1) Radical Food Storage
2) Reader Feedback on the Contract Chicken Article
3) Reader Feedback on Radical Money Management
4) Reader Feedback on Farmer's Markets
5) News Bits
a) Petroleum Supply Gets Tighter
b) 2-4-D Linked to Lymphoma
6) Troubles Peeling Hardboiled Eggs? Chickens in the Garden?
Design the Perfect Barn...
1) Radical Food Storage: A Year with No Summer?
Consider how small we are in the context of violent forces of nature. "The year without a summer" happened in 1816. That summer had the shortest growing season recorded in the northern hemisphere. The cause of the year with no summer was the eruption of an Indonesian volcano named Tambora on Sunday, April 10, 1815. Before its explosive eruption, Tambura was 13,000 feet tall and there was a thriving trade center at its base. After the eruption, Tambora was only 9,000 feet tall and there was no human alive on the island. The eruption vaporized the top 4,000 feet of the volcano, ten cubic kilometers of rock, and cast that mass in column 30 miles high into the upper atmosphere. It left a crater five miles wide and three-quarters of a mile deep, sides 4,000 feet high, the deepest volcanic crater in the world. The eruption of Tambora expended one-hundred times more energy than the explosion of Krakatoa, another famous Indonesian volcano.
Several volcanos around the world that may erupt in the style that throws much particulate matter into the upper atmosphere are showing signs of future eruption. Mt. Rainier is overdue for a blow. Mt. St. Helens is showing some preliminary signs of a coming new eruption. And, of course, there is the Yellowstone caldera. Located under Yellowstone National Park, it is the largest volcano on the planet, a phenomenon so extraordinary on the volcanic scale that it is given its own category: "super-volcano." Yellowstone also shows signs of an impending eruption, although on the geological time scale of such events, this could happen in five years, fifty, or five hundred. All of these volcanoes have the potential to erupt in a manner that spews huge quantities of ash into the air, some more than others.
Tambora's explosion thrust 180 times more ash into the atmosphere than Mt. St. Helens did. Yet when Mt. St. Helens spewed its clouds of ash into the air, it was a disaster in my life. This ash consisted of microscopic slivers of glass--very unhealthy stuff to breathe. A curtain of this ash eclipsed the sun and gradually wafted down to earth wherever the upper atmospheric winds took the cloud of it. My family and I were trapped in that cloud. I frantically tried to seal off windows and doors. That helped some, but only some. I told the family to breathe through a damp washrag. That was a hard discipline for younger folks to maintain, and it was impossible to keep the cloth over the face of my two youngest children, a month-old baby daughter, Esther, and a two-year-old son, Jacob.
Mt. St. Helens had a preliminary eruption two months earlier, on March 20, but we didn't pay any attention. It was 500 miles away. All that summer after the eruption, I battled my children to keep them in the house where I could keep the ash under control by frequent wiping of surfaces with a damp rag. But sometimes they slipped away from me into the wonder world of front yard covered with a half-inch deep layer of crystalline stuff that shimmered in the sun and leaped up into a knee-level choking cloud at the slightest stirring of wind, or footfall.
Baby Esther gradually developed a chronic cough. She would cough a half-hour when she woke up in the morning, another half-hour or so when she woke up from her afternoon nap, and another half-hour near bedtime. Then Jacob began to cough also, and then his six-year-old sister, Sara. I was frantic. Eventually, their father and I worked out a plan to move out of the ash zone to Arizona. The exceptionally dry summer right after the eruption was followed by an extraordinarily rainy and chilly year. We lived in Arizona for two years, where the children gradually stopped coughing. By the time we returned to northern Idaho, the rain had dispersed the ash layer into the soil and it was no longer a problem.
But ash from other volcanoes has been a bigger problem. The ash from Tambora's eruption was so dense that it blocked enough sunshine to cause a cooling that lasted several years. The worst year was 1816 when the average world temperature was two degrees Fahrenheit less than normal. In some places, such as the Swiss Alps, the cooling was ten degrees below normal, the coldest summer in 500 years. Grapes did not ripen. Even potatoes could not be harvested. In the United States, it snowed in June. Because crops could not be harvested livestock and then people starved. Farmers went broke and lost their farms. Around the world, hundreds of thousands starved or died of disease that ravaged malnourished bodies.
