Encouraging the next generation to get its hands dirty

by Dag Falck

Farming is a tough business—I don’t need to convince you of that. But as seasoned farmers will tell you, there is a deep satisfaction in cultivating nourishment out of clods of earth. The question is: with the inherent challenges of farming, how do we get the next generation back to the land?

Before we even look at how a young person would get his or her hands on enough cash for a down payment on a farm, let’s consider what the ideal would-be farmer looks like. We’ll call our protegé Sally. Sally has not been pampered and hasn’t been handed too many opportunities. If she has, she will not have the stamina to overcome obstacles and push through long hours of labour. She doesn’t want what most young folks her age want: cars, money, cellphones, and nice clothes (if she does, she’s lost). She doesn’t need approval for her choices. Sally doesn’t settle for mediocre, and neither does she give up in the face of long, drawn-out struggle.

The thing is, all of this is not enough: Sally also has to be an incredibly clever businesswoman, know her customer intimately, outsmart her competition, and master delivery and presentation like a pro, all while being a master financial planner. She does all this because she cares deeply about nurturing the Earth—seeing the seeds sprout, growing a bountiful harvest, and sharing it with her satisfied customers.

Her challenge will also be picking the right marketing mix. Is it going to be a market garden selling through a CSA (community-supported agriculture) box program or at the farmer’s market? Is it selling specialty products to restaurants or volumes of potatoes and leeks?

But let’s get back to the land—how can we help Sally? Ideally, she’s not attached to owning the land. Because unless she’s independently wealthy, she’ll have to become, say, an engineer or doctor first, then buy a nice little parcel of land once she decides to retire and start a hobby farm (don’t laugh, I know you are out there). Her other options are a) farming someone else’s land or b) forming or joining some kind of co-operative.

Co-operatives like the Land Conservancy (TLC) offer opportunities to match farmers with land, while protecting the land from being taken out of agricultural production. Joining a community farm also means farmers with different skillsets can come together to work the land collectively. One member may be the “marketing guru” with connections, and another may be the “motivator,” getting the field teams working together and with momentum. Yet another may be the “number nerd,” taking care of cash flow and equipment financing. The other nice thing about co-operatives is that they involve members of the community in gardening, harvesting, and food preservation, giving them a hands-on experience of sustainability in action.

In the city, farming other people’s backyards (in exchange for produce) is another way to get on the land. This is becoming increasingly popular. Sally would have the support of many landowners who wanted to see her business thrive.

So if farming is the song in your heart, there are many ways to get your hands dirty—whether you’re a marketing guru, a number nerd, or simply one who thrills at hard work and providing an invaluable service to society.

Why fair-trade, organic chocolate is so sweet

by Dag Falck

Oh, chocolate, that sweet indulgence.

Do we love it because we think of it as sinful, slightly forbidden? Because we think it’s bad for us—yet surely a little won’t kill us?

Actually, our fantasy that we are getting away with something when we take a bite of chocolate may be just that—a fantasy. We may like the idea of sneaking a little forbidden pleasure, but in fact this myth is about to be busted: the truth is that chocolate can be very good for you. But not just any chocolate, mind you.

Cheap, mass-produced chocolate is mostly made up of refined sugar, artificial flavours, high-cholesterol polyunsaturated fats, and hydrogenated oils, which offer no health benefits. Even great-tasting milk chocolate will do nothing to enhance your health.

What’s more, cocoa is one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the world. A pile of pesticides is used on non-organic cocoa plantations, including chemicals that cause cancer, genetic harm, plus developmental and neurological damage (especially significant since kids tend to eat a lot of chocolate).

However, the list of health benefits associated with high-grade, certified organic, dark (more than 70 per cent cocoa) chocolate will have you popping truffles like vitamins—OK, not quite. Chocolate contains vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, vitamin C, copper, calcium, phosphorous, iron, magnesium, zinc, manganese, vitamin E, and, most impressively, high levels of polyphenols and flavonoids—powerful antioxidants that power-charge your health. A cup of dark hot chocolate contains nearly twice the antioxidants of a glass of red wine and up to three times those found in a cup of green tea.

