China, America and melamine (IHT)

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China, America and melamine
By James E. McWilliams
Sunday, November 16, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas:
China's food supply appears to be awash in the industrial chemical melamine. Dangerous levels have been detected not only in milk and eggs, but also in chicken feed and wheat gluten, meaning that melamine is almost impossible to avoid in processed foods. Melamine in baby formula has killed at least four infants in China and sickened tens of thousands more.
In response, the United States has blasted lax Chinese regulations, while the Food and Drug Administration, in a rare move, announced last week that Chinese food products containing milk would be detained at the border until they were proved safe.
For all the outrage about Chinese melamine, what American consumers and government agencies have studiously failed to scrutinize is the place of melamine in America's own food system. In casting stones, we've forgotten that our house has its own exposed glass.
To be sure, in China some food manufacturers deliberately added melamine to products to increase profits. Makers of baby formula, for example, watered down their product, lowering the amount of protein and nutrients, then added melamine, which is cheap and fools tests measuring protein levels.
But melamine is also integral to the material life of any industrialized society. It's a common ingredient in cleaning products, waterproof plywood, plastic compounds, cement, ink and fire-retardant paint. Chemical plants throughout the United States produce millions of pounds of melamine a year.
Given the pervasiveness of melamine, it's always possible that trace elements will end up in food. The FDA thus sets the legal limit for melamine in food at 2.5 parts per million. This amount is indeed minuscule, a couple of sand grains in an expanse of desert that pose no real threat to public health. Moreover, the 2.5 parts per million figure is calculated for a person weighing 132 pounds - a cautious benchmark given that the average adult weighs 150 to 180 pounds.
But these figures obscure more than they reveal. First, while adults eat about one-fortieth of their weight every day, toddlers consume closer to one-tenth. Although scientists haven't measured the differential impact of melamine on infants versus adults, it's likely that this intensified ratio would at least double (if not quadruple) the impact of legal levels of melamine on toddlers.
This doubled exposure might not land a child in the hospital, but it could certainly contribute to the long-term kidney and liver problems that we know are caused by chronic exposure to melamine.
On a more concrete note, melamine not only has widespread industrial applications, but is also used to buttress the foundation of American agriculture.
Fertilizer companies commonly add melamine to their products because it helps control the rate at which nitrogen seeps into soil, thereby allowing the farmer to get more nutrient bang for the fertilizer buck. But the government doesn't regulate how much melamine is applied to the soil. This melamine accumulates as salt crystals in the ground, tainting the soil.
A related area of agricultural concern is animal feed. Chinese eggs seized last month in Hong Kong, for instance, contained elevated levels of melamine because of the melamine-laden wheat gluten used in the feed for the chickens that produced the eggs.
To think American consumers are immune to this unscrupulous behavior is to ignore the Byzantine reality of the global gluten trade. Tracking the flow of wheat gluten around the world is like trying to contain a drop of dye in a churning whirlpool.
More ominous, the United States imports most of its wheat gluten. Last year, for instance, the FDA reported that millions of Americans had eaten chicken fattened on feed with melamine-tainted gluten imported from China. Around the same time, Tyson Foods slaughtered and processed hogs that had eaten melamine-contaminated feed. The government decided not to recall the meat.
Only a week earlier, however, the FDA had announced that thousands of cats and dogs had died from melamine-laden pet food. This high-profile pet scandal did not prove to be a spur to reform so much as a red herring. Our attention was diverted to Fido and away from the animals we happen to kill and eat rather than spoil.
Frightening as this all sounds, the concerned consumer is not completely helpless. We can seek out organic foods, which are grown with fertilizer without melamine - unless that fertilizer was composted with manure from animals fed melamine-laden feed (always possible, as the Tyson example suggests).
We could further protect ourselves by choosing meat from grass-fed or truly free-range animals, assuming the grass was not fertilized with a conventional product (something that's also very hard to know).
But as all the caveats above indicate, these precautions will only go so far. Melamine, after all, points to the much larger relationship between industrial waste and American food production. Regulations might be lax when it comes to animal feed and fertilizer in China, but take a closer look at similar regulations in the United States and it becomes clear that they're vague enough to allow industries to "recycle" much of their waste into fertilizer and other products that form the basis of our domestic food supply.
As a result, toxic chemicals routinely enter our agricultural system through the back channels of this under-explored but insidious relationship.
So, sure, let's keep the heat on China. And, yes, let's take with a big dose of skepticism the Chinese government's assurances that they're improving the food supply.
At the same time, though, instead of delivering righteous condemnation, the United States should seize upon the melamine scandal as an opportunity to pass federal fertilizer standards backed by consistent testing for this compound, which could very well be hidden in plain sight.
James E. McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University at San Marcos, is the author of "American Pests: The Losing War on Insects From Colonial Times to DDT."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/opinion/edmcwilliams.php




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Grazing sheep help fight noxious weeds in U.S. (IHT)

