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It’s mid July in Alberta Canada, and Robert and I are studying banana fertilizer needs on the internet. Somehow, with canola blooming and wheat heading outside our window, it feels a little strange – we’re a long ways from Africa!

A beautiful bunch of bananas like this requires a lot of potassium, an expensive nutrient. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

This morning we received an email from Heart of Africa Mission (HAM) Zambia, giving us numbers for banana fertilizer prices. We had promised to purchase fertilizer for them to keep the banana plantation producing, as they were in a difficult financial situation.

Robert figured out about how much they would need before we left Zambia end of April. According to the email they sent us, fertilizer prices have climbed quite a bit since then. I phoned our fertilizer agent here just to be sure – yes, fertilizer prices have come down in Canada since April.

So why are they climbing in Zambia? Who knows? Zambia doesn’t have to react to world markets if it doesn’t want to. What can a Zambian farmer do? It’s one of those things that frustrate us so much – and farmers there even more.

Bananas need twice as much K (potassium) as N (Nitrogen) to produce well. (That’s why bananas are so high in potassium.) Robert just calculated that K in Zambia costs about Cdn$2000/tonne. In Canada it’s about Cdn$925/tonne. Why should it cost twice as much in Zambia as in Canada?

HAM sometimes used chicken manure in between commercial fertilizer applications. Robert found some numbers for the nutrients in chicken manure, and if they are reasonably correct, calculated that by adding K , they should be okay without adding commercial N and P (Phosphorous). That would save them a large amount of money.

The HAM farm management is very dedicated and works hard. But not having any formal agricultural training, they don’t understand enough about soil nutrient requirements, or how to manipulate different fertilizers to achieve an optimal yield. They don’t know enough about timing of fertilizer – what a plant needs and when and why.

Robert discusses banana cultivation issues with the HAM staff. They are dedicated, but often lack deeper knowledge of plant and soil requirements. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

Here’s an example: Robert told them to buy urea instead of a much more expensive nitrogen product. They said they’ve done that before but it grew too many leaves. Urea only needs to be applied at half the rate of the other product, which they probably missed – perfectly logical if you don’t know how to calculate actual N rates.

So that’s where some of our consulting skills come in – both to work these numbers out for them, and then to try to teach them some of the background information. It sure works better on site than from a distance though! Phone connections are often poor, and with our different English accents (Robert is Swiss, they Zambian) it can be a challenge.

There are a lot of discouraged farmers out there. So I’m always duly impressed when I meet young people that are excited and passionate about farming. I’m doubly impressed when they’re farming in an area that others are leaving.

Recently, Robert and I visited Martin and Bettina Leuenberger from Flatrock, B.C. (North Peace country). I’d heard bits and pieces of Martin’s rise as a grain farmer over the last years and was curious.

Shaylene Leuenberger poses with her dad, Martin, before a growing row of grain bins in Flatrock, B.C. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

What gives this 30 year old the courage to grow his farm in a time when many were discouraged and quitting, and in an area that is not exactly known for being the best grain country?

“It (Flatrock) has its advantages – in a good area I could never have gotten into farming,” Martin says. Every farmer that quits is an opportunity to rent land at reasonable prices.

I’d known Martin as a child. We were friends with his parents who are also Swiss immigrants. His Dad held a good job in Fort St. John, but farmed on the side. Martin always dreamed of being a big grain farmer. As a young teen he started helping his Dad on the fields – his Dad would tell him over the phone where he should go cultivating.

He still works with his Dad who is retired now, and together they operate 8000 acres, growing cereal crops, canola and fescue.

“I think the big thing now is if the opportunity comes to expand I’ll jump on it right away,” Martin says. His wife, Bettina, smiles and adds, “If he wouldn’t grain farm he would get another high risk business.”

I think of Beni Gasser in Schleitheim, Switzerland. So many older farmers are discouraged, fed up with the many regulations they have to follow to get their subsidies. Many see no future for the farm. But Beni, at 25, is excited to take on the challenge.

