AgriCulture: The Off-Label Uses of Basil
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
One of the minor mysteries that nagged at me while living in Turkey years ago was the pots of dwarf bush basil I saw on the sills of the village cottage windows along the Aegean coast. The mystery was that I never saw basil used in any way in Turkish cuisine, nor did I ever hear much mention of it. Turkish cookery is so herb oriented with its heavy use of mint, dill, oregano, and rosemary that the absence of basil seemed strange.
To me, it is very odd, given that Italy and Turkey are both Mediterranean countries, sharing so much culturally and climate-wise, that, while basil plays such a prominent role in Italian cuisine, it is virtually absent from Ottoman/Turkish cookery. Even odder, given that Turkish and Greek cultures were so intermingled for centuries, is that basil seems to be so much a part of Greek myth and folk belief while in Turkey it seems relegated, seemingly bereft of all associations, to village window sills.
I was thinking of this last month while potting the dwarf bush basil plants, labeled “Greek Basil,” I had started in the greenhouse in the late spring. This variety of basil is the one with the tiny leaves that mounds so beautifully if its end leaves are constantly pinched (thus both creating a little topiary and providing a convenient kitchen source for brightening up salads and other dishes).
I had similarly potted this variety, or one like it, about eight years ago after returning from Turkey with a tiny packet of miniscule black seeds, wild basil, which I eagerly planted with great success. But for some reason I had let the practice lapse (probably because I did not act soon enough collecting the seeds). The seeds were a gift from Erkan, the owner/captain of the yacht I usually charter for my trips. I had been in Bodrum, on the lower Aegean, making charter arrangements and was invited up into the surrounding hills to see the tiny subsistence level farm Erkan had grown up on.
I remember sitting outside his family’s farm cottage enjoying the fantastic view. Through a large cleft in the mountains, the turquoise waters of the Aegean sparkled, except where three barren cone-shaped islands, ancient mountain tops, poked through, barely rising out of the sea. As I sat mesmerized, looking at this strangely primitive scene, Erkan asked me if I would like some of the basil seeds his father had foraged recently on the mountainside.
I knew that the Turkish peasantry still foraged a great deal, particularly in the spring. I had recently seen peasants carrying baskets overflowing with some kind of greenery, which, upon inspection, turned out to be wild marguerites. On further inquiry, I learned that the villagers sautéed them as a spring vegetable. This was a dish I had never seen in Turkish restaurants or in urban Turkish homes.
I also knew that the Turkish countryside was rich with herbs. In my first months of living in Izmir, Turkey, in the early sixties, I remember having made out a list of vegetables and herbs I wanted our school buyer to get us from the market. He laughed when he saw rosemary, oregano, bay leaves, and thyme on the list and said “Oh, we don’t need to buy those. I can pick them for you in the fields.” And he did. Subsequent hikes through the countryside revealed paths redolent with herbs, especially thyme, rosemary, and oregano but not basil. However, in Bodrum, possibly because it was once primarily Greek-populated and the climate is right, basil seems to have naturalized.
Once I had Erkan’s gift seeds in hand, it seemed an opportune time to solve a few mysteries; for one, the purpose of the tiny pots of basil on cottage window ledges and, secondly, its absence from Turkish cuisine
“For deodorizing the rooms, and sometimes we use it,” Erkan glibly replied in such a way as to say “End of subject.” And this answer satisfied me for a time but, gradually, it occurred to me that in this part of the world everything was so fraught with meaning and symbol that this could not be the entire explanation.
I had learned from attending several Turkish funerals, for instance, that the bunch of rosemary dropped on the filled grave, the water poured on it, and the smashing of the ceramic water pot signified death and resurrection. And I had learned at the underwater archaeology museum in Bodrum from the centuries-old wrecks preserved there that a sprig of rosemary in ancient times traditionally hung from the mast or the roof of the ship’s cabin. And I became aware thereafter that even today in the yachts and small boats of the region, rosemary predictably can be found hanging somewhere. Obviously it was an ancient custom, rosemary functioning as some kind of protective talisman.
Are the pots of basil in the windows in Turkey there for reasons other than deodorizing the rooms? I assume they must be since there are so many rituals and beliefs associated with basil worldwide. In India, where it is generally believed basil originated, the herb is placed in the mouth of the dying to ensure that they reach God. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed it would open the gates of heaven. And it is known from an examination of mummies that Egyptians used basil in the embalming process.
In European lore there seems to be good basil and bad basil. In some, basil is the symbol of Satan, and some Greek beliefs associate basil with hatred. On the good side, it is believed that basil was found around Christ’s tomb after the resurrection, hence its use in holy water, and its presence beneath altars in most branches of Orthodox Christianity.
On a more romantic level, in Portugal a pot of dwarf bush basil is traditionally presented, along with a poem and pompom, to a sweetheart on the religious holidays of Saint John and Saint Anthony. A friends tells me that in Sicily, a pot of dwarf basil on the windowsill is the sign of a house of prostitution—they seem to have one-upped the young swains in Portugal. In eastern Turkey, a brothel is signaled more subtly, with the glow of a lighted cigarette in a dark window. Slowly, in stages, the glow moves towards the window becoming brighter and brighter, ending with a puff of smoke before withdrawing gradually in stages, leaving blackness. Very mysterious; almost hypnotic. Too dark for potted basil, I guess. And definitely too dark to see the lady.
So where, I wonder, is the basil lore of the Turks? One possible clue: Our name for the plant “basil” apparently derives from Greek. There are two theories regarding the derivation of the word; one is that it derives from the word “basileus,” above, meaning “king” or “royal”, another, that it comes from the word “basilisk,” the half-lizard/half-dragon monster of mythology, right, known for its fatal piercing stare and equally fatal breath. In popular Greek lore, the medicinal application of basil leaf was believed to protect one from the stare, breath, and even bite of the basilisk.
Is it possible that the pot of basil on the window ledges of cottages along the Aegean hark back to this protective function, guarding the vulnerability of an open window? Possibly, since nowhere else in Anatolia do Greek and Turkish cultures fuse so closely as along the Aegean. But, then, I may never know, as I have yet to meet a Turk who would speak to me about basil. —Peter Davies
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/23/11 at 08:02 AM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Leading a Lamb to Assisted Living
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
Since I wrote about the dilemma of what to do with an increasingly frail elderly ewe a few months ago, a number of people have asked me “What happened to Marina?” We debated her fate at length. Peter convinced me that she and her twin sister, Mira, and the two other elderly ewes, Brigid and Kybele*, who arrived here together 10 years ago, would have a terrible winter ahead. He worried that because they were increasingly unable to keep up with the herd, they would be prime candidates to be torn up by coyotes. I reluctantly agreed it was time for them to go, and we arranged to send them off to slaughter—there’s a market for older animals as dog food.
I’m thrilled to report, however, that at the last minute Peter called around and instead found a home for all four of them at a wonderful institution, the Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties. We took them last Monday, and it seems it will be a fine home for them, run by delightful, caring folks who did not have the doctrinaire,“farmer as enemy” attitude I feared. Instead of becoming dog food, these two sets of devoted sisters are now happily retired to assisted living in the farm animal version of DelRay Beach. [*Kybele’s first lambing resulted in twins, one of which she rejected because of insufficient milk. The author, above with the rejected twin Orhan, whom he and his partner bottle-fed and castrated to be the herd wether. Orhan now leads the herd.]
The reason I had concerns about our reception was a certain anti-farm zealotry that sometimes comes across from those associated with farm animal sanctuaries. I got a sense of this antipathy just a couple of weeks ago, when Peter (right) told me about Joe Donahue’s interview on WAMC radio with Jenny Brown, of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. In the interview, she recounted the saga of Kayli the cow. Kayli recently escaped while awaiting slaughter at a Halal slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania. Her cause was adopted by local animal rights activists; she was pardoned by Pennsylvania’s governor, and finally brought to the Sanctuary in Woodstock to live out her days as a celebrity cow.
It all sounded quite heartwarming—who would not root for a cow escaping death?—but Peter suggested to me that there was a certain anti-agricultural subtext. I listened to the interview, in which Ms. Brown sounded quite reasonable. I then turned to the Sanctuary’s website. There “the subtext” was in bold relief, essays ostensibly about factory farming, but which paint with such a broad brush, they could be used to condemn all livestock raising.
True believers concern me. I admire their passion and commitment, but always worry that their allegiance to a particular vision of an ideal world might make things in the real real world in which we live worse. This has certainly seemed true of late with the rigid ideological zealots of the Tea Party in Congress. The Woodstock Sanctuary has an admirable mission of saving abused and neglected farm animals, but, from what I can discern from its website, it is also guided by a rigid ideology that rests on some unexamined assumptions and damaging misinformation about farm life. The effect of the misinformation is to set up opposition between two groups—small, humanely-run farms and farm animal sanctuaries—that ought to be allies in a shared effort to see that farm animals are well cared for.
Let’s start with the unexamined assumptions. The story of Kayli, like many of the essays on the website, rests on the assumption that saving farm animals from slaughter promotes happier lives for them. The story does not confront an uncomfortable underlying truth: the only reason people support farm animals—provide food, shelter, and attention—is because they serve human needs. If Kayli had not been raised for food, she probably never would have lived at all.
Indeed, over thousands of years of selective breeding, livestock have been essentially created by man to serve as human food or fiber sources. The creatures we’ve created rely on us, not only for their sustenance, but also for protection. If allowed to roam free and reproduce naturally, it is likely that, in short order, they would face extinction. Domesticated livestock do not have the resources or genetic imprint to live on their own. They would be easy prey for predators.
The evil the Sanctuary says it is trying to address is inhumane, unhealthy and environmentally unsound factory farming. The Sanctuary tells us that agriculture has changed: our picture of the small family farm, with contented animals grazing out in pasture, is at least fifty years out of date, and the factory farming that has largely replaced it is full of unspeakable horror. I couldn’t agree more. But the Sanctuary’s remedy is to stop eating meat, poultry and eggs altogether, and even to stop using wool. There is no mention of the obvious alternative of encouraging the movement so evident in our region of raising livestock in a humane and sustainable way. If the Woodstock Sanctuary approach prevailed, the only place you would find farm animals would be at the Sanctuary and like institutions, or on the estates of the rich folks who keep them as pets. Ironically, achieving that goal would jeopardize the continued existence of the very animals that are the objects of the Sanctuary’s work.
Believing that all farm animals will enjoy natural, happy lives if only we stop raising them for food or fiber is kind of like believing that cutting taxes for wealthy people creates jobs—it’s essentially a religious conviction lacking empirical support. When, to support its arguments, the Woodstock website offers facts beyond those about the horrors of factory farming, many of those facts seem to have been created to justify their ideology rather than their ideology growing out of the facts.
Consider these passages from their section on what’s wrong with using wool:
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Supposedly, shearing a sheep is a humane practice because the sheep would otherwise be burdened with kilograms of excess wool. This, of course, is a myth. Sheep grow enough wool to cover, insulate and protect themselves. It is only through human involvement that the wool grows faster because it is constantly being sheared off. Sheep are sheared each spring, after lambing, just before they would naturally shed their winter coats.”
Actually, the human effect on the growth of wool on sheep is the result of eight thousand years of selective breeding. Beginning with Ovis Orientalis, a hairy goat-like wild animal, man bred domesticated animals to produce far more fibers than the animals themselves needed, in order to serve human needs. Shearing removes this excess fiber. Anyone involved in raising sheep knows that without shearing their wool grows longer and thicker and becomes matted—a big source of discomfort once hot weather arrives. The matted wool around the anus can become caked with manure, creating a breeding ground for maggots and flies. Further, sheep do not naturally shed their winter coats. This we know from the few times we have been late getting our shearing done or when we’ve decided not to shear the new lambs born in the spring.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Timing is considered critical. Shearing too late means loss of wool. In the rush, many sheep die from exposure after premature shearing.”
Give me a break. I’ve never seen or even heard of this happening on farms like ours. Our twice a year shearing is timed to give the sheep relief from summer heat (the spring shearing) and to give them time to grow back a nice coat for winter (the fall shearing). Judging from the challenges of scheduling our expert shearer, Bruce McCord, everyone else is on pretty much the same schedule. Our shearing is about as threatening to the sheep as a haircut would be to a human.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Every single year, hundreds of lambs die before the age of 8 weeks from exposure or starvation. Many mature sheep die every year from disease, lack of shelter, and neglect.”
Out of the millions of lambs born each year world wide, “hundreds” or “many” die? The vague numbers themselves (asserted without any citation to scientific literature) should give you an idea of just how serious an issue this is. Most breeders we know of create warm, sheltered environments similar to our birthing pens in the barn for sheep to have their lambs, and buy milk substitute to bottle feed the lambs if their mothers are unable to nurse them. Some breeders even make tiny garments for their newborn lambs to keep them warm. If you want a sense of the environment that sheep on small scale farms enjoy, go to the sheep barns at the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival in October.
No birth (sheep or human) is risk free, but you can be sure that livestock keepers, for whom the sheep have value, take measures to avoid risk. Sheep are quite hardy and can give birth successfully even outside in January blizzards, but if you want to see a big increase in deaths from exposure among the more vulnerable lambs, stop raising sheep agriculturally and let them roam wild.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Many people do not know that the sheep farming industry involves abuse, pain and suffering. The animals are often treated inhumanely and are made to undergo severe amounts of pain and brutality. Lambs’ ears are punched, their tails cut off and the males castrated all without anesthesia within the first few weeks of their lives.”
