http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1737

 

President-Elect Obama: Please Support Organic Food & Farming

A likely turning point in history took place on November 4th with the election of Barack Obama, a politician who has publicly voiced his support for family farms and organic agriculture, among other progressive positions. Organic consumers and farmers now have an incredible opportunity to shape the future of federal farm and food policy.

President-Elect Obama is in the process of formulating policy, assembling his transition team, and considering nominees for Secretary of Agriculture, among other important positions. The Secretary of Agriculture is responsible for directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its $90 billion annual budget, including the National Organic Program, food stamp and nutrition programs, and agriculture subsidies. Obama throughout his campaign, and since his election, has stressed that he wants to hear from the public in order to formulate his policies. Let’s all take him up on this invitation.

From Michael Pollan's open letter to the next Farmer in Chief:

"the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em

People contact me all the time with questions about the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the school where I received my training to practice Health Counseling.  Is it for real?  Would it be a good fit for me?  Is it too good to be true?  What's it really like and is it worth the tuition?  What about the experience?  Is it really as fabulous and exciting as they make it sound?

If you're wondering whether the school is as good as it sounds, my short answer to you is YES!  I loved my time at the school, and I found it to be an incredible experience.  And yes, Joshua is every bit as committed, caring, and dedicated to the school's mission to "play a crucial role in improving the health and happiness of Americans and through that process create a ripple effect that transforms the world", as he says he is. 

For all of you who've expressed an interest in IIN, and for those who are just curious or just thinking about it, I thought I would post a little more information about the experience and give you the reasons why I highly recommend the school:

1.  My experience at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition was of a topnotch education.  I thoroughly enjoyed Joshua's informative, funny, brilliant and unbiased approach to where America is around food today.  And I loved hearing from some of the best and brightest minds in health care today, from Dr. Mehmet Oz (Oprah's favorite doctor) to Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, Barry Sears, Sally Fallon and many, many others.  I realized early on that while I could hear these speakers in public venues, hearing from them at IIN was a different experience.  They were speaking to us not as lay people, but as health care students and professionals.  They shared their own experiences of entering the health care arena, and they very candidly shared their views of today's problems in the health care systems.  (They were able to do this without fear of offending sponsoring food and pharma interests because IIN accepts no funding or sponsorship from such interests.)

2.  IIN is not just a school, it's a movement.  What does that mean?  It means the school is involved in many charitable and institutional projects for improving how America eats, from improving the school lunch program, to joining with government officials to improve access to healthy foods for New York's most underserved neighborhoods.  If you are looking for avenues to get involved in a community that excels in giving back and can foster your opportunities to give back to your community, then this is a place for you.  You'll have no shortage of opportunities to get involved at the local, regional and national level.  And if that's not your cup of tea, read on for all the other reasons I recommend the school.

3.  At IIN, you meet lots of bright people, who are of like mind.  IIN attracts students from all walks of life.  In my class the youngest was 18 and the oldest was 75.  The school honors both these age groups for what they uniquely bring to the educational experience of all the students.  The common denominator at IIN is a passion for food, nutrition, health and helping others.  It's a rare opportunity to be immersed in a community of hundreds of people with similar goals and dreams, taking their own unique path to realizing those goals and dreams.  It is a wave of support that will continue to carry you forward for years to come, if you let it.  And the school provides ongoing support through the immersion program (free second year of advanced training for those who qualify) and lot's of online support via the OEF (online education forum) where you connect not only with teachers and mentors, but with all your fellow students. 

4.  You get to enjoy all this in one of the great cities of the world, New York.  The venue where classes were held when I attended was the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle, in Rose Hall, a fabulous place to spend a weekend.  Next year's class will be held at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, another world class venue.  One of the things Joshua started doing with our class was to bring in the chef/owners of some of New York's healthiest eateries to speak to the class and introduce us to their restaurants.  It was then easy to find these restaurants after class and try them out.  My favorite was Pure Food and Wine, a completely raw food menu, prepared very gourmet.  Delicious, and so digestible!

