Understand, we have one of the least industrial agricultural setups in the world. No desire to start a CAFO. But with food prices going the way they're going, my hunch is that getting the average consumer into this idea is going to be an uphill slog.
Study: Factory Farming Taking Toll on Health, Economy
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; 5:47 PM
Factory farming takes a big hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America's economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs.
The 111-page report released today, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, finds that the "economies of scale" long used to justify factory farming practices are largely an illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for a raft of associated costs.
Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.
Several experts said the report, by a commission of experts with varying backgrounds and allegiances, is remarkable for the number of tough recommendations that survived the grueling research and review process, which participants said was politically charged and under constant pressure from powerful agricultural interests.
In the end, however, even industry representatives on the panel agreed to such controversial recommendations as a ban on the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals -- a huge hit against veterinary pharmaceutical companies -- a phase-out of all intensive confinement systems that prevent the free movement of farm animals, and more vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws in the increasingly consolidated agricultural arena.
"At the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex -- an unhealthy alliance between the defense industry, the Pentagon and their friends on Capitol Hill," wrote Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Production, which wrote the report. "Now the agro-industrial complex -- an alliance of agricultural commodity groups, scientists at academic institutions who are paid by the industry, and their friends on Capitol Hill -- is a concern in animal food production in the 21st century."
The report, "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Production in America," comes at a time when food, agriculture and animal welfare issues are prominent in the American psyche.
Food prices are rising faster than they have for decades. Concerns about global climate change have brought new attention to the fact that modern agriculture is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas production. And recent meat recalls, punctuated by the release of undercover footage of dairy cows being abused at a California slaughterhouse, have struck a chord with consumers increasingly attuned to the realities of where their meat and dairy products come from.
The report acknowledges that the decades-long trend towards reliance on "concentrated animal feeding operations," or CAFOs, has brought some benefits, including cheaper food. In 1970, the average American spent 4.2 percent of his or her income to buy 194 pounds of red meat and poultry annually. By 2005 typical Americans were spending just 2.1 percent of their income for 221 pounds per year.
But the system has also brought unintended consequences. With thousands of animals kept in close quarters, diseases spread quickly. To prevent some of those outbreaks -- and, more often, simply to spur faster growth -- factory farms routinely treat animals with antibiotics, speeding the development of drug-resistant bacteria and in some cases rendering important medicines less effective in people.
The vast majority of U.S. antibiotic use is for animals, the commission noted, adding that because of the lack of oversight by the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies, even regulators can only estimate how many drugs are being given to animals.
The commission urges stronger reporting requirements for companies and a phase-out and then ban on antibiotics in farm animals except as treatments for disease, a policy already initiated in some European countries.
"That's a good recommendation. A strong recommendation," said Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which released its own report last week documenting billions of dollars in farm subsidies to factory farming operations and annual federal expenditures of $100 million just to clean up their ongoing environmental damage.
The Pew report also calls for tighter regulation of factory farm waste, finding that toxic gases and dust from animal waste are making CAFO workers and neighbors ill.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
So. Not. Good.
At $200 bbl, US gasoline is about $7 per gallon. Not. So. Good. Here are some of the ugly details from the Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4200dc9e-1521-11dd-996c-0000779fd2ac.html
The good news is that we extended the garden another 30-40 feet on Sunday. Took some of the pressure off the indoor flats, putting some broccoli and kale into the new bads. We're going to keep expanding until we run out of space, probably rototill the back yard and plant a mix of squash, beans and corn along the driveway.
The Saturday was a little more entertaining -- spent it learning to make cheese at Ricki Carroll's seminar in Ashfield, Mass. Went home and promptly started a big batch of cheddar, which is currently aging under cheesecloth and an asparagus steamer (keeps the cats and mice out) on a high shelf. I'll know how it comes out in, oh, two months or so.
Anyway. I'd recommend Ricki's class highly. The only downside is, there's not an opening until September. And they're crowded. Very crowded. Must've been 40 people at this one. It was an interesting group, though. Most of the people younger than me were in it for the sustainability issues -- they want to be able to make more of their own food when they have to make it. The folks older than me were more, eh, it's something fun to do in retirement.
Still scratching my head a bit about that one. But I did get a fair amount of supply -- some more cultures (thermophilic and mesophilic), propionic Shermanii for the Swiss, more salt and calcium chloride, and some butter muslin. All in all, I was restrained. Seriously.
Got a lot to do this week, barely time to take a break from the day job. But just saw the FT story and thought, yeeesh. I'm only commuting upstairs and downstairs, and thinking I'd better get more livestock. And one of these crosscut guys, since even a chainsaw is about to get mighty damn expensive:
http://www.lehmans.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=26&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=836&iSubCat=847&iProductID=26
Raining like hell, and supposed to get back down into the low 20s by midweek. Springtime in Vermont ...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4200dc9e-1521-11dd-996c-0000779fd2ac.html
The good news is that we extended the garden another 30-40 feet on Sunday. Took some of the pressure off the indoor flats, putting some broccoli and kale into the new bads. We're going to keep expanding until we run out of space, probably rototill the back yard and plant a mix of squash, beans and corn along the driveway.
The Saturday was a little more entertaining -- spent it learning to make cheese at Ricki Carroll's seminar in Ashfield, Mass. Went home and promptly started a big batch of cheddar, which is currently aging under cheesecloth and an asparagus steamer (keeps the cats and mice out) on a high shelf. I'll know how it comes out in, oh, two months or so.
Anyway. I'd recommend Ricki's class highly. The only downside is, there's not an opening until September. And they're crowded. Very crowded. Must've been 40 people at this one. It was an interesting group, though. Most of the people younger than me were in it for the sustainability issues -- they want to be able to make more of their own food when they have to make it. The folks older than me were more, eh, it's something fun to do in retirement.
Still scratching my head a bit about that one. But I did get a fair amount of supply -- some more cultures (thermophilic and mesophilic), propionic Shermanii for the Swiss, more salt and calcium chloride, and some butter muslin. All in all, I was restrained. Seriously.
Got a lot to do this week, barely time to take a break from the day job. But just saw the FT story and thought, yeeesh. I'm only commuting upstairs and downstairs, and thinking I'd better get more livestock. And one of these crosscut guys, since even a chainsaw is about to get mighty damn expensive:
http://www.lehmans.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=26&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=836&iSubCat=847&iProductID=26
Raining like hell, and supposed to get back down into the low 20s by midweek. Springtime in Vermont ...
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Doomers Are Out This Week
... and how.
Feeling better. Have the cheesemaking class on Saturday, and will hopefully rent a rototiller on Sunday. The crud is just about gone, and the shoulder feels a tad better. Been going hammer and tongs at the day job, at the expense of enjoying some truly gorgeous weather.
Here are the reads du jour, beginning with the quite inspirational and winding up with the utterly doomed (but yes, I did go to the co-op tonight and get a 25-pound bag of brown rice. And no, the Brattleboro Food Co-op was not limiting its customers).
First, the inspirational:
April 23, 2008
Starting His Retirement With a Splash
By PETE WILLIAMS
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Jeff Conine could have filled the first months of his post-baseball career with golf, fishing and travel — the usual pursuits that a 41-year-old with financial security might enjoy.
Instead, Conine, a 17-year veteran of six big-league teams, has spent long hours swimming, cycling and running in preparation for an ambitious triathlon schedule that will culminate in the Ironman world championship in Kona, Hawaii, in October. Several former teammates, accustomed to the less rigorous conditioning of baseball, have questioned his sanity.
“Guys in my position are supposed to sit back and relax, not do something ridiculous like this,” said Conine, who lives in South Florida and will make his triathlon debut here Sunday at the St. Anthony’s Triathlon.
The race attracts more than 4,000 competitors and is considered the kickoff to the sport’s national calendar. As an Olympic-distance event (0.93-mile swim, 24.8-mile bike ride, and 6.2-mile run), it is a small fraction of the grueling Ironman distance race, but longer than entry-level sprint triathlons.
Conine spent the final six weeks of last season with the Mets and is best known for his role as a first baseman and outfielder for the Florida Marlins teams that won the World Series in 1997 and 2003. A longtime follower of the Ironman world championship, he was inspired to take up the sport by David Samson, the Marlins’ president, who finished the event in 2006.
Conine, who stands 6 feet 1 inch, finished last season at 220 pounds, heavy by triathlon standards, and until recently had limited swimming experience. But he was regarded as one of baseball’s better athletes, having played professional racquetball as a minor leaguer.
He certainly looks the part, having been told for years that he resembles Lance Armstrong, a likeness that seems more pronounced as Conine loses weight while training.
Though baseball is an anaerobic sport with short bursts of activity, unlike the long aerobic nature of triathlon, Conine believes the experience of playing a mentally taxing sport over a 162-game season will ease his transition.
“It’s all about being mentally tough,” he said. “With long-distance triathlon, it’s all about knowing when to push your body and when to rest and persevering through these boring six-hour rides and three-hour runs.”
Next, the amusing:
Green Acres II: When Neighbors Become Farmers
Suburban Arugula Is Organic and Fresh, but About That Manure...
By KELLY K. SPORS
April 22, 2008; Page A1
BOULDER, Colo. -- When suburbanites look out their front doors, a lot of them want to see a lush green lawn. Kipp Nash wants to see vegetables, and not all of his neighbors are thrilled.
"I'd rather see green grass" than brown dirt patches, says 82-year-old Florence Tatum, who lives in Mr. Nash's Boulder neighborhood, across the street from a house with a freshly dug manure patch out front. "But those days are slipping away."
A growing number of suburban Americans are earning extra cash by growing food in their backyards.
Since 2006, Mr. Nash, 31, has uprooted his backyard and the front or back yards of eight of his Boulder neighbors, turning them into minifarms growing tomatoes, bok choy, garlic and beets.
Between May and September, he gives weekly bagfuls of fresh-picked vegetables and herbs to people here who have bought "shares" of his farming operation. Neighbors who lend their yards to the effort are paid in free produce and yard work.
A school-bus driver, Mr. Nash rises at 5 a.m. and, after returning from his morning route, spends his days planting, watering and tending his yard farms and the seedlings he stores in a greenhouse behind his house.
Farmers don't necessarily live in the country anymore. They might just be your next-door neighbor, hoping to turn a dollar satisfying the blooming demand for organic, locally grown foods.