Moreover, dark chocolate has very little caffeine but lots of theobromine, a close cousin of caffeine, which provides the latter’s health benefits—it increases both metabolism and mental alertness—but none of its negative effects. Plus, cocoa stimulates key neurotransmitters like serotonin, tryptophan, and dopamine, nutrients that can suppress appetite and reduce food cravings. Finally, cocoa butter is a good fat—just be sure to reduce other fats in your diet to compensate when you eat chocolate.

So if chocolate really is good for us, then shouldn’t it also be good for those who provide it to us? Unfortunately, a lot of chocolate is produced under harsh and unethical conditions. If we make no special effort to find out which brands of chocolate are produced in such conditions before we buy, there is a big chance that we will be supporting exploitation of farmers.

Buying fair-trade-certified chocolate is one sure way to know what you are and are not supporting. Certified by TransFair Canada (trans fair.ca), fair-trade options assure consumers that farmers are not only treated ethically, but that they receive many other benefits such as clean water, guaranteed fair prices, premiums paid to improve social conditions in producer communities, no forced or child labour, and support for sustainable, healthy communities and habitats (bird friendly, for example). To top it all off, their products are certified organic.

So, if you want to make a difference to the environment, increase biodiversity, treat farmers well, and personally benefit from some amazing, health-boosting, organic, fair-trade chocolate, go right ahead—but you’ll have to keep on searching for that perfect sin.

Dag Falck is a self-declared health nut and a firm believer in karma—but he admits he enjoys rich, luscious, organic, dark chocolate purely for its taste.

Canada’s new organic regulations

by Dag Falck

You may have heard that Canada will soon have its own national organic regime. When you wake up on July 1, you can begin to appreciate the countless volunteer hours put in by organic folk to create a whole new department of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which will enforce the Organic Products Regulation being implemented June 30.

What? you say. You thought we already had organic all around us. Every store now carries at least some organic, so what’s new?

What’s new is that, after many attempts, most of the organic sector and the government have come together to create organic regulations, or standards, in Canada. This means that organic products traded across the provinces or coming from other countries will need to be consistent with the Canadian Organic Regime (COR). It also means we’ll no longer be riding on the shirttails of the United States’s organic regulations, as we’ve been doing since they came out in 2002. It’s not that we aren’t thankful to our neighbour for letting us use their system, but hey, now we’ll have our own, eh?

As things are now, consumers cannot be sure if products claiming to be organic have been properly certified. It’s not uncommon to find products on store shelves that make organic claims without consistent labelling components such as the name of the certifier and appropriate category of organic (see “What the Labels Will Mean” below). Also, currently there is little that can be done about inaccurately labelled products. But come July 1, eaters across the country will know that all federally regulated organic products are following the same standard, and they can expect to see consistent and accurate labelling.

The Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) owns the organic standards. The board has developed strict, practical, and workable benchmarks for organic growing and manufacturing by working closely with the Organic Technical Committee (made up of about 60 experienced folk from every aspect of the organic production community). Following the standard will be required by the COR.

An organic product will need to be certified if it is coming from outside of B.C. Organic goods produced locally will not need to follow the COR, but if you want organic you can trust, then it needs to be certified. Products certified through the Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia (COABC—the last acronym, I promise) follow the same standard as the COR. When purchasing local goods, either buy direct from a farmer you know or look for the B.C. checkmark (the logo appears on p. 38), which guarantees the national standard has been adhered to. SV

As chair of the CGSB’s Permitted Substances List (PSL) working group, Dag Falck is intimately involved with Canada’s organic standards work. His biggest challenge has been overcoming his dyslexia when working with acronyms.

B.C. cows give it up, organic style.

by Dag Falck

My fascination with cheese started when I was a child. In Norway, where I grew up, I visited farms where 30 to 40 goats would spend the summer being milked by milkmaids. The milk from several days’ milking would be separated into whey and curd. Norwegian goat cheese (gtetost: pronounced yet-oast) is made by slowly cooking the whey over a fire in a very large cauldron. The milkmaids would stir this all day (for days) with their big wooden paddles. The resulting cheese is brown and sweet; it has an acquired taste that, once appreciated, will always be loved. Sometimes it is mixed with cow’s whey for a milder taste.

