It's the "Country" side

This morning I awoke to the sound of a rooster crowing. Actually, every morning this month, that rooster has been my wake up call. I do believe he gets up earlier every day, and usually before the first hint of daylight.

We live in a rural area of Italy. Growing up on a farm, as I did, and spending most of my career working on behalf of agribusiness organizations, as I have, seeing how another area farms is always interesting to me. Italy has given me no end of farming practices to observe and wonder about.

Vineyards are everywhere. Grapevines run along property lines, they border gardens, They cover patios. We have a grapevine in Iowa. I know how many grapes our one vine produces. It makes me wonder what everyone does with all the grapes. Do they all make wine or juice? Do they contract their vines to someone else who picks and processes? Are what appear to be 'garden' grapes really small farms?

Olive trees are also everywhere, in the valleys and climbing terraces to the top of the surrounding hills, interspersed with gardens. We’ve seen large bundles of netting and expect they must cover the trees to ward off birds. But what are the plastic bottles that hang from some trees for?

Four-foot by four-foot plastic cubes store irrigation water for gardens, but how do they irrigate farm fields? And are the fields of sunflowers grown for flowers or seeds or oil?

As a farm girl, I could spend another month here finding answers to all my questions.

One answer I already know is how to stop that rooster from crowing so early in the morning. But my neighbors may not agree.

Ciao!

High-tech - An ebook at last

The smallest things entertain me. But I suppose it can be argued publishing my book in a new format is not really small. So, come celebrate with me!  I just published my memoir: Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl as an ebook.

I lagged on this for many reasons, but not the least of them because there seems - to me at least - to be something slightly off about offering a book based on the nostalgia of the 1950s in the latest high-tech form.

But when I think about it, my dad adopted the latest technology available - converting our dairy from a stanchion barn to a parlor before anyone else in the county. 

Farmers today are at the cutting edge of technology with GPS systems in their tractors and combines. I'm told the equipment virtually operates itself in the field. Farmers could potentially nap as the combine works itself down the row, tells itself when to turn, ostensibly waking the operator when its bins are full. I have a hard time visualizing this!

So in offering my book to e-readers, I may simply be doing what agriculture has done all along - take advantage of the latest technology. 

Getting a foot in the farming door

I'm used to traditional agriculture. Though the farm I grew up on was a small family farm, we milked cows, raised pigs, grew corn. The traditional crops and livestock you think of when you think of Iowa agriculture.  When organic farming came on the scene, I viewed it as serving a niche, targeting a small group of people with a lot of disposable income. I wasn't thinking broadly enough I learned as I worked on an article on sustainability for the latest issue of The Iowan.

Dr. Linda Barnes who teaches biology at Marshalltown Community College has spearheaded a new program that includes organic farming, but is much more. Called COMIDA, the program is a way into farming for people who don't have a family already in farming or the money to make the massive investment in land and equipment required to get into farming the traditional way.

COMIDA is based on and teaches sustainable agriculture. As Barnes says, "Good sustainable agriculture views the farm as an ecosystem. All components contribute to the health of the whole system, including the economic success of the farmer."

Developed in cooperation with the ISU Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, COMIDA stands for County of Marshall Investing in Diversified Agriculture. COMIDA also means 'meal' in Spanish.

The COMIDA cooperative links farmers to consumers, distributing products produced by the cooperative through restaurants and schools, at farmers' markets and through an online farmers market.

Talking with Linda and Norman McCoy (COMIDA program director, left) gave me a whole new appreciation for 'organic' and 'sustainable' and what those can mean to new farmers and all of us consumers.

To read more about this program, see the entire article in the Sept/Oct issue of The Iowan.