The sun shines through the window into the lower box, heating air that rises through the upper box, dehydrating fruits and vegetables on the racks. That's the theory; we'll see if it works. Idea shamelessly stolen from Raven Waters; I figure it's his fault if it doesn't work. 🙂
Gretchen Quarterman placing racks in the solar dehydrator
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 3 August 2012.
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Feeding Tom the house spider.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 9 July 2012.
The circle in the bottom right is where I set the bug in Tom’s web. He came right out and got it.
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Terry Davis picking corn:
Terry Davis picking corn
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 July 2012.
Okra, potato, pepper, plus cornbread muffins and collard seeds:
Gretchen picks peppers every day, and right now she's baking pepper muffins to take to Valdosta Farm Days at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse. Brown Dog and Yellow Dog helping:
Brown Dog and Yellow Dog helping Gretchen Quarterman pick peppers.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 July 2012.
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Does the jar grow around them?
Here’s the video:
Planting Pickles
Video by John S. Quarterman of Gretchen Quarterman planting cucumbers
at Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 16 April 2012.
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Here’s a slideshow: Continue reading
“We were very much surprised by our findings. Until now, itThe toxicity of the corn itself may have been a surprise, but not that of Roundup:has been thought almost impossible for Bt proteins to be toxic to human cells. Now further investigations have to be conducted to find out how these toxins impact the cells and if combinatorial effects with other compounds in the food and feed chain have to be taken into account,” says Gilles-Eric SĂ©ralini from the University of Caen, who supervised the experiments. “In conclusion, these experiments show that the risks of Bt toxins and of Roundup have been underestimated.”
These findings are in accordance with several other investigations highlighting unexpected health risks associated with glyphosate preparations.Previous studies, including ones by Dr. SĂ©ralini, already showed exposure to glysophate (the active ingredient in Roundup) to be “a risk factor for developing Non-Hodgkin lymphoma”, and to be toxic to human umbilical, placental, and placental cells with a that “is far below agricultural recommendations and corresponds to low levels of residues in food or feed.” In Argentina, Prof. AndrĂ©s Carrasco has demonstrated birth defects in amphibians and there is increasing evidence of human birth defects.
Regarding Monsanto’s GM corn itself, we already knew it causes liver and kidney damage in rats (later reverified using Monsanto’s own data), and chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression.
Now we have even more hard evidence of the toxicity of Monsanto’s GM corn and of Monsanto’s Roundup. The journal article is available through Wiley online.
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Stephanie Garlow wrote for Global Post 1 November 2011, McDonald’s failure in Bolivia: The country closed its stores and left Bolivia in 2002. Why couldn’t it succeed there?
It’s the country that turned its back on McDonald’s.Here’s the movie trailer. Yes, it’s in Spanish, but I think you’ll get the general idea from the pictures without needing to follow the dialog. Or here’s another version with even less dialog and some English subtitles. Continue reading
The fast food giant added the traditional llajwa sauce to its classic patties, but still Bolivians weren’t conviced.
So after five years, McDonald’s closed its eight branches and left the country in 2002.
Now a new documentary, “ÂżPor quĂ© quebrĂł McDonald’s en Bolivia?”, explores why McDonald’s failed. Filmmaker Fernando Martinez focuses on social and cultural aspects to explain the company’s lack of success. “Culture beat a transnational, globalized world,” he said.
realized nobody else was going to hold a conference
about growing local in the characteristic soils and climate
and with the characteristic foods and culture of
south Georgia, so
okravores met in Tifton
and learned about everything from controling insect to which breeds of cows
produce the best organic milk.
Raven demonstrated
you can make cheese in south Georgia
and Gretchen
demonstrated preserving beautyberry and other jams and jellies,
along with many other interesting talks and demonstrations, and good food.
The South Georgia Growing Local Conference is back,
this time near Reidsville, in January.
When:
Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, 9-5
Where:
UGA’s Vidalia Onion & Vegetable Research Center, between Lyons & Reidsville, Ga. & Red Earth Farm, ReidsvilleWhat: Continue reading
After an initial decline in yields during the first few years of transition, the organic system soon rebounded to match or surpass the conventional system. Over time, FST became a comparison between the long term potential of the two systems.Year after year, Rodale found:
Organic yields match conventional yields.
As Tom Philpott reported for Mother Jones 17 November 2011, Yet Again, Organic Ag Proves Just as Productive as Chemical Ag,
Norman Borlaug, instigator of the “green revolution” of no-till and pesticides, when asked in 2000 whether organic agriculture could feed the world, said: Continue readingAnd now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in 1998, which has just released its latest results.
At the LTAR fields in Adair County, the (LTAR) runs four fields: one managed with the Midwest-standard two-year corn-soy rotation featuring the full range of agrochemicals; and the other ones organically managed with three different crop-rotation systems. The chart below records the yield averages of all the systems, comparing them to the average yields achieved by actual conventional growers in Adair County: