We started by buying two does, which Elan picked by spending a significant amount of time at the breeders, and taking home the two friendliest goats there. We kept them and brought them up to weight, and then we bred them to get them milking.

When they delivered, they delivered three boys and one girl.

Which raised the question, what should we do with the boys? The two options were: sell them for meat, or raise them as pets.

Not prepared to embark on the meat goat journey, we decided to raise them as pets, and then put them to work clearing brush and keeping the weeds down.

It was a hard choice to make, but bucks (uncastrated males) have a reputation for being difficult, while wethers (castrated males) are well known for being especially wonderful. We ended up castrating and de-horning them, both for their own and our visitor's safety.

We bottle fed them, brought them into the house on the few occasions they had injuries – I even spent a night sleeping on the couch with one when he was very little to give him extra care. We watched the TV show Smash, which we both enjoyed.

During the year, the wethers provided hundreds of visitors with a chance to connect with nature and the animal world first-hand.

Because we had the intention of keeping our goats as pets, they became a part of our human family. If we had raised them for meat, they would have spent more time on their own in the fields, interacting with the world of nature. As it is, their world consists of visits with people, playing, going for walks – in short, much the same world as a typical dog might have.

It has recently been decided that we will rehome these goats. While it is easy enough to get a home for milking goats and does, it's harder for "farm" animals that don't deliver a measurable product.

As a society, we spend a lot of time and money taking care and developing relationships with dogs, cats, lizards, fish, and other creatures, whereas cows, goats, and pigs are typically considered "livestock." While there are currently over 90,000 veteraniarians in the US, only 4,000 treat "farm" animals. But what we have largely come to observe is that the dintinction between "pets" and "livestock" is more about the relationships you build, or don't build, with animals, then the type of animal itself.

A few weeks ago, I listened to an episode of Radiolab about an ape named Lucy, who in the 1970s, was raised as a family member in a human home. You can find the full story of Lucy at http://www.radiolab.org/2010/feb/19/, but here is the gist of the story from Radiolab's website: "When Lucy was only two days old, she was adopted by psychologist Dr. Maurice K. Temerlin and his wife Jane. The Temerlins wondered, if given the right environment, how human could Lucy become?"

Lucy was raised with humans, had human toys, lived with people. At a certain age, however, it became impossible for them to keep Lucy anymore, because her chimp qualities began to come through more strongly. She became very energetic, and was strong; five times stronger than the average person.

While Lucy was not totally human, she also was not totally chimp. When they decided to bring Lucy to a refuge in Gambia for chimpanzees, Lucy became so depressed that she became ill. She wouldn't eat leaves, because she was accustomed to food for humans. She played with the toys she had brought from home. She had very human emotions and characteristics – she knew upwards of 100 words in sign language.

Her caretaker, Janis, ended up staying on the island with Lucy for three years, attempting to get Lucy to eat, act, and think like a chimp. Although there were other chimps on the island, Lucy would not go with them.

Janis herself lived in a cage on the island, waiting for Lucy to acclimate. Lucy would sit outside of Janis' cage, and they would talk. Janis would sign "Lucy go." Lucy would respond with "Janis come." This went on for ages. It took Janis multiple years before Lucy finally began eating leaves, living outside, and generally behaving more like a chimpanzee.

Janis came back to visit the island after leaving several times. She brough Lucy's human belongings, and Janis says that eventually, Lucy let her know that everything was ok and she could go. About one year later, Janis found Lucy dead. She believes that Lucy, who always liked and trusted humans even when the other chimps did not, approached a group of poachers and was killed.

The story illustrated to me how our relationship with animals shapes not only ourselves, but also who the animals become. Elan asked me yesterday if I would consider becoming a vegetarian again, as I used to be. When I answered that I would consider it, but wasn't planning on it anytime soon, he asked me why I found it ethical to eat other animals, but not my own goats.

The answer that I came up with was that our goat's really are different than goats raised for meat, because of the world we have created for them. Had they been raised for meat, the management strategies we used with them, both physically and emotionally, would have been very different. They would have spent less time playing with us. They would not have been bottle fed. They would not have been de-horned.

The world that we have created for them is, in a very real way, a human world. They love people, and trust people. They have lived dignified lives with us. They are members of our family.

They are lovely animals that value people, and we want to give them the opportunity to continue living dignified and worthwhile lives, where their characters will be appreciated, and where they can help provide people with a meaningful connection to the natural world.

We are looking for homes them, and we have thought about and started contacting places such as petting zoos, educational farms, family homesteads, and people centered projects. We have not found a suitable location yet, and if any of you know of a suitable place for our friends, please feel free to contact us or forward this article. We can be reached as GenevaFarm@gmail.com or 630.578.3313

Portraits are included on this page. There names are: Wapato (gray, black, and white), Little Cow (black with a white face and pink nose), and Elvis (black and white spotted).

Wishing everyone all the best in your growing season,

Kate and the Pushing the Envelope Farm Team

I wanted to use my blog post this week to introduce our three-week residential homesteading opportunity for young adults. There is more information in the link below. Please share with your friends!

The Farm Team

Hi All,

For Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d do something short and sweet. So, I leave you with these tantalizing links below about a candidate for a Jewish Valentine’s Day – namely Tu B’Av. Have you heard of it? According to Chabad, the Talmud considers this holiday the greatest festival of the Jewish year, one that is even more important than Yom Kippur! To find out more, read below.

Blessings for Love,

The Farm Team

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/717175/jewish/Of-Holidays-and-Weddings.htm An article about the themes of Tu B’Av, and why it is the most joyous day in the Jewish calendar!

http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/171057/lets-cancel-valentines-day/ A light-hearted look at replacing Valentine’s day with Tu B’Av (also a good introduction to the holiday for those not already familiar.)

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/53680/jewish/15th-of-Av.htm “The 15th of Av, Love and Rebirth” an overview of Tu B’Av, with great links to other articles.

Although Tu b’Shevat is already over for 2013, here is a great activity we thought up on the farm that you can use for 2014! This activity is adapted from The Lookstein Center’s “Tu B’Shvat Seder for Young Children.”

Make a birthday cake for trees! The activity involves making a large batch of air-dry salt clay in several different colors: brown, green, red, etc. On a very large surface, make a tree shape out of the brown dough. Then, each participant can come and help to make the leaves and fruits to add to the tree, to show how it grows in spring. When the tree is done “growing,” you can add candles to it, and sing a happy birthday song (or any other song), then blow out the candles as a group! That can be the end of the activity, or you can have a separate fruit cake which can then be served in honor of the tree’s birthday, and you can discuss all of the delicious and yummy fruits we get from trees.

Add-ons: you can also read the book, “Honi’s Circle of Trees,” plant your own tree seeds, or make dried fruit shish-kabobs to be eaten at the party.

The directions for how to make air-dry salt clay are below. Use regular food dye to create different colors.

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 cup hot water

1 tablespoon vegetable oil (this makes the texture smoother)

Mix the Clay

1- Combine flour and salt in a large bowl.

2- Add hot water and oil – mix thoroughly.

3- Allow to cool.

4- Knead for about 6 minutes- the dough should become smooth and workable.

5- Create artwork!

Happy Tree B’Earthday!

Pushing the Envelope Farm

In the Torah, Adam & Eve are not farmers, or even gardeners. They are to “to eat of the fruit of every tree” (with the obvious exception.)

Which means: all of our food was initially provided to us.

What if our expulsion from Eden, however, was a mental one and not a physical one? An expulsion that happened in the heart, when we forgot our relationship to the plants and animals around us, and began failing to recognize them?

On my short walk to work today (about 1,000 feet), I passed these edible species:

Clover, Dandelion, Juniper, Service Berry, Redbud, White Pine, Mulberry, Cat Tail, Day Lily, Elderberry, Burdock, Wild Lettuce, Rose Hips, Ferns, Black-Cap Raspberry, Oaks (acorns), Sugary Maples, Wild Grapes, Lamb’s Quarters, Dock, Sorrell, Pigweed, and Ground Cherry.

None of the plants on this list are plants that I brought here, or plants that were planted for a deliberately edible purpose.

When I first arrived at the here, Elan and I walked around the farm as he pointed out these wild edibles. It felt like my eyes were being opened to a world that I had always lived in, but never seen.

Each year I work here, the list of wild edibles that I’m aware of grows larger as I learn from the people around me.

