The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e74: Green Garlic, Easy Cut-Flowers, Keeping Birds Dry When It's Wet

Episode Date: March 3, 2016

This week: over-wintered crops like green garlic, some easy-peasy cut flowers to try out, and a tip for keeping pastured poultry dry and warm when it's wet and cold. Plus: TCOG co-editor Amy Kremen joins me to talk about updates to the Canadian Organic Standards. Every other episode (starting now!), The Ruminant zooms in on practical tips for the farm or garden.  Guests today: Hermann Bruns of Wild Flight Farm Jessica Gale of Sweet Gale Gardens John McAuley of chickenpeople.com and Healthy Hens Farm Amy Kremen of The Canadian Organic Grower Magazine  

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. The Ruminant Podcast is for people who are passionate about farming, gardening, food politics, food security, and the intersections among these topics. At theruminant.ca, you'll find a summary of each episode, as well as book reviews, essays, and photo-based blog posts to stimulate your thinking about food production. I tweet, at ruminantblog, and email from editor at the ruminant.ca. All right, time for the show. Hey everybody, it's Jordan. So last week I talked about the new format that I'm going to be trying out at least for the next number of episodes. And essentially it works like this. One week I'm going to have a long

form interview featuring usually something that takes a broader view about the topics we cover on the show. And then the following week, I'll zoom in and talk about some of the practical aspects of farming. And in those episodes, I've actually been putting together a group of regular guests, let's call them columnists, with expertise in different aspects of farming, who will come on every once in a while to share one specific thing or maybe two about something they do in their own farming. So today you're going to get a real sense of what I mean by that, of what the episodes that are going to focus on practical tips will sound like. I've got four guests today. We're going to focus on practical tips will sound like.

I've got four guests today. We're going to hear from three different producers and also the editor of the Canadian Organic Grower magazine, because another thing I want to do is to highlight good farm journalism. Okay, so today we're going to hear from a flower grower who's going to talk about a couple of types of flowers that are really good ones to start with if you haven't produced cut flowers before, and also a couple that you should stay away from. Next, we're going to hear from a pastured poultry farmer about how to manage your flocks when conditions get cold and wet. After that, we'll talk to a really successful market gardener from my province about some early season crops to consider that have really worked for him. And finally, we'll talk to the editor of the Canadian Organic Grower magazine. So that's about it for the intro.

The first conversation is with Jessica Gale, and I'll let her introduce herself. My name is Jessica Gale, and my farm is Sweet Gale Gardens. I started out as an urban farmer, and now I'm moving out to the country, and I specialize in cut flowers for sale at market, grocery stores, and I also do special events in a CSA www.sweetgalegardens.com all right so Jessica ahead of this conversation I asked you to think about some suggestions for good flowers for newbies with cut flowers to start with. So let's maybe assume a market gardener like me who focuses on vegetables is going to the farmer's market and

realizes, hey, I could probably be selling some cut flowers at market, but I've never done it before. Do you have some suggestions for flowers that are easy on the new grower? Sure. One flower I would say that's kind of a gateway flower for a lot of people who start with growing cut flowers is zinnias. They're pretty easy to grow. You can direct seed them or you can start them in the greenhouse. They come in so many colors, so many forms, and they're relatively easy to grow. And people like them because they're nice and colorful. relatively easy to grow and people like them because they're nice and colorful. I'm also going to suggest snapdragons.

There's also a lot of different forms, a lot of different colors. They're pretty easy to grow, a little tricky getting them to germinate, but if you follow the instructions on the seed packet, works really well. Okay, great. Jessica, zinnias. As I understand, zinnias are great, as as you say because of the great color variation you can get but they also they're they just produce and produce and produce all season don't they yeah yeah so they're what we call like a cut and come again flower so different cut flowers um some you can only get one cutting off of some another just a few cuts but zinnias were

