Got the Implant

but I don't believe I will fill it. I also was given a script for some sort of antibiotic that has the side effect of deadly Got the implant and I am feeling pretty much no pain. This is good. Of course I took 2 Advil when I got home and I think that is helping a lot. I was given a script for Vicoden for the pain but I doubt I will fill it. I was also given an antibiotic whose worst side effect is deadly diarrhea. That drug is making me a bit light headed but that is one of the side effects. I know this will do a number on my digestive tract but I will be replacing the flora with doses of raw milk and yogurt. And the course lasts only 4 days, not the usual 10 days.

It took Dr Silvers about an hour to drill a hole in my jaw due to extreme bone density (this is very good). I'm in the top 5% as far as dense bones go. he got the hole drilled put in the implant and than found a pocket of infection in the tooth next to the implant and scraped that out while he had the gum open and the root exposed. than he packed it with bone powder in hopes of regrowing the bone that had eroded by the tooth allowing crud to creep in and cause a small abscess.

I gotta say this is the best my mouth has felt in about 7 years. There is almost no pain and for the first time in years I believe there is no infection present in my mouth.

Getting the Implant Today

Today, at 9am, I get a titanium screw implanted in my lower jaw and I am a bit nervous about this. I know it's going to be painful, though apparently not as painful as a full deep periodontal cleaning/scraping (which I went through about 5 years ago). I visited my friend Linn yesterday (to pick up some home grown grapefruit, fresh from Florida, that a mutual friend grew in her backyard) and she had an implant put in a while ago and was telling me that it feels like they take a drill (like a drill you would use for a construction project, not a dentist drill) and drill a hole in your jaw than put in a titanium screw and than you let that set up with the jaw bone for a while. Linn said a year, my periodontist who is putting this thing in said 2 to 3 months (I have a feeling it will be far closer to 2 to 3 months as I seem to have tremendous healing abilities-likely from the great diet I eat and the fact I do not do prescription drugs, especially antibiotics, so my immune system is top notch and can do its' job). After the screw is set into the jawbone than I go to my regular dentist and get a veneer (fake tooth) put on the screw and I am done and should have no further problems for the rest of my life (knock wood).

Sounds good, but frankly I am nervous about the whole thing. I know this is gonna hurt like Hell for a couple of days (and I am not a fan of the NSAID's like Advil but will probably take my fair share over the next 48 hours). It's going to make my mouth feel different than it has since the offending tooth came out last May and there is some small chance that the screw will not set and I will have to get it taken out and a bridge put in (or just go toothless). Linn has told me that tobacco smoking is a no no and I do smoke 5 to 7 hand rolled cigarettes a day and I am not very interested in stopping this addiction. But this might just get me to quit. Than again, I was told that smoking while having stitches in my gums from the periodontal deep cleaning/scraping was a big no no and I still smoked and recovered about 3 months ahead of schedule. Perhaps all the prescription drugs big Pharma pushes on people are far worse for the human immune system than a few smokes. Not that you will hear such blasphemy from them or anyone influenced by them, such as 99% of what you see/hear on television and the radio

Ah, well I am now rambling and it is time to get more ready for this ordeal

NASS/NAIS, A Lawyer's View

The 2006 Agricultural Identification Survey and the NASS/NAIS Identity

by Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., J.D.

Like many small-farm advocates, I have been fielding questions over the past few weeks about the above survey being sent out by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Many people ask if there is any relationship between the survey and the data being collected (often without the knowledge or consent of farmers) for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). As we shall see, although USDA personnel won’t admit it, NASS data is the foundation of the USDA’s aggressive pursuit of NAIS.

To my great surprise, in this morning’s mail I myself received a 2006 Agricultural Identification Survey (2006 AIS). I say “to my great surprise,” because I am not and never have been engaged in any type of commercial agriculture whatsoever. I have never before received any type of communication from NASS.

The envelope states in very large letters, “YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW.” The envelope further states that the due date is January 29, 2007. As explained below, it is clear that many people receiving this form are not in fact “REQUIRED BY LAW” to answer it. Further, a recipient has only a couple of weeks between the receipt of the form and the purported deadline, and it would be impossible for the average non-lawyer to do enough research within that time to figure out whether he/she is or isn’t actually required to respond.

