This is a subject that literally leaves me feeling sick inside. It infuriates me, it scares the Hell out of me, it makes me despair for the future of this planet, it leaves me feeling sad and confused as to how and why any sane, rational, caring human being could involve themselves with this. Something has got to be done about this company…
Many countries are resisting, they are banning GMO crops and Monsanto’s products and technology but it still creeps in around the edges. Many countries have tried, but are now losing the battle. Globally, thousands of farmers have had their lives destroyed by this company. Many cultures have lost their native crops, they’ve become ill and have unwittingly become dependent on Monsanto for their very livelihoods.
Hundreds of seed companies are now owned and controlled by this company and thousands of plant varieties are disappearing, never to be seen again. Thousands of people are sick and dying due to illnesses caused by the pesticides, chemicals and animal growth hormones made by this company. Why aren’t more people talking about this? Why aren’t people doing something about it?
I think many people simply don’t know the whole story, don’t realize how serious it is. And what can the average person do about it anyway?
I think that voting with your wallet and your fork, is a step in the right direction. Buying locally grown food from small farms will help, support your local farmer’s markets and CSA programs. Avoid pre-packaged, processed and refined foods, most of them contain GMO ingredients. Avoid fast food restaurants. Prepare more meals at home using fresh, local, whole food ingredients. Cut back on, or better yet, eliminate all meat and dairy products which are full of cancer-causing hormones (not to mention antibiotics and other nasty things). Let your representatives know what you think. Be vocal about it! Stay informed and do your research. If possible, join and support organizations created to fight against this company (see links below). This problem really does affect us all. So assuming that lack of knowledge is the biggest factor, I’m providing a link to this in-depth documentary. Please watch it and spread the word, we can’t continue to sit by and let this happen!
“The World According to Monsanto”
This is part 1 of a 10 part documentary. You can watch the other parts on YouTube, just click on the video screen below. The whole thing is about 90 minutes long, it’s time well spent!
For more information, check out the following links…
Just a quick note to tell you about a film that I think is of huge importance and which carries a strong and impacting message for us all. I hope you will take the time to watch it and to consider the message it brings. It is so important to our world, to our way of life and to the future generations who follow…
This movie was made and sponsored so that it could be shared freely and watched by all, so please do!
Here is the trailer…
You can watch the entire film directly from the official website or on YouTube.
I guess you already noticed that…lol! Well this summer is just proving to be too much for me, there’s too much going on and too little time to do it in so something has to give. Unfortnately it has to be the blog(s). I can’t keep up with it all so until things slow down, you won’t find much new here. When life returns to normal, I’m sure I’ll be back!
I know many people don’t like wasps but they really are beneficial. I find them just as fascinating as I do our honey bees. It’s true that they do kill a few of our honey bees, but so do many other things. The wasps don’t take that many and we’ve all learned to live together peacefully. The wasp in the picture above is a German Yellow-jacket, I’ve found them to be very peaceful and non-aggressive. We have quite a few living in our area and have never had any problems with them. In fact I’ve gotten more stings from our bees (3) than for these guys (0).
This one is collecting wood for her nest. She is nibbling off very thin strips of wood and rolling it into a ball so she can more easily carry it. I love to watch them do this.
Now she is picking up the ball of wood and getting ready to fly back to her nest.
We also have a variety of very tiny wasp, I’m not sure what they are, they look like this wasp but are much smaller and very non-aggressive. They usually set up a nest on our porch every summer and don’t mind at all when we sit just beneath the entrance to their nest in the evenings, they come and go and mind their own business so we don’t mind them living there.
Another wasp that we are lucky enough to live with is the giant European Hornet. These guys are rather scary looking because they are so big! They measure approximately 1 1/2″ long. They have a very distinctive drone, very low and deep. I can generally tell just by the sound whether it’s a honey bee, wasp or a giant hornet flying by the window. Though the hornets are big and intimidating they are also very non-aggressive. They are rather rare here and I believe they are protected so we feel very lucky to have them living in our area. In the early spring we usually see the queen flying around and she is truly an impressive sight!
Photo by Richard Bartz
This is a picture of a European Hornet with a bit of captured prey that she will take back to feed to her growing larvae. I think she is just beautiful!
I love to watch our bees drink, it’s something you don’t see everyday. Long periods of time can go by without noticing any bees at all near the water barrel and then one day you wake up to find 30-40 bees all drinking at once, and they will usually spend the next several days drinking. Peer told me that this is a good indication that they are breeding. They are hauling water back to the hive. He says that they use the water to drink and also to regulate the temperature in the hive. Here is the place that our bees like to drink.
