Washingtonians

[DIYSeattle]

As for the heritage or purebred chicken deal, I would rather just have something that was bred for a purpose selectively, than to have an animal that may have all or none of the good things that Im looking for. Although its not guarantee that chicken breed A will do what I want, it is more likely that an australorp will lay brown eggs of a medium large size than (chicken a) x (chicken b x chicken c). Many people compare purebred chickens and other animals to purebred dogs but that is not what I want to get into at this moment. The only eggs dogs lay are brown and you have to pick them up or get a ticket.

 

[DuckLady]

Snow is still coming down hard.

So I am up in my office on the third floor and there is a little decorative balcony thing (that I wish would fall off) outside my window. It is filling up with snow and I am wondering.....should I feel sorry for the creature stuck outside?

See it?

Better?

Now?

Well I do feel kinda bad, but I am not rescuing it. Dumb thing should have stayed in the house where it is warm.

 

[Chickielady]

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Who is the frieght carrier and are they coming from that SoCal guy ?
I hope they are OK !
How long does it take ?
I am interested if I ever ship a bird, I thought you had to drop the birds off at a major airport and be at YOUR major airport to pick it up.

 

[Chickielady]

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Holy Cow !!!!

!!!!!!

 

[ReiMiraa]

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We have a family orchard and grow apples, pears, cherries. i havent updated the website in a month, been busy here at WSU. www.millerorchards.com but we push the buy local thing. we do not grow organic, and we believe that organic is a marketing niche/ ploy. yes many concepts organic have are good but some just can not be done on the same scale. we practice IPM integrated pest management. in fact as i am typing this i am in IPM class here at WSU to learn cutting edge technique. to highly over simplify what IPM is, it it to take the pest practices of both conventional and organic and combine them to have the most efficient farming techniques that cost the farmer less, have the land be sustainable, and with awarness towards the ecology of agroecosystems and the surrounding ecosystems..... this is the most dumbed down definition i can provide. i am always happy to educate people about what the real definition of organic is as stated by the USDA. the European Union has even more stricter standards for organic for other agriculture areas like livestock regulation.... thats another story.
In reality, if humans really wanted to become efficient we would be vegetarians. that is one argument they have right. and right now they are genetically modifying potatoes and other vegetables to have higher calcium, protein, antioxident... they are makeing vegetables more nutritious. it would be faster if GMO's were more accepted because that is faster than selective breeding. The crucifer family is an amazing example of evolution driven by selective breeding done by humans. But it is more efficient of humans to grow vegetables for direct consumption rather than vegetable > livestock (for a few months to 2 years)> then to human consumption.

The funny thing is i am in a World Vegetables class learning about all these types of veg's we couldn't grow, shouldn't grow, and don't grow. I only eat maybe 10 different vegetables in a year. I love meat and am capable of surviving on hot chocolate alone (its amazing, my metabolizm is tuned towards dairy, meat and chocolate)

for people who want to do subsistance farming or market/ hobby farming organic is perfect. but on a modern intensive farming it is not economical nor efficient and the produce is lower quality. the reality is that if the world did switch to organic we would not be able to produce enough food to supply the world (honestly we produce plenty of food, politics just get in the way, otherwise "world hunger" could be tempoarily fixed, but "its better to teach a man to fish than to feed him a fish")

This arguement can go both ways: at the beginning of the 1900 we saw the beginning of industrialization and the beginning of modern intensive farming. at this point world populations started to boom due to the fact that food was plentiful. now you can blame this as a reason for overpopulation, it can be a good arguement because it thwarts one of the 4 horsemen- famine. but at the same time if we all went back to the old style of chemical farming (sulfur has been used as a key pesticide for thousands of years, and it IS organic, since it occurs naturally)