Is punching lambs’ ears (that is, piercing ears for identity tags) painful abuse? Tell that to the millions of men and women who elect to pierce their ears, noses, lips and nipples, solely for cosmetic reasons. As to the admittedly less comfortable issue of castration, there’s a balancing of cost (including the minimal pain to the animal if done right) and benefit, as I discussed a couple of weeks ago in this space. You can make up your own mind, but in doing so, keep in mind that humane societies and animal shelters, which are not raising animals for either food or fiber, generally require neutering of both males and females before they release animals for adoption. Is the SPCA then guilty of abuse? There are many good reasons for limiting reproduction.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “While animals such as egg-laying hens, dairy cows and wool-bearing sheep are not immediately killed to procure their salable products, they suffer tremendously for years prior to their ultimate and unavoidable slaughter.”
As to whether keeping of sheep generally leads to lives of pain and abuse, I am sure the operators of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, and the readers of this blog, could readily find dozens of farms to visit within less than an hour’s drive of home where suffering is simply not part of the picture. I believe that, in our region, farms that make humane treatment of their livestock a priority far outnumber factory farms. If the evil is factory farming, then an attack on all livestock farms and all use of meat and fiber is far too broad a remedy.
Folks are certainly entitled to believe that the ultimate slaughter of animals for food is distasteful or immoral; being vegetarian or vegan on that ground is, to my mind, a readily defensible philosophy. But what is not defensible is justifying that philosophy by speading misinformation that implies that raising animals for meat or fiber necessarily involves pain or abuse. Failing to adequately draw the distinction between factory farming and humane farming implicitly vilifies the many people of good faith who live with farm animals and care deeply about their welfare even as they choose to continue the very human practice of eating meat.
As the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has argued for years, without a market for meat, most farm animal breeds would become extinct, resulting in the loss of our agricultural heritage. If raising farm animals is restricted to the few farm animal sanctuaries that have room for a breeding pair or two, these breeds will not be preserved. If the Woodstock Sanctuary were to succeed in its goal of “saving” all farm animals from their fate, it would ultimately be dooming cows like Kayli to extinction. —Mark Scherzer
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/15/11 at 04:32 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Turns Out the Philanderer Also Farms, In a Way
In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine Andrew Goldman revisited Mark Sanford, former governor of South Carolina, whose political career and marriage went down in flames when it came to light that he was having an affair with an Argentinian “soul mate.” Since Turkana Farms’ Mark Scherzer and Peter Davies are taking a week’s break from blogging, we thought it timely to revisit Davies July 1, 2009 commentary on the matter. As we pointed out then, it’s not every farming blogger who can do what Davies, a Yale-educated former English professor and dramaturg, has done: a deep reading of Sanford’s e-mails that expose a far more alarming character flaw than mere philandering.
Some of you may have read Governor Sanford’s e-mails for their salacious content. We, on the other hand, read them for what they have to say about modern agriculture. We are all familiar with American Gothic, but South Carolina Governor Sanford in one of his e-mails to his lady in Argentina sent last July inadvertently defines what we might call, “Modern American Bucolic,” He wrote:
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“Got back an hour ago to civilization and am now in Columbia after what was for me a glorious break from reality down at the farm. No phones ringing and tangible evidence of a day’s labors. Though I have started every day by 6, this morning woke at 4:30, I guess since my body knew it was the last day, and I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up.”
That his farm experience consists of running an excavator says something about him and possibly about what we have come to see as farming in today’s industrialized America. It all sounds much like George W. Bush’s favorite ranch chore, “clearing brush.” Clearing brush for what? Excavating for what? But it gets better. Sanford continues:
“To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background, the tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds - and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.”
Country music playing, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine and…. “tranquility!?” How, one wonders, does tranquility break through the din? How on earth, one might ask, is he alive to the dawning of the morning light, driving as he is with his headlights on? It reads to me like a modern advertising script selling big vehicles with all the accouterments by invoking imagery from once authentic Romantic ideals. Undoubtedly, the country music (heard, no doubt, through head phones) is faux, the windows are rolled up (to keep in the air conditioning), the hands on the steering wheel of a big roaring excavator are manicured. But somewhere in his trendy head the faint intimation, a vague sense, that one should, when in a landscape of “trees and marsh,” experience the tranquility of nature. Perhaps his distorted experience with nature mirrors the confusion of his moral and ethical standards. A family man, a devout Christian, a moral majority type, an outspoken critic of Clinton’s sexual antics—but also someone who, as it turns out, admits to dalliances over a twenty year period, and who is finally Tartuffe-like discovered to be having a passionate affair with his Argentine soul-mate.
But I digress. The image of him on his excavator with his headlights on also called to my mind our strangely unmechanized farm. Our lack of a tractor has caused consternation from several quarters. We have, for instance, had a farm laborer candidate refuse to work for us because we had no tractor. We have had the sons from a neighboring farm stop, barely veiling their condescension, to comment derisively on seeing us out working with a hoe and shovel. And we have had people come up to us at local social events to say satirically, “So, you are the Luddites.”
While we are certainly not Luddites, I must admit that somewhere in my mind is a contrast between the fields and plots of traditional Anatolian Turkey (which I visit often), filled with bands of peasants planting, weeding, and hoeing, and the typical people-less American farm scene. On returning from a stay in Turkey I am always struck by the sterility of most American farms, where tractors and other farm vehicles move endlessly up and down row after row of soybeans or corn. Farming in America is no longer a hands on operation, not even in instances where it still could be.
As we have found, the pressures to mechanize are great and the prejudice against actually doing handwork very strong to the point that much of what could be better and more cheaply done by hand must instead be done to the roar of a motor. This is not to say that there are not plenty of instances in which the use of a tractor at Turkana Farms is crucial. On that score we are quite pragmatic.
When we need brush hogging done for instance, which involves hours of driving up and down the fields mowing the pastures, we call on near by neighbors with tractors who are always eager to make some extra money. And if we need 900-pound round bales moved or to have our massive compost pile turned, we, likewise, can call on our neighbor’s services. But on a day-to-day basis, we, along with our two farm helpers, manage with hand tools and garden carts to care for our forty acres and a menagerie of livestock. And, in this way, we do experience a good measure of tranquility—real, not faux, tranquility—and in every kind of light (except headlights) can fully appreciate the beauties of the natural world we seek to tame.
Turkish Whole Fava Bean Pods in Olive Oil
For 1 lb. favas:
1/3 to ½ cup of olive oil in a cast iron skillet or heavy enameled pot with a tight-fitting cover
Heat on a medium flame
Add a couple of cloves of garlic, and once they have softened, add the fava bean pods. Toss in the oil to fully coat
Turn heat to low, cover tightly and cook, stirring once or twice, for 10 to 15 minutes, until pods begin to turn a little yellow
Then add boiling water to cover, the juice of one lemon, a tablespoon of sugar, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer uncovered on low flame for about 1 to 1 ½ hours, until beans are soft and liquid turns to a syrupy consistency
Allow to cool; serve at room temperature, garnished with chopped dill.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/09/11 at 01:28 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Blue Ribbon Okra, Plus Recipes
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
One of our best kept secrets is that our farm, Turkana Farms, won first prize, a beautiful blue ribbon with gold letters reading “First Premium,” for our okra entry at the Columbia County Fair a few years ago. The ribbon is proudly displayed on the wall of the farm office. An even better kept secret (until now): we were the only farm that entered okra in the competition. So we must admit that our pride in our blue ribbon has been severely compromised.
