Old 99 Farm, week of Feb 28 2016

This is a leap year, one extra day in the calendar. Anyone born on Feb 29th?
There were lots of public scheduled for today in the Leap Manifesto campaign to reverse climate disruption and reform the economic system. Check out the statement of climate rights at "LeapManifesto’:www.leapmanifesto.org and LeapYear2016 to find out more.

Special this week is spaghetti squash, two for one. You can cook and freeze for quick meal under sauces or as a side in place of potatoes.

Remember the Paris Agreement, so long ago Dec 2015? I was one who felt dismayed at the meager scope of agreement that was reached. I hoped that maybe the main players had a plan: minimal win now for big win later. In three years all parties are supposed to report back and update their plans to reduce carbon.

One of my main ‘go-to’ guys on climate is Albert Bates, I have posted his work here often. He has attended all COP climate summits! His first post after Paris was flat disappointment. Now with a couple of months he’s got a more complete picture. He says " what actually came out of Paris, there’s a paradigm shift. It’s giving rise to a geotherapy which puts biology first. It’s challenging big agriculture at the global industrial level. It places the soil-food-life web near the center of discussions in every COP to come."
And “The real victory at COP21, I think, was the recognition that we had this previously hidden weapon to fight climate change – the role that soils can play in reversing global warming. Managing carbon content in soils is really the best way to take control of the carbon cycle.”

I have been studying permaculture for 10 years now, practising it here for 8. It says the same and shows how to indeed treat the soil as a living system that store carbon. I farm that way. I buy thousands of dollars of hay and straw to feed animals who poop out 80% of it which I return to the soil on our farm. Better soil, better crops, better carbon capture. There are other ways too, but that is a main one. So when you buy food here, you are helping me do that. Plain and simple.

This week pretty much same as last week, except for the special on squash. As of Feb 28th, we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, spaghetti and turban squash, purple potatoes and a new crop of arugula. We’re taking advance orders for sides of pork and lamb.

I remind you of Easter if a leg of lamb is in your plans, please talk to me. (Speaking of lambs, Kazlyn shepherded triplets on Thurs last, was up most of the night, and all 3 are doing well.)

On March 16th there is a Food Freedom Rally in Newmarket at the courthouse. I am going and invite any of you to come with. The point is to come show your support for the right to eat what you choose, specifically raw milk!

MARCH 16, 2016 | Rally @ 8:30am | Hearing @ 9:30am
Ontario Court of Justice, 50 Eagle Street West, Newmarket
(south-west corner of Yonge St. & Eagle St. W.)

Who decides and controls what you eat and drink?
Not you apparently. The government has decided that raw milk is so dangerous that it must “protect” you by stopping the flow at the source – your farmer.
You go out of your way to access our fresh, nutritious milk, knowing it’s sourced from healthy, pastured cows and handled properly. You want raw milk but the current laws forbid farmers from selling or giving it to you.

After 22 years of raids and harassment against one courageous farmer, Michael Schmidt at Glencolton Farms, the government has just crossed the line. They intend to shut down ALL raw milk producers in Ontario.
The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Regional Municipality of York have issued Notices of Application for a court injunction against Michael Schmidt, his wife and son, members of the farm co-operative, another person, John Doe, Jane Doe and Persons Unknown, and the Church of the Christian Community in Canada.
They were accused of contravening the provincial Milk Act, and the Health Protection and Promotion Act. They’re being told to stop selling and distributing raw milk. The church allowed the Glencolton van to use its parking lot. Parties will appear in court on March 16th.

Unite and defend your freedom to choose what foods you consume, not just milk.

It’s NOT a done deal. We have to make it clear that we will not be intimidated. Contact me if you can come.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm, week of Feb 21 2015

We’re going to head back to Huron County this weekend to finish the Holistic Management course at MeetingPlace Organic Farm, and apparently, another storm is on the way. May be more rain than snow though.

My inquiry about chicken broth got a couple of replies, so we’ve gone ahead and started producing the first few batches. Cami adds our organic onions, carrots and seasonings. I’ll include it in the market offerings. There is the simmered chicken meat from the carcass as well, good for making quick meals, stir fry, soups and chicken pot pie. It will be frozen in baggies.

Greens are holding well in the greenhouse, with the first new crop of arugula now able to harvest. Also purple potatoes in the rootcellar and duck, chicken and goose eggs (good to eat and keep the shells for painting Easter Eggs).

