Easy Giving to Heifer

Heifer Interntional asked me if I would help them raise money to do their good works using my blog and I said YES. But I need your help.

It's simple-click on the box to the left that has the thermometer and a big number on it. That will take you to my campaign page where you can make a donation and help me towards my goal of $1500.

I get absolutely no compensation for doing this. I am doing this because I believe strongly in the work Heifer does to alleviate poverty and hunger in the world. They do so much more than simple handouts, they give families and communities a real path out of starvation and poverty by providing livestock, plants and training to people and communities around the world.

Give a little or give a lot, any amount helps.

Killing the CSA

A few weeks ago the Free Will Astrology in the Sunday Dayton Daily news told me I would have a complete change of heart about something I really believed in. This being astrology outta the paper I thought to myself, yeah...right.

The next day I was reading a post on the marketing section of Garden Web about CSA and how ATTRA polled a lot of CSA farmers and CSA shareholders and found the two had wildly different ideas about CSA. farmers see CSA as a way to market, sure. But more importantly as a way to connect people with their food and a farm by getting them to interact with the farm. CSA members, on the other hand, see CSA as a way to support local farms by buying shares and picking them up at a drop point with little/no interaction the farm or farmer.

This has been my reality with CSA for the past 10 years (with the exception of year 3 when we had 5 members and all 5 were huge into participation and came out several times a week to help work and came to all the potlucks and other on farm events. Of course, every one of these folks moved out of the area that fall/winter so none rejoined the next season). I want a CSA that will connect the members with the soil and the members basically want a delivery service. For many years I tried to make this work in my mold and I was basically hitting my head against a wall. I would require some sort of on farm participation and would get fewer and fewer people rejoining each year because everyone wanted less interaction with the farm and more convenience. So around year 5 we started delivering the shares to remote drop points and farm interaction swiftly went away. By year 7 I could not get any members to even come to a farm dinner and this past season (year 10) I decided that if I was going to deliver I would charge dearly for that convenience because I really feel that CSA members need to see the farm where their food is grown.

So 3 weeks ago I had a talk with Eugene, who has never been very high on the CSA idea, about killing Boulder Belt CSA and he was into the idea. And after having only one member for 2006, who chose to pay a hefty price for delivery so he would not have to have any interaction with the farm, I decided it was time to put Boulder Belt CSA out of its' misery.

2 weeks ago I deleted the CSA from my Local Harvest Store and this afternoon I deleted the CSA page and all links to it on my website. It took all of 3 seconds to delete the page. It's kinda sad and kinda freeing. Yesterday I went around the web to various sites that allow free farm pages and deleted the CSA from several of those. But I am sure there are a few I have forgotten about and there is at least one I cannot update but in time Boulder Belt CSA will be gone from the net.

Bye bye CSA maybe I will visit you again some day. But until than, I will put the energy I was throwing at the CSA into the farm store and the farmers' markets

A New Look

I decided to try out NEW Look for the blog today.

Too brown? Does this mean I'm in a brown mood (wot ever that means)?

I do like the side bar being on the left and I think it is more readable. But I also think the posts are too close together. not enough space or other things separating different posts. perhaps having fewer post showing up in the page will help this out.

What do you think?

Buy Nothing for Christmas

For those of you who want to buy nothing for Christmas click on the picture to find out more. Personally, as I have already said, I will buy a few things for x-mas but they will be locally and naturally made and the bulk of the money spent on this holiday goes to charity. We would all be better off if we did not put so much emphasis on the consumerism of this season and so little on the fact this is one of the big Christian Holy Days. Just think what the Christmas season would be like for millions if they did not pressure themselves to go to malls and Buy, Buy, Buy! They would have far less debt and far less stress and would probably be far happier people.

And why have the Jews never really bought into the consumerism with Chanukah. I mean an 8 day festival should mean a cash cow to the corporations. I guess the Jews are more religious than the Christians and have kept their festival of lights a pretty much purely religious event and not the commercial event Christmas has become. Same with Kwanzaa which is also a multi-day religio-cultural affair and yet it is not a multi-day commercial event.

I guess there are many 'Murkin Christians who are just not very religious and can be swayed easily by bright pretty colors and lights. And the multinational corps such as Wal-Mart, Sears, Old Navy, JC Penny's, The Gap, Nike, LL Bean, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Citibank, etc., would have it no other way. They love it when Americans over spend and go into deep debt for no good reason. Your deep debt equates to their huge profits.