really great because they continue to produce through the whole summer so um here in Ontario I will start seeing them blooming probably in early July and they will last until frost. Okay and can you talk about uh cutting, I guess, packaging for market? Like, are they easy to cut, and do they stand up to, I mean, do they store well and last long? Yeah. Wisinia is what, they're very similar to things like basil, so they actually don't want to be refrigerated. And there are some tricks to harvesting them. It's kind of a strange thing to describe, but one of the ways you tell that they're ready to be cut is you hold just below

the bloom, the head, and you give it a little shake. And if it's nice and stiff, it's ready to cut. If it wobbles back and forth a lot, like a bobblehead, it needs a little bit more time to firm up. And they usually will last anywhere from five to 10 days, depending on how well people care for them. Okay. So could you suggest a standard group of zinnias and a price to charge and how I would present them at market? Yeah, so a good variety that is just like an industry standard is Benari's giant zinnia. They're really great quality flowers. I'm not positive, but I think a company like Johnny's might have it also in our organic seed and for packaging usually when you're you're selling just one type of flower it's very common to sell them

in groups of like five ten or twenty stems so say you sold like tens and yes you could probably sell them between five and seven dollars depending on your market so a bigger city market you might get a better price um more of a country market be a little bit of a lower price people are more likely to grow their own flowers so okay so let's let's move on to snapdragons i i haven't grown those myself jessica are those coming in as well yeah so they so they're a little funny. So you can get on the first round of cuts, you get between two to three, maybe four cuts off of one plant. And then what you do is you just let them live for about three to four weeks and they'll, they'll flush again in the summer. Um, bigger growers

won't bother, um, waiting for the second flush. Sometimes they'll just rip them out and have another succession coming through. But, um, what's really great is you can get multiple cuts, um, off of them and with uh snapdragons the um different varieties uh will bloom at different times in the season they've been bred to sort of be um successional so you can choose ones from different categories so there's like one to four um and ones are i believe the earliest and fours are the latest and so you can get like a really nice staggering of blooms so you can still see blooms as early as say May June and then all the way into say early August. And how do they perform post-harvest in terms of storage and on the table? Yeah, they're really great. They're, I would say, anywhere from 7 to maybe 12 days.

Again, all these things really depend on how customers treat the flowers when they take them home and also post-harvesting treatment that the farmer does. Um, and, um, myself, I've been avoiding thus far using, um, like holding solutions and, uh, flower food and stuff like that. Um, because I try to grow more organically. So, um, but, uh, proper cooling is like such a key thing when it comes to cut flowers. So being able to put them in a cool space, not mixed in with, uh, uh, fruits and vegetables is like a really great way to extend their life. And that latter point you made is because of ethylene gas that some fruits and vegetables give off. So, yeah, so particularly actually,

snapdragons and sweet peas are very susceptible to ethylene. That being said, you know, you hear flower farmers like, you know, keep them away from the vegetables. But I've been growing at mainly a vegetable urban farm for the last three years. And occasionally my flowers are in the cooler with some veggies for a short period of time. And I don't think it makes a tremendous difference, but it depends on how much you have loaded in that.

Wonderful. Well, okay. One last very simple question, Jessica. Are there any common flowers for cut flower sales that you recommend staying away from until one gains more experience? Yeah. So three of them that I was thinking about, a lot of people when they start growing flowers, and especially if they do want to do anything with special events, they kind of get attracted to poppies and specifically Icelandic poppies. I've had just a devil of a time getting them to germinate and grow really well.

They're pretty tricky, especially you need very particular environment for them to germinate. And they also don't last as long, even though they're very beautiful. They're better for event work. Dahlias, you'll see them a lot at markets, and they are fairly easy to grow, but they're a pretty big investment paying for the tubers. And also, they don't have a long base life so they are fun to get into but you kind of have to uh have the money and the space because they also take up a massive amount of space um and then lastly um there's a group of flowers called um amy magus which is a false queen ant's lace um it's very beautiful it looks a lot like queen ant's

lace and the reason why i don't recommend it is that people often at market will think that it's just something you foraged off the side of the road um but the other reason is if you don't harvest it at the right time it gets very floppy so it's really nice to have in mixed bouquets, but save it for a few years down the road. Well, Jessica Gale, thanks so much for coming on to talk flowers with me. I'm sure my listeners will really appreciate it. Well, thank you, Jordan. Well, hello. I'm John McCauley. I run Healthy Hen Farms in Oxford, North Carolina. We primarily produce pastured poultry, really the broilers, and we do about 8,000 birds a year.

