I begin to doubt myself

or perhaps, I need a vacation.

I love the Pacific Northwest. I love it here. I love the prevailing political sentiments, I love the public-oriented government entities, I love big, clear street signs and I love ferries. I love the Mountain. I love the Forests. I love that you can see four volcanoes at once on a clear day. I like being able to walk to the Sea and drive to a glacier on the same day (not that I ever do). I love the copious availability of free, low-cost and yes, the expensive, educational opportunities for our children. I love the masses of like-minded people and that one can source just about anything needed within a hundred mile radius.

The weather itself doesn't even bother me most of the year. Summer, naturally, is an odyssey. By the time Autumn rolls around, I have so much work built up from our summer activities and purchases that I don't have time to lament the passing of Summer's bloom and warmth. The darker months surrounding the Solstice don't even phase me. I need the rest after harvest season, and I enjoy the quiet. I find the noise and bustle of the children jarring to my sensibilities during this period, but I keep them busy enough with organized activities outside the house that it levels out.

But I hate--and I do mean HATE--the months from the end of January into the beginning of May. That's a long time to be disenchanted with your natural world. Winter doesn't really show here, in my experience, until this time. Even this year, when Spring appears to be sneaking up on us early, I refuse to fall for it as I did last year. Frigid weather is coming back this week, which no one seemed to believe would happen, and I do have some glimmer of satisfaction that this year, at least, I didn't install a garden ridiculously early just to watch it die.

What I hate most about it though, is not the waiting for the signals to GO! PLANT! YAY! It is my body's response to the intermittent cloudiness. My spirit is refreshed from a long winter's rest and now I find myself wanting to channel energy into project after project. I plan them well, I organize my supplies, and then.... nothing. I sit like a lump as if petrified by the fall of a shadow. When the sun is shining at this time of year, I zip around like I have no limits. I see nothing but the possibilities in my minds eye. I do not see dormant trees and rotting leaves, I can almost physically perceive the outlines of things I want to build, plant or paint. As soon as the light fades, I droop like a morning glory and quite literally forget what I planned to do. I have been working for weeks and today I sit here as if stupefied.

I believe that being in touch with the natural world is a good and necessary way to live, but this is ridiculous. For P-daddy, it is even worse. He doesn't connect with and during the solstice months the way that I do, and he starts suffering in October. Given that I only know the man because he deliberately chose Southern latitudes for the abundance of light, I begin to feel.... cruel.

Sometimes I wonder, despite my love for this place and the community we've grown here, if we wouldn't be better off choosing somewhere more sunny.

I remember the old days....sourcing farm vegetables

One of the peculiarities about moving to Gig Harbor when we did is the small pleasure of having chosen the area before it really grew up. We were here before the new toll bridge that made the commute accessible again for the first time in decades; before the Costco; before the YMCA. When we moved here we were still driving 25 miles-- each way-- to get our farm fresh produce from our beloved CSA on Puyallup's River Road. While I remain a huge fan of of Farmer Terry and her wonderful programs, the cold reality of rising fuel costs made an hour round-trip jaunt and a bridge toll just too much. Our own successful garden and the advent of the new Key Peninsula Farmer's Market also contributed so much food it just made sense to stay local. Our favorite local farmers are Greg and Maureen at Gentle Giant Meadows Ranch. They are friendly, hands on and very reasonable. Their working farm has provided us with berries, plums, apples and eggs. They also provide the community with CSAs of beef and lamb as well as whole chickens


A newer, local CSA that just formed last year is Peace of the Earth Farm. Their subscriptions are reasonable and they've had a year now to get up and running. I plan to go visit them very soon.

Why backyard chickens?

This is a nice post on trying to acclimate your neighbors to your backyard flock. We've been quite fortunate so far and haven't had to justify anything but I love the tone of this non-threatening, non-obnoxious flyer.

from http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2010/02/backyard-chicken-pr.html

Why Backyard Chickens?

The eggs.
Beautiful, best-tasting, and most nutritious ever. They are higher in omega-3s and lower in cholesterol than commercially produced eggs.

Keeping a few hens reduces the demand for factory-farmed eggs which are produced under highly undesirable conditions. Plus, as far as “eating local” is concerned, the backyard is about as local as it gets.

Compost magic.
Chickens consume kitchen waste, weeds, and lawn clippings, reducing stress on landfills and turning household compost into a wonderfully balanced super-fertile soil. Perfect for the best
gardening conditions imaginable--without chemical fertilizers.

Sustainability.
It may be a drop in the bucket, but shopping for eggs in the backyard and enhancing
the production of a kitchen garden is a tangible step many people can take to reduce reliance on the corporate machinery that has taken a bite out of our independence.

