A little over a year ago The Lummi Island Grange decided to offer a series of workshops on the general subject of rural life, community education being one of the Grange missions. We called it the Country Living Series, a name we borrowed from the Hood River Grange which runs a similar program.
Most of us have arrived at the island from a city setting and there are many things we never knew, used to know or had forgotten about. Rural life, especially life on an island, is markedly different from city life. One must be more self-reliant and self-sufficient. It’s important to learn how to do stuff or at least know who on the island has those skills.
In the lingo of The Transition Town Movement what we are doing is called “reskilling.” The intention is to learn to do things for ourselves and our neighbors. We have forgotten basic skills. I have written before about my grandparents farm in Virginia. It was a subsistence operation where they grew their own food, milled their lumber, built their house and outbuildings, slaughtered and butchered their animals, repaired their equipment and manufactured parts. There was even a barber chair in garage because they cut their own hair as well. People of that generation knew how to do stuff.
At the heart of reskilling is the idea of localization. That is, doing as much as we can for ourselves. Personally, I was thrilled to see Chris Immer’s recent Nextdoor post that he is milling lumber from Lummi Island trees and making it available for sale. If you are somewhat familiar with the island you will know that we do have people with specific skills and talents. We have people who know how to fell trees, catch fish, sail, weld, garden, sew, weave, heal, write, build boats, can and preserve, cook, throw a pot, carve, build, fix bikes and cars. There are more people that have fascinating hobbies and special musical talent. We have people who actually know what goes on inside computers. And people who can build musical instruments.
So, the whole idea of the Grange Country Living Series is to identify those people with special skills, talents and interests and try to cajole them into sharing their knowledge with the community at large.
We had a good first year and hope to do as well in the next twelve months. Here are the details:
25 workshops on 20 different subjects (5 workshops were repeated due to demand)
Over 200 people attended in total.
Highest individual attendance was 23. Lowest was 1.
Most of the workshops were presented by islanders but we did have help from the mainland for six workshops.
Subjects (not in order of presentation):
potting soil and fertilizer,backyard chickens, pruning fruit trees, seed saving (2), chainsaw safety and maintenance (2), bread and cheese, neighbor electric vehicles, cheese making (2), rag rug construction (2), bread baking (2), how to make soap, keeping mason bees, herbal gifts, backyard beans and grains, end of life preparation, eating local, kim chi, how to buy a side of beef, making wine, using nettles.
I encourage you to volunteer to share your knowledge on any subject you deem important to share. You might find that only three or four people have an interest and that’s okay. It’s still paying it forward and helping to educate islanders to be more self-reliant and self-sufficient.
Call or email me with ideas: aubreypub@mac.com or 2130.
In my garden the overwintered kale (White Russian) is six feet tall and bolting, buzzing with honeybees and bumblebees. Seed pods are forming and will drop seed and new plants will pop up later in the summer. This is a form of permaculture, I suppose. I like to see the kale blooms and though some find the leaves bitter after the plant bolts, we enjoy the taste. We will save some of the seeds to make sure we can perpetuate the kale in the future. Seed saving and exchanging seeds is growing in popularity. But at the same time, it’s under attack from companies that want to control the seed business.
This is really the problem with GMO. It may be years before we understand completely what the health hazards are with GMO seed, how the inserting of strange genes impacts humans and our environment, though it seems logical that, at this point, we can not know all the ramifications of messing with genetics. On the face of it, rearranging DNA sounds kind of like a Nazi war experiment to me. Distasteful at a minimum. Criminal at worst.
If this were a James Bond novel Monsanto would be the villain. A real life SMERSH.
The problem with GMO is the control issue. You can’t patent my kale seed. It’s not proprietary. But a genetically modified seed can be patented. Once you have the patent you can control how that seed is used and who gets to use it. If one or two companies can control the source of seed they control the food supply. They will then control the world. It is the stuff of science fiction or Ian Flemming.
It’s difficult to fight back when Monsanto has the inside track in Washington D.C. with even a Supreme Court Justice, one of their former attorneys (Clarence Thomas0, in their camp. Is it surprising that Monsanto recently won a landmark case in the high court involving a farmer’s “misuse” of Monsanto proprietary seed?
Our government works hand in hand with Monsanto to promote their agenda world wide. We know this thanks to Wikileaks.