One thing the experience taught us is that not many people in this region are familiar with okra. The public’s reaction to our plate of artistically arranged okra in Columbia County’s New Faces of Agriculture booth was, “What is that?” This response corroborated what we had learned a number of years ago when we tried selling our vegetables at the Saturday Hudson Farmer’s Market. When our okra began producing, we were certain that, with the large African American population in Hudson, we would have to meet a big demand. But this was not to be since, apparently, after living up here for generations and buying their food at the standard supermarkets, Hudson’s African Americans no longer remember or value this signature food of the South. Only Hudson’s small Bengali community recognized our okra and purchased it.
It was not until my early twenties that I was introduced to okra. And this was by my then mother-in-law-to-be, May Johnson. Although she was born and spent her early childhood in Scotland, she had absorbed a Southern-oriented cuisine growing up in Terre Haute, Indiana.
She sliced the okra pods crosswise into thin disks and sauteed them in oil with a little chopped onion until the okra was crisp and nutty in flavor. I liked it. It was a fortuitous introduction as, within a few years, I found myself living in Turkey, where okra, known as “bamya,” occupies an important niche in its cuisine. And I received yet another infusion of enthusiasm for okra when I subsequently moved to New Orleans, the land of gumbo. As a result of all of these wonderful introductions, okra has become a favorite in my summer diet.
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Wikepedia tells us that okra (Abelmoschus esculentus Moench) is a flowering plant in the mallow family. There is some controversy about this, but it is also believed to be related to such species as cotton, cacao, and hibiscus. Its leaf structure vaguely resembles that of marijuana, apparently getting at least one grower in trouble with the law. However, Mark, who knows more about these things than I , doesn’t think the two leaves would be easy to confuse. In our region, we are lucky to get okra to grow knee high but in much hotter Texas it apparently can grow to 8 or 10 feet.
Okra is also known in English-speaking countries as lady’s fingers or gumbo.”Lady’s fingers” must have been a euphemism, as it is my opinion that a more phallic term would be more appropriate. In India, its Hindi name is “bhindi or “bhendi”, terms you have undoubtedly seen on Indian restaurant menus.
Okra is cultivated for its edible, green seed pods, which are picked at an immature stage. If not picked soon enough, they become woody and inedible, usable only in powdered form as a thickener in Creole cooking. Its hibiscus-like yellow or white flower with bright red centers is a strangely delicate flower for such an otherwise coarse-looking plant. The flowering plant, however, is considered so decorative that it is sometimes included in perennial gardens. Okra requires very hot weather, and is, therefore, in this region, a marginal crop, since it will not thrive during a cool summer. Once the temperature goes below 50 degrees it stops growing, and the leaves begin to brown, curl, and drop off. We had that experience a number of times when we first started growing okra. Significantly, it is easier to grow okra here now than it was ten years ago—another sign of global warming.
There is some dispute about the origins of okra, since it is now cultivated in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions worldwide, but it is generally believed that okra originated in West Africa. In corroboration of this, our word “okra” appears to be cognate with “Okuru and ila” in two languages, Igbo and Yaruba, spoken in Nigeria.
The spread of okra, at least in the places I know, seems to be associated with slavery. Historically, the cultures of the American South, the Ottoman Empire, and the Arabic world all included slavery as an important institution, and imported huge numbers of slaves from sub-Saharan Africa. It is known that slaves often carried with them into captivity seeds, including okra seeds. It is no accident, therefore, that okra is very much a signature food in these former slave holding regions.
Okra, according to surviving records, was being grown in Brazil by 1658. It is thought that by the early eighteenth century okra had been introduced to southeastern United States. It is known that by 1748 it was grown as far north as Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson, our most agriculturally attuned president, noted that it was well established in Virginia by 1781. [Page from Jefferson’s farm book, left, headed “Note of the Negroes Taken, 1783.”]
One thing those uninitiated to the joys of okra seem to know is that it is “slimy”. True, it is mucilaginous, resulting in the characteristic “goo” or “slime” when the seed pods are cooked in a certain way such as in gumbos, stews, and soups, where it acts as an ideal thickener.
But apart from these well known uses, it can be cooked in a way that minimizes its mucilaginous characteristics. Some of the ways include stir frying it with acidic ingredients such as citrus, tomatoes, and vinegar; or sprinkling it with a few drops of lemon juice; or cooking the whole pods very quickly leaving them al dente; or, as mother-in-law May taught me, slicing the pods into thin discs and sautéing them. A popular preparation in the Deep South is to bread okra pods and deep fry them. Okra is also, as I found in my travels, quite tasty when pickled, a dish popular in Arab and Turkish regions.
For those nutrition-minded readers, you should know that okra is a rich source of many nutrients, including fiber, vitamin B6 and folic acid. And because of its mucilaginous characteristic, it has many beneficial effects on the intestinal tract, in particular, preventing and treating constipation.
Rather than end on this odd note, may I, dear reader, offer you a few recipes:
A Southern Okra Recipe with Cornmeal
10 pods okra, sliced in ¼ inch pieces
1 egg beaten
1 cup cornmeal
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup vegetable oil
1. In a small bowl, soak okra discs in egg for 5 to 10 minutes
2. In a medium bowl combine the cornmeal, salt, and pepper
3. Heat oil in a large skillet over a medium high heat.
4. Dredge okra in the cornmeal mixture coating evenly.
5. Carefully place okra in hot oil; stir continuously. Reduce heat to medium when okra first starts to brown and cook till golden
7. Drain on paper towels
An Easy Indian Recipe for Okra
3 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion chopped
1 pound sliced fresh okra
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
salt to taste
1. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat
2. Add the onion and cook till tender
3. Stir in the okra and season with cumin, ginger, coriander, pepper, and salt, and stir for a few minutes
4. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover the pan. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until the okra is tender.
My Own Variation on Sauteed Okra
¼ cup of olive oil
A dozen or so okra pods cut into ¼ inch discs spread out on a paper towel
½ small onion chopped
1 clove of garlic chopped
1 cup of chopped tomatoes
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon of ground black pepper
juice of half a lemon
1. Heat a heavy skillet with the olive oil over medium/high heat. When hot add onions and sauté till soft, adding garlic towards the end
2. Turn up heat; add the okra discs and brown on both sides
3. Add chopped tomatoes and stir turning the heat down once the tomato sauce is hot. Salt and pepper to taste.
Cover the pan and allow to simmer till okra is tender (or if you prefer al dente)
4. Move to serving bowl and add lemon juice. Serve hot or at room temperature with lemon slices on the side.
—Peter Davies
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/30/11 at 10:02 AM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Pleasure Principle
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
On this extremely hot afternoon smack in the middle of a short (we hope) heat wave, I am very thankful not to be living in the Midwest, where the extremely hot afternoon would have been preceded by a month of similarly awful hot afternoons and followed (if forecasts are accurate) by a seeming eternity of awful hot afternoons. For us, the heat brings to the fore one of the farm responsibilities we haven’t had to pay much attention to most of the summer: Since the early days of spring, the animals have managed to make themselves comfortable without tremendous effort on our part. These days, they need our help.
