GETTING LETTUCE

The biggest difference between getting into an expensive SUV with expensive tires, expensive fuel and costly insurance (to say nothing of loan interest and depreciation) to spend an hour or so driving there and back through a smog of hazardous traffic salted with road rage to find a parking space in the vast lot of the megamall with the airplane-hangar supermarket where with money I earn at a job in an office I commute to daily I can purchase some expensive, inorganic, agribusiness-grown, Monsanto Roundup^®ped and irradiated lettuce picked 4 or more days ago by a city block of a machine on the other side of the continent and shipped 3 or more days ago in refrigerated containers filled with antiripening gases and antifungal whatevers via expensive train and expensive truck also using expensive fuel and operated 24/7 by sleepless guys day and night across the nation to get the lettuce near where I can buy it and so support the vast vegetable infrastructure by having some salad for lunch, and just going right now, on my own two legs, out into the sunny afternoon of my organic garden that I have nurtured with my own two hands and getting some lettuce whenever I want it, is, apart from the sheer simplicity, untampered flavor, freshness, beauty and natural satisfaction of it all (to say nothing of the non-toxicity), is the refreshing absence of the madness so deeply ingrained in the former approach.

COUPLE DOZEN THOUSAND MORE REASONS TO GROW YOUR OWN

Pesticide Residues in Food and Feed

Veterinary Drug Residues in Food

via: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyLI8UVdTzQ   

(5 min)

(Love the way they gave it a Latin name resonant with "nutritional expertise")

and it's international!

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FOOD INC.

(Entire documentary)
(Effectively removes any remnant wool from eyes)

＋


GM Soy in animal food - Greetings from Monsanto

Short and to the point.

via: reddit

WEEVIL JUICE

I do my gardening pest treatment in true scientific but fully organic fashion. I never use insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, anycides. If it's necessary, I just do with less produce, but that rarely happens to any extreme.

This year I'm growing a lot of green peppers, naively providing major party hangouts for a kind of weevily insect I've never seen before and can't find on the gardening sites, so I figured it's time for my all-purpose hot pepper spray, maybe not as strong or detergenty as the one that killed the impressively sudsy peach tree back when I first moved here.

So I started with two fresh hot peppers (I always grow the Japanese "hawk's talon" kind), mashed them up in hot water, filtered it, added more water and a bit of detergent in a spray bottle then spritzed the mixture over the partying weevils, who scattered like the ceiling sprinklers had just come on at CBGB. I checked again an hour later and they were all back at the party, chatting, flirting, even mating, so I ramped the juice up with two more peppers, sprayed the party venues again and the weevs made greater haste away this time, but when I went back well after lunch (scientific method) they were all back in place as flagrant as before, leaning on the green walls and chatting weevily.

So this time, for the last attempt of the day I added three more peppers - that juice was getting pretty pink by now (had to be extra careful how I handled the incendiary mixture) and sprayed it over the numerous parties: the weevs stopped whatever they were doing and leaped for their lives; some dove for the ground, some flew away to unhellsome places. I stopped whatever I was doing too, because the breeze turned and I began to breathe the nanovapors.

No idea yet how all this will affect the pepper flowers or budding fruits, cough, cough, but it's all for science and I know those weevs were up to no good, they don't just hang around for the good of the peppers. Hack, hack. If they're back at it tomorrow (the sound of weevil laughter is a cutting thing), my thoughts will likely begin to drift toward organochlorine compounds, though I will never follow...

I'll just ramp the juice again, not breathe when I spray, and enjoy my share of the party leftovers.

PERMACULTURE FORUMS

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF DISCERNMENT

Choice is not a big deal in traditional Japan and never has been, especially out here in the countryside, where vanilla ice cream is exciting and everybody drives a white pickup truck. I could go on, but then I'd never finish, so I'll stop here if you don't mind, and take a quick right to get to my point.