Bah!

A Rebuttal to NBC's Biased Organic Segment

This is my brother Scott's reply to NBC's segment on organic chicken being more contaminated than conventionally raised without broaching the 1001 other issues we face with agriculture. NBC's simplictic organic has more bacteria according to one small sample and therfore industrial chicken must be better/safer. Anyhoo, my brother's take on this.

Those annoying radiclibs* touting the virtues of vinegar as the answer to clean their libertine filth when we all know they need a bath in Clorox straight up. Now they want you to be nice to an industry that refuses to advertise with you. Unfair! But I'll tell you this much, When the rising price of oil makes the cost of fertilizer and fuel intensive farming, processing and distribution too high for for affordable food, with intrepid reportage such as the Today Show is capable of, we'll hold the course not to invest in local sustainable economies because that would just encourage them to continue not to use your vox populi (a service, that is, by the way, so reasonably priced for the deserving sponsors 'Americans need to hear most' (TM) and so sugared with compelling socially conscious programming).

What are they griping about?! Don't they know if the death rate from pesticide induced cancers or infant mortality went down, our population growth would look like Sudans! That's where the the Darfur region is? Hmmm. Well they probably (when they have food at all) are forced to eat organic. This just proves my point. Anyway, it's so boring TV, all those browns and tan, against stark blue skies especially those earnest appeals (yo Mr. Clooney., Whassup with that?) to acknowledge legions of starving innocents stuff makes a mockery of the pleasantness of our (well at least your) world that could be shown instead, it's just about as lame (and unAmerican) as a PSA to eliminate bread from our diet. This is not to mention that conventional farming contributes to the the obesity and neurological conditions
and a host of other maladies manifest from chemical contamination (from ingestion, handling and food chain accumulation from run-off), and lack of nutritional value from vegetables grown in mineral depleted soil, that will also contribute to weed out the weakest and most undesirable to, among other social solutions, give exurbia back to to those McMansion moguls who fought so hard to create it.

It sucks that a only a slightly elevated incidence (from the purest research that I'm sure had no financial incentive to be biased, right?) of bacterial contamination is reported when organic food is compared to conventionally grown. It's time to become motivated and haul out the yuck factor: compost, soiled clothing, manure, and hand painted signs. And they want to do it in your back yard!

I admire your courage in sticking to your corporate bottom-line to maximise
profit by coercing consumers purchasing habits in face of the ever-present
pressures of fairness and truth

Sincerely, Scott Owsley

*(S. Agnew circa 1970)

Have a Heifer Christmas

I have finished most of my Christmas shopping simply by giving money to Heifer international, an NGO that gives livestock and training on how to husband the animals to the poor people of the world so that families can feed themselves and eventually feed their villages when their animals reproduce and add more animals to the area.

For the past 5 years my family (me, my 2 siblings and my dad and Step-mom) has pooled money to donate to heifer. In the past, we have bought bees, geese, goats, llamas.



This year we bought a water buffalo for a family in SE Asia. That Buffalo, if it is a cow, will provide milk for the family, plow fields and pull a cart and will eventually have offspring the family can give to other villagers (which is a part of the agreement with heifer, when your animals start to reproduce you are to give the extras away to others in need in your area until everyone has enough and there is surplus to sell on the open market).

This year my brother bowed out of Christmas altogether and is not participating. I guess he feels he is in worse shape than someone who lived through the Banda Ache tsunami or a person who lives about anywhere in Africa. Not. But the rest of us pitched in to make lives of some people we will never meet a bit better.

The best part of this is I did not have to step foot in a Mall, something I try to avoid at all costs. I did not buy plastic crap no one really wants or needs made by child labor in Cambodia, China, Sri Lanka or some other place that has zero laws to protect workers (and ironically, these are places that might have the family that gets the Buffalo we donated). Crap made from non renewable resources that will be landfilled eventually (the packaging will be landfilled right away). I did not buy crap that will only take money and resources AWAY from the local economy.

Unfortunately I have not finished my Christmas shopping. I still have to buy for my brother and sister in law and a nephew. I will shop for them at the Oxford Farmers' Market Uptown Winter Market next weekend and buy an assortment of handmade soaps and candles and who knows what else. I will be keeping the money and resources in the local economy as well as buying things made from natural materials with little to no packaging that will NOT be tossed in the landfill.

