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Rye Straw

Like I’ve posted about before, I’m working on Tim Peter’s perennial rye, making selections and trying to get improved seed.

With normal annual rye, it dies off at the end of the year so you don’t have to worry about killing it.  In my case, out of the 300 or so plants I started with, I selected about 20 for transplant to another place to save.  I had to kill the remaining plants, so I first cut them down to about 50cm high to make them easier to manage, then covered them with woven black plastic.  I did this last fall.

I’m busy preparing garden beds, so I just pulled the plastic back.  I was a little amazed at what I found.  The ground was covered with very good quality and clean straw.  If I had wanted to use it where it was, it would have been no problem to just plant right into.  In my case, I needed mulch for my garlic, and it was very easy to just rake up and move.  I sometimes use plant debris for mulch, but honestly I buy a lot of mulch (mostly straw from local farmers) because it’s just easier.  I’ve never grown any plant myself that made such good quality mulch in useful quantities.

In the picture you see a few weeds poking through.  This is mostly because I used overlapping pieces of black plastic and some weeds grew through the edges.

After I raked up the straw, I had another surprise.  My camera didn’t take a good picture, but underneath was very rich chocolate brown and crumbly dirt.  I’ve never seen anything like that in my garden before either.  My garden is on top of an old peat bog, hundreds of years old, mixed with a lot of clay.  The deep roots of the rye plants (these can get to about 2m deep) pulled up lots of great nutrients and even some of the color of the peat.  The dirt also had a great smell!  Don’t you just love the smell of rich dirt?!

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The Snail of Happiness

I came across this site a few days ago, and thought I’d mention it here.

I think it’s written by a she, who’s interested in permaculture, sustainable living and gardening.  In her most recent post she mentions she has a PhD in land reclamation:

…which involved studying the re-creation of vegetation systems on restored open cast coal sites. I am fascinated by looking at natural relationships and seeing how these can be applied to physical and social systems created by people. For me, the easiest way to think about this sort of design is in my garden, because I understand the value and function of things like soil structure, micro-organisms, micro-climate, water, pollinators, decomposers and vegetation. But I am increasingly intrigued about how I can apply systems-level thinking to other aspects of my life: starting a new business, working with other people, designing a course for adult learners…

Her blog is already bringing back memories of the first few years of this blog, and I think it’s going to be very interesting to follow as she goes along.

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Stoddart Family Farm

This is probably only interesting for those of you out there living in southern Ontario, but I was emailing recently with Harry Stoddart of the Stoddart Family Farm about some seeds.  Our email exchange together with his website, gave me a really good impression of the kind of person he is and the sort of farm he has.  I thought I would mention him here, embed his promotional video, and encourage those of you who live nearby to get in touch.

If you’re vegetarian like me, you might not find his meat interesting, but it’s still very nice to know there are people out there like him raising meat humanely in environmentally friendly ways.

In particular his mentioning animals who eat grass just don’t get sick, goes along with a discussion I had a few months ago with a local farmer who also raises his animals on grass.  He referred to his cows as their own pharmacist.  He said, he could watch them eat, and when they weren’t feeling well, they would eat the plants in the pasture their bodies needed, in the right amounts.  He said he could just sit on the fence, watch them, and could tell all kinds of things about them by what they were eating at any given moment.

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Speaker Finalist TEDxWageningen

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.

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Dutch Elections

I’ve written before about Dutch politics.  It’s looking like we will have elections soon, so I thought I would try to give anyone out there interested enough information so you could follow along if you want.

The Netherlands has a multi-party system that normally results in coalition governments of some kind.  Unlike the US or UK, we don’t really have just a few parties, one of which is certain to win, but rather a number of smaller parties who’s popularity ebbs and flows.

At the moment we have a coalition government formed of a number of smaller right wing parties.  This coalition resulted because in the last election the popularity of the larger parties faltered, and many smaller factional parties got the majority of the vote, with nearly a perfect 50/50 left right split.  It’s not a strong coalition, and a particularly contentious and unpredictable member is the PVV, Geert Wilders anti-immigrant party.

At the moment the Dutch government is busy trying to pass their budget, together with austerity measures needed to bring government spending within European norms.  Broad support of as many political parties as possible is necessary for this, but especially those within the government coalition.  As of yesterday, the PVV had walked out of these negotiations, and if they do not return, the austerity measures are not likely to pass, and this will almost certainly cause the collapse of the government and trigger new elections.  Even if they do pass the austerity measures, the government is not expected to last much longer.

Okay, so what happens during and after an election?

You can find the current public opinion polls here.

Okay, the blue bars on the left are the current Dutch lower house seats from the last elections.  The red bars are the polls from about 3 weeks ago, and the cream colored bars are the most recent polling.  If you hover your mouse over the bars, the number on the bottom is the number of seats.  A coalition needs to be formed of at least 76 seats in order to form a cabinet and government.

The major parties are:

VVD: These are the fiscal liberals, with liberal having the European meaning conservative or right wing, unlike what it means in north America.  This is a center-right to right party, with a strong sense of needing to keep the rich people rich.  In the past they have been part of left wing coalitions, and for example recently supported legalizing euthanasia and gay marriage, but mostly they favor more conservative social policies and are more likely to form political coalitions with parties more to the right.

PvdA:  This is the Labour party.  Historically they support collective bargaining rights, and tend to be center-left on the political scale.  Like their counterparts the Democrats in the US, and similar parties in other parts of the world, they have been having a bit of an identity crisis lately.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between them and politicians on the right, because they all vote for the same policies.  They were in a coalition with VVD several years ago, that was popular at the time, but in hindsight most people considered a failure because the PvdA did not do a good enough job expressing themselves.  They were in the news lately because the former leader of the party decided the party should be more left, but couldn’t find support for this within the party so he stepped down.  It’s looking pretty likely they will find themselves in another coalition with VVD after the next elections.

PVV:  This is the anti-immigrant party headed by Geert Wilders.  A small percentage of the country actually votes for them, but because of the multi-party system here they are able to have a lot of influence in the government.  Pretty much none of the other parties want to work with them, but in the end some will probably have to.

CDA:  The Christian Democrats.  They are popular with Christian voters, and for a number of years were the largest party in the country.  While they are socially conservative, mostly they are just slimy politicians and increasingly people are realizing this and not voting for them.

SP:  Socialist Party.  This party hasn’t been in a government within recent memory, but they are doing very well in the polls.  Many people don’t want to vote for PvdA any more, because no one knows if they are left or right, and so are choosing SP instead.  Most of the other parties do not want to work with SP, because they are considered unpredictable, but it seems pretty likely they may be part of the next government.

D66:  This is a center-right party, non-religious and always small.  They are similar to CDA, but are sometimes thought of as more honest.  The other parties probably consider them untrustworthy, because they caused the collapse of a recent government coalition and triggered elections.

The other parties are probably too small to be considered serious contenders, but if anyone is interested in hearing about them, let me know.

After the elections, the party with the most votes will initiate coalition talks with the other parties.  If they don’t succeed, the party with the second largest number of votes tries, and so on.  If no coalition can be found, new elections are called again.