We're on Polyface

Nathan finally got around to giving his info to Polyface Farms for their apprentice page so he's now online with them. If you'd like to take a look you can check it out here:
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/2012/03/19/nathan-joppeck-wellington-oh/


To check out the whole apprentice page go here:
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/former-apprentices/

No Science for You!

Just came across the air waves from Alliance for Natural Health. I'm sure you would want to know scientific research results & information to help you make informed choices about your health without having to pay for it twice and to get it in a timely manner. Congress is up to it's tricks again.

I've included the article here with the 'take action' link at the end, but if you'd like to see it directly click here

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Congress wants to limit your access to research—even though your tax dollars paid for it. If this bill passes, you’ll learn only what mainstream medicine wishes you to know. Action Alert!

In 2008, the National Institutes of Health required that all federally funded research publications be made openly available. PubMedCentral (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine.

The publishers of the journals weren’t so happy with this new arrangement—they were afraid no one would pay for their publications if the research results were immediately accessible. So the government agreed to give them a full year of journal sales before their research papers had to be posted on PMC, which lets them keep their subscriber base. Journal subscriptions to educational and medical institutions are expensive—and they’re big business.

But even this generous arrangement isn’t good enough for the Association of American Publishers (AAP). The trade group liked the old rules, where they could sell the tax-funded research back to the taxpayers. So the AAP got two members of Congress, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), to introduce HR 3699, the Research Works Act, just before the end of 2011.

This bill would prevent the NIH or any other agency from causing or even allowing private-sector research work to be disseminated online without prior consent of both the publisher and the study authors—even if the funding came from our tax dollars.

The AAP weren’t the only publishers involved. Elsevier—the Reed Elsevier Publishing Group, a multinational company that publishes around 2,000 journals and close to 20,000 books and major reference works—happens to be in Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s district, and Elsevier employees made campaign contributions to both Issa and Maloney. (Apparently, it only takes $10,500 to buy two members of Congress.)

Said contributors all work for Tom Reller, vice president for global corporate relations at Elsevier. Interestingly, an email about the bill from Rep. Maloney to one of her critics contained language that was nearly identical to language used by Reller when he was defending the same bill! Are members of Congress employing lobbyists as ghostwriters now?

This is about access to peer-reviewed scientific information—research that we pay for with our tax money. If this bill passes, Americans who want to read the results of federally funded research will have to buy access to each journal article individually—at a cost of $15 or $30 apiece. In other words, as the New York Times recently noted, taxpayers who already paid for the research would have to pay again to read the results.

Access to peer-reviewed scientific research is essential if you are to make informed choices regarding your family’s health—especially if you choose complementary and alternative medicine. Good research will let us choose wisely when it comes to questions of treatment modalities, vaccines, diet, nutrition, and medicine. Right now, supplement companies aren’t even allowed to tell you about the science behind their products, so we must get the scientific information directly from the source.

But that’s just the problem: consumers, integrative doctors, and small businesses might not have the funds to access all these scientific journals—which means your access to the science behind natural products will be limited to what mainstream medicine may wish you to know.

PMC compiles entire studies and has 2.3 million articles going back to 1965. It allows patients, physicians, students, teachers, and advocacy organization like ANH-USA to read about and cite the discoveries that our tax dollars paid for—to keep you informed in these pages, we may review as many as a hundred studies every year. If we needed to pay a publishing company every time we viewed a study which taxpayers have already paid for, we’d be giving thousands of dollars to a publishing company every year instead of protecting your access to natural health.

So what can you do? Two things will make a huge difference!

• First, help us gain co-sponsors for the Free Speech about Science Act (FSAS). This landmark legislation enables the natural health products community to share peer-reviewed scientific findings about natural health products with the public. The problem, of course, is that if it becomes more difficult for supplement companies and consumers to access the scientific studies themselves, the entire point of FSAS is effectively undermined.
• The second step is to ask Congress to defeat this new Research Works Act. Please send your message today and explain why limiting access to the results of important studies—which your tax dollars have already paid for—is such a terrible idea. Take action immediately!

Farms on Tour

"The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life began in a garden (Garden of Eden) with that first man (Adam) and has continued through today. It's time to take a look at some of this farm land.

Napa Valley farms.....California


Rolling farm fields


Morning mist on a Tuscan farm (actually I think it's a vineyard but it's close enough)


Fish farm


Fish farm


Behaving badly on the farm!


Wheat threshing floor..... Asia....still doing it the old fashion way.


Fall foliage on the farm


Sheep farm....Ireland


Tuscan farm


Strawberry farm. I think we need one of these!


Salt farm.....Thailand.


Oyster farm


Trying to farm. Who needs a horse anyway? Gotta give him 5 stars for effort and for being resourceful.


Wind farm. Is this really a farm?


Potato farm.....1943


Village in rice farm terraces...Asia. Now aren't you glad that you're not the poor sap that had to build this?!?!



Rice farm....Asia


Rice farm...China


Sunflower farm....California


A farm with an amazing view!!


Ostrich farm.


Seed farm.


Organic farm...Aurora Dairy, Boulder, Colorado--the nation’s largest organic dairy producer. The largest private-label organic milk supplier in the United States. Is this really organic...or the organic you think you are paying for?


Lavender farm....British Columbia


And lastly....
To the farm market...Asia. At first I thought they just had to be dead while being transported this way but the closer I looked the more I saw they were not. Is this USDA approved?