So a fairly large operation, one of the largest in this area at least. And I also do online pasture poultry webinars. So you can check our farm out at healthyhenfarms.com or if you're interested in learning more in-depth topics about pasture poultry, you can check us out at chickenpeople.com. All right, John. Well, look, I'm really glad you joined me on the podcast. Thanks a lot.

Thanks for having me, Jordan. I'm looking forward to working with you guys. So, John, I thought given the time of year, it might be a good time for you to answer a few questions about, you know, keeping your birds healthy in cold and wet weather, since a lot of us around North America will be experiencing that to varying degrees right now. So you're, you've been, you're very experienced raising pastured poultry. And I'm wondering if you have tips or advice on that topic. Sure. Well, so first understand that, you know, with chickens,

they're a tropical bird and, you bird and that's where they came from. And they can actually, they can take cold pretty good and they can take wet. What they can't take is cold and wet. That's like the ultimate, I mean, you're really asking for if you get cold, wet weather and you've got chickens on pasture. asking for if you get cold, wet weather and you've got chickens on pasture. I think the number one piece of advice I would give, and it's one that we actually practice, is to try to avoid as best you can the times of year that give you a lot of trouble. So for us here in North Carolina, it tends to be early spring and late fall.

And really what we've actually done is pushed our production season, you know, sort of squeezed it into a more collapsed production season that tries to at least avoid having the birds on pasture for as long as we can and to get them off as quick as we can in the fall. And, of course, a lot of it has to do with how we produce and our main products, which are really frozen. You know, we sell a lot of frozen products, so we're able to keep our customers stocked, you know,

basically all year round with pastured poultry, which allows us to push our production more into the summer because we've already got inventory that our customers are buying. So that's probably the number one thing I would tell people is that if you can, wait, because, you know, in our early years, I think we had the largest rates of mortality with our flocks, you know, in that early spring and then late fall. So, you know, we're out there, you know, if a rain is coming and it's cold, you know, I mean, you know, if it's cooler, especially at night in the spring and then you're getting a lot of wet weather with wind blowing all of that on them,

you know, we're out there putting hay down. So you can put hay on the ground or straw to get them up off of the ground, because you definitely don't want to have your chickens sitting on the ground in those shelters when it's wet on the ground and when it's cold, because you will certainly lose a lot. So, you know, what we do, what we found works very well is actually putting the straw down in front of our shelters and then we move the shelters on top of that as opposed to trying to get in there with the chickens in the shelters and try to spread a bunch of straw and hay around. And, John, so, okay, let's see. First of all, you say that the real danger zone is when it's cold and wet. What happens to the birds? I mean, I guess I should have started with that.

Like, you know, you mentioned that's when you had your largest challenges with losing birds. What actually is happening to them when they're exposed to those conditions? Sure. I mean, well, it's a lot of the same things that happen to us as humans or any animal, right? It's more of a, it's more like a hypothermia type situation. You'll go out there and your birds will be, you know, they'll be shaken. You know, you can definitely tell they're cold and then their feathers, when they get wet, obviously they aren't insulating as well either, right? So, you know, they definitely do not like it, and they will just sit there on the ground. And depending on, you know, how your pastures are and what quality of coverage you have, you know,

you could end up with puddles of water. And when they're cold and wet, I mean, they'll simply sit in it. And you could get birds that are drowning. They won't get up. They won't move. Um, you know, they get very lethargic. Um, and basically they just start shutting down. So, and are you talking, or I better, I guess we better square this. Are you talking mainly about broilers? Because I also, I guess I also need you to describe your coops, right? Cause some people might have coops with layers where the hens are up off the ground overnight, but it sounds like you're, you're describing a situation where they're staying on the ground all night. Yeah, absolutely.

