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Tonopah Rob’s Vegetable Farm

I always like to draw attention to both new gardening/farming related blogs as well as local businesses. Tonopah Rob’s Vegetable Farm is both. Both his farm and his own vegetable stand are located just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. His emphasis is 100% natural farming (better than organic), together with interesting vegetable varieties and good prices. As well as direct sale of vegetables, he also offers a CSA plan where you buy vegetables in advance at a discount.

If you live in or near Phoenix, I would say his vegetable stand would be worth a visit. As I understand it, he also gives tours of his farm.

For the rest of us, he is a new face to welcome to the blogging community.

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Hawaii Proposes Aspartame Ban

Following a 2006/2007 attempt in New Mexico, a bill to ban aspartame is being proposed in Hawaii.

Regular readers of this blog know that while aspartame sweetener itself does not contain any GM material, it is made with the assistance of genetically modified microorganisms and the expired patent was formally owned by Monsanto.

Aspartame is metabolized by the body into products known to be carcinogenic and neurotoxins; it has no discernable health benefits, and is known to make you crave carbohydrates possibly leading to weight gain; it is known to destabilize diabetes and other medical conditions.

Aspartame is very important economically because it is sold at the same or higher price than sugar, but manufacturing and distribution costs are a tiny fraction compared to sugar. Advertising campaigns are amazingly similar to tobacco, with names like zero, diet, light and sugar-free, often displaying athletes or other healthy or attractive people, suggesting health benefits without making any direct health claims.

The failed attempt in New Mexico came in the wake of massive corporate lobbying from all directions, from soft drink giants to food and chemical giants.

A number of prominent health professionals in New Mexico made compelling public statements supporting the proposal, like HJ Roberts, Internist; Russell Blaylock, Neurosurgeon; and Ralph Walton, Psychiatry. Details can be found by entering these names into an Internet search engine such as Google or Yahoo.

The battle in Hawaii looks set to be a fierce one, and unfortunately the local press seems to be ignoring it. Most of the attention has been from New Mexico’s press. The stakes are high for all of us, and after all the issue is not making aspartame products unavailable, because they could still be imported informally from other states or prescribed by doctors. What’s at stake is the freedom of choice, because passage of this bill would mean alternatives to aspartame would be more readily available to Hawaiians.

This is a battle we should all be watching and supporting. If you have contact with friends, media or health professionals in Hawaii, please ask them to help. Success or failure in Hawaii could could have ramifications felt all over the world. Even if the bill in Hawaii doesn’t pass, benefits can be had if world attention is drawn to the debate, so be sure to spread the word.

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The Oddities of Google

Google seems to be a popular blogging topic. Mostly because Google seems to be quite broken right now, but also there are always people around amused at the search terms people use to find their blog or other strange things about Google.

Robin of Bumblebee Blog had a good idea. She suggested her readers post some of the the search terms people use to find their blogs, then she would then make a post linking to them after December 5th, so we could all compare. Here’s my contribution. I’ve been meaning to post about this anyway.

Of course people find us for the ‘right’ reasons, by searching on topics relating to this blog, but I’m going to give some examples here of some unexpected things.

The first thing to realize is Google has really changed a lot over the last few years, and search terms people were finding us with before are not the same as now, with one exception. Before and now, the single most common term people use to find this blog is ‘weed burner’. I made a post about weed burners very early on, and I seem to have become the main Internet information resource for weed burners.

As a result of using the word ‘weed’ in a popular post, and posting a little later about cannabis, we also have no end of people who find us wanting information on this:

pics of weed

weed

cheap weed

…

I also made a post about my 325 year old wooden house foundation needing to be repaired, and a lot of people started finding us looking for information on foundations:

Why is my house sinking?

sinking house foundation

How do I know if my foundation is bad?

What does a bad foundation look like?

For a long time, people were finding us searching on information about carrots:

Can you grow carrots in a bottle?

What do carrots look like when they are underground?

What types of carrots are there?

history of carrots

pictures of carrots

how do I grow carrots

To be clear, I’ve never particularly posted much here about carrots.

For a while a number of people were finding us searching for missing bees and Colony Collapse Disorder. The popularity of the topic led me to write a number of followup articles afterwards.

A number of people have found us recently looking for pictures of different kinds of garlic. This was part of the reason for posting the pictures recently, because there aren’t many pictures of garlic on the Internet.

