(Earth Eats theme music)
KAYTE YOUNG: From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, I'm Kayte Young and this is Earth Eats.
SHANE GIBSON: You don't see these wonderful things in nature if you're not outside in it. And to me maple syrup is just one more opportunity to be outside, immersed in nature.
KAYTE YOUNG: This week on our show we join Shane Gibson of Sycamore land trust while we listen in on the learning and fun of maple syrup day at a local elementary school. And we have an audio postcard from a backyard chicken coop tour. And we've got a story from Harvest Public Media about midwestern farming communities struggling to shore up infrastructure ahead of spring rains. That's all just ahead, on Earth Eats.
Here's Renee Reed, with some food news. Hi Renee.
RENEE REED: Hello Kayte. Dicamba based weed killer at the central of a federal jury trial that started Monday in Cape? in Missouri. The trial aimed to determine whether Monsanto and BASF are the reason Missouri largest peach farm is on the brink of collapse. Bater farms has been growing peaches in ? county since the late 1980's. But a lawyer representing the farms it's struggling to stay afloat today. He says that's because dicamba based herbicides sprayed on neighboring fields, drifted onto the peach orchard. AG giants Monsanto and BASF are makers of those herbicides and defendants in the trial. Their lawyers told jurors that damage to the orchard has nothing to do with Dicamba. They cite a soil fungus, ice storms, and hail as some of the many causes. Each party is expected to call on research experts and company executives to testify over the next three weeks.
This is the first of many dicamba lawsuits to go to trial.
They say don't cry over spilled milk, but what about a massive milk merger? When the country's largest milk producer Dean Koonz filed for bankruptcy late last year, the country's dairy cooperative, Dairy Farms of America, DFA, stepped in to discuss a merger. Absorbing dean's operations could give DFA a more than 60% share of fluid milk sales in markets like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. The move triggered federal antitrust regulators to investigate if a merger could lead to an excessive concentration of milk buyers in parts of the country, and a potential loss of competition in the raw milk market. Dairy farmers of America already buys some of the milk its own marketing arm sells, and some dairy farmers and antitrust experts say the acquisition of dean would only exacerbate that conflict of interest. The move could make it impossible for small dairy farmers to survive in an industry already in decline for years.
Milk consumption has decreased by 40% in the past four decades, as has the number of milk processing plants. Milk prices have bottomed out, shuttering more and more dairy farms. Even in dairy heavy states like Wisconsin, which loss 500 dairy farms in 2017. At the same time, major corporations like Walmart and Kroger have introduced cheaper in store brands, and their own bottling plants. Pressuring prices and in some cases reducing business for processers like dean. DFA and a group of bond holders are expected to bid on dean's assets next month.
Thanks to Korin Rough and Tailor Killough for those stories. For Earth Eats news, I'm Renee Reed.
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KAYTE YOUNG: After last spring's heavy rains and flooding, many midwestern communities are still living with damaged infrastructure. And as Harvest Public Media's Christina Stella reports, some still don't know how they'll afford to protect themselves from more damages this year.
CHRISTINA STELLA: Finally, after a year, the water is mostly gone from Brett Adam's farmlands, near the town of Peru in South East Nebraska. He can get in his silver pick up and take us to the levy, past the stubbly remains of 2018's crop.
BRETT ADAMS: So, the water just drained off of here a couple weeks ago. So, like here the water would have been, I don't know, 8foot deep probably.
CHRISTINA STELLA: I mean, there's still water here.
BRETT ADAMS: Yeah there's a little bit. I mean this looks great to me considering what it looks like.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] He's on the local levy board, which manages the town's nearly 8 miles of Missouri riverbed, and it's a full time, unpaid job these days.
BRETT ADAMS: Farming was the easy part. I don't get to do the farming point anymore, it's all meetings, business side of it.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] Adams spends his time mostly trying to answer one question. Where will a town of 800 people get 10's of millions of dollars to fix its levies in time for spring?
BRETT ADAMS: We have a very small level of protection. You know you get about flood states the water is going to come running right back in here.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] Typically the army corps of engineers would fund repairs through its federal rehabilitation program. But Adams says there are some costs that come with complying with its rules.
BRETT ADAMS: Well we're a very small levy district, with annual income of less than 30,000 dollars. We decided to use the funds, fully on fixing our deficiencies because that's really what's going to protect you.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] And that meant quitting the program, or becoming inactive, until they could get back up to code. That was a few years back before any talk of bomb cyclones, or five hundred-year floods. Matt Krajewski branch chief, at the Omaha district army corps of engineers says going inactive really limits how the government can help if there's a disaster.