Beth, the healthy home economist has provided us with four suggestions for keeping Monsanto out of our home gardens now that they control more than 40% of the vegetable seed market:
- Avoid buying from the seed companies affiliated with Monsanto. Here’s a list of these seed companies: http://www.seminis.com/global/us/products/Pages/Home-Garden.aspx
- Buy from this list of companies Monsanto HASN’T bought and are not affiliated or do business with Seminis: http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/ 2012/03/06/monsanto-free-seed-companies/
- Avoid certain heirloom varieties because Monsanto now apparently owns the names. This article lists the seed varieties to avoid: http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/2012/03/17/monsanto-owned-seednames/
- Ask seed companies if they have taken the Safe Seed Pledge. Here’s a list of companies that have done so: http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/ViewPage.aspx?pageId=261
There have been some questions about Territorial Seed where a lot of us buy seed and their relationship to Monsanto’s Seminis Seed Company. Here’s the skinny on that:
The case of Roundup which, sadly, many Lummi Islanders still use to kill weeds, points out how unethical Monsanto actually is. People still using Roundup need to read this and the many other studies available proving that it is harmful to human and animal health. Monsanto doesn’t care. They make using Roundup look like great fun and a manly activity at that.
And, finally, a brilliant essay by a young woman who has a connection to Lummi Island, granddaughter of a Lummi Island resident.
Money quote: “Our place is here, fighting Agra-Giants such as Monsanto, Dupont, and GE here on American soil by tilling it up and growing our own food.”
I used to get excited about new computer apps when they hit the market but most of them ended up having limited value. This year, however, I discovered Evernote which has become my favorite application. Evernote helps me remember, document and journal things. This year I’m using it to document my garden with a combination of photo and sound files. For five years I’ve used a spiral binder and the results have been unsatisfactory. So, far I’m very happy with the way things are going with Evernote. Evernote allows you to tag items with as many tags as you want: “Garden 2013″, “gardening”, “seeds”, “garden beds”, “garden journal”, or whatever. The search function pulls all these notes together as in this snapshot:
Using the Cloud, Evernote syncs these notes to all my devices. Since I am blessed with an iPhone, iPad, iMac and Macbook, all these notes appear very quickly on each device. If I modify an item on one device the change is synced on all devices. So, I can use my iPhone in the garden to make a recording, describing what I have done, when I did it and where I did it, then tag it later when I sit down at the laptop. I can also access my files via Evernote’s website from a third party computer.
I can add to each file as the season goes along and also include links to web pages, photos of invoice (for seed) and pics of seed packs to show the source, date packaged, etc.
I found it was awkward in the garden to find the notebook, something to write with and to figure out how to organize the material. At the end of the season I was constantly paging through the entire notebook to find what I was looking for.
A small garden can probably do this on a page or two. But as the garden gets bigger (and we’ve added a small orchard, some grapes, kiwis, and vegetable beds outside the main garden), it’s more and more difficult to keep track of things. I can no longer rely on my vaunted memory which has now vaulted to places unknown.
Last Saturday, Lummi Island’s own Whitney Thomas of http://www.organic-unity.com led a three hour workshop on our favorite local spring plant—nettles. This workshop, graciously co-sponsored by The Lummi Island Heritage Trust, started with a foraging expedition on the Curry Preserve where we learned when and how to harvest the nettle. We then moved to the Heritage Trust office where Whitney showed us how to make nettles tea, infusions, decoctions and pesto. We lunched on fresh nettle pesto and crackers. The health and medicinal benefits of nettles are many and i wish more people could have taken advantage of Whitney’s knowledge. However, she is available for private consultations and can formulate herbal remedies based on your specific need. Check out her website.
Here’s what’s coming up on the Grange Country Living Series.
Mike Moye—Chain Saw Safety and Maintenance. April 6 10-12pm Mike has agreed to repeat his well-attended chainsaw safety and maintenance class. Show up for this one. Held at Mike’s shop at the end of Constitution (east side of S. Nugent)
Whitney Thomas— Herbs for Cleansing, Detoxification and Wellness. Cleavers, Dandelion and Elderflower. April 13 10-1pm. $25 fee. Date subject to change. Location TBD. Call 758-7997 for more info.
Karen Kupka—Rag Rug Workshop. April 17, 6:30pm Grange Hall. Limited to four people. (Three spots still available. Note: incorrectly reported as scheduled on April 16.
Judy Olson—Soap Making. April 20, 10am to 12 at the Grange. More details to follow.
The Whatcom Alliance for Health Advancement—End of Life Workshop. April 23. 7pm to 8:40pm at the Grange. It is a free workshop about making end-of-life choices. Participants will learn why advance care planning is important; how to chose someone to be your durable power of attorney for health care; how to talk to loved ones and doctors about your preferences for end-of-lifecare; and how to complete advance directive paperwork.
Janice Holmes—Artisan Bread Making in an outdoor oven. May 4, Sat. noon to 5, 2722 Westshore. $5 fee. Janice is a graduate of the San Francisco Baking Institute. Class size 6. (5 spots still available).
Mary Stack—Cheese Making. May 19- 1-4pm. Grange kitchen
Whitney Thomas—The Heart: Wild Rose and Hawthorn flowers. June 8 10am to 1pm. Date subject to change. $25 fee. Location TBD. Call 7587997 for more info.
Diana Pepper —Self care with flower essences and accupressure points. June 15, 10:30-12:30 at Tree Frog Farm. $5 fee.
Whitney Thomas—Herbal First Aid: Yarrow, Plantain and St John’s Wort. July 6, 10am- 1pm. $25 fee. Date subject to change. Location TBD. call 758-7997 for more information
Additional workshops are in discussion.
Oregon Homestead squash
When Carol Deppe wrote The Resilient Gardener she really got me thinking about what I wanted to plant in the garden to truly provide real food for the longest period of time. Her formula consisted of duck eggs, beans, corn, potatoes and squash. This would provide her protein and carbohydrates and lots of calories over a long period of time. Beans, corn, potatoes and squash all being foods that store well months if not longer.
Her squash of choice was a sweet meat, the Oregon Homestead squash, a large, rich tasting winter squash which, I believe, she developed. She claims that this squash will keep until the following summer if stored properly. I have no reason not to believe her. Following her storage recommendation (against the living room wall) our sweet meat squash are still delicious. We may not last till summer as there are only two left.
The first year I tried to grow this squash I ran an experiment that didn’t work well and only ended up with one squash. I replanted those seeds, also gave many away, and this past season ended up with about a dozen sweet meats. This actually seems like an adequate amount for us but am going to try and increase the number of squash produced. Expect if we had more we would eat more.
This really is a terrific squash. And, as Carol Deppe points out, one squash produces a serious amount of food with flesh that can be three inches or more thick and a small seed ball producing a copious amount of fat, white, nutritious seeds.
We prepare it in a straight forward manner, steaming it and eating it with a bit of butter. It has a wonderful creamy texture and we don’t seem to tire of it.
Extending the gardening and eating season is the next challenge. Growing veggies using the Carol Deppe formula works for us and food stacks up in the pantry for eating during the winter. It’s fun to be able to put a meal on the table in March that consists primarily of garden food. Last night: Oregon Homestead squash, steamed nettles/kale combo, shallots and cabbage in a stir fry. We could last a long time on squash, beans and cornmeal with a few potatoes thrown into the mix. And this winter we had volunteer arugula for the entire season along with some corn lettuce for salads.
If the mineralization that I’ve been blogging about works as advertised, the resilient gardener’s diet should help us survive many winters to come in good health.
Seeds from one squash
The modern diseases of cancer, arthritis, chronic infection, diabetes, lupus, fibromyalgia, etc. are essentially symptoms of malnutrition brought about by insufficient nutrition in the food that we eat. Big agriculture treats their fields with chemicals and gene splicing. Medicine treats disease with drugs (chemicals) and surgery. It’s curious that every natural food store also has a large section of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs, enzymes and other potions designed to supplement the organic food that we are purchasing in the produce section, the organic dairy products from the refrigerator case and the free range, hormone free meats from the butcher shop.
Why would we need all this supplementation if the food was good to start with? Why not put the nutrition back in the food? And, why isn’t it there in the first place?
The concept of mineralizing soil isn’t new at all. In the mid-nineteenth century Justus von Liebig invented nitrogen based fertilizer and the concept known as The Law of Minimum which postulated that plant development was limited by the one essential mineral that was in the shortest supply. Von Liebig’s theories generated the fertilizer industry and moved farmers away from using manures and humus to feed their crops.