The form itself begins with several general questions, such as “Do you own or rent any land?” “Do you grow vegetables, hay or nursery stock?” “Do you receive government payments?” The questions appear deliberately designed to imply that anyone who would answer “yes” is among those “REQUIRED BY LAW” to fill out this form. The USDA is thus casting a very wide net in this particular intrusion into the lives of American citizens, because, frankly, just about everyone who is not homeless “owns or rents” real estate; some 75 million people in the United States “grow vegetables;” and some 60 million people receive “government payments.” (See 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 1226 (vegetable gardening); Table 528 (government transfer payments).)

Now, perhaps it is possible that this “wide net” might not be as intrusive as it appears. After all, maybe NASS has only sent this form to people reasonably assumed to be farmers. But in fact it was distressingly easy to confirm that intrusiveness and deliberate over-inclusiveness are the hallmarks of the NASS approach. This morning, I called the information number listed on the form and spoke to a woman at the USDA’s Helena, Montana call center. According to her, the call center is being swamped with calls from people who live in cities and have nothing to do with agriculture. She stated that the call center employees really have no idea of why or how all these people have been sent the 2006 AIS. When asked for some conjecture as to how so many unnecessary people could have been included in the mailings, the woman explained that, for example, anyone who had ever subscribed to a “horse magazine” might have been included in the database.

Now, that raises interesting questions. How is the USDA/NASS getting the subscription lists of “horse magazines”? Why and how are “horse magazines,” or, for that matter, any rural-life publication, any breed association, feed store, or private or public livestock or horticultural enterprise whatsoever, giving their member/subscriber/customer lists to the government without telling their members, subscribers, or customers?

Or, worse yet, how is the government accessing such lists or databases without the awareness of the businesses or organizations in question? During times when the Executive Branch of the United States Government has secretly gathered the records of most people’s incoming and outgoing phone calls, and the President asserts a right to open your mail and my mail without a warrant, this is not a trivial question.

Returning to the first page of the form, we see the wide net growing ever wider. The form states: “Many people who don’t consider themselves farmers or ranchers actually meet the definition of a farm or ranch and are important to agriculture.” “We need your completed form even though you may not be actively farming, ranching, or conducting any other type of agricultural activity.” Finally, the first page of the form reinforces the threat of the “REQUIRED BY LAW” language of the envelope:
“ ‘Response to this survey is legally required by Title 7, U.S. Code.’ ” (Emphasis in original.) (Note the single-double quotation marks – the threat actually is in quotation marks, employing that common tenth-grade stylistic conceit of “quoting” something to make it appear extra-important.) One senses evasions aplenty here — the form has referred to the “definition of a farm or ranch” but nowhere tells us that definition. It suggests that anyone receiving a form has a legal obligation to answer it, even though their enterprise may not meet the definition of a “farm.”

Given the foregoing ambiguities, I had further questions about the definition of a “farm” and the possible legal penalties for not responding to the 2006 AIS. Specifically, I asked if my understanding of the definition of “farm” as an operation with at least $1000 in sales from agriculture was correct. (See 2002 Census of Agriculture, FAQs, HYPERLINK “http://www.nass.usda.gov/census_of_agriculture/frequently_asked_questions/index.asp#1″ www.nass.usda.gov/census_of_agriculture/frequently_asked_questions/index.asp#1.) Further, having found the penalty listed in 7 USC § 2204g (d) (2), namely, that a “person . . . who refuses or willfully neglects to answer a question . . . . shall be fined not more than $100,” I noted that, insofar as the 2006 AIS actually contains 42 separate questions, it could be important to know whether there was a separate $100 fine for each unanswered question, or just a single $100 fine for not answering the entire 2006 AIS. These questions were beyond the purview of the call-center woman, so she made a note of the questions, referred them to a member of the NASS professional staff, and promised that the NASS staff member would call me with the answers.