Until the other day, I did not know that there is a science of animal comfort: “hedonic ethology”. The New York Times Science section this week had a report by Katherine Bouton on a new book on this topic, The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure by Jonathan Balcombe. I have not yet read the book, but The Times assures us it is not merely an album of cutesy photos of piglets tumbling in play, macaques sunning themselves together on rocks, and giraffes nuzzling with their young. It has a serious accompanying text, in which it is argued quite logically that animals’ ability to feel pain, which everyone would acknowledge, must naturally imply an inverse ability to experience pleasure. That ability reinforces our growing understanding that animals are fully sentient beings and that we, therefore, have an ethical responsibility to treat them well in order to increase their pleasure. Not that we act entirely without self interest here. As Balcombe points out, happier animals have better survival and reproductive success.
We are pretty sure that we’ll increase the animals’ pleasure these days if we give them ways to avoid the heat of the sun. Our cows need no help on this score since they have discovered the coolest, breeziest spots themselves, one of them just across the fence from the cool, breezy spot where we most like to sit in the back yard. The cows know how to find comfort. But the sheep are less resourceful about shade. They don’t seem to understand that trees will supply relief on super hot days; the only shady spot they crave seems to be the barn. Most of the summer, we try to exclude them from the barn except for brief visits for grain treats. But when the heat is this excessive we accede to their wish for indoor time on the cool shaded concrete floor of the barn. We reconcile ourselves to having to muck out the mess they leave in the barn when the weather cools down a bit.
Like us, in this heat the animals also need to be frequently and amply hydrated, This means refilling water tanks for all the animals two or even three times a day. Even when water containers appear to have plenty of water, we’ve got to test the temperature and often dump and refill them with cold water, as the animals are just as unenthusiastic about drinking hot water as we might be.
There is always the danger that we extrapolate too much from human experience in determining what will make animals happier and more comfortable. Observing them closely is the only way to really learn their preferences. Some of our observations almost rise to the level of the scientific method, perhaps making us hedonic ethologists. Three weeks ago, for example, I thought we were able through observation to establish a clear hierarchy of bovine pleasures. We were finally trading our beloved bull, Tommy, for a new one, with a different blood line, from Herondale Farm. (We had initially scheduled the trade for late May but Jeremy Peele, Herondale’s owner, thought we had better postpone until July when he was ready to place his bulls with the cows for breeding. Introducing a new face to the bull pen without the distraction of cows in heat to breed, he suspected, would lead to fighting.)
In order to avoid conflict and make for a smooth exchange when Jerry arrived with the new bull, we wanted to confine Tommy to the paddock. I figured apples, which cows love, would be the way to draw him in. I went up to Tommy, who was standing in the shade nearby, with a bucket of apple slices. He was, as I predicted, quite happy to eat them from my hand. At least while he was standing in the shade. But he was not, it turned out, willing to follow me out into the hot sun of the paddock just to get more slices. Shade trumped food. What to do?
When Jerry, practiced stockman that he is, arrived, he immediately fixed on a solution. He asked whether we had any cows in heat. We knew we did as our youngest cow and Tommy had been bellowing across the fence at each other for days. At Jerry’s suggestion, Peter moved that cow into an adjoining paddock near the barn where Tommy could see her. And when she appeared there, Tommy was out of the shade and into the paddock, where we wanted him, in a flash. On that hot summer Sunday, we executed what seemed to me to be a perfectly controlled scientific experiment, in which two stimuli competed with a third, and clearly established a hierarchy of urges. Shade may have trumped food, but both were completely eclipsed by the power of sexual desire. Peter has questioned the validity of my experiment’s design and conclusion, saying that it could just have been that Tommy sensed a trap when I tried to lead him with apples, a trap he did not sense when he saw the cow. But I’d like to think of that observation as my coming of age as a hedonic ethologist.
According to the Times, Balcome also suggests that animals may experience their own unique pleasures, types of pleasure inaccessible to humans. Maybe so. As we’ve learned, some animals have special needs and special mechanisms for making themselves comfortable. Pigs have no pores and hence cannot sweat. Their best mechanism for cooling down is to dig a hole in a wet spot, a wallow, and lie in it. Hence the expression, “Happy as a pig in mud”. In this heat, even our marshy back field where the pigs spend the summer has been drying up, so every morning, we dutifully run a hose to five or six of their favorite wallows to create the mud for them, giving them a most welcome shower in the process if they’re around when we’re doing it. Carmen and Miranda used to love such showers so much they went into hilarious pirouettes to get the full effect.
But should this pleasure of the wallow really be reserved to pigs alone? Lacking air conditioning, and closely observing the pigs’ pleasure, I’m contemplating that we might enjoy having a mud wallow of our own. If the heat keeps up more than another day, this is going to the top of my Project List, so that we, too, can be happy as pigs in mud. —Mark Scherzer
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/24/11 at 05:23 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Great Release
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AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
This is the week of the great release. Our 100 or so heritage turkey poults finally, after more than two months of confinement, have reached a size that they no longer can be carried off by the red tailed hawks and other predators. So we opened the hatch to the outside and most of them (the brave ones) rushed out excitedly for their first experience of sunlight and wind, and reveled in their freedom to forage for themselves. They found their new world to be a spacious compound grown up with waist high oats and weeds, which, in not much more than a month, they will graze as bare as the Gobi Desert.
By the second day, the stay-at-homes and cautious ones had also joined the others outside. The liquid gurgling sound they made as they moved amongst the oats and weeds said everything about their pleasure. From now till Thanksgiving, they will spend every day on pasture, only to be driven into their sleeping porch at nightfall to protect them from predators. Discovering 19 of them one morning several years ago scattered about the compound, bloody and headless, ended their nights sleeping in the apple trees. It was a horned owl that did the deed, we think.
Our Toulouse goslings were next to be released. In the almost military order that is characteristic of the breed, they waddled, under my wand’s direction, in a tight gabbling phalanx down the block-long turkey compound to the lower pasture.and with just a few movements of my wand, they obediently marched into their new hut, where they will be closed in every night.
By the second day they were making cautious forays out into the pasture to graze. .But they have not yet worked up the courage to wander as far as the little pond under the willow. Turkeys typically rush in where angels fear to tread. But not geese.
