Sunday garden blogging

Spaded over and resting for the season

More of this

"This is the unsustainable path we’re on, and it’s the path the insurers want to keep us on. In fact, the insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest – to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads. They’re flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists and campaign contributions. And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people.

Of course, like clockwork, we’ve seen folks on cable television who know better, waving these industry-funded studies in the air. We’ve seen industry insiders – and their apologists – citing these studies as proof of claims that just aren’t true."
President Barack Obama...

Keeneland morning workouts

The White House Garden

I don't have much to say. But, I felt better for watching.

Old farts baling hay

I might be getting a little "long in the tooth" but I can still sling bales!

From old_farts

Weekend Pepper Blogging

Deep, late sun right down at produce level.

Manifesto not so much

A bag of Cheetos, a can of Mountain Dew, out of the convenience store, into the car and off to work. The scene may sound outrageous enough for comedy but chips, pop and off to work is a common act in a national drama with food. Michael Pollan thinks the play is a tragedy and wastes no time making his points in his latest book, "In Defense of Food: an eater's manifesto."

Pollan is deeply cynical in the details defining his attacks on nutrition, food science, and the health industry. While well-researched and compelling, In Defense gets diluted by lazy claims deriding the industrial food complex. Yes, everything in the book has been said before and Pollan makes sure to reference his points.

References are only as good as the sources and conclusions only as good as the underlying arguments. Processed foods might not be good for us all the time. But it's hard to draw a distinction between a bag of chips and a can of pop for breakfast and a bag of flour from reading In Defense. If it's processed it's bad.

Pollan's lashing about tends to reduce the value of the central themes found in the book important to an enlightened and much-needed discussion about food and eating. We've arrived at a point where we're both "overfed and undernourished," food and eating are cleaved from culture, and that diet and nutrition fads substitute for actual healthy living are among the valuable broader points Pollan brings forward.

Let's take a quick look. Pollan talks about wheat and bread explaining that the milling process removes the nutritional value of the flour used to make bread. The effects of milling on flour are well known and Pollan is hardly providing a news flash. It was modern food science that learned how to return the nutritional value to the flour used in baking bread. The bread you buy in the grocery store today isn't like what grandma used to bake. Grandma wasn't providing for millions of people either.

In Defense struggles with economics by encouraging "those of us who can" to spend more time and money on food. That's nice. The burgeoning obesity problem and associated health issues Pollan attributes to food and eating are more pronounced among the poor and working class where cheap sugar and carbohydrates fill empty stomachs. The same groups also struggle with time. In the best of situations you have two people working, and if there are children involved, a meal of "mac & cheese" out of a box is the path of least resistance and lowest cost.

In Defense is a worthwhile read for the thinking it should stimulate. Leaning on it as an actual "manifesto" of managing the global challenges to food security is thin gruel.

Sunday zuchini bread blogging

The green thing results in the brown thing. Really.

 

Truck Farm

Maybe I'm a wee bit defensive about farming but I still think there's lots of room for creative, and even humorous, endeavor:

6:48 run time

Sunday recession garden blogging

Peppers, and they're almost ready!

From 2009_homeandgarden_7_23

MBF

At home with Eli.

 

Sunday Recession Garden Blogging

Peppers - oh, yeah! Tomatos - soon! Zucinni - in bloom! Beans, ah, well...

 

Walter Cronkite: always with us

Walter Cronkite is dead at 92. He was always there.

JC

And people don't get why I love Johnny Cash:

Iraq and its agriculture

Right at the footings for everything is farming.

Informed Comment

Shared via AddThis

Melancholy

Endings and beginnings, pages turned, chapters closed, fresh starts, perils and opportunity…

It’s actually much harder than I expected sitting here now three days after the high school graduation ceremony and two days after the graduation party. I’m relieved the young man has completed this phase of his life and I’m happy for him to be able to move on to the next phase. This is good and wonderful and something he has earned in his own odd way.

But I’m sad, too. I’m going to miss him. The young man will be around but it won’t be the same. He has stepped onto a new platform where mom and dad aren’t the engineers and conductors they’ve been for the last 18 years. We hope he has what’s needed now to be able to take care of himself.

Times are tough. He has to compete for a shrinking resource base on several fronts. Much of what he has grown up with is going to disappear in his lifetime. Hopefully, he has the skills to adapt. There have been enough hard knocks in his life so he has a taste of adversity and should know how to make adjustments.

In an interview, the film maker George Lucas said his hopes for his children and people in general are to be able to take care of themselves, find some happiness, and one day to give something back.

Yeah, me too, George.

10x12

Five tomatos, four peppers, two rows of beans and one hill for zucinni. The Great Recession Garden is in.

Union South demo

A walk around the destruction zone.

Union South

 Goodbye Union South!

Pirate update

The current pirate news story is exiting the stage with the safe return of the American hostage and the death or capture of the pirates. Greasy, creepy business and I think the pirates know the stakes are even higher now than before.