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.