Jobs, Clean Energy, Economic Investment… What’s Not To Like?

As the year last turned and uncertainties about the ridiculous state of politics in America left everyone wondering what new obstructionist tactics congressional Republicans would try following re-election of Obama, the biggest players in the wind energy began laying off workers. Yet somehow the congress did manage to extend production tax credits (though they sure enough didn’t manage much else) for another year. So the push is on again for everyone from manufacturers to installers and the industry is hiring again.

In fact, the wind energy industry now boasts more than 75,000 workers in 43 states! Illinois alone has nearly 200 companies involved in wind energy. And the technology is steadily improving as research into energy storage technologies is expanding, despite the status quo still being supported by government subsidies where fossil fuels receive $50 in direct subsidies for every single $1 wind energy receives. Yet despite this glaring backwards discrepancy, states are now lining up to get in on the action.

Iowa was chosen by MidAmerican Energy for a $1.9 billion investment in wind – which is the biggest single economic investment in the state ever made. Nebraska lost out on a $1.5 billion dollar facility for Facebook because Facebook chose to go with Iowa’s greater commitment to wind. So the Nebraska state legislature is promoting a bill that would encourage wind development to a much greater extent than the state has done in the past.

As energy producers invest ever more in wind, wherever in the nation the wind blows best, it’s not just the industrial chain, local tax bases and employment numbers that benefit. Landowners who lease the land upon which wind turbines are erected also receive payment. Just for MidAmerican’s current expansion Iowa landowners will receive payments totalling ~$3.2 million per year. For rural homesteaders and family farmers, these lease agreements could make a big difference in making it or breaking it. Even better, what is leased is the square footage of the reinforced concrete pad that holds the wind tower, plus the hole into bedrock to which it is anchored. It’s not difficult to plow around the pads, or skip the right of way to the pad allowing maintenance. In other words, Iowa farmers can still grow lots of corn, minus the pad and access track, which pays far better than corn. Win-win all around.

Thus far Iowa boasts about $4 billion in total wind investment, with more than 1,200 wind turbines up and spinning. Then there are the manufacturing, installation and maintenance jobs associated. Let’s face it – all our states could use such investments and all those jobs, not to mention the clean energy that comes with. Thus I think it’s important that homesteaders, small farmers, rural governments and state houses get involved in promoting the technology.

For that purpose June 15th has been designated Global Wind Day . Check it out, and see if there’s a planned event in your area or region to celebrate. If not, drop the GWD folks a line and get busy organizing a nice day in the country with pot luck picnic at a wind installation near you – or just in a lovely spot where the wind blows all the time, so your friends and neighbors can come to appreciate the abundance of ‘free’ kinetic energy resource we could be using to generate electricity.

Mountaintop Removal – This Water Don’t Wash

Sierra Club

Mountaintop Removal [MTR] mining – the literal destruction of entire mountains and watersheds in order to scrape coal off the ground – brought more than 100 Appalachian residents impacted by MTR and the coal companies’ total disregard for the environment to Washington, D.C. this past week to bring their situation to the attention of the Obama Administration, Congress, and the ever lax EPA. They brought along some water…

Look at the Sierra Club photo above. See those jugs full of some kind of dark liquid? No, it’s not iced tea, or apple cider, or even coffee. It’s the water that comes out of faucets in areas impacted by nearby MTR operations. It’s poison, containing as much as 17 times the allowable concentration of arsenic along with coliform bacteria, dissolved solids, and other very nasty stuff.

King Coal has ruled in Appalachia for generations, but for a great many it is way past time for them to leave. The mountainous region is notable for being perpetually ‘depressed’ economically, but is so beautiful and abundant that people from all over the world have made it a favorite vacation spot for years. Some of the states impacted by MTR boast tourism industries worth billions of dollars annually, but in order to keep that money flowing into local coffers those tourists need to have beautiful mountain views and clean water to drink. MTR is destroying both.

The Institute for Southern Studies covered the protest, as did Daily Kos via the Sierra Club.

