Got to turn that big old crank
Got to spin that flywheel around
Got to shell that red kernel corn
So we’ll have some grits and corn meal.
Here’s the video:
Gretchen Quarterman, Shelling red corn
Video by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms,
Lowndes County, Georgia, 13 November 2015.
-jsq
Corn smut a delicacy? Well, if truffles can be, why not?
Jill Neimark, the salt, 24 August 2015,
Scourge No More: Chefs Invite Corn Fungus To The Plate,
One evening last July, Nat Bradford walked along rows of White Bolita Mexican corn at his Sumter, S.C., farm, and nearly wept. All 1,400 of the corn plants had been overtaken almost overnight by corn smut, recalls Bradford, who’s also a landscape architect. The smut, from a fungus called Ustilago maydis, literally transforms each corn kernel into a bulbous, bulging bluish-grey gall. It is naturally present in the soil and can be lofted easily into the air and onto plants.
Smut is considered a scourge by most U.S. farmers, and it goes by the nickname “devil’s corn.” Just one discolored kernel typically renders an ear completely unsellable….
Yep, that’s the way we’ve usually considered it. But keep reading: Continue reading
Also rosemary, collard seeds…. A bit muggy, you can tell by the foggy picture Gretchen just took at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse in downtown Valdosta, Georgia.
-jsq
With GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds.
This has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants.
We can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying,
using plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead.
Mark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont, Crop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance, Continue reading
Even more fun and twice as many people at
my second canning class
at the Lowndes High School Canning Plant.
Thanks to James Perdue and the Valdosta Community Garden Group for organizing.
These pictures are also on
my facebook timeline.
See also shelling peas at the 19 June 2014 class.
-gretchen
Gretchen is at the old Lowndes County Courthouse now, setting up for Valdosta Farm Days, 9AM to 1PM today.
By Colter Anstaetts reported from Okra Paradise Farms for WALB yesterday,
Lowndes County farmers ready for “Farm Days”,
Lowndes County farmers will be at the courthouse in downtown Valdosta from 9 a.m.to 1 p.m. selling their crops. This is the fourth year for the “Farm Days” program, and Lowndes County farmers are looking forward to it.
“I’m definitely looking forward to Farm days,” said Gretchen Quarterman, a farmer in Hahira. “It’s an excellent opportunity for farmers, not only to sell but for local people to get local, fresh food. And, when we buy from local farmers we support the local economy.”
-jsq
Fortunately Yellow Dog and Brown Dog weren’t around when I stopped the tractor
to wait for this corn snake to slither across.
Later I showed it to Gretchen (see below). Continue reading
Likely effects of dousing 90+% of all corn, soybeans, peanuts, and cotton grown in Georgia (and elsewhere) in Roundup and other toxic chemicals, often drifting onto other people’s land, schools, shops, and churches. It’s not that hard to grow the same crops without those poisons and without the toxic seeds that require them; not that hard and more profitable.
Yes, I know Jeffrey M. Smith is not a biological scientist or medical doctor. But many of the sources he cites are.
Posted by MyScienceAcademy 29 November 2013, GMOs linked to gluten disorders plaguing 18 million Americans – report
The IRT release also indicated that glyphosate, a weed killer sold under the brand name ‘Roundup’ was also found to have a negative effect on intestinal bacteria. GMO crops contain high levels of the toxin at harvest.
“Even with minimal exposure, glyphosate can significantly reduce the population of beneficial gut bacteria and promote the overgrowth of harmful strains,” the report found.
Continue reading
Pesticide poisoning has rapidly increased in Argentina as Monsanto-seed pesticided crops ramped up. Meanwhile in Georgia, 90+% of common crops already are doused in pesticides. What effects are all those poisons having on our own children and adults?
Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko wrote for AP today, Argentines link health crisis to agrochemicals,
Argentine farmworker Fabian Tomasi wasn’t trained to use protective gear as he pumped pesticides into crop dusters. Now at 47, he’s a living skeleton.
Schoolteacher Andrea Druetta lives in a town where it’s illegal to spray agrochemicals within 550 yards of homes, and yet soy is planted just 33 yards from her back door. Recently, her boys were showered in chemicals while swimming in their backyard pool.
Sofia Gatica’s search for answers after losing her newborn to kidney failure led to Argentina’s first criminal convictions for illegal spraying last year. But 80 percent of her neighbors’ children surveyed carry pesticides in their blood.
Meanwhile, German researchers found pesticides in all samples of urine, and back in the U.S.A. and Canada, researchers found pesticide metabolites in 95% of schoolchildren tested.
90+% of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and corn around here are doused in agrochemicals, and even Continue reading