Beni Gasser together with his new wife, Rebecca, sees a positive future for farming in Switzerland. (Photo courtesy of Jacqueline Stamm)

He too is working with his Dad, taking over the family farm. His Dad, Peter, was a full time farmer, running a mixed farm with dairy cows. While many of their neighbours are winding down their business, either due to size or lack of a successor, the Gassers are expanding.

What makes these two young farmers, and others like them, different? Both of them are positive people, willing to take risk. They see opportunities where others see problems. They know it’s not a free ride, but they love their profession and believe in it.

We need farmers to feed the world so it won’t just be huge corporate farms. Most of them will continue to be family farms, run by people like Martin and Beni.

My hat’s off to you young farmers!

“This is my best memory of Canada – I’m riding in a Dodge truck, it’s raining, and I’m eating ice cream,” said our daughter-in-law from Switzerland as she was enjoying a cool rainy day in Westlock, Alta.

We’re just happy it’s raining! It’s actually raining enough to make a real difference to the crops.

Funny how everything looks better right after a rain – the cereal crops stand taller, the broccoli in my garden stretches its broad leaves and the grass seems to have grown overnight.

Young spruce trees struggle to get established on a field in Cecil Lake, B.C., near the end of June, 2009. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

I talked about carbon credit issues with farmers in Cecil Lake, B.C. One young farmer, Martin Leuenberger, farms beside a quarter of open land that was planted to spruce trees last year. He put a bid in for the land too, but the owner sold it to a European company that bought a total of 16 quarters to plant trees on.

What makes many farmers irate is that the company would only buy wide open quarters, which are usually also the best farming land.

Just a few miles down from the newly-treed quarter, we saw dark smoke billowing into the sky. As we got closer, we saw someone was burning piled trees.  Someone plants, another clears. I guess it all evens out in the end.

Bruno Osterwalder thinks that there’s a lot of wishful thinking and misinformation out there about carbon offsets. But he also thinks that it’s not such a bad thing to replant some trees.

“I think in this country here (northern B.C., Peace Country) we have removed way too many trees to keep up the water and moisture conditions,” he said. “I said this 25 to 30 years ago at a meeting – there should be a mandate to keep 10 per cent of a quarter (of land) in trees. I was just about laughed out of the meeting.”

A farmer clears out a tree line down the road. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

He was just way ahead of his time. But I still see many discrepancies between even those who really do want to do the best thing for our world.

Some say we don’t have enough food to feed the world, so we shouldn’t be planting trees on fertile quarters. Others say that we are messing up the climate by clearing trees. Others clear trees for charcoal so people can cook, as in Zambia.

If they had power, they wouldn’t need charcoal, which is a whole other topic.

The more I think, talk and read about this topic, the more confused I get!

We spent a week with my family in Cecil Lake, the B.C. North Peace Country. After a serious drought last year things are looking much better now. There won’t be bumper crops this year either but they could be decent. My brother was pretty happy with the silage he made. In the week we were there they got a much needed 1.5 inches of rain.

The crops along the Emerson Trail, near Grande Prairie, Alta., are suffering from the drought. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

But driving there and back again was pretty depressing. Most of the country is still really dry. Today we drove to the Edmonton airport to pick up our son and his wife from Switzerland. Things haven’t improved much since we last drove through there four weeks ago. As I said then looking down from the plane, “something is badly wrong here.”

Pastures are grazed bare, canola isn’t covering the stubble and is starting to bloom. Many Alberta communities have declared an agricultural disaster. I feel for the farmers. I know many farmers in the Westlock area don’t carry crop insurance because they rarely have a disaster. With input prices where they are, this is going to hurt.

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Pastor Jessy from Mpongwe, Zambia, sent us an email last week: “About the women loans there are a lot of good surprises. One lady from Nkumbu branch has really surprised the District considering that this is just a small and new branch. Before three months finishes this Lady has made about K500,000 that is minus the starting capital (K200,000). The business she started with was selling charcoal to Kitwe. She started with only 5 bags.

Nkumbu church member, she might be the one that received the business loan. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

Generally all the Ladies are doing fine, l am confident that we shall collect all the money by end of July and sign the papers of first payment and then give them back money once more for the last intake.”

