Heritage

Last week, I volunteered as a soil tester for URI at the Lowe’s in Woonsocket.  Mostly avoiding “big box” stores as I do, I was surprised at the many heirloom and heritage plants they carried - not just tomato varieties, but apple trees.  I’m in the process of removing sod to make room for a tree orchard/berry bush site, as I’d like more varieties of apples and the blackberries I planted last year are out of control.  My liberty apple (a fairly new cultivar supposedly resistant to rust) is doing fairly well, but may not be getting good pollination from my neighbor’s three crab-apples, overgrown as they are with bittersweet.  My grafted apple with four varieties including brandywine appears to be growing vigorously only from its root stock, so I’m not sure what I have.  I’d like to add two more cross-pollinating trees, and this store had seven varieties, all much bigger than the sticks I planted.  Gardeners must be patient, but a $30 grafted tree from a catalog really should put out when I could get this other brandywine on sale for ten dollars and start harvesting next year.

Why should we bother with heritage breeds and heirloom plants?  Many, through natural selection, build up natural disease resistance.  Most have better nutrition, grown as food only and not for size, uniformity, and shipping endurance.  The same goes for livestock.  Heritage breeds often are great foragers, feeding off grass, seed, and insects rather than corn.  Chickens allowed to free-range as they are meant to do (and I don’t mean that the coop is open but the chickens don’t know enough to go outside – beware of labels!) have higher protein and omega-3 and lower cholesterol.  In contrast, stressed-out CAFO poultry can produce eggs higher in cholesterol and have a higher incidence of salmonella.  Heritage breeds are not kept around for their genius, but some industrially-bred animals can no longer breed on their own.  The standard white turkey will drown drinking water from the sky.  Remember, we are what we eat.

Ironically, we can save heritage breeds by eating them.  That is, by creating a demand for them, more will be bred for consumption.  When I do get chickens, I want Plymouth Rocks and Delawares because they are dual purpose birds, cold-hardy to my New England area, docile, and happy in confinement, not to mention beautiful.  (My future six chickens will have a 24 sq.ft. run, which far exceeds the 1 sq.ft. CAFOs maintain.)  RWP Zoo has one-upped that, featuring the Partridge Rock, a rare breed of Plymouth Rock chicken. 

I’ll say it again: We are what we eat.  More and more, I hear of people’s allergies and food intolerances in reaction to our current food climate.  A whole market now exists for gluten-free foods, where almost forgotten grains like amaranth and quinoa are resurfacing.  Similarly, cows and chickens did not evolve to eat corn, and feeding them it causes nutritional deficiencies and gastro-intestinal upset.  CAFOs solve this dilemma with antibiotics, adding hormones for fast growth so the animal is slaughtered before the health effects really set in.  The closely-grouped chickens also receive arsenic to treat intestinal flora that wouldn’t be so rampant if they just had space to move.  They also over-administer it, so arsenic ends up in waste.  Now I wonder if arsenic-laden manure has been used to grow what I buy at the grocery.  I fertilize my garden with compost and guinea pig and chicken manure.  I know what’s in the first two, but this year I’ll be seeking out chicken manure from a farmer I trust rather than buying it in a bag. 

Having moved out of the area long ago, we decided to travel down the road from this Lowe’s to where I used to live as a child.  I had driven by in the past, seeing they changed the house color, changed the garden.  Now a sun room had been built, and many shrubs and trees planted.  But the biggest surprise was behind my former home.  I remembered a steep abyss of stone and scrub, trumpet vine crawling up the decline, my only sting from a hornet, when I unknowingly walked over the underground nest.  I remember puff-ball mushrooms and poking them with sticks to release the spores.  Now, it was graded and leveled, with three apartment complexes. 

The steep road going down to the mill by the river was now the entrance to the complex parking lot.  Access to the woods beyond was cut off.  Was the swamp still there, and the huge snapping turtles? 

"Trip Lane”, as I called it, the path overrun with roots?  The “Rock Zone” where I unearthed salamanders, snakes, and once, a tarantula-sized wolf spider?  Did anyone enjoy the peach and apple trees, the raspberry bushes?  Where they still there, hiding in the dark?  I think this place was even stocked with birds, and I swear I saw exotic species, perhaps quail.

In my new home, my cat has brought me mice, voles, shrews, a rabbit, and a squirrel.  I’ve seen a ground hog, a raccoon, skunks, possum, and a silver fox or small coyote.  My garden attracts more and more interesting insects.  I am cultivating the wild raspberries and blueberries, learning about the native trees.  I would like to introduce ferns and other natives.  I’d like to know what two acres can sustain, not only with its current heritage of flora and fauna, but in a greater diversity yet to be explored.  I want to protect it from greed.