Says Peter Mundy, originally published by Sustainable Food Trust (Feb 19, 2016), "We face huge challenges in feeding the world sustainably. But one thing is certain: grazing ruminant livestock – and the high-quality food they produce – can and should play a key role… The quest for sustainable food production is highly complex and there will be no one-size-fits-all solution. Indeed, the necessary solutions will inevitably be highly complex, multi-faceted and site-specific: it comes down not simply to what you eat, but fundamentally how it is farmed. Read more here and here
So, in light of this important public discussion, the special this week is Hamburger, 10% off.

Healthy eating
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn.

Old 99 Farm, week of Feb 14 2016

What a lovely drive up Hwy 86 to Wingham area, through prosperous farmland and small towns. We went last thurs and returned Saturday for a weekend at a farm B&B called MeetingPlace Farm, to participate in a course on Holistic (farm)Management. Very inspiring. The snow up there is way more than here! And we picked the coldest weekend of the year to get away! Thanks to Kazlyn for holding the fort here at home. Even had a power outage to contend with.

One of many ideas for our farm was to make regular offering of chicken broth and chicken stew meat, ready to eat. Would you be interested? Broth at $8/L and stew meat at $12/kg. It is tender flavourful and ready to use for casseroles, soups, even sandwiches.

Our greens this week survived the cold: napa cabbage is the handsdown winner followed by the perpetual green chard.
Root vegs still available: sweet and reg potatoes, onions, fresh dug carrots. Cooking apples for apple sauce or making your own apple butter are on hand. Lots of squash too.

Easter is approaching: have you thought about a leg of lamb or roast? I’ll need advance notice this week or next. Am putting lamb on special, 10% off, for the next two weeks. Whole lamb $13/kg or $5.90/lb hanging weight usually about 60lb.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm week of Feb 7 2016

Really gotta be quick tonite, still have to go do the chores!
Cami and I are away attending a course in holistic farm management this weekend starting thurs. Kazlyn will be here handling everything. No prepared foods this week.

Special on steaks repeated this week. 10% off rib, tbone and sirloin.
As of Feb 7th, we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, spaghetti and turban squash, red skin and purple potatoes.

Get ready for a cold spell coming at the weekend; supposed to drop to -17degC.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 30, 2016

We came back from the Guelph Organic Conference full of ideas and inspiration for the coming season. It was jam packed with people, some with kids in strollers, some with a bit of wobble to their walk, Amish and Mennonite, urban and rural. Well worth going.

Special this week: soup hens and beef steaks (rib, sirloin and T-bone), both 10% off.

We’re planting in the greenhouse this week, another step closer to the new season. New spinach, lettuce and arugula that we planted a month ago is healthy, waiting patiently for the longer days to really put on a growth spurt.

This week we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, chard, collards, spaghetti and turban squash, red skin and purple potatoes.

Camelia is cooking prepared foods from our produce: apple sauce, stuffed peppers, cucumber relish, quiches (on order).

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 23 2016

Eggs are back to regular price of $6.75/doz for extra large, $6.25 for large. Please bring in egg cartons, I’ve had to buy new cartons recently because we were sending out so many.

Special on ‘Bonny Red’ Chicken roasters, $1 off the per kg price.

As of Jan 24th, we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, chard, collards, spaghetti and turban squash, whole wheat flour, red skin and purple potatoes.

Camelia is cooking prepared foods from our produce: apple sauce, stuffed peppers, cucumber relish, quiches (on order).

Why is the energy/climate consensus so durable, even in the face of compelling facts or logic? A persuasive analysis of this social phenomenon by Irish systems thinker, physicist and human systems ecologist David Korowicz can be found here.

He writes, “We are trying to comprehend our world within the world-views and economic orthodoxies developed over an extra-ordinary, two-hundred year period of compound economic growth. This growth was coincident with increasing wealth, complexity and globalized integration. Part of our dominant consensus is that this trend will continue. Much of what is important to us, how we live, our expectations, what we value and hold dear, was shaped by this process. And we, the global 10%, have done well out of it.”

“When the conditions that underpinned the consensus change, it can be very difficult to acknowledge and let go of our attachment. For acknowledgement means rejecting not only the familiar but something that may have embodied our status, past efforts, our hopes and even our collective mythology.