You Have Chickens in Your Backyard? I wonder . . .

Is it going to be dirty and/or smelly?
A well-maintained chicken set-up is a very low or no-odor environment. Much less so than cats and dogs.

Am I going to get a wake-up call at dawn every morning?
Few backyard chicken owners keep roosters. Roosters are not necessary for egg production, just for egg fertilization. Some hens intermittently set up an “egg-laying cackle” in late morning to early afternoon, but it isn’t the penetrating crow of a rooster. Just a “bawk!, I laid an egg, I laid an egg” announcement. Hens are very quiet most of the time, particularly during the early morning hours and well before and after sunset.

If only all the neighborhood dogs, leaf-blowers and teenagers would be as considerate!

Aaahh! Bird flu!!
Bird flu has never been found in domestic flocks in the US. In fact, experts consider an increase in home egg production to be an answer to the threat of diseases such as avian influenza which are aggravated by overcrowded poultry factory conditions.

It it even legal?
Yes, municipal laws in our county permit backyard fowl.

Can I have some eggs? Can I bring my children to see your chickens?
Yes! We love to share! And we love introducing our flock to the people who appreciate them the most-- kids! Chickens are a great teaching tool and there’s nothing like the experience of gathering a warm egg from a nest.

Copyright Little House in the Suburbs (www.littlehouseinthesuburbs.com) 2010

Thanks Ladies!

We moved!

Now, when my family and I head down to the beach, we're striding the banks of the Salish Sea.


http://myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/~stefan/SalishSea.htm

New in our world

Some new things to ring out 2009

Mortgage Satisfaction

8 laying French Hens (pun brought you compliments of N-man)

and a fuzzy 9 week old Labradoodle, King Boo Boo Bear

The White House Garden

http://www.whitehouse.gov/video/Inside-the-White-House-The-Garden/

I was such a happy camper when Michelle Obama put this in. As my own garden is coming to an Autumn Pause, I went looking to see how the White House garden was doing. According to Time magazine this month, the WHG has produced 250 pounds of food this summer.

This video jazzes me in so many ways--- the ties to the Victory Gardens I tried to model this year; the ties to Jefferson in Virginia; the obvious reasons we should be gardening and eating with our family.

It's something peaceful and optimistic to consider while everything else political rages on about us.

So love the cooperative housing thang

Medium Thing Really Loves Chicks

N-man really has a lot of affection for the chicks. I hope his eagerness to care for them continues after they've lost their down and their sweet little peeping voices. Given his behaviour regarding our friends' chickens, I suspect he will, and will continue down this path to become a Chicken Master. Even before we got the chicks, I took him to our friend's house so he could commune with their chickens. Her daughters are responsible for the care of their flock, so he has some good precedent in there.

After having met her flock, he pined for them. One of her children gets all moon-eyed over the chickens as well, so the two of them can be all chicken-loving together. He refers to this little girl as The Chicken Master, and she quite modestly goes about the business of showing him how to do everything from feeding and watering to gathering eggs. She's happy to instruct someone, it seems, who 'gets it."

Me, I don't get it. I just want eggs and some garden fertilizer. I do talk to them and hold them. They're cute! I just won't wub them. They know me pretty well, too, although I address myself as Big Thing. "It's ok, Big Thing will fix the water." They definitely recognize me as the Big Thing that brings the water and food. A few days ago, while I was doing dishes, I heard N-man come in to talk to the chicks.

"Hi! It's Medium Thing!"

This is the new improved brooder, which we went to after the Screeching Chick incident at the sleepover.

Gardening is Up

pictured: pak choi, five varietals of lettuce, celery (under cloches), acorn squash, vidalia onion, marigold, nasturtium, beet, tomatillo, spaghetti squash, spinach, fennel, black valentine bush beans

Here are some shots of the front gardens. My ailing camera went kaput on me, asking for more energy (shaw! who needs recharging?) so I really didn't get much taken today. Even people who know me well will see things they won't recognize. P-daddy and I have been very busy during these troubling months. Focusing on life and beauty helps us through.

Our Lady of the Spent Rhododendron

We took Food Not Lawns seriously and built a number of raised beds in the front yard. We're experimenting this year with square foot gardening. I have been pretty enthusiastic about it, doing everything Just Right. Shortly after I installed everything in the front, I began reading Gardening When It Counts, written by a PNW gardening guru who founded Territorial Seed Company and now resides in Tasmania. He leads his book with why bio-intensive gardening (SFG) is a Very Bad Idea in poor economic times. Le Sigh.