5.  The school keeps adding more and more into the program every year.  The already comprehensive and thorough program is improved every year, with additions like providing students with web sites, business cards and brochures, so that there is one less obstacle to students getting out and starting to do this work.  One of the things that really impresses me about the school is this constant learning and improving of the program that is ongoing.

6.  The curriculum is broad and all encompassing.  For example, you learn about all the different dietary theories, from Macrobiotics and Ayurveda in the East, to The Zone and Atkins in the West.  It's very unusual for a school to allow all these conflicting ideas to be presented, discussed, and support you the student to form your own opinions.  If you disagree with what's presented, that's fine!  The main thing is to keep an open mind and explore what really works for your own unique needs.  And this education equips you to give guidance to your future clients on how to find their way through all the conflicting information out there about food today.

7.  You get vocational training and lot's of practical information about building your business, as part of the program.  You're not left wondering where to start once you graduate.   In fact, part of what attracted me to IIN was the solid business model that they teach in the curriculum.  It's a proven model with lot's of instruction on exactly how to make it work for you.  You can customize the model as you go along, so that by the time you graduate, you're following the simple instructions from the school, but beginning to develop your unique voice and learning how to present your unique contribution. 

I could go on, but you get the picture.  I whole-heartedly recommend the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and if you're considering enrolling, there's no time like the present!  As Mel Fisher (world's richest treasure salvor) used to say:  Today's the Day!

If you'd like to sign up, or learn more, you can call today at (877) 730-5444.  Be sure to mention that Laura Brown sent you, and tell them I said hi.  (If you call by September 15th, call me to hear about the special discount I'm authorized to offer you for your tuition.)

I hope I've answered your questions about IIN, and if you'd like to know more, feel free to call me at 770-953-0534.  As my friends know, I love to talk about this amazing school!

Candice Pert describes the human being as "more like a flickering flame than a hunk of meat".  I love this description as I find it freeing.  If I am too physical, too mired in the little miseries of being physical, I feel trapped and punished.  If I see myself as a flickering flame, I know I am free to change anything at anytime.  Like a flame, I am constantly changing, and so change is the norm, not the exception.  It is impossible not to change, and so the trick becomes to consciously choose how I will change and why.

If you are a candle, you have a form.  You can be tall and cylindrical, or short and wide, or round and smooth.  And you can melt, but you don't morph. 

But what shape is a flame?  We can say it is sorta wide at the base and tapering toward the top, but one breeze can make it the opposite - wide on top and narrow at the base.  One breeze can cause a flame to take many different shapes in the duration of one moment. 

To say that we are like a flickering flame is also to say that we contain a spark of the divine.  And so, we are not merely physical, but also go beyond the physical.  The flame that we are is what's behind the physical, illuminating it, shining through.

 

Dekalb community members are outraged at the destruction of Mason Mill Park's natural and wild habitat for the introduction of a 10 foot wide paved path. 

http://www.3forksalliance.org/

"Dekalb County wants to spend your million dollars on this un-needed and destructive project while cutting the budgets of the police and fire departments.
Dekalb County is using their legal staff to fight our efforts to stop or delay this project.
Dekalb county is willing to disregard any of their own laws to defend this project.
Dekalb County ordered PATH to begin clearing trees for this project based on an illegal contract.
Dekalb County thinks that they can make this problem go away by outlasting and outspending the opposition."

Visit the website above or the yahoo group for more information:   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/friendsofmasonmill/

 

A 124 page report from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production:

"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. Now, the agro-industrial complex—an alliance of agriculture

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."

http://www.ncifap.org/_images/PCIFAP%20FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

 

Good article on factory farming and its consequences from the NYTimes:

"A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=a9d80925d175d1b2&ex=1359090000&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

One of my visions for the world is that every home have a garden and people learn again how to grow their own food.  Michael Pollan, writing for the NY Times, provides a bunch of good reasons to do that: 

"Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs."  

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?pagewanted=1&sq=the%20green%20issue%20michael%20pollan&st=nyt&scp=2

Just joined the Advocacy Campaign Team at farmsanctuary.org.  Here is just one of the issues they are about:

Sentient Beings

"Many people have experienced the love, companionship, and joy of sharing their home and lives with an animal such as a dog or cat. But what many people don't realize is that all animals, including those used for food production, are just as sensitive, loving, and capable of suffering pain as our beloved companion animals.