By Pamela J. Podger
Monday, October 27, 2008
MISSOULA, Montana: Chilled by an autumn wind, Enrique Márquez watched from horseback as the sheep gamboled down the mountain. A border collie nipped the heels of wayward ewes.
All summer and into the fall, the flock grazed on noxious weeds infesting 1,000 acres, or 400 hectares, of public lands above the Missoula Valley as part of this city's effort to restore its native prairie grasses.
Throughout the United States, sheep grazing is gaining popularity as a low-cost, nontoxic tool in the battle to control leafy spurge, knapweed, Dalmatian toadflax and other invasive weed species. The approach is catching on in places like the Massachusetts island Nantucket, Civil War battlefields in Virginia, ski slopes in Vermont and vineyards in California.
Tom McDonnell, a staff consultant with the American Sheep Industry Institute, called this kind of grazing a "growth industry." McDonnell cited a study by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University that indicated nonnative weeds had invaded 40 to 50 percent of U.S. croplands, pasture and public lands and were spreading at a rate of 1.75 million acres per year.
Sheep grazing is a long-term solution best used in conjunction with other methods, like beneficial insects, controlled burns, herbicides and hand pulling, officials said.
Jeff Mosley, an extension range management specialist at Montana State University, said sheep were a natural "low fossil fuel" way of controlling invasive plants, with the added benefit of providing meat and wool.
"It's environmentally friendly," he said. "Grazing has an aesthetic appeal and a bucolic aspect. It's a natural form, and people appreciate that as well."
In the mountains ringing the Missoula Valley, about 600 acres of city lands are 75 to 100 percent invaded by noxious weeds, said Missoula's conservation lands manager, Morgan Valliant.
"We're using the sheep to slowly turn back the clock and decrease the density of the weeds and get some seeds" of native grasses and wildflowers sown, Valliant said, adding, "Each year, we're learning more and more."
Still, some local residents are skeptical.
Giles Thelen, a plant ecologist at the University of Montana in Missoula, said that results of the sheep-grazing program were anecdotal and that plots should be used to measure how effective the sheep were.
Thelen also worries about the sheep worsening the problem by picking up invasive seeds in their wool and dropping them in new areas, as well as causing erosion with their hooves.
"There's no data to show if the sheep are making the situation worse or better," he said.
Some herbicides may be more effective, he said, "but people don't like poison on their public lands."
Each year, the city contracts with John Stahl, a fourth-generation rancher who drives his flock to the infested hills from his Missoula County ranch nine miles, or 14 kilometers, away.
The city pays Stahl about $1,300 a month, including a modest stipend for Márquez. The rancher provides Márquez's food, equipment, camp wagon and bus fare from his home in Chihuahua, Mexico.
Stahl said access to the forage on public lands allowed him to continue raising sheep and other livestock instead of selling the ranch to developers.
"I couldn't make a living on the sheep without access to the city land," Stahl said. "And Enrique really knows the sheep and all the places they can hide. He has an instinct for animals."
Before coming to Montana, Márquez, 57, a soft-spoken man with hazel eyes, worked with cattle in New Mexico for a decade, but he had never handled sheep. He said the money he earned each season helped him fix up his small cattle ranch in Mexico.
Márquez pointed out the telltale orange patches of leafy spurge in the dun-colored hills where his flock had not grazed. He said the sheep were effective and better than spraying.
"The chemicals kill the bad plants as well as the good ones," he said in Spanish. "In Mexico, we have a little spurge, but nothing like this. I've learned a lot about bad plants and sheep here."
On a recent Sunday morning, the flock departed the mountains before the first snowfall. The sheep moved through Missoula's streets, their bells clanging and hooves clattering on the pavement as they headed back to the ranch.
The herders included Stahl on an all-terrain vehicle, volunteers on bicycles and Márquez on horseback. The woolly procession rolled past subdivisions and apartments, where children ran alongside it.
A tractor-trailer slowed to a halt as it was engulfed by the flock.
The sheep ran through an interstate-highway underpass, then across railroad tracks and a busy four-lane state highway.
When the sheep arrived at the ranch after an hour and a half trip down from the mountains, they fanned out in the waist-high grasses.
Stahl said the roundup went faster each year.
"They make their way home from memory," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/27/america/sheep.php



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Tap water's popularity forces Pepsi to cut jobs (IHT)

By Andrew Martin
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tap water is making a comeback. That's bad news for PepsiCo's profits.
The company, which makes Pepsi, Doritos and Quaker Oats cereal, announced on Tuesday that its quarterly earnings were down 10 percent in part because of declines in sales of soda and bottled water in the United States.
In response, the company is planning to eliminate 3,300 jobs and close as many as six plants to cut costs and to refocus its efforts on stabilizing its domestic beverage business.
"Revitalizing this business is a huge priority for us," said PepsiCo's chief executive, Indra Nooyi.
Pepsi reported net income of $1.58 billion for the third quarter, compared with $1.74 billion a year earlier. Excluding losses related to commodity hedges, the company's earnings were $1.06 per share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters were expecting $1.08 per share.
The company's stock price dropped $7.37 to close at $54.40 on Tuesday. The stock has fallen 28 percent since the beginning of the year, most of that in the last two weeks. PepsiCo's stock on Oct. 1 was $71.64.
Sales of carbonated soft drinks have been declining in the United States for several years, as consumers turn to a growing number of new beverages like enhanced waters, sports drinks and energy drinks. But the problems have accelerated in a volatile economy, with consumers eating at restaurants less and buying fewer grab-and-go beverages.
In addition, consumers are increasingly choosing tap water over other beverages at restaurants and at home to help save money and the environment, according to PepsiCo and industry analysts. Research by William Pecoriello, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, found that 34 percent of consumers say they are reusing plastic bottles more often and 23 percent say they are cutting back on bottled beverages in favor of tap water or beverages in containers that create less waste.
Information Resources, a research firm, found that sales of water filters increased 16 percent in the first half of the year.
PepsiCo said volume for beverages in North America declined by 4 percent in the third quarter, which ended in Sept. 6.
In recent years, noncarbonated beverages were an engine of growth as soda sales slipped, but no longer. Volume for noncarbonated beverage sales dropped 5 percent in the quarter, led by double-digit declines in Aquafina and Propel, a flavored and vitamin-enhanced water drink.
Carbonated soft drink volume in North America declined by 3 percent in the quarter.
In response, PepsiCo is creating new packaging and logos for many beverages, and plans to introduce new products in the coming year.
"Because of the economy, there is some movement, probably temporarily, back to tap water," said John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest, an industry publication. He predicted that both PepsiCo and Coca-Cola would ratchet up their efforts to improve beverage sales in 2009.
"Unless both Pepsi and Coke do something quickly, they could lose a generation of carbonated soft drink consumers," Sicher said.
To increase sales in the United States, Nooyi said, would take a "breakthrough" product. Both Pepsi and Coke are hoping for a breakthrough when they introduce beverages that use a natural, low-calorie sweetener derived from the stevia plant.
Despite the lackluster beverage sales in North America, Nooyi said international growth remained robust, particularly in the Middle East, India and China. Revenue for PepsiCo's food businesses in the North America grew by 12 percent in the quarter, and profit increased by 9 percent.

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With goat, a rancher breaks away from the herd (IHT)

Bill Niman, who founded a meat company known for its humane treatment of animals, is on to other ventures. Above, he visits his goats at a partner's ranch in eastern Oregon.

