Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
A pig herd in central Alberta has been infected with the virus after human contact.
Now after denials from the pig industry that the virus had anything to do with their products, and Egypt was harshly criticized for over reacting in it’s decision to destroy hundreds of thousands of pigs located in their country, a farm worker returning to Canada from Mexico has transmitted the infection to pigs.
Frank just sent me some pictures of canker on his apple trees.
Canker is a fungal infection that often infects apple trees and I think other fruit trees as well. I did a post on this a few days ago. What I understand is the infection tends to enter the tree through open wounds, as well as the scars left behind when leaves come off the tree in the fall.
First Frank gives three examples of canker at progressively worse stages on different trees:
This last picture is what Frank uses as an example here to show how he treats it, and he pointed out that this is not really that bad. The yellow-green stuff you see in the picture is lichen and unrelated to the canker infection.
In a comment on my previous post, Frank mentioned you should never cut more than half way through a branch or the tree trunk.
Here I’ve already started to clean up the wound, use a sharp knife, a chisel, drawknife, or whatever you like to work with, as long as it’s sharp.
In the next picture, the wound has been cleaned up, the brown patch in the middle is actually the ‘true’ apple wood, the white wood surrounding it is ‘spint’, the new wood that hasn’t turned into real wood already.
Here the wood has been treated with the tree paste, obviously something is wrong with it, this should give a smooth result (I suspect the tree paste has been frozen this winter), instead of the sort of bubbly aspect it gives now. This is a method I learned over ten years ago, nowadays many tree pastes are based not on a sealing aspect, but on a breathing aspect, and are mostly oil-based. These new products are indeed better, but I don’t know if in this specific case the oil-based pastes would work as good as the older-style ones.
It’s interesting Frank mentioning the changing composition of tree paste. Since making my last post I’ve been reading a little bit about this on the Internet. It seems the older tree pastes were mostly asphalt or latex like materials, but many people concluded they were not only on the toxic side but trees were able to heal their wounds faster without them. I remember using these kinds of pastes in my family when I was a child.
This seems to go along with Søren’s suggestion in my last post that I could also just leave the canker alone and let it kill the tree slowly. If the canker infection enters the tree through open wounds, and you conclude it’s best not to use tree paste, than I could also see why you wouldn’t want to create a wound by cutting a spot of canker away. Perhaps this is also what Frank was referring to when he mentioned the older sealing style tree pastes might work better in this case.
I recently read a recipe for home made organic tree paste made with equal parts of sand, clay and manure (one place suggested this should be composted first). This will clearly wash away, and need to be reapplied after rain.
I am completely undecided as to what to do. Does anyone else have any experiences or suggestions?
Following Lzyjo’s suggestion on my previous post, and since we’re suppose to stop calling it Swine Flu, here’s my new name for it.
My last post prompted a few comments and emails that really made clear a number of people are very worried about it. Of course I am too. At the same time, I’m really upset how the situation is being managed by the various health and government agencies, and I want to say some things about this.
We are all operating under the unexplicable rule that only information that’s 100% confirmed and not considered to endanger the interests of the food industry, gets released to the public. If the food industry has the clout to change the name of the disease, of course they have the clout to manage the entire investigation of the virus, lead it in directions of their choosing, determine the way the situation is explained and suppress any information they don’t want made public. The public doesn’t have access to any independent person or agency, completely up to date with the situation, who is free to express honest opinions and assessments over events and news.
In my opinion, this is the same thing as being lied to. Just being lied to doesn’t necessarily make the situation better or worse than it seems, but it means news that comes through traditional sources just can’t be trusted, and that’s something I find very disturbing. We all know we’re being lied to, and that makes everything that much less certain and means we worry more.
I’m not any sort of expert on viruses or pandemics, but let me recap some of what’s been talked about in some of the more independent news sources on the Internet. Of course little of this information is ‘official’ or confirmed, but I believe it to be all or mostly true.
This flu outbreak occurred more than one month before it was made public, in the Mexican city of La Gloria. Government officials ignored repeated warnings that an infectious outbreak was under way. It was reported at one point that 60% of the residents of the city of La Gloria had a mysterious respiratory problem, and we now know this was probably the Smithfield Farms CAFO Flu. Now obviously 60% of the residents of this city didn’t die! It’s something that’s far from mostly fatal. It’s a dangerous flu, but most people who contract it do not die.
Every year roughly 36,000 people die from the common flu in the US, and the death toll of the Smithfield Farms CAFO Flu is no where near this number yet. In addition, we are reaching the end of flu season this year in the northern hemisphere.
Scientists have frequently warned in the past that CAFO (factory farm) pig operations should not be located near CAFO chicken and other bird operations, because of the possibility of different flu viruses simultaneously infecting the same host and sharing DNA. There are a number of CAFO chicken operations near to the Smithfield Farms CAFO in La Gloria, and that is almost certainly why this virus developed and why it contains DNA from a number of different species.
If a month ago 60% of the population of La Gloria was infected, and now the infection is in an advanced state in Mexico City, there are a huge number of infections under way! Quite likely millions of people, some of whom will experience little more than a runny nose but be infectious nonetheless.
Traditional news media is giving us the body count, like soldiers returning from war in body bags. This is a very misleading statistic! For a while there was a little information on the number of suspected and confirmed cases — this was a lot more useful, but this information has just vanished. The way they are presenting the body count without any assessment of the number of actual infections leads everyone to believe that people are dying as they become infected.
Scientists in the UK have begun looking into the virus, and have concluded there is nothing unusually dangerous about it, especially when compared to the H5N1 bird flu.
Don’t get me wrong, people are of course dying from the Smithfield Farms CAFO flu, and protecting yourself is a good idea. At the same time, if you live anywhere in the areas of outbreaks, it’s not a time to panic. It’s not a time to fear Mexicans just because of their ethnicity, as other people are likely to be infected now too.
Use common sense, don’t go to crowded places, cover your mouth when you sneeze and wash your hands often.
If you want to read more, here are some good news sources:
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/
Vandana Shiva recently spoke out again in a Huffington Post article on farmer suicides in India.
Just like the meat industry trying to make us forget Swine Flu originated in their products, Monsanto and other seed companies are trying to make us forget their GM seeds have caused the death of hundreds of thousands of farmers in India by sponsoring a recent ‘scientific study’ that proved there was no connection.
It’s very important to maintain our resolve and continue to hold these companies responsible for their actions. It’s important to keep talking about these things, and keep pressing for change.
As probably most of you who read this blog by now know, we’re supposed to stop calling Swine Flu by that name.
The reason is, as countries started banning imports of pork, destroying stocks and people stopped eating it, the meat packing and processing industry in the US began to fear falling profits if people associated the disease with their fine products, and started lobbying politicians to change the name. Their stated preference was to call it ‘H1N1’.
This in spite of the fact that all signs point to a large CAFO (factory pig farm) owned by Smithfield Farms in La Gloria, Veracruz, Mexico as being the origin of the virus. Doctors there have identified a young boy, who is still alive, as being the first case.
According to the Narco News Bulletin, we should be calling it the NAFTA Flu.
I was watching TV the other night and noticed Dutch politicians are calling it the ‘Mexican Flu’. I guess this means they think it comes from Mexicans.
So, if we’re not allowed to call it Swine Flu, the stage is open. Anyone else have any suggestions what the new name should be?
