Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on September 15, 2010
At the end of this post is a very short video of Jose Vanegas processing their bean harvest recently just South of Northfield, MN. His wife Maria Sosa (speaking on the background) was bringing the bean bunches and loading the “aporreadero” or beating platform. The beans are hit with a wooden stick (another fellow from El Salvador who was there the day before used two sticks one on each hand and was going at it much faster for many hours), the bean shells that are hit open up and drop down the beans into the tarp below through spaces between the 2×2 boards that the platform is made off.
A Latin American family familiar with cooking black beans in different ways can eat around 75 lbs a year. This amount can be grown in a space of 25 x 50 feet. It takes about two hours to plant it (20 inches between rows and 4 to 6 inches between plants), holes are made with a how or a shallow row is carved in the soil. Beans germinate by the 4th or 5th day. Two to three times of weed removal early in their growth can suffice, once they start flowering they need to be left alone.
90 days later, the beans dry and can be picked. Picking of this small area is done in about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Beating the beans off the shells can be done in about anouther 30 minutes. After shelling, the platform is disassembled and the beans are poured from a bucket into another on a windy day to blow the small shell pieces and dust off, a fan can be used if there is no wind.
After blowing out the dust and shells, the beans are placed on a flat surface and stones and other foreign materials are removed. The beans are ready to be stored, regular paper bags do the job great as they keep light out and moisture and air circulation, very important for keeping the viability of the beans if they are also to be used for seeds.
For many of the families we work with, food security is a primary goal of their farming operations, this simple plan can supply a family with beans for the whole year, but then why settle for a 25×50 space when families can get together and plant a couple of acres and even have some beans to sell. This is the case of the Vanegas family who planted a bit more than an acre and a half and harvested close to 3,000 lbs.
Most of the beans were harvested with a combine, after picked, they were windrowed and combined. The bean beating platform was set-up to teach the kids (many of them) something about how their parents and many generations before them have done things (in fact for over 7,000 years beans have been grown and processed in similar ways across Latin America), machines are useful and can bring benefits, but some families just can’t afford them, lack of access to machines, does not have to interfere with a family’s ability to produce and process their own food if they so desire. And if coming together, like in this case, the harvest from the Vanegas-Sosa family will be enough to provide a key source of fiber, protein, basic amino acids. Although black beans do not supply the full 9 basic amino acids, if combined with a high lysine corn variety and squash (three sisters farming system) for vitamins, a low income family can have a diet far superior than anything they can buy and except for the squash, storing these foods is as simple as setting aside a small corner of the house and keeping it protected.
This system has survived for thousands of years and can survive many thousands more, it is energy efficient and anyone can use and afford it, these and other principles are critical in the process of designing sustainable food and agriculture systems.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on August 25, 2010
Invisible Minority is the title of a new series that is being published by the Northfield News and started with the first edition last Saturday. I will be posting their web link to these special edition as it becomes available the Tuesday after it is printed. Stay tuned.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on August 10, 2010
I just posted a brief 500 word column on the Northfield News describing one example of how we approach the issue of poverty through the development of food and agriculture enterprises. This is one more article in a series, I will place the names of all of the articles I have been writing in this series for the Northfield News below, each linking to the original article. There are more coming, I have enough titles for two years of publications once a month, so stay tuned, here is the most recent posting.
Here is the list of all of the previous articles published starting with the latest.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 10, 2010
I am writing this blog to create a record of some great things that happened at our demonstration site in the last two days. Although, barely one acre total, this place is becoming a magnet for activity, people come here to figure things out, to plan, to share ideas, to ponder and to celebrate and finish hard working days on their own farming operations.
Starting on Thursday, we had a group of Saint Olaf College students led by Kris Estenson from the Center for Experiential Learning (CEL), their purpose was to look close up the issues of social responsibility and how change can come about by dealing with structural and systematic failures, especially in the food and agriculture sector. We studied the issues of vulnerable children, learning delays and other disadvantages directly originated by the lack of access to food or access to too much junk food. The discussion was lively and the farm tour full of great questions.
Friday afternoon, we had the new Arts and Agriculture bilingual camp. A nice group of 1st through 5th grade kids signed up. Led by Miguel Perez, Lucy Celis and Amy Haslett-Marroquin this camp brings kids together to be exposed to a different culture on a setting where they are free to share, learn, play and explore food production, healthy living, and cooking from scratch at its best (actually starting by harvesting the products they will cook, giving the idea a whole new meaning).