So that, and we are talking primarily about broilers, you know, with layers, if you've got layers year round, you can sort, you can choose when to bring them out. You know, if you're keeping them in hoop houses or whatnot during the winter with deep bedding, you know, you can delay bringing them out, you know, you can delay bringing them out, you know, depending on what types of shelters you have. But yeah, with our broilers, we're using a standard, you know, Salatin style shelter where the birds are directly on the ground. And, you know, we raise Cornish cross, that's our breed. And, you know, even if we put perches in there, right, which, you know know some of the the uh

animal humane certifications require you to put some purchase in but you know with with cornish cross i mean it would it would do no good they won't get off the ground absolutely so okay so getting back to some of your earlier comments so so let's say you know you as you mentioned you just delay your you set up your system so that you're not putting your birds out, these broilers out, when you know it's going to be cold and wet. But let's say you get some unseasonal cold and wet, so your birds are out there. You mentioned one technique already, which is to go and spread some straw and or hay or other mulch ahead of the coop so that you can move the coop on top of it on the next move, and that gives them dry bedding.

I have that about right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we actually do it as part of getting ready. Like if we know weather is coming in and we know it's going to be pouring and it's already cold, we'll actually go out. This could be just before it gets dark, and we'll go out and actually do an unscheduled move. We do our moves every morning.

So at night, if the weather's bad, we would actually go out, put straw down, and then actually move the coops on top of it just for that night. And then we're coming right back and doing another move in the morning, and that's really just to get them off the ground for for at night when it you know, when we typically like in North Carolina, we get our, you know, it gets obviously gets the coldest and, you know, at night, which is the time we typically see the mortality if we're if we see it this time of year. Right? Any any other techniques for dealing with cold and wet when it happens, aside from the one you just mentioned? Yeah, I've heard of people that run, you know, heat lamps out in the shelters as well. And

obviously that wouldn't, it wouldn't be very practical for us, simply because, you know, we're running out in pastures that are away from, well, primarily where we have electricity. But you're talking, I mean, we may have 40 of these shelters stretched across the pasture at one time. And so it's really not practical from trying to get some sort of heat on. Right. Well, I like the two pieces of advice that you do have, though, John. You know, one is buy some freezers so that you don't have to be raising birds in the

really challenging times of year, and yet you can still keep your customers supplied uh and the second being using various mulch uh and putting that laying that down before you move um before you move the shelters that's great thank you very much yeah absolutely jordan Hey folks, Jordan here. Just a quick note to let you know that the next conversation with Herman Bruns features about two minutes where Herman's feed got a little dicey, so stick with it. It doesn't last long, and you'll still be able to understand what he's saying. Thanks. Here we go.

Hello, my name is Herman Brens, and my wife and I run a 25-acre market garden, and we've been doing it for the last 23 years in the North Okanagan. It's called Wild Flight Farm. So we have two main ways of marketing our produce. We have two farmers markets that we do, one in Salmon Arm and one in Revelstoke. And we also supply quite a lot of vegetables to a home box delivery program in Kelowna called Urban Harvest. Herman Bruns, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast. Oh, you're welcome. No problem. So Herman, for our topic today, we're going to talk about trying to

be kind of first to market with your crops or just trying to be really early with some of the crops you're producing. And so my first question is whether you, as a really, you're a longtime market gardener, very experienced. You've experimented with many different marketing channels. Do you yourself place much importance on trying to be the first to market with certain crops? do you yourself place much importance on trying to be the first to market with uh with certain crops uh well we yeah i wouldn't use the term being first to market so much as just wanting to make sure we have a good selection as early as possible what we're trying to do is offer a really broad selection of produce year round so we're actually coming out of our winter market season

where we've been supplying produce every second week to farmers markets. And then as soon as we have our own things, so a lot of those things, especially the greens, would be imported at this time. So we do something that's different from a lot of other farms in that we do continue with farmers markets, but we also offer produce from other farms to augment our own. And then as soon as we have our own available, we're super keen to bring those and displace some of the imports

