From GENE LOGSDON
Garden Farm Skills

I see [in recent Ohio news] that people are getting arrested for murdering dogs and cats. We deliberately murder  thousands upon thousands of cows and pigs every day so that we can eat meat but oh my, not cats and dogs. We kill people in war every day too, but oh my again, not cats and dogs. Has it been determined by theologians that dogs and cats are suddenly included in the Thou Shall Not Kill commandment? Did the writers of the American Constitution have in mind covering pets too?

Next thing you know, someone will get arrested for killing a mouse. Why not? Does a mouse have any less rights than a cat or dog? How about a rat? A mosquito?  What hypocrites we are. Our pet-worshiping society raises a hullabaloo when a man kills his  dog  but our local humane societies must kill dogs by the thousands every day because pet-worshipers won’t take proper responsibility for their pets and nobody else wants them.

Sooner or later some poor judge will be called upon to decide which living things can be legally killed by humans and which can’t. Mercy, what a can of worms that will open. The judge will have to decide whether or not animals have rights like humans do; or, if they have some human rights and not others, which? And then, where should the line be drawn between which living things are animals with rights and which are animals without rights. If a cat has rights like humans have, why not the fleas on the cat?

What grinds me the most are people who, believing they are being kind to animals, will live-trap the ones that are bothering them and release them out in the country to become someone else’s problem. That is first of all illegal in many places. Secondly, study after study shows that releasing a wild animal into the wild most often is an act of cruelty. (Not to mention the horrendous cruelty of dropping off pet kittens  out in the countryside.)  The wild environment already has a full complement of wild animals, believe me. That’s why they are going to town and  raiding urban backyards, looking for food. Adding, for instance, more raccoons to the countryside  will only mean grave hardship or starvation for the released animal or it will find its way back to town anyway. Or into my barn. People who treat animals this way rather than killing them or taking them to the Humane Society to be killed, are just plain ignorant about nature, or refuse to admit that the food chain requires the constant necessity of death. Thank heavens for our local Humane Societies who do the dirty work of killing these unwanted animals.  But why is it cruel to shoot a dog with a bullet, but humane to kill it with a shot of some chemical?

I once had a very refined and cultured book editor who was very adamant about not killing wildlife. She was horrified when I told her that I killed groundhogs and raccoons that were destroying my gardens. Later she took up gardening. Wasn’t long before she admitted that she understood what I had tried to tell her. She cornered  the groundhog that was systematically destroying her garden and this very refined and cultured woman killed it with her spading fork, the only weapon handy.

This is the  only way I know to change an avid wildlife lover’s view of life and death. Put them in charge of producing some of the food for the world. They can either put an animal and bird proof fence around the entire food producing acreage of the world which not even Bill Gates can afford to do, or they can help nature keep population levels from exploding.

Now all you friends of wildlife can rant at me. I wish you well and I wish you were right.  If raccoons were endangered in any way, I would be the first one to rise in their defense.  We certainly have to avoid cruelty to animals, but, oh my,  it is extremely difficult to define what is morally or immorally cruel. Life is cruel by whatever standard you want to use. I just took my lambs to market, an experience that is always very sad for me. I’ve spent many a cold night keeping those lambs alive and healthy and many a long day guarding them from neighborhood dogs whose owners won’t live up to their responsibility as dog owners. I have enjoyed the supremely pleasant sight of lambs gamboling over the meadow grass. I had the unpleasant task of cutting off their tails so that fly eggs don’t hatch into maggots in the manure that would otherwise cling to the lambs’ tails and literally eat the lamb alive. I have tried very hard to raise lambs in a way that will protect them from internal parasites which is the main  reason they often get loose bowels that bring on the maggot problem. But it is extremely difficult to succeed at raising sheep without internal parasites. Should I not raise lambs because I don’t like docking them? Should I quit raising lambs because they will end up as rack of lamb for rich people who descry the ways we shepherds must use to keep the lambs alive until then?

Should I not get married and have children because in the end we all must die? Perhaps in some idiotic war? Some of the very people who belch bricks at me because I will kill a dog that is killing my sheep support that terribly insane Iraq war and now nod their approval to killing more people in another idiotic war in Afghanistan.

But oh my, we must save our precious dogs and cats so they can die of old age and be buried in animal cemeteries. Did you know there are even live traps for mice now? You trap them and then let them loose away from your property to infest someone else’s house. I wonder how far away we are from spending money on mouse cemeteries while poor people can’t get adequate health care.
~~

From Lisa Barnes

As consumers we’re constantly bombarded with information about what to buy. As moms we have to filter and research that information to make the healthiest and safest choices for our kids and families.

When I heard about the latest recall (voluntary) from a company I thought was eco friendly and trustworthy, I had to spread the word. Sigg has announced that the liners in their aluminum bottles manufactured before August 2008 contained BPA (Bisphenol A). Apparently those made after that date have a new BPA free liner. However you need to look at the color of the liner (see photo) to determine if you have the new or old liner, as some bottles, though purchased recently may have been backstocked at the retailer. You may send your old bottles back to Sigg and they will send you a coupon code to order new bottles. I also know of some local retailers such as Whole Foods, REI and hardware stores who may switch them out for you (or even give store credit), depending on stock and policy.