Inside the barrel we have a piece of styrofoam which is like a raft for the bees. All those black dots on the styrofoam are bees. One thing I’ve discovered is that bees do not do very well around water, they fall in and drown really easily. They do much better with this big raft. The styrofoam is not totally flat and smooth, I picked out shallow holes in the surface so that water can well up and make little shallow ponds on the surface of the raft, then they can drink in relative safety. Here are some close-ups of the raft.
That same raft has been in there for more than a year, they hold up well. You can see a bit of algae has developed but the bees don’t mind, there are many other places they could get water from, but they seem to prefer this spot.
We’ve got lots of stuff blooming in our area right now. The cherry trees started blooming over the weekend and that is when the beekeepers around here put the honey boxes on the hives. That’s what peer did yesterday. He also set up 2 of our Warre hives in the hope that when the bees begin to swarm that they will just move into one of the empty hives. We have a hard time catching the swarms otherwise, because the hives are surrounded by several really tall trees and of course when they swarm they go to the very top where we can’t reach them.
I forgot to tell you that we did end up losing another hive so we are down to three right now. The one that we thought was just weak was actually dead. The bees we saw going in and out were bees from the other hives raiding it.
and so that’s about it for now, I’ll leave you with a few photos…
These are my swamp marigolds, they live in the water-trough next to the barrel where the bees drink.
And this is my favorite picture from yesterday. These are my basil seedlings coming up.
Our weather here is fantastic right now. Gorgeous cloudless sunny days with a light warm breeze and temps high enough to make working outside without a jacket a real pleasure.
The bees are out and they’re busy as…well, as bees! They’re flying furiously off into all directions and returning so loaded down with willow pollen that I’m amazed they can return at all. All four hives are alive and bursting with activity although one is noticeably much smaller and weaker than the others. We will probably only take honey from the strongest hive this year. We don’t need very much for ourselves anyway and we still have some left over from last year.
I’ve recently begun working in the garden but have also injured my back so I’m pacing myself. We’ve decided to only use one planting bed this year (which means we’ll probably end up using two :O) ) planting just the stuff we use the most. Instead we will concentrate this year on getting a green house built and a good sized herb garden, amongst other things that need doing around the property.
So far I’ve got garlic coming up. I found a few heads of garlic which apparently I forgot to dig up last year and since they were sprouting, I decided to plant them. So I pulled them up and separated them into individual cloves and replanted them. I’ve got about 25 plants growing. After I did this, I read that you shouldn’t try to propagate your own cloves due to the increased likelihood of disease. Well, too late now, so this will be a test to see how well they do. It doesn’t make alot of sense to me though, if you can’t replant your own garlic, how did people use to grow it? I guess we’ll see. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please feel free to share.
I’ve also planted four rows of parsley, four rows of spinach and two rows of red radishes. In a few weeks I’ll plant more spinach and radishes. I divided my chives and planted them in the garden instead of in pots where I’ve had them for the past few years. I ended up with 25 plants. We use tons of parsley, more like a veggie than an herb really, and lots of chives. We eat alot of greens too so I might add some kale and chard along with the spinach. There are a few other herbs I’d like to plant but that’s about it for the garden this year.
And finally, I wanted to share a very interesting and thought-provoking article with you on cars (and transportation in general) and how it has changed us and our society… not necessarily for the better. Ivan Illich on Cars
Our weather has warmed up and we are actually having days full of sunshine. The bees are able now to come out, on most days, for a few hours in the afternoons when the sun hits their hives and helps warm things up. At this point we seem to have 3 fairly active hives; the 1st, 2nd and 4th from the left all seem to be doing well. The 3rd from the left is slow and sluggish but there is life there. The fifth hive, our little Warre hive, is still as a grave. We obviously lost that one.
That was our first attempt at starting a Warre hive, we eventually want to phase out all the older, more hands-on high maintenance German boxes but last year we didn’t have much luck. The one you see above we started from a natural swarm which came from the 3rd hive from the left, I wrote about it here. It wasn’t a huge swarm but we hoped it would be enough to get things going. Peer told me that they never really took off though. They didn’t get much comb built and he had a feeling that they wouldn’t make it through the winter. He fed them up but it apparently wasn’t enough to get them through.
On the advice of another local beekeeper we tried to start another Warre hive last summer. He gave us a queen and suggested that we remove bees from one of our stronger hives and put them with the new queen to start a new hive. We did that…I wrote about it here, it was a fiasco and we will NEVER do that again. Nearly every night for a week, we would find that hive in total chaos, the queen crawling on the ground in front of the hive and her bees were scattered here, there and everywhere, they never bonded properly and eventually the colony got smaller and smaller and smaller as bees would leave, get lost and who knows what else, until Peer finally quit trying to hold them together…like I said, TOTAL disaster.
