Contest:Win a GC!

Farm & Garden has a contest running right now. The prize is a $75 gc to High Mowing Seeds.

http://www.farm-garden.com/gregg/what_does...nic_mean_to_you

Lucy & Eugene get a DVD Player (finally)

I got package full of interesting DVD's from my brother for the Christmas/solstice season, 5 in all.

But we did not have a DVD player with which to view them so we went to Richmond and got a Coby™ DVD player from REX for under $31 (including tax).

Long time readers of this blog may remember that in November 2005 we had a visit from my brother Scott and during that visit, among other things, we bought a DVD player from the local Wal-Mart box store. It turned out to be a very evil DVD player (See My weekend... & Purging the Evil for the story about the last DVD player and all the ensued) so it was returned (partly because the TV we had at the time was too old for DVD players, partly because the damned thing seemed to be cursed).

now that we have a much newer TV we can now use DVD player technology and we had been discussing buying a DVD player for a couple of months (since we got Fran's TV). When we got the package of DVD's in the mail we figured it was a sign to go out and purchase one.

And so we did.

We decided to buy at REX because it is a local company (based out of Dayton, OH) and also because it had cheap players whereas Wal-Mart had them for about $90 and HH Gregg was not much cheaper. All we wanted was the most basic unit we could find and REX had that unit. It was so basic we opted to pay five bucks more for one with an LED display. The sales guy answered all our questions but warned us that this unit played on DVD-/RW disks and DVD+/RW disks. But he also assured us that the DVD+/RW disks are almost never used.

So we drove home happy with our new purchase.

We get home and I find the DVD's my brother sent and damn it to hell, all but one was a DVD+/RW. So without reading the specs on the DVD player box we start planning the return of yet another DVD player. At least this time no pets were dead on the road or furnishings stuck where they ought not to be. but before we get too far in our return the DVD player plans I wander over to the box and read the specs and find out the unit will play DVD+/RW disks-Yay!

While I cook dinner, Eugene hooks up the player to the TV set and by 8pm we are watching one of the DVD my brother sent. we put in man on the Moon, about Andy Kauffman. We get the menu screen with sound and color and everything so we know we have the thing hooked up correctly. press play and get the movie itself but no sound. I figure out how to get English subtitles so for a while we can read along. but it ain't the same as listening. So we try this is Spinal Tap and with that we get a strange voice over of the band in recent years describing the "documentary", strange. I am curious to see what other surprises await us with the DVD's. Still have Heathers, the History of Violence (which I have not seen) and American Splendor (another one I have not seen and I hope is watchable because I have wanted to see this since it came oout about 18/24 months ago. It's about a guy named Harvey Pekar and I have a friend named Pekar but I do not believe they are any relation).

That is our most recent adventure involving electronics.

festivus time

While not making Christmas cookies I found myself surfing blogs and found a great festivus post over at Slowly She Turns..

I had forgotten all about Festivus despite several stories on NPR the past 2 weeks

My grievances are as follows:

Any and all news stories that involve puppies or kittens or small children or women riding mopeds who end up in wells or storm drains and are not from the area covered by local news should be banned from the airways

I am on the do not call list so telemarketers quit calling me

People who drive while talking need to have their vehicles taken away. either drive or talk but not both

The Ohio smoking ban is simply stupid and unenforceable. Not to mention it is prohibiting a legal substance from being used on private property.

Anything Bush has done in the past year pisses me off. Same with Cheney

I buy raw milk but why do I had to fill out a 14 page contract to buy it legally. Why do I have to do this for a pure product but milk that is factory farmed and pumped full of drugs is sold over the counter? Pisses me off!

This fear leading to hatred of Muslim Americans pisses me off. Hey we are all human beings here!

I have a real problem with Industrial organics. More so if they are being sold by Wal-Mart

Ads in movie theaters. I do not go to many movies (maybe 1 a year) and this trend of commercials in the previews is sick and wrong. I pay good money to see a movie ad free.

Now I do not have an unadorned alumunim pole set up not any dinner planned. And I probably will not do feats of strength (unless with Nate the dog).

But to those of you who will respect the entire ritual I bid you a Happy Festivus

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?