or things from other farms. So, you know, like, for example, right now, we have, of our own things, we have from our cold frames or high tunnels, if you want to call them that, we have two crops that overwinter and are available throughout the winter winter and one of them would be corn salad or mash in french and the other one is claytonia and uh so we have harvested both of those and we'll be taking them to market uh tomorrow herman i'm really glad you brought up corn salad and claytonia because those are crops i'm well aware of as like really hardy cold season crops. But I haven't really, I've never, aside from tiny little test plots, I've never really grown them commercially.

So maybe take me through that. When do you seed those crops with the plan to sell them in the spring? When do they go in the ground? Well, they would be seeding into plugs. We usually do them in plugs. Although this year we did experiment with direct seeding claytonia and it's worked quite well. But the corn salad we had would be in plugs. And we do that sort of middle of August.

Then we would transplant them from middle to late September. And some of the first, we usually do a couple of generations. So maybe one a little bit earlier, one a little bit later. And so the first ones would be available, we're aiming for having them ready in December so that we can, our December markets can have some of those greens. And possibly the Claytonia is even a little bit earlier than that, probably in November.

Oh, I see. So this isn't like when people seed their spinach in, say, October with the first cut coming in the spring. You're actually starting to cut these right through the winter, like starting in December. Well, with the Claytonia, they are cut and come again. With the corn salad,

we cut them once and then they're done. So that's why we like to have a couple of generations. And then what happens is they grow nicely into december and then they kind of sit there over december and january and don't do anything so it's kind of like a living refrigerator yeah just go in there whenever it's thawed you can't harvest them when they're growing but we always get these you know warm periods as you know that temperatures go above zero everything thaws in the greenhouse, and we can go in there and we can cut them.

So we have lots that are ready for that time period so that we have we can go in there any time that it's warm enough and cut them. And then now, at this time of year, as it starts warming up and the sun comes out of it, the corn salad's really super keen to bolt.

So it's already on its way. So we end up using anything to cut a month's worth of corn salad. And it keeps so well that we can sell it for the next month. Right. Quick question. Are these crops that could... This conversation is going to be going live this week, the first week of March. Are these crops that people could still consider planting to be harvesting for this spring, or is it getting late? Well, I have no experience seeding them in the spring. These would all be seeded in the fall.

Okay. Yeah, so I don't, yeah. I've heard of people that say that they do it, but I don't know. Corn salad is very slow growing, and I don't think it would work. And Claytonia, I'm not sure. I haven't actually tried it. Because usually what happens in our case is we've got so many other things coming at this time of the year that those two are unusual greens, and when it comes time to sell them,

very few people are going to want to buy them. It's in the winter that you can sell them because there's nothing else around. Okay, well, moving on from those two crops, Herman, I'm just wondering if in general, like you've already mentioned that you're growing your early season crops in unheated tunnels. Is there anything else you're doing, you know, any technique-wise that you want to mention, tunnels. Is there anything else you're doing, you know, any technique-wise that you want to mention, or is it just you're getting a little bit of a head start with slightly warmer soil in your tunnels? We've seeded a bunch of crops in the fall. So, well, particularly, we've seeded several, a couple of generations of lettuce mix and a couple of generations of spinach. We have green onions, and we've planted some garlic very close together,

and also red Russian kale seems to work quite well. So those are all the crops that we plant in the fall. The green onions and the garlic, what we're doing there is we're selling them like we would green onions. We pull them when they're about the size of a green onion and sell them bunched like green onions. So we call it green garlic. And I guess people can enjoy the tops of the garlic as well as a little tiny bulb developing. Yeah, the whole plant, just like you would with onions. Exactly, like the green onions.

And that's something we learned from actually a fellow that was from Switzerland that had worked on a market garden in Switzerland. He said they used to do that there. And we were always looking for some other early crops that we can sell. And garlic in a high tunnel is going to be really early. Like it's already about three inches high. So it's going to be ready to harvest in about four weeks. Well, now I've got to ask about that, Herman.