Two of these kids were itching to do some “farm work”, especially taking care of the little chickens. So they got their wish, Garrett and Jose washed the automatic watering fountains in the ranging fields and then spread barley that would sit overnight and soften for the birds to eat the next morning. The mix also included camelina (Camelina sativa) and comm on flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) seeds, both rich in omega 3 fatty acids. Not that the the young ones knew this or wanted to know for now, but the time will come when with properly nourished curiosity they will ask the right questions. For now, it is just about their curiosity for food and farming not going unattended.
Towards the end of the day, Maria Sosa and her black bean farm crew came over from their operation in Cannon Falls, I had marinated a bunch of our own free range chicken, Amy (my wife), had cooked a pot of black turtle beans, we harvested and cooked onions and other garden herbs, threw in a pot of rice and had a great dinner. Even the kids agreed this was a good evening although the soccer game they had picked, seem more important. After dinner, someone picked up a guitar, we made a bonfire and had some good conversation about life and mundane things that need to be ruminated to complete a full day’s worth of hard work and celebration.
As all of these went on, on a different corner of the farm, another crew under the leadership of Federico Vargas, put together an arrangement of equipment, a trailer, and a home-made shelter so that they can offer poultry processing on the farm for the many small flock growers in our region that are left on a limb when it comes time to process their family’s poultry flock. The purpose of the group is to go out to farmers who have raised chickens and need processing, bring the equipment, and help the farmers do the job.
Many farmers we are in touch with raise small flocks, sometimes under 50 birds, but then have to load them on the back of trucks and drive 50 or 100 miles to a meat packing plant, pay high prices to get their birds processed and then have to go pick them again and bring them home. This is not fair for the farmers who just want healthy foods on their farm, nor for the animals who suffer unnecessarily while the meat quality deteriorates. This group will take all of the pain away from the processing of these small flocks and do it right on the farm. Farmers who don’t have time or resources to put together an efficient system of their own, won’t have to do it, at least if they get in touch with Federico.
As perennial crops (fruit trees and hazelnuts) get established in this small demonstration site we run, we also get ready for many more gatherings like this, planned or unplanned, it doesn’t matter. For the younger folks, some “un-planning” makes the place more attractive, as long as we structure it well, young people will always get a fulfilling experience. Some fun unplanned stuff like bonfires can happen whenever there is grilling, a guitar handy and friends. The chickens always need care, the chores are always there and everything is prepared for anyone to do them so the kids interested in this jumped right in with some short instructions.
Many of us have learned that we shouldn’t plan kids out of their childhood, but we can surely plan a lot around their childhood, so when they are ready to be helpful they don’t feel left out of the adult structures and when they grow up they won’t go around thinking that food comes from the store and farmers are of a lesser social class. Animals and farms seem to generate kid’s desire to do things naturally (as long as the chore is not obligatory). For kids living on farms, the thrill comes from being able to show off their skills like my daughter and her friend who know how to milk goats by hand. For Hipanic/Latino farmers, it is the place where they have wisdom to pass on and an command respect, a concept slipping away in new generation immigrants who see their parents as obsolete and backwards. The demonstration site is planned to be just the way young people like things, unplanned (at least as far as they can see), fun and meaningful, but also “on their own terms.” If that is what it takes to get young people into sustainable agriculture, healthy lifestyles and healthy eating, then be it, as long as it works and the systems we develop don’t structurally and systematically leave vulnerable children living in poverty behind. We are happy to put our minds into designing and planning systems that are ready to do this, we hope you will join us in celebrating and supporting this kind of culture that brings about true “agri-culture” we so much need to make our rural communities healthier.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on June 7, 2010
What if every Latino/a family in Southern MN were given the opportunity to contribute their real skills, knowledge, entrepreneurship spirit, hard working ethic, and all the many other great assets to the regional food and agriculture sector? We could actually build a new system that is fair to workers, profitable for the small companies (farming enterprises or small farms), creates wealth for the region by keeping the resources multiplying and growing locally, improve our production efficiency (through richer, more stable, protected and improved soils, waterways and reduction of inputs), and build a regional ecology capable of turning around the way we think about farming, food, economic development, the role of new immigrants, and the ecology.
As long as we keep thinking just about job creation, instead of investing in competitive advantages as a strategy for economic development, we will continue to think of people like Mercedez as cheap labor for farm fields and meat processors and other factories, while missing the real potential these folks represent for the region. When we mismanage the people’s potential, we miss the larger potential to turn our regional food and agriculture into something we can sustain for the long haul. We have to keep in mind that conventional agriculture does not create competitive advantages, but keeps talent and opportunity from emerging through the forces that it generates in terms policies, subsidies for unsustainable systems, the flow of resources from the public to fields and factories and then out of the communities, eroding our natural and material resources while further creating economic and intellectual poverty and with it, the incapacity of building systems outside the of track of dead ideas.