Every couple of months we ship to Kasumi and Family up north a big bag of the organic brown rice we buy unpolished from Mr. S., an elderly rice farmer who lives across the Lake. We then take it to the community rice polisher down in the village, dump in the rice, use the graduated knob to fine tune the settings for optimal brownricedness, put in the coins (yes it's a rice-polishing vending machine!), then let it run and out comes rice polished just the way we like it. We ship the appropriate portion of the result to Kasumi; the grandies love that fresh natural country rice.

A side benefit of this is that now and then we get to meet various neighborhood folks down there, which can be interesting, plus we can store more rice at home, and for a longer time, because it has the hull still on until we polish it in the village, plus we get the bran and other husky stuff, that's emptied into a large barrel beside the polishing machine. I take the bran home and use it on the garden; it can also be used for making pickles, skin scrubs etc. (A mesh scrub-bag of organic rice bran in the bathtub!) How I dream on...

On Wednesday, a rainy season day, we headed down to the village with a 30kg  bag of rice to polish and send to Kasumi and family, went up to the old rice polisher and found that it was a new rice polisher. Looked real slick. Big, fancy buttons. Maybe even digital. Never had digital rice, no doubt it's fast and convenient. But on closer inspection we found that the concept of fine tuning was no longer appreciated, had been deemed an outdated thing of the past, and was not available. Gone was the big old friendly knob that had enabled infinite polishing choices. In its place were two buttons: 70% polished or Complete Obliteration of Any Indication that This Is Rice. For a higher price, too. Plus in its obsessive efficiency it sucked all polishings into a black hole; no bran was returned. This would not stand. Plus, we'd paid for that bran. (I suspect we may be the only ones around here making that argument.) We put the rice back in the car and headed north along the Lake to find another village rice polisher in an even more rural place where a spectrum of choice might still prevail, a last bastion of preference.

We went on quite a while through the downpour till we came to the egg cooperative, where they have a rice polisher in a shed out front. It was new, too, as it turned out, but offered three choices: 50%, 70% and Complete Obliteration etc. (What are these tiny translucent granules?) We like our rice around 35% polished, so there was no game in town for us, and it was now raining extra hard, which let me tell you makes it difficult to find new rice polishers tucked away up little village side streets, a demanding task at the best of times. So we put in our rice, put in our money, selected 50% and went for it, vowing to find an older, more liberal machine if there was one still around within a reasonable distance, though it probably wouldn't be there long if no one out here was opting for brown rice choices. Who's gonna support that? This sleeker, quieter, faster and more expensive rice polishing machine took our bran, too, and could not be insulted.

It seems that no one wants to choose the degree of polishing anymore, that there is no demand for the full-spectrum brownricedness, that in the new world we are all becoming, deep choice is no longer efficient.

ALL NATURAL

If you look at it like the back of a cereal box, the countryside is all natural, contains no trans fat, filler, artificial color, flavor or preservatives, is high in fiber and fully organic. A shocking difference compared to the urban cereal box.

In fact we don't really use those concepts out here; the words sound kind of funny in these surrounds, as we idle here in the shade of a thousand-year-old tree on the edge of a mountain glade listening to the stream's part of the conversation and thinking: high fiber? Bizarre. Trans fat-- what for? Triglycerides? Get out.

Even the house we live in is organic and high fiber, comprising mostly wood, and low in saturated fats. The only sugar we have is in the strawberries from the garden, the cherries, persimmons, apples, tangerines, wild grapes, raspberries and blueberries (all made with real fruit, btw, with no artificial colors or flavors; hard to believe in this day and age). It's a long list, all the stuff that grows out here (you just pick them off the plants), as compared to urbanity, which has no such list, but where cliffsides of cans, bottles, boxes and bags say the contents are made using, for example, "real fruit," which logically must mean something other than real fruit, since that would be called Fruit. Is there another kind? How did we get here? If this keeps up, we won't even be able to trust Wall Street.