Game Time

Here's some winter fun for those of us who like to smack penguins about.
Yeti batting Penguin game

Solistice

On the last day of autumn I saw a family of bluebirds cavorting about some hoophouse supports and a ringed necked pheasant that for some reason was hanging out in the south lawn by the chain linked fence. Upon seeing Us humans and the dogs, it flew over to the tall grass and weeds and disappeared from sight. I did not realise they are as big as a chicken and sound a lot like one too

Happy Solstice Everyone
May the Gods and Goddesses grant you a swell new year.

Question

Question: Which father pays for a lesbian wedding?

Dinner Tonight is Local

For dinner tonight I will be making pastured raised pork chops that I bought this past Saturday at the farmers' market in Oxford, OH raised by the Filbrun family. I believe I will sautè them and serve them with homemade applesauce, some cabbage sautèed with onion and garlic and perhaps some roasted butternut squash (all raised here on the farm) Dessert will be Brownies with walnuts that will be served with locally raised raw milk from the Streits.

The day before winter and we are easily eating mostly locally raised food. Eating in season does not have to boring and is far safer and tastier than buying possibly tainted meats and veggies from the industrial food stream. I do a lot of canning and freezing of things that hate cold weather and will not store for more than a few weeks like zucchini, tomatoes, melons, bell peppers, green beans, peas, etc.. As well as growing storage items such as garlic, onions, squash, carrots, taters, etc.. And let us not forget the winter garden under plastic that gives us leafy greens such as kale and spring mix most of the winter. You can see we have done a great deal of prep to have food available all winter. It is a lot of work but well worth the effort in my opinion.

Seed Ordering

Heirloom Red Ruffled peppers, one of the kinds of seeds we save

It's seed ordering time at the farm. This annual ritual (okay we do this more than once a year because we always either forget something or run out of something but...) marks the beginning of brand new shiny season where everything is perfect and nothing has gone wrong yet. of course things like weather, animals, diseases, etc will rear their ugly heads in the future but for now all is perfect and good.

The seed order is where a great deal of our money goes. Even though we save a lot of our own seeds we will still spend several hundred dollars on our order. The reason we do not save all of our seeds are numerous. Some are just too difficult to do. I have tried saving broccoli seeds but they always come out sterile for me. Some we do not have a good way to isolate the parents so we do not get a mixing of genetics (this includes melons and squash, though we do save some zucchini seeds that we grow out in early spring). Some varieties we buy are hybrids and while hybrids do make viable seed it will not be pure and therefore we do not know what will come up the following season.

This year I am facing a problem of losing several favorite hybrids such as fat n' sassy peppers and superstar white sweet onions. This is due to Monsanto buying out Semenis Seeds and the aforementioned varieties (along with something like 15 others we used to grow) are now owned by Monsanto, a company I will not knowingly support. So I am dropping these varieties and have to find replacements. the onions will be pretty easy as there are some great open pollinated sweet onions out there such as Siskyou Sweet and Ailsa Craig, though neither is a white sweet onion.

The good thing for me is the fact Fedco Seeds has been a leader in this "do not buy Monsanto seeds" deal and in their 2007 catalogue have clearly marked the questionable seeds (by discontinuing them) and, for many, have found good substitutes. the other catalogue we use, Johnny's Selected Seeds, still carries all the Monsanto/Semenis varieties even though they, like Fedco are anti-GMO. But I assume their reasoning is that despite the current ownership of certain varieties, these are wonderful cultivars and should still be offered to growers who want them. This makes it hard for me not to buy certain varieties such as Fat n Sassy, which, so far I have not found a replacement for. Last year I trialed Ace pepper but did not like the size, shape or taste and it was a poor seller too boot. I have found a variety called Orion which looks like it might be comparable to Fat n' Sassy. there is also a variety called x3r Red Knight that looks good and because it is in both catalogues is not a Monsanto owned seed (Orion might be as it is in Johnny's only).

Yesterday I did an inventory of the seeds we have and with Eugene we wrote down about 3/4 of the seeds we will be ordering from Fedco. Still have to get the Johnny's order started and that is the plan for today-to get to the point of filling out order forms. We have to have the Fedco order in by Jan 4th as we order with a group of folks and that is the deadline for the group. We have no deadline for Johnny's but i have found if we are ordering onion seed the earlier we get the order in the less likely we will have those seeds put on back order (a very bad thing because onions need to be planted as early as possible and we like to get them started inside by mid January. If they go on back order we may not get the seeds until mid April when they are no longer any good to us) or find them sold out.