(Chad Case for The New York Times)

By Kim Severson
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
BOLINAS, California: Bill Niman is not the rancher he once was.
Last year Niman walked away from the meat company he started in the 1970s with not much more than a handful of cattle and a political philosophy built on self-sufficiency.
Niman Ranch, which takes in annual sales of $85 million, was founded on the notion that the better an animal is treated, the better the meat will be. His beef was so good that in the early 1980s Alice Waters made it the first proper-noun meat on the menu at her Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse. His pigs, raised humanely by 600 family farms in Iowa, provide pork for the Chipotle chain's carnitas. Niman Ranch bacon, hot dogs and sausage fill grocery cases around the country.
But Niman is no longer a part of the company. Angry and discouraged after prolonged battles with a new management team over money and animal protocols, he left in August 2007 with a modest severance check and a small amount of stock.
He can't use his surname to sell meat, and he had to surrender the small herd of breeding cattle that lived on his ranch here, about an hour's drive north of San Francisco. The cattle were direct descendants of the ones he tended back in the days of counterculture, not profit margin.
But Niman, 63, is done licking his wounds. With a herd of goats and a young vegetarian wife he nicknamed Porkchop by his side, he is jumping back into the meat game.
"I think I am returning to my original roots," said Niman, who still lives in the little house he built on ranchland that kisses the Pacific Ocean.
Niman was raised in Minnesota, and moved to California to teach poor children. It was better than being drafted. In 1968, he headed north to Bolinas, a refuge for poets and intellectuals, to practice the counterculture movement's back-to-the-land philosophy.
He got his first cattle from local ranchers in barter for the tutoring his first wife, who has since died, gave their children. He has never left Bolinas, although now he watches over 1,000 acres instead of 11, and the land was turned over to the Point Reyes National Seashore.
He and Nicolette Hahn Niman, an environmental lawyer, were married five years ago, and now they are raising what they hope will be the best-tasting animals around. They have a handful of premier cattle that fatten only on pasture and a flock of traditional turkey breeds they personally chauffeured from Kansas to Bolinas last spring. Niman also has an organic pig project going in Iowa.
But he hopes goat will be the cornerstone of his comeback. That's in part because he has more of them around, and because he sees a wide-open market for pristine, pasture-raised goat meat. The guy is, after all, a businessman.
"I don't need to get 10 percent of the market anymore," he said. "I just want to be the best."
Chefs on both coasts are fast discovering his goat meat, although it is still available only in limited amounts, under the name BN Ranch.
In June, Niman stopped by Eccolo in Berkeley with a piece of shoulder, a loin, a leg and a rack of ribs. The chef and owner, Christopher Lee, now breaks down one or two of the 30-pound goat carcasses a week.
"It was succulent," Lee said. "It was mild. It was just perfect."
Like other chefs who have begun to cook with goat, Lee predicts a bright future for the meat.
"We've all cooked every part of the lamb a million times and we all know about grass-fed beef and aging beef," he said. "The goat is the next thing."
The meat Niman and a handful of other boutique farmers are producing is more delicate than the older, imported goat that is served at Pakistani curry houses, Jamaican jerk stands and taco trucks all over New York.
At a recent goat tasting in the Blue Hill at Stone Barns kitchen in Pocantico Hills, New York, Niman's young goat was compared to pan-seared and roasted loin and shoulder cuts from both a small Vermont grower and what the chef Dan Barber called "commodity goat."
The commodity goat was slightly musty and chewy. The Vermont goat was as tender and mild as lamb. The Niman goat was like lamb, too, but a lamb with a big personality. The meat was sweet and vegetal. The fat, what little of it there was, tasted rich but felt lighter than olive oil.
At Thyme for Goat, a recent collaboration between four goat farms within 25 miles of each other in Maine, goat is taking off, in a small way. People are attracted to the way it is raised and its healthful properties. Goat meat doesn't have the tallow of lamb, and contains about half the fat of chicken, according to a Department of Agriculture analysis.
"A lot of folks said nobody in Maine is going to buy goat meat," said Marge Kilkelly, who does marketing for the group. "We've found just the opposite."
The breed of goat is important. Like the Maine collective, Niman raises some stout, muscular Boer goats. But he is particularly fond of meat from lighter framed Spanish goats, which sometimes mix with the Boer.
"What Bill is so good at is the genetics," Barber said. "He's the master."
For about half the year, Niman lets the goats roam his California ranch. In the summer and fall, when the California grass is brown, they move to Oregon. He also works with ranchers raising two other herds to his specifications in California and Oregon.
Goats and cattle work particularly well together in a pasture. Goats don't like clover or rye grass, which the cattle love, but they make fast work of scotch broom, poison oak and other plants that can take over good grassland.
"Nature is so perfect," Niman said.
His longtime followers may be surprised that he is now raising his cattle entirely on pasture, without switching to a diet of grain a few months before slaughter.
He built Niman Ranch on the idea that raising a quality, year-round beef supply was like making dessert. You bake the cake with grass and frost it with grain. The method produces well-marbled meat with that traditional corn-fed flavor most Americans grew up eating. And it provides beef year-round. Animals that feed on pasture are fat enough to be slaughtered only at certain times of year.
But just as Niman Ranch was becoming a big, nationally recognized brand, Niman fell victim to a move toward meat purity that he and Orville Schell, his former partner, had started. Several chefs and food writers came to believe that a diet of corn was ruinous for cattle's health and the environment.
Although Niman's beef was quite different from conventional corn-fed beef, that he fed his animals with any grain at all was unacceptable to some chefs. Waters decided to drop it from the menu in 2002 and turn to more seasonal, all-grass options.
"It made me very sad but I just said we are at a moment in time and I just can't do this anymore," she said, adding that she "couldn't be more delighted that he's come back to his senses."
Still, Niman continued to build the company. He took on a parade of investors. A new management team took over in 2006, led by Jeff Swain, who had been at the company that produces Coleman Natural Beef, Niman's biggest competitor.
With the new team came changes, many of them made over Niman's protests. The company sold its custom butchering plant in Oakland and prepared to sell its high-end feedlot in Idaho. Niman Ranch began to purchase cattle ready for slaughter from feedlots over which the company had little control, a practice that Niman said was "against my religion."
Niman said feed standards dropped and animals were transported distances longer than 500 miles, which he said stresses them too much.
Swain said feed and care standards for the 400 head of cattle they process a week have not dropped. Contractors follow a list of protocols that are similar to those Niman developed.
And although some animals are being transported longer than 500 miles for slaughter, he said they are allowed to rest for 24 hours before they are dispatched.
The real issue, Swain said, is that Niman was a poor businessman. The cattle portion of the program was a money-loser, unlike the pork business, which processes about 3,200 animals a week. That remains unchanged, Swain said. "When we got involved, Niman would raise money and go through it and raise money and go through it," he said. "Any change to Bill's business model he didn't like. We needed to make the company financially sustainable."
The more Niman complained that the protocols he developed were being eased out, the more marginalized he became. Finally, Niman walked away, heading back to focus on the ranch where he has lived since the 1970s. Nicolette, 22 years his junior and a devout vegetarian, was there to comfort him. "It was such a dark time for Bill," she said.
While Niman fought his battles, his wife learned how to work the ranch. She also finished her book, "Righteous Porkchop" (Collins Living, March). It is part memoir and part exposé, focusing on her work fighting industrial meat companies as a lawyer for the Waterkeeper Alliance, Robert Kennedy Jr.'s environmental organization.
So how does that vegetarian thing work out? She accepts the role animals play in the human food chain, and he never pressures her to eat meat. She doesn't cook meat at home, but doesn't forbid Niman from throwing some chorizo on a slice of homemade pizza. He tends to go out for steaks, especially when he travels.
The one place they compromised was over a couple of her favorite cattle. She became emotionally attached, so he promised the cow and steer will not die for meat.
"You've got the rancher who came back home and the lovely, smart animal welfare girl who is 20 years younger and has really gone to work on him," said Betty Fussell, who writes about Niman in her new book, "Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef" (Harcourt, October). "It is the story of the cowboy and the lady, in a way."
Other people at his stage of life might be planning how to ride off into the beautiful Pacific sunset, satisfied with having made a real change in how people eat. But not Niman, who acts as if he's just getting started.
"It's the first time I've had a true partner at my side," he said of the last five years. "I feel like together, we are pioneering the next generation of animal husbandry."