Turkeys, chickens, cows, pigs, and other farm animals are sentient beings, no different from a dog or cat in their needs for comfort, companionship, food, water, and shelter. Yet, in the U.S. farm animals are treated horribly. They are kept in tiny cages or crates their entire lives, unable to walk, stretch their limbs, or even turn around. They are denied wholesome food and natural interaction with other members of their species. In fact, agribusiness treats these animals merely as tools of production.

If dogs, cats, or parakeets were treated the same way as factory-farmed egg-laying hens, pigs, or veal calves, those responsible would face animal cruelty charges. However, most states' anti-cruelty laws specifically exclude animals used in agricultural production.

The pain a pig feels is no different from the pain a dog feels. All animals, even those raised for food, are sentient beings, and deserve to be protected from cruelty. As philosopher Jeremy Bentham said, "The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?" Please join the campaign to have farm animals recognized as sentient beings in the United States, as has been done in Europe, and visit www.sentientbeings.org for more information."

From Farm Sanctuary (http://www.farmsanctuary.org):
"Factory farming is an attitude that regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit. In animal agriculture, this attitude has led to institutionalized animal cruelty, massive environmental destruction and resource depletion, and animal and human health risks."

The Meatrix - a cartoon, which is easier to watch, but still informative:
http://www.themeatrix.com/inside/
 
For more information on what you can do, visit:
http://www.tribeofheart.org/index.htm

What can you do to help end factory farming forever?  Please do what you can.  Don't get hung up on what you can't do. 

Carl and I recently returned from the 2008 Georgia Organics conference:  Quantum Leap - Taking Food and Farms Back to the Future.  Here are some highlights and local resources from the conference:

- 675 people attended this years conference, 284 people attending for the first time.  A sure sign that Georgia is interested in the organic movement.

- The organic banquet was wonderful as usual, with George Siemon delivering the keynote address.  Siemon is an organic farmer and leads Organic Valley, a markeing stronghold that unites over 1,200 family farms into the largest organic cooperative in the country. 

- We attended the "Big Farm, Little Farm" tour to visit two CSA farms:  Riverview Farm, a 250-member CSA, and Etcetera Farms, a one-man market garden supplying a small CSA through the winter.  It's great to learn from successful farmers "in the field". 

- A notable session on Saturday was "Unleashing Your Self-Sustaining Landscape" with Lindsey Mann of Sustenance Design and Kyla Zaro-Moore of Oakhurst Community Gardening Project.  The session covered planning and design for an edible landscape, recommending The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creazy.  Some recommendations included hardy kiwi vine on trellises, upside down wine bottles to line beds and biodynamic flow forms for your garden.  Resources for edible plants and seeds:

Willis Orchards
Hidden Springs Nursery
Buck Jones Nursery, Grayson, GA
Turtle Tree Organic and Biodynamic Seeds
High Mowing Organic Seeds

- Here are a few more local resources from attendees and exhibitors at the conference:

-- Bioneers Southeast - A Gathering of Innovative Minds.  April 11-13, 2008.

-- The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance - The Voice of Independent Agriculture. 

-- Low Mercury List - lists fish that are low in contaminants and are eco-friendly. 

-- Off the Vine - Home Produce Delivery in the Atlanta area. 

-- Sleepy Hollow Farm - Apothecary & Soap Shoppe (very nice quality medicinal herb products). 

"nothing supports the healing process like people being in joy and creativity, spending time with people they love, laughing, etc., and that nothing shuts it down like judgment, skepticism, and fear."

 

also:

 

"Everyone here is a master and we are all just fine."

 

The USDA is at it again.  And this time your ability to procure local fresh leafy greens is at stake.  According to the San Francisco Chronical's article, How Safe Is Your Salad? -

"New industry rules for leafy greens aim to protect consumers from E. coli.  Farmers and conservationists question the science behind the standards.