If you do not have a winter farmers' market if you area try out Local harvest. True, you might not be buying from a local person but you will be buying from small independent farmers and artisans and not from a huge multinational corporation who only cares about profits and not people. And you will be buying something that was not made by slave labor and that is comprised of natural, non toxic pure materials. it's a win win situation when we think before we buy and try to buy either local or at the very least from the small guys.

Remember there are only 21 shopping daze left and not one has to be spent in a mall or box store.

Buh Bye Clayton

Clayton looking pensive

My favorite talking head has left national news for Philly. Clayton Morris did his last stint as a part of the Daily Buzz today and I am rather sad. he was an irreverent breath of left wing liberal fresh air during a time when the right wing neocon spinmeisters such as Hannerty and O'Reilly ruled the air waves and thus national opinion.

Oh sure the guy was on a 4th rate national news show that I probably would have ignored if the show had not gotten it's start in some sort of garage in Miamisburg Ohio back in the early months of this millennium and I had not been bored enough to read about it in one of Dayton, Ohio's alternative newspapers while manning our produce stand at the Dayton 2nd Street Market.

Thus a few weeks after the Daily buzz was birthed I was a loyal viewer. What was not to love. A new morning news show on an incredibly limited budget that was national but because of said tight budget all the outdoor (and I guess indoor too) shots were local to me. I first noticed Clayton when he went for a visit to WHIO, channel 7 in Dayton. The folks at WHIO were not very thrilled to have this rather strange and obnoxious (and perhaps insane) young man arriving with a camera man. Clayton just wanted to say "hey" but WHIO did not and escorted him off the property. Ah good times...

After that, he cruised the mean streets of Kettering looking for breakfast by going door to door and asking. I was always amazed when the women who answered actually would feed him and not call the cops on him. if he had knocked on my door I would have made him breakfast and it would have included more than pop tarts or cold cereal.

Move forward and the show moves out of their garage in SW Ohio and down to sunny Florida where Clayton gets more air time and comes up with some very good regular segments such as Keeping them Honest and News by the numbers.

Clayton's departure will leave a huge hole in the show's cast as there are few people on the planet who can play well with Mitch English the Buzz's frenetic comedian/weatherdude/radio guy.

I did find it a strange coincidence that Jerry Springer, another left leaning news guy (yeah I know he also does the raunchy Springer Show too) quit his news show today also. i take this as a good sign in the cosmic scheme of things-we no longer need these people in the national media championing the lefties out there and keeping the hard righties from destroying the planet for greed, power and oil.

But I digress. Clayton I dunno if you will read this but if you do good Luck in Philly. I'll bet you are happy to be closer to your mom and dad too.

Sudoku Hell

I subscribe to the Dayton Daily News and everyday I try to do the sudoku puzzle and everyday I find fatal errors about halfway in. Once a few weeks ago I did successfully solve a moderately hard one.

Everyday I tell myself I will not do another sudoku and every evening I find myself on the couch with pen in hand trying to solve the sucker

Perhaps I should start doing the puzzle in pencil and not pen

Discover Your Blues name

Follow the instructions below for the genuine thrill that comes with discovering your blues name.

I'm either Pretty Hips King (if we use Owsley) or Pretty Hips Jones (if we use Goodman).

• From the first list, take the name using the initial of your first name.


• From the second list, do the same with your middle name.


• From the third, use the first letter of your surname.

First List
A=Fat
B=Muddy
C=Crippled
D=Old
E=Texas
F=Hollerin'
G=Ugly
H=Brown
I=Happy
J=Boney
K=Curly
L=Pretty
M=Jailhouse
N=Peg Leg
O=Red
P=Sleepy
Q=Bald
R=Skinny
S=Blind
T=Big
U=Yella
V=Toothless
W=Screamin'
X=Fat Boy
Y=Washboard
Z=Steel-Eye

Second List
A=Bones
B=Money
C=Harp
D=Legs
E=Eyes
F=Lemon
G=Killer
H=Hips
I=Lips
J=Fingers
K=Boy
L=Liver
M=Gumbo
N=Foot
O=Mama
P=Back
Q=Duke
R=Dog
S=Bad Boy
T=Baby
U=Chicken
V=Pickles
W=Sugar
X=Cracker
Y=Tooth
Z=Smoke

