The Dogs of Itchy Dog Farm

An easy post this time -- everyone likes to talk about their dogs.  It is conceivable that not everyone likes to read about other people's dogs.  But if you want to write about your own dog, add a comment to this blog and I'll publish it.

So, here are the dogs of Itchy Dog Farm, in the order in which they acquired us.

Ace (aka Aces, Acer, Acer Eraser, Aceroni, Mr. A.)

Ace was my son's birthday present.  He picked out this puppy from a large litter of identical (to me) pups at the Humane Society, but I insisted we drive to every rescue in Gainesville to make sure he was "sure".  At the end of a long day, we returned to the Humane Society and only little Ace remained from the litter.  It was fate.  It was also fated that when my son moved out, Ace was going to stay with me.  Almost 10 years old now, he is the elder statesdog of Itchy Dog Farm.

Ace is the In-The-Way dog.  Regardless of where you are and where you are going, Ace will be positioned in between.  He likes to be tight up against you, whether standing, on the couch or in the bed.  He is the Concerned dog, with many Responsibilities that weigh heavily upon him.  One of these is to ensure that there is only one squeaky toy in the house at any given time, and that said toy is in his sole possession.  Extraneous toys will be buried along the periphery of the property.  Periodically he makes his rounds, digging up each piece for inspection and replanting it in a different location.

Ace is a beautiful dog.  He looks like a Ridgeback without a ridge, although there are certainly more breeds in his DNA than there are chemicals in Froot Loops.  He remains sleek and slender, and if he has one uninhibited joy, it is loping along side of the car down the driveway, or galloping after squirrels.  I've always wanted get him a box of squirrels for his birthday, but can't find a supplier.

Darwin (aka Darwinkle, Little D., D.)

Of the eight dogs and cats at Itchy Dog Farm, Darwin is the only one I actually selected to be mine.  This warrants a digression.  When I got Sophie, my first Basset Hound, I decided I would never henceforward be Bassetless.  When she died, I applied to Suncoast Basset Rescue for another.  I completed the lengthy application, provided references, passed the telephone interview and the home visit, and was told to wait for them to match me with an adoptable dog.  Weeks of waiting dragged into months.   Every time I contacted my contact I was told I'd be matched soon, but they were short of volunteers, had a big Basset Waddle coming up, yada yada yada.  In the meantime, a rescue group I volunteer with obtained a decent used Basset.  I adopted Darwin about a month before Suncoast got back to me with a tentative match.  People in animal welfare circles often joke it is easier to adopt a child than to adopt a dog from a breed rescue.  This may actually be true.   I've adopted two children but I have yet to adopt from a breed rescue.

Darwin is a busy dog.  There are things he has to do, and he does them.  These include sorting through the recycling bin, rescuing potential edibles from the compost, finding animals in various stages of decomposition and rolling on them, and retrieving anything foolishly left on the breakfast table.  He is used to getting his way and has problems with inanimate objects.  If a ball rolls under the sofa, he will bark at the sofa until it moves.  If Timmy were to fall into a well, he would bark at the well until he and Timmy both starved to death.

Darwin loves riding in the car, and often leaps into the trucks of visiting meter-readers and farriers, hoping they will carry him away.  I let him ride with me on errands when I can, and in the summer, when you can't leave a dog in a hot car, I will take him joy-riding down the county roads for just fun.

Annie (aka Annie-Fanny-Frangipani)

My sister's first husband Mike was a great guy and always part of the family, even as she remarried twice and so did he.  He and his third wife Judi were living in Tennessee with a dog of their own when a raggedy stray started sniffing around.  She'd eat what they left out but wouldn't let them come near her.  After a number of days she dropped a single puppy at their doorstep and disappeared.  They took the puppy in and apparently passed the test, because she returned a day later with three more puppies and herself.  On taking her to the vet, they found she'd been shot in the head.   They named her Annie.

A few years later first Mike and then Judi died, and the family needed to rehome the animals.  I was offered Annie as the "best" dog.  An underground railway of transporters got her from Columbia TN to Chattanooga to Gainesville to me.

Annie is the worst of all possible dogs.  Part heeler and part terrier, she exhibits the most obnoxious qualities of each.  She tries to herd everything and literally nips your heels as you walk, and she yips and yaps and digs holes in the lawn.   Incredibly obese, she looks like an ottoman, but we can't put her on a diet since she'll eat the hens' eggs and the pony's feed and anything else it takes to supply enough calories for a sumo wrestler. She has a thousand vocalizations, from throbbing cries reminiscent of humpback whales to Scooby Doo-like mumblings as if her mouth is full of marbles.  Her only redeeming feature is occasional cuteness, as she jumps on your lap, puts her snoot under your arm, and oinks.

Rufus (aka Roofie, Rufus D. Dufus)

Rufus belonged to someone who kept him as an outside dog.  When he first came into our veterinary care program, he was fearful, emaciated, heartworm positive, and anemic from feeding mosquitoes and fleas.  The vets patched him up and I became a foster and failed foster in quick succession.

Although he may be a few treats short of a box, he was quick enough to learn bad habits from the other dogs, like how to jump up on furniture and how to rob from the trash.  Also, he does not like visitors to IDF and will startle them with scared high-pitched yips most unexpected from such a Rottweiler-looking dog. He is a nudist who cannot keep his collar on, perhaps because his neck is so much wider than his head.  (Ace is also sartorially impaired -- he can't put his ears on straight.)

Mostly, however, Rufus is just a good-natured dolt, sweet and low-maintenance, fond of order and routine.   He actually believes I am the Alpha dog and he won't go through the front door unless I go first.  And he has a happy tail.  The stirring of the household in the morning, the anticipation of dinner, the mere sight of Craig, makes his tail go thumpa-thumpa-thump-thump like the Maxwell House percolator or a jungle drum announcing good things to come.

So these are the dogs of Itchy Dog Farm.  I'd like to hear about your dogs if you'd like to tell me.

Rats

Cats should be kept indoors.  All felines are obligate hunters and cats will hunt even when they are not hungry.  With apologies to Geico, hunting is what they do.  An article in Nature Communications estimates that in the U.S. free-roaming domestic cats kill a minimum of 1.3 billion birds and 6.3 billion mammals a year, with a possible maximum more than three times that high. Overall the scourge of wildlife, the domestic cat is the largest single anthropogenic threat to birds and mammals, killing more than cars, poisons, wind turbines and any other human-created dangers.   In Florida, domestic cats are known to prey on at least a dozen endangered species, including the rice rat, Key Largo cotton mouse, green sea turtle, roseate tern and Florida scrub-jay.

Vernon. Photo by Craig Walters.