There’Äôs geological evidence of even more massive eruptions in the past. Two million years ago, eruptions in what is now Yellowstone Park expelled as much as 30 times what Tambura did. The ash from previous eruptions of the Yellowstone supervolcano heaped as much as seven feet of ash in midwestern areas where prevailing winds carried it to. Such a large explosion would cause a "nuclear winter"-- a very cold year, or series of years, without a summer.
It's an argument to do store food, warm winter clothing, sleeping bags, and a small wood-burner, even if you live in a warm climate. If you live in a high-risk zone, keep the means to make a quick migration to a secure place at hand. Make these sensible preparations, and then relax and leave the rest in God's hands.
http://www.generalacademic.com/tambora/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
2) Reader Feedback on the Contract Chicken Article
Please unsubscribe me. I do allow any e-mail with profanity. I am very disappointed in your e-mails.
Answer: You're off the list.
Hey, Carla,
Is there any way to figure out which chicken company supplies our local stores? In these parts, Albertson's is called "Jewel/Osco" and we don't buy food there anyway, preferring a locally owned grocery. Are the suppliers listed online somewhere?
Thanks for the update. This is really horrible. Anyone to whom we should write to protest? (Besides Albertson's, of course.)
Best wishes and God's blessings,
Ivy
What an eyeopener! Thank you for sharing this vital information.
Paula
Wow! What a shocking article. Makes you wonder how they can get away with what they do. So sorry for that poor man's family. Poor chickens, also. Makes you scared
to give commercial food at all. Glad to receive all of your informative letters. Most
are very interesting. Be safe on your trips around visiting us all over the country .
Judy
Gosh, so do I Carla! And it definitely put Sanderson Farms on my black list...along with Exxon/Mobile and others. Reminds me of the experience, while in no way a true comparison, of the time my dad contracted to grow cucumbers for a pickle company. He planted four acres of cucumbers and we had to pick them twice a day...we being my mom and us three kids (Daddy had a full time job with the phone company, although he did help with the evening picking if he got home early enough). One day he came home and Mama informed him that we were on strike...if he wanted to pick four acres of cucumbers twice a day he could do it himself. Well, he did and he broke even on the deal. Nothing lost except a lot of sweat and nothing gained except a backache. He never contracted to grow anything for anyone else.
Hope you had a wonderful first day of Spring. This is how I spent my day http://homesteadingtoday.com/vb/showthread.php?t=76374
Looking forward to seeing you in the Fall,
Paula
Wow! the story about the chicken farmers was sobering. Corporate greed
run amuck. Thanks for posting this report.
Larry
Hi: Sure am glad I don't raise chickens! This is about the same reasons I never contracted with large stores in the greenhouse business, went broke anyways, but at least I did it on my own! We sure agree with last week's financial advise, one cannot believe the reduction in stress when the bills are not there each month! And a person at "zero" is so much more wealthy than one with huge debts. The debt turns a person into a renter rather than an owner, but this gets me into thoughts that are out of the "mainstream" of thinking.
Ron and Sharon Harmon
Had to reply to this document...it's all true and it's happening in
Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, all across the South where
year-round chicken farming is possible. We had a farm for 4 years and couldn't get away quick enough. I too know of farmers who go berserk or just quietly eat a gun barrel somewhere out on the back 40, so their wife or kids have to find them. It stinks, but as long as America wants cheap chicken, it will continue.
Melina Bush
Carla, I always love receiving your homesteading newsletter. Creating a farm and homestead basically from scratch takes so much time, energy and money, and so many people wonder why we work so hard to do it. It's easy to forget the big picture, while trying to take care of all sorts of odd little details day to day. Your newsletters are a regular reminder of why we're working so hard. Thank you for those. And thank you also for that pair of poultry articles. It's a sobering reminder that there are still a lot of things wrong with our nation's agricultural system. I also believe it's further proof that industrialized ag is not the answer to our many problems and challenges. I can't remember the quote exactly, but Thomas Jefferson had it right when he said that our nation would be strongest when hundreds of small, privately owned family farms dotted the landscape. Each of those farms, growing a wide variety of crops and animals, provide the foundation for both rural and urban areas to grow and thrive in healthy, humane ways. And in spite of the horrors described by these articles, I think the possibility of bringing back those small, privately owned family farms is getting better and better.
