Hope Springs Eternal

It's the first day of Spring.  So why did the temperature fall to 38° last night?  And why, oh why, a week after we planted all our veggies, given that we had passed the average date of last frost by a full week, is it supposed to get down to 34° tonight?

We'll tell you why:  'cause that's the way the ball bounces.  Life is experienced in non-linear, fractal geometric fashion.  Things happen, then other things happen, and then something changes.  No observable cycle is any more circular than the Earth's orbit which, if we remember our 5th grade science at all, is actually elliptical, not circular.

So.  We've got plants in the ground, we're going to cover them at night, and hope for the best.

We've got other plants not yet in the ground because they weren't in stock -- most notably African Basil, which we have on order, and Goat's Rue, which should be coming any day now.

And, we have ordered an abundance of new trees from The Arbor Day Foundation, including a slew of new Loblolly Pines, White Pines, and Bald Cypresses.  The perimeter of Myrtle's place, particularly around the fish pond, needs to be more forested, and we want an abundance of pine-needles on hand to mulch the blackberries every year.

One unusual addition (unusual, at least, for us) is a Forsythia, which the Arbor Day folks threw in for free.  We don't usually go for ornamentals -- we planted some Raspberry Autumn Sage (Red Salvia, for those who may have heard it by another name), but that and our daughter's Morning Glories are the only inedible plants on the place (excepting a few of the trees, of course).

The Forsythia is an interesting case.  Free is always good, naturally, but in addition, it has this going for it:  it's a member of the Olive tree family:  As an Oleacea, it naturally comes near and dear to our hearts.  We only have four Arbequina Olives on the place, but we're hoping that now they will feel a little less lonely.

We're not yet sure what to make of the Forsythia's bright yellow flowers, but we're sure we'll adapt.

In other news, we have moved garden plots around, expanded some, contracted others, but mostly we've gone about the business of getting as much good chicken-poop compost as possible in the places it needs to go.  Two of our 6'x6' garden beds are dedicated to sweet corn, in addition to a new 4'x20' "S" shaped bed which we placed where the 2nd Olive bed is going to go next year.

Also, we replaced the chickens' plastic water feeder with a stainless steel variety.  It holds more water and, more importantly, is not a source of leached bromides.  Perhaps we are partly motivated by a sappy, syrupy-sweet fondness for our chickens, and we do not wish to poison them any more than any other member of our family.  But mostly, we just don't want getting bromides in our eggs.

For the next couple of days, keep your plants and maybe even yourselves warm, and...

Happy farming!

Never Leave 'em With a Problem, Always Leave 'em With a Solution!

We recently advised our fellow Myrtlians that plastic food containers are little more than slow poison.

Of course, some people are in no hurry, so this is not really any scarier a thought than any of the other alarming things we seem to hear on a daily basis, should we choose to log on to our favorite news blog of choice, or even (dare we dream anyone still does this?) read the newspaper.

However, we discovered in daily interaction with many of you followers of Myrtle that we needed to do a little more than raise the alarm.  We needed to be a little more proactive in providing some solutions.  To that end, may we introduce to the western world a little item that many people living in developing nations take for granted?  It's called a "tiffin" in some circles, although in Wikipedia, the best information is in an entry on "Dabbawala", the etymology of which we won't bother to describe here, although it seems pregnant with pun possibilities.

So, what exactly is this "tiffin" of which we speak?  A relatively inexpensive exemplar is in the Amazon.com link to your above left.  You can also find them at World Market.  Of course, if you live in a community of any size, there will be a half-dozen Indian food grocers or international bazaar style outdoor markets, etc. etc., from which it would be better to buy said item; still, for those of us who live in backwaters such as College Station, ordering online may be your best bet.

Why are you ordering this "thing"?  Because it's a lunchbox and because it is convenient, in addition to being non-toxic! 

In India, millions of workers all throughout the country rely on delivery persons to bring their hot fresh home-cooked meals to them in their tiffins; Myrtle Maintenance Personnel have a similar arrangement, although we must confess that we send refrigerated foods and rely on that most odious of modern conveniences, the microwave, to heat up said foods on a ceramic plate.  Still, we stay as true to the original intent of the tiffin as practical.

And best of all, you buy this item once, you never need buy it again.  It doesn't go in a landfill, it doesn't sully your system, it doesn't block iodine.  And it encourages you to eat cool foods -- when is the last time you took kebabs with spinach dal to your workplace?  Myrtle might cringe at the thought, but we are sure you could even take tandoori chicken in one if you so desired.

Happy lunchtime, and happy plastic-free farming!

Pick Your Poison

We've told you before about the importance of pure water.  We even mentioned parenthetically that it is important to store your distilled water in glass containers, not plastic.

We've now gone guano-loco with the logical conclusion to this line of reasoning.  We are getting rid of plastic containers altogether.  There are a wide variety of reasons, but the most fundamental is this:  most plastics leach bromines and bromides in one form or another.  And together with fluorides, our body is so flush with these chemicals in our contemporary habitat that they have effectively blocked our iodine receptors more completely than any insidious plotter from Dr. Strangelove could have hoped.

"Now, hold on a minute!" you might be saying.  "Isn't fluoride a good thing?"  Yes.  In moderation.  Fluoridation of water has dramatically improved dental health in this country for nigh on five decades now.  It's just that, along with out-gassing and leaching from plastics, fluoride and bromine/bromides have had disastrous unintended consequences.

Hypothyroidism is the condition which first brought the importance of iodine to Myrtle's household  -- Myrtle Maintenance Personnel have been fighting this condition for over a decade now.  But this is only the tip of the iceberg; iodine deficiency has been linked to breast cancer, among other things; we would not at all be surprised to find that there are links to autism, ADHD, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and all sorts of other conditions which have been on the rise like some demented Vanity Fair review of uncomfortable conditions.

Think about it... the onset of an "obesity epidemic" has only come in the last three to four decades.  "Super-Size me" has something to do with it, of course, but what else happened in the late 70's, early 80's?  Coca-Cola switched from glass bottles to plastic, that's what.  So did all sorts of other acidic foods (Tomato ketchup, anyone?), not to mention car upholstery no longer being cloth or even leather, for the most part.  We get out-gassed to the Nth degree in our cars.

You want further circumstantial evidence?  The worst offenders for obesity are in the deep south.  Where there is no public transportation... and you have to drive a long time through the blazing hot sun every summer to get anywhere...  We would love to see an epidemiologist get a grant to thoroughly investigate this question.

But we're not holding our breath.  Or, maybe we should....

So, we're ditching plastic.  We'll keep you posted.

Happy farming!