That said, we have four indoor-outdoor cats here at Itchy Dog Farm.  With our doors wide open most of the year, dogs, cats and chickens wander in and out at will.  We're lucky the pony is gated in the pasture.  Happily only one of our cats can hunt his way out of a paper bag, and even more happily, he has no interest in feathered things.  Vernon is an orange tabby, a rectangular cat, long and lean and big-headed. No fluffy furball,  he spends most of his day perched on the highest platform of the cat tree looking down on his kingdom.  At night he is the slayer of rodents.  We know, because he brings them home and leaves their parts in the bathtub.

Pocket gopher.  Photo by Wayne Lynch.

Most commonly Vernon delivers rat parts.  Rats are attracted to the chicken palace by spilled feed and scratch and are probably easy targets.  I admit I am not fond of rats and the more I find in the bathtub the happier I am.  Occasionally he brings us a mole or a pocket gopher.  Pocket gophers are ugly little critters with huge orange teeth out of a sci fi movie and long claws on their paws for digging. They spend most of their lives underground, making tunnels that mess up your yard and are a hazard in the pasture.  As they dig, they push soil out of the tunnel to create mounds of loose dirt, the tell-tale sign of resident pocket gophers.  You see them all over Alachua County.

Despite my lack of love for vermin, I like giant rodents as much as anyone.  I really wanted there to be a giant rat of Sumatra and was disappointed to learn the largest Indonesian rat, the mountain giant Sunda rat, only averages a pound.  Chinese bamboo rats are more like it.  They grow 20 inches long and when fattened for market can weigh up to 9 pounds.  (Fun fact: rat meat costs twice as much as beef in China.)  The Gambian pouched rat, wide-spread in sub-Saharan Africa, averages only about 3 pounds but can grow as large as the bamboo rat. Two interesting things about Gambian pouched rats: they can be trained to detect land mines, and they can be found in Florida (of course).

If something is weird and invasive, chances are good that sooner or later it will end up breeding in Florida.  Gambian pouched rats were brought to the Florida Keys by a captive breeder. Eight escaped and established a colony on Grassy Key.  Authorities haven't been able to exterminate them and it is feared they will reach the mainland and wreak havoc with native ecosystems.

Capybara.

My own county is home to a colony of about 60 wild capybara, believed to have originated when the rodents escaped from a research facility near Gainesville.  A pair of juveniles also escaped from the Jacksonville Zoo in 2001 and so far as we know are still on the lam.  Capybara are right out of Monty Python -- they look like 100 pound guinea pigs.  They are semi-aquatic, breed only in water, and are native to South America, where they are raised for food.  Their extinct ancestor, Neochoerus, roamed Florida in the Pleistocene.  Very similar to today's capys, they grew up to 250 pounds.

The largest rodent ever was Josephoartigasia monesi who lived from 4 to 2 million years ago.  These guys were to capybara what capys are to guinea pigs.  They weighed a ton, were as big as buffalo, and had enormous incisors they used like elephant tusks.  Josephoartigasia was a successful wetland herbivore who probably succumbed to climate change. If they existed today they would no doubt be breeding in Florida.

Tales of Valor

My friend Pat Fitzpatrick died this week.  Pat was a devout Catholic and the most pro-life person I ever knew.  He did not manifest this by picketing Planned Parenthood, but by fighting against the death penalty, organizing exploited Immokalee farm workers, and extending a helping hand to anyone who needed one, friend and stranger alike.  Over the last dozen or so years he became increasingly involved with the homeless.  He co-founded the Home Van, a kind of mobile soup kitchen that went out to the tent cities with bottled water and peanut butter sandwiches.  He fought an arbitrary daily limit on the number of meals that the downtown homeless shelter was allowed to provide, making his slogan FEED EVERY ONE the rallying cry of a coalition of activists.   Economically challenged himself, he was generous to a fault.  As one friend said, if you asked him for a dime he would give you a quarter, unless he didn't have a quarter and then he'd let you crash at his apartment.

Pat was outrageous, profane, and laugh-out-loud funny.  He was fearless, self-deprecating, and totally committed to simple humanity.  Not surprisingly, he and my sister were BFF and sat together at every Gator baseball home game for years.  Some UF film students made a documentary about his battle to end the meal limit.  Civil Indigent is a great piece of work, side-splitting and infuriating at the same time.  You can watch it online and if you pay close attention you might identify a younger me in a drive-by cameo.

Pat was widely known and widely loved.  Hundreds here will mourn his passing and celebrate his life.  He wasn't a saint, but he was a hero.  Thinking about him the last few days has reminded me of other people I know who have also been heroic, maybe not in every aspect of their lives like Pat, but in significant acts of courage or giving.

I volunteer with several groups concerned with animal welfare.  My main commitment is to St. Francis Pet Care which provides free primary veterinary care to pets of homeless and low income people.  We run a licensed clinic open every Tuesday morning, where we also distribute free pet food and flea and heartworm preventives. It is first-come, first-served, and if you want your pet to be seen by a volunteer veterinarian you can easily wait outside for two or three hours.  Many of our clients come regularly and we know them pretty well.

Some people believe that if you can't afford to take care of an animal, you shouldn't have one.  To me that's a little like saying if you can't afford food you shouldn't eat, but I won't argue.  The fact is that many people who can't afford pets do have them, and to some of these people their dog or cat is all they have.  Maybe their dog is their protector and keeps them warm at night.  Maybe the cat is the only living thing they can relate to.  Maybe they're jerks, scamming the social welfare system and collecting strays.  We treat them all.

One Tuesday about a month ago, a male client came in with his ailing pit mix.  Since he has no transportation and the bus system won't take pets too large to carry in a crate, he put the dog in a shopping cart and pushed him all the way to Clinic.  It was hot, maybe in the mid-90s, and both client and patient arrived thirsty and over-heated.  We gave them water and shade, and after a vet saw the dog another volunteer gave them a ride home.  When she returned she reported that they lived with a group of tent campers a good five miles away.  Only a lunatic would walk five unshaded miles in Florida in July -- a lunatic or some kind of quiet hero.

A homeless client has the ugliest dog I've ever seen, a sweet Rottie mix with an underbite that would make a crocodile jealous.  This woman has had the dog since it was a puppy and has taken fabulous care of it for five or six years.  This spring she was diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer and had to undergo major surgery and radiation.  We arranged to board the dog for a month while the client was in hospital and rehab, then got to witness a joyful reunion.  But when our client began her regimen of chemo, she weekly walked miles from her tent to the treatment center and back.  In Florida, in summer.  This woman never, ever once complained or asked for help.  While all this was going on, the dog developed an abscess in her throat, and St Francis Pet Care paid to have it examined by a private veterinarian.  Our client jumped through hoops to arrange transportation to and from the vet for her dog, but never mentioned that she herself was walking to chemo and back to her tent the same day.