Here in western Washington State, a group of farmers, myself included, have been working really hard for the past two years to bring poultry farming back into the realm of possibility for the small-scale and family farmer. The first year we helped overturn a new state law which had eliminated on-farm slaughter of even small batches of birds. Under that law, it was illegal for me to raise a single bird for sale if it was butchered on my farm; all birds had to be butchered at a WSDA or USDA certified facility. While that might sound reasonable, there were no regional WSDA or USDA certified processing facilities accepting small-scale farm raised birds. So small-scale farmers were shut out of raising chickens in any legal way. We were only able to bring back the ability to slaughter 1,000 birds a year, but it was a start. After that first victory we took the next logical step, and we've started work to build a USDA certified poultry processing center specifically designed and operated to serve small-scale growers. This facility will exist solely to process small batches of birds under USDA certification, so that the meat can legally be sold anywhere in the state (or nation for that matter). This enterprise will never have ownership of the birds; we will provide the service for folks who want to raise 10 birds or 10,000 birds per year, whatever they deem appropriate for their particular farm. It will be up to the grower to decide what breed of birds, how to raise them, what to feed them, and how to market them. Our facility will provide that last missing link for folks who want to establish their own poultry business. We aren't done yet, but we're getting darn close.
I wanted to describe this effort to you so that you can let other folks know that there is an alternative to the slavery described in these articles. Many states either already have groups working to build such facilities, or have newly constructed facilities specifically for that purpose. I encourage your other readers to seek out those groups, and get involved with their efforts. If there is no such organization where you live, and you need one, START ONE. Folks, it's up to us to build, and rebuild, the kind of farming communities we want to have. I can tell you from personal experience that it's hard work, but it's possible to succeed even in the face of organized industrial competition.
Thanks, Carla, for helping us all keep alive the vision of a safer, saner, healthier future. And to all of those out there who are working to make their own little corner of the world a better place, thank you. You're not alone, and your work is not in vain. We are building the world we want to live in, one little project at a time. We might not individually see progress, but we're making headway. Don't for a minute think that it's not worth the effort. It's worth all that and more.
Kathryn Kerby
www.frogchorusfarm.com
www.pugetpoultry.org
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -Ghandi
3) Reader Feedback on Radical Money Management
Dear Carla,
Love your newsletter! Just have one reservation. When you use a debit card, the money comes directly from your account. If someone gains access to your debit card, they can clean out your checking or savings in a day. There are no laws protecting you from having to pay these unauthorized charges. And since it is your money that is missing, it is not as urgent for your banking institution to catch the scoundrel. With a credit card, there is a maximum fee of $50 for any purchases made by an identity thief, and until you authorize the withdrawal, the credit card company cannot reach into your account. I think this creates more incentive to stop unauthorized actions quickly. The key to using a credit card is discipline. Never charge more than you can pay off in the free time allowed each month. Another benefit is that several cards, including Discover offer bonus dollar credits for purchases made with your card. I buy most of my books with these credits. Borders, for one, gives a $25 gift card for each $20 bonus credit earned.
Answer: I still say get rid of all your credit cards. There is a daily spending limit on your debit card. So that account can't be cleaned out in the way that you suggest. Yet If you want to make a big purchase on a debit card, you can call your bank and get that limit lifted for the one day that you specify and the amount that you specify.
Dear Carla, I'm something of a radical money manager. Don't know if you ever had time to read the newsletter I was blessed to run an interview with you in, but it's one of the main themes. We aren't perfectionists at money management, but are debt free and got that way on a low income.
I'd like to offer back issues of my newsletter to your group at no cost except postage. The back issues are sitting in storage not doing anyone any good, and I'd love to get them to people who could use them.
Thanks for MHMN!