The fruit trees in among the garden boxes.
Foremost tree is from the Cherry Deer Incident.

I still have huge honking garden beds in the back, and I had already planned to row plant them anyway. It assuaged my anxiety as I read the book, making me feel like I wasn't totally off the mark. I haven't ready something so down-to-brass-tacks about horticulture since college. This is a garden writer who takes the reader seriously, which I certainly appreciated.


The Rose-Herb Garden remains a thorn (haha!) in my side. Reclaiming this huge, broad bed from the manicured rhododendron-in-beauty bark bed that was there before has been a monumental task. We haven't spent one month ignoring it since we moved here nearly four years ago, and we're still slogging it. This particular bed will have the biggest visual impact of anything we have done when we get it finished, but it's the worst kind of thankless work getting it there; it's the sort of task-set people who don't like to garden think about when they say "I don't like to garden." Fortunately, I do like to garden. To that fact, add that I also love herbs and roses AND I like a good challenge, and it's ~L~ versus the garden bed. Along with some (finally! finally!) earthworms, ~L~ may be winning at last.

Rose bordering the herb gardens

pictured: salad burnet, lemon thyme, culinary thyme, chives, oregano, chocolate mint



A few from the back:


We're trying to grow some tomatoes upside down this year. We have two topsy turvies, with a roma in each. In the background you can see the sunflower house and beyond that, the net we're planning to use to grow the snap peas we have started and waiting.


The sunflower house is all volunteer this year. The cherry-eating deer literally slaughtered our sunflower starts. (We have to start them because of the slugs there in the rock wall adjacent to the sunflower patch.)


The strawberry patch is perennial now. It needs some weeding attention, but otherwise, it pretty much does its own thing now.

So how does one "update" life this crazy?

Maybe not catastrophic (for us) anyway but crazy. A friend of mine just bulleted through, so I suppose I should too. In no particular order of chronology or importance:

I went blonde. Blonde. Like, really blonde and slightly reddish on the ends, as is the fashion, don't you know. Blonde, as in the first time since I was three years old that I was lighter than a muddled burgundy. I despise that it makes my skin light up-- I look so much younger, they say, and even with my behind still fat and my hair chopped short (to accommodate the perfectly expected damage from such a gigantic chemical step), I get a lot more attention. Go figure. It makes me look good. It does suit my coloring. The color worked very well and looks nice. I hate it. Ugh! I can't determine whether I despise the cut, or whether I am just so resistant to change that the stranger in the mirror makes me uncomfortable. I will leave it for now.

Twilight. Nearly everyone around me has caught the bug. I rented the movie and read her online tome, (what there is), Midnight Sun. I have to admit that it is engaging, but not one to suffer from spoilers, I read ahead and I can't buy into the whole dead-guy-still-makes-active-sperm thing. I do like her take on the Vampire as an animalian subspecies, not a soulless, dead-but-not entity. I have one friend in particular who should lay some bricks when she gets to book 3. I can't wait.

Our garden is growing. P-daddy and I have been working together nicely to shore up the homestead. He built fine, square foot gardening boxes in the front yard. We mixed fill soil from our own compost, store-bought vermiculite, sphagnum moss, and Tagro a friend of ours scooped and delivered to us for free. All told, our garden beds cost us around $72.00. I know we would have done this years ago had we known! We tied them off in grids together, and have recently put in all our starts and our things we are willing to start from seed. Typically, once there is the slightest outside activity, I abandon the computer, so this is what partially explains our absence. The other is that my camera is all funky, so even on days when I would normally have great, wordless blog entries to share, ah, shucks.

Just today, the kids started their own children's gardens. When he built our primary garden beds, P-daddy used our leftover Trex board from building the treehouse and gave each of the kids a 2 X 2 box of their own to fill as they see fit. G-girl and D-meister chose to put them in the front yard with ours, but N-man placed his in the back, close his original garden and adjacent to Presley's grave. He says this is how he will grow flowers for Presleydog. They will still have access to the side gardens, but we have to get P-daddy's yard waste* out of there.

The neighbors moved for real this time. It has really saddened me on a number of levels; we will miss the little girl terribly, we enjoyed having neighbors so close to us in age and family composition; and we would like it if they had left on a completely voluntary basis. Most of all, though, it causes me some discomfiture to benefit so greatly from their departure. They moved offshore, so they left an amazing amount of things behind, including big ticket items like a chest freezer, a 10 X 10 garden shed and a yakima roof box. They gave their swing set to a friend of ours, and they gave us all their lawn furniture, which is great for us because the winter decimated ours. The kids in particular are thrilled with the influx or yard and sports toys. P-daddy has spent the past three weekends helping them sort their last things and then rebuilding the shed over here*. It's been abject chaos, and I am working so hard to be mor egrateful than I feel guilty. My guilt makes little sense, even to me, because when we moved across country, we did the same thing. We gave away or sold things I miss to this day (like our freezer!), so it's nice for some of it to come back to our family.

