Thank you, Alexandra . The power of sugar is pretty amazing! The other night my husband and I thought we’d be awesome parents and we took our son out for dinner. When our food arrived he took a couple bites and got pretty pale and said he didn’t feel well. When we inquired as to what the problem was he VERY reluctantly admitted that he had eaten WAY too much Halloween candy and he had a terrible stomach ache. I have to admit it brought back some not-so-fond memories for me of doing the same thing as a child! I guess we all have to learn some lessons the hard way.
Cheers to a few sugar free weeks before the holiday cookies take over our diets!

I am reading your blog and eating chocolate and having a cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon. I too am greatful for less election coverage and more everyday commercials. We moved to Southern Portage County, Ohio four and a half years ago from outside of Cleveland. Every year in the city we would get the kids dressed up and go trick or treating and get pillowcases filled with candy. This year Halloween went by with no costumes, no school parties and a lot less candy. Trick or treating doesn’t happen in bad weather especially when neighbors are too far away to walk house to house. Not complaining at all! We have candy but not as much, and now the candy is not the first thing the kids go for, its usually healthier foods with a lot less sugar.

Hi Alex
I like the way you think. And reflect upon life. The candy thing is a big one but I have gotten over the hump of addiction to such treats (italian pastries, not so much).
Relating to another election issue, labeling GMO’s, I have been reading the labels of our favorite candy treats and have been slowly disillusioned with our big name candy treats and their ingredients, so that has helped me stay away from them and am proud to say was not tempted by one candy this halloween. It helped that I did not buy any, since where we are located we dont get any trick or treaters.
I totally understand this temptation and thank you for articulating its hold on all of us !!

Good morning. I enjoyed your post. I lived on a farm one summer when I was a little girl (8 or 9 yrs. old) and saw the lady there kill a chicken on Saturday for Sunday’s lunch. After that I have always said I wouldn’t eat what I’ve seen walking, lol. But nowadays, I think I have changed my mind. The bad part is I don’t live on a farm so I won’t have to put it to the test. I have great admiration for farmers and am glad that more people are becoming more concerned about where our food comes from and what is is it. I try to eat only fresh or frozen foods, not processed with chemicals and preservatives in it. I add my own herbs and spices. Thanks for your essays. I really enjoy them.

Thanks for this, Alexandra. I have big ideas for my new yard (my new rental) to become an urban mini-farm. I’ve started garden beds. But I might inherit a neighbors pet chickens, which I promised not to eat. But if I get more chickens, I do want to eat them. And then there are rabbits, which make great worm food and fertilizer. But I’d like to eat them too, except i’m like you. A friend told me she’d never eat anything she had named. My problem also. But I appreciate your experience with the chickens. I would probably cry too, but I am a meat eater. I also try to only eat local, organic, free range/grass fed (depends on the critter.) It’s expensive. I ordered a quarter beef. If I could find free range piggies (as it were), I’d order some too.

I listened to the audio book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter. They raised various livestock and she talked about killing geese and chickens and rabbits that she knew, and how she looked at that process, and how she felt about it.(A great book.)

So maybe I will think of more chickens and rabbits. I could even not name them, if I try hard. And I could cry, too.

Thanks for sharing your life with us, it’s entertaining, and helpful.

I understand your system and applaud your care for the animals you eat. In 1997, I became a kosher vegetarian and haven’t missed eating meat at all. Substitutes can be found in soy chicken, beef, ham, sausage, seafood, and yes, even bacon. I enjoy yogurt, cheese, some milk products, eggs from pastured chickens and honey from local beekeepers. My veggie friends and I don’t eat anything that would cause a critter to die. We’re blessed to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where there are many vegetarian and vegan restaurants so we don’t have to spend frivolously on a $15 veggie/pasta meal. Knowing where your food comes from and how it’s grown or raised are very important aspects of our diets. It can’t help but improve our health. Thank you for sharing your stories.

What a coincidence that your article comes on our first full official season of raising our own turkeys and chickens. I can’t agree with you more that the taste and texture are superior to market meats. I will say however that our first flock of meat chickens that went to slaughter left me bittersweet, i just loved to see them mingle with each other and enjoying the outdoors, but when we sit down to a meal of roasted chicken, I thank them for providing us a delicious meal and I feel good knowing they were raised in clean, happy surroundings.

