Noted CSA Advocate, Steven McFadden to Speak Thursday evening,Jan. 30 at Longevity Cafe, in Santa Fe, NM, USA
Santa Fe's Land, Farms and Families: Steps Toward Environmental and Economic Renewal Santa Fe could readily establish environmental oases on open land, use water wisely, and provide both good jobs and fresh, clean food for its families and households, says local writer Steven McFadden. The co-author of the book Farms of Tomorrow Revisited which has helped spark nearly 1,000 community farms across America, McFadden will explore these themes on Thursday evening, Jan. 30 at Longevity Cafe, 112 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe. The talk is free. The Santa Fe journalist - author of six other non-fiction books - says the foundation of America's future is being laid right now, and Santa Fe has a golden opportunity. He wants to share the concept of community supported agriculture (CSA) with the citizens of Santa Fe, so they can begin to actively consider how community farms could bring multiple benefits to the land and the people. No matter what kind of civilization lies ahead of us, McFadden says, it will be built upon farms. No culture, no technology, no larger spiritual advancement of humanity can occur without healthy, thriving farms as a sound base. Yet via industrialization, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, genetic experimentation, and economic pressures our foundation is rapidly mutating into something ugly and unsustainable. Government will not face these problems, McFadden said. It's up to the citizens. With economic uncertainty and war looming, now is the time to reflect carefully on the kind of agricultural foundation we are establishing for ourselves, our children and our children's children. With co-author Trauger Groh, McFadden explored the possibilities for agricultural and social renewal in a 1990 book entitled Farms of Tomorrow. At that time there were about 60 community-supported farms (CSAs) in America. While the US lost more than 300,000 general farms through the 1990s, CSAs grew. There are now over 1,000 CSA farms in America, involving over 100,000 households. Noting the steady growth of CSA farms, McFadden and Groh returned to the subject eight years later to write Farms of Tomorrow Revisited (1998). The free talk at Longevity Cafe will start at 7 PM., on Wednesday, February 6, 2003. For information see the schedule page at http://www.chiron-communications.com, or at http://www.LongevityCafe. - 30 - Farms of Tomorrow Revisited is published by the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Assoc. (1-888-516-7797), and distributed by Chelsea Green, Inc. (1-800-639-4099). Steven McFadden Chiron Communications 7 Avenida Vista Grande #195, Santa Fe, NM 87508 505-248-8444 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.chiron-communications.com
ALBRECHT LAB was: Re: Perfect Orchard ?? Brookside Lab
Per - Check will Joel Simmons of EarthWorks, outside of Easton, PA. He's been doing Albrecht consulting for years and has just opened his own lab, which I understand is an upgrade over what either Brookside or Perry are currently offering. (You'll have to talk to Joel to get the details, but it's my understanding that it was disappointment with the prevailing Albrecht labs that led Joel to open his own.) Make sure they know that you are looking for an ag interpretation for your samples. http://www.soilfirst.com/soilfirst_frame.html EarthWorks Natural Organic Products 6574 S. Delaware Drive P.O. Box 278K Martins Creek, PA 18063 1 800 732-TURF
Radionics and Field Broadcasting was Re: Perfect Orchard
Hugh - Let's do it! -Allan Dear Per, We need a discussion on this. Radionics, is not exactly the same as field broadcasting. But they are related. I'll have to get back to this. In the meanwhile, any others like to have a go at this? Hugh Visit our website at: www.unionag.org
WENDELL BERRY: The Agrarian Standard
From the Orion Society Home Page http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/02-3om/Berry.html This article is an abridgement of an essay that appears in the 20th Anniversary Issue of ORION, the magazine of the ORION Society. The Orion Society is a charitable organization that focuses on the Environment. They need your help to stay active. To encourage you to support them, they are offering a very good deal on a trial subscription to their quality publication (which often features the likes of Wendell Berry, Barry Lopes, Rick Bass and Gary Snyder) This year, more than ever, we need your support. For a limited time only, you can give new subscriptions to friends and family for just $18. More about this offer at: http://www.oriononline.org/holidayoffer ) This essay appeared in the 20th Anniversary issue of Orion. It in was drawn from this spring's The Future of Agrarianism Conference which was held April 25-28 at Georgetown College in Lexington, KY. It has been further abridged for the web, where this post was drawn from. If you would like to read the full version, please click here https://ssl.crocker.com/orionsoc/freeom.cfm for a FREE copy of this special 20th Anniversary Issue. Please make time to read this essay carefully. It literally drips wisdom. THE AGRARIAN STANDARD by Wendell Berry The Unsettling of America WAS PUBLISHED twenty-five years