Interrupting all of this was a month-long illness on my part; I finally caught the flu / pneumonia / bronchitis beast that took out half of Puget Sound. Thankfully, all our family was better when it took me down. I have never needed an inhaler in my life, and needing one, plus antibiotics, plus weeks of absolute stillness to heal this, was truly startling. The illness prevented me from doing a lot of my planned work for the garden (never got my grow lights hung or my cold frame built) and it made dealing with the suddeen windfall from next door very inconvenient, despite how welcome it was. I simply haven't been fit for anything, much less extra putting-away.

I am having issues with challenging kids, my own and my friends'. My children have been celebrating spring by being mouthy and willful, scrapping with their siblings, disputing my authority and ideas on a daily, if not hourly basis. That's hard enough to deal with from just the three of them, but the thought of adding friends has become so very untenable. With a few exceptions, most of the children I know right now are half-deaf and completely bonkers. Combine that with the extreme physicality I have noticed lately in all of them, and people are getting hurt. Being bullied by my schoolmates and abused my some family, I am very sensitive to getting "beaten up." I am not very tolerant of verbal sparring either, but I really have a very hard time drawing the line between acceptable rough-housing and its resulting misunderstandings and out-and-out bullying. I think because of my awareness of my own sensitivities, I err on the side of letting it go too far. I am fully sick of stick-fighting, whoop-screaming, rock-throwing**"fun". They're all getting hurt, actual bleeding, bruising, why-won't-you-stop-I-said-enough! hurt. I don't know how to handle it; I am not willing to do some of what I've read I should do (remove the offenders from your life-- how does one do that when ones' own child is a full participant?), and furthermore a lot of that advice doesn't apply to our lifestyle as homeschoolers. While it's not natural to get cooped up all day with 35 others of your same age and real estate, its also not natural to just be able to shove people to the curb when you feel like its just too hard, either. Community means being stuck with the same folks sometimes. The goal here is to work forward towards some form of maturity and you know, having FUN when we get together or need to babysit. I'm working on it. The other Moms are good, smart people and do see what I see, so it's all good. I am hoping it's just a rough Spring on the heels of a brutal winter.

**D-meister broke the window out of my van during one of these festivities of "fun." He had a compatriot in the rock-throwing glee, but lucky for everyone it was actually my kid who broke my window. Lucky him I actually DO think spanking is a bad idea. Witholding dessert? That is something I am perfectly comfortable dishing out, especially for 200.00. (get it? Hardy har.)

The economy, in a very direct way. My husband works for a state contractor doing pretty integrated work with the department of corrections. I can't elaborate more on that here, but I can say that both the contract (every 7 years) and the state budget were up in the air this year. Anyone who lives here knows that Washington state has a 9 billion dollar shortfall in it's budget for the forthcoming year. That's a LOT of cuts, a lot. Even if his company does win the contract (fairly likely) which was decided in secret last week, the state budget will have to be appropriate to fund the work. It's been a potentially disastrous, completely perfect storm of happenstance-- the real estate crash, the stock market decline, the state budget crisis, the unemployment rate, the contract renewal date-- that has all these factors working together to a climax to come this month. It's been wearing on us for six months now but I haven't wanted to write any of it out here. All our life savings is in this house, which of course has lost all of its equity from the last four years. If he loses his job, that's it. We start over, middle-aged with three kids and three degrees between us. No home of our own, no job.

So I do what I can, I focus on gratitude and on ways to mitigate the changes for the children, if the worst should come to pass. We have very basic goals-- keep the family together, try to stay in Washington (even better, in this house!) if we can. We will see. Again, that Dalai Llama quote: "If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry."