Unlike traditional home gardeners who devote a corner of the yard to a few rows of vegetables, a new crop of minifarmers is tearing up the whole yard and planting foods such as arugula and kohlrabi that restaurants might want to buy. The locally grown food movement has also created a new market for front-yard farmers.
"Agriculture is becoming more and more suburban," says Roxanne Christensen, publisher of Spin-Farming LLC, a Philadelphia company started in 2005 that sells guides and holds seminars teaching a small-scale farming technique that involves selecting high-profit vegetables like kale, carrots and tomatoes to grow, and then quickly replacing crops to reap the most from plots smaller than an acre. "Land is very expensive in the country, so people are saying, 'why not just start growing in the backyard?' "
And on the "we're doomed" front:
Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.
I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill.
You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs."
(Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash.
Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.
Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
These are trends that have been in place for some time.
And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.
Feeling better. Have the cheesemaking class on Saturday, and will hopefully rent a rototiller on Sunday. The crud is just about gone, and the shoulder feels a tad better. Been going hammer and tongs at the day job, at the expense of enjoying some truly gorgeous weather.
Here are the reads du jour, beginning with the quite inspirational and winding up with the utterly doomed (but yes, I did go to the co-op tonight and get a 25-pound bag of brown rice. And no, the Brattleboro Food Co-op was not limiting its customers).
First, the inspirational:
April 23, 2008
Starting His Retirement With a Splash
By PETE WILLIAMS
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Jeff Conine could have filled the first months of his post-baseball career with golf, fishing and travel — the usual pursuits that a 41-year-old with financial security might enjoy.
Instead, Conine, a 17-year veteran of six big-league teams, has spent long hours swimming, cycling and running in preparation for an ambitious triathlon schedule that will culminate in the Ironman world championship in Kona, Hawaii, in October. Several former teammates, accustomed to the less rigorous conditioning of baseball, have questioned his sanity.
“Guys in my position are supposed to sit back and relax, not do something ridiculous like this,” said Conine, who lives in South Florida and will make his triathlon debut here Sunday at the St. Anthony’s Triathlon.
The race attracts more than 4,000 competitors and is considered the kickoff to the sport’s national calendar. As an Olympic-distance event (0.93-mile swim, 24.8-mile bike ride, and 6.2-mile run), it is a small fraction of the grueling Ironman distance race, but longer than entry-level sprint triathlons.
Conine spent the final six weeks of last season with the Mets and is best known for his role as a first baseman and outfielder for the Florida Marlins teams that won the World Series in 1997 and 2003. A longtime follower of the Ironman world championship, he was inspired to take up the sport by David Samson, the Marlins’ president, who finished the event in 2006.
Conine, who stands 6 feet 1 inch, finished last season at 220 pounds, heavy by triathlon standards, and until recently had limited swimming experience. But he was regarded as one of baseball’s better athletes, having played professional racquetball as a minor leaguer.
He certainly looks the part, having been told for years that he resembles Lance Armstrong, a likeness that seems more pronounced as Conine loses weight while training.
Though baseball is an anaerobic sport with short bursts of activity, unlike the long aerobic nature of triathlon, Conine believes the experience of playing a mentally taxing sport over a 162-game season will ease his transition.
“It’s all about being mentally tough,” he said. “With long-distance triathlon, it’s all about knowing when to push your body and when to rest and persevering through these boring six-hour rides and three-hour runs.”
Next, the amusing:
Green Acres II: When Neighbors Become Farmers
Suburban Arugula Is Organic and Fresh, but About That Manure...
By KELLY K. SPORS
April 22, 2008; Page A1
BOULDER, Colo. -- When suburbanites look out their front doors, a lot of them want to see a lush green lawn. Kipp Nash wants to see vegetables, and not all of his neighbors are thrilled.
"I'd rather see green grass" than brown dirt patches, says 82-year-old Florence Tatum, who lives in Mr. Nash's Boulder neighborhood, across the street from a house with a freshly dug manure patch out front. "But those days are slipping away."
A growing number of suburban Americans are earning extra cash by growing food in their backyards.
Since 2006, Mr. Nash, 31, has uprooted his backyard and the front or back yards of eight of his Boulder neighbors, turning them into minifarms growing tomatoes, bok choy, garlic and beets.
Between May and September, he gives weekly bagfuls of fresh-picked vegetables and herbs to people here who have bought "shares" of his farming operation. Neighbors who lend their yards to the effort are paid in free produce and yard work.
A school-bus driver, Mr. Nash rises at 5 a.m. and, after returning from his morning route, spends his days planting, watering and tending his yard farms and the seedlings he stores in a greenhouse behind his house.
Farmers don't necessarily live in the country anymore. They might just be your next-door neighbor, hoping to turn a dollar satisfying the blooming demand for organic, locally grown foods.
Unlike traditional home gardeners who devote a corner of the yard to a few rows of vegetables, a new crop of minifarmers is tearing up the whole yard and planting foods such as arugula and kohlrabi that restaurants might want to buy. The locally grown food movement has also created a new market for front-yard farmers.
"Agriculture is becoming more and more suburban," says Roxanne Christensen, publisher of Spin-Farming LLC, a Philadelphia company started in 2005 that sells guides and holds seminars teaching a small-scale farming technique that involves selecting high-profit vegetables like kale, carrots and tomatoes to grow, and then quickly replacing crops to reap the most from plots smaller than an acre. "Land is very expensive in the country, so people are saying, 'why not just start growing in the backyard?' "
And on the "we're doomed" front:
Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.
I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill.
You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.
"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs."
(Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash.
Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.
Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.
And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.
These are trends that have been in place for some time.
And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Postscript
It's occasionally good to get some positive reinforcement. Good Pollan article in today's NY Times Magazine:
You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.
But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.
But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
Le Crud
It's coming, I know it. Weird feeling at the back of the throat, check. Starting to feel a bit snotty, check. Run-down feeling in general, check. Occasional dizziness, check.
Sigh. I don't need this.
Didn't stop me from getting up and going to town on the chicken run. I had a bit more chicken nastiness than anticipated -- 32 wheelbarrow-fulls, to be precise. Dumped it all close to where the back garden is going. Lisa raked it out.
Given the way the shoulder is feeling (bad), I'm thinking we're going to wind up renting a rototiller for the bulk of the garden creation. Just a little too much manual labor right now.
After I finished the chicken run cleaning, I did a little bit more work on it, mostly measuring for the new door and reinstalling some perches. The plan is to finish up the door, put the netting over the top, and then proceed with a duck rodeo. Yee-haw.
Also put up a clothesline and trimmed about 50 more feet of brush along the fenceline. Nasty, sticky thorns that took forever to get done. At least I got to listen to the frogs and owls while doing it.
Here's to hoping the Emergen-C kicks in.
Sigh. I don't need this.
Didn't stop me from getting up and going to town on the chicken run. I had a bit more chicken nastiness than anticipated -- 32 wheelbarrow-fulls, to be precise. Dumped it all close to where the back garden is going. Lisa raked it out.
Given the way the shoulder is feeling (bad), I'm thinking we're going to wind up renting a rototiller for the bulk of the garden creation. Just a little too much manual labor right now.
After I finished the chicken run cleaning, I did a little bit more work on it, mostly measuring for the new door and reinstalling some perches. The plan is to finish up the door, put the netting over the top, and then proceed with a duck rodeo. Yee-haw.
Also put up a clothesline and trimmed about 50 more feet of brush along the fenceline. Nasty, sticky thorns that took forever to get done. At least I got to listen to the frogs and owls while doing it.
Here's to hoping the Emergen-C kicks in.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Smells Like Crap
Must be crap.
Wow. Gorgeous day today. Believe I got a sunburn (too bad I'm so damn fat). Anyway, we fixed the frame of the chicken run. Didn't take as long as I was afraid it'd take. Cleaning out the inside of the run, though, was another matter. Imagine a 12 foot by 12 foot space, about six inches deep in hay, chicken crap, and chicken piss.
Oh, and it's been sitting there all winter.
I piled up about a cubic yard of the stuff before punting for the day. Went to town on the back fence, clearing brush along the soon-to-be fenceline with a pair of loppers. Shoulder was just absolutely killing me by the time it got dark.
Made dinner for the kids, did all the dishes, started everyone's laundry, and did some general sweeping, dusting and other cleaning around the house. Lisa baked bread, worked on the garden and did some cleaning. Watched the Jazz beat up on the Rox until midnight -- I think they're already done this year -- and went to bed.
More chickenshit tomorrow.
Wow. Gorgeous day today. Believe I got a sunburn (too bad I'm so damn fat). Anyway, we fixed the frame of the chicken run. Didn't take as long as I was afraid it'd take. Cleaning out the inside of the run, though, was another matter. Imagine a 12 foot by 12 foot space, about six inches deep in hay, chicken crap, and chicken piss.
Oh, and it's been sitting there all winter.
I piled up about a cubic yard of the stuff before punting for the day. Went to town on the back fence, clearing brush along the soon-to-be fenceline with a pair of loppers. Shoulder was just absolutely killing me by the time it got dark.
Made dinner for the kids, did all the dishes, started everyone's laundry, and did some general sweeping, dusting and other cleaning around the house. Lisa baked bread, worked on the garden and did some cleaning. Watched the Jazz beat up on the Rox until midnight -- I think they're already done this year -- and went to bed.
More chickenshit tomorrow.
Friday, April 18, 2008
I'm Back, and Tired
... so a couple of days in Washington, and I'm beat. I didn't run, I didn't exercise, I didn't do tourist things -- although I was there for the pope's visit -- I just worked. And my shoulder (wah!) feels like hell. But it's gorgeous weather out there. Spring's here. Finally.
First things first. Rockets, in six. They just can't lose to a team that plays defense like this:
First things first. Rockets, in six. They just can't lose to a team that plays defense like this:
The Jazz. Like Indiana Jones: "The Jazz. I hate those guys." The Rox need another 22-game streak, although (I think) 16 would do quite nicely.
Wendell Berry has an awesome essay in this month's Harper's. I'm going to reprint a few relevant snippets. If you don't have a subscription, get one. Between the Index, Berry, and this months' Kevin Phillips story on how the government cooks economic numbers, this month's issue alone is well worth the $16.97 annual subscription price:
And so, in confronting the phenomenon of “peak oil,” we are really confronting the end of our customary delusion of “more.” Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice. To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice and a viable one if we can recover the necessary political sanity.
Of course it makes sense to consider alternative energy sources provided they make sense. But also we will have to re-examine the economic structures of our lives, and conform them to the tolerances and limits of our earthly places. When there is no more, our one choice is to make the most and best of what we have.
