dianahooley Out West

Can Our Farm Save the Planet?

It’s a puzzle.  The problem is our livelihood and lifestyle. My husband and I are farmers living on the Snake River in Idaho who enjoy the fresh smell of cut hay and hearing the cows calling their calves. Our life is rich and rewarding, yet because we pay such close attention to things like weather, we know it’s getting warmer. Spring is nudging earlier and earlier and we need the deep freeze of winter to kill pesky bugs and build mountain snow packs to fill our reservoirs for irrigation.

I’ve asked myself, what can we do to help slow climate change?

But the very act of growing crops accounts for nearly a quarter of greenhouse gases that causes global warming (www.environmentreports.com). Every time a farmer cultivates or plants his ground, he stirs the soil and releases carbon into the atmosphere.

“I’ll tell you what you can do,” my adult son Sam advised me. “Two words: carbon sequestration. There’s lots of research out there supporting the fact that farmers can help climate change by not working their ground so much. Then the carbon in the soil gets left alone. People need to farm differently. I’ll text you some web sites to look at.”

I wanted to see Sam’s research because I was writing an article for a magazine about farming and the environment. Many farmers are currently limiting their tillage (as my son advocated) because it saves money, time, and improves soil health. They leave old corn stalks, dried weeds, and manure on the ground over the winter to increase soil fertility. Leaving their fields undisturbed also happens to sequester carbon. When I first came to the farm forty years ago farmers disced and ploughed the ground bare, waiting for a spring injection of chemicals to make it fertile.

Using farm ground to bury carbon has become such a popular idea. . .

. . .that the Microsoft corporation, food giant General Mills, and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, have said they’re willing to pay farmers for sequestration.  Who’d have thought the “Wolf of Wall Street” would show any interest in Coyotes from Country Lane?

Despite the increasing interest in Ag carbon markets, scientists are beginning to argue for caution.  Did I mention the word “puzzle?”  The puzzle here is that though farmers can use methods like minimum tillage to keep carbon in the topsoil, it’s not stored there indefinitely. Any kind of tractor work, planting a crop for instance, will release carbon from the topsoil.

In order for farm ground to be a true carbon sink the carbon has to be stored deep, at least a meter, where it’s more stabilized.

“Okay Dr. Baker. I just have a few questions.” I was talking to John Baker on the phone. Baker was a professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis/St. Paul and a soil biologist for the United States Department of Agriculture.

“Did you say you’re an Idaho farmer?” Dr. Baker asked me. I suddenly realized how odd it must be for him to sit in his office surrounded by computer screens and data and get a call from a farmwife in Idaho.

I explained to Dr. Baker that I was writing an article about farmers and the environment.  We talked a little about farming in the west before I finally got to my central question: can farm ground be used to keep carbon out of the atmosphere?

“Well, I’m giving you a ‘qualified’ yes on that,” Baker said. “I mean farmers have to be able to sequester carbon deeper in the soil—where it will stay. They not only have to limit their tillage, but they need to plant, and then leave alone, deep-rooted cover crops that pull carbon lower in the soil.  If this happens, then yes, farmers definitely can play a role in mitigating climate change.”

When I hung up the phone I was surprised at how relieved I felt. Dr. Baker is an authority. If I understood him right, the pieces are all there. We in the farm community just have to start putting the puzzle together.

 

Image credit:  Diana Hooley, Hooley farm      Image credit: The Wolf of Wall Street 

Image credit:  Diana Hooley, wheat planted on old corn field using low till

dianahooley Books, Film, Art, Current Events

What We Don’t Know About Our Friends and Neighbors

I was visiting with my neighbor Bea in her home when she suddenly turned toward a table in the corner and said, “I want to show you something.”

Bea walked over to the table and picked up two large, clear plastic bags each containing a colorful quilt in them.  “Look what I’ve been doing this winter!” she said, pulling the quilts out of the plastic and proudly draping them over her arm.

I was amazed at Bea’s quilts, their beauty, their crisp seams, and the colorful designs.

She told me one quilt was called “The Disappearing Four Patch.”  She’d seen the pattern on a quilting TV program: “Fons and Porter’s Love of Quilting.”  The other quilt was a collage of antique pink and yellow-themed blocks, and was sewn in a garden star pattern.

I marveled at Bea’s craftsmanship especially since I’m not a quilter myself, and left Bea’s house thinking about a book I read once, The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham.  The book was about a man who searched the world for the meaning of life. He eventually found his answer in India where he watched a woman weave a blanket. He thought this was our purpose: we’re each a colorful strand of thread making a contribution to some universal pattern. I was disappointed in the book’s conclusion.  The book was a bear to read, and I was looking for something a bit more mystical.

Bea is not the type of person I see quilting.  My image for that comes from my mother-in-law who was an excellent homemaker and spent years cooking and sewing for her family.  Bea’s been a homemaker among other roles, but to me she’s never looked or acted like one.  For example, I’ve never seen Bea wear a dress much less an apron. She seems most comfortable in an old T-shirt and jeans.  Often I’ll see her in a pair of muck boots working in her half-acre yard moving irrigation pipes or firing up her tractor mower. She has short hair and brown, leathery skin, and she spent years weighing potato and grain trucks at a local farm scale house.  Bea’s always been so practical, I just never knew she harbored so much creativity.

Who we are inside, our talents and thoughts, can be a big secret to the world.

We can be like Russian nesting dolls.  Layers need to be uncovered before you actually find the core of us, and it’s only in how we express ourselves, what we make, do, or say that you catch a glimpse of our inner life.  Sometimes that core can be surprising—and sometimes disappointing, even shocking.  For example, Abraham Lincoln was described by opposition newspapers as “…the leanest, lankest, most ungainly mass of legs, arms and hatchet-face ever strung upon a single frame…”  Furthermore, these newspapers said Lincoln’s speeches were “illiterate compositions…interlarded with coarse and clumsy jokes…” (medium.com). On the other hand, Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was characterized as “… young, handsome, and well-dressed in a preppy kind of way (Quora.com).”

Appearances aren’t the only possible deception in the package of who we are.

I was struck by this fact watching the fall-out from the riot last week in Washington on television.  NBC news reported that many of the participants were simply regular people, teachers and truck drivers, some even held jobs that contributed to public safety, like firemen and former police. The old axiom that you can never judge a book by its cover is amplified here. You can’t even judge a book by its plot or characters. You have to go deep to the theme, what animates the person.  For my neighbor Bea, surprisingly, it’s quilts.  For others, apparently, it’s something far more dark and angry.

Blog post at http://www.dianahooley.net and credits:  garden star pattern    The Razors Edge    Capitol riot