sastyk
Posts by this author
October 17, 2013
If you want to know what we've been doing these last few months, read the next post down. But suffice it to say that nothing on our farm has really had the time and attention it deserves. And since we're legally not permitted to feed our goat or cow's milk to any of our foster children (yes, no…
October 17, 2013
In my last post, more than four months ago (oy, that's bad!), we had just acquired four new children, 11, 3, 3, and 16 months, and were settling in and getting adjusted. And then I didn't blog all summer. Or for most of the first month of autumn. A few people wondered whether I was eaten by a…
June 3, 2013
So it has been an embarassingly long time since I last wrote anything for this blog. Long enough that I owe you all an apology. It started out simply enough - I did something I've done a million times, picked up a full water bucket for our cow. Not sure what I did differently, but I did…
May 6, 2013
In 2008, before the revolution, the Egyptian Government set a portion of its Army to baking bread for hungry citizens, precisely to forestall revolution. Now, after revolution, it isn't clear who will provide the bread for its hungry and angry populace:
Around a quarter of the population lives…
May 6, 2013
Fast food sales now outnumber sit-down restaurant food sales in the home of gastronomy:
More than half of all French restaurant sales now take place, sacrilegiously, at fast food chains, according to a new survey by food consultancy firm Gira Conseil.
This is the first time fast food sales have…
May 6, 2013
From the Guardian:
New research suggests that the Arctic summer sea ice loss is linked to extreme weather. Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francispoints to the phenomenon of "Arctic amplification", where:
"The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the rapid warming of the Far North are…
April 26, 2013
You get tiny, unexpected tastes of the world perfected in a lot of places, if you watch. I got it last week at my son Eli's bar mitzvah (which I'll write more about shortly). Naomi Shahib Nye got it in the place most of us feel as far from the world we want as possible - at her flight gate,…
April 24, 2013
There's a great interview with Chris Nelder on why oil triumphalism is mistaken, and what that means for a whole host of things, including oil prices:
P: Now what about prices? We’ve seen oil prices soar from around $40 per barrel in 2004 to $140 per barrel in 2008. And nowadays, prices in the $100…
April 24, 2013
I'm working slowly on laid hedges around portions of our property, and did a little more this winter. One of these days I'l have old fashioned hedges that are truly livestock tight and wildlife friendly.
Check it out!
April 24, 2013
Rod Dreher has an interesting post (building on a NYTimes article) about the glories of the art of confiture and why the obsessive creation of food-as-art is worth doing:
When I went to Paris a year ago with my niece Hannah, I brought back some confiture by Christine Ferber. She makes some of the…
April 22, 2013
From the Japan Times:
Former Irish President Mary Robinson’s foundation for climate justice is hosting a major conference in Dublin this week. Research presented there said that rising incomes and growth in the global population, expected to create 2 billion more mouths to feed by 2050, will drive…
April 22, 2013
I wrote this a few years ago for Earth Day's 40th anniversary, and frankly, I haven't changed my mind.
I bloody hate Earth Day. No offense to those of you who love it, and I know there are some awesome Earth Day programs out there, but by the time we get there, I'm spending my days hiding under…
April 22, 2013
Interesting about the ways climate change will impact Saudi Arabia's agriculture - already strained pretty much to the limit by inhospitable heat and drought:
The difference between ETo and precipitation indicates that there may be a loss of soil moisture by 0.181 m/year (0.042–0.236 m/year) during…
April 8, 2013
I still have spaces in this class, which is designed to help others sort out the complicated intersections of multiple crises. The class is taught by both me and my husband, Eric Woods.
This is an exciting class for us to be teaching, since it combines so many of our strengths and experiences. …
April 8, 2013
There is a wonderful article in the Daily Mail featuring the famous photos of Lewis Hines that helped bring about Child Labor laws. Well worth a look at these incredibly important images.
