sastyk
Posts by this author
May 12, 2010
From My Favorite News Source, which manages always to put its finger on the problem:
"I think everybody is getting a little fed-up with the hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis," EPA engineer Thomas Bergman said. "Not to mention UV rays and acid rain. And, not to be petty, but shark attacks?…
May 11, 2010
I plant weeds sometimes. I just feel I should admit this upfront, and come out with it and accept your outrage. You see, my property isn't exactly untouched - it was a sod farm at one point (although most of the actual sod harvesting was done across the road on a field that is not mine), which…
May 10, 2010
Just a note to let you all know that we're having weird weather (inch sized hail, temperature shifts of 60 degrees in under an hour, thunderstoms, high winds, hot, freezing.,..) and weird power outages and weird server problems and the formal diagnosis is that the ordinary weirdness that is this…
May 7, 2010
Again, Stuart Staniford runs the numbers and clarifies the analysis, and comes up with some really hideously bad possibilities. In his "Odds of Cooking the Grandchildren" Staniford shows us the implications of a PNAS paper that I'd missed:
There is a horrible paper in this week's Proceedings of…
May 6, 2010
Note: This is the first kind of canning you should try, and the most basic, and IMHO, most useful kind. It is definitely worth experimenting with when you've got an excess of produce, which many people do this time of year. If you don't have your own overproductive garden, perhaps you can offer…
May 6, 2010
Note: This is part of a two-part piece on the basics of canning (the whole thing in more refined form is contained in _Independence Days_ as well). In a previous post, I wrote about putting canning in perspective - it is not all of food preservation, nor is it essential. That said, however, I get…
May 6, 2010
I've got a class and Eric's got a final today, plus kid stuff, so I won't have time to read through the President's Cancer Panel Report today, but I do think it is worth noting that the recommendation that we start thinking more seriously about environmental factors and the health consequences they…
May 5, 2010
"It is funny, but not that funny."
Eric's comment does not stop my uncontrollable giggling. My step-mother comes over to see why I'm hysterical. She agrees with Eric - it is funny, but not funny enough to explain why tears of laughter are literally coming out of my eyes.
I'm reading a passage in…
April 30, 2010
I can't think when I've heard something as disingenuous as Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's claim that he was "humbled" by his questioning by Congress. Oh, wait, I can...in the musical Chicago, when Billy Flynn, the star attorney points out to Roxy Hart that because people are idiots, we can…
April 29, 2010
If you are anywhere near the Massachusetts North Shore, you could come on up on Saturday between 10 and 2 to Beverly. Say howdy, hang out, talk poultry, see the fanciest and newly expanded chicken coop in town and enjoy what is supposed to be a stunningly beautiful spring day near the seashore.…
April 29, 2010
The news from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is not good. If the NOAA estimates are right about the size of the spill it could dwarf Exxon Valdez:
Over the last few days, estimates had held that the Gulf of Mexico oil spilling was leaking about 1,000 barrels, or 42,000 gallons, into the water each…
April 28, 2010
From the wonderful Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog (a favorite of mine) over at Research Blogging, is a fascinating summary of paper that describes the ways that most modern seed varieties, selected to be used under commercial conditions, don't do as well under organic conditions, because we haven…
April 26, 2010
I'm just now finishing wading through the Earth Day e-waste/propaganda/inspiring educational bullshit in my in-box. After a certain point, I stopped reading. Which means I almost missed my new favorite use of Earth Day, which was sent to me by FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform…
April 26, 2010
I wrote Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Preservation and Storage because when it came time for me to take the next steps in eating locally and homegrown - to holding some of summer's bounty for the long winter, there wasn't any book that really covered what all I needed to know.…
April 22, 2010
Starting our CSA (aka "Community Supported Agriculture") was a risk. I knew that I could grow vegetables, and more than we could eat - I'd proved that the previous year. I knew also that I could find some people who would believe me when I said I was competent to run a CSA. Beyond that, I was…
April 22, 2010
Perhaps my two previous screeds about Earth Day were unfair. After all, this could be the next major shopping holiday, with a lead in that rivals Christmas. Check out the New York Times for a sense of the range of products available
So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day…
April 22, 2010
A number of commenters to my previous post argued that I'm being unfair to Earth Day - of course, there's greenwashing. of course people are cashing in, but underlying the greenwashing, there's something good and serious and worthwhile there and I'm being churlish to deny it.
And in some ways, I…
April 21, 2010
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 the covers, because every freakin' time I open my email inbox a wave of the most nauseating spew of…
April 20, 2010
I've been sadly slack on content the last few days, but well, it is spring and I'm busy. And tired at the end of the day. And Stoneleigh of The Automatic Earth was visiting. And well...hey, it is 66 degrees, sunny and beautiful. I'm in the middle of a piece answering a reader's question about…
April 16, 2010
Hat tip to Rod Dreher for pointing out what he deems the most depressing toy ever - yes, your little one can have his or her own cubicle! Has your two year old been falling down on the hard, tedious job of being a child - here's a way of ensuring that she's ready for a life of dismal monotony!…
April 15, 2010
I'm the lone female in a house of men - when new housemate Phil moves in next month that will make six guys in my home and well, me. There are assorted female creatures on my farm - to be precise, one dog, two cats, two rabbits, 7 dairy goats, 12 ewes (seasonal) and about 40 female birds of…
April 15, 2010
As you know, Greer and I at times have our differences in perspective, but I think this week's column is particularly acute, and offers up two point that I think are really essential to grasp when thinking of the future.
The first is that technical feasibility is not all - that technical…
April 14, 2010
I still have two remaining spots in my online food storage and preservation class, starting tomorrow! If you'd like to join us you can read about the class and the syllabus here, and email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com to reserve a spot or ask more questions!
Cheers,
Sharon
April 13, 2010
A reader of mine named Aaron emailed me to ask if I'd respond to Alex Steffen's latest piece at Worldchanging. Aaron writes:
I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about Alex Steffen's recent post over at worldchanging.com. I think that it is a well considered and well informed post that…
April 13, 2010
To make up for yesterday's frivolity, today I am going to be very, very serious, and deal with weighty serious things. There will be no levity - not from me, and certainly not from my very serious readers. In fact, if I detect signs of levity from any of you, especially those of you with sad…
April 12, 2010
It was a lovely weekend with lots of friends, Eli's belated birthday party, spring, peace, quiet, music, good stuff. My house is even clean. I mean, well, for me. I'm too happy to worry about anything.
So I got nothing today. I do, however, have a contract with science blogs that requires three…
April 9, 2010
What I like about Stuart Staniford's work is that he does such a lovely job of offering useful and clear visual descriptors of things that are often otherwise made less clear. The design of a good graph or visual is worth a lot. So I thought this bit about the way sea level rise plays out in the…
April 9, 2010
I know, I know, I promised you that Eric and I would start doing joint posts months ago, and we haven't done a single one. Sorry folks. Besides the fact that it has been a crazy-busy period in our lives, there's another reason. We didn't fully grasp the reality of this blogging together project…
April 8, 2010
When Eric and I first wrote a letter to Eric's grandparents, asking them to consider living with us, the response was very mixed. Grandma and Grandpa's generation of friends and family were mostly very pleased and thrilled - given the bad lot of options available to many of them, finding a…
April 7, 2010
It is a very good thing that sound and image do not travel through the internet without forethought and intent. It permits me to write sentences about my life that seem admirably clean and functional, without actually conveying the way they play out in reality.
This allows me to write things like…