In 1893 a chemist named Julius Hensel published a book called, “Bread From Stones.” Bread From Stones advocated using stone meal (ground rock or rock dust) in place of chemicals to vitalize the soil. Hensel claimed that plants needed more than Liebig’s nitrogen, phosphorus and potash and stressed the importance of trace minerals which were ignored in the Liebig system. According to some, Hensel’s book was suppressed by the chemical industry and he was forced out of business by unfair competition. Years later his work was rediscovered and the rock dusts have become commonplace in organic fertilizers.
Starting in the late 1930s, William Albrecht was Chair of the Soils Department at the University of Missouri. Albrecht determined that animals would be healthiest if the grass they ate came from soil with a balance of 68% calcium and 12% magnesium. Albrecht believed our soils had become depleted. “Albrecht was outspoken on matters of declining soil fertility, having identified that it was due to a lack of organic material, major elements, and trace minerals, and was thus responsible for poor crops and in turn for pathological conditions in animals fed deficient foods from such soils.”
Victor Tiedjens was a contemporary of Albrecht and was another soil scientist who believed that calcium was the key to rehabilitating worn out soil. He went farther than Albrecht concluding that the calcium saturation should reach 85%. “Tiedjens found that, once the soil was saturated with calcium, he could grow a huge crop of corn or soybeans using about one-tenth the quantity of fertilizers a typical farmer thought was needed to produce a similar result. And that is why the fertilizer industry made sure you never heard of Victor Tiedjens—lime is cheap; fertilizer is not.”(The Intelligent Gardener, p. 91).
Dr. Carey Reams was a biochemist and biophysicist who, “…demonstrated that all disease is caused by mineral deficiencies and when a person remineralized, the symptoms of those diseases disappeared, and the remineralized person would no longer have that disease. It was so simple that the medical community of the day could not accept the fact that their drug, cut and burn way of treating people was the completely wrong way to treat disease.”
Authors Peter Thompkins and Christopher Bird (authors of the well-known Secret Life of Plants) wrote a less well-known but more fascinating book called Secrets of the Soil. They cover many alternative agricultural and gardening practices and spend a lot of time on mineral rock and the remineralization of soils.
Michael Astera took the work of Albrecht and Reams and wrote The Ideal Soil which explains how to test and analyze for soil minerals and the proper balance of cations and anions. It was Astera’s work that got Steve Solomon interested in the subject resulting in his book The Intelligent Gardener.
A backyard gardener can experiment with nutrient dense food at quite a low cost—$20 for a soil test and perhaps $50 for a supply of minerals to begin balancing the soil. After a few years, perhaps as soon as one year, a gardener should be able to taste the results. Using plant tissue tests, an additional expense if one insists on being completely scientific, the gardener can verify increased minerals in the tissue of plants.
Improving nutrient density of our garden produce should not only improve taste and reduce disease in our plants but increase our own ability to withstand disease.
In organic gardening circles compost is sacrosanct. So when somebody with a resume like Steve Solomon says we can use too much compost, as he has in his new book The Intelligent Gardener, organic gardeners recoil in horror.
JI Rodale’s Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine introduced organics to North Americans.
Steve Solomon summarizes Rodale’s approach as follows: “To grow an abundance of highly nutritious vegetables and fruit, make and then dig in compost. Lots of it.”
Rodale encouraged bringing in or importing lots of organic material and putting it in the garden. And then his recommendation was to counteract acidic soil to by adding crushed limestone to bring the pH close to neutral. Roedale said if you’re going to add lime it’s better to use a sort called dolomite because dolomite contains both magnesium and calcium and magnesium is as much a vital plant nutrient as calcium is.
Some compost in the garden is, of course, good. Making composts satisfies our desire to recycle the plant material from our garden waste. Compost increases the organic percentage of the soil and turns to humus which helps the garden hold moisture. And, it does provide some nutrients but, at a point in time, the benefit of compost is lost. And, depending on the materials used to build the compost there might have been much nutritional benefit to start with.
The real problem with using the composting method of organic gardening is that we don’t know the mineral or nutritional makeup of our compost. We are flying blind. We don’t know exactly what our inputs consist of. Thus, if we just keep adding compost we don’t really accomplish very much.