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A Place in the Auvergne Recommends Goodness Gracious Acres (Florida, USA; 1.5 acres; goats, Nubians, turkeys, chickens)

As a blogger of my own on Farm Blogs from Around the World (even if my own rural blog is a bit different - check it out) I'd like to recommend Goodness Gracious Acres, A.K.A jojosfarmlife.blogspot.com in West Palm Beach, Florida.

"Well sort of.. Closer to Lake Okeechobee than Donald Trump", Jojo laughs.

What I like about Goodness Gracious Acres is that it is one of best mergers between someone's non-farming professional life and their mini-farming experiences that I've come accross. Jojo is a graphic designer outside and inside her 1.5 acre "ranchette" as she terms it, although, she writes with a smile, that it seems much bigger to her.

Goodness Gracious Acres is a wonderfully ecclectic mix of material from the intersection of her professional, personal and rural life. Writing myself as someone who is an author, but who used to work in marketing, design and communications (and still reluctantly dabbles, now and again, to pay the bills) Goodness Gracious Acres also had a particular appeal to me personally.

Many of the bloggers on Farm Blogs from Around the World are not full-time farmers, that's a reality, and I would recommend anyone who wants to attempt this type of 'mixed-blog' to check it out.

Naturally, with Jojo being a graphic designer, the design values are high, and it's a little self-promoting of that side of her life - but tell me a farm blog that isn't, in some way, a little self-promoting, from produce & products to farmers markets to B&B and to bloggers 'day jobs', so I won't hold that against her!

She's the first to admit that it's not "a real big farm" but she still likes to live as rurally as possible. Jojo makes cheese and soap from her dairy goats, sells the milk and breeds and raises Nubians, turkeys and chickens.

Goodness Gracious Acres has been active for about 3 years and this is how Jojo describes it and herself:

"Animals. Animals. Animals. City girl gone slightly country. Totally, left of center. Living the simple life, on my own. With a little ranting thrown in to keep the balance. I live on a small "ranchette" with over 30 animals makes for some interesting stories. And in between mucking the stalls and milking goats I support my habit of rural living, by being a creative director, designer, art director, hack, type slave, layout artist, communicator. I blurr the lines between work and play all the time. Why wasn't it always this way?"

That's me too, and I couldn't agree more.

Some days she writes about design and artistic endeavors, some days it’s about bucks in rut.

"I’m not bipolar," Jojo wrote to me, "but my blog is".

Check it out.

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Bootleggers playing hide-and-seek on the Alaskan tundra (IHT)