Basically there's no need for those bizarre concepts out here, because out here we get the real deal. So no, there's no trans fat in the mountain stream, and yes the forest is high in fiber, the wild animals are unsalted, the fish are fully organic (unlike some city streams), there's no fast life here necessitating dietary and fiber info on the backs of boxes and sides of cans, no fast food (whatdidIjusteat?), none of the autoimposed nutritional dangers so common in the unfortunately less countrified regions where fiber is rare, concrete is big, asphalt is a fave and "totally organic" - whatever that might mean in those regions - if you can afford it, you have to buy it in a special supermarket, for a Price, whereas it's pretty much free out in the country and right at hand, since this is where it actually grows-- in fact those free sansai are just coming up now, the fukinoto, the taranome, the warabi, the koshiabura, all salt-free by the way, with zero trans fat, high in fiber, 100% organic and money free too...

Now if you'll excuse us while we take a slow walk around the mountainside among the sunbeams and harvest some of those natural goodies, then sit under the old tree by the stream and savor our wealth, join the big conversation...

WWOOF

World Wide Opportunities on OrganicFarms

ORGANIC CHILDREN

The erudite, attractive and tasteful readers of PLM are well aware by now of how much I appreciate my naturally grown produce that the monkeys don't get. Those same perceptive readers also agree with my conviction that the only kind of food to feed oneself, let alone one's children and grandchildren - unto seven generations at least - is the unpoisoned kind. If that's fully possible anymore...

Such readers also likely have, like myself, recently encountered a flurry of articles in the mainstream media attacking organic foods and their proponents. As an antidote to salaried opinion (as Walter Cronkite said "In all my years as a news commentator I was never once able to tell the truth, about anything."), here's a valuable perspective on that ongoing concerted attack against honesty and integrity in the food that will become you and your descendants.

"You may have noticed an uptick this year in news reporting that organic food isn’t really better for you, opinion pieces by conventional farmers saying that they are tired of being demonized by 'agri-intellectuals', and guilt-inducing ads by Monsanto [link mine; RB] in highbrow publications like the New Yorker touting the company’s ability to feed the world through technology.

Though all of this could be disturbing to those of us committed to sustainable agriculture and food that is fair to eaters, animals, workers and farmers, I’m choosing to see this as a good sign. I think it means we might be winning." Full article

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In the same artery:
Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

GARDENS TELL THE TRUTH

Way back when I first started looking more closely at food and nutrition, investigating vegetarianism and discovering terms like 'organic,' I read and heard that organic food was more nutritious and safer to eat than agrobiz produce.

Some years later in Kyoto I met an agricultural engineer who was here from the US lecturing, who assured me profoundly that crops grown organically were nutritionally indistinguishable from non-organic. He was earnest and forthright, and he was an expert, being friendly. I didn't see how I could disbelieve him.

Still, I always bought organic when I could, since that's mere money in exchange for no exposure to pesticides/herbicides etc. I just can't accept that we know more than the big system and our bodies do, that we can outfox Mama Nature. To say nothing of the possibility of big expenditures for medical bills after years of eating Roundup et al., manifesting in illness can never be directly linked to that tomato you ate 20 years ago.

Then this morning, now that the subject of organic food prices is becoming a consideration on the verge of the greatest economic depression ever, I saw this:

"The $4.99 tomatoes are a good illustration.

That's how much one pound of organic tomatoes cost during a recent visit to a supermarket near Michelle Jones' Atlanta home. The founder of the consumer site BetterBudgeting.com said 'there's no way' she would pay such a price. Instead, she searched the produce section and eventually found a non-organic variety that cost $1.69 per pound....

From a nutritional standpoint, organic vegetables have no measurable differences than (sic) those grown with conventional methods, according to Bethany Thayer, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association."

--Family Finance: Grocery spending a moving target

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Right after that I synchronicitously came across this:

"Organic Foods – a Far More Nutritious Choice

The simplest way back toward health is to focus on whole, organic foods, grown or raised as nature intended. Meaning, it’s grown using sustainable farming practices, and without the use of chemical additives, pesticides and fertilizers.

Food grown in healthier soil, with natural fertilizers and no chemicals, simply has to be more nutritious. It is common knowledge -- though knowledge that is greatly suppressed in the United States.