Excessive inputs of compost will usually imbalance the soil’s profile with the result that nutritional outcomes will be degraded. And if, in addition, one adds dolomite as one’s lime source the magnesium in the dolomite will change the behavior of the clay in the soil making it stick to itself and you’ll end up with tight or clumpy soil in your garden beds.
In the Puget Sound region the soil already holds huge supplies potassium but insufficient calcium and magnesium to properly balance that potassium. Plants concentrate potassium into their structural parts. So if we import lots of grass clippings, straw, spoiled hay, tree waste, etc. into our compost we are adding enormous additional quantities of potassium which will have a devastating effect on the nutritional quality of our food, even though it makes plants seem to grow great.
Here’s the problem with potassium: If potassium gets out of balance, that is top heavy in relation to the other important minerals like calcium and magnesium, plants grow differently. Instead of making proteins they make more carbohydrates. The bottom line is this. Crops on high potassium soils produce about 25% more carbohydrates. At the same time their protein content is lowered by around 25%.
By continually adding compost we end up with the situation where our food looks good, grows well but we’re producing more calories and less proteins. Plus according to Steve Solomon the nature of those proteins changes.
In the Intelligent Gardener he writes, “Proteins are long complex chains chains of about 20 different amino acids. A few amino acids usually are scarce. In plants grown with excess potassium these are even scarcer lowering protein quality and leading to diseases in all the animals eating them including us. Another shift occurs in the food’s mineral content. As soil potassium increases the mineral content of the plant growing on that soil also shifts. Excessive potassium in the soil results much higher levels of potassium in the plant tissues but correspondingly lower levels of calcium and phosphorus and minor nutrients. Our bodies can hardly get enough calcium magnesium phosphorus but
We do not need high quantities of potassium.”
We need some potassium, yes; but not lots.
We don’t have naturally balanced nutrient rich soil in our region. Part of this is because of constant winter rains which leech nutrients particularly calcium from the soil. If we bring in fertility by importing local vegetation we further imbalance our soil.
So this is why the composting method isn’t necessarily the best method and why getting a simple soil test and balancing the nutrients in your garden makes all the sense in the world.
We’ll take up this subject in more detail and learn an easy way to build a customized fertilizer for our particular garden at the Gardener’s Network meeting, Feb. 11, 6:30pm at the Lummi Island Grange.
Near the end of his new book, The Intelligent Gardener, long-time garden guru Steve Solomon makes a significant point: “There is no place on this planet that remains free of toxic residues.” He then suggests we would be far better off if we quit worrying so much about toxicity and, instead, concentrated on growing and eating nutrient dense food.
I’ve been able to follow, and participate to a degree, in Mr. Solomon’s metamorphosis from expert “organic” gardener to expert “nutrient dense” gardener. Solomon, in my opinion, has long been ahead of the pack as evidenced by his books “Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades” and “Gardening When It Counts.” Through his early gardening experiences and from starting the Territorial Seed business he devised his Complete Organic Fertilizer (COF) which was an attempt to balance garden soil. COF is still a good way to go for people who don’t wish to go any farther and the formula is easily found on the internet. (Also in The Intelligent Gardener pps. 84-85).
In the last half dozen years through association with Michael Astera’s Nutrient Dense Project and a re-study of the work of scientists like William Albrecht and Victor Tiedjens, Steve Solomon has become a convert to the concept of “nutrient dense.”
The concept of nutrient dense food is pretty simple. The gardener works over time to balance the soil with the proper mix of minerals. The result will be soil that encourages the life forms (worms, bacteria, etc.) that help with soil symbiosis and soil that provides the nutrients plants need to grow properly. Balanced soil will mean healthier plants, resistant to pests. Balanced soil will result in food that is nutrient dense, providing us with the vitamins and minerals we need to be healthy.
Steve Solomon spends a lot of time debunking the concept promoted by J.I. Rodale that compost would solve all problems and that by continuing to heap organic matter on a garden a garden would only get better and better. This is not the case as Solomon explains in detail in a chapter titled: SAMOA (The Shit Method of Agriculture). More important is bringing calcium and magnesium into proper balance. When garden soil is properly balanced, according to Solomon, the garden will create its own nitrates.