Anyway, that’s where we stand right now, we’ll see how the hives do as spring progresses and we will try again this year to get a few Warre hives established.
I’m not sure how well known this show is so I wanted to mention it here because I think it’s wonderful. Peak Moment Television originates from the west coast of the US. The birth of Peak Moment Television was “in response to awakened Peak Oil awareness” and all the issues surrounding it…Peak Moment Television is a series of “conversations” with local residents and educators which offer “perspectives and initiatives for local self-reliant living in the face of energy, climate, and economic uncertainty.” It’s a weekly 28 minute show which airs on public access tv. Or you can watch it like I do, on YouTube.
For those of you who want to walk a bit more softly and self-reliantly, and who want to see the words “local” and “community” actually mean something again, I think you will find this show informational and inspiring. I’ve linked to just one episode here, one of my favorites, just to give you a taste of what the show is like.
Peak Moment episode 87: In summer 2006 Judy Alexander embarked on an experiment to see how much food she could grow, and how many neighbors could benefit from the garden around her house. Check out her homegrown rainwater collection and irrigation system – watering her 60+ edible crops. Meet the bees, the chickens and the worms. And catch her joy in producing so much food for so little effort.
I had a huge bag of fresh spinach in the refrigerator that I needed to use today. I also had half of a butternut squash left over from last weekend’s chili. Along with half a bag of dried split peas and a few other veggies, this was a fantastic soup!
The bread is from a local bakery, it’s a typical German whole-grain bread. I love German bread, when they say “whole-grain”, they are not kidding…this bread is D E N S E! It is jam-packed with whole sunflower seeds and other grains, it is moist and chewy and it’s hard to eat more than one slice.
Split Pea, Spinach and Butternut Soup
1 tbls olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 leek sliced
1 stalk celery, chopped
2-3 large carrots, chopped
2 cups butternut or other squash, chopped
1 1/2 cups dried split peas, rinsed and drained
250-300gm fresh spinach leaves, washed well and chopped (approx. 1/2 lb)
8 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. basil
1 – 2 tsp. salt to taste (optional)
In a large soup pot, heat oil. Add onions and leek and saute for 5 minutes. Add cumin, thyme and basil, stir through. Add water, bay leaves, peas, and celery. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer with loose lid for 35-40 minutes, until peas are soft. Add squash and carrots, simmer for another 20 minutes or until squash and carrots are soft but not mushy. Add spinach and simmer for 5 more minutes. Add salt to taste (I used 1 1/2 tsp.)
Today was warmer and dryer than yesterday and we even had a bit of sunshine. Our daytime temps are averaging around 10° C (50° F). I visited with the bees again this afternoon and found them fairly active. They’re busy cleaning house and scouting around the area for pollen, at least I assume that is what they are doing, I’m not the bee expert in the family, I just like to watch them. Peer told me that bees do not eliminate over the winter, in order to keep the hive clean, so when they have a chance to get out, one of the first things they need to do is go to the toilet, I would guess there was plenty of that going on today too.
As I watched, I noticed activity from 3 out of our 5 hives. It could mean that the other 2 are dead. 60% of all the activity was coming for just one hive, which is the one in the picture above. I didn’t see any activity from our Warre hive which is the one we started last summer, we had hoped this one would do well so we could slowly phase out our older German style hives. I really hope we won’t lose any hives, but it happens.
Health/Environment Diet for a New America - John Robbins
Diet Revolution - John Robbins
The China Study -T. Colin Campbell
Eat to Live - Dr. Joel Fuhrman
Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappé
Self Sufficiency/Gardening The New Complete Book of Self Sufficiency - John Seymour
The Self Sufficient Gardener - John Seymour
How To Grow More Vegetables - John Jeavons
Square Foot Gardening - Mel Bartholomew
Vegetarian Cookbooks Vegan Planet - Robin Robertson
Vegan Fire and Spice - Robin Robertson
Vegan with a Vengeance - Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Veganomicon - Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Super Natural Cooking - Heidi Swanson
Greens Glorious Greens! - J. Albi and C. Walthers
Real Food Daily - Ann Gentry
World of the East - Vegetarian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey
Bread Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book - Laurel Robertson
Bread Alone - D. Leader and J. Blahnik
Crust and Crumb - Peter Reinhart
I know many people don’t like wasps but they really are beneficial. I find them just as fascinating as I do our honey bees. It’s true that they do kill a few of our honey bees, but so do many other things. The wasps don’t take that many and we’ve all learned to live together peacefully. The wasp in the picture above is a German Yellow-jacket, I’ve found them to be very peaceful and non-aggressive. We have quite a few living in our area and have never had any problems with them. In fact I’ve gotten more stings from our bees (3) than for these guys (0).