The next day, January 12, 2007, I received a call from Jody Sprague, a NASS statistician. First we addressed the question of the “farm” definition. Ms. Sprague conceded that someone whose property or operation did not meet the “farm” definition would have no obligation to answer the 2006 AIS. She also conceded that the basic definition of a “farm” as an operation with at least $1000 in agricultural sales was correct, but explained that in addition to the gross sales figures, NASS also assigns certain “point values” for particular agricultural activities. If the points add up to 1000, your operation would meet the definition of a “farm.” When asked for an example of how the point values work, Ms. Sprague explained that 5 equines would equal a farm but 4 would not. (Subsequently, she explained that each equine equals 200 points.) When asked how many cattle equal a “farm,” Ms. Sprague said she did not know. At one point Ms. Sprague said that NASS wanted, through the 2006 AIS, to determine if they could delete people who should not be on their mailing list. But for the most part she contended the opposite, e.g., that she would “advise” anyone who had received the form to fill it out; and that even a person with one horse should complete the questionnaire, although she previously had conceded that someone with fewer than 5 horses would not meet the definition of a “farm” and therefore would not be required to fill out the survey.

We next turned to the issue of how NASS may have compiled its mailing list for the 2006 AIS. First Ms. Sprague maintained that the sources of the NASS mailing list are “confidential.” I noted the call-center woman’s reference to a subscription to a “horse magazine” as a source of names, and asked for some other possible sources. Ms. Sprague said that growers’ associations, such as the Wheat Growers’ Association and Barley Growers’ Association, were examples of sources. I asked for more examples but she was reluctant to give any, claiming that some are “confidential” and some are “not confidential.” She explained the overall process of list building thus: as NASS comes across lists where there are “possibilities of agricultural activity,” NASS incorporates those names into its mailing list.

We returned to the subject of “point values” for different livestock. Explaining that many people were likely to have questions about this, I asked if Ms. Sprague could find out for me the point values of cattle or other non-equine livestock. She put me on hold for a long while. Subsequently, she gave me the following point values: beef cattle, 310 points per head; dairy cattle, 2000 points per head; goats and sheep, 50 points per head. (I wanted to ask about chickens, but I was getting the distinct sense that I might be pushing my luck.)

Ms. Sprague stressed that she did not want people to be concentrating on the point values. For example, she noted that people should not say they have 4 horses if they really have 5 horses, “because it wouldn’t be ethical.” (But apparently under the NASS moral code, rummaging through some of those Choicepoint-type consumer profiles to track your reading habits is perfectly “ethical.” And, as we shall see, the NASS moral code also permits forking over your data to states that are in hot pursuit of the NAIS premises-registration quotas imposed as a condition for the states’ continued receipt of federal NAIS grant money.)

We went on to the question of the $100 non-compliance fine. Ms. Sprague assured me that a farmer’s failure to answer any or all of the 42 total questions on the 2006 AIS would only result in a single $100 fine. She also said that the fine is “rarely enforced” and that if any “producer” “chooses” not to report, no one from NASS would seek them out.

Finally, I asked Ms. Sprague if there were any relationships between NASS and the APHIS NAIS program, and she said, “Absolutely none.” I asked her if any other agency, state or federal, would ever be allowed to use NASS’s database to solicit premises IDs for NAIS, and she said, “Absolutely not.” And indeed, pursuant to 7 U.S.C. § 2204g (f) (3), “Information obtained [for NASS surveys] may not be used for any purpose other than the statistical purposes for which the information is supplied.”

Several weeks ago, Missouri antiNAIS activist Doreen Hannes sent a series of questions about Missouri’s solicitation of NAIS premises IDs to Steve Goff, DVM, the Animal ID Administrator of the Missouri Department of Agriculture (MDA). Dr. Goff provided written answers on December 20, 2006. When asked where the MDA had obtained addresses for its solicitation of NAIS premises IDs, Dr. Goff stated: “the mailing was done through a contract with the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service.”

I won’t answer my 2006 Agricultural Information Survey. Instead, I will send a copy of this article to my Congressman and my two United States Senators. I will ask them to have the House and Senate Agriculture Committees investigate the rampant and shameful abuses of federal law and common morality inherent in NASS’s compilation of its mailing lists and use of those lists to promote the APHIS National Animal Identification System. Why will I do this? Because I don’t live by the USDA’s false code of ethics; I answer to a higher authority.

Copyright 2007 by Mary Zanoni. The following article may be distributed solely for personal and non-commercial use without prior permission from the author. Non-commercial distribution and posting to assist in disseminating information about NAIS is, in fact, encouraged, so long as proper credit is given and the article is reproduced without changes or deletions. Any other distribution or republication requires the author’s permission in writing and requests for such permission should be directed to the author at the address/phone/e-mail address below.

Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., J.D.
P.O. Box 501
Canton, NY 13617
315-386-3199
mlz@slic.com

Sir Albert Howard

Fertile Ground
Reviving a much-cited, little-read sustainable-ag masterpiece
By Tom Philpott
01 Mar 2007

http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2007/03/01/soil/index.html?source=daily
The real Arsenal of Democracy is a fertile soil, the fresh produce of which is the birthright of nations.
-- Sir Albert Howard, The Soil and Health

Sir Albert Howard.Around 1900, a 27-year-old British scientist named Albert Howard, a specialist in plant diseases, arrived in Barbados, then a province of the British Empire. His charge was to find cutting-edge cures for diseases that attacked tropical crops like sugar cane, cocoa, bananas, and limes.

To use the terms of the day, his task was to teach natives of the tropics how to grow cash crops for the Mother Country. The method was to be rigorously scientific. He was a "laboratory hermit," he would later write, "intent on learning more and more about less and less."

But the "natives," in turn, had something to teach him. On tours through Barbados and neighboring islands, through "contact with the land itself and the practical men working on it," a new idea dawned on Howard: that "the most promising method for dealing with plant diseases lay in prevention," not in after-the-fact treatments.

The insight was radical. Then, as now, conventional science tended to view plant diseases as isolated phenomena in need of a cure. But Howard began to see diseases as part of a broader whole. As quickly as he could, he fled the controlled environment of the lab and concerned himself with how plants thrive or wither in their own context -- outside in the dirt, tended by farmers.

The Soil and Health, by Sir Albert Howard.Sir Albert Howard would eventually transform the insights he gained from farmers in Barbados and later colonial India into the founding texts of the modern organic-agriculture movement: An Agricultural Testament, published in 1940, and The Soil and Health, which came out five years later. Inflamed by his readings of Howard, a young American named J.I. Rodale launched his seminal Organic Farming and Gardening magazine in the early 1940s. That publication popularized Howard's ideas in the United States, galvanizing the first generation of organic farmers here.

Perhaps appropriately for an author who concerned himself with the ground beneath our feet, Howard -- who died in 1947 -- is a genuine underground hero. If his influence has been epochal, his books have remained maddeningly obscure, out of print since their initial publication. Until last December, that is, when the University Press of Kentucky -- perhaps inspired by Michael Pollan's excellent work on the history of organic agriculture -- brought out a new paperback edition of The Soil and Health. Now we don't have to hunt down musty, pricey old copies of the book to find out what the fuss was about.

Sixty years after its initial publication, what does The Soil and Health have to teach us? Plenty, it turns out. Howard never foresaw the brand of agriculture he championed as an "alternative" that would occupy a trendy niche. He launched a broad and fundamental critique of industrial agriculture that still resonates -- and indeed applies to much of what passes for "organic" agriculture today.

Madmen and Specialists

Howard began his career not long after the triumph of the Industrial Revolution. The rise of mass production had prompted a mass migration from farms to cities, leaving a dearth of rural labor and a surplus of urban mouths to feed. Tasked with the problem of growing more food with less land and labor, scientists in Howard's time worked to apply industrial techniques to agriculture.

By then, science itself had succumbed to industrialism's division-of-labor logic. The study of plant disease had become a specialized branch of plant science, itself a subset of biology. The task of growing food could only be studied as a set of separate processes, each with its own subset of problems and solutions.

Soil specialists working at that time had isolated the key elements in soil that nurture plants: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. Known as N, K, and P, respectively, these three elements still dominate modern fertilizer production. By learning to synthesize them, soil specialists had "solved" the "problem" of soil fertility.

The process for synthesizing nitrogen, it turned out, also made effective explosives. The same specialists who had industrialized agriculture also, as tensions among European powers mounted in the early 20th century, began to think about industrializing war. During World War I, munitions factories sprouted throughout England, using those fertilizer-making techniques to mass-produce explosives.

Soon thereafter, weapons technology repaid its debt to agriculture. As Howard puts it, "When peace came, some use had to be found for the huge factories [that had been] set up and it was obvious to turn them over to the manufacture of [fertilizer] for the land. This fertilizer began to flood the market." These technologies made their way over the Atlantic to the United States.