The consequences of the crisis fell heavily on California's Central Coast farmers, who are now being pressed by buyers to comply with a con{fllig}icting array of new food-safety measures, some of which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory agencies, are costly, scientifically unproven and environmentally harmful. Some violate state regulations, and may even be counterproductive to food safety. But the growers must follow these measures in order to market their crops to the larger contractors or handlers.

The new set of rules is jeopardizing the future of sustainable agriculture and of the habitat and clean water it supports, according to the Nature Conservancy's Monterey Project Director Chris Fischer: "Farmers and conservationists in California have been working together for more than 20 years to develop practices that help protect water quality and wildlife habitat, but since last fall, farmers have been under enormous pressure from their buyers to go the other direction. To stay in business, they are being forced to build miles of fences along streams, cut down trees and bulldoze ponds. Some actions, like creating bare-earth buffers along waterways, may actually increase the risk of contamination downstream." "

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/16/CMMQSSF81.DTL

 

see also:  http://www.caff.org/foodsafety/

"While all growers should use safe farming practices, the “one size fits all” approach of the rules does not work for family farms." 

Yesterday I signed up for classes at a Dahn Yoga Studio here in Atlanta, and wanted to share this great resource:

http://www.dahnyoga.com/

"Practitioners often begin a Yoga exercise class with a specific health goal in mind, such as increasing flexibility or reducing tension. However, it is not unusual for them to soon report additional benefits they had not anticipated such as improved sleep, reduction in food cravings, or an overall sense of well-being. In addition to the physical benefits of yoga, you may also experience enhancements to your mental and emotional well being."

One of the pleasures of living on the banks of the Chattahoochee river is the daily relationship you get to have with the wildlife that occupy the same territory.  This week, during an unseasonably warm summer's day in mid-winter, fishermen dot the river:  the human kind, with their innertube outfits and fly rods, and the winged variety. 

 

The blue herons have had a couple of good years lately, and the pair of birds that were seen flying together last summer had babies, which now are almost grown.  This week the five or six birds in this one heron family are cavorting over the river, playing chase, circling and wheeling low over the water in tandem.  It's an amazing sight.  While those herons play, their sibling stands quietly in the shallow rapidly flowing water near the bank, fishing for hours on end.  Nothing to do but wait for that shiny tasty fish.

 

It's a bird's life!

 

 

Could one conversation change your life?   more »

Eliot Coleman, a well-known advocate of organic farming today, suggests that

"The label "organic" has lost the fluidity it used to hold for the growers more concerned with quality than the bottom line, and consumers more concerned with nutrition than a static set of standards for labeling. "Authentic" is meant to be the flexible term "organic" once was. It identifies fresh foods produced by local growers who want to focus on what they are doing, instead of what they aren't doing...."

He talks about moving beyond the organic label which has been largely taken over by corporate interests. 

"'Authentic' growers are committed to supplying food that is fresh, ripe, clean, safe and nourishing. "Authentic" farms are genetically modified organism-free zones...With a definition that stresses local, seller-grown and fresh, there is little likelihood that large-scale marketers can steal this concept."

-Eliot Coleman

TMJ (tempora-mandibular-joint disorder) - here's  what works for me:

- night guard from dentist (plastic thingy that you wear at night in your mouth to prevent grinding your teeth)

- hot compresses over the painful area

- stop using cell phone - it seems to really aggravate symptoms,  creating earaches and TMJ.  I've used a headset succesfully too,  although an earbud probably just channels the radiation into the  ear (not good).

- passionflower tea for the pain.  you can buy  it in the health food store, and I'd use 2 teabags to make a strong  brew and drink 2 or 3 cups.  it's non-addictive, and considered  safe for long-term use as a sedative, painkiller, muscle relaxer...

"The decline of a true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in national culture as a whole.  When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they have lost their personality, and become the instruments of other people's wills."  - Robert Graves in an address at MIT, "On Human Culture" 1966

According to The Record, Mom did know what she was talking about:

"Eat your spinach."
How many times did you hear that while growing up. Or the vegetable may have been broccoli, green beans, squash or peas. In any event, mom was once again proven right, according to new research on vegetables and aging.
The study, conducted by the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, found that eating vegetables appears to help keep the brain young and may slow the mental decline sometimes associated with growing old.
Older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger at the end of the six-year study than those who ate few or no vegetables.