Sorry if its a rant. One of these days, once i graduate. I am thinking of having a few of my educated classmates come with me to seattle and have a little convention about the ag industry. but instead of it being like the Washington State Horticulture Convention. this would be in terms that city people and uneducated people can understand. oh, and honestly. its peoples lawns and septic systems that are a major contribution to river pollution than farmers. farmers have to have a pesticide license and take X amount of credits of classes each year to remain certified. but city people see a problem, go to home depo, buy chemicals and apply and apply not even realizing that the application rates on the lables are already set to beyond the LD 50 level you can actually apply less and it would still work. and then they start to wonder why its not working anymore, well the pest built up a resistance to that chemical family because you only used one tactic and one chemical type. they probable misdiagnosed the problem as to why the lawn was turning brown. There is a Turf Management Major here at WSU, and listening to those students, its amazing.

sorry about the rant, when ever things like local, organic, and fruit comes up it tends to trigger me to want to educate people.
Oh one last thing, the food safety program wants to somehow regulate treefruit. honestly if that passes it will just become a burden for growers and warehouses. right now there are 3 different private programs warhouses have to do because different companies have different standards.
tree fruit is on a tree, is never touches the ground. worker should wash their hands and any fruit that falls off the tree should be left on the ground. its common sense.

I am Majoring in Tree Fruit and Vegetable Management while also specializing in Viticulture and Oenology (not double majoring, just making all my elective V&E based)

 

[Cowgirlgrace]

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Can flies freeze? Oh, during our cold snap my son pulled up a board that had worms under it. Talk about dumb, they didn't sink back down in the ground. They just layed there and froze to death.

 

[Cowgirlgrace]

Quote:
Who is the frieght carrier and are they coming from that SoCal guy ?
I hope they are OK !
How long does it take ?
I am interested if I ever ship a bird, I thought you had to drop the birds off at a major airport and be at YOUR major airport to pick it up.

When were they shipped? isn't it supposed to be overnight or 1 day? I had some birds shipped from Arizona, they were shipped on a Monday and showed up Wednesday morning. They came right to my local PO. They called me when they got there and went and picked them up.

 

[Ogress]

4cats....

Elk photos and other wildlife ... took me long enough, and I still can't get them where I want them, but I got the photos up on my BYC page for you to see. I forget what a nice view I had before I let all these doug fir grow! The newer photos are of their butts in the woods. Didn't post those, nor the bears since all I got is scat and fur on the fence, oh, and lots of broken tree branches.

 

[Ogress]

Trying real hard to get as much local as we can, not just food, but everything. Trying to find holiday gifts for my 12 yo boy is a challenge; everything seems to be made in China. Went on ETSY and found some cute things for my daughter. I think I may just get the boy a few days at Camp Orkila in the summer and he'll have to earn the rest of the week.

I get the Full Circle CSA box, but in the winter much of what is in it is from Chile. Bought a food dehydrator last year and did a bunch of canning. I keep cutting further back on the amount of sugar in the peaches. The ones I did last year had almost none, and as a result, the kids won't eat them. Need to find the magic balance...

The winds have died down, but it's still raining hard. Looks like sun later in the week, I'll be able to move my tractors out from under the trees and give the girls some sun! (and what is left of the lawn - it is starting to peek out now in patches under the melting snow).

 

[Cowgirlgrace]

A comment on the Organic Certification thing. First on a small scale it is cost prohibitive and also with a diversity of crops rather than a mono crop the record keeping would be a full time job. The big producers wanted to cash in on the Organic thing but didn't know the first thing about it therefore the Certification thing to try and hold them accountable for what they were trying to pass off as organic. They still try to cheat and cut corners. The small honest true organic farmers who actually created the name and methods lost their label to the big guys. Well, I am not certified Organic but because I, the farmer, sell directly to the consumer there is a level of trust between us. They can come out to the farm anytime and see how I do things. All this is not possible with the Mega producers. Because of this I do not need organic cert although after a certain income level I legally cannot call it organic without certification. So let the Depts of Ag and the mega producers take our name but we don't need it. We have something so much more important and something the big guys will never have. We got our people.