More reading, from the NYTimes:
April 18, 2008
Sticker Shock in the Organic Aisles
By ANDREW MARTIN and KIM SEVERSON
Shoppers have long been willing to pay a premium for organic food. But how much is too much?
Rising prices for organic groceries are prompting some consumers to question their devotion to food produced without pesticides, chemical fertilizers or antibiotics. In some parts of the country, a loaf of organic bread can cost $4.50, a pound of pasta has hit $3, and organic milk is closing in on $7 a gallon.
“The prices have gotten ridiculous,” said Brenda Czarnik, who was shopping recently at a food cooperative in St. Paul.
Of course, we think we have problems? Read on ...
April 18, 2008
Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger
By MARC LACEY
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti’s presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country’s prime minister packing.
Haiti’s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.
Saint Louis Meriska’s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, “They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.”
That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.
I'm guessing not even everyone in our own country is concerned about the price of organics. Lots and lots of rough times out there:
April 18, 2008
Workers Get Fewer Hours, Deepening the Downturn
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Not long ago, overtime was a regular feature at the Ludowici Roof Tile factory in eastern Ohio. Not anymore. With orders scarce and crates of unsold tiles piling up across the yard, the company has slowed production and cut working hours, sowing worry and thrift among its workers.
“We don’t just hop in the car and go shopping or get something to eat,” said Kim Baker, whose take-home pay at the plant has recently dropped to $450 a week, from more than $600. “You’ve got to watch everything. If we go to town now, it’s for a reason.”
Throughout the country, businesses grappling with declining fortunes are cutting hours for those on their payrolls. Self-employed people are suffering a drop in demand for their services, like music lessons, catering and management consulting. Growing numbers of people are settling for part-time work out of a failure to secure a full-time position.
The gradual erosion of the paycheck has become a stealth force driving the American economic downturn. Most of the attention has focused on the loss of jobs and the risk of layoffs. But the less-noticeable shrinking of hours and pay for millions of workers around the country appears to be a bigger contributor to the decline, which has already spread from housing and finance to other important areas of the economy.
Monday, April 14, 2008
No. 250
I hadn't run this weekend, so I woke up this morning and decided to be unkind to myself. Did eight miles. Felt pretty good, too. I just kind of zoned out and relaxed, something I really do need to do a bit more. It started out cold, but by the time I finished (no global warming jokes, please), it was mild. Headed into Brattleboro and got some chicken feed and corn, milk, and a new shovel to replace the sorry, busted-ass implement that couldn't lever a 15-pound rock out of the garden.
Plugged away at work all day, taking a break at noon to get Stink out of the pond and pull taps out of the maples. It's been cold at night, so I believe we'll go for one ... more ... half-gallon. We can stop any time we want. Really. We've already got 5 1/2 gallons (and would have had six, if we hadn't let one batch boil over and burn). But we can stop. Honest.
You don't have to agree with him, but give Kunstler props for another hilarious rant:
A President Hillary will also go a long way to defeating the popular delusion that a world ruled by female humans would be heaven-on-earth. (It would be more like one of those chaotic single-parent households in Section-8 housing, ruled by a harried and distracted mom, with a shadowy man in the background molesting the little ones while she was off working at the WalMart.)
Better get to sleep at a reasonable hour. I'll have an insanely busy next few days. Off to The Big Apple and Our Nation's Capital. Sigh. Haven't even packed, and I'm already quite certain that I'd rather be sitting out on the front porch with Gray Kitten on my lap, watching the ducks torment collies and the chickens scratch in the dirt.
Plugged away at work all day, taking a break at noon to get Stink out of the pond and pull taps out of the maples. It's been cold at night, so I believe we'll go for one ... more ... half-gallon. We can stop any time we want. Really. We've already got 5 1/2 gallons (and would have had six, if we hadn't let one batch boil over and burn). But we can stop. Honest.
You don't have to agree with him, but give Kunstler props for another hilarious rant:
A President Hillary will also go a long way to defeating the popular delusion that a world ruled by female humans would be heaven-on-earth. (It would be more like one of those chaotic single-parent households in Section-8 housing, ruled by a harried and distracted mom, with a shadowy man in the background molesting the little ones while she was off working at the WalMart.)
Better get to sleep at a reasonable hour. I'll have an insanely busy next few days. Off to The Big Apple and Our Nation's Capital. Sigh. Haven't even packed, and I'm already quite certain that I'd rather be sitting out on the front porch with Gray Kitten on my lap, watching the ducks torment collies and the chickens scratch in the dirt.
This is Sad
And it happened in the next town up the road from us.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- An autopsy was planned Monday on a 2 1/2-year-old girl found dead after her mother and 6-year-old sister drowned in Wardsboro.
Police, meanwhile, continued their probe into the actions of Nicole Waring, 40, of Wolcott, hoping to determine why she avoided a would-be rescuer and plunged into the 36-degree waters of Wardsboro Brook carrying her 6-year-old daughter, Dakota Waring.
The bodies of Waring and her older daughter were recovered Saturday. Autopsies indicated deaths consistent with drowning, according to Vermont State Police.
Grace Waring's autopsy was set for Monday. Still unclear is how the toddler ended up in the water, although police believe she was with her sister and mother before that.
"We have the results of this incident, in that we have three untimely deaths," said Lt. Kraig LaPorte, a Vermont State Police trooper in Rockingham. "The focus of the investigation now is `What brought these events together to occur?' That's what we'll be looking at. Hopefully, we'll have some answers."
He said police knew of no reason why Waring -- who disappeared with the girls from her parents' home about 1 a.m. Saturday -- would be afraid of police or trying to avoid them. According to police, a Vermont State Police sergeant tried to rescue her from the brook but she ignored his pleas and entered the roiling waters of the brook before being swept away.
A woman who answered the telephone at the home of Waring's parents declined comment on the deaths Monday.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- An autopsy was planned Monday on a 2 1/2-year-old girl found dead after her mother and 6-year-old sister drowned in Wardsboro.
Police, meanwhile, continued their probe into the actions of Nicole Waring, 40, of Wolcott, hoping to determine why she avoided a would-be rescuer and plunged into the 36-degree waters of Wardsboro Brook carrying her 6-year-old daughter, Dakota Waring.
The bodies of Waring and her older daughter were recovered Saturday. Autopsies indicated deaths consistent with drowning, according to Vermont State Police.
Grace Waring's autopsy was set for Monday. Still unclear is how the toddler ended up in the water, although police believe she was with her sister and mother before that.
"We have the results of this incident, in that we have three untimely deaths," said Lt. Kraig LaPorte, a Vermont State Police trooper in Rockingham. "The focus of the investigation now is `What brought these events together to occur?' That's what we'll be looking at. Hopefully, we'll have some answers."
He said police knew of no reason why Waring -- who disappeared with the girls from her parents' home about 1 a.m. Saturday -- would be afraid of police or trying to avoid them. According to police, a Vermont State Police sergeant tried to rescue her from the brook but she ignored his pleas and entered the roiling waters of the brook before being swept away.
A woman who answered the telephone at the home of Waring's parents declined comment on the deaths Monday.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Flashback Time
Pretty busy weekend.
Got two more months of co-op hours out of the way, working cheese early Saturday afternoon and bagging late Saturday afternoon. Bad weekend for it -- the weather was just gorgeous, and I kept wanting to be outside.
Made it home in time to take Will to a school fund-raiser for his Arizona trip. Went into Keene and got a few needed items: A new wheelbarrow wheel (solid, not inflatable), a good rake, some liquid solder, and a clothesline.
Woke up late Sunday and spent pretty much all day either gardening or cleaning. The garden is coming along, slowly. We've got a space about 10 feet wide by 75 feet long, so far. It'll go another 10 feet or so, then widen out to a patch that's about 15 feet wide by 100 feet long. The problem right now is equipment: I broke a shovel handle and a pitchfork handle. I was pissed.
Fixed the electric fence. I'm hoping it'll at least shock the crap out of Stink the next time he goes chasing the ducks. He's developed a bad habit of going into the pond after them. He won't catch them, but he'll become a very stinky Stink after splashing around the pond for 30 minutes. I caught him by luck earlier this week, turning a leash into a lasso and grabbing him from about 10 feet away. Pretty slick, if I say so myself.
It was beautiful Saturday, but I wasn't so happy on Sunday. Snowing. Not accumulating, but snowing. Damn. On the other hand, it's hard to sulk about weather when you've just finished reading The Worst Hard Time, by Tim Egan. It's a hell of a story -- a man-made weather disaster on top of the Great Depression.
For those of you who don't know (which should include just about anyone who reads this blog), I went to school on the High Plains, on the southern edge of the Dust Bowl. I'm reasonably familiar with the north Texas and Oklahoma panhandles where most of the dirt got kicked up, and I've seen my fair share of dust storms. You could tell who the freshmen were at my school; their cars hadn't been sandblasted yet, and they were still trying to wear contact lenses.
Anyway, you spend any amount of time on the Plains, and you hear old-timers talk about how bad things used to be. You'd see a dust storm coming from 50 miles away, rising about 10,000 feet in the air, and some old-timer would shake his head and mention that when he was growing up, a storm like that meant everything was clear.
The Dust Bowl was such a traumatic part of growing up for so many folks that it really interested me. I'd ask relatives about the Depression, just general "what was it like?" questions. Always got the same answers. My mother's mom lived in east Texas and just muttered about how those poor folks in West Texas got the sorriest deal on the face of the planet. Grandmom (my dad's mother) lived in north Texas during the worst of it. She'd smile, and say, well, it was bad, but everyone was so poor that it just didn't matter. Granddad would just look pissed off.
My great uncle and aunt, who lived in the town where I went to school, were a little more forthcoming. Aunt Mabel would shake her head and say things like, it was just horrible and a mercy that more folks didn't die. Uncle Clendon would just look pissed off.
A few years later, when Uncle Clendon wanted to make some salient point about how I maybe needed to apply myself a little more at school, he mentioned one thing that happened to kids without college educations during the Depression. He and some friends were trying to get a job doing warehouse work in north Texas. Turns out there were four or five openings. About 100 men showed up to apply for the job. The owner didn't have time to sort everyone out, so he made it simple: Work until you drop. Last five standing get the job.
Clendon got one of the jobs. But, jeeez. Worst, hard time, indeed. I'll probably have nightmares about dust storms for a week at least.