Contaminated Meats

So where does your meat come from?

Meat Contamination Widespread
Acres, June 2011

According to a nationwide study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), drug resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus are present in meat and poultry from United States grocery stores at unexpectedly high rates. Nearly half of the meat and poultry samples -47%- were contaminated with S. aureus, and more than half of those bacteria -52%- were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. This is the first national assessment of antibiotic resistant S. aureus in the U.S. food supply. Researchers collected and analyzed 136 samples -covering 80 brands- of beef, chicken, pork and turkey from 26 retail grocery stores in 5 U.S. cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Flagstaff and Washington D.C.

Summer 2011

It has been a really long time since I've posted anything. Summer is SOOO busy! Wish it would come about a month sooner and last about a month longer.... then maybe I wouldn't feel the pressure to get everything done in such a short amount ot time.

Here are some pics taken through the summer.....


Some of the tomatoes I was harvesting at the time....heirlooms-Mr. stripely & Black Krim, green zebra, regular red slicing, and red romas. The orange slicing and yellow romas weren't ready when the pic was taken. All this color makes for a very interesting salsa! Using just the old standard red ones is boring now.

It was a pretty good year for strawberries given the absolute horrible spring we had. The bad spring pushed everything else back and when the berries started getting ripe, we were still messing with other things and they kind of got ahead of us.

Storm clouds moving in.

This came during strawberry season. Hail is not good for berries in the field! Thankfully we didn't have too much damage.

One of the flower gardens. Even though this birdhouse is mostly for decoration, we had some wrens moved in again. Wrens are very good bug eaters.

A flower garden

I was stitting at the computer one night and looked over my shoulder and saw this on the window. Look at that waistline!

This momma was slated for butcher....then she had a baby (it was a bit of a surprise)....looks like she gets to stay a bit longer.

A hot air balloon took off at the fairground going over the pasture barely above the tree tops then landed in a yard a few doors down. Don't know if this was on purpose or something was wrong. I like seeing these in the air. One of these days, I am going to ride in one of these things.

The guys trying to get the hay wagon in the barn to unload.

Now this is a bit too comfortable! We were over run with squirrels and chipmunks this summer for some reason.....luckly they have moved on (or the cats got them). They are nice to watch but can become a pest real quick and they eat a ton of bird seed.

Veggies growing in the garden. I love mixing different things together. A big mass of the same thing looks boring....plus this helps with pest control.

Broccoli, peppers, potatoes and cucumbers.

Cucumbers, green onions, potatoes and basil

This monster thing is growing out of a little compost pile. I'm not sure yet what it will be but it is growing over the truck cap, shelter, and then heading through the trees.

And lastly, this little guy takes a good amount of time and energy but he's well worth it! It's been a joy to have him around. I will say it has been a juggling act some times for us (and Nathan) to get things done when it needs to be done.

When he's here with us, John has started taking him out with him to do the chickens chores. He wheels him out in the stroller, then throws some grain on the ground by him and little Owen loves to watch the chickens run around him eating while he waits for Grandpa to finish what he needs to do.

Know Your Farmer Program Attacked

Heaven forbid that the USDA finally support the local effort to help the public connect with small farmers to help them understand where their food comes from and how it gets to their plate.
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Farmers' Markets Today, May/June 2011
Three Senators attacked USDA'S "Know Your Farmer" Campaign

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack received a sharply worded letter against the ag department's Know Your Farmer program from Sen. John MaCain (R-AZ), Sen. Ag Comm. Ranking Member Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and House Ag Comm. Member Pat Roberts (R-KS).

Argi-Pulse reported that the contents of the the letter included, "while the concept of educating consumers about production agriculture is a worthwhile endeavor, we have serious misgivings about the direction of the Know Your Farmer program." The letter charged that the Know Your Farmer initiative also included "Subsidizing the so-called locavore niche market" with $65 million this year, and claimed that the USDA 'pledged to deliver more in Fiscal Year 2011."

The Senator's letter charged that 'this spending doesn't appeared geared toward conventional farmer who produce the vast majority of our nation's food supply, but is instead aimed at small, hobbyist and organic producers whose customers generally consist of affluent patrons at urban farmers markets."

Additional charges are related to spending "rural Development funds on feel-good measures" and how 'propping up the urban locavore markets addressed their [American families and rural farmers] needs." The letter also requested that USAD provide proof of congressional authority to spend money for Know Your Farmer purposes along with a full accounting of all spending.

Agri-Pulse has posted the MaCain/Chambliss/Roberts letter for public review online http://www.agri-pulse.com/20100429H1.asp -- use the link there to see the full letter.

Exploding Watermelons

From: the New York Times

World Briefing | ASIA

China: Acres of Exploding Watermelons

CHINATOPIX, via Associated Press

Farmers cleared out watermelons that had burst from their rented greenhouse in Danyang city in eastern China's Jiangsu province.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: May 17, 2011

Watermelons have been bursting by the score in eastern China after farmers gave them overdoses of growth chemicals during wet weather, creating what state news media called fields of “land mines.” About 20 farmers in Jiangsu Province have been affected, losing up to 115 acres of melon, China Central Television reported. High prices over the past year prompted many farmers to enter the watermelon market. All of those with exploding melons apparently were first-time users of the growth stimulator forchlorfenuron, which has been widely available for some time, the report said.


LJ:
Now do we really need growth stimulators for produce??? Come on now...it's bad enough it's in our dairy & meats!!