Old 99 Farm, week of Sept 12 2015

We’ve started planting the winter crops in the greenhouse, the same weekend as we are canning tomatoes as juice and sauce. There should be vine ripened tomatoes here till December though.

The bumper crop this year, after tomatoes, has to be spaghetti squash. We just harvested 8 bushels and there’s still more out there on Berry Hill. They are storable till midwinter in a 50 to 60 deg 60% to 70% humidity room, according to the Bubels, authors of The Root Cellar.
Spaghetti squash is a healthy alternative to pasta to go under your fav tomato sauce.

See the attached list for our offerings.

Apples are ripening in the 100 yr old orchard but not quite ready. We’ll do our cider pressing day on an early October weekend. Stay tuned. All friends come and help mash and press apples for fresh juice to take home.

Healthy eating,
Ian and Cami
PS I have a personal facebook page you might enjoy

Harperman going viral

avaaz is doing a campaign to get the cdn federal scientist who wrote a protest song about Stephen Harper reinstated… he lost his job because he wrote and performed this song…

Here’s what avaaz has to say.

Dear friends,

Tony Turner wrote a political protest song about Stephen Harper – and now he’s been put on leave and is being investigated by the government!

They want to silence free speech and stop the song, “Harperman”, from reaching a bigger audience…but it’s about to backfire big time. Because if everyone receiving this email watches the video at the link below, it will be seen by 3% of Canada – if we all share it with just one other person, 6% of Canada, and so on.

Let’s make this viral and timely video a political nightmare for a government try! ing to silence critics. Click now and help make this huge by signing a petition demanding Tony be reinstated immediately – then watch the video and help “Harperman” take-off across the country by sharing on Facebook, and everywhere else:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/harperman_loc/?tTavWbb

Tony Turner is a popular folk singer, and also a scientist at Environment Canada. When a recording of his “Harperman” political protest song — calling on the country to get rid of the Harper government – was posted on Youtube, he was suspended and put under investigation.

Environment Canada says that all employees agree to comply with a value and ethics code that lays out expected behaviour – but the Supreme Court has said that public service workers have a right to free expression — just like the rest of us.

Our government has consistently muzzled scientists and public servants whose opinions or research could threaten their policies. And we’ve seen how it views protest, passing Bill C-51 that labels environmental activists as “security threats”.

Fortunately, they can’t silence the internet. Click now to stand with Tony and watch the video – then share it around the country:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/harperman_loc/?tTavWbb

It’s our right to protest, and we shouldn’t be punished for it. Let’s turn this story and “Harperman” into a political nightmare as election season comes into full swing.

old 99 farm. week of Aug 30, 2015

Are plants intelligent? So asks Albert Bates, currently in Iceland teaching a permaculture course.
“Plants communicate — they are actually quite loquacious communicators. They are able to distinguish kin and non-kin. They communicate with plants of their own and other species and they communicate with animals and humans.

We are here in Iceland teaching a permaculture course with Robyn Francis and she likes to say plants are just upside-down humans. We have our senses up at the top — in our mouths, noses, ears and fingertips. Plants keep those mostly down in their roots but they also smell and taste and touch like we do. We keep our sex organs hidden down in our bottoms, but plants put them up on full display at the top.

But can a plant be intelligent? Some plant scientists, like Stefano Mancuso, think they are — since they can discover, learn, remember, and even react in ways we would call intelligent."

http://peaksurfer.blogspot.ca/2015/08/distributed-intelligence.html

Check out this TED talk about quantum biology: using quantum physics to fathom how birds migrate using the earth’s magnetic field, etc. http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_al_khalili_how_quantum_biology_might_explain_life_s_biggest_questions?language=en

Oh yes we do have more mundane things to mention this week! tomatoes, squashes, potatoes etc. As of Aug 30th, we can offer 48 items including the following crops: zucchini, plum tomatoes, cilantro, basil, napa and early white cabbage, arugula (rocket), kale, three varieties of chard, red cabbage, collards, and beetgreens, peppers, eggplant, spaghetti squash. There are lots of eggs. So please surf on over to the locallygrown site and see what you’d like to eat.