Got two more months of co-op hours out of the way, working cheese early Saturday afternoon and bagging late Saturday afternoon. Bad weekend for it -- the weather was just gorgeous, and I kept wanting to be outside.
Made it home in time to take Will to a school fund-raiser for his Arizona trip. Went into Keene and got a few needed items: A new wheelbarrow wheel (solid, not inflatable), a good rake, some liquid solder, and a clothesline.
Woke up late Sunday and spent pretty much all day either gardening or cleaning. The garden is coming along, slowly. We've got a space about 10 feet wide by 75 feet long, so far. It'll go another 10 feet or so, then widen out to a patch that's about 15 feet wide by 100 feet long. The problem right now is equipment: I broke a shovel handle and a pitchfork handle. I was pissed.
Fixed the electric fence. I'm hoping it'll at least shock the crap out of Stink the next time he goes chasing the ducks. He's developed a bad habit of going into the pond after them. He won't catch them, but he'll become a very stinky Stink after splashing around the pond for 30 minutes. I caught him by luck earlier this week, turning a leash into a lasso and grabbing him from about 10 feet away. Pretty slick, if I say so myself.
It was beautiful Saturday, but I wasn't so happy on Sunday. Snowing. Not accumulating, but snowing. Damn. On the other hand, it's hard to sulk about weather when you've just finished reading The Worst Hard Time, by Tim Egan. It's a hell of a story -- a man-made weather disaster on top of the Great Depression.
For those of you who don't know (which should include just about anyone who reads this blog), I went to school on the High Plains, on the southern edge of the Dust Bowl. I'm reasonably familiar with the north Texas and Oklahoma panhandles where most of the dirt got kicked up, and I've seen my fair share of dust storms. You could tell who the freshmen were at my school; their cars hadn't been sandblasted yet, and they were still trying to wear contact lenses.
Anyway, you spend any amount of time on the Plains, and you hear old-timers talk about how bad things used to be. You'd see a dust storm coming from 50 miles away, rising about 10,000 feet in the air, and some old-timer would shake his head and mention that when he was growing up, a storm like that meant everything was clear.
The Dust Bowl was such a traumatic part of growing up for so many folks that it really interested me. I'd ask relatives about the Depression, just general "what was it like?" questions. Always got the same answers. My mother's mom lived in east Texas and just muttered about how those poor folks in West Texas got the sorriest deal on the face of the planet. Grandmom (my dad's mother) lived in north Texas during the worst of it. She'd smile, and say, well, it was bad, but everyone was so poor that it just didn't matter. Granddad would just look pissed off.
My great uncle and aunt, who lived in the town where I went to school, were a little more forthcoming. Aunt Mabel would shake her head and say things like, it was just horrible and a mercy that more folks didn't die. Uncle Clendon would just look pissed off.
A few years later, when Uncle Clendon wanted to make some salient point about how I maybe needed to apply myself a little more at school, he mentioned one thing that happened to kids without college educations during the Depression. He and some friends were trying to get a job doing warehouse work in north Texas. Turns out there were four or five openings. About 100 men showed up to apply for the job. The owner didn't have time to sort everyone out, so he made it simple: Work until you drop. Last five standing get the job.
Clendon got one of the jobs. But, jeeez. Worst, hard time, indeed. I'll probably have nightmares about dust storms for a week at least.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Bob Greene Died.
Didn't know him, but sure respected the work:
April 11, 2008
Robert W. Greene, Journalist, Dies at 78
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:31 a.m. ET
MELVILLE, N.Y. (AP) -- Investigative journalist Robert W. Greene, who led reporters from across the country in an effort to uncover corruption in Arizona and who twice helped Newsday win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, died Thursday. He was 78.
Greene, who spent 37 years as a reporter and editor at Newsday, had been ill for some time and died in a Smithtown hospital of complications including congestive heart failure, the newspaper reported.
''His doggedness in pursuit of hidden information inspires reporters here at Newsday, and across the country, to this day,'' said the paper's editor, John Mancini.
The longtime journalist won his first Pulitzer in 1970, for exposing land scandals in a Long Island town. Four years later, he helped a team of reporters win for a series that traced heroin from growing fields in Turkey to the streets of Long Island.
In 1976, Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed by a car bomb as he worked to expose organized crime. Greene, who had helped found the Investigative Reporters and Editors group, led a team of volunteers from the organization in a five-month project to complete the slain reporter's work.
At the time, he told the IRE board the project could make people ''think twice'' about killing journalists.
''We are buying life insurance on our own reporters,'' he said, according to IRE's Web site.
The project was met by resistance from some in the journalism community who did not believe reporters should crusade on behalf of one of their own. The work of the reporters, some of whom used their vacation time for the project, resulted in a 23-part series that was published nationwide. More than a quarter-century later, the IRE continues to be an important teaching organization.
Former Newsday editor Howard Schneider recalled Greene as an imposing figure.
''For much of his career, he could outthink, out-hustle, out-report, outeat, outdrink and outwork any other journalist in the country,'' Schneider said in an e-mail. ''But if his excesses were occasionally unbridled, they were driven by his passion to get a good story and root out the bad guys.''
Before arriving at Newsday in 1955, Greene was a staff investigator for the New York City Anti-Crime Committee. At the request of Robert Kennedy, he took a yearlong break from the paper in 1957 to become an investigator for the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee.
Survivors include Greene's wife, Kathleen Greene, and his son, Robert Greene Jr. Greene's daughter, Lea Greene, was killed in 1989 during a break-in at her home.
April 11, 2008
Robert W. Greene, Journalist, Dies at 78
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:31 a.m. ET
MELVILLE, N.Y. (AP) -- Investigative journalist Robert W. Greene, who led reporters from across the country in an effort to uncover corruption in Arizona and who twice helped Newsday win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, died Thursday. He was 78.
Greene, who spent 37 years as a reporter and editor at Newsday, had been ill for some time and died in a Smithtown hospital of complications including congestive heart failure, the newspaper reported.
''His doggedness in pursuit of hidden information inspires reporters here at Newsday, and across the country, to this day,'' said the paper's editor, John Mancini.
The longtime journalist won his first Pulitzer in 1970, for exposing land scandals in a Long Island town. Four years later, he helped a team of reporters win for a series that traced heroin from growing fields in Turkey to the streets of Long Island.
In 1976, Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed by a car bomb as he worked to expose organized crime. Greene, who had helped found the Investigative Reporters and Editors group, led a team of volunteers from the organization in a five-month project to complete the slain reporter's work.
At the time, he told the IRE board the project could make people ''think twice'' about killing journalists.
''We are buying life insurance on our own reporters,'' he said, according to IRE's Web site.
The project was met by resistance from some in the journalism community who did not believe reporters should crusade on behalf of one of their own. The work of the reporters, some of whom used their vacation time for the project, resulted in a 23-part series that was published nationwide. More than a quarter-century later, the IRE continues to be an important teaching organization.
Former Newsday editor Howard Schneider recalled Greene as an imposing figure.
''For much of his career, he could outthink, out-hustle, out-report, outeat, outdrink and outwork any other journalist in the country,'' Schneider said in an e-mail. ''But if his excesses were occasionally unbridled, they were driven by his passion to get a good story and root out the bad guys.''
Before arriving at Newsday in 1955, Greene was a staff investigator for the New York City Anti-Crime Committee. At the request of Robert Kennedy, he took a yearlong break from the paper in 1957 to become an investigator for the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee.
Survivors include Greene's wife, Kathleen Greene, and his son, Robert Greene Jr. Greene's daughter, Lea Greene, was killed in 1989 during a break-in at her home.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Five-Oh
Thought real hard about skipping the run this morning. My shoulder was still stiff, I didn't get to bed until 11a, I had a lot to do at work, and it was likely to be the last clear day until the middle of next week. Then I had a thought:
Pansy.
So I dropped the boys off at school and did five miles. Went to physical therapy -- the therapist said my shoulder and neck were pretty stiff. Felt much better after some stretching and ultrasound.
Came home and picked up about five gallons of sap. It looks as though the end is near, as far as the sap season goes. The syrup is becoming progressively darker -- not quite Grade C, but close. I believe even after propane and paying for buckets, spouts, felt, etc., we'll just about break even with five gallons or so (and at $50/gallon, it's pretty steep).
Plugged away at the day job, called about some pigs, got my eggs together for market, and ordered pig waterers. It looks like it'll be raining too much this weekend to get the electric fence installed in the back pasture, but we'll see. House needs serious cleaning, anyway.
Pansy.
So I dropped the boys off at school and did five miles. Went to physical therapy -- the therapist said my shoulder and neck were pretty stiff. Felt much better after some stretching and ultrasound.
Came home and picked up about five gallons of sap. It looks as though the end is near, as far as the sap season goes. The syrup is becoming progressively darker -- not quite Grade C, but close. I believe even after propane and paying for buckets, spouts, felt, etc., we'll just about break even with five gallons or so (and at $50/gallon, it's pretty steep).
Plugged away at the day job, called about some pigs, got my eggs together for market, and ordered pig waterers. It looks like it'll be raining too much this weekend to get the electric fence installed in the back pasture, but we'll see. House needs serious cleaning, anyway.
Where We Live
From today's Reformer:
Thursday, April 10
BRATTLEBORO -- With the first warm week of spring here, wildlife experts are reminding bird lovers that it now is the time to bring in their feeders.
"With the weather we're having this week, I've already heard of a couple of bears wandering around. One already came by a bird feeder," state Wildlife Biologist Forrest Hammond said.
Although people like to see the birds as long as possible, he said, "now there's a lot of natural food for them. They don't need the feed like they do in the wintertime. It's more important to prevent bears from beginning a life of crime simply by taking in your feeders."
Young bears are more apt to go out to feeders, particularly if they got away with it the first time, Hammond said. "Individuals could play a role in educating the bear by making loud noises, trying to scare the bear enough so that it wouldn't want to try to approach the next house."
With the stronger winter, "there may be more bears than normal visiting bird feeders because there was not as much late fall nuts available to them before they went into the den," Hammond said.
Thursday, April 10
BRATTLEBORO -- With the first warm week of spring here, wildlife experts are reminding bird lovers that it now is the time to bring in their feeders.
"With the weather we're having this week, I've already heard of a couple of bears wandering around. One already came by a bird feeder," state Wildlife Biologist Forrest Hammond said.
