September 2011
9 posts
4 tags
Labor Day Weekend
While most of the world honors work on May 1, Labor Day in the United States is the Monday of the first weekend in September. It also marks the end of summer - and very long hot summer in most of North America, though in the Pacific N.W. it seems that the start of a very short summer.
As to the Labor: 5 pints Crabapple sauce; 6- ½ pints Port Wine Jelly; 5 pints Strawberry Jam; 10- ½ pints Walla...
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Pennsylvania School District Is Using Sheep To Cut... →
What a great idea, and a tip of the hat to mollyfamous for recognizing it as such. As a bureaucrat I recognize a few issues with implementation as described (the sheep are owned by a district employee) but nothing which can’t be corrected with appropriate contracting processes. Assuming managed grazing and, if playing fields, off season grazing, sheep get fed, weeds controlled, grounds...
August 2011
8 posts
4 tags
Off Topic: Why Your Teenager Can't Use A Hammer →
The chances are good that you know someone young or that you are young. Give them tools or make certain that tools are around and that they have a chance to utilize them. Let them take things apart. Let them fix things. Help them to recognize that “technology” didn’t start with transistors and printed circuit boards, but with levers and sleds. Don’t panic when you hear the...
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Neither Dismal nor Dumb
The unfolding disaster in the Horn of Africa will not solve itself, and four factors make the situation potentially explosive. First, long-term human-induced climate change seems to be bringing more droughts and climate instability….Second, fertility rates and population growth in the Horn of Africa continue to be extremely high, even as children perish in the famine. … Third, the region is...
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“Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to...”
– Craig Claiborn (via allthingsfood)
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10 Reasons to Escape Excessive Consumerism
fenikkusu:
This is a guest post by Joshua Becker at becoming minimalist. It hits perfectly to the point about consumerism. Minimalists are still consumers but we cut out the excessive and put in the necessary.
I am trying to live a minimalist life. But that doesn’t mean I still don’t own stuff.
My family of four still owns three beds, three dressers, two couches, one table with chairs, one...
Washington State to Celebrate Its Farmers Markets →
Washington’s Governor Christine Gregoire (and my boss’s, boss’s, boss’s, boss) has proclaimed next week, August 7 through the 13, as Washington Farmers Market Week - an occasion best celebrated by shopping at your local market and cooking up your treasures sharing them with friends on a summer’s eve. At least that is what we’ll do in the U.S. Pacific Northwest....
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July 2011
1 post
June 2011
5 posts
Hungary to Tax Foods It Thinks Unhealthy →
I’m okay with this. Besides, who would bother eating prepackaged Rigojancsi or Retes?
Is it really Organic? Or is it really Good? →
Sharpsideoftheknife educated a shopper recently who was concerned that some locally produced foodstuffs were not “certified” organic. “Sharpside’s” comments are very pertinent to consumer decisions. When you take the opportunity to participate as either a buyer or seller in the “direct from producer” market, a chat is worth so much more than certification....
Maybe we can still have the GMO debate. →
(full disclosure: 1. At heart I love the promise of genetic engineering; 2. I also have a great many policy concerns about Monsanto and many of its practices.)
Mr. Dilley has posted a recap of certain research on the effects of Bt corn. I don’t know whether his argument is valid or not, nor will I take time in the near future to verify his sources. What’s important is that there ARE...
May 2011
15 posts
1 tag
Changing Roles in the Local Food Economy →
Who is the farmer? The distributor? What do they, and others, do? This essay begins to place some theoretical structure about (perceived) changes in the food economy. I’m still not convinced that this movement is of economic significance beyond a smattering of individual consumers and producers, but I’m certainly game.
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