Monday, August 30, 2010

Invasive weeds in the Gulf Islands - something other than broom and gorse

Scotch Broom

-->
We are all familiar with many of the invasive weeds of the Gulf Islands, most notably broom, gorse and thistles. Non-native invaders have come to the Gulf Islands both intentionally and accidentally. Some homesick Brits liked the yellow flowers of broom and brought them along. On the other hand, some early settlers were most dismayed to find thistle seeds smuggled in with their imported grass, vegetable and flower seeds for their newly cleared land. Transport by vehicles, road clearing and highways equipment, and even wildlife and migrating birds have spread weeds as well. They become invasive due to a lack of natural predators or diseases that help to control them.
Yellow star thistle
Hay can be one way weeds are introduced to farms. A few years ago we bought alfalfa that came from Washington. Some of the bales had a small extremely sharp sticky thistle called a star thistle. It injured some of the sheep's mouths, and would stick to clothing. It didn't take hold and spread its seeds here, but it was a close call. This particular weed originated from the Mediterranean, and prefers a hot, dry, Mediterranean climate (like the Gulf Islands) and is on the “watch” list for BC.
Rhinanthus minor "Rattle box"
One weed that appeared in our pasture was identified as Rhinanthus minor, or rattle box, a European native. It is also known as “the vampire plant” because it is hemiparasitic, attaching to the grass and sucking its nutrients. This creates a stunting and clearing effect on the grass, allowing other plants to seed the area. One source of this weed is in wildflower mixes, and rattle box is sold in the UK to aid in creating wildflower meadows. Not very helpful at all if your goal is to grow grass. We tilled and re-seeded, ending up with the sprouting of some dormant thistles. And so it goes.
Tansy ragwort "stinking Willie"
Common tansy
In the past few years, some new weeds have appeared and have the potential to create problems for farms in the Gulf Islands. One of those stowaways that came in with the European settlers is Tansy Ragwort. It is already a problem in the Fraser Valley, and this year I noticed a few of the bright yellow flowers along the roadside on both Pender Islands. The leaves of this weed are “raggedy”, the stems long, and the flowers are a bright yellow, arranged in a dense cluster of flowers with a button centre and 10-15 petal rays like small daisies. They can be spread by animals, brought in with hay, or more commonly by the wind. They look a lot like common tansy which has a button flower without the rays, and is also seen here and there along the road. Each plant can produce 150,000 seeds per year and the seeds can survive 15+ years in the soil, so it is important to pull the plants, including the roots, before they go to seed. This is especially important to farms, because the plant can take over pastures and is poisonous to deer, cattle, pigs, horses and goats. The alkaloids in the plant cause cumulative liver damage, and produce a bitter flavour in honey. There are some reports of sheep tolerating it, but given its ability to spread and take over it is best to control it. In Europe, sixty insects control the plant. In Oregon three insects have been imported to control the weed, and the Cinnabar moth and tansy flea beetle have worked the best. The Cinnabar moth has also been useful in controlling the weed in BC, and in the Nanaimo area there is a valley named for it - the Cinnabar Valley. In the Fraser Valley in heavily affected areas, bio controls using defoliating and root-crown feeding moths, seed head flies, and root-eating beetles have been helpful as well.
In the battle to control weeds on farms, we are helped by the Invasive Plant Council of BC and its regional committees. The IPCBC started after members of the Fraser Basin Council had a field trip to the Cariboo in 2001 and saw the devastation of invasive weeds. They developed an Invasive Plant Strategy for BC, which was intended to address the explosion in invasive plants in BC. The IPCBC is a registered, non-profit charity whose members are involved in all aspects of invasive plant management and agree to work cooperatively. Members include technical specialists working for government and industry, weed committees, First Nations, foresters, forest technologists, biologists, ranchers, farmers and farm groups, horticulturists, recreation enthusiasts, gardeners, and other concerned individuals. Membership is open to everyone willing to work collaboratively. The Gulf Islands are included in the region covered by the Coastal Invasive Plant Committee. 