Thus began modern agriculture. No longer dependent on animal manure to replenish soil, farmers could buy ready-made fertilizer from a fledgling chemical industry. For the first time in history, animal husbandry could be separated from the growing of crops -- and meat, dairy, egg, and crop production could all be intensified. As production boomed, prices for farm goods dropped, forcing many farmers out of business. Technology had triumphed: fewer and fewer people had to concern themselves with growing food.

But Howard prophesied that the victories of industrial agriculture, whose beginnings he lived to see, would prove short-lived. In its obsession with compartmentalization, modern science had failed to see that the health of each of the earth's organisms was deeply interconnected. Against the specialists who thought they had "solved" the fertility problem by isolating a few elements, Howard viewed the "whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man as one great subject."

Artificial fertilizer could replace key elements, but it could not replenish the vibrant, healthy topsoil, or humus, required to grow health-giving food. Humus isn't an inert substance composed of separable elements, but rather a complex ecosystem teeming with diverse microorganisms. Only by carefully composting animal and plant waste and returning it to the land, he argued, could topsoil be replaced. For Howard, agriculture wasn't a process sustained by isolated inputs and outputs; rather, it functions as a cycle governed by the "Law of Return": what comes from the soil must be returned to the soil. Farmers who violate the "Law of Return," Howard claimed, are "bandits" stealing soil fertility from future generations.

Looking Back for a Way Forward

The real arsenal of democracy.For Howard, the ideal laboratory for agriculture lay not in some well-appointed university building, but rather in wild landscapes. As he put it in a celebrated passage in An Agricultural Testament, "Mother earth never attempts to farm without livestock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; [and] the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another."

Was Howard right? Despite his gloomy pronouncements, industrial agriculture has so far kept many of its promises. Food production has undeniably boomed over the past century.

And yet, the Green Revolution -- the concerted effort, begun at about the time of The Soil and Health's publication, to spread the benefits of industrial agriculture to the global south -- has failed to eradicate world hunger. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 800 million people live in a state of undernourishment. And in the United States, where industrial agriculture arguably won its most complete victory, diet-related maladies are reaching epidemic proportions. Howard's contention that chemical-dependent soil can't produce healthy food may yet be borne out.

And, of course, industrial agriculture's environmental liabilities are piling up, and could still prove its undoing.

Howard's books belong on the shelf with other 20th-century classics like Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities and E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful. These works challenge a scientific/bureaucratic establishment that seeks to solve the problems of mass industrialization with more industrialization. In the words of the great German-Jewish writer Walter Benjamin, a contemporary of Howard, they seek to "make whole what has been smashed" by a zeal for specialization. Much-cited and little-heeded, they may yet point a way out of our mounting environmental and social crises.

Got a question about where your last supper came from?
Fork it over.

- - - - - - - - - -

Grist contributing writer Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

High Anxiety

I have been quite anxious the past 5 days or so and this will likely continue until sometime next Wednesday.

As regular readers know i am doing a workshop at the OEFFA conference this coming Saturday at 2:15pm on pastured poultry. For some reason I have been in a major procrastination mode and until 2 days ago did not even have an outline to work form. That has changed for the better. I now have on my desktop a decent handout out that I will work on today to make it a really nice handout for the workshop, complete with pictures and references.

I have been talking a lot about how to do the workshop with Eugene since Monday. I want to bring in a chicken tractor, fencing, feeders etc., so the participants have more than a general idea about what we are talking about when it comes to raising chicken on pasture. Eugene does not want to deal with hauling a chicken tractor around Granville High School and I don't really blame him but I think we will be able to get the thing in and out of the building without much too do (unless it is too big to get through a door, than we have a problem)

The other thing that has me quite anxious is the fact that next Wednesday I will be getting a tooth implant in my jaw. I am not looking forward to this. it will involve pain and it will likely effect how I eat somewhat. Though probably not too badly as the part of my mouth where this implant is going is already fucked up from a crown and a deep cavity that has recently been drilled badly filled which makes for a painful quadrant on my lower left jaw. Anyhoo, I have noticed each time I have something done to my mouth these days, other than cleaning, I get ever more pain. I am hoping this will not be the case with the implant, but I will not be holding my breath. From what the periodontal surgeon has told me the implant is way better than a bridge for a couple of reasons. 1) It is permanent. 2) because there is a titanium screw implanted in my jaw with a fake tooth affixed to the screw I will not lose bone density (osteoporosis) in my jaw due to a lack of tooth/lack of pressure. Apparently when you lose a tooth or teeth your jaw starts to degrade because there is no pressure on the bone from the act of chewing/grinding/clenching of teeth. This is why dentures slip within 2 years of being prescribed-because the jaw literally changes shape and shrinks. And the same thing happens with a bridge only on a smaller scale as it is just 3 teeth involved instead of the whole shootin' match. there is a third reason for the implant-it is cheaper than a bridge. A bridge costs around $3500US. The implant will cost around $2000US, maybe a bit less

