Old 99 Farm, Week of Mar 1. 2014

March 1st and minus 20, we gotta say, this is a winter like they used to be.

But are we thinking about spring and food we can grow in the backyard yet? Has your seed catalogue from William Dam’s arrived (or see on line)?

I promised myself to get pictures of the ‘hotbed’ for posting here soon: current state: seeds planted, just starting to sprout today, 4 days later.

Available this week: meats (beef, pork, lamb, chicken, goose, salmon), eggs and some vegetables, potatoes, garlic, cilantro, celeriac.

Now for the part of my post you are all waiting for! what have I been reading this week??
I got back to Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallow to read up the ‘politically incorrect science’ on dietary fat. Yes, eat animal fat and eggs.

A farming neighbour gave me for my 60th, Joel Salatin’s last book, Folks, This Ain’t Normal, a farmers advice for happier hens, healthier people, and a better world, 2011.
Sample: he gave his pastured burger and chain store burger to his cats for a ‘taste test’.

They refused to touch the supermarket burgers. he says, ’don’t take my word for it, go try withyour own cats, they are not funded by industrial food cos. ‘They don’t have political alliances, they are not peer-dependent or swayed by hours of TV ads. They are just primal beings whose sensory safeguards still function. Your pets probably have a better handle on nutrition than your doctor.

You can grab a read for yourself, put it in the loo alongside the TP.

Here’s the ‘Big Gulp’ on climate change, this week.

The stunning increase in extreme weather events — 25 disasters exceeding a billion dollars in 2011 and 2012 — which had long been predicted by climate scientists, has not gone unnoticed by the public (that would be you):

But what do we actually get fed by the media? Joe Romm (www.climateprogress.org) did a study and concludes:
1. The broad [American] public is exposed to virtually no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on climate change in popular culture (TV and the movies and even online).
2. The same goes for the news media, whose coverage of climate change has collapsed
3. The public is exposed to constant messages promoting business as usual and indeed idolizing conspicuous consumption.
4. The political elite and intelligentsia, including MSM pundits and the supposedly “liberal media” like, say, MSNBC, hardly even talk about climate change and when they do, it isn’t doomsday.
5. At least a quarter of the public chooses media that devote a vast amount of time to the notion that global warming is a hoax and that environmentalists are extremists and that clean energy is a joke.
6. The major energy companies bombard the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of repetitious pro-fossil-fuel ads. The environmentalists spend far, far less money.
7. Environmentalists when they do appear in popular culture, especially TV, are routinely mocked.
8. There is very little mass communication of doomsday messages online.
9 If you want to find anything approximating even modest, blunt, science-based messaging built around the scientific literature, interviews with actual climate scientists and a clear statement that we can solve this problem, go to the most widely read and cited site: his blog which is not even aimed at the general public. Probably 99% of Americans haven’t even seen one of his headlines.

What about food security?
Last year saw food prices reach their third highest year on record, corresponding to the latest outbreaks of street violence and protests in Argentina, Brazil, Bangladesh, China, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and elsewhere. This article tracks that http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-03-03/global-riot-epidemic-due-to-demise-of-cheap-fossil-fuels

The recent cases illustrate not just an explicit link between civil unrest and an increasingly volatile global food system, but also the root of this problem in the increasing unsustainability of our chronic civilisational addiction to fossil fuels.

Global agriculture’s excessive dependence on fossil fuel inputs means food prices are invariably linked to oil price spikes. Naturally, biofuels and food commodity speculation pushes prices up even further – elite financiers alone benefit from this while working people from middle to lower classes bear the brunt.

Unfortunately, simply taking to the streets isn’t the answer. What is needed is a meaningful vision for civilisational transition -* backed up with people power and ethical consistence.* (that would be us.)

Hey, if you’ve read this far, here’s your reward, some good news.
Last year 6,000 neighbours met through Streetbank to carry out neighbourly acts of kindness. This year they are on track for more than 30,000 people to meet who will save more than £500,000 in the process. By the end of 2016 they expect 150,000 people to be meeting and saving £2.5m.

All Streetbank does is to make sharing with your neighbours easy – and because people are time poor that easiness is helping to unlock resources and generosity that would otherwise remain untapped. People and things are connected, community spirit is strengthened and large amounts of things and skills are kept out of landfill.

If people are interested, how can they get involved?

Head to www.streetbank.com – it takes about 90 seconds to join and once you have you’ll be able to see everything your neighbours are offering in your square mile.

Why don’t we do it for amongst our 0ld99farm.locallygrown.net list?

Eating healthy,
Ian and Camelia