Our shy, yellow ducklings next followed in the exodus from the brooder houses. But with their rather hysterical nature, there was no prospect of walking them in an orderly way to their new world. Instead they were gathered in a large garden cart, covered with a sheet and trundled to their portable pen, where they will safely overnight. We learned quite a few years ago that ducks could not survive outdoors at night, as each morning we had the depressing experience of discovering yet another missing or maimed duck. For us the expression “like a sitting duck” took on new resonance.
On the second day we left the portable duck pen door ajar, and soon most (but not all of them) mustered the courage to venture out to graze in the fenced area between the turkey compound and the vegetable garden. We are trying another breed this year, the Muscovy, actually a type of duck most people are familiar with. Unfortunately we could not convert our customers into accepting the smaller, leaner French Rouen duck despite our eloquent explanations and the French recipes we supplied. This new, improved breed of Muscovy will, we have been assured by our hatchery, reach a much larger size and in a shorter period of time.
In the next few days our fifty meat chickens, the French Freedom Rangers, will also be released, leaving their brooder boxes to take up residence on pasture, sleeping at night in their portable pen for safety. We are leaving the Cornish/cross chickens we have grown in the past behind for the Freedom Rangers, which are a relatively new French breed, pasture grazers that produce, we think, a better tasting chicken. Last year we raised an equal number of each breed, and we invited our customers to sample both and give us their responses. On the basis of those responses and our own tastings, as well as some research into fat and nutrient content, we have voted this year to move entirely into Freedom Rangers even though they take considerably longer to reach market size.
Would that things ran this smoothly with the vegetable garden and berry bushes. A particularly brutal winter seems to have considerably reduced the berry crops this year. Strawberries were sparse and small and rather malformed. And the birds and chipmunks seem to have gotten most of them. The raspberries are also producing a pathetically sparse crop; hopefully on the next flowering we will be lucky. The gooseberries and black currants (partly because of the winter and Mark’s radical pruning) likewise have produced very little. Only the blackberries, it seems, are going to live up to their potential. We are thankful we planted the hardy Illini breed.
Our vegetable garden struggles along, enduring days and days of rain and high humidity and precious little sun. Rain seems to come these days only in deluges, and the sun, when it does appear, is scorching. Thunder storms and winds have become increasingly violent. And there has been the constant threat of hailstorms and even tornadoes. These extremes of weather are not conducive to growing crops.
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But while plants like tomatoes (which are again threatened by tomato blight), and corn (which so far has looked rather stunted) have not been thriving, spinach and lettuce have. And, surprisingly, as we discovered as we took up our garlic this weekend, we have produced the most beautiful and bountiful crop yet. But so far this is one of the few bright spots.
The news we have been getting from other farmers supports our impression that, indeed we are experiencing the effects of climate change. Perhaps only a know-nothing faction of the Republicans can believe that this is not happening. But with matters having to do with climate, we should not be in the realm of religion (which is a matter of faith and belief) but rather science (which is a matter of empirical observation).
It is hard for me to imagine that farmers can remain Republicans for long when they see what they are experiencing so directly and intensely on a daily basis adamantly denied.
—Peter Davies
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/16/11 at 01:22 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Why We (Um)...Castrate
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
If you want to know what empathy is, follow the expression on a young man’s face as he assists at a piglet’s castration. Last Sunday I watched bemusedly as Tony, below, who is helping us part time this summer, darted a glance quickly down at the tiny piglet whose leg he was holding, widened his eyes, winced in almost visceral pain, and then intently stared off into distant space, mouth contorted, while the surgery proceeded. That was for the first piglet. For the second one, he never shifted his gaze downward at all.
Even though we assemble three people to assist the vet (probably a bit overstaffed), castration day is always something of an ordeal. It starts with catching the piglets. I am the designated catcher, a task that varies in difficulty, depending on where the sow and her litter are housed. If they are in the pen we have set up for this purpose, I simply have to deposit food in the corner we have created with a low fence. The piglets enter through an opening in the fence too small for their mother to follow, and once they are in, I block the opening, locking them into the corner, then simply reach in and pick them up. Last week, however, they were in one of the other pens lacking this feature, along with their mother, Jane (cousin to Eyre). I had to climb into the pen, fending off Jane. then use a large fisherman’s net to catch the scampering piglets, jumping out, with Jane in close pursuit. One of the piglets escaped the net, forcing me to corner him again. In a castration session a few years ago, one I was fortunate to have missed, a young kid we had hired to do the deed found himself backed up against the pen fence as the enraged sow charged him. According to Peter, the poor guy, obviously powered by a surge of adrenaline, escaped by doing a backflip over the fence.
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As piglets are caught and lifted from the ground, they emit loud squeals and unearthly shrieks, but once they are securely in my arms, they generally quiet down, and my role in the castration becomes perhaps the least traumatic. I clasp the back of the piglet to my chest, so he is facing away from me, my hands holding his front legs. I murmur soothing words into his ears. I can’t really see what’s going on below. Meanwhile, Peter and an assistant face me, each holding one of the piglet’s hind legs away from the groin area. They have a front row view as Elaine, our trusty, cool-headed vet, makes incisions and quickly yanks out the testicles. She is quite practiced at this, and it’s usually over in a matter of a minute or two.
During the operation itself, the piglets usually seem unaffected by pain and don’t seem to have much awareness of what’s going on. And the minute you put them back down in the pen with their mothers, they return to nursing and running around as if nothing has happened. Their relative equanimity about the process does not do away with the trauma for the human witnesses, however. We men, particularly, seem to feel the pain on behalf of the poor little piglets. We don’t relish castration days.
So why do we do it? The first reason that comes to mind is control of the testosterone level on the farm. Intact males are aggressive, challenge each other and their owners, and create chaos when intent on breeding or establishing their pecking order. We see the power of the sexual urge and male hormones every day. If we are to keep the peace and exercise reasonable control over the breeding schedule, we must carefully control the number and placement of intact males
But this is not the whole story behind castration. There is yet another, even more compelling reason for this unsavory task—the flavor of the meat. There seems to be near universal consensus in America today that meat from sexually mature intact males just doesn’t taste very good, especially as they get older. Farmers I’ve spoken to say that male hormones makes the meat of all large livestock, including cattle and sheep, unpalatable, but the distaste seems particularly strong where pigs are concerned.
Does the meat from mature intact males really taste different? Our experience with the slaughter of a ram years ago suggested it did, but we haven’t made a scientific study of the question. Others have. I found a University of Wyoming study, for example, comparing palatability of intact rams with wethers. They determined that the meat of wethers was generally more tender than that of young intact rams, though the flavor was similar. But, they found, as rams age and became heavier, their meat also developes a marked “staggy” or ammonia-like odor. This is not to most Americans’ taste, and I’m not sure if it is to anyone’s.
