Organic in my own way.

[sewer rat]

I've been looking into how to get organic status and it ain't easy - the land where my MG is gonna be sited has been in grass for the last 7 years and hasn't seen any artificial fertiliser, herbicide or pesticide, but I still have to go through a two year inspection period.
And yesterday I was speaking to a chap who raises and sells wild boar and he can't get organic status on the basis that the nearest "organically approved" abbatoir means his animals would be subjected to a four hour drive before meeting the great big boar in the sky.

[Jaxom]

Rat some times the rules seem a little crazy. I was told once that a field that had been unused in a familes living memory was out of bounds until it had passed all sorts of tests.

[nick the grief]

Trying to defend the beaurocrats for a minute, I guess if the rules weren't so strict any old bod could say they were organic & charge a premium for stuff the probably bought down the market!

I think the 7 years rule come from the fact that it take that long for all trace of pesticides etc to disappear form the soil, but you are right Jax, as an organic producer you have pretty feirce arsenal of sprays that you can use & some "organic" people aren't as concientious as normal growers with their "non organic" sprays.

I too am like Piglet, I only resort to sprays when nothing else will do the job as good or as quick as I only have a finite amountof time to fit everything in.

[blackkitty]

I don't know if many people know that organic can mean many different things. The soil association certification is the hardest to get, there are huge differences between them and some other certification schemes. Chicken flock sizes are one aspect where the sa minimum standards are far higher than others. that's why supermarkets seldom have sa certified eggs.

[pigletwillie]

On our level, especially on allotments where you have no control over neighbouring plots being a mess, being totally organic I think would heavily reduce your ability to actually produce crops to justify the energy spent on growing them. I think that the SA has driven people away from being organic as with them its is do as we say or were not interested, but set the bar that high that its cheaper to import Polish eggs than to sell British ones. Common sense has gone out of the window.

Even putting non organic banana skins in your compost would destroy your claim to be organic if you listened to them. The big supermarkets have sacrificed taste for shelf life and quality for price and are now being found out.

Real food is easy to cook, getting easier to find and the advice to grow it becoming more available, perhaps the wheel is turning, slowly but definitely turning.

[Alice]

I'm with you Piglet. A bit of commom sense has to prevail. I see no need to use insecticides, pesticides and herbicides for minor problems and never do, but, when all else fails it is a remedy of last resort and reluctanty I do. I'm not just going to watch my work and food destroyed. As for "organic", it's just a word that's bandied about like thermal or farm fresh. It means whatever the user wants you to think it means. I go for good wholesome food and common sense.

[SueA]

Like you Jax, I've always thought of blood,fish & bone as being 'organic' but was reading a reply in last month's GYO mag. which said it contains non-organic potassium sulphate & so isn't ! It won't stop me using it though even though I don't like using animal products being 'almost veggie' (still eat fish!). Your neighbour could have just accepted graciously & passed them on to someone else if she was really strict about not eating non-organic produce but just sounds like she was being 'sniffy'. I don't like using chemicals but certainly wouldn't turn my nose up & free ,fresh ,homegrown food & used to eat my dad-in-law's toms even though he used a nuclear arsenal on them sometimes!

[nick the grief]

On the subject of eggs, we were looking to buy a smallholding a few years ago & we thought of doing contract free range egg production, the company concerned would sell me all I needed including the housing & stock, guarrentee to buy all I produced & then deduct the payments from my monthly pay cheque so to speak, sounded fine till when you read the small print.

They only collected once a week, then the eggs went to their packing plant where they were washed in a disinfectant, graded & packaged, then delivered to the supermarket so your fresh free range egs maybe 2 weeks old by the time you get to eat them!!!

We now barter withthe nextdoor neighbour who has 3 rescued chooks I give them toms, they give us eggs & I knw where they are from & when they were laid!

[Alice]

Like I said Nick. It all means what they want you to think it means. What is fresh ? free range ? organic? But I do know what home grown means if I grow it myself

[pigletwillie]

The only way to know how fresh something is, is to know its provenance and you only really know that if you grow it yourself.