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SoGa Growing Local & Sustainable Conference

I think this is the third year of a fascinating conference that started when some people in south Georgia realized nobody else was going to talk about what it takes to grow local sustainable food here below the gnat line in this longleaf pine land of tea-colored rivers, acid soil, and rich gardening traditions. -jsq

Red Earth Farm Janisse Ray present:

SoGa Growing Local & Sustainable Conference

A day-long, information-rich, action-packed, affordable conference designed to get you healthier and save you money.

facebook event

When and Where:

9AM to 6PM, Jan. 26, 2013
Tattnall County High School,
Highway 23/57 South,
(1 Battle Creek Warrior Blvd)
Reidsville, GA 30453

Registration:

PDF, Word
$30 before Jan. 15;
$45 afterwards.
Includes lunch.

Many do-it-yourself workshops in homesteading and country living: mushroom culture, beekeeping, backyard chickens, soil-building, small fruit production, economics, gardening for wildlife, charcuterie, natural cleaning, fermentation, herbs on the menu, natural cleaning & body care products, making jams & jellies, vermiculture, weed management, marketing, everything you need to know about small farming. Ladies Homestead Gathering, seed-saving. And so much more….

Conference actually starts on Friday with a potluck, reading & a showing of the film “Grow.”

For more information see Registration on the left here, or email redearthfarm at yahoo.

Gretchen Quarterman will be giving a workshop at the Growing Local conference: Beginning lesson on home made jams and jellies. What you’ll need (not much) to start making delicious sweets from fruits that are easily available.

Inspirational gardener & naturalist Ellen Corrie of Tifton, Ga. will be teaching a workshop on Gardening for Wildlife at the Growing Local conference Jan. 26. This presentation will look at how gardening for wildlife makes your garden (whatever size) healthier and helps restore habitat and preserve biodiversity. There’ll be an overview of factors which need to be considered to attract and keep any wildlife or beneficial general. I’ll focus on pollinators and specific practices and plants to attract them. — with Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath and Dan Corrie.

Albert Kipple Culbreath will be teaching a Mushroom-Growing Workshop at the conference. Inoculation and care of logs for production of shiitake and oyster mushrooms. Will include information on where to obtain supplies, how to handle logs, which type logs to use, care for the logs, and culinary uses. Sign up now. — with Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath.

Native plants in your yard for native wildlife

Nature is not something out there, apart from people. It never was, and nowadays people have built and farmed and clearcut so much that wildlife species from insects to birds are in trouble. In south Georgia people may think that our trees make a lot of wildlife habitat. Actually, most of those trees are planted pine plantations with very limited undergrowth, and in town many yards are deserts of grass plus exotic species that don’t support native birds. Douglas Tallamy offers one solution: turn yards into wildlife habitat by growing native species. Since we are as always remodeling nature, we might as well do it so as to feed the rest of nature and ourselves, and by the way get flood prevention and possibly cleaner water as well, oh, and fewer pesticides to poison ourselves.

Douglas Tallamy makes a clear and compelling case in Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

…it is not yet too late to save most of the plants and animals that sustain the ecosystems on which we ourselves depend. Second, restoring native plants to most human-dominated landscapes is relatively easy to do.

Some of you may wonder why native species are so important? Don’t we have more deer than we can shoot? Maybe so, but we have far fewer birds of almost every species than we did decades and only a few years ago.

Some may wonder: aren’t exotic species just as good as native ones, if deer and birds can eat them? Actually, no, because many exotic species are poisonous Japanese climbing fern on native Smilax to native wildlife, and because invasive exotics crowd out natives and reduce species diversity. From kudzu to Japanese climbing fern, exotic invasives are bad for wildlife and may also promote erosion and flooding by strangling native vegetation.

All plants are not created equal, particularly in their ability to support wildlife. Most of our native plant-eaters are not able to eat alien plants, and we are replacing native plants with alien species at an alarming rate, especially in the suburban gardens on which our wildlife increasingly depends. My central message is that unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.

Tallamy had an epiphany when he and his wife moved to 10 acres in Pennsylvania in 2000:

Continue reading →

Cane grinding

Terry Davis cut the cane because of frost. He ground the cane, then Mr. Tucker lit the fire under the bowl; Gretchen took pictures. Here's a video playlist:

Cane grinding with Terry Davis and Mr. Tucker in Berrien County, Georgia, 16 November 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms.

And here's a slideshow of still pictures:

-jsq

Crop rotation for profit

Want better yields and the same or more profit? Stop buying pesticides, rotate more crops over longer periods, and mix in animals. Yet another study confirms this. Oh, and a hundred times less disease-causing pesticides in streams, and presumably also less pesticides in the food going to market.

Mark Bittman wrote for NYTimes today, A Simple Fix for Farming,

The study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the Marsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set up three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its routine mix of chemicals. On another, they planted a three-year cycle that included oats; the third plot added a four-year cycle and alfalfa. The longer rotations also integrated the raising of livestock, whose manure was used as fertilizer.