I mentioned we do save a lot of our own seed. Most of the seeds are either tomatoes, lettuce, beans or peas with a few peppers and leafy greens in the mix too. We also have a lot of butternut squash seed which we can successfully save because we rarely grow any other squash that will cross with butternut (some day I will write an entry on the sex life of winter and summer squash but not today). Oh yeah and some eggplant seed that likely did cross with the other eggplants and will give us some interesting fruits. Actually we have a lot of squash and melon seeds because Eugene loves saving seeds from such fruits despite the fact he refuses to isolate these crops properly for seed saving. So Eugene's seeds are generally a genetic cocktail of really interesting but not sellable results. This past season he planted zucchinis from seed he had saved and I think all 5 varieties of zukes were represented in new and wonderful shapes and colors. but while the squash were really beautiful they were not great eating and not what we expected. And when you garden for a living you really need expected results for most things.

So What's the Big Deal?

December 18, 2006

"A National Pattern of Disregard"
So What's the Big Deal, If Wal-Mart Makes a Mistake?
By JIM GOODMAN

That was the question asked by the host on a recent Public Radio
call-in show. Her question to her guest from the Cornucopia Institute
was in regard to recent charges that Wal-Mart was passing conventional
grocery items off as USDA certified organic.

A mistake? I doubt it. Seriously, think about it, you start a big push
in marketing a new line of high profit products and one of the first
things you do is mislabel your products, "accidentally"? As Jim
Hightower would say "Do they think we were born with sucker wrappers
around our heads?"

Ever since Wal-Mart announced earlier this year that they planned to
greatly increase their organic offerings at a cost of only ten percent
more than their conventional foods, those of us who grow organic food
have been skeptical.

Now it appears our skepticism was well placed. I personally felt the
worst we might expect would be imports of cheap "organic" food from
China, but hey, why not go for the gold, just sell conventional food as
organic.

There was much excitement about Wal-Mart expanding their organic sales
and how it would do so much to help organic farmers, huh? did Wal-Marts
entrance into the conventional grocery business help conventional
farmers, did their profits go up? Hardly, but it did put lots of small
grocery stores out of business and certainly added more black ink to
Wal-Marts multi-billion dollar bottom line.

In its short history as an organic retailer Wal-Mart is already under
scrutiny for sourcing its organic milk from a factory scale dairy that
is under investigation by the USDA for failing to comply with federal
organic regulations. It would also appear that they have no qualms
about selling organic produce from China as long as it's cheaper and
more profitable than sourcing from the U.S, but then Wal-Mart is an old
hand at offshore sourcing, just ask the U.S textile industry they
helped ruin.

I wonder if a Wal-Mart mistake was the reason 1.6 million women have
joined in a civil rights lawsuit against Wal-Mart? This action, now the
largest class-action lawsuit in history charges Wal-Mart with sex
discrimination in pay and promotions.

When an Oregon jury found Wal-Mart guilty of systematically forcing
workers to work overtime without pay, the evidence obviously pointed to
more than just a "mistake" on the part of Wal-Mart.

On ten separate occasions the National Labor Relations Board has ruled
that Wal-Mart broke the law when it fired union supporters. A mistake,
or are they just slow learners?

"A pattern of national disregard by Wal-Mart" was how Connecticut
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal described the company's adherence
to environmental protection laws. More mistakes, or just their way of
doing business?

In Wal-Marts tightly structured business model everything is controlled
down to the temperature and in-store music) from the head office in
Bentonville Arkansas. The home office knows exactly whats going on in
the stores and they certainly didn't become the worlds largest retailer
by making mistakes.

Everyday Low Prices, the Wal-Mart slogan, wins the hearts of many
because "poor people can afford to shop there". Those low prices are
kept low by the exploitation of international sweatshop laborers,
driving competitors out of business and paying their associates wages
so low they must turn to Medicaid for health insurance and often buy
their cloths at Goodwill.

Wal-Mart does have a history, a history of low wages, union busting,
sweatshop exploitation, discrimination and doing whatever it takes to
make a profit. So what's a little mislabeling? Like many of their
business practices, a big mistake, but their most consistent mistake is
thinking they can get away with it.

