Notices by Sarah Taber (sarahtaber@mastodon.online), page 4

So English estate owners & their local managers had strong financial reasons to dedicate as little of their land as possible to subsistence farmers' personal plots, and as much of it as they could to grain destined for export.

Even after the Napoleonic War ended, English families who owned estates in Ireland got used to the income from exporting grain.

England had various controls on exporting grain, to keep food affordable. But those laws didn't apply in Ireland.

(A quarter = a little over 1/4 ton.)

Most people wound up growing a potato variety that became known as the "Irish Lumper."

It's a knobby little guy that thrives on poor, wet soils.

So a country of 8M people lost all their groceries in a week. And almost nobody had savings or backup food.

Meanwhile Ireland was also growing lots of grain!

But the people who owned most of the land kept exporting it, while subsistence farmers who rented from them starved.

Also it has a spore that swims. So if it's wet & rainy, which Ireland usually is, all that water is a highway to late blight meltdown city.

Potato late blight is what the crop scientists call an explosive disease. The time from first symptoms to "your entire crop has melted down" is very short- days or hours.

It hits so fast, there's a distinctive smell to it. The smell of "entire potato field in distress."

Usually when you live on potatoes, you either have them in a root cellar or dig a day's worth out of the ground at a time.

One day, everybody went to their cellar or garden. And all the potatoes were slimy and rotten.

Which is why now, people have exchanges like this.

It's important to note that Ireland wasn't alone in getting hit with late blight. This disease, caused by Phytophthora infestans, was going all over Europe at the time.

But Ireland was the only place that wound up with a famine so deep it changed the shape of the country.

Here's one to start: most corn varieties can be popped. But there are breeding programs to create corn varieties just for popcorn.

What makes a good popcorn? Flavor, high % of kernels that pop quickly, & popping into a round "mushroom" shape (left).

https://www.cals.iastate.edu/news/2020/retired-popcorn-breeder-keeps-poppin

Ok guys it's Oscars night. For every donation to this link I will tweet one (1) agriculture fact! And they'll all be Oscars- or film industry-related!

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mastodon

Next stop: Lee's One Fortune Farm in Burke Co near Morganton NC!

Like many Hmong families, the Lees tried growing their traditional rice cultivars. They were thrilled to find that their rice- which has struggled in CA, WI, & other Hmong communities- LOVES Appalachia.

Elizabeth Ayers, extension agent who helps run the food hub, shows off the cooler & a 1980s-vintage food scale.

This hub has a licensed kitchen that people can rent out to make commercial-scale batches of noodles, pickles & sauerkraut, etc.

Great meeting with people running the fairgrounds & food hub in Madison Co, NC this morning!

We talked about the struggles of rebuilding a farm economy without tobacco. Tobacco's high revenue/acre traditionally was what made agriculture possible in the small plots of Appalachia.

Hmong rice is a perfect fit for Appalachia.

-Doesn't need a controlled paddy- any dry or wet field around here is fine.

-Unlike wheat and corn, where you need big fields & combines to compete, there's LOTS of rice equipment made for tiny fields. You can make 1-2 acres work.

Hmong rice is adapted to the tropical mountains of Southeast Asia. Western North Carolina's warm, humid temperate rainforest is a close fit!

Get you someone who looks at you like Tou looks at his rice combine

The logistics of growing strawberries are similar to most veggies. So for field mgmt purposes, strawberries are a vegetable.

Here, Nate at Darnell Farms shows off a trial where they keep strawberry plants in the ground for 2 years instead of one. More berries, less plastic!

CHORE TOUR 2024 day 3: vegetable farms!

We started the day pulling carrots & spinach with Anne & Aaron Grier at Gaining Ground.

Harvesting vegetables that are in/on the ground, aka "Ok everybody, assume the position!"

Vegetables bring lots of $/acre. That makes them very popular in Appalachia, where farmable land tends to be in very small patches.

You can make a living on veggies on a small plot* where nothing else would bring enough revenue to pay bills.

*with the right experience & preparation, because nothing in ag is a given. but it *can* work on a small plot, unlike commodity corn & soy which definitely won't pay bills on small plots.

Believe it or not though, the crates eventually do get full!

Had a good time talking farm labor & wages with the owners, and how they build their farm around generating a livable wage for staff. They hire most of their crew through ATTRA (https://attra.ncat.org/internships/).