Back in March we taught these women some basic business principles. Later we decided to stick to farming projects for loans – after all, we were farmers and we were a little anxious about spreading ourselves too thin.

The women were quite upset when they heard that. “Marianne taught us about business and now they don’t want to give us loans for business. That can’t be.” Well, we were kind of stuck, weren’t we! So we decided to give 200,000 Zambian Kwachas each to ten women – that’s about Cdn$50 per woman.

They were anxious to get the money at the time (May 2009) as this was the season for business. The corn harvest starts in May to the end of June, and then people have money for awhile. The women wanted to cash in on that.

In development work we are often told that women are the most likely to succeed in business, most likely to return loans and also most likely to use the profit for the good of their family.

This project seems to substantiate that. Well, I am sure glad we gave those women that money! I look forward to meeting with them next time we’re there and hearing their stories.

Is it raining outside my window? – Just wishful thinking. It’s the sprinkler. I’m watering the garden, hoping that will bring on rain.  Maybe I should wash my windows and the car too – it might be more effective. I think we Canadians have a superstitious root too, not just the Africans!

There is much talk in the world about the whole food versus fuel issue. We often discussed it in Zambia, where thousands of hectares are being planted to Jatropha, a tree specially used to produce biofuel. Contrary to what many would like to make us believe, Jatropha is not just being planted on marginal soil, but on some of the best land in Zambia, in Africa itself.

Natural Resources Canada has reforested this fertile quarter as a response to climate change. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

We saw more of that happening in Europe. As we drove through the Rhein valley along the border between France and Germany, the fertile valley was seeded mostly to corn – not to feed the world, but to feed the big silos beside biodiesel plants. Many feel this is unethical. While the World Food Bank talks about a looming food shortage for the earth’s masses, some of the most fertile acres are being seeded to plants for fuel.

The whole debate came close to home today for me. A quarter of land down the road was planted to trees some years ago. I didn’t think too much of it, really. Today we decided to stop and read the sign beside the fence: “This plantation is part of the Government of Canada’s response to climate change. Natural Resources Canada’s Canadian Forest Service in partnership with the local landowner established this plantation to promote afforestation for carbon sequestration and fibre production.”

This quarter is part of the most fertile land in this area, some of the most fertile land in Alberta. Just some twenty kilometers north the land becomes more marginal, moving into swamp and then north of that grey wooded soil which is mostly cattle country.

This quarter is just adjacent to the reforested one, and will produce a good crop of canola, if it ever rains. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

Farmers continue to clear land of trees in that marginal area while trees are planted on some of the most fertile soil. More of the same of what is happening in Africa and Europe? Unethical, perhaps?

There was a website on the sign: www.nrcan.gc.ca/cfs-scf/ I checked out the site, and found that this could be part of a research plot related to learning more about climate change and its affect on the forest, etc.  But those words ‘carbon sequestration’ sound very much like carbon credit trading to me.

My Dad was very upset last summer when he learned that some of the best land in his community, Cecil Lake, B.C. (North Peace River country) was sold to a European company to use as carbon credits. At the time I told him that if farmers can make more money growing trees than a crop, why not? He didn’t like to hear that!

He and many like him spent a good part of their lives wrestling that land from the wild and making it fit to grow grain. I remember spending summers picking roots while other kids got to go play baseball. Now the next generation is turning it back to trees. At the same time farmers and ranchers continue to clear land in the more marginal areas of the community.

Couldn’t the treed land be sold to companies for carbon credits instead of reforesting fertile land and continuing the clearing of more marginal land? I’ll have to look into this more.

It’s dry out there

I don’t like to drive through the countryside when the pastures aren’t turning green, the tiny canola is turning blue, and the sun beats down mercilessly. You’d think since we rented out the farm the weather shouldn’t stress me. It doesn’t, not like it used to, but I still hurt with my neighbours.

Last week I complained it was too cold. Now it’s very warm, but without the much needed rain it feels like a bad joke.

