The Weblog
This page contains news, event information, and other items added by Ian and Adam, the resident farmers at Old 99. We send out a message every week, but most are set with a delete date about two weeks later. I archive some of the posts if they have content other than weekly availability of produce and meat.
You can send me questions too, which if they are of a general nature, I can post to this Old99 blog.
Old 99 Farm Week of Sept 29 2013
This post expired on September 30, 2023.
The new laying flock is now here and producing about 5 doz a day of medium sized eggs. So I’ll weigh the dozens and price mediums at $4.75 vs large at $5.50; as they mature the eggs will get larger.
I have Lamb and oven ready roasting chickens in the freezer as well as stewing hens. Beef is at the butcher and will be available here next thursday.
We had a powerful presentation by Nicole Foss on Local Food Challenges yesterday. Ten people attended plus Camelia and myself. I’ll post a fuller summary later, but here is the cherry-picked list of ‘to-dos’ in response to the question, “My generation is going to inherit the health, environmental, and social consequences of our current food system. What advice would you give to young people with respect to this?”.
- stay out of debt including student loans
- pool wealth across generations so the younger have access to capital and the older have old age security
- rethink renewable energy so that it is very local, sufficient for your needs, not an investment (eg Microfit)
- keep the energy input of your food low, eg locally grown, in season, not processed much, store in low energy ways
- save seeds and plant lots of varieties
- avoid GMO foods; for us canucks that means avoid corn and soy ingredients in anything since the GMO is not labelled
- eat little carbohydrates (starches, grain, fruits), low processed foods, high animal fat for energy
- eat plant foods for micronutrients and fiber, grown in fertile soil
- eat pastured meat and eggs, avoid industrially produced foods, esp if imported
- eat fermented foods
- learn to grow, store, ferment, prepare foods as a lifeskill.
Mild tender leaf lettuce (Salat, a german variety brought to Canada 40 years ago by a neighour friend, saved seed till now) is now available as is Rapini and arugula. Lots of potatoes, spinach, eggplant, tomatoes and ground cherries.