Although people like to see the birds as long as possible, he said, "now there's a lot of natural food for them. They don't need the feed like they do in the wintertime. It's more important to prevent bears from beginning a life of crime simply by taking in your feeders."
Young bears are more apt to go out to feeders, particularly if they got away with it the first time, Hammond said. "Individuals could play a role in educating the bear by making loud noises, trying to scare the bear enough so that it wouldn't want to try to approach the next house."
With the stronger winter, "there may be more bears than normal visiting bird feeders because there was not as much late fall nuts available to them before they went into the den," Hammond said.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Some Shameful Shit
... to quote Gus Haynes.
I didn't run this morning -- shoulder still hurt. Slept late, possibly because I was up working until 1a or thereabouts. Shoulder feels a bit better, but meh. Plugged away at the day job, mostly.
No wonder people are pissed. Here's some truly shameful shit:
April 9, 2008
Economic Scene
For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t
By DAVID LEONHARDT
How has the United States economy gotten to this point?
It’s not just the apparent recession. Recessions happen. If you tried to build an economy immune to the human emotions that produce boom and bust, you would end up with something that looked like East Germany.
The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.
This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?
In the second half of the 20th century, the United States passed the test in a way that arguably no other country ever has. It became, as the cliché goes, the richest country on earth. Now, though, most families aren’t getting any richer.
“We have had expansions before where the bottom end didn’t do well,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist who studies the job market. “But we’ve never had an expansion in which the middle of income distribution had no wage growth.”
More than anything else — more than even the war in Iraq — the stagnation of the great American middle-class machine explains the glum national mood today. As part of a poll that will be released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center asked people how they had done over the last five years. During that time, remember, the overall economy grew every year, often at a good pace.
... followed by this. I'm appalled that if you eat seven eggs a week, you've increased your chances of death by 23 percent. Apparently, six is just fine, though.
Sigh. I'm going to have to start peddling my product on street corners ... dodging law enforcement authorities. Following today's "The Wire" motif, I'll have to hook up with some of the other distributors and get a little Prop Joe-style co-op going.
As the late, great Clay Davis might phrase it: Sheeeeeeeeee-it.
Seven or more eggs a week raises risk of death
Wed Apr 9, 12:19 AM ET
Middle-aged men who ate seven or more eggs a week had a higher risk of earlier death, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
Men with diabetes who ate any eggs at all raised their risk of death during a 20-year period studied, according to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The study adds to an ever-growing body of evidence, much of it contradictory, about how safe eggs are to eat. It did not examine what about the eggs might affect the risk of death.
Men without diabetes could eat up to six eggs a week with no extra risk of death, Dr. Luc Djousse and Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School found.
Oh, but wait!
Men who ate the most eggs also were older, fatter, ate more vegetables but less breakfast cereal, and were more likely to drink alcohol, smoke and less likely to exercise -- all factors that can affect the risk of heart attack and death.
I didn't run this morning -- shoulder still hurt. Slept late, possibly because I was up working until 1a or thereabouts. Shoulder feels a bit better, but meh. Plugged away at the day job, mostly.
No wonder people are pissed. Here's some truly shameful shit:
April 9, 2008
Economic Scene
For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t
By DAVID LEONHARDT
How has the United States economy gotten to this point?
It’s not just the apparent recession. Recessions happen. If you tried to build an economy immune to the human emotions that produce boom and bust, you would end up with something that looked like East Germany.
The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.
This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?
In the second half of the 20th century, the United States passed the test in a way that arguably no other country ever has. It became, as the cliché goes, the richest country on earth. Now, though, most families aren’t getting any richer.
“We have had expansions before where the bottom end didn’t do well,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist who studies the job market. “But we’ve never had an expansion in which the middle of income distribution had no wage growth.”
More than anything else — more than even the war in Iraq — the stagnation of the great American middle-class machine explains the glum national mood today. As part of a poll that will be released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center asked people how they had done over the last five years. During that time, remember, the overall economy grew every year, often at a good pace.
... followed by this. I'm appalled that if you eat seven eggs a week, you've increased your chances of death by 23 percent. Apparently, six is just fine, though.
Sigh. I'm going to have to start peddling my product on street corners ... dodging law enforcement authorities. Following today's "The Wire" motif, I'll have to hook up with some of the other distributors and get a little Prop Joe-style co-op going.
As the late, great Clay Davis might phrase it: Sheeeeeeeeee-it.
Seven or more eggs a week raises risk of death
Wed Apr 9, 12:19 AM ET
Middle-aged men who ate seven or more eggs a week had a higher risk of earlier death, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
Men with diabetes who ate any eggs at all raised their risk of death during a 20-year period studied, according to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The study adds to an ever-growing body of evidence, much of it contradictory, about how safe eggs are to eat. It did not examine what about the eggs might affect the risk of death.
Men without diabetes could eat up to six eggs a week with no extra risk of death, Dr. Luc Djousse and Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School found.
Oh, but wait!
Men who ate the most eggs also were older, fatter, ate more vegetables but less breakfast cereal, and were more likely to drink alcohol, smoke and less likely to exercise -- all factors that can affect the risk of heart attack and death.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Jinx.
Working late tonight.
Got up, did a slow three miles. Spring (and mud season) is certainly here. Felt like it was in the high 40s by 7a. Came back home, started the sap boiling, and went to physical therapy. I'm getting to the point where I can start thinking about only once a week, which would be nice, from the day job perspective. Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again.
Jinx.
After therapy, we ran by the feed store and picked up materials for an electric fence. All we need now are four pigs and two dairy goats. Also got some more seed under the theory that seed is cheap, food is expensive.
Made it home early afternoon, just in time to grab about 15 gallons of sap from the buckets. I was carrying a full five-gallon bucket in the woods and slid into some slush. My head went one way, legs went another. Down on the shoulder.
See: "Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again."
Fortunately, I didn't slip on ice. I slipped on slush. Which meant I landed in slush. It was an owie, but not a painkiller owie. Toted the sap to the burner and went upstairs to work for a few hours.
Come dark, and I'd forgotten to chase my roosters into the barn. They got into this whole rooster competitiveness deal, no one wanted to be the last one inside, so I had to get them running. And I did. I ran four of the five into the barn, then started chasing the last one. He ran between my legs, I pivoted on an icy patch. Head went one way, legs went another. Down on the shoulder.
See: "Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again."
Again, I was pretty lucky. Another owie, but I fell harder on my arm than my shoulder. We'll see how it feels in the morning, but I think I'll be OK. As long as I don't slip on the ice and screw it up again.
In matters unrelated to slipping on the ice and screwing it up again, I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I'm not hugely enthralled with the gossip side of the journalism business, but damn! She can write. Powerful stuff. Makes me wish she'd get out of the celebrity racket and start doing narrative journalism. Incredible read. Five stars.
Got up, did a slow three miles. Spring (and mud season) is certainly here. Felt like it was in the high 40s by 7a. Came back home, started the sap boiling, and went to physical therapy. I'm getting to the point where I can start thinking about only once a week, which would be nice, from the day job perspective. Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again.
Jinx.
After therapy, we ran by the feed store and picked up materials for an electric fence. All we need now are four pigs and two dairy goats. Also got some more seed under the theory that seed is cheap, food is expensive.
Made it home early afternoon, just in time to grab about 15 gallons of sap from the buckets. I was carrying a full five-gallon bucket in the woods and slid into some slush. My head went one way, legs went another. Down on the shoulder.
See: "Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again."
Fortunately, I didn't slip on ice. I slipped on slush. Which meant I landed in slush. It was an owie, but not a painkiller owie. Toted the sap to the burner and went upstairs to work for a few hours.
Come dark, and I'd forgotten to chase my roosters into the barn. They got into this whole rooster competitiveness deal, no one wanted to be the last one inside, so I had to get them running. And I did. I ran four of the five into the barn, then started chasing the last one. He ran between my legs, I pivoted on an icy patch. Head went one way, legs went another. Down on the shoulder.
See: "Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again."
Again, I was pretty lucky. Another owie, but I fell harder on my arm than my shoulder. We'll see how it feels in the morning, but I think I'll be OK. As long as I don't slip on the ice and screw it up again.
In matters unrelated to slipping on the ice and screwing it up again, I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I'm not hugely enthralled with the gossip side of the journalism business, but damn! She can write. Powerful stuff. Makes me wish she'd get out of the celebrity racket and start doing narrative journalism. Incredible read. Five stars.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Restating the Obvious
From today's NYTimes:
April 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Grains Gone Wild
By PAUL KRUGMAN
These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.
I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.
There have already been food riots around the world. Food-supplying countries, from Ukraine to Argentina, have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers, leading to angry protests from farmers — and making things even worse in countries that need to import food.
How did this happen? The answer is a combination of long-term trends, bad luck — and bad policy.
Let’s start with the things that aren’t anyone’s fault.
First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese — that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating like Westerners. Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains.
Second, there’s the price of oil. Modern farming is highly energy-intensive: a lot of B.T.U.’s go into producing fertilizer, running tractors and, not least, transporting farm products to consumers. With oil persistently above $100 per barrel, energy costs have become a major factor driving up agricultural costs.
High oil prices, by the way, also have a lot to do with the growth of China and other emerging economies. Directly and indirectly, these rising economic powers are competing with the rest of us for scarce resources, including oil and farmland, driving up prices for raw materials of all sorts.
Third, there has been a run of bad weather in key growing areas. In particular, Australia, normally the world’s second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought.
O.K., I said that these factors behind the food crisis aren’t anyone’s fault, but that’s not quite true. The rise of China and other emerging economies is the main force driving oil prices, but the invasion of Iraq — which proponents promised would lead to cheap oil — has also reduced oil supplies below what they would have been otherwise.
And bad weather, especially the Australian drought, is probably related to climate change. So politicians and governments that have stood in the way of action on greenhouse gases bear some responsibility for food shortages.
Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.
The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a “scam.”
This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But it turns out that even seemingly “good” biofuel policies, like Brazil’s use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.
And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.
One more thing: one reason the food crisis has gotten so severe, so fast, is that major players in the grain market grew complacent.
Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.
This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.
What should be done? The most immediate need is more aid to people in distress: the U.N.’s World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more funds.
We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake.
But it’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.
April 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Grains Gone Wild
By PAUL KRUGMAN
These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.
I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.
There have already been food riots around the world. Food-supplying countries, from Ukraine to Argentina, have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers, leading to angry protests from farmers — and making things even worse in countries that need to import food.
How did this happen? The answer is a combination of long-term trends, bad luck — and bad policy.