I seem to have a pretty horrifying mouth-my teeth and jaw are not set right. I have already had major periodontal surgery at age 35 (the average person has this surgery at 55 to 65 years of age-I'm a trendsetter!). And I still have 7 baby teeth in my mouth (I had 8, one got horribly infected and pulled and this is why I am getting the implant). I figure by the time I am 60 I will have replaced a lot of my teeth with implants.

I suppose I could get multi-colored teeth or gem chips in each veneer. I have not really thought of that possibility. I have until May to decide since the implant will be toothless for 2 to 3 months while it heals and bonds with the jaw bone.

What color teeth would you get if given this kind of choice?

The Future of Food

The Future of Food (comic)

Coyotes

Went out side after dinner for a smoke and to let the dog take a pee. The other dogs in the area were barking up a storm and Nate was quite alert and seemed a bit nervous.

Than we herd the howl of a single coyote and it sounded like it was just below the pitch. Than another howl a bit to the west and suddenly ti woods to our west erupted in a cacophony of howls and yips as a rather large sounding pack of coyotes took down something. maybe a rabbit, maybe a deer.

I dunno. it send shivers down my spine and raised the hackles on my neck.

All the howling got our dogs wanting to run into the fray and defend their property. We had to call them back as it sounded like there were a lot more of them than there were of us. And it sounded like they might be on our side of the fence even. Where Nate probably would have put up a good fight and maybe even survived, Danny would have been a hors d'oeuvre for the wild canines. Arlo, being old and stodgy these days stayed on the deck (I get the feeling Arlo still is not considering this farm his territory or real home and likely never will).

As suddenly as the howling started it ceased but all the dogs in a mile radius were barking up a storm.

We went back inside and a while later Nate was growling towards the back door so I assume he was hearing them again. Right before I drifted off to sleep, after the dogs had been put out for the night, I heard the pack howling again off in the distance

Gearing Up for the OEFFA Conference

I see by the calender on the wall that the OEFFA conference is less than 2 weeks away. Eugene and I will be doing our Pastured Poultry Workshop at 2:15 Saturday Afternoon.

True to my nature I have been procrastinating on putting together an informative handout for the workshop but I feel the handout muses getting close and this will likely be done and 45 copies printed out by Monday.

There is a lot to cover in less than 40 minutes (the workshops are about 60 minutes but you must leave ample time for questions and the Q&A part is often the best part of the workshop). We will do an overview of what we do and than discuss things like what are the pros and cons of various breeds for pasturing chicken for meat, feed, keeping the birds cool in hot weather, etc.. I'd write out the whole thing but as I mentioned the workshop handout muses are near but not yet here.

Eugene thinks we should just go in cold and wing it. Silly boy, doing that usually makes for a bad workshop. You got to at least write up an outline to keep your talk on track, even if you are not going to make handouts for the attendees. I have done enough lectures and workshops in my life to know better than to go in cold, no matter how well you know the material. What usually happens to a person doing this sort of thing unprepared is they will get knocked off track early on by a question from the audience. the question may be an excellent one but I have found without a map of what you intend to do one questions leads to another and another and suddenly that pastured poultry workshop has become a hoophouse lecture. Interesting to be sure but not what the folks paid their money to see.

Fortunately for Eugene I am a good writer and I love to write handoutty sorts of things so he does not need to do anything other than familiarize himself with the order of go before we are in front of an audience. Oh, and put a chicken tractor in the van and than when we get to the High School in Granville haul it to the room we will be doing our gig in.

I'm getting pretty excited about doing this conference. It's been years since I have been in a building with several hundred other organic foodies and farmers. I am looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones

Harbinger of Spring

February has been cold and snowy since groundhog day but now we are going into a warmer period which has caused it to rain, fog and melt a whole lot of snow.