By Dan Barry
Monday, October 13, 2008
BETHEL, Alaska: On a misty day the color of lead, a few people linger outside a general store in the small and remote city of Bethel, struggling but failing to achieve an air of purposeful loitering. Try as they might to feign enjoyment of the damp cold, they are clearly looking to score.
Jess Carson, a plainclothes investigator for the Alaska State Troopers, watches their fidgeting performance through the windshield of his pickup truck, a cramped theater that smells of wet dog, courtesy of Kilo, his scent-sensitive German shepherd. Carson seems less than riveted by an act he has seen too many times before.
This show is not about heroin or cocaine; it's about booze. Many rural Alaskan communities consider alcohol to be the primary accelerant for crime, domestic strife and other social problems, and either ban it outright or, as in Bethel, tightly restrict its use.
And with illicit alcohol come bootleggers who lack any roguish Prohibition-era charm; just one case of their whiskey can upend a small native village.
An outsider might scan an Alaska State Troopers annual report, come across that photograph of Coors Light cases stacked beside bottles of R&R whiskey, and see ingredients for a holiday party. But many people here see it the way others would a few kilos of cocaine, piled in a pyramid for the camera — as seized contraband.
By the way, a fifth of R&R — which stands for Rich & Rare, a highbrow name for a bottom-shelf blend — sells for $10 or so in Anchorage. But that same bottle can sell for as much as $300 in a dry village in the tundra, making R&R the bootlegger's current alcohol of choice and the trooper's alcohol of interest.
"Ninety-five percent of all bootlegged alcohol in the Bethel area is R&R, and because of that we tend to focus on it," Carson says. But the brand is not for discriminating tastes, he adds. "Even the bootleggers don't like it."
Of course, bootleggers need go-betweens, some of whom will gladly work for the promise of a bottle. These runners and hustlers often congregate outside this corrugated warehouse of a store called the AC Value Center, where Listerine, Lysol and other items containing alcohol are kept behind the counter.
Carson sees something through his windshield: a woman in a yellow parka may have just slipped money to a runner now spiriting away. He steps out to question the woman. She says she has no idea what he's talking about, as those around her scatter like shards from a dropped bottle.
If need be, the woman will wait all day for that bootlegger's runner to return with her liquor. But there are so many other leaks to plug in the Alaskan bush, which some say has nowhere near the complement of officers needed to stem the illegal alcohol flow. The trooper returns to his dog-reeking truck and pulls away.
Carson, a boyish 32, has an innocent way that masks a street savvy culled from years as a narcotics investigator in Fairbanks, not far from his eastern Alaska hometown of Tok. Eighteen months ago he was transferred to Bethel, a western outpost of 6,000 that serves as a base for 56 native villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Where he once concentrated on cocaine and heroin, he now focuses on beer, wine and spirits, with no doubt in the value of his mission. "Most of the sexual assaults, suicides and homicides are alcohol-related here," Carson says. "Whenever you show up at a scene, you'll see the alcohol. It increases the importance of getting that off the street."
He works out of a small office near the regional airport with a few other troopers, including Investigator Jerry Evan, 38, a Yup'ik Eskimo from the village of Napaskiak. Carson says his colleague's fluency in Yup'ik, understanding of native culture and prowess as a hunter have been invaluable in a region where often the only way to get from here to there is by boat or plane.
Evan, who listens more than he speaks, says he well knows the devastation that alcohol can do to a village like his. Suicides. Drownings. People freezing to death.
"Alcohol has always been an issue," he says.
So much so that dozens of communities have voted over the years to restrict or ban the importation, sale and possession of alcohol. These include many native villages, where alcohol is a relatively new addition to the culture.
"This is not a bunch of lawyers from Anchorage and Juneau, flying in from southeast Alaska to impose our law," says James Fayette, a supervising assistant attorney general for Alaska. "We're flying in to impose their law."
Then Fayette says something startling: "You need to understand that a case of bootleg whiskey in a small Alaska village of 600 people can shut down that village for a week."
The comment may sound hyperbolic, but various studies have documented the insidious effect of alcohol in the bush. And when Fayette's words are repeated to four elders in the native village of Akiachak, a short flight from here, the men nod in sad agreement. Then one growls, "I hate bootleggers."
Life in rural Alaska can sometimes seem like one long chase scene from "The Dukes of Hazzard," Fayette says. Two months ago, state troopers in Aniak, about 90 miles to the northeast, reported chasing two drunken bootleggers 25 miles up the Kuskokwim River, sometimes at speeds topping 40 miles an hour. The suspects were finally caught — with five bottles of vodka.
Here in Bethel, you can possess alcohol, but not sell it. There are no bars or package stores, so many people, including several known bootleggers, have it sent by airmail from businesses in Anchorage with evocative names like Gold Rush and Brown Jug.
Though the amount someone can purchase in one month is limited — and closely monitored by troopers when it lands at the airport — people still smuggle. They tape bottles to their legs, or fill water bottles with vodka and apple juice bottles with whiskey, or use the name of some hanger-on down at the general store to exceed the monthly limit.
The bootleggers also know that troopers will actually listen to luggage, trying to detect the glug-glug sound of liquid in a bottle. So the smugglers will buy liquor that comes in plastic containers, "burp the bottle" by releasing the contained air without breaking the seal, then cover the cap with tape.
"It's identical to the drug trade," Carson says.
His pickup splashes its way out of the rutted parking lot of the AC Value Center and on through the misty gray of Bethel, a place so isolated that it has only a dozen miles of paved road. He checks out the loiterers outside another general store, then heads to the airport to record who is receiving what and how much.
At the Alaska Airlines depot, Carson logs in a case of vodka and two cases of beer. As he leaves, though, he passes a known bootlegger who is carrying away a case of R&R on his shoulder. Delivered legally, received legally, and within the limits of a Bethel resident's monthly allowance of purchased alcohol.
The trooper doubts the man will taste a drop of that scorching stuff.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/13/america/13land.php





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Racing over mountains on twigs and fry oil (IHT)

By Jesse McKinley
Monday, October 13, 2008
BERKELEY, California: It is a classic road rally, 600 miles from the liberal embrace of Berkeley to the anything-goes lights of Las Vegas.
No speeding is allowed, or in some cases even possible. And if you stop to refuel, it had better be in someone's trash.
On Saturday morning, five teams began the Escape From Berkeley, maybe the world's most eco-friendly motor race, driving all manner of alternative-fuel-burning jalopies, roadsters, and even a Mercedes-Benz fueled by frying oil, with a single goal: to complete the approximately 1,000-kilometer race using no petroleum.
"Gentlemen, start your whatever they are," the master of ceremonies shouted to begin the race, which offers the winner $5,000.
The final catch of the race is that participants - artists, environmentalists and even a cattle farmer from Alabama - have to find or scavenge their go-go juice, whether it is used vegetable oil from restaurants or twigs and sticks from the side of the road. All the vehicles, which are required to be street legal, were allowed to start with a single gallon, or about 3.8 liters, of whatever fuel they used.
"We're just going to hang out in front of Ace Hardware and beg," said Ben Wedlock, who was riding a two-man bicycle, augmented by a one-horsepower electric motor that runs on ethanol.
The race's route will also present some challenges, running as it does from the relatively mild terrain of the Bay Area, across the Sierra Nevada via the Tioga Pass (elevation 9,943 feet, or 3,030 meters) and finally through the deserts outside Las Vegas.
All of which is highly likely to make it more a matter of survival than of speed for some of the racers.
"Considering the Tioga Pass, it will be pretty much miraculous if we make it," said Shannon O'Hare, the designer of Kristie's Flyer, an elegant steam-powered vehicle on three wheels (two of which are wooden). "I think it's more of an art piece than a competitor."
Indeed, O'Hare and several other participants are veterans of Burning Man, the art-for-art's-sake festival held every summer in the desert north of Reno, Nevada. At an opening party for the race Friday night, a giant fire-breathing snail - late of Burning Man and made of metal - was in attendance.
Jim Mason, the founder of Shipyard Labs, the sponsor of the event, said the race was meant to encourage creative thinking about alternative energy. "We want to transfer it from an engineering problem to art," Mason said.
Many of the cars were worked on at the Shipyard, a 20,000-square-foot, or 1,900-square-meter, open-air garage, where self-described "geeks and gearheads" work in shipping containers.
"We have more Ph.D.s than Google," Mason said. "But here, they weld."
Not all of the racers are Bay Area cognoscenti. Wayne Keith, 59, is a cattleman from Springville, Alabama, who decided five years ago that he wanted to be independent from gas. "When gasoline hit $1.75, I bailed out," Keith said. "I'm a hostage to no one."
His adapted lime-green Dodge Dakota pickup burns wood in a pair of burners in the pickup bed and uses the gases created by the combustion - primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide - to drive the engine. He said the ready availability of scrap wood on his farm made his energy expenses almost nil.
On Saturday, Keith's truck was also towing a table saw, in case he happened on any particularly large branches.
"I don't know if it makes me good or guilty," he said. "But the wood's going to rot if I don't use it."
Keith said the truck's top speed is about 90 miles per hour, or 145 kilometers per hour, making it a favorite to win the race. Not so for Wedlock, 24, and his racing partner, Mike Gittelsohn, 54, who spent about $3,000 to build their recumbent bicycle, complete with an engine better suited for a weed whacker.
Neither man is much of a cyclist, they said.
"A really strong human can produce about one-third of a horsepower," Wedlock said. "I'm probably less than a quarter."
The men's main concern was the wind, which had been gusting through Northern California for several days. The team, called Two Cats, had built a cover for their bike but were worried that it might be more of a sail than an aerodynamic sleeve.
"If we have crosswinds like we did today," Wedlock said, "it's going to be an issue."
The elements, including snow in the upper Sierras, were also quite likely to be an issue for the Prisoners of Petroleum team, which was driving an open-air and open-wheel two-seater.
Jack McCornack, part of the Prisoners team and the owner of Kinetic Vehicles, a maker of alternative cars in Cave Junction, Oregon, said his roadster could go 72 miles per hour - and get 70 miles to the gallon, or 25 kilometers to the liter - using nothing but vegetable oil.
"It's extremely no-frills," McCornack said of his car, which has no windows or doors. "It's everything you always wanted in a sports car, and less."
Sure enough, there was snow in the pass Sunday, and Wedlock and Gittelsohn had dropped out because of an engine problem, Mason said.
O'Hare's steam-powered carriage, which he had estimated would top out at 15 miles per hour, had been reduced to a ceremonial role, leaving three viable challengers in the race.
Mason said he suspected there might be a little more attrition before the race ends on Monday in Las Vegas. "It might just be one or two," he said. "But maybe they'll all make it."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/13/america/car.php