Let’s start with the things that aren’t anyone’s fault.
First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese — that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating like Westerners. Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains.
Second, there’s the price of oil. Modern farming is highly energy-intensive: a lot of B.T.U.’s go into producing fertilizer, running tractors and, not least, transporting farm products to consumers. With oil persistently above $100 per barrel, energy costs have become a major factor driving up agricultural costs.
High oil prices, by the way, also have a lot to do with the growth of China and other emerging economies. Directly and indirectly, these rising economic powers are competing with the rest of us for scarce resources, including oil and farmland, driving up prices for raw materials of all sorts.
Third, there has been a run of bad weather in key growing areas. In particular, Australia, normally the world’s second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought.
O.K., I said that these factors behind the food crisis aren’t anyone’s fault, but that’s not quite true. The rise of China and other emerging economies is the main force driving oil prices, but the invasion of Iraq — which proponents promised would lead to cheap oil — has also reduced oil supplies below what they would have been otherwise.
And bad weather, especially the Australian drought, is probably related to climate change. So politicians and governments that have stood in the way of action on greenhouse gases bear some responsibility for food shortages.
Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.
The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a “scam.”
This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But it turns out that even seemingly “good” biofuel policies, like Brazil’s use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.
And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.
One more thing: one reason the food crisis has gotten so severe, so fast, is that major players in the grain market grew complacent.
Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.
This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.
What should be done? The most immediate need is more aid to people in distress: the U.N.’s World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more funds.
We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake.
But it’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Moving Day
One of those days where I'm going to want to get to sleep early.
Slept late, but it didn't help much. Got up, threw on some running clothes, and did six miles, which is as much as I've done in ... well, in a long time. Didn't feel too bad, other than just setting the stage for dragging most of the rest of the day.
Ran into Brattleboro for feed hay, mulch hay, rabbit food, grower pellets and corn. Stopped by the grocery and got some kid food -- cereal, pork chops (99c/lb!), ziti noodles, and all things dairy. I was tired and hungry and lusted after a couple of McD's quarter-pounders, but I had a couple of thoughts that saved me:
1. Do I really want to be this fat any longer than I have to be? and
2. Am I such a tool that I need to spend money, much less calories, on this reputed food?
No, and no.
So I came back home and gathered sap. Only about three gallons today. Either it's slowing down, or the lack of sun makes a big difference. Part of me hopes it's slowing down -- we've made three gallons so far this year, and should make a couple more. I think five gallons is a good first year.
Lisa and I grabbed old chickens from the small coop and threw them in the barn. Most weren't too pleased about it. Then, I went upstairs and put leg bands on the small chicks so I can identify them next spring and took them down to the small coop, eight at a time. They really weren't too pleased about it ... but I've got my bathroom back, anyway.
Dishes, laundry, a few other things, and I'm ready for bed. But before I crash, it should be noted that We Are Trendy (Although Not in a Swiss-Family Robinson Sort of Way):
April 6, 2008
Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism
By ALEX WILLIAMS
THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.
It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”
“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.
Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”
Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.
Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.
Slept late, but it didn't help much. Got up, threw on some running clothes, and did six miles, which is as much as I've done in ... well, in a long time. Didn't feel too bad, other than just setting the stage for dragging most of the rest of the day.
Ran into Brattleboro for feed hay, mulch hay, rabbit food, grower pellets and corn. Stopped by the grocery and got some kid food -- cereal, pork chops (99c/lb!), ziti noodles, and all things dairy. I was tired and hungry and lusted after a couple of McD's quarter-pounders, but I had a couple of thoughts that saved me:
1. Do I really want to be this fat any longer than I have to be? and
2. Am I such a tool that I need to spend money, much less calories, on this reputed food?
No, and no.
So I came back home and gathered sap. Only about three gallons today. Either it's slowing down, or the lack of sun makes a big difference. Part of me hopes it's slowing down -- we've made three gallons so far this year, and should make a couple more. I think five gallons is a good first year.
Lisa and I grabbed old chickens from the small coop and threw them in the barn. Most weren't too pleased about it. Then, I went upstairs and put leg bands on the small chicks so I can identify them next spring and took them down to the small coop, eight at a time. They really weren't too pleased about it ... but I've got my bathroom back, anyway.
Dishes, laundry, a few other things, and I'm ready for bed. But before I crash, it should be noted that We Are Trendy (Although Not in a Swiss-Family Robinson Sort of Way):
April 6, 2008
Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism
By ALEX WILLIAMS
THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.
It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”
“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.
Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”
Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.
Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Bad Dog. Very, Very Bad Dog.
Slept all morning. Got up in time to fix the large chicken run (more or less), empty sap buckets, do laundry, boil some more sap and help drag the not-so-Great Pyr out of the pond ice.
Silly girl wandered next door to eat some Labradors. I went over to get her and was escorting her home. Almost to the house, and she broke back the other way, across the pond. Fell through about halfway and couldn't get out. Tried breaking ice with a long stick so she could swim out, but she wasn't too interested. Lisa had to jump in and drag her out.
Bad dog. Very bad dog.
Silly girl wandered next door to eat some Labradors. I went over to get her and was escorting her home. Almost to the house, and she broke back the other way, across the pond. Fell through about halfway and couldn't get out. Tried breaking ice with a long stick so she could swim out, but she wasn't too interested. Lisa had to jump in and drag her out.
Bad dog. Very bad dog.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Really Good Journalism, Part Three
... and then I'll shut up. But this CNN Money special (America's Money) hit home, too:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/news/0803/gallery.real_stories/
Very good stuff.
Ran three miles this morning in some pretty slushy rain. Got by the feed store as it opened to buy egg cartons and bird leg bands for the chicks, plus more propane for the sap. Loaded up on eggs, had a physical terrorism appointment (and I'm feeling much better this afternoon).
Worked like hell on the day job; only took a break to escort Will to his annual checkup.
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/news/0803/gallery.real_stories/
Very good stuff.
Ran three miles this morning in some pretty slushy rain. Got by the feed store as it opened to buy egg cartons and bird leg bands for the chicks, plus more propane for the sap. Loaded up on eggs, had a physical terrorism appointment (and I'm feeling much better this afternoon).
Worked like hell on the day job; only took a break to escort Will to his annual checkup.
Eh, Who Needs Food?
Farmers worry proposal to cut Agriculture Department could take garden out of Garden State
By Tom Hester Jr.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:40 p.m. April 1, 2008
TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey farmers are starting to worry that their state lawmakers are about to take the garden out of the Garden State.
Gov. Jon Corzine is proposing to make New Jersey the third state without a Department of Agriculture as he looks to slash spending amid chronic state budget problems.
Some argue the move will chase away farmers who persevered for generations while New Jersey grew into the nation's most densely populated state.
“Ultimately, the quality of life of all of New Jersey's citizens will suffer,” said William Griffin, president of the New Jersey State Board of Agriculture.
New Jersey would join Alaska and Rhode Island as the only states without an agriculture department, said Charles W. Ingram, spokesman for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.
In those states, he said, agricultural services are handled by environmental agencies, and that's part of what Corzine is proposing.
His administration contends the move would save $4 million by having the environmental protection and health departments take over the agriculture department's functions.
Those savings would hardly put a dent in the state's $33 billion budget and “would send the worst kind of signal,” said Mary Jo Herbert of the Hopewell Heritage Farm.
By Tom Hester Jr.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:40 p.m. April 1, 2008
TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey farmers are starting to worry that their state lawmakers are about to take the garden out of the Garden State.
Gov. Jon Corzine is proposing to make New Jersey the third state without a Department of Agriculture as he looks to slash spending amid chronic state budget problems.
Some argue the move will chase away farmers who persevered for generations while New Jersey grew into the nation's most densely populated state.
“Ultimately, the quality of life of all of New Jersey's citizens will suffer,” said William Griffin, president of the New Jersey State Board of Agriculture.
New Jersey would join Alaska and Rhode Island as the only states without an agriculture department, said Charles W. Ingram, spokesman for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.
In those states, he said, agricultural services are handled by environmental agencies, and that's part of what Corzine is proposing.
His administration contends the move would save $4 million by having the environmental protection and health departments take over the agriculture department's functions.
Those savings would hardly put a dent in the state's $33 billion budget and “would send the worst kind of signal,” said Mary Jo Herbert of the Hopewell Heritage Farm.
Brutal. Just Brutal.
I'm not an enormous fan, but this really hit home:
Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?
By Dana Milbank
Friday, April 4, 2008; A03
Meet Alan Schwartz, welfare recipient.
As the chief executive of Bear Stearns, he's getting rather more public assistance than your typical welfare mom -- specifically, $30 billion in federal loan guarantees to help J.P. Morgan Chase take over his firm. But then, Schwartz has had rather more than his share of suffering of late.
As his firm collapsed, he was forced to forgo his entire 2007 bonus, leaving his compensation for the past five years at a paltry $141 million, according to Business Week. Things have become so bad that, the Wall Street Journal discovered, Schwartz has had to rent out his 7,850-square-foot home on the ninth green of a suburban New York golf course -- leaving the poor fellow with only his 17-room, seven-acre home in Greenwich, his condo in Colorado and the athletic center he built for Duke University.
Schwartz's tale of woe tugs at the heartstrings all the more because he and his colleagues at Bear Stearns were, he believes, blameless for the bankruptcy of two hedge funds and the subsequent collapse of the 85-year-old investment bank. "I am saddened," Schwartz told the Senate banking committee yesterday. He was saddened that Bear Stearns was undone by "unfounded rumors and attendant speculation," despite its impeccable balance sheet.
"Due to the stressed condition of the credit market as a whole and the unprecedented speed at which rumors and speculation travel and echo through the modern financial media environment, the rumors and speculation became a self-fulfilling prophecy," Schwartz told the senators. "There was, simply put, a run on the bank."
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) asked the corporate-welfare recipient whether he shares any blame for his indigent circumstances. "Do you believe that your management team has any responsibility for the company's collapse?"
Schwartz could think of no missteps -- not even his decision to remain at a conference at the Breakers in Palm Beach while his firm was imploding. "I just simply have not been able to come up with anything, even with the benefit of hindsight," said the blameless chief executive, escorted into the hearing room by superlawyer Robert Bennett.
Fortunately for Schwartz, he had a sympathetic audience in the banking committee, whose members have received more than $20 million in campaign contributions from the securities and investment industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. "I want the witnesses to know, and others, that as a bottom-line consideration, I happen to believe that this was the right decision," Chairman Chris Dodd (D-$5,796,000) said before hearing a single word of testimony.