Pigweed is the most recent addition to the list. A community farmer who moved here from Mexico taught me about it. Where he comes from, it is a popular crop that can be bought in markets. Having spent hours weeding it out of my field, I have to stop and wonder: what for?

If I am in fact surrounded by edible plants, how might my life be if I knew and understood them in a different way? What if I could walk out in the morning, and gather my breakfast? Is it just a lack of knowledge, an abundance of forgotten things, which prevents me from doing this? Who would I be if I could?

Which begs the question: If we forget our surroundings, and the other life forms surrounding us, what do we forget about ourselves?

And maybe we’ve got it wrong – maybe it wasn’t an apple of knowing, but an apple of forgetting.

Which means, we get to expand our list of edibles that we’ll be putting in, and deepen our plans! It also means that some of my plans for fall sown greens for the following spring won’t work, and that goes for garlic (which is put in in November) as well.

That being said, we wanted to share some resources for anybody looking into Shmita-izing their projects with perennial vegetables by discussing our favorite North American friendly perennial favorites.

Asparagus – plant it this coming spring to harvest by Shmita 2014.

Horseradish – not strictly a vegetable, but still it’ll be great for Passover.

Ground Cherry – these will come back year after year and are so delicious. This is a self-seeding annual.

Strawberries – yes.

Rhubarb – careful with these, the stalks are delicious, but the leaves are always poisonous (after a certain date, you should avoid the stem, too. This is a spring-time vegetable.)

Daylily buds – these are so good, it will be hard not to eat them all (and if you do, you won’t get any beautiful flowers)

Jerusalem artichoke – plant these somewhere where it’s ok if they spread like crazy (some kind of grassy island surrounded by cement might be best), and then harvest the tubers year after year.

Welsh Onions – a perennial bunching onion variety that can be ordered from Oikos (see below).

Wine Cap Mushroom – these edible fungi can be inoculated into the straw or wood chip mulch in your garden, and provide a perennial harvest.

Sea Kale – according to Restoration Seeds, this one takes two years to come to maturity, but is a good substitute for collards and kale. And, it’s perennial.

Dock – a perennial alternative to swiss chard / spinach. Haven’t tried it yet, but it’s a definite on my list.

Broad-Leaf French Sorrel – another leafy choice, apparently it’s a spreader, so it’s best to put it somewhere it can roam. As it grows in part shade where little else does, this shouldn’t be too tricky. (Sorrel does contain oxalic acid, similarly to spinach, so eat in moderation)

Egyptian Walking Onion – plants itself!

Burdock Root – These grow wild, but you can plant them, too. They are common in Asian groceries.

Dandelion Root & Leaf & Flower – The roots make a delicious tea, can be added to soups, and the leaves (although very bitter) are quite good for you. Make sure you get these from a lawn that has not been treated from pesticides!

Red Clover Flowers – these are sweat and yummy, and make a beautiful salad topper.

These are just a few of the plants we are thinking of putting in our Shmita garden. In the way that the first couple could harvest from Gan Eden, so may we too with our own permaculture landscapes! The following websites offer great information (and seeds) for those looking for more information on perennial plants: Oikos Nursery & Restoration Seeds

Shabbat Shalom,

Kate Re, Farm Manager at Pushing the Envelope Farm

The Shmita year has the possibility of being one of the most revolutionary and profoundly Jewish ethical experiences because it serves as a foundation to synthesize so many of the values that we hold as important in our daily life. It has the transformative power of turning these values, which we aspire to, into real direct action that can change our mind frame, our relationship to the earth, and our relationship to each other.

Shmita, like Shabbat, has the power to be a consciousness changing experience. It presents us with an opportunity to change our acquisitional mind-frame, and to experience peace. We invite you to join us as we begin our preparations for Shmita, 2014, on our farm. Although we’ve started late (it’s the 6th year already!) and we’re not in Israel, we think that the project has so many important aspects that we’re opting in to see what we can accomplish.

Shmita means, among many things, a commitment to the earth. It also means, by virtue of the sabbatical year, a commitment to learning, connecting with others, and treating ourselves with care. The list of preparations below taken wholly illuminates some of the ways in observing and preparing for Shmita could enable us to see ourselves and our relationship to the earth in a new light.

