Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
Yesterday the company that hosts my blog (Dreamhost) had a problem with their webserver, which temporarily broke comments on the blog. I’ve recoverd a few comments, but it’s possible if you left a comment yesterday it got lost.
If you left a comment and you don’t see it now, please leave it again! Sorry about that.
I’m in the process of updating my Blogroll and other links, and at the same time expanding them.
This is really fiddly and time consuming work, so I plan to work on it a little at a time over the coming days or weeks.
The intention is to move most of my links onto a separate page, to unclutter the front of the blog and make it more Google friendly. You can see the links page I’m working on as a link off the front page of the blog.
In particular two categories of links I want to expand are Small Farming related sites, as well as Friends of Bifurcated Carrots. The later category is one for people and websites that aren’t strictly about heirloom gardening, but related to this blog anyway. Please send me your suggestions! I can’t promise I’ll add every link you suggest, but I appreciate your help in identifying blogs and other sites related to this one. The Internet is a big place…
Biochar seems to be the latest new craze in everything agriculture and biofuel related. It seems a term we are all going to be hearing a lot more of soon.
The basic idea is green waste is converted, by means of a process called slow pyrolysis, into a high carbon byproduct that is beneficial to soil fertility. By adding it to crop land not only is the need for fertilizer inputs reduced, but the carbon is trapped in the soil for potentially thousands of years. The process of slow pyrolysis also produces energy that can be converted into electricity in a similar way as burning biomass.
National Geographic recently ran a program on Terra Preta soil discovered in the Amazon rainforest, apparently as a result of an ancient civilization that built up their soil with biochar. Alan of Bishop’s Homegrown recently made a post on this, and expressed an interest in making his own biochar.
On the other end of things Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the largest food processing company in the US, is preparing for a big push with this technology. They see biochar working together with GM crops, used for food and biofuels, in a supposedly sustainable and environmentally friendly way.
Personally, I find it very exciting that someone like Alan is working on it on his own farm. It would be great if it turned into a way to make local and small scale agriculture less dependent on chemical and other inputs, and increased productivity. Likewise, I find it very suspicious that anything good can come from ADMs interest in the technology, and doubt very much they will implement it in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way in the end.
There’s a rumor floating around here, that has yet to be confirmed, but did make the newspapers on Thursday (article in Dutch).
Apparently a Fries business man, who is behind a large peppermint company called King, with the family name Obbema, settled in Africa many years ago. He is apparently an ancestor of Obama’s, and his children took on the name Obama.
Some research into this lead to the family coat of arms (of which I have not seen a picture), and apparently along the bottom it says in old Fries ‘Ja, wy kinne’, which translates into modern English as ‘Yes we can’!
It’s important to mention historically the region of Friesland was much different than it is now, so even if a Fries connection is proved, it doesn’t necessarily mean a Dutch connection.
Recently Phil Voice and I exchanged some emails and blog comments. While not really heirloom plant related, if you have an affinity for landscaping this is a great blog to check out. Think of it as landscaping from the political left.
Sunil Khemaney recenly left a comment here, leading me to find his blog. He recently made some great posts about the dangers of various food additives, in particular aspartame and MSG. I’ve posted several times about aspartame, in particular in connection with the recent efforts in Hawaii to ban the substance. Aspartame and MSG are made with genetic engineering techniques. While this is certainly not the only thing that makes them dangerous, it should be of great concern to everyone who avoids GMOs in their food. These are both dangerous products made in a dangerous way, and in a lot of processed foods.