Maybe this is what led me to seek an education in agriculture (I’m an agronomist) and later work for several farms as their “dairy herdsman.” The intimacy of leaning up against the flank of a warm cow while hand-milking her, smelling the barn smells while the cats stood and waited for their share, are fond memories. But unfortunately this is often not the modern picture of milking cows.

Needing to earn a living, I worked for conventional dairy barns with up to 350 cows, where I learned that farming is not “automatically” romantic. The cows in these operations rarely, if ever, see a pasture. They spend most of their existence being milked two or three times a day, eating hay, silage, and grains (some genetically modified) to produce the energy needed for milk production. They are confined to barns with concrete floors with a few stalls where they can sleep or lie down to chew the cud.

For me the logical option was “organic,” where the cows are required to have access to pasture and are treated with natural health aids instead of antibiotics. And consider this: an organic cow eats only certified organic feed. That’s much more organic than even the most committed human!

Of course, the organic cow’s health starts with the health of the soil. If their pasture is naturally fertilized and mineralized (with seaweed or volcanic ash, for instance), the health transfers to the cows (or goats), and that in turn transfers to the milk or cheese. Finally, it has a healthy effect on you when you eat it.

Luckily there are now several organic dairies in B.C. producing cheese. The scales are smaller than those of their non-organic commercial counterparts. Farms like Moonstruck Organic Cheese Inc. on Salt Spring Island have only a few cows and take exceptionally good care of each. They are known by names, not numbers; they have personalities and are valued as the key contributing members to the “farm business.”

From one simple main ingredient—milk—hundreds of different cheeses can be created. Cheesemaking is truly an art form, and cheeses can be as individual as the talented people (and cows!) who make them. Cheeses with names like Blossom’s Blue, White Moon, Baby Blue, and Ash-Ripened Camembert look and taste as individual as they sound. Mild or strong, soft or hard (or smelly)—there is a cheese for every taste.

Best of all, by supporting this “romantic” organic version of farming, you are getting a final product free of antibiotics, genetic engineering, food colouring, and unhappy confinement for the cows.

Dag Falck’s wish is to liberate all cows from factory farming and introduce them to the good (organic) life, where they can kick up their heels in non-GMO pastures.

Perfect food plants to grow indoors.

by Dan Falck

With gardening season pretty much over and the cold and dark season lying ahead, I’m starting my “inside gardening.” That means moving some of my food plants indoors as well as sprouting a few new ones. And yes, you too can grow herbs and tomatoes in the dead of winter.

Your first consideration is dirt. Take some from the garden before it’s all frozen or mucky (if you don’t have garden soil, you can substitute potting mix). If you have any well-aged compost, you can bring in some of this, too.

Remember that the micro-organisms in the soil will do wonders for your plants indoors as well as outdoors, so you want to make sure the soil and compost do not dry out. Until you’re ready to plant, you may want to store them in a bucket with a lid. Also, get some perlite and peat moss; they both lighten the mix and hold moisture well so you won’t have to water your plants as often.

For nutrition, the compost will do the trick. For minerals, I add five to eight (crushed) Norwegian kelp supplement pills (available in the health supplement section of your favourite store) to every one gallon of mix. Don’t forget to take some of these yourself, too; they boost your immune system.

When you’re ready to mix, use three parts soil, one part compost, one part peat moss, and one part perlite. Add only enough water to moisten lightly.

You can use any container—fancy, decorative, expensive, or cheap—but containers three to four inches deep work best. I like to recycle, and this is a great opportunity to use some of the excessive plastic that surrounds us, like the big tubs salad greens come in. (They’re roomy enough to be mini greenhouses when the lids are on.)

For bigger containers, fill with soil to within three-quarters of an inch of the top.

Light is important. A south- or southeast-facing window is ideal. You can also supplement with artificial lights (see options at homeharvest.com/lightingmain.htm).

Now, which plants tickle your fancy? From simple to challenging, here are a few you may want to try.

• Sprouts (alfalfa, lentils, broccoli, etc.): no soil needed; kits and lots of “how to” info are available.
• Lettuces: plant seeds in two to four inches of soil. They grow quickly and taste just as delicious grown inside as outside.
• Herbs: plant from seed or bring your perennials (such as basil, oregano, tarragon, and rosemary) indoors, and put in pots.
• Peppers: grow little ones if space is an issue (they get up to a foot high, eight inches wide); larger peppers can grow up to two feet and need more heat to ripen.
• Fruit: for tomatoes, choose a dwarf cherry variety, unless you live in a mansion.
• Exotics: banana, avocado, and citrus all grow indoors, but it’s challenging to get them to bear fruit. Lime trees are easy to grow from seed, and the young leaves can be added to salads and curries.