“The water is poison and I came to D.C. to see if the federal government will do what the local, state, and regional governments have failed to do – which is to bring us an emergency supply of water for the 100 families in my community,” says Jimmy [Hall of Letcher County, Kentucky]

The protesters called on Congress to support the Clean Water Protection Act [CWPA], introduced by congressman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) with 45 co-sponsors, including Jim Moran and Bobby Scott of Virginia and John Yarmuth of Kentucky. Yarmuth is also sponsoring the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Act, which would impose a moratorium on permits to coal companies for MTR mines until the Dept. of Health and Human Services has completed health studies of the people effected. That bill has 27 co-sponsors.

The momentum is growing. Last year 21 protesters were arrested during sit-ins at congressional offices, as those who wish to save the unique and beautiful environment of southern Appalachia keep coming back to demand action of a government determined to remain deaf, dumb and blind to the destruction. Just last month a group of independent scientists and doctors called for an immediate halt to the practice of MTR until a clear understanding of the health effects is in hand. D.C. isn’t listening to them either, apparently.

Meanwhile, people are dying to support the most rapacious destruction of Mother Earth that callous industry has yet invented. In Kentucky the state determined after tests that the water was absolutely unfit for any purpose other than flushing toilets, but their industry-captured Division of Mine Reclamation and Enforcement [DMRE] told the residents to ignore the test results, just filter out the dirt and it’s perfectly safe to drink and bathe in. As a result the grim numbers of people dying of cancers, heart disease, skin and organ issues has continued to rise.

To help in this effort to stop Mountaintop Removal mining, please visit the Sierra Club website’s petition page and let your voice be heard. Thanks to all who love the land and want to preserve something of it for our own enjoyment and future generations.

Links:

ISS: Carrying Water for an end to mountaintop removal
Appalachian Families Denied Clean Water
Sierra Club Petition
Ison Rock in Virginia Saved… for now
WLJ: Mountaintop Removal articles

The Afikomen Project

The First All-Wild Foods Market in North America

My homestead is located in the Katuah Bioregion, which has the distinction of being the richest temperate ecosystem on planet earth. The bioregion includes the mountain areas of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, southwestern Virginia and northern Georgia. The word is an adaptation of a Cherokee name for the “mother town,” Kituhwa.”

This time of year the bioregion offers some spectacular wild foods that have long had an important place in the culture of southern Appalachia, such as ramps, morel mushrooms, chickweed, poke salat, violet flowers and other yummy delicacies free for the foraging. This year a new food market has opened up in Asheville that specializes exclusively in the wildings that are so popular in this region. The Asheville Wild Foods Market is open on Saturdays from April through November 2nd at the Asheville City Market on South Charlotte Street. This last week there were ramps, chickweed, redbud, violet, quince, wild mustard flowers, garlic mustard greens, Japanese knotweed and dandelions. Next week the morels should be coming in… and there’s just nothing like a morel, fiddlehead and ramp omelet made with fresh duck eggs!

The Wild Foods Market is sponsoring a public education program called Afikomen Project, primarily aimed at children (and their interested parents), teaching them how to forage for food and for profit by offering their gleanings for sale at the Saturday market. It’s designed to be a local, closed-loop economy and such projects could be spread throughout the bioregion to help combat chronic hunger and unemployment.

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Yum! New “Veterinary Drug” For Dinner!

Many of us well-informed homesteaders already know about genetically engineered foods and are committed to producing edibles in our carefully tended fields and pastures that do not ‘enjoy’ the much-touted ‘benefits’ of genes from other species or genera to make them resistant to harsh chemical herbicides, or make them express bacterial toxins humans have never before been exposed to or industrial chemicals and/or drugs, or to make them last longer on grocery store shelves. Some of us have also been paying attention to the development of genetically engineered animals, with an eye to how we’ll avoid them when they reach market.

So the term “Frankenfish” is somewhat familiar. These GMO salmon have been given a whole extra set of chromosomes so they’ll grow to market size six times faster than wild salmon do. AquaBounty Technologies is the Boston-based company that developed this triploid salmon, and our ever-compliant (to Big Ag) FDA is now ready to approve them for human consumption. Which is a first in the murky world of GMO ‘science’.