"Age is no bar to being a good mother and there is no reasonto prevent pensioners from becoming parents, researchers have found.

Women in their 50s and 60s who conceive after fertility treatment are just as capable of being good parents as women in their 30s and 40s, a study has shown.

The finding will bring hope to thousands of women who have delayed parenthood and seek help late in life to have a family." 

see The Independent for more

From: Alliance for Natural Healthhttp://www.alliance-natural-health.org/index.cfm?action=news&ID=234

New research carried out by researchers at the University of Michigan suggests that ginger could have an important role to play in treating ovarian cancer, reports the BBC.

The researchers used dissolved ginger powder, similar to that sold in shops, which they applied to ovarian cancer cells. In the study the ginger killed the cancer cells in each of the tests carried out.

Even more significantly, the ginger seemed to stop the cells from becoming resistant to treatment.

The US research demonstrated two types of cell death apoptosis, in essence cell suicide, and autophagy, a kind of self-digestion.

The reports author, Rebecca Lui, told the BBC: "Most ovarian cancer patients develop recurrent disease, that eventually becomes resistant to standard chemotherapy, which is associated with apoptosis."

"If ginger can cause autophagic cell death in addition to apoptosis, it may circumvent resistance to conventional chemotherapy."

But the researchers have warned that the results are "very preliminary" and that a lot more work needed to be done to establish if ginger, in either natural or drug form, can prevent or treat cancers in animals or people. The US team now plans to test to see if they can obtain similar results in animals.

In my work as an IT and business consultant, I can see the results of the hostile environment in which IT consultants and contractors often work.  Hostile to the body that is.  Ergonomically incorrect chairs, fast food, disdain for human needs, constant travel for some, all lead to burnout and predictable health problems.

So what's a person to do?  Here are a few tips for staying healthy on the high-pressure job:

- Take adequate breaks (especially from close work) - once every hour get up and walk around, go talk to someone, find reasons to move, take a walk, jump up and down a few times.  Any and all of these can increase circulation and breathing. 

- Learn exercises you can do at your desk (for example, Ten Ways to Exercise at Your Desk)

- Adopt a practice such as Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Yoga to keep your spine flexible - Qi Gong is my favorite exercise - low impact, fun to do, painless - flexibility helps your body absorb the impacts and stresses of daily life.

- Take a healthy lunch (or eat out healthy) - Thai food is often light, healthy and digestible.  For a new definition of healthy eating (taken from ancient wisdom - what's old is new again...) check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, "challenging the diet dictocrats" - backed up by solid research. 

- Drink soothing herbal teas to reduce stress and the possibility of inflammation (aching joints and back) - Passionflower vine is my first choice, although there are many herbal blends on the market that can help, and the fluids help you stay hydrated too.  See Traditional Medicinals for a good brand.

- Learn to meditate to help keep you calm, focused and centered - adopting a daily practice of meditation can lower blood pressure and improve many health markers.  It slows and deepens your breathing and pulse, while increasing available oxygen in your system.  And going deep into meditation can put you in touch with sources of inspiration and give you access to your own internal reserves. 

- Drink plenty of water and make sure you take in enough salt - dehydration contributes to problems from aching joints to high blood pressure.  most of us don't drink enough water to stay hydrated and with today's low-salt diets, we sometimes forget salt is absolutely needed by the body to function properly. 

- Slow down!  In Grayton Beach, Florida, a vacation spot, there's a sign at the end of the road that reads "Slow down - you've arrived!".  You've arrived - you got the job - sometimes the best way to keep it is to pace yourself - take time to think - pause - dare to be a heads-up consultant rather than a heads-down drone.  Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, kept a sign in his office displaying one word:  THINK!

 

Last weekend's CFSA Conference on Sustainable Agriculture heard a lot about this issue, as reported by the Organic Consumers Association:

"BOYCOTT THE SHAMELESS SEVEN--ORGANIC OUTLAWS LABELING FACTORY FARM MILK AS 'USDA ORGANIC'

While USDA bureaucrats drag their feet on closing key loopholes in national organic organic standards, retailers, wholesalers and major “organic” brands are continuing to sell milk and dairy products labeled as "USDA Organic, even though most or all of their milk is coming from factory farm feedlots where the animals have been brought in from conventional farms and are kept in intensive confinement, with little or no access to pasture.