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California farmers know 'witch' way leads to water (IHT)

Phil Stine walked a grid pattern with Frank Assazi in search of water with the aid of a Y-shaped willow stick on Mr. Assazi's land in Merced, Calif. (Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)

California farmers know 'witch' way leads to water

By Jesse McKinley
Thursday, October 9, 2008
WATERFORD, California: Phil Stine is not crazy, or possessed, or even that special, he says. He has no idea how he does what he does. From most accounts, he does it very well.
"Phil finds the water," said Frank Assali, an almond farmer and convert. "No doubt about it."
Stine is a "water witch," one of a small band of believers for whom the ancient art of dowsing is alive and well.
Emphasis, of course, on well. Using nothing more than a Y-shaped willow stick, Stine has as his primary function determining where farmers should drill to slake their crops' thirst, adding an element of the mystical to a business in which the day-to-day can often be painfully plain.
Asked how he does it, Stine has a standard retort. "I just tell people," Stine said, "it's the amount of lead" in your haunches.
Scientists pooh-pooh dowsers like Stine, saying their abilities are roughly on par with a roll of the dice. But water witches have been much in demand of late in rural California, the nation's biggest agricultural engine, struggling through its second year of drought.
The dry period has resulted in farm layoffs, restrictions on residential and agricultural water use, and hard times for all manner of ancillary businesses, like tractor dealerships and roadside diners.
"There is a domino effect to the point that a little clothing store goes out of business in a town, because the people living there move on," said Doug Mosebar, the president of the California Farm Bureau.
The state estimates nearly $260 million in crop damages through August. The drought has been particularly hard on areas like the Central Valley - the state's farming basin, some 400 miles, or 640 kilometers, long - and in Southern California, where some avocado farmers have taken to stumping their trees, cutting them back to the base rather than watering them.
Statewide, farmers have left nearly 80,000 acres, or 32,374 hectares, fallow rather than struggle - and pay - to keep them irrigated.
The dry times have meant good business for people like Blake Hennings, a well driller in the Central Valley city of Turlock, who says he has a lengthy waiting list and a yard full of worn-down drill bits. At a recent job he dug five test holes, all of which had been identified by a water witch like Stine.
"We only had one bad one," said Hennings, whose brother Curtis also dabbles with the dowser. "How they do it is beyond me."
How many rural witches are still around is an open question. Water witches have no trade unions - or covens. Few advertise, or dowse full time.
Stine, for example, offers his services without charge, though he says he does accept thanks of another sort. "I got a bunch of gift certificates," he said.
Dowsers have been part of lore for millenniums, and many on the farm today have no doubt that they have special abilities. Richard Cotta, the chief executive of California Dairies, a Central Valley cooperative, said he vividly remembered the first time he saw a witch.
"I was 6 years old," Cotta recalled. "A neighbor's well had gone dry, and this old fellow came out and he witched it, quite a ways away from the other well. Doggone it, I'll be darned if they didn't get water. That made a believer out of me." So much of a believer that Cotta recently walked away from a land deal because Stine said there was no water.
"He said he couldn't find enough water to do what we wanted," Cotta said.
Thomas Harter, a hydrologist at the University of California, Davis, who runs workshops with farmers looking to drill wells, says there is no scientific evidence that dowsers have special talent at finding water. They are, however, usually much cheaper than the various scientific tools, like electromagnetic imaging or seismic studies, that can help find aquifers.
"It's worth a bottle of whiskey to have a guy come out," Harter said.
But Harter also says men like Stine, who worked in the irrigation business for nearly half a century, could have an intuitive sense of where water is, simply by dint of knowing the territory.
In the Central Valley, which was once the bottom of a giant inland lake that water soaked into for eons, finding groundwater for domestic use is pretty easy, Harter says. But Stine's efforts are reserved for agricultural wells, which need to produce much more water and sometimes can run 1,000 feet, or 305 meters, deep.
Stine is 77 and retired from a successful irrigation business here in Waterford, a town of about 7,000 on the banks of a slender section of the Tuolumne River, the same river from which he now cuts his willow branches.
What does he look for in a good dowsing rod? "It's got to have leaves on it, and it can't really be bigger than your finger," Stine said. "And you got to find one with a fork in it."
He says he was taught his dark arts many years back by a fellow irrigator who used a metal coat hanger and a hard hat to dowse.
"He used a metal rod and wore a metal hat, and that thing would hit his head," Stine said. "So he always wore that hat."
The American Society of Dowsers, an organization based in Vermont, claims more than 3,000 members who use various tools - pendulums, L-shaped rods, bobbers - on all manner of mystery, finding minerals and lost objects, and even attaining "ancient wisdom," according to the group's Web site.
"Dowsing is a system that uses tools," said George Weller, the society's national president. "And the tools give you an answer."
Stine, a plainspoken Baptist, claims no connection with a higher power or otherworldly sensations when dowsing, merely a strong tugging in the hands.
"You can feel it twist," he said. "You can't hang on to it. It will actually break in your hand."
On an afternoon not long ago, Stine was summoned to a parched patch of earth outside Merced, California, owned by Assali and Cotta.
Stine's process is simple: walk the eastern edge of the property with the willow held straight up. When it bends toward him, he marks the spot with a flag and keeps walking. If he gets two or three in quick succession, he is convinced there is a stream underfoot.
On Assali's and Cotta's land, Stine worked fast, practically speed-walking. And then, after about 150 feet, the willow bowed suddenly - inexplicably - toward Stine's chest.
"There it goes," he said, his hands straining against the stick.
And so it went, again and again as Stine moved along the property's perimeter, planting perhaps 20 flags. Assali said he would start drilling on Stine's recommendation as soon as he could.