The word “triploid” means the fish have three complete sets of chromosomes instead of the natural two. This purportedly produces only female fish, and those are sterile to protect against the possibility of interbreeding with wild salmon if any of them manage to get loose. Most of us recall the film Jurassic Park when the stars discover that the all-female GMO dinosaurs defied the scientists and started breeding anyway. But the most outrageous part of this corporate mad science is how the food regulation agency of the U.S. government is classifying these Frankenfish so we the people can eat them in good conscience.

Unlike countries in Europe that drafted new laws for regulating GMO foods, the U.S. government – specifically the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] has avoided that process at the behest of the Big Ag/Big Pharma/Big Chemical corporations that produce genetically modified versions of what used to be perfectly good food. Here in America, the FDA will be approving genetically engineered animals for human consumption as veterinary drugs!

When a new animal drug is approved, it is only approved for production in a specific facility. Therefore, if you invent a new pill for cats, you submit data on its production in a specific facility, and you receive approval to produce it only in that facility. If you decide to build eight more factories because your drug is so popular, you must go back to the FDA to receive approval for the eight new facilities.

Oh. So, they can only grow these Frankenfish at one facility. That will be in Prince Edward Island in Alaska, in a facility that will produce the eggs. Which will then be shipped to Panama to be grown into edible-sized fish, which will then be shipped to U.S. supermarkets and marketed without any labeling to distinguish it from actual fish-fish that naturally inhabit our planet’s waters.

Senator Mark Begich of Alaska has been a tireless opponent of GMO salmon, which is seen as a threat to one of his state’s most important commercial products. He has been finding out the hard way just how difficult it is to go up against the gigantic giga-corps that produce GMOs – companies like Monsanto, Dupont, Sygenta and others. Begich and his fellow Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski have been working hard to ensure that salmon products from Frankenfish are labeled clearly, though the GMO industry has been spectacularly successful in preventing the proper labeling of genetically engineered foods. Now, apparently, it’s perfectly okay with the FDA for people to consume veterinary drugs disguised as food, sans labeling.

There is still a little time to submit comments about Frankenfish to the FDA before they sneak it into our food supply as an animal drug. Here’s a link to the FDA website page for comments to this subject:

Regulations.Gov

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to let your Senators and Congresscritters know you want them to be on our side in this nutty corporate-governmental con game.

USDA Undermines State Food Sovereignty

Food and Community Self-Governance

Many of us are aware of the machinations the US Department of Agriculture [USDA] uses to balance its job of regulating the production of food with the self-serving no-regulation desires of Big Agribiz. We are also aware of the Revolving Door that puts industry bigwigs into government positions to serve the dictates of industry over the needs of the people.

Recently small farmers and community members in Blue Hill, Maine passed a “Local Food and Community Self-Governance” ordinance that allows farmers to sell their food directly to the public. Several other states are contemplating similar laws at the state Department of Agriculture level to get CSAs [Community Supported Agriculture], buying cooperatives and other local food distribution systems exempted from draconian USDA regulations to combat the notable public health dangers presented by industrial agriculture’s filthy practices and blatant disregard for the safety of the nation’s food supply.

As small farmer/producers know very well, the kind of food safety risks the industrial system engenders simply don’t apply to the local small producers who deal directly with their neighbors in their quest to buy wholesome food that doesn’t have to be transported across the country or world to get to the table. Yet small farmers are being put out of business by being forced to bear the huge costs of regulations designed for, say, big CAFOs and poultry operations known to spread deadly bacterial infections. The ordinances being passed – often unanimously – by cities and towns allow things like the sharing of USDA licensed slaughter/prep operations, direct sales of raw milk and fresh eggs, and the marketing of fruits and vegetables locally at farmer’s markets and grocery stores without having to have it all inspected by state or federal operatives first.

…Maine’s State Department of Agriculture is challenging one of the local ordinances by suing a dairy farmer. Community members are reaching out to friends in surrounding counties and national food justice coalitions, asking them to call in and urge the state to drop the suit. The case has drawn national attention. Meanwhile, organizers from far and wide are watching closely, hoping to launch similar initiatives in their own communities.

U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), an organic farmer, co-sponsored an amendment in 2010 to national legislation increasing FDA inspections and reporting requirements also supported by more than 150 food groups which exempts small farms from the requirements. “Foodborne illnesses don’t come from family agriculture,” Tester said.