More on the farm bill

First, to preface this post and to respond to the individual whose comments were so egregious I had to delete them:

Personally, NO, I do not think most of the US food supply is safe. NO, I do not think the government has done a responsible job of managing what involvement it has had with food saftey and regulation. NO, I do not think big agribusiness is absolutely invested in the consumer's well-being. In that, I absolutely agree with the foul-mouthed lout who has bothered to virtually vandalise my blog--we need a big change in the way our food supply is managed, and only the federal government has the resources and the geographical scope to pull it off. It is because I think that way, however, that I want small, local farmers protected. It's why I want my garden protected. What I don't understand is why anyone who shares that perspective is just raring for the government to pass a bill with as many loopholes for abuse as the recent lead-based toy bill. I am not asking them not to pass it. To quote myself, I wrote " As it is written, this bill would be catastrophic to the American people. Provisions must be included to protect the organic farmer and the family gardener." and "Please restrict it to conventional farming, or vote it down." My interest here is not withholding something that could help us all; I have been calling for sustainable agriculture for years, and this could be a giant leap forward in that regard.

If you want to comment here, then by all means comment. I welcome a discussion on this because I am certainly amenable to learning everything I can about this. I will not, however, host cussing, accusations or more death threats. Anyone else who suggests I feed my child peanut butter will likely be getting a real time visit from the PoPo. It's very out in the open on this blog that my child has an anaphylactic food allergy to peanuts. For those of you who need me to write in small words, that means she could die from ingesting peanut of any kind, tainted or otherwise. Living like this for the past seven years, living with constant vigilance about food and where it is sourced, is WHY I am passionate about protecting organics and small farmers. How I get my food, where I get my food is an absolute, literal passion for us.

I want to protect my daughter. I want you to be able to protect your daughter. Unlike the ...person... who posted here today, I am not willing to let Big Brother be the sole director of how that food gets to my plate. That's all. The bill, as written, does more than streamline the governance of food safety. It allows for a single agency to approve what kind of fertilizer, what kind of seed, what kind of record-keeping each farmer uses. At first blush, that sounds fandamntastic-- if you've got a sustainable-minded individual going in. If you have an agency that is sensitive to the cost-load for the organic farmer. I didn't write what I did here in a knee jerk reaction. I have talked to organic farmers here in Washington, and corresponded with CSA farmers from my hometown in South Carolina. The ones I spoke with are very concerned. They have encouraged us to get this into a national discussion, which is what we did. Organic farmers, particularly those who have pursued tilth certification, really shouldn't have anything to worry about, that's true, because their standards typically exceed anything in corporate farming. But the bill doesn't include any such provisos. That's the concern.

Today I received an email forwarded by a local farmers market with a less apprehensive stance towards the law. They're just as much "my team" as the farmers I mention above, and I will post it in its entirety here:

From the Farmers Market Coalition Executive Director (For more information about the Farmers Market Coalition, visit their website: http://www.farmersmarketcoalition.org/ )

Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 2:20 PM
Subject: H.R. 875, Food Safety, & Farmers Markets: A Letter from FMC

Dear Fellow Farmers Market Advocate,

In the last few days, there has been much discussion and speculation
surrounding H.R. 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, which was
proposed by Representative Rosa DeLauro and 39 other co-sponsors and
currently under review by two house committees. The bill¹s intention is to
centralize most of the current food safety responsibilities of FDA and USDA
into one new agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
While the bill does not spell out any specific regulations with respect to
food safety, it establishes a new framework of oversight to prevent the
breakout of food-borne illnesses (like the recent cases involving bagged
spinach, peanuts, tainted meat, imported tomatoes, etc.).

Calls to Congresswoman DeLauro¹s office from me and several colleagues have
been met by assurances that she is an advocate for small family farms, and
that the bill¹s intent is to minimize (or eliminate) the impact on such
entities while addressing the challenges posed by a global food supply by
more closely regulating imported food. Based on what we know at this point,
farmers markets are not considered ³food establishments² under Section 3
(13), and would not be subject to inspection as such.

Food production facilities (including farms), may be subject to additional
recordkeeping via a written food safety plan which follow ³good practice
standards² under Section 206(2). There is no language in the bill that would
implement a national animal ID system, or mandate farm inspection. In fact,
the legislation specifies that technical assistance would be provide to
farmers and food establishments that fit the definition of a small business.

There are also no assurances that, given the current economic climate and
the inherent cost of establishing a new administration, this bill will even
survive in its current form or at all. To what degree there may be any
change to current standards (like GAPs), which are now voluntary for most
growers, would be up to the new agency, which is directed to consult with
USDA and state departments of agriculture before enacting any new farm
production and handling standards. FMC believes that any standards designed
to prevent contamination at the farm and market level, whether voluntary or
mandatory, must take into account the cost, time, and ability to implement.
As many realize, a one-size-fits-all policy would ultimately do a disservice
not only to small, biodiverse farms, but to the consumers who value
affordable access to safe, fresh, nutritious food directly from the farmer.