As for me, this year I’m going to try something new—not to save on my food bill, but, well, just because I want to: carrots! I’m going to see if, by January, I can be eating my own fresh carrots. And I’m going to transplant my stevia roots from the garden and see if they will regrow green leaves. If they do, I’ll sweeten my carrot cake with it—and eat it, too.

Dag Falck loves gardening inside and out and believes organic principles are applicable to both. How much more local and organic can you get?

Local, healthy eating all year-round.

by Dag Falck

It used to be that Grandma was busy this time of year “putting up” food. Even though this had a certain charm, I also remember an intensity of “this is serious business!” Back when she had a family to feed, the produce grown in her garden, fresh berries from the fields, and even bartered foods with neighbours got transformed into storable forms so they would last well into winter and even spring. If she didn’t do this, the family might have had nothing to eat.

I’m getting serious about eating locally year-round. But slaving over a hot stove pickling cukes, handling large pots of boiling water and dozens of Mason jars, and measuring pickling salt is too much work. For me, it’s not about survival, but rather the pleasure of eating local, tasty, healthy, and uniquely personal food.

Having said that, I have a number of options. Labour-intensive preserving includes pickling onions, hot peppers, and other produce, fermenting cabbage to make sauerkraut, and canning whole tomatoes. Slightly less onerous tasks would be sealing vats of jams and jellies in tight jars. Much easier, and the thing I prefer, is simply storing beets, carrots, and potatoes in sacks in underground cold storage. No cold storage? Here’s how to make one:

Take a tub and put a layer of sand or sawdust on the bottom. Then put down a layer of crop, leaving some space between each root vegetable. Cover with a few inches of sand/sawdust, lay down your next layer of vegetables, and repeat till you get to the top. This keeps the moisture level perfect. Keep in a cool place (even outside is OK, as long as the tub is sheltered and protected from heavy frost).

Living a modern lifestyle doesn’t usually include pickling crocks or root cellars, but freezing and drying are popular ways to preserve food, and both are top-notch when it comes to safeguarding taste and nutrition.

When freezing berries you can use the individual quick frozen (IQF) method, which will yield whole, firm berries in February. Simply put a single layer of berries on a cookie tray (with edges) and put it in the freezer. When the berries are hard, slip them into a food storage bag and keep in the freezer—done! For making smoothies or syrups, save time by putting blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries straight into small storage bags and freeze. Then use the whole bag.

Sweet peppers are easy to simply chop up, bag, and freeze. Hot peppers can be hung with sewing thread by the fireplace mantle as Mexican-style decor while drying. Once they are dry, put them in the blender and you have your own hot spice.

Crushed tomatoes can be boiled down in a big pot at low heat for many hours and bagged and frozen when cooled. Surprise everyone by using cherry tomatoes for this; your dinner guests will want to know how you got your tomato sauce so tasty and sweet. Blanching for four minutes does it for beans, corn, and carrots. Just remember, never thaw frozen vegetables before cooking; put them straight into whatever dish you are preparing. This preserves their texture and taste.

Eggplant and zucchini won’t freeze whole, but they are great as part of a pre-made dish. If you have access to a variety of veggies, make your favourite stew and freeze in bags ready to heat and serve. Start now to explore how far you can stretch “local” into winter and spring.

Dag Falck and his wife Elina grow their own organic garden and are building an underground cold storage to stretch the garden’s bounty well into winter.

Thoughtful brown bagging for everybody

by Dag Falck

If you were to make coming up with one week’s worth of delicious, healthy, and fun lunches your most important project, where would you start? First, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:

• What do you want? Well, you want to have a meal that will last you until supper (or at least till your mid-afternoon snack), right? And you want it to be healthy and tasty.
• What do you not want? Remember, a truly healthy meal does not contain GMOs, pesticide residues, artificial preservatives, or hydrogenated fats (organic accomplishes all this and more). If you’re vegetarian, you don’t want meat, fish, or fowl. If you’re vegan, no egg, milk, cheese, or honey. And if you have food allergies, the list grows.

