sastyk | November 9, 2012I wrote this five years ago, but I think all the discussion of free-range parenting merits a reconsideration. My kids are now 7, 9, 11, and 12, and they range much further and freer than they did five years ago, but still I'm more careful than my parents - not because of fear of strangers, but because of the number and speed of cars.
My neighbor and I were discussing a favorite children's book the other day. The book is Robert McCloskey's classic _Blueberries for Sal_ in which a mother human and her daughter go blueberrying, and have a minor mix up with a mother bear and her cub. The book is…
sastyk | November 1, 2012I was in Boston this weekend visiting my sister, so didn't have a chance to reprise my Irene prep post or any of the other approximately two billion (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration) posts I've made over the years about how to prepare for a natural disaster, but I'm still getting emails from people in the dark or by the water talking about how their preps fared, and how they are doing. It is one of the most rewarding things about what I do - hearing that others are warm, fed and safe in part because they took my advice. For us, it was a matter of putting our preps into place and then…
sastyk | October 25, 2012AP Wire - As it heads rapidly towards energy independence, the US has been dubbed "The New Middle East" by Energy Department officials, hoping desperately that it will be true. Slightly rising oil production, a lot of shuffling paper around to make "liquids" look like oil, and a new policy of fostering internal discord and violence will, hopefully, make overblown claims about our energy situation slightly more plausible.
After years of merely rhetorically presenting itself as the "Saudi Arabia of Coal and/or Natural Gas," the US Department of Energy announced a new, stepped up resemblance…
sastyk | October 23, 2012I was asked this by a friend recently, and it has been stuck in my head (even though the whole idea requires an egomaniacal suspension of disbelief) - "If you could sit down to dinner with the people you think see the world we're in most clearly and spend dinner working on how to change things and be ready for a crisis, who would you invite to eat with you?" He added the caveat that I can have as many people as I want, and no, I don't have to cook and clean up ;-).
Actually, if I were going to do this, I would love to host. I like nothing better than to be the one doing the cooking,…
sastyk | October 21, 2012A week ago, one of our former foster sons celebrated his ninth birthday. He's now living with family in another state, and we have kept in regular touch. We sent a gift, a card with some pictures we thought he'd enjoy, and on the afternoon of his birthday, we tried to call and wish him happy, but the phone had been disconnected.
This was not a total shock. It had happened once before, during the process of getting him ready to move. His family loves him and he's very happy there - but they live very, very close to the economic margin. Both of the adults in his family have serious health…
sastyk | October 21, 2012At least they do in The Onion.
“Citizens are advised to bid farewell to parents, children, and any other friends or family they haven’t seen in a while,” Frieden told reporters, adding that if you live anywhere in the Northeast, you should definitely call within the next 48 hours, if not by tonight. “If you have any unresolved emotional issues with any family member whatsoever, now is the time to work those out—I mean right now, because there will not be another chance."
It is always more fun if you have no idea what your doom will look like. I'm guessing just like this, though. Bunnies and…
sastyk | October 21, 2012Hi Folks - Sorry for not announcing this sooner. Here are the winners. Email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com with your address!
Where There Is No Doctor: Karen (for her daughter)
Where There Is No Dentist: Sarah
Where Women Have No Doctor: Farmer Amber
Thanks again to the kind donor who sent them and also to all of you for giving my kids an excuse to pull names out of a hat - it is one of their favorite things about my blog ;-).
Sharon
sastyk | October 11, 2012I gather from the polls that there's a tight race for which of two violent, torturing, mass-murdering or potentially mass-murdering (Romney has had no opportunity to send out automated killer drones over civilian populations yet, but since he has every intention of doing so, the difference really is no difference) war criminals will lead the US. If the last sentence sounds cynical, well it is and it isn't. Since every president in my life time (born during the Nixon administration) has been either a mass murderer or a wanna-be mass murderer (don't talk Jimmy Carter to me - there's a reason…
sastyk | October 11, 2012Whenever I mention to people that my stove set my house on fire last week, they assume it must be my wood cookstove. But no, it was the electric stove that nearly burned down the house last week. I was canning raspberry jam on a warm indian summer's day, and thinking about our anticipated sukkah guests that night, when I walked back into the kitchen to find the stove and the back wall of my kitchen in flames, and one of my electric burners shooting sparks. Fortunately the fire extinguishers we have always kept at hand near every st0ve worked just fine - but we were lucky. Another two…
sastyk | October 11, 2012We missed frost earlier this week by a degree or two, just enough to clip the basil (basil is wussy that way ;-)), but tomorrow night should be definitive. We've moved from steaming amber spice orchards (as the poet puts it) to "post-frost" quiet. We brought the pumpkins in earlier this week, picked the last of the okra and tonight I'll bring in the green tomatoes for pickling and/or ripening (depending on how far along they are). The first fire in the cookstove will probably be tomorrow or the next day. We picked the last raspberries on Sunday afternoon, and they became the last batch…
sastyk | October 5, 2012A reader asked me to comment on this video critiquing Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's challenge to Ontario consumers to spend ten more dollars a week on local, Ontario produced food. My first comment is that people who speak like affectless zombies probably should stick to the written word, rather than making videos, but that's more of an aesthetic critique. Beyond that, however, there is the tiny germ (if you can find it under the same old economist free market babble) of a real question - how much impact does switching our dollars into local foods and products actually have?