A caller to that same radio program asked the guest why he was picking
on Wal-Mart. While the guest correctly focused on examples of Wal-Marts
unethical and illegal behavior, in particular their flouting of organic
standards, my answer would have been shorter, we're not picking on
them, they're picking on us.

JIM GOODMAN is a dairy farmer from Wonewoc Wisconsin

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

Still Awake

It's now 3:57pm. I have been awake with no nap for over 12 hours-woof!

It's a warm sunny day and by warm I mean it is almost 60˚F and it is the middle of December. Gotta love the el Nino effect on SW Ohio. We get dry warm winters when there is a strong el Nino this time of year.

This is good for our winter gardening. This means the ground will not freeze badly if at all and that means plowing and tilling can be done in January and February. This means the things in hoophouses will grow very well. We have some nice spring mix that will be cut tomorrow for the farmers' market this Saturday. This is good since the older spring mix beds that were not in a hoophouse got pretty nuked by the combination of high winds and snow followed by bitter cold. The lettuce and other greens are still alive but a lot of the leaves are pretty burned and thus not very usable. I am hoping there is some arugula that is usable as Eugene, for some reason he cannot explain, did not plant any arugula with the lovely spring mix in the hoophouse. Arugula is pretty darned important in my spring mix mix, it's a much duller salad without it.

Ah c'est la vie.

puzzles in today's Dayton Daily News are repeats from yesterday. I did some house cleaning this morning. Discovered the crossword and SudokuHmmmph!
Lightly weeded the spring mix so it would be ready for harvest tomorrow. Ate lunch-PB&J sandwiches, bananas in vanilla yogurt and a big cold glass of ovaltine and raw milk. Than went to Eaton to get more hangers for the gutters that Eugene is putting up today. Got some clamps for the Montero muffler (the Montero is my 1986 Mitsubishi Montero, the 1st SUV ever made. It is a small tidy vehicle, nothing like the behemoths of today) at TSC because the Auto Zone place was out of them. And dog licenses at the court house (I love the Preble County Court House). Despite living in a very rural county Homeland Security decided there might be terrorist threats at the PC Court House. This means there is a deputy Sheriff stationed at the door and you have to walk through a metal detector and if you have a bag or purse it goes through the x-ray machine. A bit of big city paranoia in small town America. Gotta love it. Got the dog licenses. $28 for two dogs. It was not too long ago it was $7 per dog. Now Arlo and Nate are legal for 2007.

Eugene is busy hanging gutters, something that should have been done last fall but we had a porch and roof to paint because our old insurance people said we had to. The roof took a lot of time and because I have a morbid fear of heights I was zero help in the roof painting project. If I get up on a roof I have an extremely hard time moving or getting back down so I avoid roofs when ever possible. So it took Eugene something like 8 weeks to get it done (look at the Oct and Nov 2005 archives for the full story). the night after he finished the roof it started snowing and did not quit for about 5 weeks than when it did warm up farming got in the way (he had 150 beds to open up last winter) so the porch and eaves did not get a final coat on them until this fall when he quit farming for the most part for the season. Two weeks ago everything was ready to receive the gutters 'cepting the weather which got windy than cold. But now we are unreasonably warm and the gutters are going up.

When we got back home from our errands I made an appointment to get some periodontal infection dug out of my gum and to get an implant screwed into my jaw. 6 months ago I had a horribly infected tooth pulled and that is why I am getting an implant. The tooth next to the horribly infected tooth was also infected but instead of the infection going into the tooth it went into the gum along side root of the tooth. So on Jan 10th at 4pm I get to go and get that checked out and likely will get the infection out at that visit and than 2 weeks later get the implant or at least get fitted for the implant. The woman I talked to assured me it would be almost painless. My dentist tells me it will be about as painful as getting my gums flayed open (which is what they do to you if you have to have a full born periodontal cleaning. It is not as fun as it sounds. Been there, done that. Makes a filling with no Novocaine seem like a day at the beach). I do not know why I pay people a lot of money to put me into exquisite pain in my mouth but I do. I guess to save my teeth and health. A sick mouth will lead to a very sick to dead body. A healthy mouth means good health for the rest of the body.

Now I am thinking about what to have for dinner. Could always go to Taco Bell and eat some e-coli laced lettuce (Or is it the beef? Or is it the tomatoes? Or is it the food system?!). Or I can make something here that will cost less, taste better, be far more nutritious and not be full of pathogens rampant in the industrial food system.