Buy stuff

You may have noticed that there are ads on this blog. These are there in order to generate money to make it somewhat worth my while to keep updating the blog. There are two kinds of ads Google Adsense which I very little control over (though I was able to block all Monsanto ads from showing up on this blog, much to the dismay of the people at Google who tell me how to best get people to click on the ads here and have written me many many notes telling me I am not a great capitalist because I block certain corporations from appearing here. Too bad, I have standards that are not negotiable)

I also have products from Amazon that I am selling through this site. These, unlike the Google Adsense, I have full control over which items will appear on this blog. And today I updated my offerings to include non book items for the first time.

There are now 3 non book items
Food Inc-this is a must see film if you do any eating at all in this modern world. For the savvy locavore there will not be much new (though I was still shocked by a lot of this film because you so seldom see graphic images of our industrial food stream). This movie was nominated for a 2010 Academy Award, BTW

Zyliss Salad Spinner-if you are getting into eating locally or just love salads your kitchen is not complete without a salad spinner. I use mine many times a day. It is a Zyliss spinner that is at least 12 years old and still going strong. It is not like the model listed here as mine has a pull string (which they do not seem to make any longer-Amazon does list the pull string type as out of stock and not getting any more)

Excalibur Food Dehydrator-this is the BMW of dehydrators. This model is their largest and will do around a 1/2 bushel of food. I use mine heavily and love the results. I highly recommend this product

A note on some of the the books
The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook is excellent, I have a copy and have learned much. If you are a farmer and want to be truly profitable get this book and make a better living you need this book in your library. I give this a hearty thumbs up

The New Organic Grower Another excellent book, a classic on how to set up and run a small diversified organic farm. Eliot Coleman is a master market gardener and a really good writer. this book, more than any other got us up and running and we still refer to it a lot. If you are a market gardener or serious organic gardener this book should be in your library

Follow Up to helping the DOJ Investigate Monsanto

here is a follow up to the DOJ investigation of Monsanto. An excerpt of the several thousands of letters from people explaining just how Monsanto and the industrialization of our food system has negatively affected them. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/10/823719/-Millions-Against-Monsanto

Ewww

This is a porterhouse we had for Christmas Dinner. It was from a grass fed cow raised withing 50 miles of our farm and smothered in lots of our hard necked garlic. Now this is beef!

If you ever needed another reason to eat grass fed (and locally raised) beef and quit eating at fast food places and buying the factory farmed beef at the grocery here it is Yummy!-Ammonia-treated-pink-slime-now-in-most-U.S.-ground-beef

This is the dairy herd at Double J farm, near Middletown, OH where we buy our milk and quite a bit of our beef. this is how cattle should live. This was taken late November 2009

I have been buying grass fed beef for years and it is well worth the cost.

Small Farms vs Industrial Farms

For years I have read the argument that Industrial farms are the most efficient way to produce food. That compared to, say 75 years ago a farm could produce food for 5 people, today's farms produce food to feed 125 per farm. That does sound good but I have noticed that this number may not be as good as it sounds

The farms of yesterday were diversified, smaller and I believe fed far more than 5 people as these farms did support the families living on them. And these families averaged around 8 people, not 5. So right there I wonder where these number are coming from? Are they just arbitrary pulled from someone's butt? (you would be surprised how often that happens-the 3 year transition period before a farm is certified organic is one such arbitrary number and really means nothing as it really takes 7 to 15 years to get soils in organic shape, especially if they were subject to conventional/chemical farm management) or did someone do some real research and find that the farms on pre WWII really did feed only 5 people?

I am pretty convinced that these numbers have been hatched by proponents of the Green Revolution and are based on nothing of substance. I say this because I have been running these numbers in my head and what I come up with is that small diversified farms feed more people per acre than the big "efficient" Industrial farms.

For example, lets say a pre WWII farm (that feeds only 5 people) is 100 acres (which is pretty much the average size of farms at this time). Now the modern mono-cropped farm of 4000 acres (pretty much the average size of a modern farm or the combination of all rented and owned land that a Midwestern farmer will work) feeds 125 people. pretty good right? A lot more people than that paltry 5 of the old fashioned diversified farm.

Ah but lets look at how many people per acre these farms are feeding. if we extrapolate the numbers we see that perhaps the industrial mono-cropped does not produce as much per acre as a small diversified farm. For if a 100 acre farm can produce enough food to feed 5 people 40 of those farms would produce enough to feed 200. I believe 200 is greater than 125 and thus we see that smaller diversified farms can indeed outproduce the big industrial mono-cropped farms

Food Inc

This is a must see film for anyone who eats food in the United States (which is everyone). I have not been able to get to any public screenings of this film but a few days ago i was perusing the Millions Against Monsanto Facebook page and found a link that took me to a site that allows you to watch a fairly low quality copy of the movie for free.

So I took 94 minutes out of my life to watch the movie and I was rather shocked by it. And this surprised me as I have been well aware of what is happening to our food system for the past 15 to 20 years which has lead me to eat a basically local diet of food produced by people I know personally. I figured I would not learn much from this film. I was wrong, I learned several new things about our food system and they were not good things to learn.

And if I got new things from this movie that means that 99% of the people out there will have a truly eye opening experience

Link to movie here "enjoy"