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October at Skoog Farm (NY, U.S.A.; 5 acres; horses; organic garlic, vegetables and flowers)

It's always a pleasure to hear from Farm Blogs from Around the World bloggers with seasonal updates from their part of the world.

If you'd like to send me some photos and text, please feel free to do so (no more than once a month and no more than 5 photos please!)

Here's news and pictures from Skoog Farm in NY state, U.S.A.

"Ian...we are surrounded by 120 acres of soybeans that should be harvested soon. After nearly a week of rain, the sun is back out and the air is crisp. The orchard at Apple Creek Farm is bursting with fruit. Our Farm Market continues to be full of vendors."

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Tainted milk from China turning up worldwide (IHT)

The Associated Press
Friday, October 3, 2008
Russian food inspectors have found nearly two tons of Chinese dry milk believed to be contaminated with melamine, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Friday, the same day that the list of tainted products grew in other nations as well.
ITAR-Tass quoted Russia's chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, as saying that the milk was seized in the eastern city of Khabarovsk, on the Chinese border.
The Vietnamese Health Ministry has discovered the industrial chemical in 18 food products imported from China and three other countries, and has ordered them recalled and destroyed, officials said Friday.
And health officials in the Philippines found melamine in 2 of 30 milk products from China tested for the chemical. The Philippine government had halted imports and sales of Chinese milk products pending inspections last week.
Australian food regulators recalled Chinese-made Kirin Milk Tea after tests found that the drink contained melamine. It is the fourth product withdrawn from the country's stores as a result of the tainted-milk scandal.
Milk containing melamine has been blamed for killing four babies and sickening more than 54,000 with kidney stones and other illnesses in China. The contamination has sparked global concerns about food products made with Chinese milk or milk powder and recalls in several countries of Chinese-made products.
The Chinese authorities believe suppliers trying to bolster output diluted their milk, adding melamine because its nitrogen content can fool tests aimed at verifying protein content.
The tainted food has also spread to the United States, where melamine has been found in Chinese-made White Rabbit Creamy Candy sold in California and Connecticut.
The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that trace amounts of melamine are safe in most foods, except for baby formula. A safety assessment by the agency concluded that 2.5 parts per million - a tiny amount - does not raise concerns. A week ago, the FDA warned consumers not to consume White Rabbit Candy and Mr. Brown coffee products because of possible melamine contamination.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/03/asia/china.php







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Kelly the Kitchen Kop (USA; 'Your health detective')

Kelly

With all the news of contaminated dairy products in China at the moment, it seems a good time to profile a blog that was recently recommended to Farm Blogs from Around the World, Kelly the Kitchen Kop - Your Health Detective.

Kelly's isn't worried about providing a lot of what she calls "politically incorrect" health and nutrition information because she doesn't "believe everything "they" have told us is the way to good health. Why? Look around, it hasn't worked so far!"

Kelly's goal with her kitchen cop blog is to get us thinking about what we're putting into our bodies, the effects it will have, and to give us more of the knowledge we'll need to help us make good choices for us and our families.

"With the overload of information available to us today, here is one place to easily find what you need to know (or at least a very good start) on a wide range of health & nutrition topics, and you won't have to do all the time-consuming work of searching out the truth on each issue!"

Which in many ways is similar to the purpose of Farm Blogs from Around the World.

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Bluebird Meadow Farms (NY; 35 acres; poultry, vegetables, berries)

"Welcome to Bluebird Meadow Farms - a taste of our country life and journey towards the dream of sustainability on our farm."

Thanks to Andy for writing to me with some more info about his farm and blog, Bluebird Meadow Farms in Upstate NY, U.S.A. outside of Rochester. Some good practical stuff on this blog which I learnt from, especially regarding chicken processing. (The picture below is the set up for big day for the chickens.)

"We have 35 acres, a house and a barn. Currently our work with livestock is limited to the seasonal production of broiler chickens (this first year was experimental - next year we are selling a bunch) - we will also likely be adding just a few layer chickens next year for primaraly personal production.

We farm about an acre - have all anual crops you would expect - plus we are starting on blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, asparagaus, rhubarb and other perannual crops as they come up."

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Sugar on Snow Recommends

Sugar on Snow is a general resource site in Vermont, U.S.A, which is all about "Finding and Preparing Vermont’s Local Foods".

Meredith has recommended some fantastic general resource sites (which I have added under general resources) and one other Vermont farm blog:


Local Harvest
USA
"Real Food, Real Farmers, Real Community."
A general resource helping people in the U.S.A to find the best organic food grown closest to you.

Cheese Slave
USA
"For the love of cheese. And bacon. And butter. And raw milk. And all those other things we're not supposed to eat."
Another fun food general resource blog.

Ethicurean
"Chew the Right Thing"
A ethicurean is "Someone who seeks out tasty things that are also sustainable, organic, local, and/or ethical - SOLE food, for short."
Based in the U.S.A but with worldwide correspondents.

Clear Brook Farm , Vermont, U.S.A.

*****************************************************************

N.B
If you are listed on Farm Blogs from Around the World have you sent me your best farm blog Recommendations?

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Bosky Dell Farm Recommends

Mary Barrosse Schwartz from Bosky Dell Farm in Vermont recommends the following bloggers:

UK – Musings from a Stonehead

VT- Cold Antler Farm

VT - Sugar on Snow: Finding and Preparing Vermont’s Local Foods

NH - Lazy Toad Farm

NH - Life on Bean Rd.

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Cedar Cove Farm Recommends

Scott, at Cedar Cove Farm recommends the following bloggers:


Homesteading Hickory Hills
"Describing our family's adventure of creating a life in the woods."

TNfarmgirl
"Seeking to live a deliberate, simple, self-sufficient life, depending upon God’s leading and by His grace."

Liberty Farm
"Adventures in building a small sustainable farm for raising healthy food and healthy kids."