A switch to a more Shmita like thinking might help us to combat global climate change, social injustice, and hunger issues. The cultural implications are dramatic and far reaching.

Increase the practice of cultivating perennial food producing gardens, and eating wild foods

• Planting and tending perennial edibles gardens
• Planting fruits, nuts and berry bushes to prepare for the Shmita to come
• Learn about and practice foraging
• Set up perennial food sources for our animals to eat

Experimenting with planting the year before:

• Carrots, beets, garlic, melons
• Dump heaps (a method of piling up old melons, etc. and seeing what grows next year)
• Volunteer encouragement (covering seeds from tomatoes that happen to be on the ground with soil
• Fall seeding lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, turnips, radishes, peas, etc.
• Covering fall seeded crops in winter
• Fertilizing the soil in fall with manure, and other sources of nutrition

Increase our awareness of, and commitment to, the health of the land and the plants and animals that live on it.

• By exploring long-term fertility experiments
• By exploring our relationship to land, plants, and animals through text study and discussion.
• By spending more time in nature, observing and participating rather than extracting

Plan, plant, harvest, and then dry, freeze, sauce, can, pickle, and generally put up crops grown in 2013 for consumption in 2014.

• Grow extra root crops for preserving, canning, pickling, etc.
• Grow winter crops with excellent storage, such as butternut squash and certain types of onions, garlic, peanuts, sweet potatoes, etc.
• Build a large array of solar dehydrators on the field to create a steady stream of dried tomato, tomatillo, ground cherry, pepper, eggplant, kale chips, and others.

Prepare spiritually with a Shmita Chevurah, which meets regularly to explore the meaning of Shmita.

• Discuss relevant: texts, films, and outside organizations
• Learn to preserve food, and prepare those crops there will be an abundance of during the Shmita year.

Learn about and conduct outreach on Food Justice issues, including the farm bill.

• Through petitions
• Through workshops
• Through partnering with other organizations
• Through making resources available.

The above list is one that we came up with as realistic possibilities for Pushing the Envelope Farm. Just putting it together made me consider the project that I work on in a new way, and many of the things on the list are things I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time. When put in the context of Shmita, seeing all of them together makes their value more apparent.

Kate and Elan, Pushing the Envelope Farm

I've been thinking this past fall, as we investigate our institutional role in the future, abou tthe futility I felt about going to farmer's markets last year. About how much work it took to grow everything. How much money we lost on our mistakes. All of the times we connected with people, and then lost those connections.

Things like this get me down, but if I were to stop and reflect on what my thoughts were when I "joined" this movement, I would have said something like:

1. Individual consumers are the only people who have the power to change things, and we should stick together to vote with our dollars.

2. Public policy won't change without pressure from people.

3. All of our needs come from the planet, and we need to start taking care of it.

4. People are spiritually connected to the planet, and working with nature is good for people spiritually.

It's easy to feel that I'm not accomplishing anything when my individual project doesn't seem to be advancing, or it's not advancing at a quick enough rate.

But when I consider that I'm going to the Food Conference, and I'm going to be joined by bunches of other people who are working for the same thing, I feel a little better. When I think of Hazon's work to raise awareness about the Farm Bill, I'm reminded that even though progress may seem slow to me individually, there is a lot that has taken place and will take place to make our food system more just.

Then I think about the growing organic market, the farmer's markets and CSA's that exist, most of which are relatively new. I think abou tthe restaurants that have added healthier meals, and abou the DIY movement and the people that I know who respect what I'm working for, even though they are not a part of it.

I think about our institution, and all the people who we have worked with and shared with, and all the other institutions such as Pearlstone and Isabella Freedman. It shows me that though I might feel hopeless, there is actually a lot that is changing. And that's a good thing, and I'm really proud to be a part of it.

So, if I were to talk to my past self, I would add:

5. Change takes a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of work, and a lot of people. But it DOES happen.

I hope these words will be encouraging to everyone working in the Jewish environmental and food movements.

Best, and I hope to see many of you at the conference!

Kate Re

Pushing the Envelope Farm

At Thanksgiving we celebrate the abundance of the harvest, the end of the agricultural season and the entering of the winter cycle. During the previous summer, we’ve worked in partnership with the land to yield abundance before a season of scarcity.