Weeds BC Video Clip

Weeds BC Video Clip

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Summer Vacations and Fall Fairs

     As summer draws to a close, the days get shorter and the evenings cooler. Gardens are bountiful and harvest starts. For some, harvest begins earlier in the summer as hay is harvested for livestock for the winter. Once that is put away, it is time to send off lambs and harvest from the garden. In days past, in rural areas that were exclusively agricultural, the school year was planned around the agrarian calendar. School took a break in the spring for planting time, and took a break in the fall for harvest time. Urban schools had fewer breaks so the education of rural kids was not in balance with urban kids. When the educational system was reformed, it was decided to have a break for the summer which would still meet the needs of the farms. It allowed for a break for both teachers and students, but if you lived on a farm it didn't necessarily mean that you had a holiday. Many kids that live on farms are still expected to help out with the summer workload. Longer days mean longer work days on the farm.
      In the Gulf Islands, beaches, boating and fishing, family barbeques and fall fairs have been a pleasant respite for those who farm. The workload in the summer would be set aside for the preparations for the fairs, and would give the family a day or two off from farm work to enjoy the fair and exhibit their livestock and produce. The fall fairs were also important as a marketing tool for farmers, and a way for farm suppliers to reach all the farmers in one place. Before the internet and modern farm marketing, farmers would advertise their breeding stock by attending exhibitions and bringing their best stock. They would also check out the competition, and might return home with a new bull or ram. In the Gulf Islands the young men would take the best cattle by ship to Vancouver or Victoria, walking the herds to the fairgrounds. It was probably a very exciting break from farming. Many prizes were won by the Gulf Island farmers, giving the farms here a good reputation. When I was young, fairs like the Pacific National Exhibition had livestock exhibitors from as far away as Alberta and Oregon. It was a great opportunity to meet farmers from all over and see how your animals compared to the competition. Now, the PNE only has a 4-H show.
     Many fairs have experienced a dramatic shift away from exhibitions that are geared to the farming community, towards entertainment and educational exhibitions for the public. The government provides funding to encourage fairs to educate the public about where their food comes from and how agriculture contributes to society. In the past, most people in the community farmed, even if it was a subsistence type of farming that allowed them to be self sufficient. With the interest in community and backyard gardening, and resilient “Transition Town” communities, we may be moving back to more self sufficiency in our food production. The educational displays at our fairs will no doubt include “how to” demonstrations for those that are interested in producing their own food.
     This year the BC government announced that it was giving $75,000 to the BC Association of Agricultural Fairs and Exhibitions to implement a five year strategic plan. The plan is designed to educate the public about the important role that fairs play in promoting agriculture and local food production, as well as to pursue long-term funding and partnerships. The government has cut funding to BC fairs in the past, and this looks like more funding cuts will be occurring in the future, leading to a need for greater community support for fairs, or greater partnerships and commercialization. As fairs evolve with the changing times, and as farmers make up only 2% of the population, the focus on fall fairs as a support for farming has been replaced with fairs that educate and entertain the larger non-farming public. Hopefully, the emphasis on the importance of agriculture to our society won't be lost.

IN THE NEWS – AUG 13 - Salt Spring Livestock Producers are eligible to receive a grant of $100,000 towards a mobile meat processing unit if they can raise matching funds. The grant could be as much as $150,000 if cut and wrap services can be provided at the same location. The funding comes from the Meat Transition Assistance Program, which is managed by the BC Food Processors Association. Currently the mobile abattoir will only be for Salt Spring Island. There is a possibility for other islands to also have use of the mobile abattoir. If you are from an outer island and are interested, please contact Barbara Johnstone Grimmer (250) 629-3817 or firhill@gulfislands.com.  If you would like more information on the Salt Spring initiative please call Margaret Thomson at (250) 537-4669.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Retail Meat Processing Program: Thompson Rivers University