April 3, 2013
Globally, almost half of all the food the world produced is thrown away. This Global number hides some critical differences however. In most of the Global South, food is lost to lack of preservation techniques. Grain gets wet in the field, and instead of being dried with machines as it might be…
April 3, 2013
We're still buried in winter here - the peepers haven't even started peeping, and I suspect we won't hear them until the weekend with night temps in the teens here and ice still on the pond and swamp. That will make it the latest I've ever heard them. Despite a warm winter, March was one of the…
April 3, 2013
First of all, in my first post I accidently wrote the class was starting tomorrow, April 4. In fact, we're starting the following Thursday, April 11 and running to the first Thursday in May (apparently I can't read a calendar correctly). I still have spots available, but sign up soon, because I'd…
March 29, 2013
Mark Steel at the Independent has a great column on the root cause of our economic instability - poor folks and all the trouble they cause by not quite appearing to do the evil deeds they do!
It’s a tricky argument to pull off, that the poor caused the debt so they should pay it back. Maybe that’s…
March 29, 2013
Things have been a little nuts here.
Two weeks ago Eric and I took an emergency placement of two children, six and 17 mos. It turned out to be one of the most exhausting and stressful placements we've ever had, not because of the kids, who are delightful (although I had somehow forgotten what…
March 14, 2013
It fascinates me that so many people in the media expected the new Pope to be a flaming American-style social liberal. Consider the New York Times which this morning notes with surprise:
But Cardinal Bergoglio is also a conventional choice, a theological conservative of Italian ancestry who…
March 13, 2013
This is an interesting paper indeed - a new PNAS paper argues that before an abrupt climate change, there is a characteristic SLOWING DOWN of climate change that might be a warning sign:
Putting our results in an even wider perspective, it is important that slowing down is a universal property of…
March 13, 2013
Liked this bit from The Onion:
And it’s not like it’s actually against the law, at least I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Oh, maybe it’s against some really antiquated laws in certain old New England towns from, like, the 18th century or something. But that’s my point: Would anyone today even care if we…
March 12, 2013
This essay is a little different than most of my stuff. It is the result of a collaborative discussion on a foster parenting list I'm a part of by a group of foster parents. I've paraphrased and borrowed and added some things of my own, but this is truly collaborative piece, and meant to be shared…
March 7, 2013
I get to play ringmaster to the Greatest Show on Earth - my own personal family farm circus with at least three rings of fun going on at any given time, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
The circus varies a lot in size (I recently overheard myself saying that it didn't matter how many people…
March 7, 2013
Chances are you already have a strong opinion on this subject. There's a great deal of noise, mostly but not wholly on the American right about the dangers of fertility decline. Jonathan Last's book _What To Expect When No One is Expecting_ and Ross Douthat's recent lament about American women's…
March 7, 2013
Randy Udall at The Oil Drum puts shale "oil" in clear perspective:
Let's try a redneck experiment.
Winter's coming, and I'm willing to pay $1,000 to the first Coloradan who decides to heat their house with oil shale. I'll deliver it in October, free of charge.
Such an experiment would teach you a…
March 7, 2013
From Agrilife, apparently we're going to spend 3 million bucks to confirm the obvious - if you only breed for one thing, maximum milk production, you will be casting a lot of other critical traits to the winds:
“Fertility is a critical component of efficient dairy production,” Pinedo said. “Failure…
March 7, 2013
Former Scienceblogger Boris Zivkovic, now at Scientific American, has an excellent post arguing that we should eliminate daylight savings time. Given that DST was invented to save energy, it may seem strange that I agree with him, but I do - mostly because there's no evidence that it does, and the…
March 6, 2013
About five years ago a colleague of mine, Dale Allen Pfeiffer wrote an essay I can no longer locate. At the time, Colony Collapse Disorder was just being diagnosed in bees, and one of the discussed potential causes of the problem was cell phones and cell phone towers. Pfeiffer didn't, as I…