Most of the…
sastyk | October 5, 2012
(Athena takes her ease)
A couple of readers have asked me to describe all the people and critters on our farm - they are newer readers or old ones who know things have changed a bit but not how, so I thought I'd do a series of short posts introducing you the residents. For some reason, I thought we'd start with the cats.
The cats are the only true pets on our farm. That doesn't mean they don't have a purpose - they do, of course, the obvious pet control, but ultimately we'd have them (although probably not quite so many) even if we had no use for them. We're just kinda cat people. I…
sastyk | September 28, 2012A few years back Stuart Staniford, (who is one of the most brilliant people I know) and I had a lively debate about the future of small scale agriculture over at The Oil Drum. Stuart argued that agriculture would continue to get bigger and more industrialized, because its fossil fuel dependency really wasn't that great. I argued that in fact energy and environmental pressures would push us back to smaller scale agriculture. So it is nice of Staniford to note that at least at this particular moment, there's a small general trend in my direction ;-):
I've circled the 4% increase between 2002…
sastyk | September 28, 2012From Simon Black at Business Insider:
The researchers’ analysis went a step further, though; they modeled the relationship between food prices and social unrest to reach a simple conclusion– whenever the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)’s global food price index climbs above 210, conditions ripen for social unrest.
Read more: http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/two-no-brainer-ways-to-play-rising-food-prices-8900/#ixzz27moSPcTK
We're currently at 213. Read the whole thing, including Black's exhortation to get a garden, at least. Not that that's news if you read here regularly.
Sharon
sastyk | September 28, 2012Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy,…
sastyk | September 24, 2012It is the nature of popular books to inspire people to wildly overstate their importance. The most stunning example is Abraham Lincoln's statement upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 “So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war.” While _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was an incredibly important book, one that moved many people to shift their sympathies on the subject of slavery, this was, of course, the wildest hyperbole. So too are claims that _Diet For a Small Planet_ invented modern vegetarianism, that _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ started the local foods movement. …
sastyk | September 21, 2012So I know that some contributors and book giveaway winners are still waiting for their copy of _Making Home_ and I offer you profuse apologies. When I was out of town and a friend really wanted to sell copies at an event, Eric gave her some books. Actually, all the books. He didn't realize there weren't more. In the meantime, she didn't sell all of them but for reasons involving complicated personal things hasn't been able to get them back to me. They will re-arrive this weekend, and go out in the mail early next week. Again, apologies for keeping you waiting.
As a form of contrition…
sastyk | September 21, 2012In 2011 I wrote an essay about how the convention of escape undermines our thinking about the environmental crises we are facing. A kind reader of mine emailed to tell me about how she uses that essay "Outrunning the Boom" in her classroom, and her wonderful students responded with this video. Apparently, outrunning the boom is way cooler than I knew. No wonder I'm not winning the rhetoric war ;-)! H/T to Anna - Thanks!
sastyk | September 21, 2012Most of the comments people make about our slightly changeable and somewhat odd family are lovely. Like all parents my husband and I love hearing how beautiful our kids are, how well behaved (even when it isn't always true), how nice it is to see us all together, what fun it is to see a big family having a good time.
There are a few that trouble me a little, but I understand why people make those comments - our family is different and strange, and people are processing how to respond to it. I've made mistakes when in those kinds of situations too, so I don't mind it. I know some people get…
sastyk | September 19, 201240% of all food produced worldwide, and nearly half of all food produced in the US goes to waste. When you break down the realities of food waste, you see that in the developing world, much of the waste is due to lack of ability to preserve food - no refrigeration means that sheep you slaughtered is waste if all of it isn't eaten or dried or otherwise preserved immediately. Lack of energy to run grain dryers means that rain at the wrong time results in moldy grain, etc...
In the Global North, however, the vast majority of food is wasted not in the field, but in the process of getting to our…