The Future Cow-Calf Producer
"Ever since my first encounter with cattle, I knew I wanted to be someone who works with animals everyday. This blog is a start of that dream. Enjoy the read."



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Cedar Cove Farm (MI; 5 acres; Pastured poultry, beef, worms, rabbits, vegetables, dairy; Christian)

I'd like to thank Scott at Cedar Cove Farm for responding to my appeal to bloggers who have been recommended by other bloggers on Farm Blogs from Around the World, but who haven't yet contacted me with their own story and their favourite blogs.

Recommended bloggers go straight into the blog roll, but the idea is that I do one post on each of them, in the words of the recommended blogger, and then do another post on their own recommendations. Just as Scott has provided for me.

On the blog roll you can see which recommended bloggers have become recommenders themselves in return. If you're listed but haven't sent me your story and your recommendations, I'd really appreciate you dropping me a line.

And so it grows....





"Our story began about 10 years ago when we first moved to the rural lifestyle we now enjoy.

We started out trying to find ways to raise our own food, to provide for ourselves and become more self reliant.

We are a family of four, myself (the husband), my wife, and our two beautiful daughters ages 8 and 6. We are a Christian family that believes in the bible as the wholly, complete, inerrant, inspired, word of God. Jesus Christ is our Saviour from a life of sin and death. We believe in His death, burial, and resurrection-God's sacrifice once, forever.



We love the country life, and our girls refer to themselves as "country girls". We home school, teach them God's word from the bible and enjoy all that farm life has to teach.

We built our modest home on five acres in a "cove" of Cedar trees. We put solar panels on the roof to run some lights, started with a composting toilet but switched back to conventional methods. We even had a windmill to pump our water. That, too, we went conventional eventually. It's not that these thing wouldn't work, they did. We couldn't gather enough wind to keep the water tank full, and the toilet was set too high to work properly. In other words, we learned a lot during those beginning years.

During this time, we began reading a bunch and learning of old ways to farm. The ways prior to industrialised, corporate, agribusiness. The days when labor was provided by the farmer, not the machine. Staying small and providing food fit to eat, for us and, maybe, our community.

Our little farm began to grow, slowly, over the years, and continues to grow. We adhere to the principle of "Organic Growth", or growing from within, not with large debt or other outside influences. Slow it is, then, but that is OK. We have found several small ways to provide different "salaries" for ourselves. Of course, I still work a full time job, which is the major source of income.


We raise and sell "Pastured Poultry". This is a method of raising meat chickens on pasture, in their natural environment, without antibiotics or hormones of any kind. We were surprised at how much grass a chicken will eat! It is because of this that we began reading and studying grass fed meats and dairy products. To sum it up, grass is the key.


We are learning as we go, trying to raise healthy food for us and others. By no means do we have this thing figured out, but we're gaining on it.


We are looking forward to our first grass fed beef from our miniature Hereford bull calf.



We started raising worms for the garden and the compost they produce, with the possibility of sales to local fishermen.

We raise meat rabbits and sell them for pets.

We garden with raised beds made of concrete blocks (the only way to garden, in our opinion) because the ground, here, in southern Missouri is all rock and clay.

We have grown to the point, now, that we have several customers for our Pastured Poultry, free range eggs and fresh yogurt made from the family milk cow's milk.

Our ideas are many, but, we intend to stay small, serving our neighbors, and not add enterprises unless they complement one that already exists.

To learn even more about us and get an idea of where we are coming from read our blog at: www.cedarcovefarm.blogspot.com

Thanks for stopping by and let us know what you think. Or you may click the links and send us an e-mail. Enjoy."







N.B You may note that I label some posts Christian. This is not used in a prerogative sense, but simply to aid like minded people find each other more easily.





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A Vermont Family's Farm - Bosky Dell Farm (VT; 22 acres; Dairy, pigs, poultry, vegetables, honey)

I was put on to Bosky Dell Farm by Mary Barrosse Schwartz, of the Schwartz family whose farm it is. It's an inspirational blog and what I particularly like about it is the co-operative nature of what they are doing, which is very much how my family manages and produces our food here in the Auvergne.

(Only yesterday, for example, I was helping to finish a pigsty for 4 piglets that 5 five families are going to share, buying them in at 30kg and fattening to about 100kg on 'petit lait' and cereal from the dairy/cheese making farm owned by three of the families involved. I'm also going to be doing the milking one morning a week, in return for cheese and fresh milk.)

Bosky Dell Farm House

Mary was kind enough to write, and I'll let her do the talking:

"We decided as a family that even though we had our demanding day jobs, and even though food is plentiful in the local grocery stores, we’d grow our own food, mainly in response to higher prices for lower quality foods. When we tasted the honey from our own hive, we swore we never tasted honey as delicious and fine. Our pork was the best pork ever. Our milk, a creamy ambrosia, each glass a spiritual experience. Potatoes from our dirt tasted like potatoes my grandpa raised – carrots snappier and sweeter – and the corn could be eaten raw because it was so fresh and tender.

We have 22 acres of land behind our home, set in an upscale Vermont village. We treat our neighbors to the milk and eggs, meat and veggies we raise as a way of saying thank you for putting up with the lowing of a mother separated from her just weaned calf, or the smell of manure when we are moving the composting piles around.

We also work with a group of friends that we gradually seduced with home grown roasted chickens and many bottles of wine around our kitchen table to grow a large root cellar garden on another family’s land. We grow pork and chickens with the collective too, and buy produce in bulk from a supplier in the winter. It is a true co-op. We help each other in all ways that have to do with growing food.

We have miniature Irish Dexter cows, which we milk to drink and to make cheeses, and they are sometimes slaughtered for meat. We have laying hens, bee hives, and occasionally piglets running around. We make our own maple syrup by standing around outside in the freezing cold in late winter over a steaming pot of sweet maple sap. It is well worth tapping and hauling the sap, to taste that rich maple flavor.

We preserve much of our own food by canning, freezing and root cellaring. We even preserve the hides from the cows.

Our website discusses the recipes, shows the processes, and features our clan of teenagers and barnyard animals in photos of the garden, farm, and home. We’re learning to do much of what is going into our homestead as we move along – so we have our ups and downs, like all farmers. We share both. One friend said that one month this year was a daily saga akin to the tale of Job. I had forgotten that we had a tough month because you can’t dwell in the past when the cows need to be milked.

I hope people learn from what we learned and share.

I hope more people see and understand that if the Schwartzes in East Dorset, VT can do it, they certainly can raise their own good food too."









A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew

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