By far in a way the biggest ‘Google event’ happened when Steph made this post on Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

For those of you not familiar with this beer, in recent years it’s probably become the most popular ‘alternative’ beer in the US, and it’s particularly popular among students. When Steph and I were students in Chico, California, where the brewery is located, we went on a tour of the brewery while it was still in a garage. A few days ago we bought our first bottle in Amsterdam! It still tastes the same after all these years. At 15 euros (about US$21) for six bottles it’s not going to become our daily beer again anytime soon, but it was still a nice treat.

Anyway, after Steph made this post people started ‘borrowing’ the picture by linking to it within blog posts, forums, myspace pages and so on. It’s all over the Internet now, and a search on Google images shows it’s now the most popular image above even those released by the brewery itself! The picture itself is probably the single largest source of Internet traffic for our domain, I think more than everything else combined.

Like I said, Google is broken now, but until recently it was including all of these links in our page rankings. I like to think I’m popular for other reasons, but surely this has had the greatest impact on our Google rankings!

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More Trades

I posted a few days ago about some things I traded my garlic for. Here are a couple more:

Eggs and Cheese

My garlic got me a nice discount for some eggs and cheese. These came from Het Marlanner Kaashuis (Fries and Dutch languages). The cheese is handmade by the farmer there, and in my opinion is among the best tasting cheese I have ever had. It’s traditional Dutch/Fries style, sometimes called ‘Gouda’ by people outside of Holland. It’s made with milk from his own certified organic/bio-dynamic raised cows. It tastes so wonderful compared to commercial cheese, it’s made without any added color or other chemicals and the milk comes from well cared for cows. They sell many different kinds of cheeses, ranging from young to very mature, and many made with different herbs and spices. Some of the herbs come from their own garden, or are collected from nearby wild areas.

One of the most important aspects of this cheese is the biodiversity behind it. The area this farm is located in is rich in natural biodiversity. The cows have no fewer than 75 different grasses and other plants to eat (the farmer calls these ‘herbs’), and I have seen several different breeds of cows in his fields and barn.

Their eggs too have a wonderful fresh taste. People in North America will immediately notice something strange about the eggs. Here in Holland (and I think most of Europe) a ‘dozen’ eggs aren’t really a dozen. Here they sell eggs in packages of 10. If you’re wondering if the eggs are free range or not, if you visit just poke your head around the corner from the shop and have a look at them running around.

I hope I’m not giving away a trade secret here if I tell you when they have spoiled cheese that can no longer be sold, they feed it to the chickens. Perhaps this is part of the reason the eggs taste so special!

They also sell meat from their cows, as well as a wide variety of other organic and bio-dynamic products. They give tours, if you arrange it with them in advance.

They are not able to use my garlic in their cheese now, because it’s not certified organic or bio-dynamic like the rest of their products. They have however said they will use my garlic as planting stock in their own garden, eventually to also be certified and used in their cheeses.

Although it’s in a very remote part of Friesland, a province in the north of The Netherlands, it’s worth a visit if you are ever in the area. It’s on the road between Metslawier and Ee, and if you are coming from Ee it’s on the left hand side. They are open Monday-Saturday 10-13.00 and again from 15-20.00.

Pumpkin Seed Oil

The label on this bottle says Kürbis Kern Oel [Ölmühle Hötzl/Mureck(a)].

This is pumpkin seed oil. It comes from a Swiss neighbor of mine, and I understand it’s popular in both Switzerland and Austria. It’s commonly served on salads, but can also be used in other dishes. It’s supposed to both taste good and have health giving properties. I had some the other day and it’s really delicious.

It has a brown color, but according to Wikipedia if you put it on yogurt it turns green. I haven’t tried this yet!

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Trades

Jane on Horticultural recently posted on some things she got from trades, so I thought I would post some of mine.

Miss Hathorn of Mustardplaster traded some of her very tasty looking honey, together with some Blue Hubbard Squash and True Red Cranberry seeds for some of my garlic:

Honey and Seeds

I love the labels she made for everything!

Lieven traded me a winter squash from his garden for some of my garlic:

Squash

He didn’t tell me what kind it was, but I’ve seen pictures on the Internet of a squash called Sweet Dumpling that looks similar. Lieven warned me it was sweet. Not for soup, he said!