Merry Holidays

Holiday Giving

Today I sent $250 to Heifer International. My sister and I pooled our money to buy a water buffalo. Now some family in SE Asia will soon have an animal that will provide milk, work, fertilizer and more water buffaloes if it is a cow. This will mean a whole new world to this family as their job of subsistence farming will suddenly get a lot easier.

This is a Christmas tradition I have with my sister that I hope we continue for a long time.

Merry Christmas

Christmas Lights

It's Early Saturday morning. It is cold and raining. I am so glad we do not have to do a farmers market this morning. It would have been miserable setting up and selling in such cold and wet conditions. Next Saturday morning we do have a farmers market, hopefully the weather will be dry and calm (I am not hoping for warm, it is December after all.).

So what do we farmers do on a dreary day in late fall? Since it is Saturday we will drive down to pick up our raw milk sometime today. Eugene put up 2 fake Christmas trees last night and went through a box of what he thought were Christmas ornaments from his Mom. There were a few ornaments in the large box but mostly it was paper trash years gone by. He also found short strings (35ct) of cheap lead filled lights. He could not find many of the light strings we have had for years. Maybe this is the sign to go out and buy several strings of LED lights and get started on that direction. So it looks like we will buy some LED's and decorate trees and the house and store for Christmas.

While I am not a practicing Christian I do like many aspects of the Christmas holy day season. Lights are one of those aspects. I fantasize about designing and implementing a million+ light display here on the farm. I doubt I will ever do this, though with LED's and computer chips one could do a spectacular display and it would not use all that much energy. Probably could run a large and complex LED display off of batteries charged by alternative energy such as a wind turbine or solar panels.

Any hoo, we will not be doing a gigantic killer light show again this year, but we will likely have a simple display up and twinkling by this evening.

It's Not Too Late...

You stop by to read this blog at least once a week. You really like what you encounter (or you would not return, unless of course you a masochist...) so why not show your appreciation by donating a gift to Heifer. It would mean a lot to me if you did...

Oh and it makes a really nice stress free gift. It's so incredibly simple to do, just click on the box to your left and the magic of the web will take you to the page you need to do the rest. In under 5 minutes you can be all done with your Christmas shopping and you will not be giving that gift that will either be returned, re gifted next year or landfilled. Nor will this gift involve the depletion of resources or involve slave child labor. As a matter of fact, your gift to Heifer will prevent more of these evils from happening around the world.

What better way to honor a loved one than this?

Holiday Winter market

Did the December edition of the Oxford Farmers' Market Winter market and it was a fine one indeed!

Unlike last year, we had a lot of leafy green things to sell along with things that store well like winter squash, garlic, carrots. Plus the fact we are having a much warmer than normal late fall has meant we have lots of cold loving crops.

I wanted to take some pictures of the market to post but we were simply too busy selling for the two hours the market is open. We sold out of many items we brought and most everything else sold well. We opted to not open the store today because we don't have a whole lot of most things except garlic, dried herbs and some winter squash. It was an intense market.

And a fun market too, as we are now into Chanukah and it is of course the Christian Holiday season. So everyone was festive and happy. It did not hurt one bit that the weather was beautiful-sunny and around 50˚F. Unreasonably warm but a welcome thing if you are selling freezable produce outside in December. We got to see a lot of people got many hugs and even got some Solstice presents (I'd say Christmas presents but not everyone who gave us presents at market is Christian but we all celebrate the solstice and return of the sun). One woman who has been a long time customer told me my comments about Heifer International in the email newsletter I send out to anyone who signs up (this is more for local people) inspired her to donate to them. Need more people like her and that can be you by simply clicking on the box in the sidebar.

So we came home happy-we sold lots of food, meaning two things:1) we have some cash on hand and 2) we are not faced with what to do with too much kale, cabbage, broccoli, spring mix, etc., for a few days. What we have been doing with the bounty is eating a lot of greens every day which has got to be good for our bodies. I remember this time last year craving kale and chard and having to buy chard at the grocery. BTW Kroger has far and away higher quality produce than Wal-Mart, especially when it comes to kale. But if you have the choice of buying kale grown by Boulder Belt that is the far better choice. Kroger kale is edible but nothing to write home about the 2 times I bought Wal-Mart kale I ended up throwing out most of it as it was horrid. This year we have kale and Lucy is a happy camper.

I see my dough for snickerdoodles should chilled and so I end this entry on that note

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.

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!

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.