The Wealth Pile in Front of the House

          When I was in high school the local parish priest taught religion class one day a week.  He was Irish and had the one in a life time trip overseas to his ancestral home land.  Father Denis enjoyed reliving this trip with my junior year class in great detail.  When he went on to explain that each rural home had a large pile of manure in the front or side yard. We all looked shocked and feel pity for such backward people.  Then he explain that they considered it their wealth pile.  It fertilized their field and made them prosperous.

Where is the farmhouse, where is wealth pile?

           Any small truck farmer today and all urban gardeners like myself knows that recycling of kitchen food scabs, chicken manure and mulch from the leaves and wood chips are the answer to successful gardening.

           The large wheat fields of today are the possible with petroleum.  What happens to this landscape without the  subsidies of fossil fuel industry?  What happens as the world demands out paces the resource for this type of fertilizer?

            There is a strangeness to this landscape.  There is little sign that humans life in this part of the country.  The field meets the roadway without a fence or a weed.  The view from a hill top can reach 25 miles and there maybe one  building to be seen. Where are the people that plant this field, where do they live?  Do they walk the land or touch the wheat heads?

          I think like big banks, big fields have a short life cycle, they are unsustainable.
           
     

Ground Cherries

          All of my small berry type fruit did very well in this year with the rainy cool spring.  The surprise for me this year as been how much the ground cherries produced.  I put had one plant in the ground and and it spread and flatten out as if it was a pancake.  I found all this tiny paper covered fruit laying under the plant and realized they were all ripe and sweet waiting for me to harvest them.

           Next year I will probably plant ground cherries in a raised bed and may even lay a burlap sack around the base of the plant to make things easier later in the season, keeping the fruit from the soil and the slugs.  I will also try either a tomatoes cage or a rope system to keep the branches off the ground.  Last night I throw a few into our lettuce catch all salad and they were lovely surprises to bite into.  So far, I have preferred to eat my small fresh with out the work of baking or the addition of sugar.

Potato Harvest

         Since the subject harvesting potatoes is important enough for artists like Breton, Pissarro and Millet to create paintings around the event I guess I can share some stories about my experiences yesterday.  I harvested most of my potatoes from one 12 by 15 foot bed I had.

          Now, to begin with it has to be understood that my vegetable gardening is a personal style not written about as standard method of gardening.  I allow my chickens to walk though this bed, stop and scratch this area at will and occasionally uproot a potato.  Of course, I have been eating these gems that have been exposed in the last couple months as a matter of course.

           In the morning, I used the shovel for a while, then sat on a small stool with a hand trowel.  I pulled the plants and weeds making one pile for them and another pile of the potatoes.   I was joined by Autumn, one of my chickens.  She quickly discovered the newly exposed earth meant it was easy to see worms.  Autumn was my companion for most of an hour and rapidly sensed my repeated patterns of movement.  She would occasionally do a few energetic two step moves but mostly she let me do the hard work.  As I progressed across the bed,  I started to look for worms as much as potatoes, that is called bonding with a chicken!

           The surprising thought about digging potatoes is how the grocery store bags all the same size so neatly.  Potatoes come in sizes ranging from the size of a grape to grapefruit.  What happens to the odd size potatoes in the commercial world?  I knew in the morning how I was going to fix those grape size tubers. By noon I had two piles of mostly red potatoes and a few whites.

            Later in the afternoon, John joined in the fun as we both sat near a wash tub in the middle of the yard. I placed a cloth of screen near us so as scrubbed  the dirty off we could make new piles according to size.  I encouraged John to only do the really big potatoes.  All during this time, John is questioning when will this job be ended and I answered him by asking what was on his schedule later.  Those little grape potatoes were of special interest to me as I reached into the wash tub of dirty water.  As the pile of the screen grew I felt I had done this job many times before or at less it was implanted in my Irish veins.

              Last night for dinner we had tiny potatoes with sea salt, rosemary and olive oil.  Those little gems made John smile with pride.

       

Have to relearn

If one is retired in these days the pension plan somehow has to be protected from the stock market, has to be earning more than interest to live off of and can not be the income from of the value of real estate.  A simple life style has already being adopted by most Americans but new ways will continue to be found as it the economy worsens.

The little book I received four years ago about a WWII English Vegetable Garden I then viewed a charming thing. Now I look at it was a bible for today's life that should be in print for all Americans, maybe for all Europeans also.

The debt bubble has enveloped Greece, Ireland and Portugal and most likely will suck in Belgium, Spain and Italy in the process. There is absolutely no way a financial crisis can be avoided and it’s already been in this stage of failure for two years. No country can bailout these six without destroying themselves. Can 21 nations find $4 to $6 trillion to bail out the six? We do not think so, and we have said this from the beginning. Fragile isn’t the word for it, neither is contagion. The operative phrase is object failure.

Morality and Empathy

I wish I could remember who first posted that:

When Ron Paul began to practice medicine, people had heart attacks, and died.
When Ron Paul began to practice medicine, people contracted cancer, and died.
When Ron Paul began to practice medicine, premature babies were born, then quickly died.
When Ron Paul began to practice medicine, people with torn ACL limped for the rest of their lives.