FMC recognizes the importance of food safety not only from a consumer health
perspective, but also to uphold the integrity of farmers markets and
viability of small farms everywhere. Families and individuals across the
country put their faith in the quality, safety, and freshness of farmers
markets every day, and that investment of faith cannot be taken for
granted. Proactive measures to prevent contamination at the farm and market
level are good business. FMC's web site has links to several resources
developed by various states with regard to food safety at farmers markets,
many of which include good recommendations for food storage, handling, and
sampling.

FMC is working to ensure that strategies to prevent contamination are
science-based, sensitive to scale of production, and friendly to farmers
markets and the farmers they depend on. Recently, the Coalition represented
farmers markets at a national Good Agricultural Practices summit to support
voluntary (rather than mandatory) implementation of the Guide to Minimize
Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, which is
presently undergoing review for updates. We will continue to stay involved
in issues surrounding food safety, and keep you informed of developments
that could impact farmers markets and their producers.

Sincerely,

Stacy Miller
Executive Director
Farmers Market Coalition
--------------------------------------------------


There's too much at stake here for any of us to adopt a blanket thumbs up or thumbs down approach to something this big. Again, I welcome the discussion, should that come to me, but I won't allow anything that calls for harm to me or my family, or insults or degrades me or the other commenters. I am a citizen of this country, and like it or not, this is part of the process. We're fortunate we have a voice, and I for one intend to use mine.

Congress voting on bills to outlaw organic farming

And raw milk, and fresh eggs and heritage seeds and farmers markets and roadside stands.... and oh, yeah, your backyard garden.

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message761823/pg1

http://www.treehuggersofamerica.org/Say_Goodbye_To_Farmers.php

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas (look for HR 875)


This isn't a tinfoil hat moment, folks. This is Monsanto again, trying to control you and your food supply. This I implore you : contact your representatives and senators. Tell them to Just Say No to Monsanto and it's attempts to stamp out the competition. It sounds ridiculous, because it is. This is a Big Brother-meets-Borg moment and your very civil liberties are at stake here. When planting a backyard garden can be considered an act of defiance, not of patriotism, then we have a problem.

Even Michelle Obama has begun an organic garden on the South lawn, which I think is a fantastic, encouraging thing for us all. In a time of economic despair and war, we NEED to be doing that, people! Even as she plants her starts, though, just a few miles away, 40 legislative sponsors are attempting to demand she use this kind of seed and that kind of fertilizer.

The intentions of the bill, the at least the people in congress who are trying to draft it, are most certainly honorable. But like the recent ripple effect from the lead-in-children's-products act, because the language is not specific enough, this law could put a lot of good people on the out and outs. In this instance, I am not worried about being an alarmist. I'd rather raise a ruckus now and have the legislators pay attention to what they are doing so they can revise it appropriately than pass this "schill," to use a word a deleted commenter decided to use for my blog post.


DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, READ THIS LEGISLATION FOR YOURSELF.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas (look for HR 875)


Pay special attention to

• Section 3 which is the definitions portion of the bill-read in it's entirety.
• section 103, 206 and 207- read in it's entirety.

Red flags (from Aaron)

• Legally binds state agriculture depts to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.
• Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn't actually use the word organic.
• Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but consuming it.
• Effects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game.
• Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal. There are no specifics which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.
• Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation. It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation. Who do you think they are going to side with?
• Section 206 defines what will be considered a food production facility and what will be enforced up all food production facilities. The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.
• Section 207 requires that the state's agriculture dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements. This takes away the states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.

Things you can do

1. Contact your members at 202-224-3121 and ask them to oppose HR 875 and S 425. While you are at it ask them if they personally have read the legislation and what their position is? If they have not read the legislation ask them to read it and politely let them know that just because other representitives are not reading the legislation and voting on it does not mean they can do the same.
2. Get in touch with local farmers and food producers by attending a local farmers market and asking them how business is.
3. Attend a local WAPF meeting, this is a good start to learning about what is going on in farming and local & state initiatives . The website is Local Chapters
4. Check out the Farmers Legal Defense Fund at Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund
5. Find out who sits on your states agriculture and farming committee and contact them with your concerns.
6. Continue to contact your elected officials and let them know your position on legislation and why.
7. Get active at the local and state levels, this is the quickest way to initiate change.

Dear Norm Dicks,
I am writing regarding HR 875.

As it is written, this bill would be catastrophic to the American people. Provisions must be included to protect the organic farmer and the family gardener. We cannot "outlaw" organic farming and the bill does not include adequate protections for those of us who DO protect the people and the environment with whom we coexist.