There is a special good feeling you get when you have to "put up" food for the winter. I remember my first efforts at canning and how I loved to see the rows of canned goods lined up and looking so pretty! You will have successes and disappointments along your journey. I had to throw out an entire batch of applesauce one year. How disheartening! However I still enjoy canning, pickling and jam making some 40 years later! Keep on keepin’ on and you will always have that "special relationship" with your food! P. S. Your bunnies are too, too cute!

If you have problems with your pickles and they are still firm, but just too bitter, this is what I would do. Make a new brine with sugar pickling spices, garlic, vinegar, what ever tastes good. Open one jar and rinse of the pickles. put them in a crock or large jar and cover with new brine. Let sit a couple of days and try them, I bet they will have improved a lot. If that don’t work, I would grind up and make relish or add mayo to make a batch of tartar sauce for fish night. Well good luck, and never give up!

I am so proud of you and happy that you want to keep the traditions alive. Maybe making pickles is one of the reasons farm people live so long – you have to wait for them and in that you are trusting in the future.

Beet pickles are my favorite, especially for holiday dinners. They bring back fond memories of my grandma.

sounds heavenly, and I think i would have loved Fannie, reminds me of my aunt who is 90 this year and still works everyday in the yard and bldg things. she was a true pioneer woman as well, hunting and fishing and living in a tent by the river.
thanks for sharing and be Blessed. Neta

Great post as always Alex. I love to take vacation in the Spetember/October time frame. I was born and raised in Maine and I am a New England girl through and through! I love having time at the beach, on the trails and at historic sites to myself once all the families have packed up and gone home. While I have never been camping, it’s fun to have that down time to just walk and play outdoors in the sunshine, read a book and nap in the fresh air. It’s very restorative. In the years when I can’t take a whole week off at this time I always manage to give myself at least 1 day when I can go to my favorite haunts and walking paths along the coastline. I love to get a real lobster roll in a local dive to bring along for a picnic lunch and make a whole event out of it.

I’m with you, Alexandra. It seems like this debate is getting hotter as there becomes more organic food available. Had a conversation with someone the other day who said that there was only a slight difference, a few more pesticides! Well, isn’t that enough? Who wants to injest ANY pesticides, and maybe this is all happening because people are getting smarter about their food and companies like Mansanto feel the need to brainwash the public.

I think the organic stuff tastes way better. I grew organic Sugar Snap peas the year they first came on the market. My neighbor, a crusty old farmer who sprayed everything but Napalm on his veg bed, raved about them when I gave him some to try. The next year he demanded to know why his weren’t sweet like mine…I gave him a carrot to try…the following year he went organic.

By now I guess most people know the true story about the Stanford study which was pretty much bought and paid for by Big Ag. if not, however, here are a couple of links that outline how that study came together and how the statistics were manipulated so the press could present its outrageous headlines saying ‘organics are no better for you than chemical-laden crops.’ Please read:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Organic-Food-Debunker-was-by-Michael-Collins-120906-964.html
and

http://www.naturalnews.com/037108_Stanford_Ingram_Olkin_Big_Tobacco.html

Alex,

As someone who worked for 20 years as a scientist and engineer, I find the Stanford study to be of poor quality. They basically set up a strawman hypothesis that "organic food is healthier because it has more nutrients" which is not the key benefit of organics. The key benefit is that we are not ingesting pesticides, genetically modified substances and other unnastural chemicals into our bodies. The strawman was easy to knock down with their data, because as you state, nutrient levels are dependent on what is done to prepare the soil.

By the way, I cooked up some Spring Creek new potatoes and leeks with some elk/cheese/jalapeno sausage for dinner tonight. Yum!

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people…" Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781.

Slugs YESSS! and snails this year in the Pacific Northwest. I go on slug patrol and agree that even the chickens won’t eat them. On the windows,yes, but I do use a shovel and have hurled them across the road in an Olypian toss! I don’t LIKE slugs!!!

Just be glad you don’t have Japanese beetles. No slugs this year in Minnesota, but tons of Japanese beetles eating and eating. Poisons don’t work, they loooove green beans. I go out with a bucket of soapy water and knock them into that where they die. One shake of a bean vine will get about 25 beetles in my bucket. They also love roses and birch trees. This will eventually eliminate birch trees in my opinion. hmmmm, sounds like bugs are winning.

I am a banana slug (UC Santa Cruz alumni), and I LOVE outdoor slugs. But now, after moving to the woods, I have a slug problem INSIDE my house…..now I must draw the line!

Hi, it’s your Mom and Auntie Gwen we are at Reed’s using the internet. We know how to kill your slugs with kindness. I’ve never tried this but I have heard that you can place a shallow plate like a pie plate into the garden soil and fill it with beer. I think the slugs are attracted to the beer and crawl in and drown or maybe they become to intoxicated to crawl out. Not a bad way to go for a slug.

You asked what slugs are good for–duck food. I used to skewer them and drop them in the duck pen and they would pounce on them and nary a drop was left. Good stuff for the ducks but not my cup of tea. I have a problem with snails that has just occurred in the past few years.

At the beginning of spring, we have wild blackberries. There are large wild brambles everywhere. The birds and I squabble over them vigorously! We usually have some pretty good mushrooms but not so much this year because of the dryness. Wild sage, mint, and other herbs are usually abundant. I love fresh "stuff" whether cultivated or wild.

Checkout Backyard Harvest, Fallen Fruit and other websites for urban foraging ideas.

I’m sort of surprised that I haven’t found any educational type blogs about GMO’s… would love to see this topic spread like wildfire and for people to have their eyes opened. Thanks in advance for any consideration of this topic 🙂

I really enjoyed your article. I live in a small town in Iowa and we really enjoy gardening. I wish that I could own a few farm animals but I can’t. When I was younger I would stay with my grandparents who lived on a farm and I would have a lot of fun helping Grandma gather eggs in the morning or whatever else there was to do.
Thanks,
Donna W.

Lovely article. I have seen first hand the rise of the small family farm here locally as more farmers markets are opening every year. Locally grown is the trend as there is such an improvement in the quality of the food provided. I have embarked in a career in fiber and wholesale hand dyed yarn and am in the process of developing a registered Shetland flock of sheep with the notion of developing an American Shetland yarn. My back ground is being a military brat. But l have educated myself via a lot of classes offered by local ag colleges and extension services. I volunteer for 4H and local schools teaching knitting, spinning, and dyeing. I think it is important to share knowledge.
Kat at Sweet Tree Hill Farm in VA

Wow, I did not know about farmers not being listed on the Census. Wow wow wow…SCAREY. The ‘bread basket of the world’ … not so much anymore is what you’re telling me.

In our corner of the agricultural world – Ranching – the average age of the American rancher is 75. Frightening. American citizenry seems to be either clueless(?) or uninteresing in caring. I guess people are ok with being by & large dependent on other nations for food…?! So very bizarre that a country so rich in Ag history and just as promising for continuance in Ag self-reliance [as a nation] is going the way of consumerism in all four corners of our existence.

I so hope that enough of you youngfolk see what is a’foot and move away from this trend.

I have several family members currently that are farmers, which farming has been in the family for generations. Most of my relatives have anywhere from 800-1200, however as they all have cows, they use several hundred acres of their land is then used as pasture land. A few of my cousins are currently helping out as farmhands to my uncles and grandpa, mainly due to the high price of land they are unable to purchase their own right now. When the time comes at some point the land that my family members own will be passed down to them. I even know farmers that will purchase land from a neighbor (a private sale is usually done instead of a public one), that they do not necessarily even need, but do so in order to ensure big corporations are not getting the land. They will then either have more acreage for their cows or grow alfalfa or just have it be fallowed to preserve it. I think beginner farmers should be given low interest rate loans to start out and be able to purchase land and equipment. My uncles and grandpa love to talk farming to people, so if someone is starting out I highly recommend trying to find a seasoned farmer in their area to get advice from.

I have recently (2.5 months ago) moved onto and I should say into a family farm that has been on set-aside for the past 12 years so even though it is a farm , it’s only a beginning farm. We are slowly adding and learning as we go and I love to hear other newbie stories. I’m 36 and would never have guessed that this is what I would want to do, but after having my daughter the normal consumer driven life I had been leading seemed all wrong. We only have gardens and chickens, ducks, and geese right now but will add crops next year along with a few dairy cattle, bees, and possibly a few sheep or goats…oh and a few pigs. 🙂 We hope to bring in more biodiversity with small amounts to help soil and labor amount. To anyone out there thinking about it…I say you gotta try it even if you don’t have a farm to play on, there are so many that would love any help they can get, go volunteer! There’s nothing that beats fresh dirt on your hands and animals calling out to you as you walk by.