We have clients we have helped to get into subsidized housing, pets we've re-homed, and pets we've fostered while the owners were incarcerated or in rehab.  One of our clients is a lovely, lively, elderly, disabled lady who lives in a house she inherited from her parents but cannot maintain.  A couple of weeks ago some vets and other clinic volunteers went to her home and pulled up an old, stained, disgustingly awful living room carpet to reveal a decent terrazzo floor underneath.  The room is lighter, brighter, more sanitary and easier to clean, and the client could not be happier.

Most of our clients have bad teeth, but one of them has the worst mouth I've ever seen.  She is homeless and has the intellect of a child, but was unable to navigate the system to get on Disability.  The State of Florida insisted she testify to her status in person in court in Jacksonville, without advising how an intellectually challenged homeless woman in Gainesville lacking public or private transportation would be able to accomplish this.  A clinic volunteer filled out the paperwork, drove the client to Jax and back, arranged a dental appointment, and drove her to the dentist who pulled every tooth in her upper jaw.  The woman came to Clinic last Tuesday displaying her stitches and grinning like the Cheshire cat.  In time she will get a set of uppers and be able to eat solid food.

Who are the heroes here, the clients or the volunteers?  It's a stupid question -- obviously both.  The clients make the best of the hands they've been dealt and put the welfare of the pets they love above their own.  Our volunteers balance the pain and frustration of all the sad cases they can not help by giving more of themselves to the cases where they can make a difference.

Pat Fitzpatrick, rest in peace.

Sturgeon General

July is not a good month for gardening in North Central Florida.  Tomatoes and cucumbers stop producing in the heat.  Okra and eggplant will do all right if you water every day, but everything else wilts, yellows and curls.  At Farmers Market, booths sell bread, pastured beef, free range eggs, honey, jams and jewelry -- everything except vegetables.  It's too early to start planting the fall garden, which is fine because you don't want to be outside anyway.

Meteorologists can go on vacation because there is only one forecast:  heat index above 100 degrees, impossible humidity, and scattered thunderstorms in late afternoon and evening. In town, the afternoon downpour is anything but a relief, as the rain turns to steam as soon as it hits pavement, creating a city-wide sauna. Here at Itchy Dog Farm we welcome every drop, but too often the storm is just south or west of us, and all we get are dry thunder and lightning.  It is a harrowing time for the dogs, who all have some degree of storm anxiety.  Ace is the most severely affected, requiring a Thundershirt, a pheromone collar, a dose of Rescue Remedy and 4 grams of Clonazepam to survive each evening.

The north central part of the state is the only area of Florida an hour from either coast, and we have no sea breeze.  July is not a good month for yard work.  It is not a good time to paddle, fish, birdwatch or hike. What North Floridians do in July is take to the rivers in boats.  Put a motor on anything that floats and you can generate your own breeze on the stillest of days.  Dad grabs a six-pack, mom gathers grandma and the kids, and everyone heads for the boat launch.  The beautiful and normally peaceful Suwannee and Santa Fe rivers roar with motion.

The downside of this is death by sturgeon.  Approximately 9000 Gulf sturgeon return from marine waters to spawn in the Suwannee River each year between spring and fall.  And they leap.  In July and August these giant (up to 8 foot long and 200 pound) fish can jump up to 6 feet in the air before crashing back into the water. Nobody really knows why.  Some scientists think they use their jumping sounds as a form of communication with other sturgeons.  Others believe jumping equalizes pressure in the swim bladder. Other hypotheses are that jumping helps shed parasites, elude predators, or plays a role in courtship.  All we know is that in mid-summer, especially at dawn and dusk, Suwannee River sturgeon fly out of the water like Polaris missiles.  If you are in a boat speeding toward a jumping sturgeon, you are in serious trouble.

Earlier this month a 5 year old girl was killed on the Suwannee when a sturgeon collided with her family's boat, also injuring her mother and 9 year old brother.  This week two adults were hospitalized from crashing into sturgeon.  Four other adults have been reported injured this month.  Collisions with flying sturgeon can be avoided, or at least the damage can be minimized, by traveling slowly in danger areas, but for some reason Florida motor boaters believe that speeding down the river is their constitutional right.  Damn the Gulf sturgeons, full speed ahead.

It is not the sturgeon's fault:  he is only doing what sturgeons do and have presumably done for millennia.  Sturgeon are among the most ancient of fishes, dating from the late Triassic about 200 million years ago, and they have undergone remarkably little morphological change since.  They are boneless apart from rows of hard bony plates called "scutes" that line their backs. They are bottom feeders with protusible mouths that let them vacuum up mollusks, worms, crustaceans and brachiopods from the sediment.  Sturgeon flesh is edible, but sturgeon roe is prized.  The term "caviar" specifically refers to the roe of a different species of wild sturgeon from the Caspian and Black Seas, but roe from Gulf sturgeon is popular enough to have caused a marked decline in the wild population due to overfishing.  Unfished, a sturgeon can easily live for 25 years, unless, of course, it collides with a North Floridian in a motorboat.

Craig and I have kayaks and a canoe, but nothing with a motor.  We stay out of the rivers in July.  In fact, we mostly stay in the house in July.  It is a very good month for reading.

Listen to the Mockingbird

Alachua County is a great place for birdwatchers. We're blessed with a varied habitat that includes piney flatwoods, hardwood forests, sandhills, freshwater marshes, farm land and 3 large lakes. At Paynes Prairie, a large savannah just south of Gainesville, 270 species of birds have been recorded. During the fall migration season at least 150 species come to visit and about 100 of them stay for the winter. A smaller migration in the spring brings us more transients and neo-tropicals that stay for the summer to breed. By June the transients have all gone on their ways, while the residents settle down to raise their families.

At Itchy Dog Farm right now we have a lot of birds, but not so many species. We have pileated woodpeckers in our pine trees, hummingbirds and cardinals in the yard, and a red-shouldered hawk keeping an eye on the pasture. Most common by far is the Northern Mockingbird, a year-round resident. In fact, they're so common, we almost don't notice them, despite their beautiful songs. We mostly notice them when we're birding and think we've sighted something interesting and it turns out to be only a mocker, oh well.

But we really shouldn't take them for granted. Mockers have beautiful voices and will sing for hours on end. They are so good at mimicking other birds' songs they can easily confuse a novice birder like me. Their scientific name, Mimus polyglottos, means "many tongued mimic." The male can sing as many as 200 different songs and will continue to learn new ones throughout his life. It stands to reason that the parent in the classic lullaby hopes a mockingbird will sing the baby to sleep:

Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

Pappa's going to buy you a mockingbird 

Mockingbirds don't just imitate the songs of other bird species, but can pretty much mimic whatever they hear, including the sounds of humans, frogs, dogs, cell phones and even chain saws. A video on YouTube records a mockingbird mimicking a car alarm. In Hopi and Pueblo Indian creation myths, it is Mockingbird who first gave speech to humans.