Figure 3. Multiple indicators of cropping system performance.

The paper’s Figure 3 (above) illustrates that labor increased with crop rotation length, but so did yield, and profit remained the same or better. How can this be? Continue reading →

Parkinson’s and Roundup: latest in a long list

We already knew Argentinian farmers were suing Monsanto about Roundup-induced birth defects, including cerebral palsy, down syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers, and blindness; we knew Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate was “a risk factor for developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma”; we knew that Roundup-ready corn causes liver and kidney damage in rats and chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression, and we knew that Roundup-ready corn is toxic to humans. Add to all that: Roundup is a risk for Parkinson’s disease.

Sayer Ji wrote for GreenMediaInfo 18 April 2012, Roundup Herbicide Linked To Parkinson’s-Related Brain Damage,

Alarming new research published in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology supports the emerging connection between glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, and neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Parkinsonian disorders.

Published this month (April, 2012), the new study entitled “Glyphosate induced cell death through apoptotic and authophagic mechanisms,” investigated the potential brain-damaging effects of herbicides, which the authors stated “have been recognized as the main environmental factor associated with neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.”1

They found that glyphosate inhibited the viability of differentiated test cells (PC12, adrenal medula derived), in both dose-and-time dependent manners. The researchers also found that “glyphosate induced cell death via authophagy pathways in addition to activating apoptotic pathways.”

Roundup herbicide is now a ubiquitous contaminant in our air, rain, groundwater, and food, making complete avoidance near impossible. A growing body of experimental evidence now indicates that it in addition to its neurotoxicity it also has the following.

Modes of Toxicity

Continue reading →

Plop!

Sounds you don't want your smart phone to make: "Plop!" as it falls out of your pocket into the pond.

Now you might think it would be easy to find, since you can plainly see it fell straight down. Nope, I've rummaged through the bottom all around with fingers, then with a potato fork. Nothing. I blame it on the beavers, who I think are facebooking with it.

Here's the video:

Plop!
Video of John S. Quarterman by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 April 2012.

-jsq

Want some 2,4-D with that drifting Roundup and Paraquat?

Got enough Roundup and Paraquat drifting onto you? Want some 2,4-D with that? If not, you can send your comments to USDA now. Hey, what if we all plowed under the mutant pigweed instead of breeding more with poison soup!

Tom Philpott wrote for Mother Jones 18 July 2012, USDA Prepares To Greenlight Gnarliest GMO Soy Yet,

In early July, on the sleepy Friday after Independence Day, the USDA quietly signaled its intention to greenlight a new genetically engineered soybean seed from Dow AgroSciences. The product is designed to produce soy plants that withstand 2,4-D, a highly toxic herbicide (and, famously, the less toxic component in the notorious Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange).

Readers may remember that during an even-sleepier period—the week between Christmas and the New Year—the USDA made a similar move on Dow’s 2,4-D-ready corn.

If the USDA deregulates the two products—as it has telegraphed its intention to do—Dow will enjoy a massive profit opportunity. Every year, about half of all US farmland is planted in corn and soy. Currently, Dow’s rival Monsanto has a tight grip on weed management in corn-and-soy country. Upwards of 90 percent of soy and 70 percent of corn is engineered to withstand another herbicide called glyphosate through highly profitable Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seed lines. And after so many years of lashing so much land with the same herbicide, glyphosate-resistant superweeds are now vexing farmers and “alarming” weed-control experts throughout the midwest.

And that’s where Dow’s 2,4-D-ready corn and soy seeds come in. Dow’s novel products will be engineered to withstand glyphosate and 2,4-D, so farmers can douse their fields with both herbicides; the 2,4-D will kill the weeds that glyphosate no longer can. That’s the marketing pitch, anyway.

There’s more in the article.

It can also get into your well water, and then, according to EPA:

Continue reading →

Early corn Planting —Alla Peek Quarterman

My grandmother wrote this around 1960, when she was around 77 years old. -jsq

I remember when corn in the fields was dropped by hand — 2 grains every two steps. Mule plow opened the furrow & children dropped the grains.

The first corn planter was considered bad — it was sure to keep the seed from sprouting!

My brother Patrick found this text in a notebook his aunt Elsie had kept.

-jsq

Dog shower at Okra Paradise Farms

The dogs like the new spigot!

Here's video of them cooling off after a run:

Dog shower at Okra Paradise Farms
John S. Quarterman and Gretchen Quarterman, with Brown Dog and Yellow Dog.
Video by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 June 2012.

-jsq

Protracted extreme drought: U.S. Drought Monitor, 2012-05-08

Acording to U.S. Drought Monitor, drought throughout south Georgia and surrounding areas is either extreme or exceptional, and has been for months.

Here you can see detail for Georgia:

Continue reading →