ago; it is still in print and is still being read. As its author, I am tempted to be glad of this, and yet, if I believe what I said in that book, and I still do, then I should be anything but glad. The book would have had a far happier fate if it could have been disproved or made obsolete years ago. It remains true because the conditions it describes and opposes, the abuses of farmland and farming people, have persisted and become worse over the last twenty-five years. In 2002 we have less than half the number of farmers in the United States that we had in 1977. Our farm communities are far worse off now than they were then. Our soil erosion rates continue to be unsustainably high. We continue to pollute our soils and streams with agricultural poisons. We continue to lose farmland to urban development of the most wasteful sort. The large agribusiness corporations that were mainly national in 1977 are now global, and are replacing the world's agricultural diversity, which was useful primarily to farmers and local consumers, with bioengineered and patented monocultures that are merely profitable to corporations. The purpose of this now global economy, as Vandana Shiva has rightly said, is to replace food democracy with a worldwide food dictatorship. To be an agrarian writer in such a time is an odd experience. One keeps writing essays and speeches that one would prefer not to write, that one wishes would prove unnecessary, that one hopes nobody will have any need for in twenty-five years. My life as an agrarian writer has certainly involved me in such confusions, but I have never doubted for a minute the importance of the hope I have tried to serve: the hope that we might become a healthy people in a healthy land. We agrarians are involved in a hard, long, momentous contest, in which we are so far, and by a considerable margin, the losers. What we have undertaken to defend is the complex accomplishment of knowledge, cultural memory, skill, self-mastery, good sense, and fundamental decency -- the high and indispensable art -- for which we probably can find no better name than good farming. I mean farming as defined by agrarianism as opposed to farming as defined by industrialism: farming as the proper use and care of an immeasurable gift. I believe that this contest between industrialism and agrarianism now defines the most fundamental human difference, for it divides not just two nearly opposite concepts of agriculture and land use, but also two nearly opposite ways of understanding ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our world. THE WAY OF INDUSTRIALISM is the way of the machine. To the industrial mind, a machine is not merely an instrument for doing work or amusing ourselves or making war; it is an explanation of the world and of life. Because industrialism cannot understand living things except as machines, and can grant them no value that is not utilitarian, it conceives of farming and forestry as forms of mining; it cannot use the land without abusing it. Industrialism prescribes an economy that is placeless and displacing. It does not distinguish one place from another. It applies its methods and technologies indiscriminately in the American East and the American West, in the United States and in India. It thus continues the economy of colonialism. The shift of colonial power from European monarchy to global corporation is perhaps the dominant theme of modern history. All along, it has been the same
Fwd: Re: Root Aphids
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 05:32:35 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Root Aphids To: Allan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Allan, Please Fwd: I remember reading an article years ago, which I followed up with naked-eye observations in the field. The article stated that aphids were feeding on something called honey dew; a black sweet dew that forms on plants. This is easily observable developing on field peas during humid periods; a good reason to use 508 on the plants. Anyway, if mycorrhyzae is the technical term for honey dew, I would say Hugh is right on the money. What I would watch out for is its' appearance above the soil line; it limits the health of the plant. Michael Ant and aphids on roots is just about always a good sign. Ants cultivate the mycorrhyzae so there is a surplus for the aphids. Best, Hugh Hugh - I thought ants on the roots, among other things, indicated poor soil structure. It seems so degenerate, aphids on the roots (I don't recall seeing ants, myself). (Moving right along) Are you saying that the aphids are only feeding on exudates and not on the plant itself? -Allan __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
Re: vortex pump
Well, thanks, as usual, Frank, for making everything so much clearer. I really appreciate a guy with your brilliance taking the time to lunge at my pretentions like a Great White from the Great North, but, frankly speaking, all sarcasm and no content makes even Frank Teunton sound like a dull boy. Compost quality and compost complexity (sourcing from Elaine-formula compost, vermiculture and real forest leaf mulch in all batches) will profoundly affect the quality of the final tea, as well as it's functionality in the field. But by the very nature of the brewing process, a bad brewer is it's own limiting factor, even with the best of inputs. So, please make it clear, my friend, so I can respond in a useful fashion: are you railing against my conclusions as pre-mature, assusing me of crony-ism, or just being onery? Thanks for your attentions, -Allan