Unfortunately, if you are a bird it does not behoove you to be too special. Passenger pigeons were plentiful and plump, and we ate them to extinction. Florida herons and egrets were slaughtered by the millions for the plume trade before obtaining federal protection in the early 20th century. Mocker populations were decimated near urban centers because of the Victorian passion for caging songbirds. Of course, those were the days before records and radio, when if you wanted a little music in your life you either had to teach your daughters to play the piano or hang a birdcage in your parlor. And the trend had an upside -- ornithologists believe mockingbird populations in the northwestern U.S., Hawaii and Canada originated from the release of caged birds.

Another distinction of mockers is that they are fearless. Mockingbirds are intensely territorial, and will chase away birds, dogs, cats, and any other living things they perceive as a threat.. It isn't unusual for us to see mockers chasing away crows twice their size, or harassing our resident hawk. Also like crows, they can recognize and remember individual people, and they do hold a grudge. A study at the University of Florida showed the birds could recognize and remember specific humans after only a minute of exposure. It would take way longer than that for me to recognize a particular mockingbird.

Despite the fact that they are found in all U.S. states including Hawaii and Alaska, Northern Mockingbirds are southern birds. They are the state bird of Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, and until 1948, of South Carolina. The proclamation establishing the state bird of Texas declares the mocker "...is a singer of distinctive type, a fighter for the protection of his home, falling if need be, in its defense, like any true Texan". In To Kill a Mockingbird, the quintessential southern novel, the mockingbird is the symbol of innocence. The children are advised they can shoot as many tin cans and as blue jays as they can hit, but never hurt mockingbirds because they only sing and give pleasure to people. The Civil War ballad Listen to the Mockingbird evokes all the pathos of Walter Whitman's poems in far fewer words, as the dead woman's lover mourns the loss of his sweetheart:

Listen to the Mockingbird, listen to the Mockingbird
Oh the Mockingbird is singing oe'er her grave

Eminem's 2005 hit Mockingbird manages to evoke both the innocence of the lullaby and the sad experience of grieving for lost innocence in a single song, not bad for a Missouri boy.

Well, enough of all this. Mockers can't help the emotional baggage we pile upon them any more than they could have prevented 19th century urbanites from kidnapping their fledglings to sing in gilded cages. But they rule the roost at Itchy Dog Farm, and I'm glad they do.

* Photograph by Craig Walters, Avian Photographer Extraordinaire

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To Beef or Not To Beef

When I married a carnivore, we made a compromise.  We won't have meat when I'm  home, but he can consume all he wants when home alone or eating out.  I only ask that he please stick to beef rather than poultry or pork.  This surprises people.  Beef is the current protein non grata, both for health and environmental reasons.  But my personal concern is animal welfare.  Factory farmed chickens, turkeys and pigs will spend their entire lives in misery.  The beef cow at least spends the first nine or so months of his life grazing on grass under the open sky before being shipped off to the feedlot and the slaughterhouse.  And grass fed, organically raised beef cattle can have a pretty good life right up to the last day.

Cows on Williston Road

On the route from Itchy Dog Farm to town I pass miles of open pastureland before hitting the highway interchange, strip mall and traffic hell.  Right now the pastures are dotted with mama cows and their calves.  Earlier this spring the babies were nursing but now you see them grazing yards from their mothers and paying them no mind.  It's a beautiful sight, and I've often wondered if those pastures would be housing developments if they had no value for grazing.  Half of the agricultural land in Florida is used for beef production, but we're a "cow-calf" state -- our primary product is calves which are shipped to other states for finishing.

Earth Day last month was tough on beef.  I saw any number of posters riffing on Tim Benton's famous quote: “The biggest intervention people could make towards reducing their carbon footprints would not be to abandon cars, but to eat significantly less red meat.” Experts say beef production requires excessive amounts of water, emits large amounts of greenhouse gas, and uses land that could feed 10 million people if planted in staples.

But like most people I want to believe what I want to believe. I'm not grilling burgers on Memorial Day, I just want to enjoy the sight of these huge animals munching peacefully by the road.  There must be facts out there to support me.  I open a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations open in one tab (1) and a National Geographic article (2) in another.  And away we go.

Land degradation.  More than a quarter of the planet's ice-free land is used for grazing livestock, and a third of agricultural land is used for feed.  Grazing degrades the environment and decreases biodiversity.  This is bad.  But in the United States we're not razing rain forests to raise cattle. Most land used for beef cattle in the U.S. is unsuitable for farming, and converting grazing land to agriculture creates a different set of ills from erosion to fertilizer runoff.   Not to mention, sustainable farming of grass fed (pastured) beef actually improves the grassland.

Water depletion.  This one I know already.  In the county next to ours, a cattle ranch owned by Canadian billionaires wants to draw 1.2 million gallons a day from an already threatened aquifer, jeopardizing nearby Silver Springs and Salt Springs.  The planned 9,500 head of cattle will also produce 158 million pounds of manure and 11 million gallons of urine a year, polluting both ground and surface water.  Ugh.  But this is a factory farm, or as is known in the biz, a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation).  Pastured systems have significantly less impact on water resources.

Pollution.  Apart from animal waste, the largest source of pollution is the nitrogen fertilizer used to grow feed for CAFO cattle.  But in the U.S., beef cattle consume only about 10% of available grain, way less than the 36% used for ethanol production.  And if the grain wasn't being used for feed, it would surely be used for something else, so even if all beef cows were raptured tomorrow it's unlikely fertilizer use would go down.  And again, pastured beef is not fed grain by definition.

Climate change.  Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, although it does not live in the atmosphere as long.  Cows belch methane, and apparently quite a lot of it.  The FAO estimated that beef production is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  Here CAFOs have the edge, because pastured cows emit more methane than grain-fed.  But well managed pastureland sequesters carbon, and the overall effect of pastured beef on the atmosphere may be positive.

Health.  Remember "Sleeper"?  In Woody Allen's classic 1973 film the protagonist wakes up 200 years in the future to find that steak and hot fudge are health foods.  Nutritional advice is constantly changing, but overall it seems like a little bit of anything on occasion is good for you while a lot of it all the time is bad.  While the Paleos and Ornishers duke it out, we could spend a moment worrying about antibiotic and hormone use in food animals.  Antibiotics given to CAFO cattle to keep them from getting sick on feed that ruminants are not designed to digest is probably contributing to increasing drug-resistant infections in humans.  Unfortunately, abstaining from CAFO beef yourself won't protect you; once superbugs develop, they're out there looking for you.

By now, I've almost forgotten the question. It's clear the equation is different locally and globally.  It's different if I'm comparing the effects of the beef industry to the poultry and pork industries or to crop-based ways of producing the same number of calories.  It's different for pastured and CAFO beef.  I almost wish I could ask a cow: are you happy being out there in the sunshine, even knowing what's likely to come?  But the cow doesn't know, and come to think of it, neither do we.