Retail Meat Processing Program: Thompson Rivers University

Meat Processing Certificate: Olds College

Meat Processing Certificate: Olds College

Want To Open A Slaughterhouse? Go To Meat School : NPR

Want To Open A Slaughterhouse? Go To Meat School : NPR

Want To Open A Slaughterhouse? Go To Meat School

Remember Sam the Butcher from The Brady Bunch?
Today, the days of the neighborhood butcher like Sam are mostly gone, replaced by vast meat-processing plants putting out shrink-wrapped cuts for supermarkets.
But foodies and locavores are fueling a demand for local and artisanal meat products. The problem is there aren't enough slaughterhouses or qualified meat cutters.
A Month In The Meat Lab: $3,000
It was lamb day recently at the State University of New York's meat lab in Cobleskill, a little town near Albany. Guys in white smocks and hard hats haul carcasses out of the cooler. They slaughtered the animals the day before.
McKeever Stanley
Enlarge David Sommerstein/NPR McKeever Stanley was looking for a job when he enrolled in the State University of New York's Meat Lab course. He says he loves to dress the venison he hunts each fall.
Instructor Clint Lane runs through the cut list.
"All the riblets, we're gonna pull the flank off of them, cut 'em in half for riblets," he says. "Shanks — we'll do half of 'em as whole and half of 'em as cross-cuts."
The students slice the carcasses on the band saw. They forked over $3,000 for a month of killing, cutting, and grinding up beef, pork and lamb. They get a meat-processing and food-safety certificate and the basic know-how to work in the industry.
Fred Beckman, who's worked in Manhattan's fanciest restaurants, wants to sell his own foie gras, terrines and sausages.
"There's nothing that's more satisfying than biting into something that has a great deal of good fat," he says.
McKeever Stanley, who's out of a job, loves to dress the venison he hunts every fall.
"My wife one day said, 'Why don't you go to school and do it and get paid for it?'"
And Tom Acampora, a construction worker, wants to build a slaughterhouse next to his home.
"Walk out in the morning with a cup of coffee, start doing some cleanup and get going at my own leisure," he says.
Shortage Of Small Slaughterhouses
The local food movement is driving more farmers to raise animals for meat. But between farm and table is a bottleneck — a shortage of small slaughterhouses serving small farms, especially in the Northeast.
You've gotta know which end to start cutting and then just start cutting, whether it's on a saw or with a knife. The skill of knowing where that part came off — and how to get it from a carcass — has left.
"What we need is for that smaller operator who may have 100 acres or 150 acres — he would like to have the opportunity to take and raise a few cattle or a few hogs and be able to slaughter them and sell them locally. To do that, you have to have an infrastructure," says Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
There are a couple reasons for the shortage. Hundreds of slaughterhouses went out of business in the 1990s after new, technical regulations took effect. Betsy Hodge, of Cornell Cooperative Extension, says they make what's known as an abattoir costly to build and daunting to run.
"They're put in there for safety reasons. But they are sort of overwhelming for these smaller slaughterhouse operators to handle," she says.
Also, the craft of butchery is becoming scarce. It used to be that aspiring knifemen apprenticed with a butcher, or in the meat department of the neighborhood grocer.
Help Meat Stay Local
But meat cutting has industrialized. Plants in the Midwest slaughter and cut up tens of thousands of animals each day.
At the meat lab, director Eric Shelley teaches his students about every step, from food safety and humane animal handling to how to cook different cuts.
Meat Lab director Eric Shelley wants to revive the fading craft of meat-cutting.
Enlarge David Sommerstein/NPR Meat Lab director Eric Shelley wants to revive the fading craft of meat-cutting.
He drills a student on the lamb's basic parts, or primals.
Shelley used to work at Walmart, where, like most supermarkets today, meat arrives pre-cut into the primals.
"Basically, it comes out of a box," he says. "You've gotta know which end to start cutting and then just start cutting, whether it's on a saw or with a knife. The skill of knowing where that part came off — and how to get it from a carcass — has left."
Jason Cramer wraps and labels shank cuts, the final product. He wants to start a slaughterhouse on the farm where he works near Buffalo, N.Y. They run a herd of 300 Hereford cattle. But they have to truck them to Pennsylvania for butchery.
"It's just a shame to see it go out of state and to go into these big factories and get mixed in with all this other meat when, in my eyes, it should be sold locally because we put so much time and effort into the animals," he says.
The federal government is taking small steps to help meat stay local. The USDA is offering grants for mobile slaughterhouses, an abattoir on wheels that goes from farm to farm.
Meat lab director Eric Shelley says more than half of his graduates work in the industry today — they're starting to fill in the gap left by the disappearance of Sam the Butcher.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Sheep Field Day on Saturna Island

