Chemistry and Chemicals – a Brief Tutorial for the non-Chemist

I have been a professional chemist for well over 30 years. I know a bit about organic and medicinal chemistry, some about biochemistry, and enough about toxicology, pharmacology, and metabolism to discuss them with reasonable accuracy. My area of specialization is natural products chemistry, which is the study of biologically active chemicals from plants and bacteria. I am planning a post on pesticides and organic farming, but I thought I would first put up a post on chemistry for the non-chemist.

• What is a Chemical?

A chemical is the form of physical matter with which we interact directly. Chemicals are the components of everything you see, smell, touch and taste. The oxygen you breathe is a chemical, as is the water you drink. There are simple chemicals such as sodium chloride, there are complex chemicals such as sucrose, which is a dimer of glucose and fructose, themselves complex organic molecules made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. There are exceptionally large and even more complex chemicals such as DNA or proteins. Absolutely everything that physically exists in our world is made of chemicals. The only thing that is absolutely chemical free is a pure vacuum. Those two words, chemical and free, when put together, construct the most ridiculous non sequitur in existence.

Potato Crop Failure

Only 8-10 seed potatoes - out of five rows - sprouted in the garden. The remainder rotted because of the heavy rains when we planted them. It isn't a total failure, but we will only get a few pounds of potatoes. We tilled the rotten potatoes into the ground and planted cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, eggplant, and Brussels sprouts in the space.

Rotten potatoes smell really bad.

Where I'm Coming From

Below are links to some of the books that have influenced my thinking and planning for Dogs Run Farm. What has been particularly striking in these books is the common theme of the lack of sustainability of industrial agriculture. Kingsolver in particular makes the point with great effectiveness that growing food has moved so far from the actual growing part that it no longer resembles farming, just as mountain-top removal does not resemble mining. Both industrial agriculture and mountain-top removal are more efficient than their predecessors, but both are vastly more destructive and are irresponsible. She notes that most people are so removed from where and how their food is produced that they no longer realize that seeds grow into vegetables and that they do so in dirt; they no longer know what to do with a bag of flour or rice or dried beans; they can't feed their families except by purchasing what the industrial agriculture conglomerate tells them they should buy; and that this conglomerate has maximized its output and divvied it up on a per person basis, so that each of us is targeted with a specified number of calories of food. Too many calories, I need to add. Excess calories. It is as if someone sat down and asked how the most food calories could be produced at the lowest cost and fed most efficiently to the populace, with regard only to how much money can be made in the process. /naïveté

Gardening Progress

It's been a while since I posted a garden update, and although a great deal has been accomplished at Dogs Run Farm, no one single thing has been remarkable. We have mostly been working on infrastructure, getting the garden started, clearing trees, and pondering how to clear our big meadow of the roses and other brush so that we can use it for livestock. A bulldozer seems to be a realistic option.

The first weekend in April, we planted rhubarb, horseradish, and more raspberries and blueberries in the garden. Most of the red clover had survived over the winter and was growing steadily. This is a great ground cover that prevents erosion and fertilizes the soil, since clover fixes atmospheric nitrogen. We seeded the clover too late last fall for it to grow much before winter, so this year it will go into the ground even before we have harvested all the crops.

At home, the tomatoes and peppers were doing well, and had been repotted at least twice. Thirteen tomato plants were eventually set in large pots outside on May 6, and two were planted in the West Virginia garden and staked. Several plants have small tomatoes already. The beet plants didn't seem to be doing much in the seed starting tray, so they were transplanted into the West Virginia garden on April 28 and seem fine. The potatoes were put into the ground over that same weekend. We planted two varieties of fingerling potatoes, Laratte, a French potato, and Peanut, along with German Butterball, Nicola, a mid-season golden potato, Red Gold, an early red-skinned potato, and Red Pontiac potatoes. They were just starting to emerge over the May 12 weekend.

That same weekend, the green beans, lima beans (known as butter beans in the South), sweet peas, bell, cayenne, and Padron peppers, and more beets were planted. A hard rain fell the evening after planting that had some erosive effects, but nothing major. More logs were laid in an attempt to reduce water flows. In early April, artichoke and Brussels sprout seeds were started, and these have been repotted and will go in the ground May 26, along with a few cauliflower plants.

Bird Watching update

A few hummingbirds were back at the end of April, but were out in force over the May 12th weekend. Towhees, Grosbeaks, Wood Thrushes, Veerys, Indigo Buntings, and a lone Scarlet Tanager were back, noted either by sight or song. The Bluebirds were busy with their nest and the Phoebes were sitting on the trees and diving for insects.

