Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
I’ve applied as a speaker at TEDxWageningen later this year, 30 May. I’ve been short-listed as a finalist but not yet selected. As part of the application process they’ve asked us all to submit a 1-2 minute video promoting ourselves, and giving a glimpse into what we might talk about. You can view my competition on their YouTube channel, and my submission is embedded below.
Wageningen is the main agricultural university in the Netherlands.
I’ve started a new Dutch language blog. I’m mentioning it here mostly so Google will find it and start indexing it. I don’t think it’s going to be of great interest to many people here, even those of you who speak Dutch. You’re all welcome to stop by of course, and Google translate may be enough for you to read and understand most of it.
What’s the reason for this blog?
Since you asked, let me try to explain…
My community garden, called ‘Vlijtigveld’ (meaning busy or diligent field), has a racist and not very smart management. The name really says it all, almost in a comical way. What’s an organic gardener like me doing trying to have a lazy no-dig garden, with mulch to control weeds, in a place where we’re all supposed to be working hard??
Anyway, for 4 years now I’ve been trying to ignore the fact the management doesn’t recognize any gardening technique that’s not heavily reliant on sprays or chemical fertilizers, or any gardener that doesn’t control weeds by killing them with chemical warfare or pulling them out one at a time.
I’ve also been trying to ignore the garden management as they walk around telling any one who’ll listen about how they don’t let in any more Turkish gardeners, or how 60% of the gardeners have to be Dutch or the foreigners will get voting rights. It’s us against them, don’t you know! In this time I’ve been pretending not to notice our perimeter security fence, designed with a weak side, meaning whenever there is a break-in and a garden is vandalized, it will almost certainly belong to a Muslim gardener.
Literally, all our gardens are assigned based on ethnic origin, and the layout of the complex is planned on this basis. Because the management doesn’t want any of us teaming up against them, they avoid assigning friends adjacent gardens, and try to promote friction by assigning nearby gardens to people of conflicting ethnic origins.
Anyway, as we can all imagine, this isn’t working very well. It’s not working because it’s as much comical as anything else. The gardeners are all mostly getting along and becoming friends. The management has mostly lost the respect of everyone, Dutch and foreign. This has recently prompted a great deal of hostility from the management, gardeners are now frequently harassed by the management and often threatened with the loss of their gardens. Our drinking water was recently cut off! You’d think it was war.
So, I really don’t have the time or inclination to try to solve all the problems of our community gardens. I have no desire to join the management and try to ‘fix it’ from within. Other than a little passive aggressiveness, I’ve really been trying to keep my head down.
I want the other gardeners to get together and decide what kind of community gardens they want to have, work for it themselves, possibly with my help. To that end, I decided to start a blog to provide the gardeners, as well as anyone else with an interest in Vlijtigveld more information. As well as information it will have the views of myself, the sole American gardener. I think mostly the blog will have a lot of detailed information about how the rules are constructed, and how Dutch law might provide some help. I’ve exchanged some letters with the garden management, and I intend to publish these. It’s probably not going to make a lot of sense to most readers, but if you’re interested you’re welcome!
Luck was with me when I went searching for a domain name for this new blog. ‘Their’ domain name, vlijtigveld.nl was not in use and available for registration, so this blog is at http://vlijtigveld.nl The management are not really Internet people, so it may be some time before they notice the existence of the blog…
The Warmonderhof is the place I buy most of my vegetables from at the local Farmers’ Market in Amsterdam, and a few weeks ago they had an open house day at their farm. They’re about an hours drive from Amsterdam, and Steph and I decided to make the trip.
They’re actually much more than a farm. They’re a school, and they issue a degree similar to what Americans would think of as a Junior College degree, however it’s a 4-year program instead of 2. It’s basically vocational training in a formal college setting. The Dutch call this degree an MBO. I think the program they have is pretty unique, and I’ve never heard of similar programs elsewhere although they may exist.
Basically they are a fully functioning Biodynamic and Organic farm, and their program includes everything from growing the food to selling it at the farmers market. Not only do they make it a point to have every possible type of vegetable, but they have chickens, cows and bees. Because what they grow is used for teaching classes, everything is nicely laid out and organized, and very presentable. It made for a nice open house.