(1) Livestock's Long Shadow. http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm

(2) Carnivore's Dilemma. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/meat/

Abby

My sister Abby was the center of the known universe for eight good years before I came along and ruined everything.  She could not hide her black-hot hatred.  My parents kept my crib in their bedroom for a year because they thought she might try to smother me in the night.  Family lore has it that she broke my arm twice in failed attempts to do me in.  As I grew older and harder to damage, she alternately ignored my existence and tormented me without mercy.  Despite everything, I worshiped her like a god.  She was the smartest person I knew. She painted her room orange and wore nothing but black for two years.  She stood up to our father.

We shared what we considered an abusive childhood, although much later when I became a foster parent I realized it didn't come close.  Our father was a tin-pot dictator; an angry, bitter man who was only happy when denigrating someone else.  Our mother was a saint when she was sober.  Abby and I wanted nothing more than to get out of the house, but she was older and had more means at her disposal.  She tried to move in with friends, sleeping in bedroom closets so parents wouldn't know.  She tried to run away, once making it all the way to New York City.  When I was eight years old she figured it out.  My 16 year-old sister, her 18-year-old husband and their infant son moved into a one-bedroom apartment of their own.

Overnight the sister who couldn't stand me became my protector and constant companion.  She'd escaped from the house and was determined to spring me as well.  She let me stay overnight whenever I was allowed to, first in that tiny apartment and and ultimately in a mortgaged split-level ranch in a spanking new 1960s subdivision.   We called ourselves the BLEESTER SEESTERS and sang Wobbly anthems, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and Old Testament gospel at the top of our lungs.  We memorized Woody Allen and Jonathan Winter comedy albums.  We took car trips to parks and beaches with the baby in a laundry basket in the back of the Rambler station wagon.  We were mesmerized by the Buckley-Gore debates and could recreate every one, each of us playing either part.

Having an older sibling was invaluable -- she introduced me to Bob Dylan and pop art, explained Civil Rights and Freedom Summer, shared her cigarettes and joints and horrible 16 mm pornography.  When I went away to college, I did my best to return the favors.  For the first time my world was larger than hers, and I tried hard to bring it all back home.  I found anarchist professors, Marxist authors, student activists and libertarian economists and laid them on her doorstep like a cat leaving mouse parts on the pillow.

I never loved anyone as much or felt as special.  We called ourselves a gestalt -- not sisters or best friends but different parts of a single being.  But time moves on, decades pass, things change. In retrospect I can see we were once so close because we came from a small family in a tiny town and had a common enemy.  In time we both escaped, divorcing the past, acquiring husbands and lovers and children and friends and interests and experiences we couldn't share.  Over the next 40 years there were times when we felt as close as teenagers, times that were strained, and times when we were hardly in touch at all.

If Abby had found time to write her memoirs, I think they would have started after she moved to Gainesville and found her own real self.  She discovered her own voice and her own passions.  She raised five remarkable sons and daughters and married the love of her life.  She did not just rage against injustice and inequality, she fought it tooth and nail.  She lived more fully than anyone I've ever known, loved her family and friends as fiercely as anyone ever did, and never for a single moment looked back.  I needed to take this moment to look back, and now I'll try to move on.

Abby Goldsmith, 7/21/1945 - 4/27/2015.

The Ides of March

Now that it's April, I can say it.  I hate March.  I hated this March and I hated last March and I've hated March for as long as I can remember.  Twenty years ago my mother died in March.  Every year bad things happen in March, to me and to people I love.  I go into a blue funk and a brown study. T.S. Eliot had it wrong,

I began the month burying my sweet old horse and ended it with a speeding ticket.  In between, my husband, son and daughter all suffered significant setbacks.  Their stories aren't mine to tell, but in the way of families, their problems weigh heavier than my own.  I hate March.

Which of course leads me to wonder about the Ides of March. Clearly not a great thing for Caesar, but what the heck are Ides anyway, and should I worry about them?

Turns out whoever invented the Roman calendar either had a sick sense of humor or was a very odd duck.  Days of the months were not numbered one, two, three, four or first, second, third, fourth.  Dates were counted back from three fixed points based on the lunar calendar:  the Kalends at the start, named for the day that bills were due; the Nones, either the 5th or the 7th, depending on the month; and the Ides, the 13th or 15th.  The Ides of March was the 15th.

The unnamed days of the month would count back from the named days, so March 4 would be "IV Nones", or four days before the 7th, and March 14 would be "I Ides", one day before the 15th. As odd as this seems, it's at least a little consistent with Roman numerals which can also count back from significant numbers -- e.g. IV for 4 and IX for 9.  Kind of makes you wonder about the Romans.

We all know that Julius Caesar was warned to "beware the Ides of March" before his demise at the hands of 60 senators.  Those actual words were a bit of poetic license by Shakespeare, but according to Barry Strauss in The Death of Caesar, the historical ruler did visit a haruspex named Spurinna on February 15, 44 BC, and sacrificed a bull so that the soothsayer could predict his future.  Spurinna warned JC that his life would be in danger for the next 30 days, i.e. until March 15.  On that date Caesar told Spurinna that the Ides had come and was answered, "Aye, they have come but not gone."  That should have kept JC away from the senate, but the rest, as they say, is history.

Next question, what the heck is a haruspex?  Haruspices were people trained to read omens from  the entrails of sheep and poultry, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep. Haruspicy was a kind of specialty within the wider practice of divination from animal entrails, brought to Rome via the Etruscans, who were apparently quite good at it.  Caesar's soothsayer was surely of Etruscan descent, as Spurinna was a common Etruscan name.

Snide aside:  How do people come up with this stuff?  I mean, say I'm thinking about changing jobs or invading Persia and I want an idea of how it's likely to go.  I might think to pull petals off a daisy: good luck, bad luck, good luck, oops.  Or, if I need a bit more nuance, maybe I could try to interpret the clouds.  Are they white, dark, puffy, flat, shaped like duckies or H-bombs?  But no, of course I'll  slaughter some farm animals and look at their livers.  How stupid of me not to think of it sooner.

Back in the day, of course, it wasn't quite as bizarre as it appears to us now.  It would be natural for priests performing ritual sacrifices to look  at the carcass of a healthy sheep or calf and think the gods would  be pleased, whereas if the organs were diseased, maybe not so much.   Mesopotamians believed the liver to be the source of blood and hence of life, so paying particular attention to that organ would make sense.  And the more obscure something is the more privileged the practitioner, so you end up with exquisitely complicated liver topography that only experienced haruspices could interpret.

Whatever.  According to one story, Caesar's bull lacked a heart, always a bad sign.  According to others, Spurinna was also an astrologer and his prediction was primarily based on the planets.   In any case, Caesar took the prediction seriously but chose to go to the senate anyway.  He must have really hated March.