PLEASE say no to Monsanto and do not legislate away our rights. We have to be able to protect natural, organic gardening and adding on one-size-fits-all regulations will cause widespread harm. Please consider Monsanto's absolute interest in squelching its competition. Please consider the amazing rise of food allergies, chronic illness and autism, much of which can be accredited to frankenfoods.

Many of we the people have been following Obama's suggestion to provide for ourselves and to create local, interconnected networks. This would seriously hamper our efforts, and the future of the open-pollinated (natural, existing outside the tweaking of a laboratory) seed supply. It's dangerous and unconstitutional. Please restrict it to conventional farming, or vote it down.

And Chuck, no thanks on the peanut butter. We're allergic here.

Spring has Sprung (?)

It is officially the first day of spring. Read that???

SPRING

SPRING

SPRING

Happily, I have hundreds of seeds optimistically tucked away in homemade, optimum seed starting mix. They're loosely covered with saran wrap and located where it's warm. I look forward to hanging the lights in the garage so I can move them out there when they're ready. I look forward to putting out the frames for the square foot gardens we're using to fill the front lawn. I look forward to being able to work the soil in the big, back garden, that I do indeed plan to use again this year, much to my own surprise. The birds are going nutso in the backyard, and for all the world it sounds like spring.

But it's grey. It's raining. It's 48 degrees. The children are happily making kites and running them, outside, in between showers. The kids planted indoor terrariums a few weeks ago and we can happily look on those sprouts when we need a boost. We got the seeds started in time this year. Hopefully, we can keep them as happy, flourishing starts so that we can put them out and save a bazillion dollars on our Freedom Garden. Think Victory Garden, but no war effort.

So despite its grey and overcast beginning, despite my being on antibiotics for the first time in years, despite the errant economy, despite me forgetting to obtain tomato seeds; spring has come at last. The birds are partying and taking their fill at our feeders. And we are here, simmering beans on the stove and planting beans in our garden. Let's get a move on!

So it snowed after all

We didn't get the accumulation our friends in the Puyallup Valley enjoyed, but we sure did get some blow! My daughter tells me that it was snowing this morning when she woke up and my friend, a scant fifteen miles away down the bay, reports that it is currently snowing there as well. March in the PNW. Yay.

Yesterday, despite the weather, was enormously productive. I made gallons and gallons of soup, all of it organic and a good bit of it from our frozen garden stores. I read "vegetable" one too many times in my garden planning and that brought it on. What better go with head colds and snow outside than bowls of steaming soup? So we ate potato-leek and hearty vegetable, and were able to put away a lot of that for future, easy meals. The work we have been laying down is starting to come back to us. These weren't skimpy or desperate meals, but they both came from what we had put by. It felt good.

Lunch, as it happens, involved sprouts on sandwiches as well. My batch of sprouts this week was a bit ....large.... so I was happy the kids were enjoying eating them!

Earthbound Farms Free Lettuce Seeds

http://www.ebfarm.com/AboutUs/GrowYourOwnOrganicSalad/

In celebration of Earthbound Farm’s 25th anniversary, we’re giving away free organic heirloom lettuce seeds!

Getting your hands into the soil, whether it’s a sunny garden acre or a few containers on your window sill, can be an enjoyable pastime and great fun to share with kids.

Twenty-five years ago, Earthbound Farm started in a backyard garden in Carmel Valley, California, where our founders, Drew and Myra Goodman — a couple of New York City transplants — wanted to grow their own fresh, healthy food. (Read the whole story.) More than raspberries and baby heirloom lettuces flourished in the warm valley sun; what took root was an unshakeable commitment to organic food and farming.

With these free seeds, we want to share the excitement our founders felt when they planted and nurtured their first crops. Tend your little garden carefully and you’ll harvest your own beautiful, delicious heirloom lettuces, just like our founders did back in the early days.

Brittle

Spring is beginning to show itself in the PNW. The trees are budding in the far away sky, and pollen now dusts our cars each morning like facepowder from the hands of a toddler. Writing has taken a back seat to teaching my six year old to read, planning our garden efforts and clearing out, clearing out, clearing out. I feel like we're forever purging.


The economy has not directly hit our interests, but we do have it looming over us. Until April, I will be wondering in the darker recesses of my mind whether this garden is even something we should be concerning ourselves with. One of my favorite garden trinkets, though, is a garden plaque which references the inherent optimism in planting a garden. So I will plant the garden and expect to harvest the fruits of our labours in one fashion or another. The Dalai Lama says "If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry." This I am taking to heart and consider it every day.