What variety or what cloves are you planting for that? One reason I'm asking is garlic seed can be very expensive. Are you planting whole large cloves from larger, fully mature garlic, or is there another approach with green garlic? Usually what we're doing is we have garlic. We grow quite a lot of garlic, and in the course of selling it over our winter market, we're always calling out some that have been damaged or even during

the harvest process, there are some bulbs that get damaged a bit or something like that are kind of not looking very nice. And we save all our call garlic and break it up and plant that. Because we're not, even if it's a little bit diseased, usually it'll grow at least to the point where we can pull it as a green garlic and sell it that way. No, and that's brilliant. Because A, it's not going to be in the ground long enough, presumably for disease to be a problem. And B, you can plant the tinier cloves that you would normally not. Yeah, we just plant anything and everything we got. Oh, that's awesome. We're just going to pull the whole thing. Right on. That's really cool. Excellent. Well, Herman Bruns,

I really appreciate you coming on, and I look forward to having you back on to cover another topic in the future. Thanks so much. Yeah, sure. Anytime, Jordan. It was great talking to you. Hey folks, Jordan again. Before we get going on this next interview, I just want to disclose that I am on the board of directors of the Canadian Organic Growers, which publishes the Canadian Organic Grower Magazine. I don't think that has anything to do with this interview, but that's for you to decide. Hi, I'm Amy Kremen. I'm the co-editor with Stephanie Wells of the Canadian Organic Grower Magazine. Amy Kremen, thanks a lot for joining me

on the Remnant Podcast. Thanks for having me. Amy, you're the editor of the Canadian Organic Grower Magazine, and you're here to tell me that you've got a jam-packed issue about to hit stands within a week. That's right. So what's the focus of the issue this time? Well we're really excited about this issue. We decided in light of the November 2015 release of the revised Canadian organic standard to actually focus the spring issue on pertinent implications of those revisions. So we're thinking, well, you know, regulations,

tricky, complex, maybe not so exciting. But really, looking at how certification works in practice, it's lived out by the farmers and processors, if there's a way to talk about it from the perspective of people who are directly affected, we thought this would be a really great way of showing how the standards are lived in action. So we've tried to cover through a range of the main topics that were subject to a lot of revisions in the standard. We've tried to provide articles on those topics. Well, I'm looking at a summary of the articles that will be in the issue. And wow, there's really a lot here and they look really interesting. It appears you have a little article dealing with a whole bunch of different aspects of the updated Canadian organic standards.

So Amy, let's talk about some of those updates. And I've got the list in front of me here. I'll pick ones that kind of jump out at me. The first one I think I'd really like to talk about are the changes regarding the use of biodegradable mulches in commercial veggie operations. What's the gist there? What change is about to happen? Okay, so this is a change that actually has kind of already gone into effect in some ways. Basically, what it comes down to is that there was a realization that happened in 2015

that the component parts of the very popular biodegradable mulches that are used across Canada actually have some components that aren't factored into the permitted substances list required for organic certification. And so in that case, basically these biofilms were being used. They had been approved for use by certifiers, but they actually contained components that weren't approved for use under the Canadian Organic Standard. Biofilms are tricky because once you put them out in the field, they actually start to decompose right away.

And so eliminating, pulling them off the field after them being used is quite a daunting prospect. Shannon Jones, who has written, who wrote, I found, I had seen an article that she'd written about this topic when it kind of came to light last year. I decided to follow up with her to get a follow-up to say, you know, I know that you're going to be researching this. Could you turn some of that research and your explorations talking to other farmers about the different options and alternatives? If you would do your own research for your own farm,

do you think you could turn that around and make that of use to other farmers? And she's done so in a beautiful piece that lays out many different options that Heart Farm intends to use or is already using or plans to explore. Okay, let's talk about cheese wax. We've got some good news for certified organic cheesemakers, don't we? Yeah, this is a lot of fun. So this little piece came about because of an alternate hat that I wear as the convener for the permitted substances list processing working group. I had a farmer come and approach me, called me up out of the blue one day, and he's a dairy producer from Alberta who said,

you know, I make these traditional how-to cheeses, and, you know, I'm hearing different things from different certifiers meanwhile in Europe traditional cheese making there's that there's an organic coating which has been approved in Europe and I really wish the playing field could be leveled this is a special coating that's been derived without the use of synthetics or fungicides or bactericides and it's not consumed and people in Europe can use it to make traditional cheeses in a traditional way. Meanwhile, we're having to rely on ways that aren't traditional to try to make traditional cheeses. And so we worked with the working group to do some more research

and the use of cheese wax, which is kind of a funny product because it's kind of packaging and it's kind of a processing aid. It kind of doesn't fit into any category. And so it had, it was sort of a gap in the organic standard. It hadn't been as of yet addressed in clear language. And so now there's clear text that allows the use of organic compatible waxes and other cheese coatings to be used to be making traditional cheeses and talking to some, some cheesemakers. They are, they are thrilled because this opens the range of the different kinds of high quality organic cheeses that can be made in the traditional

way, that can be cured in the traditional way and it will make for some really wonderful and beautiful products. Very cool. Very cool. Okay, let's see, there's so many here that you cover. I'm really, I can't believe you've managed to fit it all into the upcoming issue, but let's talk two more, maybe. Let's do one for the livestock lovers. Dairy barns. What's happening with dairy barns? Okay. So this is a really important one. The main change has to do with what kind of barn you have. If

you're using a tie-stall barn, a winter exercise requirement was put into effect, which states that dairy cows housed in tie-stall barns need to go outside once a day or at least twice a week during the wintertime. And dairy cows that are housed in freestyle barns aren't subject to this exercise requirement because they're walking around freely going to feed and going to be milked and things like that. So for farms that have tie stalls, and this is a lot of farms across Canada, what this means is if they have difficulty fulfilling that exercise requirement, actually many of them might have difficulty fulfilling this exercise requirement in terms of getting their cows to go outside,

they might not have the right kind of space or a big enough space to take their whole herd out at once, which means it's going to be a very big burden for them in terms of time and effort to actually fulfill this winter exercise requirement. Another part of the standard is that those with tie-stall barns who have difficulty fulfilling this winter exercise requirement must submit by next year a construction plan that can be carried out within the next five years of how they're going to renovate their barns. And those barn renovations cannot include tie stalls.

They have to be in a freestyle system. So this is huge because to renovate a barn in this manner requires extreme investment. The bottom line was many of the livestock changes were made with the whole intention of clarifying and specifying ways in which animal welfare within the organic systems would be promoted. Right. Okay. So, well, I wanted to add to that. My very first season on a farm was on a beef operation in Nova Scotia where they had a

barn that only had tie stalls. So through the winter, for weeks and weeks of the year, the cows were just standing up and sitting down. That was their life. It was one of those situations where there was a real barrier to changing things. The farmer was a sixth generation farmer. That's how they'd been doing it forever, but he was kind of limited by his infrastructure and the huge cost of changing it he eventually did but it's it's nice to see this this update to the standards yeah thanks for bringing that bringing bringing

that into like clarity about actually how this how this works and the difference for for cows and thais and why why it's so important um it's really cool because in a freestyle system i i there's two two things i'd like to say really quickly in a in a freestyle system, there's two things I'd like to say really quickly. In a freestyle system, what's interesting is that, especially when you make a lot of changes so you by the testing of the milk that happens for each cow, each milking, or how much, what a cow is eating at each feeding. It will help them to optimize and better understand what's going on with each cow and really have a great understanding of their system and be able to adapt in real time. And the second thing, which I think is a very cool looking head, which is kind of why we titled the title