The Organic Consumers Association is expanding its boycott of Horizon and Aurora organic dairy products to include five national "private label" organic milk brands supplied by Aurora, as well as two leading organic soy products, Silk and White Wave, owned by Horizon's parent company, Dean Foods. Its time to turn up the heat on the "Shameless Seven.

While thousands of organic consumers and a number of natural food stores and cooperatives have joined the boycott, major national large grocery retailers have ignored the boycott. "

Saw a story-teller at the CFSA sustainable agriculture conference this past weekend, name of Gaines Steer.  He did a delightful presentation on the elements of storytelling, acting them out and demonstrating as he went along.  Some of the elements:
- be demonstrative
- give things away
- involve the audience, honoring their wisdom
- evolve your own style, your own voice

A quote from his newspaper, The Pronoia Times:  "The universal conspiracy-of-goodness had its day in court and won a class action against the combined forces of evil, doom and gloom, badassness, and doodoo.  Without benefit of legal counsel, the paradigm shift pronoia, won a precendented battle to represent the proven possibility that the "universe is a benign conspiracy on our behalf". 

cheers.

USA Today brings us the arguments for and against putting unlabeled cloned animanls into our food supply.  What will they think of next? 

Patch Adams with his "love platform" has some interesting ideas for Iraq:

"As a doctor—and a clown—I’ve seen the tremendous healing power of love. The number one factor for surviving a heart attack is having a loving community. A study of 4,000 women with breast cancer found that with a little love—six hour-long support sessions—their survival rate increased five-fold. With the situation in Iraq imploding, tensions increasing with Iran and North Korea, and our government’s policies leading more and more people to hate Americans, it’s time to take the healing power of love to the global level. It’s time for a love platform.

What’s a love platform? It’s a set of policies that shows compassion for the elderly, the mentally ill, the homeless, the poor. It’s a platform that treats the environment with the loving respect it deserves.

A love platform would call for kissing, not killing. You switch two little letters and you get a whole new outlook on life. Kissing, not killing.

A love platform would put women in charge—women with loving instincts who would treat the world the way my mother treated my friends when they came to my house. She fed them, she wiped their noses, she was nice. That’s it. We’d have a policy called “Be Nice.” If everyone treated people like my mother did, we’d put an end to violence."

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

Mark Twain
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)

This weekend Carl and I attended the first Georgia farm aid concert at Whippoorwill  Hollow Farm in Walnut Grove, 30 miles from downtown Atlanta. 

Some of Atlanta's top chefs turned up to perform cooking demonstrations:

Chef Anne Quatrano from Bacchanalia
Michael Tuohy from Woodfire Grill
Pithya Kongthavorn from L'Thai Restaurant
Chef Scott Peacock from Watershed
Chef Tamar Adler from Farm255

Anne Quantrano's shrimp pilau with south carolina yellow rice was outrageously good.  The others weren't bad either, and the bluegrass/southern rock music was great.

We walked around the farm, enjoying the chickens, turkeys, sheep, goats, horses and fields of green.  It was like a day in the country at a friend's farm.  Sitting around with a beer, listening to down-home music, and watching the horses kick up their heels with cool-weather spirits.

We saw a demonstration on how to ferment vegetables (good to know the little secret ins and outs of fermentation), and bought beautiful red pickled cherry bomb peppers, hot spicy pickled garlic and delicious mild pickled okra (from Full Moon Farms), along with fresh veggies from the farm table of Tucker and Celia's Woodland Gardens.  We had tasty samples of sweet potato chips from farm 255, "a restaurant that seeks to reconnect food to its roots & people to their food."

Other Georgia Organics events are found here.

 

 

At last year's Georgia Organics Conference, the keynote speaker was Janisse Ray.  Her book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, tells her story of growing up in a junkyard on Highway 1 in the heart of the rural South.  She reminds us of our Celtic origins and the forest of Longleaf Pine that once surrounded our ancestors. 