Healthy eating to you all,
ian and Cami

Old 99 farm week of Aug 23 2015

As of Aug 23rd, we can offer 48 items including the following crops: zucchini, plum tomatoes, cilantro, basil, napa and early white cabbage, arugula (rocket), kale, three varieties of chard, red cabbage, collards, and beetgreens, peppers, eggplant, spaghetti squash.

Another week upon us and soon market day. We dug potatoes and harvested onions, pruned the raspberry canes and seeded some flats for fall and winter crops.

The spaghetti squash is going to be bountiful this year, already enough ripe fruits to offer for sale. This is the item you can use to substitute for durum wheat pasta, if you are trying to reduce your wheat and high glycemic index foods.

Eggs are plentiful so please consider introducing a neighbour to pastured organic eggs from here.

If you want quiches, cabbage rolls, or sauerkraut, pls place order early in the week.

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Living on the edge of the Age of Limits

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/08/the-boundaries-and-future-of-solution-space-part-5/

My acquaintance with Nicole Foss started on the internet and became a personal one through several phonecalls and two visits for public lectures here in Copetown.

Her blog is mostly written by a colleague, as she travels, an itinerant freethinking social visionary and prophetic voice, in my personal view. Her recent speaking tours have been in Australia and Europe so when a new essay by Nicole appeared on “The Automatic Earth” I jumped to catch up on her thinking.

Here are a couple of long quotes from part five of the essay, which is linked at the top of this post.

“We are heading for a profoundly humbling experience, to put it mildly. Technological man is not the demigod he supposed himself to be, but merely the beneficiary of a fortuitous energy bonanza which temporarily allowed him to turn dreams into reality. We would do well, if we could summon up sufficient humility in advance, to learn from the simple and elegant technologies of the distant past, which we have largely discarded or forgotten.”

and,

“Cohesive communities will act together in times of crisis, and will be able to offer significant support to each other. The path dependency aspect is important – the state we find ourselves in when crisis hits will be an major determinant of how it plays out in a given area. Anything people come together to do will build social capital and relationships of trust, which are the foundation of society. Community gardens, perma-blitzes (permaculture garden make-overs), maker-spaces, time-banks, savings pools, local currency initiatives, community hub developments, skills training programmes, asset mapping and contingency planning are but a few of the possibilities for bringing people together.”

If this has caught your attention, perhaps you will snuggle up to the internet screen and have a read.

May we all live well within the earth’s means.

Ian

Old 99 Farm Week of Aug 15 2015

Did you notice that post on friday that we are now in ecological ‘overshoot’ as a planet, as of Aug 13? Means even the renewable resources we consume from here to the end of the year, cannot be replaced/renewed in an annual cycle. Worth pondering…

Fewer items each week passing as the seasonal items get sold out, and we’re waiting for the next harvest. But fun to say, today I picked the crop of peaches from our orchard, organic, mostly untended fruit trees. One whole 10 kg basket! Needless to say you will not be seeing these in the store! Unless you ask me very nicely …

Special is now over for lamb, but I am taking several animals to butcher at the end of the month. I have a sad story to relate on that; I found that the sheep have a high parasite load from not being rotated often enough around my paddocks and I lost two to anemia. The rest had to be treated with antibiotics so they are no longer organic. But you decide if that’s a deal breaker: they have had great pasture, no drugs, a good life.

Did you ever see the BBC series on This Living Earth with David Attenborough? I just found his two documentaries on The Truth about Climate Change, one from 2006 and one from 2013. They’re on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JmrmwIyhAE

Healthy eating
Ian and Cami

Aug 13 Earth Overshoot Day

In 2015, 13 August is Earth Overshoot Day. The day marks the estimated calendar date when humanity’s demand on the planet’s ecological services (which produce renewable resources and assimilate wastes) outstrips what the Earth can supply. This means that for the rest of the year, we are taking more than is regenerated, operating in Overshoot. Last year, Earth Overshoot Day was August 19th. We first went into Overshoot in the late 1970s, and since then the day has crept ever earlier on the calendar. This means we are using the ecological resources of just over 1.5 Earths.

Meeting the challenge of providing for all humanity’s needs within the limits of what our Earth can provide will require a radical restructuring of the global economy. In this post I will discuss how a post-growth economy based around not-for-profit enterprise can help us get to One Planet Living.