We do have customers who like somewhat older lambs, for their stronger flavor. Our Uzbeki customers even like adult sheep up to 3 or 4 years old. And of course the English and Australians have long loved their mutton. But we have not yet found any customers clamoring for meat from intact males of any of our livestock. I’ve seen wild boar on some menus, and found it quite tasty, but I assume that what is being served is either very young intact boars or simply feral female pigs.
If leaving the piglets intact did not make them unsaleable, we might well figure out ways to avoid the surgical castration. Thankfully, when we turn our little bull calves into steers and little rams into wethers, no surgery is required. Unlike pigs, these animals have hanging scrotums that can be removed by placing a band around them, above their testicles, that cuts the blood flow so the scrotum gradually atrophies and falls off. I’ve been learning to do a reasonably good job of this myself, at least on the lambs, obviating the need for surgery. But for the piglets, there is no alternative.
So why do we engage in this barbaric-appearing practice? My friend George, disturbed that we might be doing this just for a minimal improvement in flavor, asked only half in jest, “What’s the next Turkana taste test? ‘Bovine Waterboarding: Added Flavor, or Just a Waste of Time?’ or ‘The Rack: Prior to the Kill, or Only in the Oven?’ ” But it’s really the difference between enjoying flavorful and tender meat or ingesting something that tastes like ammonia. Now that you realize its value, let us know if you’d like to volunteer to assist at the next castration.
—Mark Scherzer
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/09/11 at 07:59 AM • Permalink
AgriCulture: The Farm and I
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
Ah being a “farmer!” But, what’s in a name, as they say? My first memory of the term is from baby nursery rhymes:
“The farmer in the dell
The farmer in the dell
Hi ho the derry o.
The farmer in the dell”
And, of course:
“Old McDonald had a farm
Eey aye eey aye oh…”
But this one I found a bit wearing. Anyway, for a child, rhymes are all sound and rhythm and repetition. And not meaning.
Strangely, enough even in my early childhood, farming was not associated in my mind with food, even though as children we often rambled from our urban neighborhood in Cardiff, Wales out to a nearby farm to play. It was wartime Britain and food, as far as we were concerned, came from the British government’s food ration book. For us, a farm was a place we went to romp in the pastures and wade in the stream. The closest these forays came to food was eating wild blackberries and gathering what we thought were wild mushrooms, which the adults in the family immediately discarded..
Once in this country, in Hinsdale, Illinois, I found myself, the only non-German, in Zion Lutheran School, enrolled there by my stepfather’s family, the Seesemans. Gradually I realized that many of my schoolmates were from German American farm families. And I found myself playing baseball in pastures hazardous with cow patties; and watching with horror and fascination an oversexed bull bashing through a barn wall; or munching on cracklings as the gory fall pig slaughter took place. And I reluctantly made family visits to distant relatives of my stepfather’s clan who lived on farms, which to my shock and dismay, had no plumbing but instead smelly out houses and outdoor hand pumps and buckets.
I was also learning to see farming in another way. Next to the ubiquitous insult, “you spastic,” being called a “farmer” in the 1940’s and 50’s (as in “Oh, you farmer!”) was one of the worst and most constant put downs amongst my classmates. in the Midwest of the time, being a farmer and, in fact, all things having to do with farms were decidedly not in fashion.. It would be decades before pie cabinets, pickle crocks, antique farm implements, and such would become fashionable, sought-after accoutrements. At that time, they was mere farm trash. America was then leaving its farm past behind. And fast.
Strangely enough, it was not till the 1970’s in the post-hippie Berkshires that, for me, the issue of farming came up again. To my surprise I found myself dubbed a kind of virtual farmer. In Great Barrington, just off Alford Road, I somehow fell in with, for a time, a coven of aging hippies occupying a huge, decaying stable building. The grizzled, bearded patriarch of the group, Jerry, I think his name was, somehow fancied himself a theatre writer.
Apparently on the basis of my theatre work at the Ark at nearby Simon’s Rock, Jerry had fixed on me as the lead for his musical version of, of all things, Orwell’s Animal Farm. To my surprise, without auditioning I was cast as Farmer Brown and handed a script .
Somehow I did not feel like I was central casting’s idea of Farmer Brown. I still sometimes imagine how it all might have turned out, for, after a time with very little actual work done on the project, it vanished into an aromatic mist of Mary Jane, and never came to be. And I was left a Farmer Brown manqué.
And now, of all things, I find myself an actual farmer—or a hobby farmer, or a gentleman farmer, depending on who you talk to. I now realize that, although my stint as Farmer Brown was all too brief, it did prepare me for one thing: pigs. As you may recall, it is the pigs in Orwell’s classic who are most resentful of Farmer Brown. It is they who foment revolution amongst the other livestock, and it is they who ultimately become rulers of the farm once Farmer Brown has been disposed of. And it is they who coined that wonderful revolutionary slogan: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Now with my nine years of hands-on experience with pigs, I believe Orwell got it exactly right. Pigs truly are the enemy within—or as we would call them today “terrorists.” Some of you undoubtedly recall the hell the late Carmen and Miranda put us through a year or so ago, both immortalized in my poem Two Pigs Who Like to Samba (reprinted here). Only Farmer Brown suffered more than we have from pigs.
TWO SOWS WHO LIKE TO SAMBA
( to be read to a samba beat)
I’m Carmen! I’m Miranda!
We’re two sows who like to samba!
We samba here! We samba there!
We samba sans our underwear!
But not without our turbans on!
Without our turbans all is gone!
Our turbans piled with fruits and nuts
From tiny grapes to coconuts.
While our pen is far from Rio,
It shakes, o me! o my! o mio!
Like bums and boobs at Mardi Gras.
As we twist and turn, our last hurrah,
Two sows who love to samba,
Known as Carmen and Miranda!
As I sat at table last night munching on one of their succulent pork chops, the scenes of havoc and chaos they created passed once again before my eyes, almost spoiling my appetite. But then after a few glasses of wine and coffee and dessert, I, in a brighter frame of mind, began nostalgically thinking back to the farmer in the dell and all the other incarnations of farming that I have passed through my imagination as I—and farms—have experienced constant and unending change. —Peter Davies
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/01/11 at 12:45 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: Antibiotics, You Can Run But You Can’t Hide
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
Lately I’ve been afflicted with the uncomfortable feeling that my fate is in the hands of other people. Last week it seemed almost all of those people were in Albany.
Such is the scope of our state capitol’s sway over my life that I’ve become an avid reader of the Albany Times Union Capitol Confidential blog. While the Legislature was still in session, I was checking every couple of hours to see if they had made decisions that could determine where I will live in New York City (they extended and strengthened rent stabilization), how our domestic life might be organized (they authorized same sex marriage), how and at what price I will buy my health insurance (they left town without creating an effective State Health Care Exchange), and how I conduct my health-oriented legal practice (they made good changes in health insurance appeal rules). All of these issues affect my life but were totally out of my control.
It is, therefore, a considerable comfort to have the farm. A big part of my life (Peter would say it’s far too big a part) is what I eat. Producing the majority of my food supply gives me a modicum of feeling of control over that part, at least.