On the Longleaf Alliance site, Ray's testimonial begins:

"The landscape that owns my body is the longleaf pine. I was born to it, as my ancestors for seven generations were born to it, although as a child I did not know its name, or its habits, or the names of its inhabitants. All this I have come to know.

Maybe through my genes I inherited a vision of the original longleaf pine flatwoods, because I seem to remember their endlessness. I recollect when the coastal plains of the South were one daybreak-to-dark, rust-and-bronze longleaf forest. It is a monotony one learns to love, through days and seasons and years, for this is a landscape of loyalty, that you devote yourself to more with the passing years, like a beloved friend. The more you know of it, the more you love it. The more it gives you, the more you give in return. A longleaf pine forest never tells its secrets at first meeting, but reveals them slowly over time—and a longleaf forest is full of secrets.

In a longleaf forest, miles of trees forever fade into a brilliant salmon sunset and reappear the next dawn as a battalion marching out of fog. The tip of each needle carries a single drop of silver. The trees are so well spaced that their limbs seldom touch and sunlight streams between and within them. Below their flattened branches, grasses arch their tall, richly dun heads of seeds, and orchids and lilies paint the ground. Purple liatris gestures across the landscape. Our eyes seek the flowers like they seek the flashes of Bachman’s sparrows and ruby-crowned kinglets, and the careful crossings of fox squirrels and gopher tortoises."

Christian Northrup recently commented on the HPV scare tactics we've seen in recent TV ads:

"...the first Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has just been released along with a barrage of information from Merck and the FDA promoting the vaccination of young women ages 9–26. The recent media attention about the vaccine has raised concern in millions of women unnecessarily ...you’ll want to think long and hard about immunizing your daughter for HPV."

This looks like a case of "viral marketing".  Have you ever received an email warning of some dire situation (email tax, various supposed viruses and scams)?  Invariably, the email urgently instructs you to "forward this email to everyone in your address book"...   Same thing, only now they're applying it to TV!

Maybe we should "tell someone" to think twice about this vaccine. 

It's that time of year when the passionflower vine's green egg-shaped fruits are ripening. Yesterday I picked a handful for eating. Sweet and tropical, they're almost like eating a pomegranite;  the flavor is in a pulp sac enclosing small hard black seeds.  Another reason to buy a good juicer...

All summer I've been harvesting the vines, with their exotic purple flowers and fruit, to dry for passionflower tea.  (see earlier post: Recent Interview for a description of the tea)

In the garden, while I begin to clear the beds for fall planting, there are 3 humming birds visiting the abundant flowers on morning glory vines that have sprung up on all the fences.  The flowers bloom in two shades of red, white, blue, purple and pink.  The hummers love the reds and purples. 

In the far corner, where we composted the debris from clearing out the flower beds in the yard this summer, bits of rhizome took root, and now huge red and yellow canna lilies bloom there.

Most of the summers veggies have finished, though I'm still picking a tomato or two every weekend.  Yesterday I pulled up foot-long daikon radish and set them to pickle in a salt brine with ginger and red peppers.  In a day or two, they'll be slightly fermented and ready to go in the fridge.  Daikon is considered, in chinese medicine, to help the digestion.  I like its mild taste and tenacious growth habit. 

 

 

 

USA Today weighs in on THE RAW MILK DEBATE:

"Advocates of raw milk are behind legislative efforts in Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky and Nebraska to legalize selling raw milk. Moves to introduce legislation have begun in North Carolina and Maryland.

Raw milk appeals to consumers who seek natural and unprocessed foods, to those with health concerns who believe it has curative powers...  But this is a dangerous game, public health officials say."

sounds like unbiased and objective journalism, yes?  read on...

"For those who are convinced that pasteurized milk is unhealthy, there's little that health workers can do to change their minds, says Michael Lynch, a food-borne-illness expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"But we want to get the word out to people who may not understand," he says. "If you explained the dangers to them, they would probably not want to drink the raw milk. They're confusing it with organic, and organic has positive connotations.""

Take a look at the Weston A. Price Foundation's campaign for real milk and see for yourself if the proponents of real milk sound like they are "confused" and fail to "understand".