"You made the right decision," Sen. Evan Bayh (D-$1,582,000) told the regulators who worked out the loan guarantee.
"The actions had to be done," agreed Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-$6,162,000).
Only a minority of senators, particularly those with smaller pieces of the campaign-cash pie, dissented. "That is socialism!" railed Sen. Jim Bunning (R-$452,000). "And it must not happen again."
To the extent the lawmakers objected to the Bear Stearns bailout, they worried that the Fed's actions would create a "moral hazard" -- an economic term of art -- that, as Shelby put it, "encourages firms to take excessive risk based on the expectations that they will reap all the profits while the federal government stands ready to cover any losses if they fail."
Shelby's notion was a curiosity for the senators, who don't often spend a lot of time worrying about moral hazards. No fewer than five other senators invoked the phrase. "I think the moral hazard was minimized," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, one of the witnesses, reassured the senators.
No moral hazard, however, would interfere with the lawmakers' compassion for the beleaguered Schwartz and his fellow witness, J.P. Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, who had given a combined $260,000 in political contributions in recent years -- a small part of the $1.7 million their co-workers contributed in this election cycle alone. That's a sizable handout -- but a good investment compared with the $30 billion federal hand-up.
"On behalf of all of us here on this dais, our sympathies go out to your employees," Dodd told Schwartz after his opening statement. "There's no adequate way we can express our sorrow to them for what happened. Obviously, shareholders, same sort of feelings, but obviously the employees particularly. It's a particularly hard blow."
Of course, some might consider $30 billion an adequate expression of sympathy, but Dodd was apologetic as he gently probed Schwartz. "You both will have forgotten more in the next 10 minutes than I'll ever probably understand about all of this," he told the witnesses, but didn't the irregular trading at Bear Stearns mean than "more than just rumors" were behind Bear Stearns's demise?
"You could never get facts out as fast as the rumors," Schwartz explained. "It looked like there were people that wanted to induce panic."
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) reminded Schwartz that two of the firm's funds went bankrupt in 2007. "It caused concern, not only here but on Wall Street," the senator said. "Did that dramatically alter your behavior?"
Evidently not. "I'm not sure I understand the question," Schwartz answered.
Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?
By Dana Milbank
Friday, April 4, 2008; A03
Meet Alan Schwartz, welfare recipient.
As the chief executive of Bear Stearns, he's getting rather more public assistance than your typical welfare mom -- specifically, $30 billion in federal loan guarantees to help J.P. Morgan Chase take over his firm. But then, Schwartz has had rather more than his share of suffering of late.
As his firm collapsed, he was forced to forgo his entire 2007 bonus, leaving his compensation for the past five years at a paltry $141 million, according to Business Week. Things have become so bad that, the Wall Street Journal discovered, Schwartz has had to rent out his 7,850-square-foot home on the ninth green of a suburban New York golf course -- leaving the poor fellow with only his 17-room, seven-acre home in Greenwich, his condo in Colorado and the athletic center he built for Duke University.
Schwartz's tale of woe tugs at the heartstrings all the more because he and his colleagues at Bear Stearns were, he believes, blameless for the bankruptcy of two hedge funds and the subsequent collapse of the 85-year-old investment bank. "I am saddened," Schwartz told the Senate banking committee yesterday. He was saddened that Bear Stearns was undone by "unfounded rumors and attendant speculation," despite its impeccable balance sheet.
"Due to the stressed condition of the credit market as a whole and the unprecedented speed at which rumors and speculation travel and echo through the modern financial media environment, the rumors and speculation became a self-fulfilling prophecy," Schwartz told the senators. "There was, simply put, a run on the bank."
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) asked the corporate-welfare recipient whether he shares any blame for his indigent circumstances. "Do you believe that your management team has any responsibility for the company's collapse?"
Schwartz could think of no missteps -- not even his decision to remain at a conference at the Breakers in Palm Beach while his firm was imploding. "I just simply have not been able to come up with anything, even with the benefit of hindsight," said the blameless chief executive, escorted into the hearing room by superlawyer Robert Bennett.
Fortunately for Schwartz, he had a sympathetic audience in the banking committee, whose members have received more than $20 million in campaign contributions from the securities and investment industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. "I want the witnesses to know, and others, that as a bottom-line consideration, I happen to believe that this was the right decision," Chairman Chris Dodd (D-$5,796,000) said before hearing a single word of testimony.
"You made the right decision," Sen. Evan Bayh (D-$1,582,000) told the regulators who worked out the loan guarantee.
"The actions had to be done," agreed Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-$6,162,000).
Only a minority of senators, particularly those with smaller pieces of the campaign-cash pie, dissented. "That is socialism!" railed Sen. Jim Bunning (R-$452,000). "And it must not happen again."
To the extent the lawmakers objected to the Bear Stearns bailout, they worried that the Fed's actions would create a "moral hazard" -- an economic term of art -- that, as Shelby put it, "encourages firms to take excessive risk based on the expectations that they will reap all the profits while the federal government stands ready to cover any losses if they fail."
Shelby's notion was a curiosity for the senators, who don't often spend a lot of time worrying about moral hazards. No fewer than five other senators invoked the phrase. "I think the moral hazard was minimized," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, one of the witnesses, reassured the senators.
No moral hazard, however, would interfere with the lawmakers' compassion for the beleaguered Schwartz and his fellow witness, J.P. Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, who had given a combined $260,000 in political contributions in recent years -- a small part of the $1.7 million their co-workers contributed in this election cycle alone. That's a sizable handout -- but a good investment compared with the $30 billion federal hand-up.
"On behalf of all of us here on this dais, our sympathies go out to your employees," Dodd told Schwartz after his opening statement. "There's no adequate way we can express our sorrow to them for what happened. Obviously, shareholders, same sort of feelings, but obviously the employees particularly. It's a particularly hard blow."
Of course, some might consider $30 billion an adequate expression of sympathy, but Dodd was apologetic as he gently probed Schwartz. "You both will have forgotten more in the next 10 minutes than I'll ever probably understand about all of this," he told the witnesses, but didn't the irregular trading at Bear Stearns mean than "more than just rumors" were behind Bear Stearns's demise?
"You could never get facts out as fast as the rumors," Schwartz explained. "It looked like there were people that wanted to induce panic."
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) reminded Schwartz that two of the firm's funds went bankrupt in 2007. "It caused concern, not only here but on Wall Street," the senator said. "Did that dramatically alter your behavior?"
Evidently not. "I'm not sure I understand the question," Schwartz answered.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
I Cannot Disagree With Michael Pollan
A good point from the NYTimes (although truly, I just need to eat less. A lot less):
April 2, 2008
Some Good News on Food Prices
By KIM SEVERSON
WHILE grocery shoppers agonize over paying 25 percent more for eggs and 17 percent more for milk, Michael Pollan, the author and de facto leader of the food intellectuals, happily dreams of small, expensive bottles of Coca-Cola.
Along with some other critics of the American way of eating, he likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.
And if American staples like soda, fast-food hamburgers and frozen dinners don’t seem like such a bargain anymore, the American eating public might turn its attention to ingredients like local fruits and vegetables, and milk and meat from animals that eat grass. It turns out that those foods, already favorites of the critics of industrial food, have also dodged recent price increases.
Logic would dictate that arguing against cheap food would be the wrong move when the Consumer Price Index puts food costs at about 4.5 percent more this year than last. But for locavores, small growers, activist chefs and others, higher grocery bills might be just the thing to bring about the change they desire.
Higher food costs, they say, could push pasture-raised milk and meat past its boutique status, make organic food more accessible and spark a national conversation about why inexpensive food is not really such a bargain after all.
“It’s very hard to argue for higher food prices because you are ceding popular high ground to McDonald’s when you do that,” said Mr. Pollan, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” (Penguin Press). “But higher food prices level the playing field for sustainable food that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels.”
The food-should-cost-more cadre wants to change an agricultural system that spends billions of dollars in government subsidies to grow commodities like grain, sugar, corn and animal protein as cheaply as possible.
The current system, they argue, is almost completely reliant on petroleum for fertilizers and global transportation. It has led to consolidations of farms, environmentally unsound monoculture and, at the end of the line, a surplus of inexpensive food with questionable nutritional value. Organic products are not subsidized, which is one reason those products are more expensive.
As a result, the theory goes, small farmers can’t make a living, obesity and diabetes are worsening, workers are being exploited and soil and waterways are being damaged. In other words, the true cost of a hamburger or a box of macaroni and cheese may be a lot more than the price.
April 2, 2008
Some Good News on Food Prices
By KIM SEVERSON
WHILE grocery shoppers agonize over paying 25 percent more for eggs and 17 percent more for milk, Michael Pollan, the author and de facto leader of the food intellectuals, happily dreams of small, expensive bottles of Coca-Cola.
Along with some other critics of the American way of eating, he likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.
And if American staples like soda, fast-food hamburgers and frozen dinners don’t seem like such a bargain anymore, the American eating public might turn its attention to ingredients like local fruits and vegetables, and milk and meat from animals that eat grass. It turns out that those foods, already favorites of the critics of industrial food, have also dodged recent price increases.
Logic would dictate that arguing against cheap food would be the wrong move when the Consumer Price Index puts food costs at about 4.5 percent more this year than last. But for locavores, small growers, activist chefs and others, higher grocery bills might be just the thing to bring about the change they desire.
Higher food costs, they say, could push pasture-raised milk and meat past its boutique status, make organic food more accessible and spark a national conversation about why inexpensive food is not really such a bargain after all.
“It’s very hard to argue for higher food prices because you are ceding popular high ground to McDonald’s when you do that,” said Mr. Pollan, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” (Penguin Press). “But higher food prices level the playing field for sustainable food that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels.”
The food-should-cost-more cadre wants to change an agricultural system that spends billions of dollars in government subsidies to grow commodities like grain, sugar, corn and animal protein as cheaply as possible.
The current system, they argue, is almost completely reliant on petroleum for fertilizers and global transportation. It has led to consolidations of farms, environmentally unsound monoculture and, at the end of the line, a surplus of inexpensive food with questionable nutritional value. Organic products are not subsidized, which is one reason those products are more expensive.
As a result, the theory goes, small farmers can’t make a living, obesity and diabetes are worsening, workers are being exploited and soil and waterways are being damaged. In other words, the true cost of a hamburger or a box of macaroni and cheese may be a lot more than the price.