MATT KRAJEWSKI: Inactive means that there's an event, then we cannot rehabilitate the structure.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] But Adams and the army corps agree that Peru’s levy didn't stand a chance against the floods, with or without repairs. The corps still can't make exceptions to policy. Only congress can do that.
MATT KRAJEWSKI: Nobody here wants to walk over to those folks and say hey you know what, we can't do anything. Right? So, we're bound by the law.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] Peru isn't the only one on the hook for millions in federally owned infrastructure repairs after 2019's wet spring. ?? irrigation canal collapsed in western Nebraska last July leaving over 100,000 crop acres to shrivel in the sun for two months.
RICK PRESTON: This district has been delivering water for 96 years, and we have never called on the state or the government to help us with it.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] That's Rick Preston, who manages the irritation district.
RICK PRESTON: Now all of the sudden we're in a situation and we need some help, and we can't get nobody to step up.
CHRISTINA STELLA: He says the bearuo of reclamation which owns the canal, is trying to court money from other federal agencies with leftover funds. But that process takes months, if not years.
RICK PRESTON: And were in a situation, we can't wait. And if I don't get it put back together then these farms are going to go without water one more year.
CHRISTINA STELLA: And anyway, that money would be a loan. So, Preston would have to raise water prices for farmers to pay it back.
RICK PRESTON: The ag economy is so poor right now. If we borrow the money, and we have to increase y?? 10 dollars an acre, ??? the door because all hell is gonna break lose. You wouldn’t hear the end of it.
CHRISTINA STELLA: Preston says he's explained the situation to his elected officials over, and over, and while he says they have sympathy and want to help, those feelings haven't translated into any real progress yet.
RICK PRESTON: Every road I've turned and went down, it's a dead end.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] On the other side of the state, Adam says he's practically got his representatives on speed dial.
BRETT ADAMS: ?? you talk to congressional people and you think something’s going to happen, and then all the sudden, nothing does, and you're down in the valley. You know it's kind of a little roller coaster.
CHRISTINA STELLA: [Narrating] Congressman Adrian Smith represents Adam’s community and told me in an email, he's still trying to help wherever he can. But Adams doesn't have any more time to talk about it, he's off to another meeting. He leaves me, with why he needs some time, to go on a drive with yet another reporter.
ADRIAN SMITH: This flood will break people. I don't want to sit around and dwell on this happen and blame blame blame, let's move forward and figure out how to fix it, and how to make it not happen again.
CHRISTINA STELLA: Which brings him to the only option he really has. To keep riding that valley of uncertainty and look for the peaks wherever he can find them. Kristina Stella, Harvest Public Media.
KAYTE YOUNG: Hear more from this reporting collective at HarvestPublicMedia.org.
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KAYTE YOUNG: The Tour D Coop is a yearly backyard chicken coop tour in Raleigh North Carolina. The tour benefits urban ministries of Wade county, a local nonprofit providing food, shelter, and medicine to people in crisis. Producer Josephine McRobbie sends an audio postcard from this year's tour.
CARN WIBERK: Silent night, hands tucked in, starlight on snow.
(minimal festive music)
CARN WIBERK: I'm Carn Wiberk, and I'm the author of Chicken Haiku. And the owner of the house where we're showing all the chickens right now.
DAWN ROZZO: I'm Dawn Rozzo and I'm an artist, visual artists, and collage illustrator.
JUSTIN MILLER: Justin Miller, we are in my backyard, which is inhabited by eight chickens and two potbelly pigs.
M’LISS KOOPMAN: My name is M’Liss Koopman and I’m a volunteer organizer with tour d coop, Raleigh’s own chicken coop tour. Benefitting urban ministries of white county.
Chickens can be a true pets, they all have personalities, they all have individual likes and dislikes. Some of them are very anxious, some of them are very calm. Some of them like to go in and roost at night, some of them stay out till the bitter end, like teenage roosters.
JUSTIN MILLER: They have their little cliques, I tell people that are like a group of high school girls living in the backyard. So certain ones like other ones, every night they go and sleep in the same spot in the same order.
M’LISS KOOPMAN: We are in an area of Raleigh called five points. We’re about five minutes from Raleigh's true downtown core. Chickens need to be dry; they need to be protected from heat and cold, and they need good ventilation. So, no matter what the coop looks like, as long as it does that, they're happy.