Farmers are still feeding cows as they wait for rain so pastures can grow. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

The drought is especially tough on cattle farmers – although there are less of them than there used to be. Several of our neighbours have quit with cattle, or are selling off their herds. They just haven’t been making any money and don’t see any point in continuing.

Smerychinski’s down the road turned their pasture into crop land. Every spring since we’ve been here – that’s sixteen years now – little calves have cavorted beside their mamas in that quarter section that’s just a bog, we thought. Peter must think it can’t do worse in crop than it did in cattle. Their cattle enterprise was a name among ranchers.

Triple Creek Farms sold all their replacement heifers this spring, and a good number of cow/calf pairs. Valerie Seatter says it’s a funny feeling. They’ve always had cattle. Out feeding the remaining cattle Sunday morning – the birds singing, the sun warm on the fresh leaves – Richard wondered how life would be without cows.

A buffalo herd with its young ones near Neerlandia, Alta. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

Tim and Maureen Kubinec sold the rest of their cattle last fall. Tim has worked with cattle most of his life. Maureen says they never missed the cows one bit. She is sure the land will do much better in crop than it has in the last years as pasture.

Maybe it won’t this year. If it doesn’t rain soon it’s not likely to be a bumper crop. Robert likes to remind me though, that in our area grain farmers do better in a dry year than a wet one. I’ve worried my way through a lot of weather, and we’ve always made it through somehow. I’m sure the farmers will make it through this one too – most of them, anyway.

My brother dairy farms up in the B.C. side of the Peace Country. He says he’ll be starting to make grass silage next week.

“What have you got to cut?” I asked him. He says the grass has just bounded out of the ground in the last two weeks. They had a good soaker rain a couple weeks ago and the grass grew well. I hope they’re making enough hay up there for this part of the world too!

I’m happy for him. Last year that area of the country was in a major drought. They can use a better year.

I’m going out to turn on the sprinkler. At least I can water my garden!

Flying over the farmland towards Edmonton last Thursday I said to Robert, “there’s something wrong down there.” It’s not because we’ve just come from Switzerland where the canola pods are leaning heavily, and the first barley is already starting to turn colour. After all, we know those are winter crops.

Everything, including the crops, is several weeks behind - barley field in front of our house. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

No, it’s more than that. It is June, right? Shouldn’t it be green down there? There can’t be that much summer fallow.

Driving the 200 kilometers home from the airport we get a closer look. There are some wheat fields that are an even green now, but they’re in the minority. Even from the road many fields look like they’re just seeded.

Later we learn some canola fields were reseeded due to frost damage. Most are just very late. Farmers were happy to get their crops in quite early after the late winter. Now they’re concerned because it’s taking them such a long time to grow. Our growing season is so short here – we can get frost again late August, although usually it waits until mid September.

Not even the weeds want to grow in this cold weather. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

Harold Huising phoned me from Innisfail. He and his wife Johanna moved down there last summer and he’s running a market garden together with his daughter-in-law Beth. He’s pretty discouraged. The zucchini and other squash have frozen twice already and the tomatoes he planted last week froze too. The strong winds blew the cover cloths around so that the seeded crops underneath were damaged. The year hasn’t started out well for him.

Everyone tells us it’s the coldest spring in a long time. I felt it when I poked my head out the door Friday morning – only three degrees Celcius! This morning there was a light frost. That isn’t quite conducive to growing conditions. The long range weather report is for warmer temperatures. Together with the 15 millimeters of rain we got Friday that could improve things quickly. Let’s hope so!

In my garden – seeded for me with love by my wonderful neighbour –  not even the weeds are growing well. Nothing is really, except spinach – and rhubarb. I made a rhubarb torte and invited our neighbours for coffee yesterday. This is a recipe I received over 20 years ago from my sister-in-law in Switzerland who received it from a friend who got it from the Alsace, France. The torte has delighted us and our guests every spring since.