And apparently this warm weather has awoken a skunk from its' winter slumber and Danny found the thing and came in this morning with a fine skunk perfume. he (and Nate and Arlo who also stank) were quickly ushered back out the door to t eh great outdoors where they will stay until we run into town and get a couple of big bottles of hydrogen peroxide to put in their bath water.

Peroxide neutralizes the sulphur based chemical that we know as skunk smell on contact. Put a cup of peroxide in a gallon of water with a 1/4 cup of baking soda and douche the dog everywhere (anyplace you miss will stink). Than rinse the dog and you are done-No more skunk smell

Made the Local Paper

Suzie Marcum sent me an email this morning alerting me that I was mentioned (and pictured) in the following article from the Hamilton JournalNews from this past Sunday about the Oxford Winter Market. The reporter came to the January market and interviewed most everyone there.

That was a happening market because the weather was good. The market this past weekend was much smaller and snowier. I believe there were only 7 vendors and not many customers. The parking lot had a lot of snow in it. There was an Alberta Clipper on top of us showering us with quite a bit of snow. All the tables were snow covered, even if they had set up shelters. I am glad we went down to shop and not sell, it would have been miserable.

On that note, here is the article about the January Market. Thanks for sending it Suzi.

Business is Hot at Winter Farmers Market


By Celeste Baumgartner

Contributing Writer

Sunday, February 18, 2007

OXFORD — OXFORD — Farmers markets are a connection to life and are a tremendous social event, said Debra Bowles.

Every third Saturday November through May, Bowles can be found by her stand at the Winter Oxford Farmers Market in Uptown adjacent to the parks at Main and High streets. The market, offering fresh local
seasonal produce, baked goods and handmade wares, is open from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.

"I love the farmers market," Bowles said

On a recent Saturday, the market was abuzz with people of every age, many in heavy coats, mittens and hats, sometimes with their dogs.

"A lot of things had been sold out," said market manager Larry Slocum. "Don Schwab's peaches sold like hotcakes. There was a big line by Dale Filbrun's organic meats."

A walk down the aisle finds those vendors just as varied and unique as the products they sell. In addition to peaches, Schwab also had sold out of potatoes; and popcorn was moving fast.

"Business has been real good, excellent for this cold day," he said.

Lyman Peck's regular customers had cleaned out his supply of bread, which he bakes in his backyard in a brick oven heated by a wood fire.

"I burn the fire for about five or six hours and then clean everything up and bake with the retained heat," said Peck, who taught at Miami University for 15 years.

Harv Roehling of Locust Run Farms had a lot of takers for his lettuce. He had 10 varieties for sale. Roehling, who is certified organic, raises the lettuce all winter long in an unheated greenhouse.

"It slows down a little in the winter primarily because of the light," he said. "December has short, cloudy days. Even when the sun is out, it is low in the sky so we don't get a lot of energy from it. That has more effect on the growth than the cold weather."

A bit farther down the aisle is Mike Egbert. "We're selling eggs from free-range chickens today," Egbert said. "We'll sell 50 to 60 dozen."

Egbert is the third generation of his family to have a stand in a farmers market. His grandparents had a stand in Findlay Market, his father had one in the Cincinnati markets.

Luci and Eugene Goodman of Boulder Belt Farms offered herbs, cabbages, lettuce, spring mix, popcorn, garlic and more.

"I like the winter market. It's a good thing," Luci Goodman said.

"We've got a beautiful day; it's been worthwhile," said Bob Rauen, who has been selling honey products and produce at farmers markets for 30 years.

Rauen has 50 beehives, about half as many as he once had.

"It's hard to keep bees anymore because of the mites
and other problems with bees," he said.

Bowles had a display of soaps and body creams made from goat milk. She also offered beeswax candles made from Rauen's honey.

Bowles sees big things on the horizon for the market. There are plans to connect with the Oxford Parks and Recreation Department to offer Saturday events.

"This is going to be the place to be," she said.

From May to November,

the market is open every

week. Interested vendors can call Larry Slocum at (513) 505-5238.

What's Your Aura Color?

Your Aura is Violet

Idealistic and thoughtful, you have the mind and ideas to change the world. And you have the charisma of a great leader, even if you don't always use it! The purpose of your life: saying truths that other people dare not say Famous purples include: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony Careers for you to try: Political Activist, Inventor, Life Coach

What Color Is Your Aura?