Here are some very good resources for homesteaders who want to follow developments and/or possibly work to enact ordinances locally to protect local food and family farms in their regions.

Harvesting Justice
USDA, Inc.
Small Farms Fight Back
Other Worlds

And do check the Wise Living Journal’s many informative articles (with links!) under the Farm Policy tag:

“They should all be ashamed.”
Food Safety Jeopardized by ‘Ag-Gag’ Laws
Land Mines in the 2013 Farm Bill
Disrupting the Way We Buy Produce
The GW Issue Few Wish to Hear
Disconcerting: Tom Vilsack at USDA

“They should all be ashamed.”

How Monsanto’s Rider Got Into The Funding Bill

Honestly. Nothing should surprise us anymore about how far the agribiz giants and our erstwhile “public servants” in government will go to sneak truly bad laws into place when nobody’s looking. This time it was a last-moment rider attached to important legislation to fund the government for the next six months, something that went entirely unnoticed by all but a small handful of congresscritters when the votes came in.

It’s called the “Monsanto Rider” and it’s sneaky as hell. Inserted in Section 735 of the government funding bill, the rider makes it legal for farmers to go ahead and grow any genetically engineered crop, even though it hasn’t been approved by the USDA/FDA or is actively being challenged in court. No one in Congress claimed credit for the rider, and the rider itself doesn’t name an author. Most Senators and Congress Members expressed surprise when asked about it, said they had no idea it was in there when they voted.

Which is about as believable as anything else our criminal class of professional liars and prostitutes (a.k.a. politicians) have to say for themselves whenever they get caught screwing the American people. And while it’s true that Missouri Senator Roy Blunt has long been tete-a-tete with Missouri-based Monsanto to draft specific sneaky pro-biotech and meat industry legislation, Monsanto isn’t the only beneficiary of the new laws protecting unapproved GMO cultivation. The meat packing industry got some big goodies too, which is a symptom of the industrial consolidation at the top of the food industry ladder that has been going on for some time.

The reason Big Ag needed some sneaky legislation that would allow an end-run around required testing and approval for genetically engineered crops is that the first generations of GMOs designed to express specific insecticidal toxins and/or be resistant to certain herbicides have resulted in insects developing resistance to the toxins and weeds developing tolerance to the herbicides. So new cultivars designed to express new toxins and be resistant to more poisonous herbicides need to be rushed to the farmers quickly. Without having to take the time to win approval. One might be tempted to wonder at what point our food supply expresses so many toxins that we get poisoned by it, but that’s never been a question Monsanto, et al. have been concerned about. They don’t eat the stuff (Monsanto’s corporate offices serve organic food in the cafeteria). It’s mostly for cattle, pigs and poultry anyway…

In the end Big Ag got everything it wanted, and the lonely objections voiced by Montana Senator Jon Tester – a farmer and organic producer – made no difference.

…Not only does this ignore the Constitution’s idea of separation of powers, but it also lets genetically-modified crops take hold across the country–even when a judge finds it violates the law,” he declared.

In his remarks, Tester stressed that the source of the rider is murky–there’s no way to find out which senator inserted it. “I don’t know who authored this provision,” he said. “Maybe someone in Washington knows, but no one is willing to put their name to it. And that’s a shame.”

Can’t wait for the new farm bill we’ll be treated to this fall. It ought to be a doozy.

Spring House-Freshing

Ah, spring! The college kids are off the entire week for spring break, but the weather isn’t cooperating at all. It’s freezing at night so I can’t yet plant out my seedlings, it’s snowing right now despite it being the last week of March – and this is supposed to be The South – and we’re all so sick of splitting firewood and the stuffy been-shut-in-too-long blahs.

So I’ve spent the week attending to those spring cleaning jobs that always get planned but hardly ever actually get done – dusting the walls and picture frames, trying to find all the boxes for the gazillion DVDs we’ve watched through the long winter and nobody ever returns to their rightful containers, scrubbing the rock wall of its accumulated dust and mold, using the upholstery brush on the vacuum cleaner to de-dust the books in the library. Heck, I ever managed to clean out and re-align all the photo albums and family Bibles from where they’d been scattered through the season by people flipping through old photos or looking up the Christmas and Easter narratives to read aloud.