I finally figured out why our birdfeeders empty so fast when we're not on the property. I would fill up the feeders when I arrived, and after 3-4 days, they would still be 80% full. Then another 10 days would pass and they would be completely empty. Clearly a non-linear process. It isn't raccoons, it's crows and squirrels. I caught half a dozen crows raiding the feeders early one morning, throwing food out to their friends on the ground. Cooperative behavior. Rather than spend $75 for a crow/squirrel-proof feeder, I armored our existing feeders with hardware cloth left over from building our chicken coop. We shall see whether this has worked next weekend. I did buy a squirrel-proof feeder at Lowe's and hung it from a shepherd's crook down in the forest, hoping to attract a different group of birds that won't come up and out of the forest to feed on our deck. This should work, unless a bear decides to snack on the bird food.

Dogs Run Farm logo

Soon after staining the outside of our house in 2006, I designed a geometric logo that was painted on a large piece of plywood and mounted on the chimney chase. The four colors were identical to those used in the living spaces of the house, with the pattern of my own design. We have now used this as the "business" logo of Dogs Run Farm. I re-created the design in Illustrator and added the colors using Photoshop and the picture at the right.

Dante è Arrivato!

My retired show jumper Dante has moved to West Virginia today. My friend Laurie is boarding him with her gelding Shaheen on a nice paddock in Canaan Valley. It is close to FR80, which heads up into the north side of Dolly Sods Wilderness, and there are tons of places to ride. Laurie and her husband Chip own White Grass Ski. As they say over there: "they're good people."

Dante was shipped over on May 15, and is happy just doing horse stuff. He had been back at Liberty Farm for a couple of weeks before moving, so I had a chance to ride him on several occasions. He was pretty ramped up being back at the barn, and was happy trotting and cantering around the ring, going over poles, and walking around the farm. It will be a bit of a project getting him turned into a trail horse, but hopefully the more relaxed atmosphere in West Virginia will calm him down.

He was the first horse I owned, having purchased him in April 2008 when I first started riding. He is about 20 years old. He is a Dutch Warmblood, trained and shown in Europe as a show jumper. He is sweet, loving, and sociable, and also manipulative and stubborn, but lovable just the same. It will be nice to have him with me in West Virginia.

Small Building Projects

In mid-April, I built a cold-frame out of old 2" x 12" lumber used to pour the foundation of the barn. We had an old aluminum storm window that had been ordered the wrong size that I used for the window. The best part is that I got to use my brand-new DeWalt table saw to cut the boards. This will be used to start lettuces and other plants early in the spring, as well as provide transplants an advantage over plants exposed to the colder nighttime temperatures on the property. Over the April 28 weekend, we build a 4' x 8' raised bed out of the same lumber, and filled it with dark rich dirt dug from tilled ground at the edge of the clearing, layered with straw. Under the cold-frame, we planted arugula, and at the front of the bed planted mint, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and cilantro. Two peppers were planted towards the back of the bed under the cold-frame. Everything looked good over the May 12 weekend, except the rosemary, which had died back but was putting out new growth. 

Mushrooms

Many mushroom species grow naturally on decaying wood, and edible varieties can be cultivated in logs innoculated with commercial spores. There is an area in the forest nearby to the garden where numerous mushroom species grow, including the chanterelle mushrooms we harvest every August. We have also harvested oyster mushrooms growing on an old oak log.

plug spawn

Taking a clue from The Joy of Hobby Farming, we ordered mushroom growing supplies from Fungi Perfecti. We bought 100 each of 5/16" dowels (plug spawn) innoculated with the spores of shiitake, oyster, and maitake mushrooms along with some soy wax to seal the logs. Last autumn before the leaves fell, we identified several 6-8" diameter oak and maple trees to use for growing mushrooms, and cut them down in early April. After letting them sit for two weeks to allow natural antifungal compounds to decompose, I drilled 1 1/4" deep holes every 4" down the log in a diamond pattern. That would be 300 holes in five logs. Three hundred, by hand, into wet, hard wood. The spade bit got so hot, that the holes were steaming when it was withdrawn. The dowels were tapped in with a hammer, and the holes were sealed with melted soy wax. The shiitake and maitake went into oak logs, while the oyster mushrooms went into maple logs.

shiitake mushrooms on oak logs

The inoculated logs were laid crossways on top of other logs to keep them off the forest floor, but in a wet drainage area under the forest canopy. That's it. Now we wait, and maybe late this year, but certainly next year we will have home-grown mushrooms. Waiting is going to be hard, but this is yet another long term investment.

Pictures from Fungi Perfecti.