Today, all of those things are treatable. Treatments which keep people alive and improve their well being cost more than simply letting them die, or letting them "live with it."

Mr. Paul is simply out of touch with the reality of the practice of medicine - likely because he stopped being a doctor in 1976 when he switched careers to become a politician.

Not one person on the stage had the moral courage to disagree, not one person had the empathy for a dying person.  What has become of America? 

­.

Adding Spice to my Life

It is amazing to find a book that is factual, material presented that is easy and quick to understand and at the same time takes a reader, that probably is new to the field, along a path to change.  That is the book I just finished reading.  HEALING SPICES HOW TO USE 50 EVERYDAY AND EXOTIC SPICES  TO BOOST HEALTH AND BEAT DISEASE by Bharat B. Aggarwal.

Let me share some gems from the book to beginning with and then I will wrote about the changes I will be making.   Top meal for a healthy heart---"dine on a serving of fish flavored with garlic and topped with slivered almonds.  Don't forget a side or two of vegetables.  Drink a glass of red wine with the meal.  And for dessert, much on an apple and a small piece of dark chocolate."

Or this one-----"The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a consistent pattern of protection--the more onions in the diet, the less cancer. Red, white, yellow onions, garlic, shallots and leeks are members of the family. Garlic is the 'anti-aging' food.  On of the world's most potent natural medicines."

Or this gem----The Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto showed that lycopene (tomatoes) prevention and treatment of osteoporosis, the the consumption of tomatoes and tomato products may offer a viable alternation to mediation for osteoporosis. 

Finally on the most important spice, Turmeric and the active ingredient curcumin.  Dr. David Frawley , "If I had only one single herb to depend upon for all possible health and dietary needs, I would choose the Indian spice turmeric."  As a folk remedy , it has been used to treat some 60 maladies.  Let me tell a personal one, it is about my left hip.  I am not bothered by it in the daytime but at night, the pain of it wakes me up.  I turn,  I have taken an assortment of pain killers, enyzimes but it became a fact to sleep with.  Until I read about the power of curcumin and it reducing inflammation.  I have personal proof of it's power.  Sometimes, I wake and wait to feel the pain, as if it is not possible to be pain free, then I realize there is no pain with that hip.  I am currently taking two 450 mg. first time in  the morning, then two more before bed.  The fact is that turmeric as no side effects so there is no limit to the amount one can take, the list of 35 prevent or/and  treatments of illnesses it can be used for is in the book. Many of them are written about.   The most important item I find is that it is called the guardian of the liver.  Everything we consume good or bad, makes a stop at the liver.  Curcumin keeps the liver healthy-------that is worth gold in terms our bodies.

I have made a list of new herbs that will be making their way to my cooking pots, some will be grown in my garden next year and my skills at making spice mixes will be on my schedule to practice this winter.  I enjoyed reading this book and and need it as a reference book so I have to purchase a copy.

Still Young

Thomas Jefferson is quoted as calling himself an old man but a very younger gardener, it is perhaps my favorite quote about gardening.  There is so much to learn about the whole process of growing plants that just about the time I think I understand that now, the weather for a particular season is totally different and it offers more challenge.   There are disappointments each year but also surprises that the earth gifts, without any work on my part. 

This year has I am calling the berry year.  The wild blackberries are so numerous that I picked another five pounds again last week.  Now that is a free gift from mother earth.  In my yard the blueberries have had a very good crop and that idea of planting different varieties so they ripen at different times has proven to be very wise.  One bush is still producing for me.  The surprise though now is the raspberries they love this late summer heat and I am giving plenty of water.   The first berry of the spring are the red strawberries that are the warmth and sweetness of the sun.  I have volunteers all over my year, thanks to the birds I suppose.  My bed is a favorite of the chickens and fortunately they clean the bed of bugs and weeds more than they are interested in eating the fruit.

My current plans are to have three hoop beds going for the winter months.  One will be mixed greens and two will be kale.  Another bed will go until maybe December with onions and Brussels sprouts.   There are always some herbs that survive during the winter and I do protect them on very cold night with a cloth cover.  They are want makes the soup or dish in the middle of winter smell so wonderful.

The Anointed One

The other night during the debates I had a flash back to a C-Span book lecture I heard a couple years ago.  It was a WOW moment.

During the debate the question was asked of Perry about his record of the number of people he has allowed to be put to death in his prison system.  The audience cheered and applauded.  Perry without a moments pause answered with a firm he stands by the figures, is proud of it, he is without regret. 

WOW!  There is something very deeply missing or injured in that man's core.  Taking human life is against the most basic DNA of  our soul.  Sadly, this man has been invited by the Bilderbergers in 2007,  it would make sense to understand that big international money is betting on him as the anointed one.

The lecture I refer to was by a graduate of Westpoint, serviced in a war zone, taught at Westpoint, author a book about the psychology of making a man ready to go to battle.  It was a very sobering eye opening talk about how from WW I to the present day, the army has done such a good job of understanding the need to break down the basic human reluctance to killing another human -- the United States military is best killing machine ever known in history.  

Perry's answer made me think of that lecture.