Balancing calcium, magnesium, potassium, sulphur, sodium and other minerals is the key to nutrient dense food. Getting this balance correct begins with a $20 soil test. Then, with a copy of The Intelligent Gardener in hand, one can use the worksheets provided to come up with a prescription for a custom fertilizer designed for one’s own garden. Solomon’s colleague and co-author, California gardener Erica Reinheimer has developed a website where you can find copies of the worksheets found in Steve’s book. On this same website you will find a link to “OrganiCalc” which allows you, for a small fee, to compute your custom fertilizer prescription on line.
The Lummi Island Grange Gardener’s Network will have a discussion of The Intelligent Gardener at their Febuary 11 meeting: 6:30PM at the Grange Hall.
Hawaii is on a mission to label GMOs. More than that, the pure food groups would like to kick Monsanto right off the islands. A big demonstration at the capital on Jan. 15 coinciding with the opening of the legislative session got things going followed up by the Vandana Shiva tour.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is one of the rock stars of the food movement world wide and we were lucky enough to get seats for her talk Wednesday night at the amazing Salvation Army Joan Kroc Community Center in the Kapolei area. This $133 million community center was something to behold and it’s too bad that MacDonald’s Joan wasn’t into healthy food. Then, perhaps, her $1.6 billion gift might have gone to an organization like Hawaii Seed. It’s ironic that a hamburger-funded facility hosted such an event which also featured the very impressive Andrew Kimbrell from the Center for Food Safety and Walter Ritte the guy who got the military to stop practice bombing the island of Kahoolawe.
In many ways, the GMO issue is the most important political issue of our time. Topics like Right to Life and Gun Control get more press but are side shows. Because, everything is about food. And, as it is with so many other things the public has been sold a load of crap by corporate interests to modify our behavior so they can make more money.
Both Dr. Shiva and Mr. Kimbrell made the point that our modern food system of chemical monocroping is a continuation of WWII. The big chemical companies did really well with explosives. Sadly, the same materials used for bombs can be turned into fertilizer. Farmers were convinced to use these modern methods to increase yield. Shiva pointed out that it’s all about control and the strategy of the chemical industry has been to “Occupy the Seed.” If you control the seed you control the farmer and the food and the public will be forced to eat what you present to them. Patenting seeds, plants and animals and genetic engineering are tactics in the stategy of occupying the seed. (The chemical industry has succeeded in morphing the phrase “genetic engineering” to the less inflammatory GMO or “genetically modified organism”).
All of us need to learn a lot more about the hazards of GMO. There are no studies to determine the side effects. Modern agriculture has convinced most of the world that to feed the billions their chemistry will be required. The sad truth is that chemical agriculture makes us sick, destroys the soil and affects the culture and local economy by undermining traditional food systems.
Here’s the exciting thing about the food issue: it’s a political issue that you can do something about immediately. This minute. You can decide to never eat genetically engineered food. You can decide to grow some of your own food. You can decide to boycott any store that sells unlabeled GMO products. You can decide to support local agriculture and local farmers. You can contribute to organizations working to defeat Montsanto and the other four or five giant chemical companies who have worked so diligently to turn their war chemicals into fertilizer and who are determined to control the world’s seed stock.
Makana, one of our favorite Hawaiian performers opened the show. He’s written a number of anti GMO anthems and sung for us last evening. Here are the last few stanzas:
Monsanto and the others all make great claims
Of feeding the world… and pests they overcame
But yields are shrinking and the pests are getting bigger
And no one knows what’s coming cause they pulled an early trigger
Remember the butterflies and bees that all died
And the quarter million farmer suicides
You think you might start asking why?
So many living things would die from a thing that’s meant to save the world
The makers of Agent Orange and Roundup too
Were all excited over a new breakthrough
Just before their patent on herbicide was up
They found a way to keep farmers drinking from their cup
They built their product right into the crop
Turned Mother Nature into their own shop
Now they can patent your food
While family farmers are sued for the crime of saving their seeds
And all the cheerleaders talk of ending world starvation
But it ain’t from lack of food, it’s from economic segregation
They say Genetic Engineering is old as growing food
But we know it ain’t the same in fact it’s way more crude
It ain’t science when you’re aiming a gun
And praying the DNA don’t come undone
They’re playin’ cowboy with our genes
Ignoring all the unforeseen risks, they made a laboratory of the world
50 nations label transgenic food
But out here in the US the consumer’s gettin’ screwed
It didn’t change the price of food to label it elsewhere
Now they’re spending millions just to keep us unaware
This is the story of the GMO
It’s on your plate and you probably don’t know
There never was a dry run
Put on a grocery shelf, not one test to prove the safety of the food
The recent discussion on Nextdoor about UFO’s reminds me that I haven’t covered everything that could tip the balance of the way we currently live. Obviously, alien invasion/infiltration should be included in my list of possible crises that could change our society. And, I had no idea that Lummi was a hot spot for alien spacecraft.