Cindy Miller
CSAH, The Millers csah@lakeozark.net
Answer: Folks, Cindy Miller's Common Sense at Home magazine was a treasure that more people should have subscribed to while they had a chance. If you're a homeschooling Christian family, you should take her up on this wonderful offer because you'll love what she had to say.
4) Reader Feedback on Farmers Markets, etc.
Carla
I wanted to send a note to you, you had mentioned a couple weeks ago about how you do your market garden , and your normal take on a weekend, i think the figure was like 200.00 or so dollars ....we have always planned on doing a market garden , in our area there are two of them , each costs 15.00 a year, plus a small percentage of sales, 5%, most of the people we have talked to have been more than friendly, and anxious to have another market member, even to the point when we asked about financial, we were told what others had made the previous year, between 2000.00-3000.00 for the period from last week in April to the first week in October, i know when i was in Wisconsin , we made about 7k per Summer,r but i was in a big metro area, and we had a waiting list to get into the garden , plus annual fees were 500.00 , plus 5 % still it evened out pretty well... Ive spent roughly 40.00 this year getting my seeds and all , some of that is recoup able , like the grow light i expect to use for several years, along with the seed trays .. seeds are CHEAP , did you know many of the 10 cent packets of seeds are heirloom types? i actually have lots of seeds i bought last year, at the beginning of fall i bought seeds for 20 for $1.00 there's a few specialty seeds i will be ordering, but thats because i want them , more than anything else, yes there's more effort involved in doing the market, but i can market other items that we have here that for different reasons i cant sell there, meat and animals mainly... every week i can have little flyer's advertising our farms other products ,and the fact that we are a certified naturally grown farm. Networking, with a small profit built in all for one morning a week ....
just something i think others should think about .
Beth LaFerriere
Carla:
Here's a handy hint that may appeal to some of your readers. We shred almost everything - junk mail, thin cardboard boxes (such as a Kleenex box), tea bag wrappers, prescription bottle labels (to keep people from snooping for personal information), cancelled checks and other obsolete financial information. We have a cross-cut shredder (cheap - $22 at Sam's Club). When we get a big 30-gallon bag full, we give it to our friend who has wood heat. She uses a handful to start the wood fire each morning. She does't use it as a fuel per se, just a fire starter. This next fact I can't vouch for its veracity so will leave the usefullness of it to those who have animals and the knowledge. A friend told me that the shredded paper can be used as bedding for hamsters, rabbits, chickens, etc. Every once in a while she cleans out the beds and buries the used bedding in her garden. The paper will mostly decompose.
Have you ever heard of this?
Harry & Josie Meekins
5) News Bits
a) Petroleum Supply Gets Tighter
Crude oil prices have more than doubled over the last two years. In trading Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, oil for delivery next month rose 52 cents, to $54.95 a barrel.Overall oil demand worldwide is growing faster than expected this year, according to the International Energy Agency. Investments in new exploration, drilling, capacity expansion, pipelines, transportation and refineries have failed to keep pace with rising world demand. That has led to the current tightness in the system.
b) 2-4-D Herbicide Linked to Lymphoma
I have a dear friend who used to work on a conventional (chemical, herbicide-using farm) together with his father. When his father was diagnosed with lymphoma, Stephen, then in his early 20's went to the hospital to be tested to see if he could be a marrow donor for his father. They discovered that he, also, had lymphoma. Both Stephen and his father have endured chemotherapy and are now in, hopefully permanent remission. He is now a happily married pastor in a midwestern ministry--and totally converted to the all-organic way of life! Most people don't realize that only 30% of pesticides are carcinogentic, but close to 80% of herbicides are carcinogenic. Here's the rest of the story on 2-4- D:
Epidemiological studies have linked 2,4-D to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) among farmers and studies in Canada and Sweden have also found a greater incidence of 2,4-D exposure among people diagnosed with NHL. A number of studies also link 2,4-D exposure to childhood cancers including leukemia, NHL, and brain cancers. In dogs, exposure to lawns treated with 2,4-D has been associated with greater incidence of bladder cancer.