When we were in the Alsace a week ago at the wedding, this cake was one of the desserts served. I was pleased to find it is an Alsace specialty offered at most restaurants and bakeries at this time of year. So for those of you with a rhubarb patch who like to bake, here’s the recipe:

Alsace Rhubarb Meringue Torte

This specialty of the Alsace, France, can be baked up by every Canadian farm woman! (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

Cream together: 3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
Pinch of salt
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp. milk

Add:             1 2/3 cup flour (I’ve used whole wheat flour)
2 tsp. baking powder
Mix, and roll out or press into a round cake form, spring form, or tart form. (22 cm or more)

Spread 2 tbsp. crushed nuts over the dough.

Add: 2-3 cups of chopped rhubarb. Bake at 200 (350) degrees C. for 15 minutes.

Mix:     1 egg yolk
3 tbsp. sugar
100 ml. thin cream

Pour over rhubarb in crust. Return to oven and bake another 20 minutes.

Meringue:  3 eggwhites
Pinch salt
2-3 tbsp. sugar

Whip until stiff peaks form. Pile on rhubarb torte. Bake for another 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

I’m hanging in the air – literally, somewhere over the far northeast of Canada. Figuratively I hang between my three worlds – Zambia, Switzerland, and Alberta. When we first got back to Switzerland people often asked me: ‘Bisch scho aacho?” (dialect for – have you arrived?) What they’re really asking is: “has your spirit arrived, have you come to terms with your different worlds?

Will the contact with Harold, our Canadian development co-worker, affect the future of these Mpongwe boys? (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

My corporate brother-in-law says he thinks the most clearly in the air between worlds. I’ve learned to take these hours as an opportunity to ‘leave and arrive’ – to assess the time behind, and think about the time before. Mostly I ‘leave’.

We are often asked “Do you feel you were able to achieve something in Zambia?” It’s a question that plagues any development worker, I think. Did we do enough, did we do it right, did we do more harm than good? How can we ever know?

Pastor Jessy emailed us that the women in Mpongwe have not all received their loans for a small business yet, because some of them don’t know what business to do. I wish we had more time with them to discuss their plans. Shouldn’t we have given more training first? Sometimes we think they are ready when they’re not. Sometimes they’re more ready than we think.

Mr. Mate, chairman of Bukuumo cooperative emailed us that they couldn’t get a quorum for their last meeting. Did interest die again when we left? Have the women given up hope without me there to cheer them on? I never did get the invoices to be able to do a proper audit. Why wouldn’t Tito give them to me??? I guess I was too naïve – I fully expected him to get me the invoices and waited too long to take action.

The loose ends that needed to be tied up to completely finish the building project at Heart of Africa Mission are still loose. Robert fully expected them to finish in two weeks. They did finish the money – they used most of it for wages. They couldn’t put that many hours of work into those two weeks if they tried! But then, who am I to say something? We used several times that amount in four days enjoying ourselves in London. They needed the wages to feed their families.

What will the future hold for this girl - have we helped to change anything for her? (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

So we wonder. We know it is unrealistic to expect everything to work great, the way we would like it to. But experience tells us most of the 10 women receiving loans will succeed. The building project at HAM will finish at least to the point where the toilet/shower block is usable. And hopefully Bukuumo will get a new treasurer.

We know that mindsets have been affected, are changing; people are thinking new thoughts. Ultimately that’s what we want. One Canadian also working with farm cooperatives in Africa said that our biggest contribution is probably the encouragement we bring to the Zambian farmers. When I look at it that way, I can honestly say, “Yes, we have achieved something.”

That’s pretty good for a three month stint. And anyway, would I have achieved more if I’d stayed home in Canada for that time?

Bonjour. Comment ca va? C’est tres bien. My mother-in-law enjoyed herself so much she wanted to stay a week! I think she loved having all her seven children and their spouses around her for two days. She was sure she’d packed her own suitcase!

Our group enjoys the inside of one of the courtyards of Mittelbergheim, Alsace. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

The Alsace and the wedding were wonderful. So were the wines which were all from local vineyards.  After the wedding ceremony in Rosheim at the ancient stone L’eglise St. Paul et St. Pierre, we enjoyed an apero in the courtyard of a former farmhouse. Alsace villages were once mostly farm buildings in a U-shape around a courtyard and a gate leading in. The front of the buildings with the gate joined to the next farmyard  and formed a solid wall to the village street. One of the delights of wandering through the villages is peaking in through these gates. Often this is where the wine tasting takes place, or restaurants have their outdoor seating, or a wedding apero is hosted.