For many of us, the harvest will come from our gardens, as well as our agricultural fields. But what does a partnership with the land really mean, at its best?

Thanksgiving is celebrated as a day of a meeting of cultures, between Native American and Europeans. In this light,we thought it might be interesting to look at pre-European land management practices as they relate to stewardship and being guardians of the earth.

Tending and Tilling the Native American Way

When the first European settlers arrived in North America, they likely thought they were looking upon open, wild land. It has since, however, come to be understood that the land was already being managed by the Native Americans who lived here.

While the American ethic of land management tends to be that wild spaces should be left wild, and cultivated places should be cultivated, the management of whole tracks of land by the Native Americans was more a mixture of the two.

For example, we can look at selective burning, where large areas of prairie but also forest were burned to remove underbrush and to make the forest more park like. Early European settlers compared the appearance of American forests to their parks of large trees that touched canopy to canopy with open space underneath. While this practice certainly made the forests more attractive for humans, it also aided other wild species.

Prescribed burns actually assist in building wild life abundance through creating flushes of food for a wide variety of creatures. Many animals and plants rely on a certain stage of development in the forest to thrive, and natural as well as prescribed burns are one way of ensuring this state. Forest burns were similar to prairie burns, which helped to favor the grasses and plants that could support large populations of game.

Native cultures also practiced seed saving, selective plant breeding, and wild gardening. For example, the pawpaw tree, America’s largest native fruit, was thought to be planted throughout a wide variety of areas.

In the practices described above, an intimate knowledge of several aspects of nature would be utilized into making a management choice that could benefit people, animals, and the ecosystem as a whole. And so a sense of place in working with the land is important to create the successes that we depend on.

Food for Thought

So for this Thanksgiving Day, I will be thankful not only for the food and family in front of me, but also for the thousands of years of collaboration between people, plants, and animals that made the array of food before me possible.

I will also make a commitment to trying to pay more attention to those aspects of nature which may not be able to take care of themselves, or that could flourish with better management, and try to concentrate more on my tending as well as my tilling.

Happy Holidays,

The Farm Team at Pushing the Envelope

And God said: "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree that has seed-yielding fruit — to you it shall be for food." Gen. 1:29

So, this is our (Pushing the Envelope Farm’s) first posting on Jewcology. Woo-hoo! In honor of this, I thought that I would begin at the beginning: a seed.

This month at the farm, we’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be food independent. There was a talk at the Great Lakes Bioneers by Dr. Vandana Shiva. She’s a remarkable woman who has received the alternate Noble Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) and the award that caught my attention, a Lennon ONO grant for peace. The below is from the promo for the talk:

“Corporations like Monsanto have created a seed emergency – an emergency through patents on seeds, seed monopolies, biopiracy, genetic engineering and creation of non -renewable sterile seeds. Seed monopolies have pushed 250,000 farmers to commit suicide in India. After contaminating farmer’s seeds and crops, Monsanto sues farmers “for stealing their gene”, putting the polluter pays principle on its head, and making it the polluter gets paid principle.” She has created the Global movement on Seed Freedom to "stop the corporate hijack of seed."

Dr. Shiva encourages everyone to grow at home as a way of protecting the diversity of seed on the planet, and nature's ability to reproduce itself. She also sees it as a way of protecting people's access to healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. Certiainly, seed sovereignty and growing at home ties in to TIkkun Olam.

How this relates to PtEF: This past Sunday, we had our garlic planting on the farm. What struck me about it is that most of the participants who came to learn to plant garlic also took some garlic home to grow on their own (I’ll admit, not actually a seed, but still).

We’ve had countless programs on the farm, and out of all of them this is the first time that I can say most of the people who attended actually went home to plant. So, what is it about garlic? Or was it the event? Perhaps the event was limited enough in scope that people came, knew what they were going to be doing, learned, and went home to try it themselves.

While a lot of our events are aimed at giving visitors the whole sustainable picture, maybe narrowing our focus made it easier for people to get started. For the upcoming season, I’m going to see if I can get this model to work for other crops, too. The farm will hold watermelon planting parties, seed starting sessions, and other similar workshops next year. I’ll let you know how it goes.

-Kate Re

Farm Manager at Pushing the Envelope Farm