A Week in Canterbury, Part II (Thoughts on Organic Farming)

(Part II on my time in Yaldhurst, New Zealand.)

So before I left for New Zealand, I began reading Michael Pollan's excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma (and actually, I'd started reading it before I even made any of these crazy plans). In it, I read about the concepts of grass farming and permaculture as practiced by an organic farmer in Virginia. The object of these things - to create a natural sustainable environment that produces large amounts of food, by ensuring a healthy grass environment, using activities animals do anyway as part of the farm work. Cows, goats, and/or sheep eat the grass, keeping it well maintained, and poop in it, fertilizing the soil. Pigs and/or chickens then seek out insects which are living in the soil (and eating the poop), rotating the soil. If this is done in a controlled manner (ensuring goats don't overgraze, or pigs don't dig up the soil too much, using pens), this can be very effective.

The beautiful thing about it is how common sense it all seemed when I read about it, and experienced it. There is not a lot of energy needed to maintain this - I helped Carla on her week off, and things went fine with my five hours per day, and the two times a day Carla went out to milk Minnie the new mommy goat, and feed the pigs. And the animals are doing things they should be doing. These were some happy looking creatures (Ivanhoe II, above, kind of seems like he's smiling, doesn't he?). Was definitely in stark contrast to animals you'll occasionally see on TV, crowded in barns and such, and written reports of how chickens in cages are treated (and how small those cages can be). I've often had some guilt about eating meat; I generally try and limit how much meat I consume, and tried vegetarianism very briefly back in '07 before realizing it wasn't going to work for me...but after seeing these happy animals, much of that guilt was gone. I had a lot of bacon at Carla's place, and knowing that it came from a pig that was as happy as the ones I fed during my stay there, it felt better, and even tasted a little better, too.

But, as for the work - I spent most of my time moving hay and soil around (another product of the grass farm - hay to sell to horse farmers and such). Exciting? Not especially so. But important-feeling? Maybe even a little bit noble? Yes. I was charged with evening out little patches of earth (maybe 15 feet by 100 feet) that pigs had dug up. I had plenty of time to think while I was doing this, and of course, when I get to thinking, I go to nerd-dome. I imagined I was terraforming a new planet, making it suitable for life to grow, and of course, part of that was true (not the new planet part.) What I experienced was a very small sliver of chores that could potentially be done on organic farms, but it was an interesting task - and I may go back to it fairly soon now that I've had a break from it (beats a desk job for now, anyway).