Third List
A=Jackson
B=McGee
C=Hopkins
D=Dupree
E=Green
F=Brown
G=Jones
H=Rivers
I=Malone
J=Washington
K=Smith
L=Parker
M=Lee
N=Thompkins
O=King
P=Bradley
Q=Hawkins
R=Jefferson
S=Davis
T=Franklin
U=White
V=Jenkins
W=Bailey
X=Johnson
Y=Blue
Z=Allison

Yay local Food

I found this post surfing blogs via Blog Explosion called Do you Know Where Your Food Comes from posted on the blog Mando's World. Nice little treatise on why we should all be buying/growing/eating locally grown food. has links two two good food sourcing sites-Local Harvest and Food Routes

NBC Airs Biased Segment on Organics

This came in my inbox this morning. I saw this segment and It was pretty one sided. I guess this is to be expected as there seems to be yet another attack on organics from the anti-organics crowd that started with the e-coli contaminated spinach this past October that was not organic spinach but early on was thought to be. And of course the organic opponents such as the Hudson institute and the father/son team of Dennis and Alex Avery took the opportunity to build up some negative momentum and it seems the Today Show has been swept up somewhat by this momentum.

There is so much to be said about organics and so few competent people in the news on any level (including almost all agricultural reporters) that rarely good information is reported so it is up to us in the know to set the record straight. Below is all the information you need to send NBC the message that we will not put up with half assed, biased reporting and information.

Take Action: NBC's "Today Show" and organic misinformation


Dear friends,

We asking for NBC's "Today Show" to give equal time on organics. The show ran a piece yesterday, which paints organic food as unsafe, leaving the impression that conventional chemically grown food is better. Please join us in asking the Today Show to get the facts right. See video clip below, how to contact the Today Show, and our abbreviated comments (which you can use) below. You can also view our longer letter to the Today Show at http://www.beyondpesticides.org/today_show_organic.pdf.


Thanks.
Beyond Pesticides

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=18cf1bd8-4c53-4cee-b6de-c625b114d0ce&f=05&fg=rss


Viewer Comment Line: 212-664-3499
General Number 212-664-4249
today@nbc.com

Sample letter/email. Simply cut, copy and paste into your email body or word processing app.=, Change where appropriate, or not

December 5, 2006

Today Show
NBC Universal
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
(212) 956-2395

Re. How Fresh Is Organic Food?
A Call for More Truthful & Accurate Reporting

Dear NBC Today Show Producers:

I appreciate your attention to organic food in your December 4, 2006 segment How Fresh Is Organic Food?, but I am troubled by the serious lack of focus on the hazards of chemical-intensive agriculture and food commodities. The piece glosses over key organic issues and leaves viewers with the impression that chemically-treated food is safer. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a disappointed viewer and concerned consumer, I am writing to ask you to do a follow-up story, giving equal time and consideration to the value of organics. Please take the following into consideration:

1. Your piece does not articulate effectively the hazards of pesticides and the importance of curtailing their use. The key issues for concern are pesticide residues in and on food commodities and agricultural practices that hurt the environment and those working on farms. Pesticides found in and on food are known to cause cancer, birth defects and other serious health effects.

2. Creating a false choice between chemically-treated food with less bacteria and organic. Because of the hazards of pesticides, the Today Show piece created a false choice between what you characterized as safer chemically-grown food and more dangerous organic food. Instead, the choice is to adopt adequate cleaning practices, recognizing the important role that bacteria plays in digestion and the environment.

3. Additionally, no mention was given to other health concerns resulting from conventional agriculture, such as use of antibiotics in animal production. Antibiotic use in animal production has been linked to antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

4. Your piece also glosses over a key issue when it comes to the freshness of organic. People increasingly want fresh food, rather than food preserved by chemicals for lengthy periods. Buying organic and local is increasingly an option consumers are turning to, and in turn, are supporting their local economy.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Sincerely,