Defending the dominant consensus is always reasonable, confident and considered, for it is born out of the cosmology or world-view of the age. But world-views shape their own perceptions and contain the narratives of their own defence."

What consensus views do you share or refute? Where do you stand on the fringe (of conventional wisdom) looking in? Organic food? Limits to Growth? Grassroots democracy? Population overshoot?

Healthy eating,
Ian Cami and Kazlyn.

Unpaid Political Announcement!

Stop Pipeline Approvals: Stop Making Climate Change Worse

(I am hopeful you will appreciate the concern that I share will many people about a the moral dilemna we face between climate and lifestyle: energy and ecology: fossil fuels and growth.)

Hamilton 350 Committee invites you to a RALLY on Tuesday, January 26 at 11 am at the Federal Building (55 Bay Street, near York Blvd) in Hamilton. We are calling on the Trudeau government to keep its election promises and halt the broken National Energy Board pipeline hearings.

During the recent federal election campaign, Prime Minister Trudeau and his party promised to include climate change in pipeline reviews and to respect community voices – especially First Nations. Their election platform promised to “replace Mr. Harper’s changes to the environmental assessment process” including a pledge to “modernize and rebuild trust in the National Energy Board” and “move towards a system where federal environmental assessments of projects include an analysis of upstream impacts and the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the projects being assessed”. Events in the past week indicate those promises are being broken.

The Kinder Morgan (Trans Mountain) NEB hearings resumed last Tuesday despite multiple protests, including civil disobedience, by First Nations, the mayor of Burnaby and other British Columbians. We stand in solidarity with those demanding suspension of these hearings. The Trans Mountain project would triple bitumen flows across southern BC and out through Vancouver harbour.

Last week also brought the proposed 4600 km Energy East pipeline back into the public eye. The City of Montreal and municipal governments representing over half the people of Quebec declared their opposition to this scheme to ship bitumen across Ontario and five other provinces to be exported through Saint John, New Brunswick. Elected officials in Alberta and Saskatchewan are attacking the principled stand of Montreal.

Fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change and our poisoned atmosphere, and their extraction and spills devastate the land. Why is anyone trying to increase the extraction, transportation and use of materials that must be phased out? Please join us on Tuesday morning to demand the Trudeau government keeps its promises and suspends NEB pipeline reviews. Stand in solidarity with First Nations and all those threatened by the Trans Mountain and Energy East pipelines.

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 17 2016

I got excited this week with a post by Rob Hopkins (he of Transition Towns movement) raving about a new book on Urban Farming, by a young Canadian musician, Curtis Stone. Says Hopkins, " Curtis Stone’s brilliant new book ‘The Urban Farmer’, is one of the most important contributions to Transition thinking over the last 10 years, and sets out in great depth and detail what that could look like."

Contrast this with this: Corporate Farming!

As of Jan 17th, we can offer the following crops: sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, kale, fresh dug carrots, chard, collards, spaghetti and red october squash, red skin and purple potatoes.

Camelia is cooking prepared foods from our produce: apple sauce, stuffed peppers, cucumber relish, quiches (on order).

Meats SPECIAL THIS WEEK: GROUND BEEF 10% OFF
I have pork, beef lamb and chicken in the freezer. I have Bonny’s Big Red roasting chickens, ducks, geese and stewing hens.

Eggs SPECIAL CONTINUES THIS WEEK: 3 for 2 Please bring in recycled cartons.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Eggs and chicken this week on special

I forgot to put this in the memo just out.

Eggs: 3 doz for price of 2, that’s $4.50 average.

Roasting chicken, stew hens: 10% off.

Make this the week for chicken.

Ian

Old 99 farm week of Jan 10 2016

Come and get your eggs, meats, root vegetables. We’re open. Eggs on special 3doz for price of 2, that works out to $4.50/doz.

There is a growing interest in getting ready for climate upset happening in Hamilton. We won’t see fire storms or hurricanes, but we might see floods, and we’ll certainly experience the results of climate upsets elsewhere. Think: california drought, florida freezeups, etc affecting price of food. The coalition that coming together is Hamilton 350; focused on enhancing the local capacity to cope with climate change and reduce its causes. The next meeting is on Wed Jan 27, 630pm at 294 James St North (parking available). Come on out and see whether this is for you!

Healthy eating
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn