Local agriculture

A friend was cranky at the students running this project in the neighborhoods today, but it made me  research further.  I have even more respect for Gandhi Mahal now...   This too.  They obviously have not worked out all the kinks, in true nonprofit style, but I'd give an A- for big ideas in action...

Deep summer

Tomato season.  Peppers, tomatillos, corn, eggplant, bitter melon.  Salsa canning.  Need I say more?

Bounty

It's that time of year where every neighbor, co-worker, family member, and friend is trying to give you zucchini but you're full up too...

Last of the harvest

And the farmers market ends too.  :(.

Ah, the wild west...

I sort of miss it.  The land, yes.  The social graces, not so much.  Water wars, not at all...

Overgrown madness

Eureka

What the endless watering, weeding, and worrying is all about. 

Speaking of worrying, I did more research and it turns out the creature living in my front yard in a very residential big city neighborhood is a groundhog. 

I thought it was chipmunks, until I saw its furry face pop out of the hole one day.  That made me think it was a gopher, 'cos it looked just like the one in Caddyshack.  It turns out they used a groundhog in Caddyshack.  And gophers have the big long teeth and do not hibernate, like my guy does and groundhogs do.

Now I just have to find out how one removes a groundhog to wilder digs, legally and feasibly, as well as affordably.  The 357 Magnum a friend used on a 25-lb chicken-thieving raccoon on his farm way out yonder won't play so well in the city, I suspect...  Plus the groundhog is pretty freaking cute.

And I did watch Caddyshack 5,000 times thanks to little brothers, so I do have a small amount of respect for the adversary...

Farm country news

Pesticide overuse can be trespass, says the Court of  Appeals.

Labor battle over  sugar beet contracts. 

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's  Bike and Bite event, August 13.

Energy star

Validating my decision to replace the old fridge that always freezes the vegetables, it turns out to use 649 kwh for a measly 18.5 cubic feet of poorly designed space.  No Scandinavian economy here...  The slightly larger fridge I found at the scratch and dent store gets 343 kwh.  What was I waiting for?  Well... employment, but still... Laziness does not pay in this instance.

Fuss-free Urban Gardening

Quote of the day

Animals, said the writer and naturalist Henry Beston, "are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

Quoted by Vandana Singh in her Strange Horizons essay, Living With the Other , well worth checking out. 

It made me think about my uncle, Bill Devall, often called the "Father of Deep Ecology in North America" for his eco-philosophical writings and Deep Ecology text used in Env 101 classes, as well as his teaching at Humboldt State U.  He died on the anniversary of Stonewall, a couple years ago now.  Sort of fitting, since he wrote one of the earlier sociology studies of gay men.  I had issues with some of the finer points of political philosophy, but a moment of non-anthropocentrism seems like a good way to start the day.

Lazy urban gardening

Yes, the trashcan is a composter.  The raccoons haven't figured out how to get the lid off yet.  Honeybees may be disappearing elsewhere, but my raspberries manage to keep a large swarm happy.  Plus rabbits use them to hide from dogs, forgetting dogs will *make* a hole for themselves if one does not already exist or is not big enough...