March is actually lovely in North Central Florida.  They days are warm and evenings cool. Redbuds and dogwoods line the county roads with pink and white. Deciduous trees begin to leaf out species by species, from sweetgums to cypress.  Robins and cedar waxwings visit in great numbers on their way back north. Winter gardens are harvested, spring gardens are planted, and potato gardens grow bushy and tall.

Now the house is filled with mosquitoes.  Tomato plants sag in the sun,  Pollen wafts down from the sky.  The humidity is creeping up, and highs in the 90s are  predicted.  Hello April, I love you.  

Norwegian Dancer

We got Norwegian Dancer, aka Weegie, not long after moving to Itchy Dog Farm.  Standing tall at 16.2 hands, Weeg was a dark bay Thoroughbred previously owned by Craig's friend Audrey, a professional horsewoman in Ocala.  She had taken a job with a stable that required summers in Pennsylvania and she could no longer afford to move Weegie back and forth twice a year.

I had originally hoped for a couple of horses we could ride together, maybe plodders retired from the trail. Weegie was 29 years old and although it was clear he was game to work, the idea of riding him seemed mean.  But Craig said he was the best horse ever and we had to take him, so we took him.

Turned out, Weegie was the best horse ever.  He did this little nibble-nuzzle with his lips that tickled you into a laugh.  You could groom him forever without a halter.  He stood for the farrier, only getting agitated if requested to lift a leg out of turn.  And he had the most gorgeous gait.  Our neighbors own and board astonishingly expensive horses and I never saw one of them move as beautifully as our Weeg.

As it happens, I somehow believed a lot of misinformation about him.  I thought he was born in the UK and had a successful racing career overseas before coming to the States to be retrained as a competitive dressage horse.  In my research after his death, I found he was born in Kentucky in 1982.  His sire was Nobel Dancer from Great Britain, his dam Patriotic Petunia out of Floral Park by National. As a 3-year-old he was unplaced in 12 starts, which means he did not win, place or show in the twelve races he was entered in.  The New Jersey Register for October 30, 1985 lists his odds as 8:1 in the first heat at the Meadowlands, $7,500 prize.

In 1988 he was sold by consignor Dancer's Hill Farm to an R. D. Brady for $1200.  I do not know how he came to to be used for dressage or how he came to be owned by Audrey.  I can't find anything about his dressage career.  I did find an article published in 2015 about his sire, Noble Dancer, that states:

Noble Dancer went on to sire some magnificent stakes winners: Explosive Dancer, Noble Fury, Island Sun, Noble Cookie, Norwegian Dancer and Noble Ringer are just a few of his outstanding offspring.

So he was an outstanding offspring, I'm just not sure at what. 

No matter, we loved that horse.  If he had any downside at all, it was how he hated to be alone in the pasture. It was not an easy job finding pasture pals for him.  First we tried in succession a couple of younger Arabs whose owners were only too happy to give them away.  Weegie is submissive about his food, and we had to rehome one Arab after another when they gobbled up his fodder.  Next we got Pebbles, a sweet blond mini horse, from a nearby equine rescue.  She had horrible health issues from the start, but Weegie adored her and would not leave her side.  After her death we briefly suffered the Donkey From Hell who would not let Weegie eat at all.  Finally we found a pony named Chavez. Weegie's mini-me, Chavez was a little copy of Weege and they loved each other like nothing I've seen before.  They could not be more than a few feet apart, and neither would let the other be taken away.  The farrier and the equine vet quickly learned they could could only treat one horse if the other was standing beside.

BFF

Chavez has laminitis from grazing  on our rich pasture grass, and I always thought he was the one to worry about.  But a week ago Friday, just a few weeks before Weegie's 33rd birthday, I found him swaying like a drunkard, shifting his weight from one front foot to another.  Both feet were so painful he could not stand on either.  I made an appointment with the vet and plied him with Bute to ease the pain.  When she came the following Monday, she confirmed he had foundered and his coffin bone was pushing through the hoof.  There was nothing to do but put him down.

I have been imagining Weegie crossing the Rainbow Bridge.  He might have just walked across with his typical confidant dignity.  Or maybe he galloped across like the 3-year-old racehorse he once was.  Or he could have trotted lightly, head up and tail flowing in the best dressage style.  But I like best to think that he cantered across that bridge with his effortless, big-horse loping gait that we watched so often in the pasture, when suddenly he would throw back his head and run for no reason I could see except the love of running.  He runs and runs, and his feet don't hurt and his muscles are long and hard, and he runs and runs and his head is high and he doesn't even care that there is a world of fat sweet grass waiting on the other side.

Jeepers Peepers!

The best time to set hens to have the best, largest, and most kindly chickens is in February in the increase of the moon, so that she may hatch or disclose her chickens in the increase of the next new moon, being in March; for one brood of March chickens is worth three broods of any other.*

Jeepers Creepers, where'd ya get those peepers?**

Every year we raise a new batch of kindly chicks to add to our flock.   The feed store in Archer sells pullets from the beginning of February through the middle of April, but the real excitement begins in late January when they publish the weekly schedule of Chick Days:

02/05/15  25 RHODE ISLD RED PULLETS

                   25 BARRED ROCK PULLETS

                   25 BUFF ORPINGTON PULLETS

                   25 AMERAUCANA PULLETS

                   25 FRENCH GUINEA ST RUNS

Craig and I pore over this list with the fervor that others save for their spring seed catalogs.  Chick Days represents winter's end, anticipation, rebirth and renewal, boundless possibility.  We are tantalized by twenty or more breeds of hens, not to mention turkeys, guinea fowl and partridges.   Is this the year to take a chance on AST FRIZZLE COCHIN BANTAM?

But we are practical farmers.  Above all we want hens that are good layers, predisposed to be docile and friendly, and not inclined to brood.  That eliminates motherly girls like cochins and silkies, as well as breeds that prefer to be left alone, like anconas and leghorns.   We're in Florida, so heat-tolerance is always a good quality.  Heavy breeds are less likely to fly over the fence into the pasture or our neighbors' yards.  Craig likes colorful eggs.  I like beautiful birds, but they're all beautiful birds.

Our first ever flock consisted of two Rhode Island Reds, two Plymouth Rocks, and two black sex-links (the always-female issue of a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Barred Rock hen).   Both Reds and Rocks are quintessential American birds, popular on small farms, and good for both eggs and meat.  Our Rocks were white with black and gold flecks and the sex-links were black with rust and gold, all of them speckled and sparkling and glinting in the sun.  I thought they were the prettiest birds I'd ever seen until we got our Buff Orpingtons, golden yellow beauties with bright red combs.  They strut picture perfect against the green grass and lay lovely large light brown eggs.   I thought they were the most beautiful birds I'd ever seen until we got our Brahmas...  