Embracing My Inner Redneck

Tony Stewart Signing autographs at Eldora Speedway August 2006
©Lucy Owsley 2006 do not use without permission

Today is the Daytona 500, the Super Bowl of Nextel Cup level NASCAR Racing.

And this lefty tree hugging , organic farming, college educated, brought up by liberal and affluent parents, farmer is gonna be watching and cheering on Tony Stewart who is favored to win the big race.

I got into NASCAR back in the late 1980's due to dating a gearhead ex-dragster racing dude. he watched the Winston Cup races every Sunday afternoon (this was before 2 networks showed these races or there were any Saturday night races). We'd sit around all afternoon swilling beer and watching fast cars go round and round the track and occasionally have a big wreck. For a couple of years I found this about as appealing as watching paint dry. But getting tight did help in that respect and of course the wrecks were always worth watching. Some weeks the two of us would got to Zerby's house and watch with him. Zerby hated NASCAR but he and I had a good time wondering what would happen in they used a figure 8 track and just generally making fun of stock car racing while Drew-bob got all pissed at us for not taking this sport seriously.

frankly, back than I could not take NASCAR seriously because I was not tapping into my inner redneck. Despite being raised in SW Ohio (this is where a lot of guests on the Jerry Springer Show come from, in the first 5 years of that show I'd hazard a guess that about 75% of his guests hailed from Hamilton, Butler and Preble Counties in Ohio. I grew up in Butler county and I have lived in Preble county for the past 14 years), I was a liberal , anti corporate, feminist, secular humanist, conservationist, foodie, well read, a tree hugger, Birkenstock wearing elitist. I am still all of these things.

But after being taken to a nigh of sprint car racing in Winchester, IN I was hooked for real. Nothing like driving into the parking lot and hearing your first racing engine doing hot laps. God that was exciting! This was not a top level NASCAR event. Actually I don't believe it was a NASCAR event at all because I do not remember stock cars racing that night. It was all sprint cars. It was also Jeff Gordon's last time driving sprints before going off to the big show-Winston Cup Stock care racing on the super speedways (he was such a geeky looking teen back than). Not that I knew what that meant at the time. I was just told this 17 year old who was winning all his races that evening was leaving for the big time. And he has certainly made his mark.

Anyhoo Drew bob and I broke up and I figured I would quit watching NASCAR but I found myself drawn to it. And this embarrassed me as none of my close friends could stand the sport and ridiculed it. So I went underground for several years. I did have a co-worker, Kenny who was heavily into Winston Cup and we would sometimes talk about it at work or after work if we went out drinking together (pretty common thing to do when you work in a kitchen). Than in 1997 (or thereabouts) I met my buddy Rosie and we found we had two strange things in common-we both loved the Ohio Lottery show (which has since been ruined) and we both love NASCAR. Like me Rosie is well educated (Ph.D from Harvard in toxicology) and politically liberal. Finally I had someone I could come out to. Someone who would not denigrate the redneck inside screaming to come out, but rather would embrace her.

The only problem we had in the beginning was the fact I did not like Jeff Gordon back than. I referred to him as God-boy. but Rosie was (and is) in love with Jeffy. I used to bust her chops by insulting Mr. Gordon and than telling her the story of getting to see him race his last non NASCAR race. I don't do that any longer as I have grown to really respect Jeff Gordon's abilities on the track. He's very very good.

Back when I met Rosie I was Bill Elliot fan but now I have been a Tony Stewart fan for the past 5 years or so. I like the fact he's a local boy from Rushville, Indiana (yeah he claims to be from Columbus IN but when he was a rookie he was called the Rushville Rocket), he 3 years ago bought Eldora Speedway up near North Star, OH (about 45 minutes north of me), he has an anger management problem which can make for some rather interesting incidents and he is one hell of a driver.

I got to "meet" Tony last summer when he was racing at Eldora. After the races you can go to the pits and wait in line to get something autographed. Most people chose to get their hat or T-shirt signed. Me, I opted to have him sign a thing of Old Spice deodorant that they were giving out to everyone who came to the track that night (Old Spice was the main event sponsor). Next time I will get a T-shirt as Sharpies and the plastic on the deodorant container do not mix well and even after 6 months the ink has not set and will easily rub off.

So this afternoon I will be allowing my inner redneck to revel in the Super Bowl of NASCAR. I can't wait.