Chickens are wonderful because I have a food source right here that has a very low carbon footprint, a lot of what I feed them comes from my very own garden, a lot of the fertilizer that goes back to my garden comes from them. I compost it and it goes back to the garden.
JUSTIN MILLER: Anyone who knows chickens knows that there is called a concept called chicken math. What chicken math is when you go out and you say you're gonna get three or four, you wind up getting eight or ten. I decided there were certain types, certain breeds that I wanted to add to my flock and that's how I originally, how I went from four to eight in the beginning. Of the seven that lay eggs, I have seven different color eggs that are produced from chocolate brown to bright white. I get about a half a dozen eggs a day; I'm known in the area as the egg guy. So, my neighbors, I have a rotating list I leave eggs out on the porch for them, they leave money in my mailbox, so in terms of sustainability it's actually a pet that pays some rent here which is nice.
CARN WIBERK: So, I got chickens and I knew about the tour d ‘coop, I had heard about it, so we went on the tour d coop one year and looked at all the coops, and figured out what we wanted to build. And the next year we decided to be a coop host on the tour d coop.
M’LISS KOOPMAN: You will just see creative coops, some of them very high end and gorgeous and architectural wonders. And some of them made of recycled materials, or very homemade, which is my coop.
Our houses represent not only chickens, but often times beehives, gardens, unique sustainability features, so you might see rain barrels or a form of composting with worms. You will see music, there will be food trucks, there will be artists, authors, every year is unique and different.
M’LISS KOOPMAN: I worked hard for about a year to pull it together, get it designed, and, it’s awesome. The homes and the art really work together.
DAWN ROZZO: : They really work together.
CARN WIBERK: I can't tell you how many evenings that we've just spent out here watching them free range, and just been amused.
So as a writer it's just a natural thing to just write about them. And haikus just seem like the perfect way to capture chickens.
DAWN ROZZO: :They are incredibly stupid acting intelligent creatures.
JUSTIN: They look at me as the momma hen, they know when I'm outside, it usually means snacks or food, or something goods gonna happen.
CARN WIBERK: Scraps, scraps, scraps
Digging for gold flecks
When the dreams hatch
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KAYTE YOUNG: Thanks to producer Josephine McRobbie for that audio post card.
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Production support comes from: Insurance agent Dan Williamson of Bill Resch Insurance. Offering comprehensive auto, business and home coverage in affiliation with Pekin Insurance. Beyond the expected. More at 812-336-6838. Elizabeth Ruh, Enrolled Agent with Personal Financial Services. Assisting businesses and individuals with tax preparation and planning for over fifteen years. More at PersonalFinancialServices.net. And Bill Brown at Griffy Creek Studio, architectural design and consulting for residential, commercial and community projects. Sustainable, energy positive and resilient design for a rapidly changing world. Bill at GriffyCreek.Studio.
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KAYTE YOUNG: If you like to use maple syrup on your pancakes, you're probably familiar with how costly it can be. Especially compared to the hungry jack variety made with basically maple flavored corn syrup.
Last year at Unionville elementary school, just outside of Bloomington Indiana, the students had a hands-on lesson with maple syrup production. And they possibly came to appreciate that high price tag.
Producer Alex Chambers was there and sent back this sound portrait.
(birds chirping, children and adults chatting)
SHANE GIBSON: I think we sent home a hundred and 25 spiels.
A spile is like a hollow tube where you will let the sap flow out of the tree and into your bucket.
I'm Shane Gibson, environmental education director with sycamore land trust. Sycamore land trust is a nonprofit and our mission to conserve land in southern Indiana and to connect people to nature. As the education director I get the good fortune to do a lot of connecting people with nature. These wooden spiles are made from elderberry, that I just snipped from some elderberry at my house. Elderberry and sumac have a soft pith in the middle, and so you can take a heat up like a hot wire, should be hot enough, use my gloves, and we're gonna burn out the tips. Burn out the pith. Get that hot wire burns out the center, push right through that really soft pith. That didn't go all the way through, but we have one that's completed and so then you have your spiel, or like a straw, you can use it for a straw, of made very quickly, from elderberry.
