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

Old 99 Farm, week of Jan 3 2016

Here we are in a new year and our first days of historical winter. It’s minus 15 this am, but only a few degrees below zero in the green house by the door. The greens are snug in cool soil under the row cover.

We need people to help us even out supply and demand for eggs. I can help by lowering the price, and give you that sort of incentive. The intangible is that you have to want to have local eggs available, you want the hens to be fed organic grain and greens, and to be well treated: free ranging, access to outside, comfy. If my hens could talk they would be your best source of confidence that they have a good life!

So I’ll put eggs on special again at 3 doz for the price of two, all at the XL price, which works out to $4.50 a doz. Keep me wanting to be a locally grown organic egg farmer.

We have a good supply of meats: chicken, stew hens, goose, duck, lamb, beef and pork.

I think 2016 is going to be the climate news year as the global scientific community ramps up with more and better data on weather, ocean temps and salinity/acidity, precipation, glacial melt, winds etc. I hope more will try make the point sink in that this is the crisis of our time, no holds barred.
Here’s a link to 10 food impacts that could make you pause. Here’s one on apples that will likely lose their crunch.

Local food becomes more relevant all the time.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Old 99 Farm, week of Dec 27 2015

Last market of the 2015 year. We had a salad with freshly harvested lettuce and shelf ripened tomato yesterday. very tasty.
Hope to see you for you weekly greens and root crops, meat and eggs.

Have you ever heard of Burkina Faso, country in Africa? no/ well w hat about farmer Jacoub Sawadogo, famous in the last 10 years for greening the desert. See this youtube and get inspired about reversing desertification and drought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpLJIM7JgoU

healthy eating
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn

Xmas Week 2015

We will open the market on Wednesday 4 to 6, instead of Thursday. Please come by for squashes, potatoes, lettuce, carrots, etc. I have a few roasting ducks and geese left, some smoked hams, and beef and chicken.

350.org Hamilton Paris climate debrief tonite

Late news, but if you can, head to City Hall tonite 6:30 to hear an explanation of the development of the Paris Climate Agreement and what it means for Hamilton.
Organized by Hamilton chapter of 350.org.

Location: room 264 City Hall, Hamilton.

Presentation followed by brainstorming local initiatives that matter to Hamilton in the face of human caused climate disruption and the Paris Agreement.

Old 99 Farm, week of Dec 13 2015

Paris Climate Agreement signed Saturday Dec 12, 2015… By golly you are going to remember this day! A finally hopeful step to moving to a stable climate, economy and global ecosystem. Barely a first step but at least one that could send a signal to the global fossil fuel industry that it is in its sunset years. If you are invested in oil stocks I would start paying close attention to good advice about their future value.

Old 99 farm is focused on growing healthy food locally, as you know. On saturday a few 20somethings came for a visit, excited by what they had heard about us and permaculture ways. they wanted to know what they could do to support such ventures. So I made a few suggestions, like be willing to pay the price, eat in season, cook from scratch, look for local sources, learn to store food bought in season, etc.

We went on to the climate issues, (all these people were aware of the precipitous slope we are on for a liveable earth). Here are some quotes I dug up to give the flavour of that discussion.

Here’s one from Joe Romm, who was in Paris for the two weeks. (Romm is a major chronicler of the ongoing climate issue, with impressive credentials http://thinkprogress.org/person/joe/)

The economic and environmental implications of this deal for Americans are staggering. In the near term, it will unlock an accelerating multi-trillion-dollar shift in capital investment away from carbon-intensive coal and oil, which were the cornerstone of the first industrial revolution, into clean technologies like solar, wind, LED lighting, advanced batteries, and electric cars. It means far less harmful carbon pollution will be emitted in the coming years.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/12/3731236/paris-deal-fossil-fuels/

Albert Bates says in his post today at http://peaksurfer.blogspot.ca/2015/12/here-comes-sun.html

Once we apply honestly science-based Earth system sensitivity at equilibrium, excluding none of the feedbacks and forcings that we know of, we discover we passed the 2°C target in 1978. To hold at 2 degrees we would need to bring CO2 concentration down to 334 ppm, not increase it to 450 as the Paris Agreement contemplates.

Will voluntary pledges, revisited every five years starting in 2023 be enough to cut emissions and hold to the budget? It is the wrong question. That budget does not exist. Closer scrutiny of embedded systemic feedbacks reveal we’d blown though any possible atmospheric buffer zone by the 1970s and have just been piling on carbon up there every since.

The Guardian reports:

Throughout the week, campaigners have said the deal had to send a clear signal to global industry that the era of fossil fuels was ending. Scientists have seen the moment as career defining.

350.org Executive director, May Boeve said:

“This marks the end of the era of fossil fuels. There is no way to meet the targets laid out in this agreement without keeping coal, oil and gas in the ground. The text should send a clear signal to fossil fuel investors: divest now.

Bill McKibben said:

“Every government seems now to recognize that the fossil fuel era must end and soon. But the power of the fossil fuel industry is reflected in the text, which drags out the transition so far that endless climate damage will be done. Since pace is the crucial question now, activists must redouble our efforts to weaken that industry. This didn’t save the planet but it may have saved the chance of saving the planet.”

Yes we have vegetables, meats, eggs and more. See the attached list for details. Egg special is now over.

I have some tree seedlings as well: Oak, Locust and Chestnut, ready to plant now.

Old 99 Farm, week of Dec 6 2015

Yes I did not put a title on this graphic for a reason; can you figure its meaning? clue: from a COP21 Climate Summit observer about the progress being made in Paris.

Continuing above normal temperatures and lack of precipitation are projected into December. Good for greens growing in the greenhouse. Kazlyn even has some tomato seedlings started!

Good selection of greens: kale, collards, lettuces, mixed greens, mizuna, arugula, and root crops: carrots, potatoes, sweet potato. Also lots of squash and apples. Still good selection of meats; chicken, goose, duck, beef, pork and lamb.

We’re offering eggs special price: Three dozen for price of two, works out to $4.50 a dozen. Can’t beat that for organic free range happy chicken eggs.

Our international guest, Tangey Troadec arrived on Thurs last for three weeks, from Nantes France.

Healthy eating,
Ian, Cami and Kazlyn