Wind Storm

Yesterday we had high winds all day and a steep drop in temperature as a strong cold front came through. We started the day in the low 60's with predawn thunderstorms (we got 2.5 inches) and ended the day in the high 20's (that's degrees Fahrenheit). The winds got started around dawn and were cranking by 10am. Steady 30 mph with gusts to 60 mph. Just after breakfast we had our first go round with tightening up the houses. Already there was damage to the hoops themselves. The plastic on one house started coming out of it's trench which is a very bad thing. Eugene got the plastic's edge reburied with me holding down the end and keeping tight so the wind did not rip the edge back out. The crops not in hoophouses but under row cover were naked for the most part. So while Eugene tried to fix the strawberry hoophouse (plastic coming looses, several supports bent up) I ran around and put covers back on things and put more weight along the edges of the covers. Remember that it had rained all night and the covers were soaking wet and the temperature is dropping like a stone. At this point the covers were still pliable.

After an hour of trying to keep things from falling apart I went back to the house to find the power going on and off. Around 11:15 Eugene came in all bummed out because he knew the houses were coming down if the winds didn't let up immediately. And that was not happening as we found out about 20 minutes later when we were standing on the front porch and heard the staccato popping indicative of a lot of plastic suddenly being ripped from the ground.

We stood there discussing what to do.
A) Go up in what are now about 45 mph steady winds with 65 mph gusts (we think the one that got the plastic may have been over 70 mph as it picked up a bunch of water out of the small pond that had formed overnight on the northern boarder of our property and we had never seen the wind do that before and we have seen 65 mph winds out here) and try to fix things
B) Let the plastic flap and steadily bash the metal hoops into uselessness
C) Go up and get the plastic off the hoops and secured to the ground.

We chose option C and Eugene went back up and pulled plastic off the frames and found the metal bent up just from the plastic getting loose. We have found that in high winds the plastic continually slaps the metal conduit hoops and shoves them into the ground. If it is muddy (which it was) the hoops literally shrink 1 to 2 feet and the plastic gets really loose which allows the wind to much more easily rip the stuff out of the ground. This is one of the drawbacks to our hoophouses. But we do not get 15 hour high winds along with saturated ground conditions very often so we can live with this flaw most of the time.

So Eugene gets the plastic all squared away and finds that the row covers have once again blown off about everything and this time they have frozen in the tangled shape the wind created. Thus useless for covering vegetables. So some thing got to go through the last part of the storm in horrible drying winds along with freezing temps. These are conditions that almost nothing will live through. Kale maybe. He comes back to the house and and says we have to harvest all the cabbage and broccoli before it is ruined by the conditions since there are no thawed row covers up there in the market garden and we did not want to take dry ones up because they would be a real hassle in the wind and we would likely damage them. As it turned out there were some dry covers that had been in the hoophouses (where it did not rain) so we had some protection for cabbages, broccoli and kale. We cut all the broccoli we could find and took in around 24 cabbages (which have been sweet) The hoophouse with the salad mix and lettuce (see photo at top) was still able to support its' plastic so those tender baby greens were well protected from the wind and cold overnight.

When I went up to check out the damage this morning things looked remarkably good. The hoophouses did not look good but the work we did to protect the plants overnight another story. None of the covers we put on in the late afternoon had come up so everything had at least heavy row cover and most everything is adapted to be grown in the cold. I did not peek under the covers as they were still frozen but it would not surprise me if all the cabbage and broccoli is okay


This hoophouse had mostly dead things in it. There are leeks but they should be alright. The zukes and beans that were kinda of alive are now dead and can now put something else in their place that can take winter conditions like lettuce or kale or radishes.



This is one of our chicken feed storage silos that was pushed over by the wind. Likely the same gust that got the hoophouses.



The strawberry house got the most damage but were had just quit picking them about a week ago and being exposed to winter conditions will not hurt them any. If anything, this will be good for them as this will insure that they go dormant.

This even has been a real bummer to us but it by no means the end of the world. And to be totally expected in this line of work. The hoophouses will be put back together. We lost only one piece of plastic and I ordered extra rolls of the stuff this past spring for just this sort of thing. We had a lot of wasted space in several of the houses and now that the houses have to be taken apart and put back together we can also put them where they will most useful (i.e. over the tilled beds that were going to be planted in early spring greens and now can be planted in mid winter greens). We will get yummy fresh veggies out of them most of the winter and all of the spring. Life will be good again.



Postscript (12/05):
The hoophouses are back together again as of Sunday morning. The weather is fridgid but reasonbly calm. Life is good.