And that’s your spiel that would go in the tree, and would then direct the sap into your collection container. They probably brought in sixty, seventy gallons of sap. We'll never get through that today. I’ve brought in my portable maple evaporator to then demonstrated how you can cook it at home in your backyard. I just have a 55-gallon drum and I went to a hardware store and purchased an adaptor kit that you can get for those, to make them into a woodburning stove. I cut a rectangle out of the top that would fit a pan that is used in like a buffet style pan I got from a restaurant supply store. So that pan fits right in there, so now you have your one pan evaporator.
What we have going on is we have our main pan evaporating, we have another pot on the back of the cooker, that’s heating up the sap so that when we go from the, we take that warm sap on the pot, and put it into our boiling pan so we don't lose our boil. The key thing for making maple syrup is keep that fire hot at a rolling boil. The fast3er you can get that water evaporated off, the quicker you're gonna get to syrup. And I’ve had too many experiences of getting distracted and letting your fire go away, and then you're there all day long.
So, then we also have a Coleman stove showing the finishing process. We have some sap that we're trying to finish to syrup, so we have our different ways to show students that they can use just a spatula to dip in, and just do a visual if it's syrup, it comes off like a sheet of paper. We have a candy thermometer. And we also have a hydrometer that measures the sugar content. So, there's different way that you can finish it. We're also showing them how to bottle the syrup and why we turn the bottles on their side when it's hot. And we have then a tasting session, area, so they can taste the sap, and taste some finished syrup.
CHILD: It has, it's not like the normal syrup that you would taste after it's been like, through the fire. It... I don't know how to explain it, it's like...
CHILD 2: So, it kind of tastes like the ice if you're sucking on a popsicle during the summer.
CHILD: It’s like a mixture of like three forces sugar, and like a half cup of water.
CHILD 3: It kind of tastes like the ice does after sucking on it for a while
CHILD 5: I did really like the sap.
CHILD 6: It tastes like water with juice.
CHILD 7: I noticed with the syrup it tastes almost like it was smoked at one point, which kind makes sense, cause I mean you require a stove, a hot stove to cook it while the sap it kind of tasted like... what’s the word, bitter?
CHILD 8: I liked the sap. And the maple syrup was also really good as well.
SHANE GIBSON: Maple syrup day came about because last year I worked at a school at Evansville, Evansville Montessori, and they organized what they called the sugar bush social. And we really modeled today off of that first experience there, and also modeled it a lot off of my experiences of doing maple syrup camp at Bradford woods, and the maple syrup programs at southeastway park in Indianapolis. And in having that experience in Evansville, I came to Unionville, I said I think this could work for your school, what do you think? And so, she was willing to work together and give this a try, and we brought in Bradford woods staff to have extra teachers doing the history stations of native American history.
SHANE GIBSON: So, we have three stations here.
SHANE GIBSON: and your history.
SHANE GIBSON: So th4e first stations are able to practice drilling a tree, using a hand driller. And then the next stations are going to practice how to hammer spiel.
KATIE HAMMAKER: They were talking about how back when the native Americans used tools how they had to use rocks, and just things that they found in natural resources around them. Whereas the pioneers had made tools such as hand drills, and different things like that and spiels as well to help collect the sap in copper buckets and things.
My name is Katie, Katie Hammaker. And I am from Bradford woods.
NEAL KITANAR: I'm Neal Kintanar, I'm from Bradford woods.
SHANE GIBSON: and the third station there with Beth, you're going to see, this is what they call a yoke, where the pioneers introduced a yolk, where we put it on our shoulders. And then two buckets on each side, that will help us carry the sap we just collected. There you go, just like that. Okay? Are we excited to try on these machines?
(class: yes mixed)
Okay we're going to divide you into three groups…
KATIE HAMMAKER: The event today is just teaching the kids about native Americans and how they discovered maple syrup and then the process of the pioneers coming over and bringing their tools.
(children and adults chatting, woman saying push it to the top)
SHANE GIBSON: Right now, they are actually, there's a group that's hand drilling a tree.
(kids talking)
They are turning the knobs and we are teaching them how to drill the maple tree. And then the next group how to put on this pile. It's made up of metal, but sometimes it can be just plastic, and then sometimes it can also be wood. So, they're going to hammer it into a tree. And then the third group there, they’re trying on the yolk. So, a yolk is where it's like something that you put on your shoulders, it’ll help you bring the buckets.
(kids talking, asking can I do it again?)