So, Craig and I work our way down the Chick Days flyer.  There is a vocabulary you have to know.  Pullets are formally hens under a year old, but used here simply to indicate the chicks are all  female.  Bantams are smaller counterparts of full-sized breeds.  ST RUNS or "straight runs" means the chicks have not been sexed and will be a mix of pullets and roosters.   We google our favorite chicken fact sites.  Dominiques are handsome and thrive in both heat and cold, but wait, they're light and can be flighty.  Naked Necks get 4.6 stars from Backyard Chickens but they look like something out of Dr. Seuss.  Cuckoo Marans lay enticing chocolate colored eggs but are down as good brooders.  So many chickens, so little time.  Finally we settle on Speckled Sussex pullets.  Affectionate, intelligent, curious, almost dog-like, they are neither broody nor flighty and are consistent producers of large brown eggs.

Alas, when our Chicken Day comes, the Speckled Sussex don't arrive as scheduled.  The hatchery has substituted Blue Hamburg bantams.  The feed store clerk and I are equally nonplussed.  The bantams are out of the question -- they are flighty and will lay small white eggs -- but I am not leaving the store without some peepers.  I purchase four partridge Ameraucana pullets.  They are GORGEOUS.  Buff with brown patches  running from the crown of their heads through the center of their backs, framed by a brown stripe on either side.  They are such sweet babies they don't run away when I try to pick them up.  They will lay pale blue eggs. They are the Best Chickens Ever.

Ameraucana peepers, one day old.

Our little peepers will live in a galvanized steel tub in the living room with an infrared heat lamp to keep them warm.   We'll hold them on our laps whenever possible to get them used to human touch.   In a couple of weeks their permanent feathers will grow in and they will be able to stay outside in a dog crate on warm afternoons.   Eventually they will range free in the sunshine and sleep in the chicken palace with the big girls.  They will forage for seeds and bugs and lay eggs with incredible orange yolks.  With luck they will live well beyond their egg-producing years and die of natural causes.   It is a good life for a chicken here at Itchy Dog Farm.

* Advice from Gervase Markham’s A Way to Get Wealth, 1625, as excerpted by Jeff Kacirk for his Forgotten English Calendar entry for 16 February 2015, and sent to me by my friend Charles Husbands.

** Start of 1938 song by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer.

Postscript:  Unless you buy from your farmers' market, the eggs you are frying for breakfast likely came from a factory farm where thousands of birds are crammed together vertically in battery cages in windowless sheds.  Each hen has a space the size of a piece of notebook paper on which to live out her life.  She will never see the sky, scratch the earth for bugs, or splash in a dirt bath.  Her beak will be clipped (without anesthetic) so that in her misery and boredom she doesn't peck herself or others to death.  She may have such a serious calcium deficiency from over-production of eggs that her bones are broken.  Happily her life expectancy is short and she will soon be slaughtered for food scraps.  

The River Styx

In Greek mythology, the River Styx, or River of Hate, was one of five rivers separating the underworld from the world of the living.  The others were Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Lethe, or Woe, Lamentation, Fire and Forgetfulness, respectively.   Although Ovid's Metamorphoses puts the ferryman Charon [Kharon] on the banks of the Styx, all Greek and most other Roman accounts have Charon and his dragon-tailed dog Cerberus ferrying the souls of the dead across the River Acheron.  Nonetheless, Styx was the principal river of Hades, circling it nine times before draining into the Stygian marsh.

In Alachua County, the River Styx flows from a swamp in the Longleaf Flatlands Reserve to Orange Lake.  It is part of a conservation ecosystem known as the Lochloosa Connector, linking Newnans Lake in the north through Paynes Prairie to the River Styx and Orange Lake. In the summer I don't think I could afford enough mosquito repellent to keep me alive for an hour on the Styx, but on these glorious, mosquito-free, North Florida winter days a paddle up the river is far more like Paradise than Hades.

Towards Orange Lake

The best place to put in is at the bridge over County Road 346 in Micanopy.  It's an ugly, aging concrete slab bridge but it does have a wonderful view.  Just over the bridge is a pull-off where you can park your vehicle and carry your boat down to the river. Go downstream and you will ultimately end up in the spacious waters of Orange Lake.  Turn upstream and the water carries you a mile or so into strand swamp before the vegetation becomes impenetrable.  You may start out under blue skies but it gets darker and darker the further you paddle.  You skirt towering bald cypress with buttress roots and hear creatures plopping into the water, hoping turtle not gator.  You wouldn't be surprised to see Bigfoot.

The area includes the Micanopy Cypress wood stork rookery and is known as the home of nesting pairs of these threatened birds as well as Florida black bear and river otter.  Craig and I have never seen anything so remarkable on our paddles, but even the usual wildlife is stunning.  Bald eagles are common, as are ducks and all manner of wading birds including herons, egret, ibis and limpkin.  Anhinga are rampant.  These beautiful birds swim submerged in the water with only their long, S-shaped necks above the surface, giving them their other name, Snakebird.  They are often seen resting with their wings stretched out to dry.  They are all over Florida but I've never seen so many in one place as on the Styx.

In mythology, the poisonous waters of the Styx could confer invulnerability to the gods but were toxic to mortals.  (Achiles' mom dipped him in the Styx as a baby, but the heel of his foot where she held him stayed dry, hence Achiles' heel.)  The water was so corrosive it could only be contained in a horse's hoof.  It is now believed that the real life Styx is a stream called Mavroneri (Black Water) in the Peloponnesian mountains. Even now, locals avoid drinking the water and say it corrupts drinking vessels.  Recently researchers at Stanford have proposed that the Mavroneri may have contained a lethal bacteria-produced poison, calicheamicin, and more, that water from Styx/Mavroneri might have been used to poison Alexander the Great.

Heading upstream

The water of our River Styx is stained mahogany red and has the faint but unmistakable odor of Cypress swamp.  So far as I know it is neither poisonous nor corrosive, but it does have magical powers.  A shaft of sunlight through the trees can turn dark water into gold, and a heron rising from the weeds can make your heart fly.





A few follow-ups on earlier posts:

Elinor is back to her normal sweet self, and egg production exceeds our capacity for egg consumption.

Number 9 is still spending his days with his sandhill crane friends at the Beef Teaching Unit.

Going broody

Elinor is broody and it is not a pretty sight.  She is puffed up to twice her normal size and hunkered down in her nesting box like Jabba the Hut with feathers.  She is cranky and aggressive and if you try to touch her she'll make a noise like grinding gears.  It's scary.

