive effects, less runoff, less particulate in rivers, less flooding, less erosion, less fresh water loss to the sea, less desertification. Less badness—more awesomeness.

Something Else Awesome
Chapter three is entitled, The Making and Unmaking of Deserts—The Grazing Paradox. Deserts can be unmade? I have always considered deserts as a dead end. One man, Yacouba Sawadogo, reclaimed land from the desert by digging shallow pits and sprinkling in manure and seeds. Sparse rainfall was collected in the pits, plants took root, more manure was added and thirty years later a once barren land was dotted with trees, grasses, and a vibrant farm. He is dubbed, “The Man Who Stopped the Desert”. This simple story of one man and animal poo filled me with more hope for our survival than all the environmental conservation movement to date, which has typically been, people=bad.

I’m being fanciful here, but humor me... Inland jungles typically are responsible for their own water cycle, when the jungle is gone the water is gone too. Imagine that process in reverse, imagine the Sahara Desert a vast jungle sequestering CO2 and providing homes for species on the brink of extinction—or perhaps as a savannah, with elephants, zebras, and wildebeest thundering across vast plains, with lions in slinking through the grasses. Imagine that people and livestock created that. Pretty neat. I'm sewing up some cow sized blue suits—tonight.

Moo.

***
This is the end of the Book Review. You have done your due diligence and I appreciate your time. The following paragraphs are pure indulgence on my part. These observations and ideas have been bumping around in my head for years and thanks to this book I see how these pieces fit.

River Health - or Lack Thereof.
My father-in-law and I were discussing the Willamette river and its supposed recovery from the days when sewage and industrial waste flowed unabated into the river. He said that it is a difficult scenario, that water almost needs to pass through a filter before going into a river. My imagination served up an image of a huge Brita water filter collecting runoff. Sewage still flows into the Willamette during heavy rains, but even if that were curtailed, the river would still be polluted. The city streets sluice water into storm drains that flow straight to the river, carrying with it all dirt, debris of city life. Imagine if the city absorbed that water instead, in bioswales or healthy green spaces. Less runoff to flood the river, less garbage and filth in the water and recharged aquifers. Soil, is that Brita filter.

Walking Composters
I read an article once that explained mammoths were the greatest composters and tillers of the ice age.  After their extinction, the tundra steppes that spanned Asia, Europe and North America lost their vitality. The was the first time it occurred to me that grasslands need herbivores.

The Buffalo are Back by Jean Craighead George
This is a kid's book I read to my girls.  It follows the bison’s connection to the great American Plains through Native Americans, Cowboys, the Dust Bowl, Teddy Roosevelt and the returning herds and their influence on the health of the plains. In Jean's naturalist style, she details the plant and animal species returning to the land.  This was the first time I learned that herds trampling the ground helped water absorption, as well as fertilization and mowing.

The Wolves are Back by Jean Craighead George
Another book I read to my girls describes the restoration of the ecology in the Yellowstone National Park since the return of wolves. Herbivores, unchecked, will overgraze grasslands and damage riparian areas. The wolves moved the herds of elk and deer frequently, pushed the goats and sheep back into the mountains, brought the coyote population back under control. Jean details the return of bird, mammal and plant species that all but disappeared with the wolves. A short thirty-two-page children's book did a better job of demonstrating the importance of apex predators than all of the scholarly or emotionally charged articles I've read to date.

Ditches and Puddles
Our newest city parks are coming shiny new play structures and rocky, plant laden bioswales, a fancy term for a ditch lined with rocks and plants. I get their importance now and I'm proud of our city for taking this measure to capture runoff and allow the water a chance to recharge our aquifers rather than sluicing it off into our polluted rivers. It's a small step (very small) but I like to see the implementation.

'Shrooms
We have a ring of mushrooms in our yard that pop-up every fall, just in time for the leaf drop. We rake them up with the leaves and toss them in our yard debris. Charley, fearful that they are poisonous, has toyed with treating the area chemically, but I resist. It is our ONE patch of grass that is healthy all year long. The long, super-green grass follows the arc of the mushrooms. Our back yard is clay, soupy all winter and hard as brick all summer. Except for this one arc. It has piqued my curiosity for years.

Tillamook, Oregon
Lovely Tillamook.  Could it be improved?  Maybe.
Just after finishing this book, we took a trip to Tillamook, Oregon. This entire town was built on the stout legs of the cow. Looking at the green fields with the cows dotting the land I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would look like Holistically Managed. I pictured double the cows, fenced in smaller areas, with the fields at various levels of growth--parts that were knee high with grasses, others in different stage of regrowth but on the whole, looking a little less anemic. If Tillamook ranchers adopted this method, in theory, they could increase their herds of cows, reduce or eliminate expenditures on grain, reduce runoff to keep waterways cleaner, and beef up the nutrition content of the milk and meat. More profits, better land… It would be fascinating to watch this play out...

There is hope for our the climate of our planet. There is hope for feeding or growing population.

We can make deserts and we can also unmake them.