SHANE GIBSON: Mrs. Albright sent home a questionnaire, do you have maple trees? Would you like to help collect sap for maple syrup day? Students brought back the farms, and Unionville elementary and sycamore land trust bought spiels and taps to send home, I think we sent home 125 spiels. So, families really got involved, I know some kids are cooking at home, they've brought in, they've probably brought in 60 70 gallons of sap. We'll never get through that toady. And each class I came in and did an in-class session, which each class to kind of give them to try to give them some knowledge and confidence to say "hey I could do this at home, let's give it a try. what do I have to lose? if Shane can do it, I can probably pull this off too"
So, I need, Mrs. Underwood if you could select two volunteers for us.
MRS. UNDERWOOD: Hank and Abby.
SHANE GIBSON: You're gonna come inside the cones, one of you go over your ? we need help, one of the jobs when you are making maple syrup is splitting wood. I like to use small pieces because they burn hotter and faster and you can keep that fire really hot. So, when you use these big hammers, you don’t' have to swing them really hard, that the weight will help do the work for you. So just keep your fingers back from the edge, maybe up around the tape. And I’m gonna hold the axe, and... move your hand back a tiny bit. Yup.
(clicking, clacking)
There we go. Then you get to that point, you can just pull it apart, nice. Thanks for your help, that helped us out a lot.
The thing that I love about maple syrup, that I’ve loved that some of these kids have gone out and done it is that this a time of year when many people spend their days indoors and this is a great time of year, maple syrup is a great activity to get you outside in a time of year that you may not usually be outside. And this time of year, is a great time to hear that hear the ? cranes flying over, I was tapping trees a couple years ago and two bald eagles came flying over. One was upside down, they were kind of going back and forth, and the one on the bottom actually hit a limb in the woods that we were tapping in, fell to the forest floor, kind of got its wits about it, and then took off again. All happened in about 10 seconds. But I used that as an example if you don't see these wonderful things in nature if you're not outside in it. And to me maple syrup is just one more opportunity to be outside immersed in nature.
It's really been a good partnership over the last two school years, working out there, they really embrace being outside.
CHILD: When you, it takes a long time. And usually the first time you harvest the sap you get the most. It will, it was one day and then we got like half a gallon.
SHANE GIBSON: They probably brought in 60-70 gallons of sap.
CHILD: half a half a gallon jugs on there.
SHANE GIBSON: and not everything we do is outside but just nature-based learning, and it's not all science. You know we're doing cultural history here today, we're doing healthy eating, a lot of what we do in wild edibles, that's about healthy lifestyles. And being outside carrying 5-gallon buckets of sap, that's exercise. It's a lot of hard work.
CHILD 3: It tastes like honey with just... yeah yeah more sugar.
SHANE GIBSON: and it's really fulfilling at the end of the day to have a stash of maple syrup.
(clicking and clacking)
KAYTE YOUNG: That was Shane Gibson from Sycamore land trust. We also heard from outdoor educators Katie Hammecer and Neal kintar from Bradford woods and Unionville Elementary students Reece, Jason, Zachary, Arlow, Landon, and Juleen.
The best weather conditions for harvesting maple sap is when the overnight lows are in the 20s and the highs are in the 40s. Around here that tends to happen sometime in January or February. If you have sugar maples in your yard, keep an eye on the forecast, and consider tapping your trees this year. It takes about 10 gallons of sap to make 1 quart of syrup depending on the sugar content of your particular maple sap.
Maple day is part of Unionville elementary school's earth program. EARTH stands for Environment, Art, Resources, Technology and Health. Learn more about the program and see photos from the event on our website. We've also got some links to recipes using maple syrup. That's at EarthEats.org.
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(Earth Eats theme music)
RENEE REED: Earth Eats team
KAYTE YOUNG: Special Thanks this week to Melisa Coopman, Justin Miller, Carn Wiberk, Don Roso, Shane Gibson, Katy Hammer, Neal Kitnear, and everyone at Unionville Elementary school.
Production support comes from: Insurance agent Dan Williamson of Bill Resch Insurance. Offering comprehensive auto, business and home coverage in affiliation with Pekin Insurance. Beyond the expected. More at 812-336-6838. Elizabeth Ruh, Enrolled Agent with Personal Financial Services. Assisting businesses and individuals with tax preparation and planning for over fifteen years. More at PersonalFinancialServices.net. And Bill Brown at Griffy Creek Studio, architectural design and consulting for residential, commercial and community projects. Sustainable, energy positive and resilient design for a rapidly changing world. Bill at GriffyCreek.Studio.