So while I mean what I say about worry, and while I have in most ways kept a pleasant outlook for the sake of my health and my children's daily life, I still find myself depleted. It takes a lot of energy to keep the sadness and despair at bay. I look around at the state of things locally, where every day I see a new shell where a business had recently thrived; where I read of homeschoolers in common groups putting their children in school so the mothers can take minimum wage jobs so the family can keep the lights on; where people I personally know are losing their home and lying to the kids about why they are moving, in yet another parental attempt to preserve something of a happy childhood for them; it all presses in and makes maintaining a status quo work.

I am not depressed or overtly anxious, but I remain contemplative and far more serious than I would otherwise like to be, with a contrasting and overriding sense of complete gratitude for what we do have, and the options that stretch before us come what may. There has been plenty for me to write about, to share, but I have this sense of survivor's guilt, as if to share it all in my typical blithe revelry would be disrespectful to the many who are hurting so much.

So there it is. The birds are singing, the days are lengthening and I will plug along with a spirit of work, to drive away the idleness of hands that might otherwise make a painful spirit.

And from someone as "radical" as Garrison Keillor....

Palin's future, according to Garrison Keillor

GARRISON KEILLOR
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus. In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her. I know because I'm related to some of them.

Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it. Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay -- uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori.

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for forty grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

These are dark days, my friends.

Interminably boring

I have been following politics.... the economy.... so I have not been really writing here. I don't want to revisit this period when it is over so I will decline to even bother with it. The campaign is nasty, full of lies and posturing. People want Obama to bring his own "bam" in retaliation to the smoke and mirrors emanating from the McCain camp, but I am wanting candidates who can focus on what we (as a country) need. I don't have patience for anything else. Flash and vim, leave it home please. Tell me how you're going to fix it. Fix it.

I have been studying the great depression-- the causes are identical to what is happening now-- but I have been focusing on what they did to survive it, get past it, on individual family bases. I am trying to identify whether my family will just struggle, or will be Hooverville candidates. So yes, I am not writing much about that. While these things occupy my mind, my husband and I are focusing on making the children's world stay the same. The children- who are studying phonics and Egyptians and geography. Who climb rock walls, swim laps and paint pictures of giant farting dinosaurs.

How grateful am I that we practice voluntary simplicity? That we refuse to buy new cars because ours are "old?" It may not be voluntary after a while, and I am grateful we were already looking at sustainability out of principle. In many ways, that makes us prepared ahead of the curve.

We love our kids, just like everyone else. Make it. Make it. That's all it is lately with me. Make it.

One of those easy to report weeks

It's "back to school" for us and it's been a fun week. I can't say we went out of our way to do anything differently; we just pay different attention to our lives, so that we can remember to report it. We attended swim classes, went rock-wall climbing and worked on some story writing. We had a tie dye party and finished up the structural work on the treehouse. When we finish the week up, we'll have had guests five out of seven days. It's been busy.

This day in particular was funny because it was the middle boys leading the charge on a full-out project. It's days like this that make being an "eclectic homeschooler" really enjoyable. I knew they were picking berries. That's standard fare around here. I had no idea, initially, to what task they had set themselves.




The boys picked copious amounts of blackberries, huckleberries and strawberries. As evidenced by what they did with them, they've been paying attention to all the canning we've been doing. They even set aside a smaller bowl of berry mash and let the three year olds eat that, so the big boys could continue working unmolested.

One of my berries was THIS BIG!

Slow and controlled!

Almost done!

DEElicious!

Mr. Man also lost his second tooth. Sniff sniff. He was more interested in showing that off than displaying his handiwork.

When Niki came home to her children, she asked her son,
"How did you get berries in your hair?"

Bags for Fun

I would love to make this happen here. I can totally see some local parks really stepping up for this.

In a terrific promotion we can only hope will lead to more creative thinking, Rye Playland in Westchester, NY recently held a promotion where every child that turned in 100 plastic bags for recycling received free admission to the park that day.

All told, the kids put together some 39,995 plastic bags as they worked their way through the turnstiles in search of a good time at one of the most historic amusement parks in the country.

And while we recently highlighted a high school student who recently came up with a way to make plastic bags decompose in just three months time, the truth is that simple actions like this not only go a long way towards cleaning up the local environment but help educate kids, their parents and the public about what a positive contribution they can make by limiting the use of plastic bags.

So hats off to the folks who run Rye Playland, perhaps those at Six Flags will take the hint and come up with something similar?

I would love to head this up. Who would be the most likely to be receptive to this?

Pacific Science Center is my first, immediate thought. One of the zoos, perhaps-- especially a place like Northwest Trek? Or would something like this catch the eye of a in-need-of-good-PR venue like the EMP or Wild Waves?