Read more at Resilience.org

Old 99 Farm, week of Aug 9 2015

Lamb special still on this week, 25% off. Please place orders for your fall lamb soon.

Cami is doing cabbage rolls and quiches on a regular basis now.

We have tomatoes in varieties to wonder at: the cherry type in yellow, orange and red; slicing tomatoes, romas, and heirloom beefsteak, the kind we eat with bacon and mayo! Lots of basil too.

Bush beans are now in harvest: yellow, purple and green.

Special on Chard: free bunch with every order! Three varieties: Rainbow, Fordhook and Perpetual Green.

I have a Facebook page to repost really cool news and information, especially about permaculture, climate disruption, peak energy and now the Election. It’s going to be A LONG 11 WEEK CAMPAIGN. Maybe the real stories will get out, not just the posturing and propaganda. Yes I’m voting NDP.

I got one reply so far on the Local Food Challenge, so I encourage you to review last week’s post or go here for the scoop. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-08-05/talking-resilience-with-vicki-robin.

Healthy Eating,
Ian and Cami

RESEND: 10 Day Local Food Challenge

I found this idea on Resilience.org and thought, why not try to float it in the Dundas valley?
So read more here about the Local Food challenge.

Here is the basic idea in Vicki Robin’s own words.

“I invented this thing called the 10-Day Local Food Challenge, which is giving people a game to play that’s like my game, if a little easier. For 10 days (not 30 days), you eat only food grown within 100 miles of your home (not 10 miles), and you give yourself 10 exotics (not 4). October, (the) 10th month, 1st through 10th.

You do it as a process of self-discovery, a process of discovery of your community. I could bundle everything that I just said in terms of what I call “relational eating.”

I discovered that eating is…part of the hyper-individualistic mentality. [Many people in the US] think of eating as an act of consumption. “Food is in the store. We get food and we don’t even have to do anything other than pay for it…. Food is so easy and actually so cheap.”

[W]e don’t have any relationship with the hands and lands that feed us. But when you focus on local food, you realize that your destiny is tied to your place on Earth and to the competency of the people.

You care in a way that is so much more profound, and you know that your environment, it isn’t just a nice place to live…. No, I live in a community that can feed me. That is ultimate, and that’s around relocalization and resilience and resourcefulness."

The whole interview with Vicki is a good read too. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-08-05/talking-resilience-with-vicki-robin.

You may have come across her as the co-author of the classic “Your Money or Your Life”.

Reply here or email if you are interested in being part of this. We can talk about it when you come to the farm for your ‘local organic fresh’ produce.

Ian

10 Day Local Food Challenge

I found this idea on Resilience.org and thought, why not try to float it in the Dundas valley?
So read more here about the Local Food challenge.

Here is the basic idea in Vicki Robin’s own words.

“I invented this thing called the 10-Day Local Food Challenge, which is giving people a game to play that’s like my game, if a little easier. For 10 days (not 30 days), you eat only food grown within 100 miles of your home (not 10 miles), and you give yourself 10 exotics (not 4). October, (the) 10th month, 1st through 10th.

You do it as a process of self-discovery, a process of discovery of your community. I could bundle everything that I just said in terms of what I call “relational eating.”

I discovered that eating is…part of the hyper-individualistic mentality. [Many people in the US] think of eating as an act of consumption. “Food is in the store. We get food and we don’t even have to do anything other than pay for it…. Food is so easy and actually so cheap.”

[W]e don’t have any relationship with the hands and lands that feed us. But when you focus on local food, you realize that your destiny is tied to your place on Earth and to the competency of the people.

You care in a way that is so much more profound, and you know that your environment, it isn’t just a nice place to live…. No, I live in a community that can feed me. That is ultimate, and that’s around relocalization and resilience and resourcefulness."

The whole interview with Vicki is a good read too. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-08-05/talking-resilience-with-vicki-robin.

You may have come across her as the co-author of the classic “Your Money or Your Life”.

Reply here or email if you are interested in being part of this. We can talk about it when you come to the farm for your ‘local organic fresh’ produce.

Ian