Allan Savory - Holistic Management 

Thursday, January 8, 2015

It's a Good Tired

Rescued from my unposted pile...

November 28th, 2014

It's Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.  With a belly full of tryptophan laced turkey, a small glass of wine, wrapped in a sweater against the and a gloomy wet of the outside, it's amazing I'm upright.  I feel like a fur-less black bear, who should be curling up in her root framed den, with her cubs snoozing merrily beside her.
****

Wednesday was a cleaning frenzy.  Charley took the girls out and about whilst I drudged away at the grime in our home.  By the end of the day, I'd hardly eaten anything and I felt floaty and numb as I laid down for a short rest.

Berzo washing chairs.
Thursday morning was another cleaning, rearranging fest, but much more merry.  Boots steamer mopped the entire lower floor, Berzo washed all our dining chairs down while I swept, tidied, readied, and moved furniture about. Charley was channeling his inner-black bear as he spent most of the day resting.  He was slightly hung-over from our Neighborhood Marshmallow Roasting event.  I was too, to a lesser degree, but high on hostess nerves, I toiled on.

Can I have s'more?


My family was first to arrive.  That hollow spot in my heart filled to bursting with our greetings and hugs.  My heart expanded, as it always does to make room—warmth spreading throughout my chest.  Then Karreman family arrived.  The house became warm with introductions and kids playing.  Then Oma and Opa arrived with the turkey, stuffing and chocolate creme pie.  The familiar scents intertwined as people gathered, laughed, retreated, and rejoined.


Food was served.

Pie was served—first to Boots the Eater of Pie, then to the rest of the company.  Coffee was pressed.  Coffee was poured.

The feast was complete.

Dad and Poncho, Reed, Erika, and their boys, Tiberius and Christian, were the first to depart.  Erika was determined to do Black Friday shopping on Thursday night.  I filled up on hugs but my leaky heart emptied, feeling more hollow than before they came.  Then Matt, Lori and their kids left.  Then not long after Oma and Opa returned to Clark's house at 3380.  The feast smells lingered as did the body heat of those just gone.  Their voices echoed in my head with fragments of conversation.  We waved goodbye.  My house emptied.  My eyes filled.

I cleared the tables and stripped their dresses and threw them in the wash.  I folded up the naked tables leaned them against the wall.  I put the girls in the tub.  I returned the Ikea chairs to our living room and the little kids table to the front room.  I rinsed the dishes and stacked the plates in the sink.  Swept up the crumbs and lost food.  It was 6 p.m.  Sigh.  Didn't people usually stay and  enjoy company until at least 8 p.m.?  I got the girls out of the tub and into jammies.  Boots asked in her sweetest voice if she may join us upstairs tonight.. ...being Thanksgiving and all…  I said sure. I donned my jammies, brewed some tea and we all went up together, to watch our new movie Divergent.  Charley and I would watch, the girls would watch Netflix shows on Boots' tablet.

It was lovely.  Snuggled on our sofa, watching a good movie, the girls snuggled watching their show.  I no longer felt empty.

The night was long and we all slept sound.

The day broke late, and we emerged bleary but happy.  We spent this wet day at an empty zoo, enjoying the time out of doors.  Perhaps the Black Friday deals were too sweet for people to pass up.  Or perhaps the cold rain is off-putting to other people.  Not for us, we have good rain gear and thoroughly enjoyed the day.



Now I am tired.

Now I am fuzzy and warm.

Thank you for this time.

It is a good time.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Our 2014

In the gray of the late fall, feeling cabin feverish, I began to flip through our pictures to knock out yet another chore, choosing pictures for our Christmas card. I was bewildered at the sheer number of photos I took this last year. Nearly all of them outside—sweet cabin fever relief—at some interesting place, e.g., the Oregon beach, the Washington beach, my brother's in Eugene, Lina and Dave's in Elma, Beavertail Canyon on the Deschutes river... Our peak fun month seems to be August. Every year since our kids arrived, I have taken somewhere close to a thousand pictures that month. As I flip through them, none of them seem superfluous. The chore of choosing pictures quickly morphed into a frolic through the wonderful memories of the past year.

In the past year Boots finished the first grade and started the second. Her improvement in her reading and writing is phenomenal. As I write, she is across from me reading a chapter book and turning the pages faster than I think she ought to be. She also writes her own stories. This year she has created several dozen books. Some are derivative of things she's read or seen on TV, some are entirely her own creation. A few she wrote for Berzo. A favorite of Berzo's was based on Frozen, on one page was a picture of Olaf making more Olafs. Berzo found this hilarious. Boots illustrates her books and and binds them with staples.  I need to take one of her more complete works to Powell's Espresso printer to get it professionally bound.

The author & illustrator at work.
Despite her success at school, all the amazing uses to which she puts her new found skills, and being doted on by her teacher, each morning I am subjected to the same mantra, “I hate school. Why do I have to go? I hate school.” To prepare for their day, some people drink coffee, some people exercise, some people do a daily devotional of some kind, my daughter performs her I-hate-school mantra and off she goes. I always collect a happy kid from the big yellow bus who extolls upon me the adventures and experiences of her day, which are almost always positive.

Boots has made strides in swimming and I hope that one day she'll want to be a part of a swim team. Her passion for horses and all things equestrian has only intensified this last year. When she has something to ask me she says, “Mama, I have an equestrian.” She is a cool little kid that I love hanging out with, especially when we get a chance to be alone together.

***
Gabrielle started pre-school this year. She is in a Gymboree School Skills class one day a week. She is proud to be going to school like her big sister. On the first day, she insisted we take a picture with the pretzel, a German tradition, and on having a backpack with her school things in it. (There are no required supplies for preschoolers, but we got some anyway.) She went right into her class the first day, nervous but not scared, and greeted me with a happy hug when it was over two short hours later. She is also starting swim lessons this coming January and seems really ready. I, however, am sad to see my “baby” growing up so fast.

During Berzo's early toddlerhood she was very sweet and a bit shy. However, in her threes, she has found her voice and usually uses it for yelling at other kids. We are working on it and I'm sure she phase out of it in time. She seems to have difficulty in reading people's intentions, friendly gestures by a kid at the park are often read as hostile and she reacts as such. Once she gets more socially adept, I don't think she'll feel the need to be so forceful. For those who spend time around us, please be patient as we work through this not-so-glamorous phase.

***
Charley chalked up some big accomplishments at work. The new CNC machine he convinced the company to invest in last year has been a success. His talented patternmakers had it up and running within days of its arrival in the shop and he is careful to leverage its speed and accuracy as much as possible when scheduling jobs. The Continuous Improvement program he began for the company is also off and running, with employees turning in over 1,100 ideas for the first year. He has played a big part in changing the company culture in a positive way. If you know his company at all, you will know what an ambitious undertaking that is. They are lucky to have him.

The Tough Mudders, Ted, Clark, Charley & Jason.

Charley competed in three big races this past year. He ran the Helvetia Half Marathon in June. Charley and Clark, the brotherly brothers, with Jason and Cousin Ted ran the Tough Mudder in August. They're not kidding when they named it “Tough”. It makes my Warrior Dash races look rather lame. The course is ten miles of leg cramping hill climbs, plunges into ice water—Charley actually kind of liked that part—and electrical shocks. It's grueling and also a pretty darn impressive achievement. After that, he ran the Portland Half Marathon with Lina. After the toughness of the Tough Mudder, he could hardly motivate himself to train for the half. A half marathon is simply too easy these days. Ho-humm. Which is good because coming up in 2015, he's already signed up for the Hood to Coast, on his friend Chris's team. To finish it off, his ex-Navy Seal buddy, Marshall, is working on him to compete in a triathlon.

Working the mash-tun.
Between all this running and working Charley manages to find a few hours to brew a beer occasionally. Special for the Oysterville Regatta, Charley brewed a five-gallon keg of his IPA dubbed, Cappy's Pokahoy IPA. The general comment was, “Geeze Charley, you could have botched it a little—to give us a chance at avoiding a hangover.” Too soon the keg was high in the water, and then it sputtered out. It was a moment of pride for him when visitors from Germany sampled his bier and extended their complements. Germans know bier, and Germans do not veneer their opinions.

He is bringing his brewing to the next level with the addition of the mash tun, which is used to extract sugar from grains. This allows him to remove the malt-extract ingredient from his beer recipes and thereby the malt-extract flavor, which will be awesome for his Hefeweizen recipe, (my favorite variety) but in general the all-grain brewing  process allows for greater control of flavor.

***
I have spent this year watching my little family growing up, curling up with a book at night as I wait for little eyes to close and breath to soften, and spending most of my free time writing. (I only blog a small fraction of what I write—it's a good thing.)

I have also been serving as a board member for the Oysterville Restoration Foundation, (ORF). ORF owns and maintains the Oysterville Church, several open spaces, and collaborates with other organizations in the community in an effort to preserve the historic heritage of the village. I serve as the secretary in addition to establishing a few IT resources for the foundation. I also traded my web development skills for some killer massages from my friend Lori Karreman as she launched her new business, Serenity Therapy Massage. I came out on the better end of that deal. Seriously.
This is going by too fast.

I look forward to 2015 with mixed feelings. Berzo will be four in June and be entering bigger kid preschool. With a twinge of sadness, I realize the era of being a parent of babies and little kids is coming to a close. We have only a few years left of the sweetness of the innocence of Santa, the Easter Bunny, and unicorns. Little shoes and brightly colored toys are soon to make way for cell phones and sports equipment. Nervous-for-school hugs and “I love you, Mama.” at the bus stop is going to become, “Mom—you're embarrassing me!” Those little hands that fit so small in mine are going to slip away as they dash off with the car keys.

Having been home for seven years I sometimes I peer into the fog of my future and I can't quite make out what that picture looks like, I'm feeling obsolete in so many ways. I'll just hold on to those little monkeys while I still can, then when the time is right I'm sure the picture will become clear.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year!

A toast to you!

F