The Health Of America Starts On The Farm

  Mark Bittman makes the point in his column at the New York Times today, that the biggest killer of Americans isn't guns but industrial agriculture. A point I have made repeatedly with my family over the years. ...the root of that dangerous diet is our system of hyper-industrial agriculture,…

College Park Prairie in Deer Park

I used to drive by this site and not know the significance. Good news! An amazing prairie remnant has been found in Deer Park. It is called the College Park Prairie, named after an adjacent elementary school. This is a 53-acre prairie pothole remnant with a full complement of pimple…

International Year of Biodiversity

Welcome to the International Year of Biodiversity You are an integral part of nature; your fate is tightly linked with biodiversity, the huge variety of other animals and plants, the places they live and their surrounding environments, all over the world. You rely on this diversity of life to provide…

Saturday Muses

I saw Patry's post about the medicinal use of red wine in the treatment of influenza... Patry Francis Red wine may prevent swine flu, which is the absolute only reason I drink it. http://www.anotherwineblog.com/archives/4253 I checked my stock and decided I needed to make a "medicine" run...Off to Spec's we…

Sissy Farmer? I don’t think so…

Stumbling through my news reader I came across a reference and a video of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I have been aware of the work Joel is doing for a while. His success with Polyface is an inspiration that will become more important…

Agriculture in America…Looking better?

When I was born in 1952, there were 203,000 farms in Iowa, only 11,000 fewer than when my dad was born in 1926. By 2002, the number had dropped to about 90,000, with roughly the same acreage in production in a state with a population that had remained roughly the…

What Is Blowing On The Wind?

Maybe the answer to some of our ecological problems... Out of thin air: Successful wind confab in Houston points up Texas' growing role in alternative energy development | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle Although it tops the nation in the volume of man-made greenhouse gas emissions fueling global warming, Texas has…

Saturday morning muses at the end of summer.

I began thinking of the wordsmiths I enjoy who make their primary living working on the farm. I haven't made it a point to search these folks out, but maybe I should. There is something about the solitude of farm work that seems to allow the wordsmiths it produces to let their words steep and age before they commit them to paper (or electronic replacements thereof).

Thursday Shorts….

Jim Hightower | CORPORATE AMERICA’S “CHEAP” IMPORT ADDICTION Let's be honest. China’s trillion-dollar-a-year export economy is based squarely on the country’s deliberate lack of humane standards. That’s precisely why our CEO’s rushed over there – every corner cut, every penny taken from workers and the environment, every product made on…

Robert D. Novak – Losing to the Greens – washingtonpost.com

 From the parallel universe of Robert Novak. "Environmentalists' well-financed propaganda operation"...Does the man live in this universe? Industry has been spending many times the amounts the environmentalists have but the truth is still coming thru their lies and distortions. Industry has controlled the conversation for 12 years in congress and…