The Origins Usher in a New Generation of Dairy Farming, Organic Dairy Farming, is that many conventional growers right now are, excuse me, dairy producers are using tie-stall barns. And one of the things that I think is most promising looking ahead, if we're thinking about will more conventional farmers eventually consider transitioning to organic production is that if they've already adopted the freestyle system within their

farms, then there are fewer components. Those farmers who might be interested in transitioning have to figure out the forage and the pasturing part of their operations, but they don't have to figure out housing and the feeding and milking portions. They've already got that part already in line with and compatible with organic systems, which I think is going to lower the barrier to entry for some of these farmers in the future. Cool. And I might add, just for, I mean, this issue compared to your other issues is very, I guess, it's more relevant for the certified organic farmer. I don't really think that's true necessarily. I think the Dairy Farms piece is written, for example,

in a way that it's supposed to be relevant to non-organic growers who are curious about transitioning in and what it takes and what it involves, kind of trying to make that clear for them. And another thing is that it's to explain to consumers what certified organic, not as a certified organic, but really organic systems are all about. So like that, there's a piece in there about organic maple. It's like people be like, well, is it all maple syrup organic? And, you know, the reason why there's a standard is to help, you know, like kind of set, clarify what the differences are between a mainstream and organic system so we're really trying to make sure that this is actually

a way of helping explain keep keep on educating consumers on what um what organic is and what it means and what it looks like for the farmers to choose to take it on so inspiring and a lot of work goes behind doing this and i think so we're we're really keeping consumers in mind with this issue um in terms of what we think it might bring or convey to them about the importance of how organic works in practice uh i hate i hate to uh i hate to ask you to look ahead you're probably burnt out from producing this issue but what what what have you what are you working on for the uh let's see this is the spring issue so what are you working on for the next one probably coming out this summer?

That's great. I love to pitch future issues. So the spring issue is looking good so far. We've got a range of articles from across the country coming in. It's a real goal of ours to have livestock and crops production from as many provinces as possible in each issue, so that we really are creating a Canadian story, or you know, basically just keep on with each issue, showing what Canada organic looks like. And so we've got, it's going to be on specialty crop production. So we've got, we'll have an article about a specialty cheese producer or cheese maker

and a spelt kamut farmer. It looks like we'll have one for high tunnel greenhouse growing of certain crops and so on. So that's looking exciting. Looking ahead to fall 2016, I think, not totally sure, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be the family issue. This is going to be about different issues, agronomic pertinent, but different issues that have to do with how you make it work with your family on your farm. Say one person in a couple is a farmer, but the other person isn't. How does that work? So there's a lot of different ways you can kind of approach that topic. And I'm hoping to pull that off.

Okay, well, look, how can people look at the spring issue? Like what are ways people can consume this content? All right. So there's going to be to begin with, this is going to be available as part of our print subscription, which comes out three times a year. It's at the printers now, and if you go online to magazine.cog.ca or simply cog.ca, you can get to click on a button that says magazine, and you can subscribe. A one-year subscription, which comes out three times a year, is $20.34, and that will come to your house. And in the meantime, if you want to get started, we've put a sneak peek up online.

If you go to magazine.cog.ca and look in the recent posts on the right-hand column, you should be able to find the preview link for the issue. Scroll down the list of the content, and there's an active link to look at that Dairy Farm article that we talked about earlier. Amy Kremen, thanks so much for coming on to talk about TCOG Magazine. You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.

All right, folks. So that about does it for this first edition of the Practical Focus Remnant episodes, which will be happening every other week. Now, I would love to know what you think about this uh this new format it's not set in stone and uh yeah we're just getting going with it so uh if you like it or if you hate it or you're somewhere in between please let me know editor at the ruminant.ca and uh just just about i don't know 50 of the emails i get whatever their main focus the writer also asks who's singing at the end of the show uh you know the person that's singing right now as i'm talking well i'll say it again that's my wife that's

vanessa she wrote this song and uh it is available for stream and download at the ruminant.ca slash podcast if you want to check it out okay so next week we'll be going back to a long form interview on uh you know like a broader topic Stay tuned for that and have a great week, everybody. Because why would we live in a place that don't want us A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking, some real soul searching,

and here's my final resolve i don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out into the wilds and braces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.