Field day participants enjoying view at Taylor Point, Saturna
On Saturday, July 24th the Inter Island Sheep Breeders had a terrific sheep field day at Campbell Farm on Saturna Island. The field day was open to anyone who wanted to know more about sheep in the Gulf Islands, historically famous for its lamb and the Saturna Island Canada Day Lamb Barbeque. The Campbell family were wonderful hosts, greeting us with coffee and home baked goodies after 20 producers and visitors arrived by water taxi and ferry. It was great to see NDP Agriculture critic Lana Popham there, and Eric and Sue Boulton from Gabriola - and a boat full of Salt Spring farmers. Others came from Vancouver Island, Pender Island, Mayne Island, and Saturna Island.
Anita O'Brien showing Psion RFID tag reader
Anita O'Brien, a sheep specialist and traceability expert from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture working with the Canadian Sheep Federation (CSF), described the CSF national radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag trial that the Campbell Farm is part of, and she demonstrated the specialized equipment and software used to read the tags and store data on each animal. Jacques Campbell is testing two or three electronic tag types, a Psion tag reader, a bluetooth enabled scale head, and Farmworks software. This was a good opportunity to see the potential (and problems) with RFID tags, which are to be mandatory in Canada by Dec 31, 2012. The current mandatory system uses an inexpensive “pink” tag that must be manually read and recorded and must be on every animal that leaves the home farm. The federal government will go to mandatory traceability by December 31, 2011 and the Canadian Sheep Federation is keeping pace with this timeline by phasing out the current non-RFID tags and going to mandatory RFID tags. Traceability is often emphasized as something needed to improve food safety, but it's real value is as a system designed to shorten the time to trace livestock in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak, such as foot and mouth disease. This would greatly reduce the amount of animals needlessly destroyed in a disease outbreak. However, this has not been without controversy since the RFID tags are more expensive, and the equipment is extremely expensive, so the purpose of this national trial, and a recently completed study in Alberta, is to determine management benefits to the RFID tags and equipment, and to determine how useful the tags and equipment are in field conditions. Other questions that producers have about “full traceability” have to do with the tracking of individual animals that must be done by producers who are moving animals beyond a 10 km radius from the home farm. If producers can't afford the RFID readers, they will still have to manually read and record each tag and record animal movements.
Campbell Farm Abattoir - Class A facility license
The second part of the field day was a demonstration of lamb processing in the Campbell's facility. Campbell Farm Abattoir is a small building with a walk in cooler, a cut and wrap area, and a processing floor that is lower to give greater height in processing beef. A newer building close by contains the inspector's office and washroom, the walk-in freezer, a workshop, office, and guest space with a good sized meeting room where we had a productive lunch time discussion after the demonstrations. The Campbell's operate one day per week during most of the summer, fall and into the winter. They use a cooperative model where people in the community help out, and they process up to 3 beef or 15 lambs per day. In one season they usually process 9 beef and 120 lambs, both for themselves and for the community. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspector arrives by ferry at 6:30 am, and is done and on the 10:30 am ferry on Fridays. An inspector came out on a Saturday just for this field day. The plant was upgraded so that it could be licensed as a class A plant capable of both slaughtering and cutting and wrapping meat, thus meeting requirements for the meat regulations which now require meat for sale in the southern Gulf Islands to be government inspected. This was critical for the annual Saturna Island Canada Day Lamb Barbeque, a long time fundraiser for the community of Saturna Island. Having a licensed plant has allowed producers to sell to grocery stores, restaurants and to keep their regular customers. Communities lacking inspected facilities have experienced large declines in livestock numbers.
Some participants had never witnessed a lamb being slaughtered, and commented on how humane and quiet it was, very efficient and respectful to the animals. It is reassuring to know that livestock can serve their purpose without distress to them. Jacques always makes sure that there are extra animals in the holding pen so that a single lamb or cow isn't left alone to be the last caught, which can be stressful to them. They are quite content when in a larger group, and taken out one by one.
Participants watching a lamb being processed
A boat load of Salt Spring Island producers came especially to see the abattoir, since they do not have an inspected facility on Salt Spring Island and are currently working hard to get a licensed mobile abattoir for their local production. Eric and Sue Boulton came all the way from Gabriola Island to see the upgraded abattoir. The Boulton's also upgraded their facility on Gabriola, where they process 80 of their own beef and about 100 lambs each year for the surrounding community. Eric stated that having a licensed facility saved his farm. It would be ideal if each island had its own licensed facility for the community to share, either privately or community owned and operated.
Vancouver Island and Outer Gulf Island participants
Salt Spring participants heading back to their boat on the Saturna version of rapid transit.
The field day ended with a tour of Campbell Farm, through their forest of incredible old growth trees and a visit to the most beautiful beach at Taylor Point . Taylor Point is part of the Gulf Island National Park Reserve, but was originally part of the farm. Thank you to the Campbells - Jacques, Nan, Tom and Jim for their hospitality and the time they took to not only give us a tour, but to show us how their farm and community work cooperatively together for everyone's benefit.