Since it’s still too cold to open all the windows and doors to catch a breath of honest spring air, let’s talk about ways to give the household a sweeter and fresher smell without the fresh air (or the pollen it contains). We all know how great the house can smell while something scrumptious is cooking, and some of us are quite familiar with the practice of adding a little candle scenting and/or flower petals and/or spice to the water kept atop the wood stove or radiator to humidify the dry heat. Some people do the same thing with pottery pots in a votive candle contraption, or simply put a concoction in an open pan on a back burner of the stove over low heat, and these type of air freshening means work fine to get and keep a nice welcoming scent in the air.

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Food Safety Jeopardized by ‘Ag-Gag’ Laws

National Public Radio’s Brooke Gladstone interviewed environmental journalist Will Potter last week about a sudden spate of “Ag-Gag” bills in several state legislatures that would make it a crime to expose wrongdoing in livestock operations gathered via undercover means.

Such legislation threatens food safety for everyone, as well as the very concept of freedom of the press, enshrined in the first amendment to the U.S. constitution. Such undercover investigations of poultry, beef, dairy and hog production operations have long been the only means of prodding effective enforcement of food safety and animal welfare regulations that responsible agencies of government are always eager to ignore. In 1987 the CBS investigative program 60 Minutes aired their hidden camera footage of gross food safety violations in the poultry industry, thereby vindicating USDA whistleblower Hobart Bartley, who had been ignored and threatened by his bosses when he warned of unsanitary conditions at a Simmons Industries poultry processing plant in Missouri. Diane Sawyer called it “fecal soup.” We learned about the very dangerous practice of slaughtering ‘downer cows’ during the Mad Cow epidemic in Britain, also through the practice of undercover investigations of slaughterhouses. The practice has proven itself valuable given the reluctance of companies involved in the raising, slaughter and handling of livestock foods are notably reluctant to share their inhumane and often illegal practices to the press.

So the producers have ordered state lawmakers in 18 states to provide them with these ‘Ag-Gag’ laws to criminalize reporters and whistleblowers who threaten to expose their dirty deeds to the public. And those state lawmakers are busy-busy doing just that. Such state laws were introduced in Florida, Iowa, Minnesota and New York in 2011, and in 2012 similar bills were introduced in six more states. So far in 2013 nine new ag-gag bills have been introduced in New Hampshire, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee and New Mexico. Findings that the original ag-gag bills were blatant violations of the first amendment right to freedom of the press, a new tactic is being employed this year to get around that little constitutional issue. Instead of making undercover investigation itself illegal, the legislators have drafted wording that makes lying on an employment application (reporters sometimes seek employment in the target industries so they can do their investigating) a crime. This way factory farms and slaughterhouses can simply ask on their applications if the applicant is affiliated with any news organization, labor union or animal protection group. Handy-dandy!

No one should be surprised that these ag-gag laws follow on the model law drafted in 2002 by the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], an organization that designs and drafts self-protection and promotion legislation for corporate interests. Same folks were responsible for all those voter-ID disenfranchisement laws in 2011 that tried so hard to keep minorities from being able to vote. They’re also responsible for the NRA-drafted “Stand Your Ground” laws that have been used more than once to absolve murderers of any wrongdoing. The latest versions of ag-gag making it illegal to photograph or video a farm or anything on a farm without the owner’s permission would, hilariously, make a lot of popular tourist “pastoral view” spots off limits to tourists as well as residents.

‘Ag Gag’ Bills Would Stop Undercover Animal Abuse Investigations

I urge all readers in states with pending ag-gag legislation to get busy writing to their legislators and governors in protest, to pen letters to the editor in local and regional newspapers, and talk up the subject amongst neighbors and area acquaintences that share your commitment to sustainable production and humane treatment of animals.

Getting to Know Your Duck Eggs

I’d originally wanted a goose, to be a 24-7 watch-critter over the chickens I was planning to get. The little Chilean Araucana chickens who lay blue or blue-green eggs. My family doesn’t eat all that many eggs, but I figured some naturally colored ones would sell well down at the Saturday tailgate market.