Here in the Missouri Ozarks, we long for rain!
Our temps have been over 100 for the past few days and so we are
hibernating thru the day time, working our gardens only in the early mornings and late evenings.
There’s lots of time for reading in the afternoons.
My daughter bought me a journal filled with beautiful thoughts for each day, then a few lines to write my own, so thats just what I do on hot afternoons, write a poem about each day!
Thanks for the cheery thoughts! Hugs, Diana

My husband is a great storyteller. He can keep groups spellbound for hours with tales of WWII, the war between the states, historical facts, etc. He also writes books and has two of a trilogy in print, check out his website above. Stories have always been a means of learning things for me. Like you say, either fact or fiction they are interesting and I am an avid reader. Thanks for your blog and the opportunity to add my comments.

One of my very favorite mirmoees when I was growing up, was going to the Bookmobile every two weeks. Oh, how I loved this special treat! I stayed with my Aunt Dianne every summer when I was little and this was something that I looked forward to from one visit to the next. I can remember counting down the days until its next arrival in the nearby little town of Richfield. This is where I could spend hours just reading and looking at books. I would have the hardest time trying to decide what adventure I wanted to go on next. Would it be with Tom Sawyer or the brothers and sisters from the Boxcar Children Series? Most of the time, I went with the children on a boxcar adventure. I still remember how when they first started living in the old abandoned red boxcar on the hill and how they found old metal spoons and scrubbed them with sand so that they could use them. I know I read every book in that series at least three times each summer, plus all the other books as well that I loved reading to my little brother and younger cousins. Whenever I think about the bookmobile, I can still remember that very distinct smell. All those books, in that one small space, gave such a wonderful aroma. It was like medicine for my soul. I still love books to this day, especially old books. It’s funny because whenever I find an old book, it is not unusual for me to open it up and put it to my nose to see, if just by chance, it has that wonderful smell that I still long for. This is such a fond memory for me that I talked about it all the time when I started dating my now husband. A few years ago, when he found out that the same bookmobile that I used to visit was up for sale, he tried to buy it for me as a surprise. Unfortunately, we could not afford it. Which in retrospect, I guess was a good thing, because I would have been in there all the time and never accomplished anything. I have thought many times about how I would love to give that same memory to my own two children. There will never be a more special place to me in my childhood mirmoees. All I can hope for, at this point, is that my mansion in heaven, is an old tan colored bookmobile. Until then, it will forever be in my heart!

Alexandra, you hit it on the head for me with this statement:
"Small scale organic agriculture is a very happy medium between the untamed wilderness and the chemical killing of bigAg."
Tho it would be wonderful to return to our hunter-gatherer roots where we make no radical changes to any ecosystem in order to feed ourselves, our enormous population does not allow for that. ORGANIC agriculture is really our only hope, and that’s been proven in study after study despite what big ag manages to get published in the press to make the minions think otherwise.
I appreciate your insights very much as well as the photos of your beautiful Alaska. Keep it up, farmgirl, I love it.

Your quote "just hit the spot" this morning!
Your pictures are out of this world with beauty, how blessed you are.
It reminded me so of our lives in the wilderness of Montana!
Now that we are in the Ozarks, it is a little more difficult to find wild places, but there out there, even if it is in our own back yard, sitting out drinking our morning coffee in between raised beds and gazing at the stars before bed every night! Thank you for sharing your beautiful life with all of us!
Hugs from the Ozarks, Diana Henretty

That was a truly inspiring message from your heart about the land, agriculture, nature and growing all things organic. It put me in touch with how I really feel about what is happening all around us that is destroying the land and wildlife. I live in Idaho and am surrounded by yellow buzzing airplanes that spray pesticides on practically every crop. I hate that! I’m trying to have an organic yard and vegetable garden and it’s nigh unto impossible. You also sparked an interest I have, and that is learning about biodynamic farming. I just started hearing that word! Thanks for letting me see the passion and purpose you have. It truly inspired me and gave me hope.

very nice. I knew a lady that loved to help shave llamas for their fur to make sawrtees. Had a spinning wheel in her living room.. was not to much fun to watch while I sneezed up a storm.