Elinor wants to be a mother.  More specifically, she wants to sit on a clutch of eggs until they hatch.   She has stopped laying eggs and is going to sit on whatever is under her for about 21 days.   It is a natural chicken condition caused by a surge of prolactin, the same hormone associated with PMS in women.  Some breeds are more prone to broodiness than others.  The mood to brood has pretty much been selected out of hybrids used for commercial egg production, but is common in more traditional varieties.  Elinor is a cross between a Welsummer and a New Hampshire.  (We got her and five sisters from a local farmer trying to recreate a line of Bielefelders. Our girls were the rejects that she did not want to continue breeding.  But they are beautiful and excellent layers.)  Welsummers are not known for going broody, but New Hampshires are.

If you want to raise chickens from eggs you might be delighted to have a broody hen or two as an alternative to the incubator.  It can be significantly less trouble, since you don't have to monitor temperature and humidity or turn your eggs over three times a day -- your hen takes care of all that.

Craig and I do not want to hatch chicks from eggs.  If we did about half of them would turn out to be male, and there aren't many things you can do with a rooster.  You can eat it, or sell it to someone else to eat.  You might keep one to keep watch over your hens, which has its pros and cons.  He will be always on the alert for predators and may be positively heroic protecting his flock.  But he will also try to mate with them constantly, and may hurt the hens or even denude their backs with his frequent attentions.  Contrary to what some people think, hens will lay perfectly fine eggs without roosters, thank you very much.  But the eggs won't be fertilized, which is a plus if you don't like to eat fertilized eggs and don't plan to hatch them.

Big Red

We actually have one rooster, Big Red.  He's a Rhode Island Red from our first-ever flock of chickens, a mistake but one we're overall happy we made.  A gorgeous animal, he does his jobs well.  We had to get an "apron," kind of a back-protector, for Sweetie, who was rubbed raw from his advances.  But on the whole he isn't too rough on the girls and they can out-run him if they care to.

But I digress. Big Red is all the rooster we need, so hatching chicks from eggs is ill-advised, and we have no use for a broody hen.  It isn't great for the hen, who will only leave the nest once or twice a day to eat and drink and poop.  She'll lose weight and start looking really ratty.  Also, she's taking up a nesting box full time, to the annoyance of the others.   Broodiness seems to be catching, and one broody hen can throw off egg production for the whole flock.  Since Elinor went broody, our daily egg production went from five or six to one or two.

Most advice says the best way to break a broody hen is to put her in an elevated wire cage with no nesting box until she lays an egg.  Then let her out, give her some tasty scratch, and hope she doesn't hunker down on the nest again.  If she does, put her back in for a second round.  We have a dog crate with an extra wire rack on the floor we can use for the purpose.  Sometimes tough love is the only way to go.

Spuds

Everyone knows that in Florida you plant potatoes in January.  Or rather, everyone in Florida knows you plant potatoes in January.  The commercial seed companies, which tend to be located in non-Florida places like Indiana and Pennsylvania, do not seem to know this, and they won't ship a seed potato order to Zone 9 before mid-February.  Happily, our local Feed & Seed stores have their own suppliers.  Call around Martin Luther King Day and the spuds will either be in stock or on their way.

Prepared potato garden, with chickens.

Every farm should have a garden, and Itchy Dog Farm is no exception.  Shortly after moving here we tilled and fenced a sizable rectangle in back of the house, but after one season of raising collards and squash it was clear that I don't have enough time to garden and that Craig doesn't like collards or squash.  Thereafter the fenced garden became a no-mow weed protection zone.  However, I do keep a smaller raised bed in service as a potato garden.

The best varieties for planting here are Sebago, La Chipper, Red La Soda and La Rouge.  (The "La" varieties were developed by an experimental breeding program in Lousiana.)  Sebagos are the best all purpose whites, good for boiling, mashing, roasting, frying and steaming.  This year I will plant Sebago and Red La Soda to have both white and red.  Sweet potatoes also do well but I haven't tried growing them yet.

Potatoes originated in the mountains of southern Peru some 10,000 years ago.  The Incas not only ate them for dinner but applied them as medicine, paid them for taxes, and used them as clocks, measuring time by how long their potatoes took to cook.  The Spanish, after decimating the Incas, introduced potatoes to Europe in the 1500s.  Potatoes were introduced to North America in 1621 when the governor of Bermuda sent a chestful to the governor of colonial Virginia.  In 1802 Thomas Jefferson boosted the popularity of the potato and invented the first French fry when he had the White House chef make potatoes "served in the French manner" at a dinner party.

One reason potatoes caught on as they did is they are relatively easy to grow and more nutritionally complete than other staples.  People can live on potatoes alone for quite a long time, although not forever, as they lack vitamins D and E.  The pre-famine 19th century Irish poor lived primarily on potatoes but also had buttermilk, cabbage, turnips and oatmeal.  They did, however, eat a whopping lot of potatoes -- according to Wikipedia, as many as 60 a day.  When the potato crops failed in the 1840s, a million people died because of the British government's failure to provide relief or allow Irish tenant farmers to eat the meat, dairy and grain they exported.

After the Irish Potato Famine, Americans who were previously quite enamored of the potato relegated it to animal feed for a few decades.  Although the United States Potato Board (yes, Virginia, there is a United States Potato Board) implies the cause was an aversion to potato blight, one can't help but wonder if it wasn't an aversion to the half million Irish peasants who immigrated to eastern U.S. cities.  That would be a great irony since it is believed the fungus that caused the potato blight came to Ireland on ships from eastern U.S. cities.

Potato seed balls

In another great irony, the nutritious potato is also poisonous.  The leaves and stem of the potato plant contain a glycoalkaloid poison called solanine, a nerve toxin that disrupts communication between cells.  A greenish tint to the potato skin indicates presence of solanine in the tuber as well.   Pollinated potato flowers will develop into fruits that look like green tomatoes and contain hundreds of potato seeds.  These seed balls also contain tons of solanine and should not be eaten by man nor beast.  Potato breeders use potato seeds from cross-bred plants to develop new varieties, but farmers and gardeners use seed potato tubers for growing potato crops.

Potatoes grow well in North Florida.  The town of Hastings, about an hour east of here between Palatka and St. Augustine, is the Potato Capital of Florida.  This may be a distinction, but not a very remunerative one, and the residents just manage to scrape by.  The joke is that a Hastings potato farmer wins the state lottery and is asked what he'll do with all that money.  He says, well I guess I'll just keep farming 'til the money runs out.  According to the 2010 census, there were 580 people in Hastings, up 37 bodies from 2000, equally distributed between white and black.   The populace is overwhelmingly Democratic and has a good sense of humor -- a local bumper sticker reads "Stuffing is for turkeys -- eat potatoes".

Our own potato garden is ready for Martin Luther King Day.   Earlier last month I turned the soil and dug in leaf mulch and my own special brand of compost.  When the seed potatoes come in I will cut them into pieces and let them cure for a day or two, then plant them in 4" trenches.  As the plants grow I will hoe them to hill them, and wait for them to bloom.  Then we'll dig up the sweetest little new potatoes you ever saw and eat them with April spinach and tomatoes.