But then I remembered last time the younger grandkids were visiting that geese are large and notoriously mean. So when my husband suggested getting the kids a couple of duck-peeps from Tractor Supply might let us end up with at least one grown Pekin duck, which at an average of 10 pounds would be big enough to help the Border Collie keep chickens safely herded. Besides, I’m planning to get that Border Collie a sheep for Christmas for his very own, who he can herd on command to any portion of the yard or disc golf course that needs mowing this week (plan, plan, plan I say!). Needless to say, the sheep was not forthcoming at Christmas.

What we found ourselves with months later were not one but two grown Pekins, both of them female. Once they started laying they haven’t stopped, and I get 2-4 eggs a day out of their night-coop when I let them out to range in the morning. Some of those are double-yolkers, but that’s better than when they first began laying and hadn’t yet figured out about making shells. Let me just say that shell-less eggs are plenty weird.

I’ve been giving duck eggs away to every neighbor and/or friend who hasn’t yet said ‘no’. Half a dozen here, half a dozen there, still not making much of a dent in the accumulating hoard. Grandson makes egg salad once a week, but that doesn’t help all that much either. He takes a dozen over the mountain to an organic food store, when he can remember. The other grandson has taken to trading a few duck eggs to the family that runs the Chinese take-out in the next town over for fried rice and an entree. But still the duck egg stash grows and grows. I’m keeping them six to a cut-off half-gallon milk cartons so I know which are oldest and which freshest. They’re taking up most of the top shelf of the ‘fridge. Unrefrigerated duck eggs are good for a month, six weeks at least if they’re refrigerated. Older eggs have less albumin in the whites, thus work better in some egg dishes.

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Want to Market Value-Added Products?

Was listening to a local Western North Carolina radio station while attempting not to display too many symptoms of the viral gnarl my grandkids gifted me with last weekend, and heard a fascinating interview with the PR person from an outfit I’d not heard about before, AdvantageWest Economic Development Group.

Well, I’d heard there was something going on with entrepreneur development, some CSA and food product ventures, and Agritourism. Things that may well appeal to homesteaders looking for ways to further develop their chosen way of life and perhaps increase annual income from the effort. What I hadn’t heard was that under one private/governmental umbrella there is comprehensive and coordinated development help available for advanced manufacturing, tourism and film development, green building and renewable energy projects as well.

I also discovered that similar regional economic development commissions – chartered by state legislatures – operate in other states too, perhaps yours. The list of corporate sponsors and funding ‘partners’ for this commission is a long list of established regional businesses, banks and credit unions, colleges, local governments, county governments and development partnerships, medical facilities, media, and divisions of state governmental departments.

I already have ready markets for fresh culinary herbs, duck eggs, wine and balsamic vinegars, hot sauces, medicinal herbal preparations, etc. Three breweries set up facilities in this area last year, so I’m going to be growing hops with ready markets this year too. But Advantage West offers classes and workshops that come with advice and information about state and federal regulations regarding food production, those “value-added” products like wine, jam, condiments, sauces, etc. that bring in more money than raw produce ever will. It also allows start-ups to book the facility for production by the hour, where products can go from raw ingredients to finished and labeled bottles/jars or other containers, and come out the door having passed FDa and/or USDA inspection. There is also a full production facility with the same type of education and hoop-jumping perks for ‘Natural Products’ herbal preparations, teas, and cosmetic/skin preparations.

Best of all, the group has an Entrepreneurial Development arm that offers education, mentoring and networking help, and will get qualified entrepreneurial business plans before groups of local and regional investors to raise necessary capital. Readers will enjoy the story of one of Advantage West’s Blue Ridge Food Ventures success stories, Kelly Davis and her Lusty Monk mustards. There’s a lite honey mustard “Altar Boy,” the original fresh-ground “Original Sin,” and a spicy hot chipotle mustard “Burn in Hell.”

Homesteaders, once they’ve got their ducks in a row on what, exactly, they’re doing with their homes, land, outbuildings and resources, will be looking for a way to “make a living” by the way they’re living. These private/governmental regional economic development projects can be a big help. They aren’t the only resources available, but they do tend to cover more ground than the extension services or other entities dealing with specific issues of land use, crop planning, livestock handling, etc. It behooves us to check into these things, and use them if we can to secure our way of life into the future.