Back in the very early fifties my friend Dicky and I were avid UFO investigators checking out every book the Vancouver, Washington library had on the subject. We would lurk about Lake Vancouver as late as Dicky’s parents would let us, trying to spot a UFO or, better yet, get abducted. That sounded like a lot of fun. This kind of curiosity and sense of adventure no doubt served Dicky well in his career as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I lost track of Dicky and am guessing that he might finally have been abducted. I expect the aliens would like to know what Dicky and I knew.
I continued to pay some attention to the UFO phenomena, never discounted the possibility, watched some X Files, etc. but never could be certain that it was something I needed to worry about. After all, what can be done against civilizations so advanced as the ones who created the UFOs we occasionally read about?
For a period of time in my life, one year to be exact, I was in the thick of things as part of Project Blue Book. This was an effort by the US Air Force to systematically study unidentified flying objects. The way this worked was that if a UFO sighting was reported it was channeled to the closest Air Force Base where the report was assigned to one of the Wing Intelligence Officers to investigate. That’s where I came in. We used to fight over these assignments. We’d get to check out a government vehicle, put on our class A uniform and go interview the person who made the report. I was enjoying a delightful year in Tampa, Florida and Project Blue Book was one of the year’s highlights.
Two officers went on each call. Lt. Billy Joe and I got to visit a very weathly and attractive young woman in St. Pete who served us coffee in bone china cups as she described her sighting which turned out to be Venus. The whole thing should have lasted five minutes but Billy Joe and I stretched it out to a couple of hours, standing where she stood, drawing diagrams and getting her to tell it a couple of times while we stared attentively.
In another case we were in back country Florida on a set out of Deliverance with a bunch of crackers who talked all at once and presented us with a 3′ x 5′ drawing showing the space ships and how they hovered over the telephone lines.
There was the case of obvious fraud where we drove for hours to determine that someone, possibly the reporter of the incident, had made a device to imprint what was supposed to be landing gear marks in the dirt. We saw the device leaning up against the side of the house.
My favorite has always been this description: “Ma’am, can you tell us what it looked like?” Response: “It looked like a despondent woman’s bosom.”
Our experience as a Project Blue Book investigators was pretty much as the same as the Air Force’s final conclusion: ”There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” were extraterrestrial vehicles.”(Obviously, some kind of cover up).
I will be interested to learn more about Lummi Island UFO sightings. I expect they may be interested in us because of our excellent ferry service. More likely, they have heard about the Willows Inn.
Blogging has been light in the doom and gloom department due to the holiday season and many other distractions. Who knows what will happen in the coming year. There are still many predictions of collapse or at least decline caused by (take your pick) the economy, climate change, war, peak whatever. Whether you believe it or don’t believe it, it still makes sense to prepare for hard times.
Lummi Islanders rekindled Disaster Preparedness in 2012 and are much more organized than we were before. Recent earthquakes in Alaska, awful hurricanes and unseasonably warm winter weather in the PNW remind us that it’s good to be ready for anything. Our island Disaster Preparedness took a leap forward with a MURS radio network, CERT and First Aid Training, increase in the number of authorized Red Cross Shelters, additional disaster supplies in place and neighborhood organizations.
On a longer term basis everyone needs to make their own assessment on their personal preparedness. Here’s mine:
1. Location, location, location: I contend that if there is trouble of any kind whether civil unrest, shortages, etc. that an island is a pretty good place to be. The fact that it is difficult to get to will be more advantage than disadvantage.
2. Community: If you live on the island you are de facto a member of a club and one that is very supportive. All the writers about collapse (Dmitri Orlov for example) emphasize the importance of having friends, a group that has your back. Having lived several places in my adult life it’s easy to report that Lummi Island is the strongest community I have lived in. To summarize points 1 and 2, step one in our own personal plan was to move to Lummi Island.