James DeMeo on Hugh, Reich, Hubbard, Steiner and bionous decay
Dear Allan, I have met Hugh during at least one Acres conference. Unfortunately, I would disagree on many points given in his email below. Reich was a natural scientist with nothing to compare him with Hubbard or Scientology. Reich's use of new terms was justified, based upon the observation of new phenomena which were not previously known or observed, and which demanded explicit descriptive terms. Terms such as Chi or Ki, or Prana or the numerous other synonyms for life-energy may superficially sound the same, but they lack the specificity of descriptive precision as compared to Reich's terms, which have significant empirical support. For example, most all advocates of Chi, Ki or Prana will inform you that it is a non-physical energy beyond the here-and-now, which is why only specialized spiritual exercises, or spiritual experts, can make full contact with it. One has to master such things, become a master, along the road where devotee is the first step, to really get into the deeper essence of it. Very little substantive research has gone into investigating the basic nature of the energy, except to demonstrate that people can subjectively feel it, and affect it. Reich's orgone, by contrast, is totally physical, nothing metaphysical about it at all. You can build an orgone accumulator, as can any farmer or auto-mechanic, or Ph.D. scientist, using simple instruction plans, and so long as you don't expose it to *dor* or *oranur*-producing influences (nuclear radiation, low-level em fields, etc.) it will produce results for you. In a laboratory, you can measure it using the right devices. Most people can feel it, and even see it, once it is pointed out to them, and you don't have to be an especially enlightened or transformed person. Orgone, we know, is reflected by metals, absorbed by organic materials, and flows and moves in the atmosphere and in the body according to certain principles. Chinese acupuncture gets closer to this, but even here, many trainees in that field will deny any physical basis to Chi, mainly because they have a personal interest in keeping it metaphysical. I would agree that the term organizational energy is a good starting point, and many scientists have been or are looking for this, but Reich is the only one who really proved its existence by experimental methods, and worked out useful applications. He really is a light-year beyond the others -- but my Orgone Accumulator Handbook gives a good listing of scientists other than Reich who measured and detected this same phenomenon. Steiner I would disagree about as well. While it may kick up some dust in a Biodynamic Ag. discussion group, I feel most all of his claims in this regard were stolen from old Germanic folk traditions (some dating back to pre-Christian times), or from Hahnneman's homeopathic findings. If you strip that away from Steiner, not much is left in any practical sense. I would argue that the BD preps are in actuality homeopathic in nature, perhaps utilizing the observable phenomenon of bionous decay which Reich described, and which today we know have bioenergetic effects. One can interpret them metaphysically, of course, but the point is, metaphysics is not necessary at all. Steiner, I think it is proper to say, was more concerned about metaphysical things, as are discussed in the bulk of his writings. His ethers are likewise metaphysical speculations, similar in nature to what the theosophical society and other metaphysical groups were calling ethers, and have little relationship to either Reich's orgone, or the ether of 19th Century physics. This latter concept is, in some aspects, closer to Reich's orgone, and you can get a good review of this by looking at my paper on Dayton Miller's ether-drift experiments. http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm The entire language and approach to the matter of ether by the 19th and 20th Century physicists has little resemblance to the Anthrosophical or Theosophical ether(s). As Hugh mentions, some of the ether-theorists tried to claim the ether was only an immaterial abstraction, and therefore incapable of affecting even light waves. Einstein said this also. But Miller's measurements proved the ether existed, was tangible and probably had a slight mass (similar to neutrinos), that it was metal-reflectable, and moving faster at higher altitudes, as is the case with Reich's orgone energy. It is a tangible thing, like the air or water, but of a much lesser density. My article on this subject, along with a lot of new stuff which should interest your group, will soon become available in the new book: Heretic's Notebook: Emotions, Protocells, Ether-Drift and Cosmic Life Energy: with New Research Supporting Wilhelm Reich -- you can review the table of contents at the bottom of this web page: http://www.orgonelab.org/xpulse.htm Reich's discovery on bionous decay of materials, which releases varying amounts of orgone (life-energy) from material
