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.



 
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Old 99 Farm week of Mar 27 2016


Who would have thought we’d get two snow storms in first half of April! And twenty degree C swings in temperature.

The greenhouse is giving about 10dC of temperature protection at night and lots of heat during the days. The crops are looking fabulous.

We can offer spinach, kale, collards, mixed greens, cilantro, chard, arugula, rocket, green onions and leeks. Rhubarb maybe. The freezers are well stocked with lamb, beef, chicken, goose and duck, tho we are running low on some items, sold out on others. Cami will have stuffed peppers and quiches this week.

I have tree seedlings, about 3ft tall, ready to plant: Red Oak, Black walnut, and Eastern Chestnut. Also have comfrey in pots for your medicinal garden.

I discovered some mainstream ‘heavy hitters’ who are sounding the wake-up call for businesses to stress test their business plans for climate change. I like the approach of providing a ‘most likely’ and a extreme 5% risk with very costly impacts. This one by Bloomberg et al. From their website:
The mission of the Risky Business Project is to quantify the economic risks to the United States from unmitigated climate change. (You can easily extrapolate what these might be for Canada.) Our inaugural report, Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States, highlighted these risks across every region of the country, with a focus on three sectors: commodity agriculture, energy demand and coastal infrastructure.
Our research combines state-of-the-art climate science projections through the year 2100 with empirically-derived estimates of the impact of projected changes in temperature and precipitation.

When assessing risk related to climate change, it is particularly important to consider outlier events and not just the most likely scenarios. Indeed, the outlier onein- 100-year event today will become the one-in-10-year event as the earth continues to warm. Put another way, over time the extremes will become the “new normal.”

Interactive maps, regional reports and other content associated with the Risky Business Project are located at riskybusiness.org.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami
(Kazlyn has departed and we miss her. She’s doing her next internship at HeartSong Farm in Jerseyville. You might see her at the Ancaster Market this summer.)