2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid), a ubiquitous lawn and garden herbicide that is frequently mixed with fertilizer in a "weed & feed" product. Weed and feed formulations are especially problematic because they encourage repeated and far wider use of 2,4-D on lawns, presenting special risks to children and contaminating ground and surface water. The herbicide is said to have relatively low persistence in both soil and water. However 2,4-D has a high potential to leach from soil and contaminate surface and ground water, and has been detected in the groundwater in five states and Canada. In King County, Washington a 1996 study found the herbicide present in every stream sampled during spring storms. Yet the herbicide's greatest persistence by far is indoors, away from direct sunlight. One study calculated that a single application to turf that was tracked indoors could be expected to linger in carpeting for up to one year.
6) Peeling Hardboiled Eggs, and Designing the Perfect Barn...
Dear Carla,
Now that my chickens are in full production I do not buy store bought
eggs any more, however, I find the whites cling to the shell when boiled. Is there a cure? Also, I caught the Chicken Fever. This occurs when one discovers all the beautiful varieties of chickens available and wants one of each. Symptoms include rapid pulse rate when near broods of chicks in the feed store followed by impulsive ordering of more chicks than one needs. I recently ordered 10 feathered legged Bantams of varying colors because the information said they are docile, make good pets, and are good buggers. My question is: Are they safe to let in the garden? My larger chickens scratch every thing up and eat the vegetables. Between the goats and the chickens I'm going to have to invest in some better fencing.
Thank you,
Lunette
Answer: Hard-Boiled Eggs
Fresh eggs, unlike cold-storage grocery store eggs, can be hard to peel when hard-boiled because they haven’Äôt lost any fluid to evaporation. The inside of the egg doesn’Äôt have any space between it and the shell, so part of the egg white tends to come off with the peel. To prevent this problem, let eggs for hard boiling age 7’Äì10 days before cooking. Put them in cold water (no more than 2 dozen in a pot). Bring to a boil. Simmer, covered tightly, 10 minutes. Pour eggs into a colander to drain off hot water. Make sure that each shell is cracked. Chill Ôø‡ hour in ice water. Now, they should peel easily. After the eggs are cool and you are ready to put them in the fridge, scribble on the shells with a pncil so you know they are hard boiled.
Don DeLong says: Boil them hard, 6 to 10 minutes. Dump them in ice water for half an hour, then peel. Peels will come off fine.
Caroline00 wrote, ’ÄúI can peel same-day [as laid] eggs. I bring water to boiling and add 1 t. vinegar. I add cold eggs slowly, cover, and boil. Then I plunge them into cold water and peel immediately.’Äù
Diane wrote, ’ÄúI wash fresh eggs and lay them in the aging basket, turning after two days. On the fourth day, I start them in cold water, bring just to a boil, then turn the heat off and let them set for 20 minutes. I cool in cold, running water and peel at once.’Äù
KimMC: ’ÄúI let them sit for 6’Äì7 days, then boil 10 minutes. I boil 10 minutes, pour off the hot water, replace with cold. I do this a few times until the eggs are cool enough to handle. They peel just fine.’Äù If the egg forms a greenish layer around the yolk, it was cooked too long or at too high a temperature. This color can also develop in stored cooked egg. It is harmless.
As for chickens in the garden, yes, they can be woefully destructive, especially on young plants. My chicken house is near the garden. I keep them confined--unless the plants are mature (will resist scratching up) and I'm more worried about some plague of bugs than I am about the nibbling and scratching the chickens will do. There is a time to keep the chickens out of the garden, and a time to let them in. Post-harvest is another good time to let them in. They'll till the soil for you!
Does anyone have any ideas on building the perfect combination of a milk room, hay/feed storage, kidding pens, birthing areas and general housing for goat and dogs that live together? I will be tearing my old barn down this spring and i just can't seem to find the right plans to fit my needs for a new barn. The goats and dogs live together, eat together and sleep together. Most of the plans i've seen are for horses (which i do not own). If any of you can direct me, that would be great.
Thanks,
Pam
Northern Arizona Anatolians (And Kangals too!!!!!)
www.northernarizonaanatolians.com
Nazanatolians@aol.com