The garcon asked me what I would like to drink. “Un vin rouge, s’il vous plait.” (I did take three years of French in high school.)  He obligingly brought me a glass.

Roses in front of one of the churches of Mittelbergheim, Alsace. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

That’s when I noticed no one else around me was drinking red wine. Oh, oh – a serious faux pas? My sister-in-law: “You asked for red wine? Don’t you know you don’t drink red wine until at least four o’clock?”

Sorry, I grew up in the northern Canadian bush drinking rhubarb and dandelion wine.

But I did enjoy the Champagne from Christian Lassaigne-Berlot as the appetizer, the Pinot Gris 2007 from Francois Platz, Bergheim with the Buffet de Hors d’oeuvre, and the Chateau Meric 2006 – a Bordeaux from Graves – with the Mignon de porc aux baies rouges.

There are many wineries in every village, the trim rows of vineyards covering the surrounding hills. We visited Mittelbergheim on Sunday afternoon. Many of the courtyard gates were open, inviting visitors in for wine tasting. One village has a different farmer every day set up a wine tasting booth in the village square.

Ripening cherries in front of an Alsace farmyard. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

I was delighted to see the first ripe cherries. The Alsace has some fine orchards alongside their vineyards. Westhoffen just to the west of Strasbourg is the cherry capital, hosting a cherry festival every year in mid June. I slipped around a building to take a picture of a tree full of ripe cherries. Yes, I did eat one. But only one!

On our way home we passed many a cherry stand, some also offering fresh strawberries which are in season too, and asparagus, whose season is coming to an end soon.

It was a lovely time to spend a weekend in the Alsace. The wine, the cheese, the cherries, the climbing roses spilling over brick walls, and a wonderful family to share it all with.

Tonight is the beginning of the Pentecost long weekend. It’s also the beginning of long traffic jams in front of the Gotthard tunnel. The tunnel is the main connection to southern Switzerland with its Italian villages tucked between high mountains and narrow lakes.

An old stone village high up on the Italian side of the Swiss Alps. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

One of the wonders of Switzerland is its diversity of cultures, languages and geography. The northern side of the Alps is mostly German in language and culture, hilly with some plains. Western Switzerland, well known for its fine wines, is French all the way down to Geneva where the UN has its headquarters. There is a small Romansch community on the east boundary, in the mountains. On the south side of the Alps is the Tessin, where palm trees and rhododendron grow, and you order ‘uno espresso con latte’.

The Alsace is a popular tourist region, here is a canal in the town of Colmar. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

All of this is squeezed into a country that fits into Alberta, Canada 16 times. If a tiny country like Switzerland can support four cultures and languages – every product is labeled in German, French and Italian – and live peaceably, why shouldn’t Canada be able to work with two languages and cultures? Doesn’t the ethnic diversity add richness to our country too?

We’re going to the Alsace, the northeastern corner of France, for Robert’s brother Dani’s wedding. Dani and Emma booked a hotel for the weekend and turned the wedding into a family reunion. The weather promises to be quite nice, so the Alsace should present itself in all its touristic beauty. It’s wine country, with a string of picturesque villages strung out along the Vogesen – the foothills on which the vineyards thrive.

This is the village where the Swiss Gruyere cheese comes from, in the French area of Switzerland. (Photo by Marianne Stamm)

Robert’s mom keeps saying she’s not going. She’s 86 now, with some dementia, and the idea of staying away from home for two nights did not make her happy! I sent her off with Robert to buy some flowers and packed a suitcase for his parents. I feel bad being so sneaky about it, but she’s a lot easier to live with if she’s not upset the whole time. By tomorrow evening, she’ll be enjoying herself and hopefully forget she wanted to go home.

I can hear voices – they’re back. The closet doors are all closed again, no telltale signs anywhere, I hope! It’s not easy to be old, even in beautiful Switzerland.