Oh, and perhaps you’re like me: I’m sensitive to gluten, food colouring makes me hyper, and MSG gives me a headache. Looks like you’ll need a spreadsheet to figure this all out. Argh—already it’s no fun. And “fun” is on the list. But you can keep it simple and cut out the hand-wringing by making whole foods choices from many places. Here’s my own plan of attack:

When I make my lunches, I first turn to my own organic garden (how’s yours coming along?). Second to my own backyard, I select any organic products from farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture associations (CSAs), or farm-gate (buying produce directly from a farm). Alternatively, I sometimes shop for fresh organics in local natural food stores. Overall, the idea is to prepare meals from whole foods.

If I find I need to save time, I will consider supermarkets, delis, and prepared and processed foods—choosing organic foods when available. At the end of the line (I try not to cross it) are processed, non-organic junk foods.

Realistically, I end up eating from a variety of these sources, but I try to always stay conscious of aiming high. Most importantly, I remind myself that convenience is a trade-off for awareness.

Brown Bag Strategies

Now that I’ve met all my needs in what I want and don’t want, let’s start packing lunch. Here are some key rules of thumb that I find helpful:

• Make more for supper so you have leftovers.
• Stock up on foods that are easy to tote—fruit, cucumber, celery, peppers, and berries, for instance.
• Have on hand an assortment of organic breads, pita pockets, and crackers (non-gluten if you’re sensitive).
• Use organic spreads (hummus, nut butters, pepper paste, pâté, avocadoes, etc.).

So, take some leftovers from supper, and supplement them with a sandwich, pita pocket, crackers, and/or salad. For a fast and delicious Greek salad, combine a handful of olives, chopped cucumber and tomatoes, some feta cheese (leave out if you’re vegan), and a drizzle of lemon juice.

For a quick and tasty pita pocket: cut up a veggie burger, and add mustard, lettuce, sprouts, and cheese (again, simply leave the cheese out if you’re vegan).

Add a dessert of fruit or the ever-popular “bumps on a log.” (Don’t know about these? They’re celery sticks spread with nut butter and topped with raisins.)
If my lunch bag takes me a little longer to prepare, and looks different enough that people comment on it at lunchtime, I know it’s because I put extra energy into my own health and happiness. It’s a great excuse to talk about it with others. Take it from me: bumps on a log keeps the conversation going.

Organics expert Dag Falck is the life of the party—especially when it comes to potlucks.

Demystifying the Big ‘O’ - What is a truly organic experience?

by Dag Falck

How did Grandma keep her garden healthy and productive year after year? Her approach was probably not that different from today’s organic agriculture methods. Like organic growers, Grandma grew and processed her veggies in harmony with nature. She didn’t expose them to chemical fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, irradiation, harsh solvents, sewage sludge, or artificial preservatives or colours. And, of course, no genetic engineering.

Admittedly, all farmers—big and small, whether they raise grains, vegetables, or fruits—face the same challenges. They lie awake at night thinking about how to overcome pest attacks, diseases, and competition from weeds. The soil also has to be fertile in order for the plants to grow. Every successful farmer knows that without addressing these concerns, they might as well throw in their hoe.

In non-organic farming over the last 40 to 50 years, these challenges have been solved—mostly by applying the solutions that organic farming has rejected: chemical fertilizer for soil fertility and pesticides for bugs and weeds. Additionally, processors of non-organic foods add “freshness” with artificial preservatives and bright, artificial colours.

Is there something intrinsically wrong with non-organic approaches? That’s a matter of opinion, but here are the facts:

• Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are produced by fossil fuels.
• Fossil fuel reserves are finite; they will run out one day.
• Most pesticides are toxic to insects, birds, and micro-organisms in the soil.
• Most pesticides cause toxic runoff, which pollutes streams and aquifers.
• Pesticides are hazardous to those applying them.

Organic avoids all this, yet it’s a successful farming system—a method that not only yields food free of the above issues, but also avoids their Earth-ravaging side effects.