Since the food available in stores and the food we grow on the farm looks very much the same, it is good to have the occasional reminder of why that control is so important. One reminder came in an email Peter received and passed on to me this week from a progressive on-line group, CREDO Action, asking us to actively support legislation banning routine use of antibiotics as an additive to animal feed.
Industrial agriculture generally uses antibiotics both as a prophylactic against disease and as a growth enhancer. The need to prevent disease is, in part, a function of how the animals are raised. If cattle are closely confined in feed lots, eating a diet of grain that their rumens were not designed to digest, and are standing in their own feces, or if poultry are raised cheek-by-jowl in indoor sheds breathing manure-laden dust, fast-spreading disease is a constant risk. The need to enhance growth is a response to the high cost of feed and overhead. Bringing the animals to market faster reduces costs, thus enhancing the corporate bottom line. Sure, the immature animals don’t have the same flavor as slow grown older animals, but industry banks on consumers not being able to discern the difference in the quality of the meat. We often wonder if they are right.
Widespread subclinical antibiotic use is not solely an industrial farming practice. Many small farms and hobby farms routinely buy commercial feed mixes that also contain antibiotics. For certain types of non-organic feed, it is hard to find “non-medicated” varieties. Non-medical antibiotic use, in fact, is widespread. For all we read about overuse of antibiotics in humans, in this country, it is the livestock that ingest 70% of all antibiotics sold.
So what’s the problem? Why not use the miracles of modern science to advance efficiency and augment food production? One reason is that widespread use of antibiotics, accelerates the pace at which these drugs come in contact with the microbes they are intended to attack, thus also accelerating the pace at which those microbes develop resistance to those medicines. The result is an increase in diseases and infections that are antibiotic resistant, such as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph bacterium), which is now a major killer in the United States, and the antibiotic resistant strain of e-coli that killed many dozens of people in Germany just weeks ago.
A second problem is an increasing body of evidence that antibiotic residues in the meats we eat have adverse human health effects. A short abstract I read in Veterinary World summarized the mechanisms by which antibiotics enhance growth in animals. It also detailed how the residues left in meat are toxic for humans, potentially causing harm to the liver, kidneys, and bone marrow, while raising the risk of cancer as well as reproductive and autoimmune disorders.
What are we doing to ourselves?
There is certainly a place for antibiotics. Under medical supervision, we use them for sick or wounded animals. But if livestock are raised in a healthy, uncrowded environment, the incidence of sickness is greatly reduced. We haven’t needed to administer antibiotics to our poultry in years.
I can just imagine you thinking that this is all well and good but we can’t all be farmers and control what the animals we eat are eating. While that’s certainly true, a lot more of us can gain some control over our food supply by checking out small scale local farms, examining their practices, and patronizing those that eschew routine antibiotic use in their feed. That’s a step toward the consumer seizing control.
But we can’t stop there. Even if we, as individuals, manage to avoid all the antibiotic contaminated food on earth, we live in a larger society, and what others do affects us: The antibiotic-resistant microbe that develops in a feed-lot steer can reproduce and spread, and its progeny will be no less antibiotic-resistant when they infect us, even if we eat nothing but grass-fed beef.
CREDO is right. We need much broader controls on antibiotic use in animal feed. That, however, requires legislative action. And so, I will continue to read Capitol Confidential and wait. —Mark Scherzer
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/27/11 at 06:59 PM • Permalink
AgriCulture: A Tail of Two Cultures
AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
That’s right, “tail” not “tale.” Our sheeps’ tails have gotten caught in a collision of cultures. As some of you may know, we breed karakul, a desert sheep originating in the Karagol region of Turkmenistan. What is unusual about them is that instead of the standard sheep tail, this breed has a large fatty mass where the tail should begin, sometimes weighing several pounds; a more standard ropelike tail extends down from that. This fatty upper tail apparently acts metabolically in a similar way to the camel’s hump, that is, as a reserve food source in times of drought—a handy appendage for a desert dweller.
To our slaughter house and some USDA inspectors, this fatty tail seems to be regarded as some kind of abnormality or strange aberration. Despite our requests to save it, the slaughterers usually throw it away, or the inspectors sometimes order them to be discarded on the grounds that they are not sanitary. But, one might argue, a cow’s tail hangs just 
as close to the anus as a sheep’s does, and still finds its way to the meat market as “ox-tail.” Likewise pigs’ tails hang around the same unpleasant aperture, and even they find their way to some markets. But in our part of America, apparently, not sheeps’ tails.
By contrast, for the Uzbekis now living in Queens, the karakul sheep’s tail is a highly prized commodity, so much so that some of them are now googling “Karakul” and finding us, we, apparently, being the only listed source for the tails in the region. Yes, I tell them: we have karakul sheep, and they do have the fatty tails but for reasons difficult to understand we are not usually enabled to sell them.
So what is this Uzbeki passion for tails all about? In Uzbekistan, as in other parts of Central Asia, the karakul tail, when rendered, is the major source of cooking oil and, as such, imparts a distinctive flavor to Uzbeki cuisine. For added flavor, lumps of it are typically alternated on the skewer with meat kebabs, and, in some cases, lumps of the fat are used as the kebabs themselves. For an Uzbeki, cooking without the karakul tail is tantamount to someone from the Mediterranean world being deprived of olive oil. Or someone from the deep South being deprived of lard. Our Uzbekis in Queens are craving something very central to their diet.
And why, you may wonder have the Uzbekis settled on this strange choice of cooking oil? In a largely Muslim land (with a large Jewish minority), lard, obviously, is not an option. And the Uzbeki climate does not permit olive trees. Further, for a population heavily pastoral, the availability of these tails for cooking oil is obvious. For a pastoralist, the sheep is not just a source for meat and wearing apparel but also for milk, butter, yoghurt, and, yes, cooking oil.
Our latest culture clash came last week when I went to pick up the lamb from the five karakul we sent off for slaughter recently. A few days before pick up, I received a phone call from a Mr. K, an Uzbeki living in Queens, who was obviously craving the tastes of his homeland. He was very excited to hear that I would be getting karakul lamb and wanted a whole one, but, in particular it was the tail he wanted. I said we had requested, once again, that the slaughter house save the tails, but warned him we had been having trouble getting them in the past. Not long after, I received a call from yet another Queens Uzbeki also requesting karakul tails.
But we were all to be disappointed. Once again, I discovered that the tails had been discarded. Mr. K, therefore, declined to buy the lamb. Without the tail he was decidedly not interested. But, as a measure of his passion for karakul, he has arranged to arrive at 7 a.m. Saturday morning with knives and a large sheet of plastic, and will choose his own sheep to slaughter it on the premises. Where there is a will, there is a way, as they say.
I am not sure I want to be so close to the terrible act, but I can appreciate it when someone is willing to go to such lengths to find the food he loves.
—Peter Davies
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 06/20/11 at 09:28 AM • Permalink
