From PEAK MOMENT TELEVISION

We taped a conversation in Port Townsend, Washington with (right to left) Peter Bates and Judy, both members of the Port Townsend steering committee of the Northwest Earth Institute, and Dick Bergeron, president of the local Chimacum Grange.

These three organized 25 discussion groups in early 2010, using Menu for the Future, a slim but impactful study book produced by the Northwest Earth Institute. It contains fascinating short readings from a wide range of authors and perspectives, plus a discussion guide, all around the topic of food.

The groups are for “anyone who eats.” Each 6-week group has 8-10 members who read a chapter per week, and then explore and discuss their values about food in a safe and respectful environment. How and where it’s grown. Additives. Health. Fossil fuels and other resources. Industrial Agriculture. Local food producers. Justice. Security.

The unique touch is that Judy, Dick and Peter brought together people who might not otherwise be in touch with each other but share an interest in food. “Country mouse and City mouse,” is what Dick Bergeron calls them.

It started when Dick brought together local farmers to see what the rural Chimacum Grange could do to help them. Their reply? They needed help to market their products, which also entailed educating the public about the value in their locally-produced food products and producers.

Judy Alexander and Peter Bates had done a lot of local educating through previous NWEI discussion groups in Port Townsend, so they mined their connections to organize 25 groups of 8-10 people (mostly City Mice). In an innovative twist (and with Dick’s assistance), Judy lined up a food producer (Country Mouse) to be in each group…
~~

From GENE LOGSDON

It says here in the paper that it takes 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. No wonder we have so many people holding down unnecessary jobs. There aren’t enough real jobs to go around and besides, we are replacing people with machines as fast as we can to do the real jobs. Rather than trying to eliminate pretend jobs for the sake of efficiency as is now being proposed (lots of pretension in that too), we should be thinking up better quality pretend jobs— imaginative new positions in useless work that are more beneficial to society than the usual run of useless work.

The famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, first thought of this approach many years ago. He proposed, as useless but harmless work, burying tin cans full of money all over the landscape and then letting people without jobs hunt for them and pocket the contents. He claimed this would keep the unemployed occupied and happy without causing any costly harm to society. He didn’t say it, but I suppose if the money were buried out in next year’s corn fields, you could get the soil worked up for planting without burning a whole lot of fuel. Also you could create another bunch of useless jobs hiring people to bury the cash.

Agriculture is full of examples of beneficially useless jobs. Many of the positions in the Extension Service no longer serve any real need or purpose and are finally being cut in the current wave of “austerity.” But if county agents and consumer educators merely repeat work already being done by the private sector, at least such jobholders are not doing destructive work like manufacturing bombs. For awhile, I had a job that paid me for checking newly-installed drainage tile systems to make sure they were put in according to Soil Conservation Service regulations. It never seemed to have occurred to authorities that farmers were not going to deliberately put in drainage systems that did not work. But my job surely contributed more to the social good than if I had been employed to check the operation of roulette wheels at casinos. More…

From DEBS
Food Day Washington State

Food Day Calendar is Here! “Eat Local Now!” dinner and other fun stuff you should do for Food Day

Food Day seeks to bring together Americans from all walks of life—parents, teachers, and students; health professionals, community organizers, and local officials; chefs, school lunch providers, and eaters of all stripes—to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. We will work with people around the country to create thousands of events in homes, schools, churches, farmers markets, city halls, and state capitals.

Don’t see your event listed below? Add it to the Food Day website here, and send an email to debs at seattle local food/com. 

What’s happening in Washington State for Food Day?

EVENTS SORTED BY DATE, OCT 11-29 
For events sorted by location or searchable on a national map, visit the Food Day website at www.FoodDay.org 

Saturday, October 22

Seattle Tilth Farm Works Open House in Auburn  invites media and public to tour the farm, meet farmers and staff, and see harvesting and field preparation. Executive Director Andrea Platt Dwyer will be making an exciting announcement. 10-11:30 am, United People’s Farm, 17601 SE Lake Moneysmith Rd. Auburn
AUBURN
Details

Community Alliance for Global Justice will host a teach-out field trip to Hilltop Urban Gardens, an urban agriculture and education project.
TACOMA
Details

Seattle Farm Co-op is hosting its Harvest Party, Barter, Potluck, Square Dance and Book Release, for the new Urban Farm Handbook, and launching the organization Backyard Barter. Phinney Neighborhood Center 6532 Phinney Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103 5:30 – 9
SEATTLE
Details 

More…

From GENE LOGSDON

You would think that one of the easiest facts to find on search engines would be records for the longest ear of corn in the world. But apparently not enough people care about such statistics anymore. Diligent search on Google and Yahoo produced a lot of facts and falsehoods about corn but not any specific measurements as to the longest ear. The first thing that comes up under that heading turns out to be about a fake ear, and other references mysteriously omit measurements. One website professes to sell seed from a white sweet corn it calls “Two Foot Long Corn” but there is no data included on just how long the ears really grow. Since it is simplicity itself to lay a yardstick alongside an ear of corn and take a picture of it to show its length, as I do above, why didn’t they do it? There are local corn varieties in Mexico “over a foot long” and some strains of skinny flint corn produce foot long ears even in the U.S. But dent corn, the kind commonly grown, rarely gets beyond a foot in length, and today’s hybrid yellow dent corns generally run no more than 8 inches in length.

In the absence of any info to the contrary so far, I am going to draw myself up in grandiose hauteur and declare that I grew the longest ear of dent corn in the world this year. It is Reid’s Yellow Dent open-pollinated corn and if it is not the longest ear, I bet it is the biggest. Other years, I have grown ears nearly as long as this 15 incher, but this is the first time there were 20 rows of kernels on such ears instead of 16 or 18 rows. Actually length is not the best indicator of how much corn there is on a cob. I have had ears with 24 rows of kernels and a length of 11 inches that actually contained more corn by weight that the longer ears with 18 rows of kernels. More…