A 2003 study in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry, for example, found that organic foods are better for fighting cancer. And in 2005, scientists found that, compared to rats that ate conventional diets, organically fed rats experienced various health benefits. Rats that ate organic or minimally fertilized diets had:

• Improved immune system status
• Better sleeping habits
• Less weight and were slimmer than rats fed other diets
• Higher vitamin E content in their blood (for organically fed rats)

But perhaps one of the best studies out there on the benefits of organic versus conventionally-grown foods is the 2007 QualityLowInputFood Project -- a $25-million study into organic food -- the largest of its kind to date.

The researchers grew fruit and vegetables, and raised cattle, on adjacent organic and non-organic sites, and discovered that:

• Organic fruit and vegetables contain up to 40 percent more antioxidants
• Organic produce had higher levels of beneficial minerals like iron and zinc
• Milk from organic herds contained up to 90 percent more antioxidants

The results were so impressive they stated that eating organic foods can even help to increase the nutrient intake of people who don’t eat the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day."

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My garden tells me the truth. Use your compost, grow your own. Cheaper than agrobiz cheap, and gives you natural exercise. Tastes better, anyway. Like those just-dug-up organic potatoes in that quiche I had for lunch today.

10 Reasons to Consider Growing Organic Vegetables in your Backyard

ORGANIC HEIRLOOM SEEDS

In a can. At Everlasting Seeds

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And then there's Fedco Seeds...
(Check out the trees,
link found via this great article)

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And on the Darth end of the spectrum...

WWOOF JAPAN

THE BARON PREFERS ORGANIC

In a post a couple of days ago concerning the fact that I had been robbed blind in the night by a wild ruminant with major horn action, aka The Baron, I was amazed that the stag had eaten all my tomato leaves, when it had been my impression that nothing ate tomato leaves, excepting perhaps a species or two of seriously misguided insects who didn't yet realize what they were eating, or were simply insane.

Then this morning I read a headline that led to an article saying that a ten-year study - already being attacked by other scientists (perhaps Monsanto-funded, judging by my scientific snide index) - alleging that organic tomatoes have much more of certain important flavonoids, specifically quercetin and kaempferol, names that do not as yet rock the world.

To the weight of that study can now be added the expert opinion of The Baron, creature of great repute and renowned connoisseur of vegetation, who relished every single leaf on my tomato plants, because of course my tomatoes are – I mean were - 100% organic.

I would have enjoyed the tomatoes, too, but royalty takes precedence in certain areas.

DIAMOND SEED

Early this morning Echo and I went down to the village rice polisher to polish 30kg of organic rice from Moriyama to send to Kasumi (Kaya and M&M go through rice like sumo wrestlers). When we got there a rice farmer was just opening the shed and was about to polish some of his own rice, but graciously allowed us to go first. As we were chatting, another farmer came to polish his rice, then another. Even at that hour the rice polisher was action central, all the rice having just been harvested.

At any rate, we finally got started, pouring the rice into the hopper, setting the polisher for pretty fairly darkly brown rice, making sure to catch the bran for use on the garden. As we and the farmers then stood there tweaking the polisher and waiting, Echo happened to mention that we were polishing completely organic rice from Moriyama, which was sort of like bringing out a handful of Hope diamonds at a gem convention.

All the farmers, multi-generation rice experts to a man, clustered up to the machine to eye the rice, grab a handful of grains from the hopper and take it out into the sun, where, under the farmer’s light they shifted and turned the grains in their brown farmerhands, eying the kernels as if they were holding handfuls of diamondseed, talking to and among themselves, looking for something, then saying to us that if this is organic, where are the signs of insects? There are always signs of insects with organic rice, but there are no signs of insects in this rice, are you sure it's organic? They showed us handfuls of their own rice, as if we too were experts.

We assured them that the grower had a special technique involving some natural material he had developed that bugs didn’t like, and avowed it to be 100% organic; the farmers collectively agreed that it must be true then, since no rice farmer would ever lie about his rice, a rice farmer would have too much integrity to do such a thing, it’s unthinkable, how much do you pay for it and when Echo told them they all fainted slightly, the price being about double what they get for their non-organic rice, and I’m sure it got them thinking further along positive lines...

But seeing that collective trust for a nameless stranger who wasn’t even present was every bit as nourishing as the brown rice will be...