With organic farming, it’s easy to keep the soil rich and fertile—and it’s often cheaper than a bag of chemical fertilizer. Here’s why: organic farmers rotate their crops and fertilize the soil with seaweed, alfalfa, composted manure, or “green manure.” A green manure crop (it has nothing to do with actual manure) is a crop such as clover or vetch that’s grown and turned back into the soil. Green manure can add more pounds per acre of nitrogen than any farmer could afford to add from a bag.

But how did Grandma manage pests? Simple: she had a balanced ecosystem in her garden, where one bug ate another and where one plant exuded a repellent that benefited another plant. When bugs did become pests, she either lived with them, handpicked them, or devised various traps—none of which left toxic residues in the soil, water, or air.

Organic growers listened to Grandma, and even on large-scale farms they now plant crops in a rotation system to encourage diverse insect cycles. Organic farmers plant hedgerows to attract birds and diverse species of insects, which get close to the crops and eat the pests.

As for weeds, in large field crop situations—grains, for example—green manure crops and crop rotation do wonders for preventative weed control, as do late seeding and pre-emergence tilling. Organic farmers often delay seeding their crop to give weeds time to sprout; then they lightly till the land and wipe out those weeds, and then plant the crop. In the garden, hand weeding, mulching, and some hoeing usually do the trick.

Simple methods like these make all the difference between success and failure for an organic farmer. Just ask Grandma.

Dag Falck, the organic program manager for Nature’s Path Foods, reveres all grandmothers who grow their own organic gardens. See Dag’s insights on organic grain farming at naturespath.com under “Organics.”

Coaxing your kids into eating healthy

by JYOTI STEPHENS

Playing with your food has to be one of the most underrated childhood activities of all time. Some of my favourite little-kid memories include plucking ripe raspberries off the vine, placing one on each fingertip, and nibbling on my berry-covered fingers. I believe this close connection to food at such a young age helped start a lifelong love affair with all things fresh and tasty.

I recently had the opportunity to see Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food, discuss some of the pressing food issues of our time. During the question-and-answer session, a young mother asked how best to get her children to try healthier foods. Pollan then told a story of how he engaged his young son in sampling new grub. At the time, his son would only eat things that were white—and dress only in clothes that were black!

Pollan summed up this desire for extreme simplicity as a reaction to the bombardment of stimuli we receive from media and advertising. So Dad’s technique of engaging his son was really quite simple: he invited him to cook with him. This invitation opened up a previously closed door to the joy of food. Pollan believes that in allowing your children to play with their food, you engage them in creating a closer relationship with all the possibilities and beauty that food holds.

Inviting children into the world of food can start from the seed and move up to the salad bowl. Beginning with a small herb garden that includes hearty plants like parsley and thyme can be a great way to engage children in growing food. Planting seeds with the kids in your life, and setting aside time to check the growth of the plants, will allow you to spend time together while learning about gardening. If you aren’t able to grow a little garden, make visits with your kids to a farmers’ market. This will offer them a memorable opportunity to pick out the foods they’ll be eating, as well as interact with the people who grew the food.

Once you’re in the kitchen, there are plenty of appealing resources for kid-friendly recipes available both in books and online. Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen is one of my favourites; it has cute illustrations and simple yet really tasty recipes for even the pickiest preschooler. If your kids are a little older, try Katzen’s Honest Pretzels book, which has instructions on how to make your own peanut butter and a yummy recipe for easy, kid-friendly lasagna.

In a great online resource, “Bread Comes to Life” (breadcomestolife.com/bread), filmmaker George Levenson and Lily Tomlin (who narrates) help kids explore how a stock of wheat becomes bread. Through time-lapse photography and live-action footage, the film depicts the life cycle of wheat, from planting and sprouting, all the way to harvesting, and grinding into whole-grain flour. Making bread from scratch is a lesson in both science and art as kids make, mix, knead, proof, bake, and finally eat their homemade creations fresh and warm from the oven.

After you’ve enjoyed cooking and eating the bounty you’ve collected, share the fun of composting with your kids to help complete the circle. It’s a sterling lesson in seeing how what you don’t eat can help grow the food you will eat in the future. It nourishes not only the soil, but also the health and spirit of your family.

Jyoti Stephens, sustainability and stewardship manager for Nature’s Path, doesn’t have any kids of her own, so she plies her play-with-your-food approaches on her nieces and nephews.