Here are some photos of Mercedez’ operation. In a chronological account, we first we take the open fields and place free range poultry units in quarter of an acre plots, these birds are fed and live outdoors, they include a combination of meat birds and heritage breeds, most of the heritage breeds are picked live at the farms by families who like to butcher their own birds, as they like to use every part of the bird, the rest are taken to inspected processors for market distribution. From the fields, we remove excess composted manure and cure it to turn it into clean finished soil.
Then vegetable production can start, as these field composted manure is rich in all of the nutrients needed to grow vegetables. In the future there will be a story about this as well as further explanations are in line as to how we manage the micro and macro ecology that includes flora and fauna, organic matter, sun, water, etc, to its maximum potential for net energy yields in the form of food.
Mercedez has operated his poultry at the Rural Enterprise Center’s experimental farm in Northfield and grows his vegetables at his newly secured land in partnership with Greg Carlson on the South side of Northfield. He is now starting to think about strategies for land ownership. One step at the time, from the aspiring dreamy farmer living in poverty, to introduction to MN’s farming conditions, specialized training, to systems development, to land ownership, to the full launch as a new farmer working under a new ecology of food, that is Mercedez story, one that will still take many more years to finish telling, and his is only one of many we will be telling as we build a regional competitive advantage by building the systems, support infrastructure and programs needed to make Southern MN a hub of a new way of doing agriculture at a large scale without compromising the efficiency of the small scale farming systems and the contributions of new immigrants to this new ecology of food.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on November 12, 2009
We posed this question to a group of farmers, food business owners, building/metal contractors, and low-income families in the Northfield/Faribault area. Their response was a solid “YES, it can work.” Of course, if you have ever been at a rally where an energetic speaker gets everyone motivated about something, it is easy to chant “yes, we can.” And even if one does not completely understand whether one actually “can,” it still feels good. Our challenge was to move beyond possibilities and excitement, and figure out how we could turn everyone’s aspirations — especially those of the low-income families (all Latino) — into a successful partnership.
Here is how we made that happen:
First, we worked on a plan for a two-week project to process over 3,000 free range chickens from our two start-up farms in Northfield and Cannon Falls (please don’t try this at home). For the plan to work, we had to secure a physical site on one of the farms, find basic processing equipment, fully pre-train one or two of us on the whole system, design a layout, and complete many other tasks associated with organizing the project and the people. We also needed some cash to purchase basic supplies (boxes, packaging material, ice, LP gas, etc.).
Thousand Hills Cattle Company lent our cooperative (Hillside Farmers Cooperative) the money to purchase the basic processing equipment. Prink Oakridge Farm in Cannon Falls figured out the freezer truck with Thousand Hills, driving and operating the unit, and unloading at the storage facility. Cannon River Machine, figured out the layout and basic processing skills needed so that a team could be trained on the specifics of each aspect of the processing. They also built a large 2 by 8 foot steel platform so we could build a fire under it and heat a large tub of water (saving time and LP gas).
Our program found financial support to cover some of the supplies and materials. Both farms contributed part of their production to compensate each individual who participated in the processing, providing them with a supply of poultry that will feed their families all winter.
A community organizer in Faribault worked to organize 14 individuals to do the processing. In the course of one and a half weeks, we all took turns loading chickens into cages, bringing them over to the site, switching jobs when someone got too tired, wet, cold or all of the above. All this happened during the two weeks that it rained non-stop and got really cold as well. It was physically demanding work under miserable conditions. It was almost as if some higher power was seeing if we would give up on the whole project.
When we finished, all of the birds had been processed and 12 individuals had learned how to do this work efficiently and cost effectively, achieving very competitive production levels. They worked happily and in a relaxed atmosphere. Some children came and played, observed their parents working together, and watched a mix of people of different skin color and backgrounds interact as if issues of race had never existed. Much more happened while this community enterprise took shape. Of course, one part we did not hold back on was the enjoyment of the best chicken stews and grilled chicken you have ever tried.
These families will be ready to start again next spring when the production season begins. Going forward, more families in our region will learn that community supported agriculture includes growing chickens, but also processing them right on the farm for freshness and health. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll have more opportunities to connect with each other as a community, while supporting those who have been left behind in our current economic system.
The Rural Enterprise Center is a program of Main Street Project that focuses on enterprise development. Our mission is to strengthen communities by bringing together the support infrastructure, systems, resources and programs that rural entrepreneurs need to succeed. More...