3. Food security: Pretty much everything revolves around food and it’s somewhat ironic that the Willows Inn has put Lummi on the map because of food. What I like about the Willows is the emphasis on local and wild foods. It’s an important emphasis and everyone needs to pay attention to the imagination and creativity shown by Mr. Wetzel.
In the last five years vegetable gardening has taken a great leap forward on the island with a Gardener’s Network, an Edible Garden Tour sponsored by the Beach School Foundation, a community garden on the Curry Preserve, two community orchards, several new gardens and participation by many people in Whatcom County CSAs. Nancy Ging has single-handedly raised awareness of local food through her Whatcom Locavore blog and columns in her Bellingham Herald articles.
I’m coming closer to my own goal of growing 50% of our food, following the planting plans of The Resilient Gardener Carol Deppe and the nutrient dense ideas of Michael Astera and Steve Solomon.
I’ve just added a 12′ x 12′ hoop house to the garden which, hopefully will extend the growing season.
It makes sense to me that, to supplement garden produce, we build up long term food storage in the Mormon style. It would be comforting to have about six months of rations available in the event that transportation problems develop over the short or long term.
4. Water: It doesn’t look like we’ll have a water problem of any kind this coming year. This rain should be giving everyone a good recharge. But it’s still important to practice conservation. People who water their grass should be mocked and scoffed at. Many people, including myself, have added rainwater catchment since the State changed the rules on rainwater collection. I am able to water my vegetable garden entirely with rainwater which would take pressure off the well in any drought years (assuming I get those tanks filled in the winter months). I could easily filter and pump this water to the house. Another benefit of living on the island is that we all have private water systems. This creates the added responsibility of using water conservatively and wisely.
We are well past Veteran’s Day, a day I always find myself conflicted, and could almost let this one pass. Almost, but not quite. Because I strongly believe that if we weren’t so military, that if making war on people didn’t seem to be our country’s primary business, we might have money to spend on getting ready for the many problems that face us instead of focussing on the the fake problems of “terrorism” and “drugs” and “Iran,” motives for our current wars since we lost the bugaboo of the “red menace.” Heck, there might be money for things like state of the art ferries.
“Supporting the troops” is a phrase that has no real meaning unless it means “shut up criticizing our wars.” Real support of the troops means making certain that contracts made with them for benefits are upheld. Instead, “Support the troops” leads to celebrations where school kids are subjected to glorifying military service. I realize this is a very touchy area. Veterans such as myself are justifiably proud that we were in the military. But we are proud for various reasons; not necessarily proud of the wars we were involved in or all the actions that took place.
The Petraeus scandal, among other things, demonstrates that Generals are pretty normal human beings. The modern general is much like any corporate CEO who fights or cheats his or her way up the ladder. Petraeus has been a master of PR for a good part of his career (most recent events excepted). All In:The Education of General David Petraeus is a pretty good example of how he co-opted the media. Now, having violated America’s standards he will finally be subjected to a no holds barred analysis of his career.
I just finished reading a book called, The Man Who Saved the Union, a biography of Ulysses S. Grant who ended up being the 1860s equivalent of a four star and then a two term president who presided over a very tough period of history called “Reconstruciton.”
Grant’s PR was pretty bad until he started winning battles and then won the Civil War. In the later part of the nineteenth century he was the most famous man in America and actually world famous. He hated to give a speech and was well-known for being self-effacing. This tradition continued through WWII.
Consider this photo.
Dwight Eisenhower, who actually won a war like Grant, wears a single row of ribbons. Petraeus, who sandbagged a President into authorizing a “surge,” displays some 30 decorations on his blouse.
What civilians don’t recognize is that Petraeus’s awards are the equivalent of merit badges signifying that he has, “been there and done that.” He has one medal for valor, a Bronze Star with a “V” device. The rest are service ribbons or unit citations.
I don’t know when it started, perhaps in the Vietnam era, but there has been a lot of inflation where medals are concerned. You can’t even be certain about the hero ribbons. I would like to think that most are earned. For example, in the Air Force in Vietnam, if you flew 15 combat missions you received an Air Medal. You got this if you were a prop plane pilot flying low level night bombing missions or a B-52 pilot dropping bombs from 25,000′. I can’t speak for every combat unit in every service but in the last combat wing I served in in the Air Force you had to write your own citation to get most medals, e.g. a Distinguished Flying Cross. A DFC was important to a pilot on his career resume.
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