This really saddens and angers me, as not only have I advocated for the use of such on-the-go bottles in my classes and book, but also use them for my family. Whether you believe their reports that the BPA does not leak and is safe or not - consumers should have all the knowledge to choose. If you are looking for other BPA free drinking bottle options, here are some to consider:  Klean Kanteen, CamelBak, Kids Konserve, EarthLust, and Eco Vessel.

I traded in a few of my Sigg’s for new ones, however I don’t feel good using them.  The company wasn’t honest and I don’t want to promote them.  Although I like their shapes, sizes and tops, we also have Klean Kanteens and Kids Konserve options for lunchboxes.  I certainly won’t buy more Siggs.  I just bought the CamelBak kids bottles for a try.  Yes, they are BPA free, plus my kids were really wanting to try out the straws.  (I did take away THEIR cups by the way).  After a recall or problem with a child’s item, it puts the parent in an tough position.  You have to teach your child about the possible harmful product (good lesson from mom), but you have to take away a favorite item (bad mom).

I can’t say what the be all end all is in reusable cups - especially as the landscape changes.  However all we can do is our best to research and try to make a healthy consumer decision for what we know at the moment.  I can’t beat myself up (and neither should you) about things I thought were safe and turn out maybe not so great.  At least we’re safely drinking (as far as we know) at home, when it’s good old fashioned glasses made of glass.
~~

From GENE LOGSDON
Garden Farm Skills

An intrepid new garden farmer has been asking me lately about the details of making hay. I can tell by his questions that he is very intelligent but has never experienced the culture of the hay field. Until now, it had never occurred to me how difficult the situation has to be for him. I was unceremoniously handed a hay fork about seventy years ago, and in a sense never let go. What I know I could never have learned on my own in a short time, no matter how much instruction was available from the printed word. Only by working in the shadow of father and two grandfathers did I learn, sort of by cultural osmosis. But what makes the whole business so enormously difficult is realizing that even after all that, I still don’t know much. Haymaking is mostly art and just a wee bit of  science thrown in to make it look, pardon the pun, cut and dried.

I just finished making some hay in a way that most farmers would describe as “strange.”  I’ve made hay this way now for three years in a row with excellent results so I’m not afraid to pass the idea along even if it is a little offbeat. To appreciate it, however, you need to remember how hay is made these days. A very expensive disk-type mower now cuts hay at twelve miles mph or faster, squishes the moisture out of the hay stems in a very expensive attached crimper, and lays the squished hay in a fluffy windrow, all in one operation. A few hours later, another expensive machine, called a tedder, fluffs the drying hay up again, so that it dries even faster. Then, usually two days after mowing,  a tractor pulling  one of the latest very expensive new balers speeds  down the windrow spitting out bales faster than a kid spitting out seeds from a slice of watermelon. If the hay is still not quite dry, the baler senses the fact and automatically sprays a very expensive liquid on each bale  that almost magically keeps the hay from molding as it finishes drying in the bale. All this is wonderful technology, but if you can’t sell the bales, standard sized, for four dollars a bale or so,  you are losing money.

Until three years ago, I believed  that we small-time folk, being unable financially to buy the new haymaking equipment, had to use a sickle bar mower to cut hay. When my old sickle bar mower decided to die on me, in desperation I cut the hay with my ancient rotary mower. I had hitherto balked at that idea because the rotary shreds the hay too finely, or so I thought, to be windrowed with my old side delivery rake. And besides, I thought, finely-chopped hay was too hard to handle, even with a hand hay fork. And besides, my old coot of a rotary mower would have a hard time mowing a heavy stand of red clover, my preferred hay forage.

It so happened, however, that the hay I intended to cut was a stand of Alice white clover, which is a much daintier plant that red clover, and is, in fact, not recommended for hay but for pasture. It does not yield enough tonnage to satisfy the demands of commercial haymaking. But my old bones did not want to make a whole bunch of hay in one cutting anyway. My aim was quality, not quantity. So I mowed it, or more correctly, I shredded it, with my rotary about eleven o’clock  in the morning after the dew was gone. The mower threw the chopped hay out the side of it in a fine layer. To my surprise, that clover was dry enough to bring in the very next day. It dried fast because there was not much bulk there anyway and it did not have those heavier stems of red clover or alfalfa (which the animals don’t much like anyway) that dry only slowly unless run through a crimper. My ancient hayrake could rake the chopped clover fairly well, all things considered, rolling three mower swaths into one windrow. By about three  o’clock the next afternoon— hardly twenty four hours from mowing— I  could hand-fork it from windrow to pickup truck, using a bigger fodder fork rather than a hay fork, haul it to the stack and pile it up— finished  before the sun went down. If the hay wasn’t always perfectly dry, it could finish curing in the stack better than in a bale. This clover was exposed to only a very minimum amount of sunlight and only one night of dew to harm it. Being of highest quality, it is equal to twice the amount of only average hay so even though I am making only a small amount at one time, it is more than meets the eye.

This method will work for red clover or alfalfa too if the growth is on the sparse side, as is the case when I renew a stand by broadcast-seeding into the old clover sod. Often the new seeding will not be heavy— not “good” enough by commercial standards but just right for my sheep.

The moral of the story is that what is the “right” way by commercial standards can be the “wrong” way for a garden farmer.
~~