A Honking Busy Day
Yeesh.
Up at 6a. John to the bus at 630p (Will was sick). Ran 4 miles. I need to run. A lot. Getting very stout and round. Back in the car, to the feed store for hay and propane refills for sugaring. To the grocery for milk. To the dry cleaners. To the barber shop for a haircut. To the recycling center with a garbage bag of cans.
Back home, at my desk by 1015a.
Worked like a dog on the day job until 3p. Went to the library to download files, to the post office to send some work-related correspondence. Came home, took care of chickens. Hauled sap in buckets to holding tanks. Went for a walk. Back to work on the day job.
Saw geese. Felt the sun. Liked it.
Up at 6a. John to the bus at 630p (Will was sick). Ran 4 miles. I need to run. A lot. Getting very stout and round. Back in the car, to the feed store for hay and propane refills for sugaring. To the grocery for milk. To the dry cleaners. To the barber shop for a haircut. To the recycling center with a garbage bag of cans.
Back home, at my desk by 1015a.
Worked like a dog on the day job until 3p. Went to the library to download files, to the post office to send some work-related correspondence. Came home, took care of chickens. Hauled sap in buckets to holding tanks. Went for a walk. Back to work on the day job.
Saw geese. Felt the sun. Liked it.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Higher Food Prices?
Didn't run this morning. Woke up and felt really cranky, creaky and tired. Lot to do on the day job front today, so I skipped the Wednesday run. I'll do Thursday and Friday. Honest.
So why are food prices higher? I suppose Slate has a pretty reasonable explanation, although there's not nearly enough recriminations and accusations involved:
explainer
Why Are Global Food Prices Soaring?
Energy costs, investment in ethanol, bad weather in Australia …By Juliet LapidosPosted Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 6:31 PM ET
The U.N. World Food Program's executive director told the Los Angeles Times that "a perfect storm" is hitting the world's hungry, as demand for aid surges while food prices skyrocket. Cost increases are affecting most countries around the globe, with prices for dairy products up 80 percent, cooking oils up 50 percent, and grains up 42 percent from 2006 to 2007. (For more specifics on how prices have changed since 2000, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has a handy chart.) Why are groceries getting so expensive all at once?
Energy prices. The global food system is heavily dependent on petroleum, not just for shipping goods from one location to another but also for production, packaging, and processing. As the price of oil rises—crude oil is currently hovering at around $100 a barrel—so do the costs of planting, harvesting, and delivering food.
High oil prices have also created a secondary problem: The burgeoning interest in biofuels. In 2006, 14 percent of the total corn crop in the United States was converted into ethanol; by 2010, that figure will rise to 30 percent. When the production of corn intended for human or animal consumption decreases, prices go up. Why does this local shift in policy affect food prices around the world? The diversion of American corn into energy has a ripple effect for two reasons: First, the United States is the world's largest corn exporter, accounting for about 40 percent of global trade, so when corn-as-food production decreases here, costs go up everywhere. Second, when the price of corn increases, farmers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere who use the crop to feed livestock look for cheaper alternatives, like wheat or sorghum. These alternatives, in turn, become more expensive.
Another factor is the improved standard of living in rapidly developing countries. The demand for foodstuffs like meat and dairy is on the rise in China and India, sending costs skyward not only for those items but for the grain used as cattle feed. Finally, weather deserves a share of the blame. Australia has seen bad droughts six years running, and last year there was major flooding in Argentina. Since both of these countries are major dairy exporters, milk and butter are pricier than they used to be.
We're on a bit of a sustainability run this week -- made mozarella (finally! not ricotta!) last night, and Lisa baked some nine-grain bread. We're taking turns wandering out to the grill today to check on the sap that's boiling down. Figured we'd best do something when the sap stash got to 64 gallons. Which, depressingly enough, is good for two gallons of maple syrup.
I'm thinking it'll come in handy, though, when sugar prices go up. Gotta have something to flavor the border collie, who's about to be roasted for crimes against man and ducks.
So why are food prices higher? I suppose Slate has a pretty reasonable explanation, although there's not nearly enough recriminations and accusations involved:
explainer
Why Are Global Food Prices Soaring?
Energy costs, investment in ethanol, bad weather in Australia …By Juliet LapidosPosted Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 6:31 PM ET
The U.N. World Food Program's executive director told the Los Angeles Times that "a perfect storm" is hitting the world's hungry, as demand for aid surges while food prices skyrocket. Cost increases are affecting most countries around the globe, with prices for dairy products up 80 percent, cooking oils up 50 percent, and grains up 42 percent from 2006 to 2007. (For more specifics on how prices have changed since 2000, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has a handy chart.) Why are groceries getting so expensive all at once?
Energy prices. The global food system is heavily dependent on petroleum, not just for shipping goods from one location to another but also for production, packaging, and processing. As the price of oil rises—crude oil is currently hovering at around $100 a barrel—so do the costs of planting, harvesting, and delivering food.
High oil prices have also created a secondary problem: The burgeoning interest in biofuels. In 2006, 14 percent of the total corn crop in the United States was converted into ethanol; by 2010, that figure will rise to 30 percent. When the production of corn intended for human or animal consumption decreases, prices go up. Why does this local shift in policy affect food prices around the world? The diversion of American corn into energy has a ripple effect for two reasons: First, the United States is the world's largest corn exporter, accounting for about 40 percent of global trade, so when corn-as-food production decreases here, costs go up everywhere. Second, when the price of corn increases, farmers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere who use the crop to feed livestock look for cheaper alternatives, like wheat or sorghum. These alternatives, in turn, become more expensive.
Another factor is the improved standard of living in rapidly developing countries. The demand for foodstuffs like meat and dairy is on the rise in China and India, sending costs skyward not only for those items but for the grain used as cattle feed. Finally, weather deserves a share of the blame. Australia has seen bad droughts six years running, and last year there was major flooding in Argentina. Since both of these countries are major dairy exporters, milk and butter are pricier than they used to be.
We're on a bit of a sustainability run this week -- made mozarella (finally! not ricotta!) last night, and Lisa baked some nine-grain bread. We're taking turns wandering out to the grill today to check on the sap that's boiling down. Figured we'd best do something when the sap stash got to 64 gallons. Which, depressingly enough, is good for two gallons of maple syrup.
I'm thinking it'll come in handy, though, when sugar prices go up. Gotta have something to flavor the border collie, who's about to be roasted for crimes against man and ducks.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Flaming Chickens, Hayseeds, Smart Collies and Rising Sap
Busy weekend; cranked out another half-gallon or so of maple syrup. Hauled trash to the dump, mailed syrup to family, cleaned house, bought bulk at the co-op. Took John to school Sunday morning at 6a to catch a van for a field trip to New York.
Headed out aroudn 8p Monday to pick John up from school and smelled something ... strange. Strange and gross. Wandered around the basement door, trying to figure out what the hell. It most likely wasn't the car (at least, shouldn't have been, since (a) the car hadn't been used all day, and (b) I put an un-Godly amount of money into fixing it). It wasn't anything inside the house, since the smell didn't get really bad until I stepped outside.
And I could see a little bit of smoke, even though it was dark.
I called Lisa, and she sniffed around before pointing at the small coop, where smoke was clearly coming out. I ran to get a big bucket of water. Very bad images of burnt chicken, etc. Got lucky, though -- a red heat lamp had fallen directly into the feeder, and the nasty smell was burning poultry feed.
Kicked snow all over the feeder and hauled it out of the coop. Ran to pick up John from the school, apologized for being late. I'm guessing a lot of my urban acquaintances wouldn't have teachers who understood perfectly that a chicken coop fire could be an issue.
I spoke with John:
"How was New York?"
"It was a good opportunity to get the hay out of my hair."
"With your hair, who could tell?"
"I'm speaking metaphorically."
Ran three miles this morning, and it's getting hot. Supposed to get up to 61 today. So after my run, I put on mud boots and sloshed down to the maples. Had 17 gallons of sap, which means we'll easily make another gallon. Yikes.
The collies will miss the snow. Their favorite game (besides the ever-popular "Chase the Duck") is to leap into the air and snap at kicked snow. We played it for a bit yesterday while I was walking to the faucet to get water for the chickens. I stopped to fill up the water bucket. Stink and Pepper just stood there, quivering. After a minute, Stink got impatient. He put his nose into the snow, flicked it into the air, and jumped up. He looked at me for a minute, then did it again, a couple more times.
I kicked snow up, and they jumped. You could see the thought bubble in Stink's head:
"What a clever human!"
Lots and lots to do with the day job.
Headed out aroudn 8p Monday to pick John up from school and smelled something ... strange. Strange and gross. Wandered around the basement door, trying to figure out what the hell. It most likely wasn't the car (at least, shouldn't have been, since (a) the car hadn't been used all day, and (b) I put an un-Godly amount of money into fixing it). It wasn't anything inside the house, since the smell didn't get really bad until I stepped outside.
And I could see a little bit of smoke, even though it was dark.
I called Lisa, and she sniffed around before pointing at the small coop, where smoke was clearly coming out. I ran to get a big bucket of water. Very bad images of burnt chicken, etc. Got lucky, though -- a red heat lamp had fallen directly into the feeder, and the nasty smell was burning poultry feed.
Kicked snow all over the feeder and hauled it out of the coop. Ran to pick up John from the school, apologized for being late. I'm guessing a lot of my urban acquaintances wouldn't have teachers who understood perfectly that a chicken coop fire could be an issue.
I spoke with John:
"How was New York?"
"It was a good opportunity to get the hay out of my hair."
"With your hair, who could tell?"
"I'm speaking metaphorically."
Ran three miles this morning, and it's getting hot. Supposed to get up to 61 today. So after my run, I put on mud boots and sloshed down to the maples. Had 17 gallons of sap, which means we'll easily make another gallon. Yikes.
The collies will miss the snow. Their favorite game (besides the ever-popular "Chase the Duck") is to leap into the air and snap at kicked snow. We played it for a bit yesterday while I was walking to the faucet to get water for the chickens. I stopped to fill up the water bucket. Stink and Pepper just stood there, quivering. After a minute, Stink got impatient. He put his nose into the snow, flicked it into the air, and jumped up. He looked at me for a minute, then did it again, a couple more times.
I kicked snow up, and they jumped. You could see the thought bubble in Stink's head:
"What a clever human!"
Lots and lots to do with the day job.
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