A lot of what they produce they don’t offer for sale, for example dairy or eggs, probably because they feel they can’t produce them in sufficient quantity or profitably. It looked like they were offering their eggs to people locally via a CSA sort of scheme, but I’ve never seen them at their Amsterdam market.
They also aren’t afraid of buying produce from elsewhere, and I’ve occationally been told I was buying broccoli from Spain or whatever. I guess you can’t avoid this completely, because not everything can be grown on a single farm in season. It’s still a little annoying sometimes when you think you’re buying something local from a farmers’ market.
Interestingly enough, they even have an art gallery, and I guess art classes are part of their program.
Of course they had fields of vegetables to see, some of which were on offer for people who wanted to pick their own.
The theme of the day was ‘Family’, and there were lots of things for the kids to do.
I do actually have some misgivings about buying my vegetables here. I’m buying from them now, because I go to the Wednesday market which is smaller than the main Saturday market, and the only other vegetable stand is really bad.
You might wonder what could be more perfect than so many vegetables grown locally, but the problem is they’re too perfect.
They are a school, with students who pay to go there and give free farm labor. They also get funding directly from the Dutch government for this. There’s no denying this amounts to a massive subsidy for their operation, and it makes it hard for other small farmers to compete with them.
They do sell their vegetables at what I would call a normal price, and it is possible to buy cheaper at other stands. The main problem is they have everything, and it’s of exceptional quality.
I think they’re a bit sensitive to this problem. They try to cooperate with other stands, and aren’t afraid to refer their customers to them if it’s appropriate. They talk about competing stands as their colleagues, rather than their competition. What do you do if you’re like them in that situation? It’s hard to know what the right thing to do is, but I do try to give my business to other vegetable stands when I can.
We had no fewer than three cement mixers in front of our house today. Strangely enough, two were full of cement, and the other had the pump attached to it they used to pump the cement into our house. Why they couldn’t just fill the truck with the pump full of cement too, and save the trouble of bringing an extra vehicle, I’m not sure.
The other thing I find curious is why, all over the world apparently, cement trucks always have to have silly slogans on them. Translated, this one says something along the lines of ‘Concretely into cement’. When I lived in the area around San Francisco some of the cement trucks used to say things like ‘Get a load of this!’ or ‘Find a need and fill it!’. Is it just that working with cement means you have to have the sense of humor that goes along with it?
The tool above they used to pull large amounts of cement around the room, in order to get it level. It was powered and vibrated, and could move a lot in one go.
Here it was coming in.
This tool had a flexible pipe on the end, was also powered and vibrated. They used it to insert into places the concrete might not have flowed on it’s own, like the inkassing or the odd corner, in order to encourage the concrete to flow.
Finally, when they finished with everything else, they smoothed out the floor. The picture above was taken from the same place the distance shots in this post were made.
This is what the contractor calls ‘The Braid’. It’s concrete reinforcement steel or rebar as it’s often called, at least in the US. It took five men nearly two days to complete the structure, and the picture above is after the first day. You can see the special pieces here designed to fit into the inkassing. You can also see the piles have been filled with concrete and also have steel reinforcements coming out of the tops.
Below is a picture of the same part of the wall, but from more of a distance. This picture was also taken the second day after they finished. You can see it’s been built up in layers and in many places, especially connecting the rows of piles, you can see extra reinforcing material was added to give strength in specific places. This was all very carefully and mathematically planned by the construction engineer.
This last picture is almost the same as the previous, but you can see the extra lines of reinforcement a little better.
Tomorrow the concrete will be poured, and what’s called the construction floor will be made. After this happens our house will have it’s new foundation and will finally be stabilized! In total the construction floor will be about a foot or 30cm thick, and on top of that we’ll put a layer of insulation, floor heating and finally a finished tile floor.
Until now we’ve been enjoying walking around in the space with it’s high ceilings, and it’ll be a shame to lose the extra height to the thick floor. We will actually gain about a foot (30cm) of height compared with what was there before, but to put the new floor in deeper than that would have been too expensive, because it would have meant working under the water table.
The other thing that’s critical about this stage of the project is that once the concrete is poured into the inkassing it can never be undone, so tomorrow when they pour the concrete it will be an irreversible step.
