Market is Open

Greetings ALFN members,

I just opened the gates to a fresh paddock of produce; the market is open!

News/Updates

Check out Kellogg Valley Farm this week. They have new fall listings including greens and gourds!!

I’m excited to invite all of you to next week’s market day. Nathan Crabtree is a member of ALFN and expert juicer. He will be conducting a free, informal workshop during market hours this Saturday. The whole workshop will probably last about an hour. Nathan will discuss the methods for juicing as well as the machine used. He will also show how to develop recipes with a scale. The workshop will begin at 11:00 during market hours. Come pick up your produce and hang out for an hour with Nathan. I believe taste tests will be included! Why not purchase some fruit and greens with the intention of experimenting on your own after the workshop!

Living with the Wild

“Wild animals, like wild places, are invaluable to us precisely because they are not us. They are uncompromisingly different. The paths they follow, the impulses that guide them, are of other orders . . . Seeing them, you are made briefly aware of a world at work around and beside our own, a world operating in patterns and purposes that you do not share. These are creatures, you realise that live by voices inaudible to you.” (Macfarlane, The Wild Places)

Early yesterday morning, I pulled out of my alley while it was still dark. As I drove up the hill and briefly stopped at a neighborhood intersection, the headlights of my car illuminated a raccoon foraging for food. I wanted to roll down my window and give him a good cussing. But even for a raccoon, I thought this would be too rude. You see, I had suspected the presence of a predator on our darkened streets. A few months ago, I lost a chicken in the night. I say lost not to say disappeared, but dismembered and consumed. Raccoons are highly adaptable creatures due to their intelligence and omnivorous appetite. They have always had a role in evoking the nostalgic era of childhood through stories such as Sterling North’s “Rascal,” and Wilson Rawls’s “Where the Red Fern Grows.” Today, raccoons are a dominant presence not just in the boyhood river bottoms of the countryside, but in urban sprawl. Population densities in America can range from 333 to 67 per/square kilometer, and their success has also raised concern over illnesses such as rabies while conservationists worry about the impact of raccoons on endangered species. In Europe, the raccoon is considered an invasive species.

I find the concept of “invasive species” and our emotional and behavior response to these species an educational window into how modern civilization lives with the wild. Often, we prefer to keep the wild out of our lived spaces, and even then, we prefer a wild that is more picturesque and aesthetic. However, invasive species are successful organisms that have filled ecological niches in the world we have created. The replacement of field to asphalt is a profound habitat shift that upsets ecological systems and individuals within those systems. A monoculture of corn is also a massive habitat disturbance. When such a disturbance occurs, predators and prey reassemble to fit the new habitat. In other words, my neighborhood raccoon is part of the urban ecosystem; blight or insect population explosion in a mono-cropped field is part of a modern agricultural ecosystem.

Whether we attempt to destroy invasives with pesticides (believe it or not, conservation efforts often use certain herbicides to control invasives) or exterminate/remove them from our controlled habitats, the modern reaction to invasive species is indicative of our own inability to live with the wild world. I’m not suggesting we feed urban raccoons or protect potato beetles. However, I would suggest we consider their presence to be an ecological response to habitat disturbance that is usually rooted in human behavior. To me, we have to shift our thinking. Instead of bifurcating the world into good and bad species, we need to think ecologically. Our farming and our thinking need to mimic the workings of Mother Nature. I disturb the soil and poison ivy emerges. Instead of reaching for glyphosate, I find other species to fill the niche I created when I disturbed the soil. Every action has a reaction in the natural world. In the end, growing food or raising chickens or driving to work involve living with the wild world around us. Consequently, we must always be in conversation with this wild to not only live sustainably, but keep ourselves from becoming the ultimate invasive species.

Wildly Yours,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager