World Hunger Relief, Inc.
This is the old World Hunger Relief, Inc. blog. There is still lots of good stuff here so take your time and look around before going to the new blog accessible from the homepage on our website. www.worldhungerrelief.org
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Solution To All Your Pecan Problems
Ok. First thing you need to do is find a native pecan grove or plant an orchard. After you plant, wait 15-20 years until the trees are old enough to start producing. You'll have a lot of free time in between, so you might want to find a way to pass the time...like a part-time job or build a canoe or something. Next, you'll need to go out on a crisp fall day when it's dry and a little windy. Take a hearty work crew with you that is excited about life and can't wait to strain their bodies for cheap/free.
It wouldn't hurt to do some pecan yoga beforehand. This is good for even the limberest of the limber. It doesn't do much for the body. It's mostly a good way to procrastinate from having to get to work.
Spread out your vinyl tarps around the base of the tree. Make sure you get the real thick kind that are heavy and awkward to carry. Watch out for fire ant hills, armadillo holes, and irrigation pipes.
So you've got your tree, you've got your tarps in place, now you're ready to shake.
So go ahead and jump on the tractor and...oh wait. You're tractor is missing a bolt, the hydrolics aren't working, or just won't start for some reason. You better figure out how to fix this.
Ok, you've jimmy-rigged some solution to the tractor, now you're ready to shake! Back up the tractor with the shaker implement up to the tree.
You've locked on with the jaws of the shaker...now rev up the RPM's, engage the PTO, and let 'er rip!
Whew! what a shake! The wind will hopefully have blown most of the leaves off into the wild blue yonder and your precious pecans should have fallen into the open arms of your tarp....along with hordes of sticks and twigs and caterpillars. Now, pull the tarps to the next tree in the row and repeat the process.
The tarps will get progressively heavier as you go. This is OK. This means you're bringing home the bacon. It might ruin your knees and back, but just think of all those pecans you'll be swimming in later!
After the load gets too heavy, and the crew is starting to lose moral, call for a "tarp dump". This is a technical term in the pecan production industry which means you take the tarps and dump the contents in the back of the trailer. (Take note, this by far the worst part of the job. If you can get past this, consider yourself a trooper, and don't feel guilty about the next slice of greasy pizza you eat.) After the tarp dump, stand back and say to yourself, "oh yeah".
Now, some of you might be thinking: "Cool. I've got pecans out of the tree. Let's eat!" Hold your horses, just one minute. You've only done half the job! You've got pecans, but you've also got leaves and sticks and twigs and caterpillars. If you want to eat those, then go ahead and call it a day. But if your stomach can't handle all that stuff, read on. Take your load up to the barn and unload it on a tarp and start shoveling it into the sorting machine.
Have one person pull the big sticks and twigs out of the hopper so they don't clog up the machine because this makes you really frustrated when this happens.
As the trash gets blown away, the good pecans will pass through and fall onto the conveyor belt. Now you feel like Lucille Ball as you sort the good and bad pecans. Throw out all the bad ones and let the good ones fall into the bucket at the end of the belt. Don't put any in your mouth because the shell tastes gross.
When you've sorted through the whole load, check out all those glorious pecans! Whoa mamma!
Now take the pecans that you've sorted out that still have the green husks on them and stomp on them. It helps if you have some sort of traditional folk music that sounds like a march...or maybe some salsa music...or maybe swing. I don't know. I've never actually done it to music, but it seems like it would be a good idea while you stomp and twist the husk off of the pecans.
Once the green ones have been sufficiently stomped, sort through them again, and then bag 'em up!
Now take your thousands of pounds to a sheller, wait a week, pick them up, and enjoy! It's really that simple! However, if some of you out there are just too busy to spend 8 hours a day for 2-3 months harvesting pecans, I do have a much simpler solution for you. I have actually already done all of this and have plenty of pecans ready and waiting for human consumption! All you have to do is call up World Hunger Relief, and we'll gladly share our bounty with you for a great price! Our pecans are Organic, taste better than anything you'll find at the store, and are usually a little cheaper. I know it's hard to believe. Check out our website (worldhungerrelief.org) and click on "Organic Pecans" on the right side for all the information you'll need to get your hands on these taste-tastic treats.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Farm Day Madness 2009
World Hunger Relief, Autumn Farm Day, November 2009 from Chris P. Jones on Vimeo.
It takes a lot of work - work from everyone on the farm along with the power of over 100 volunteers - to put an event like this on.We painted signs. We baked (a bazillion cookies and muffins). We hammered nails. We used drills. We painted. We called. We emailed. We harvested. We shared stories with fellow volunteers, donors mingled with customers. Kids mingled with animals. Vendors laughed with farm folk.
And of course the music! As you saw in the video, we rocked our hand-knitted socks off. From under the big tent, music flowed and feet taped.
We had our turkeys out, so you could see your future Thanksgiving bird, and our goats and chickens were very nice to let all the people pet them. Tasty farm, grassfed meat was served and sold. Pecan were cracked. Eggs were bought.
It was definitely an event not to be missed. If you were unable to attend Fall Farm Day, make sure you save the date for next year's: April 10, 2010!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
drink yer milk.
some of us at the farm like to drink raw milk. and question authority. so supporting the real foods movement seems like a good fit. . .
From Joel Salatin’s foreword to The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights by David Gumpert.
I drink raw milk, sold illegally on the underground black market. I grew up on raw milk from our own Guernsey cows that our family hand-milked twice a day. We made yogurt, ice cream, butter, and cottage cheese. All through high school in the early 1970s, I sold our homemade yogurt, butter, buttermilk, and cottage cheese at the Curb Market on Saturday mornings. This was a precursor to today’s farmer’s markets.
In those days, the Virginia Department of Agriculture had a memorandum of agreement with the Curb Market that as long as vendors belonged to an Agricultural Extension organization such as Extension Homemaker’s Clubs or 4-H, producers could bring value-added products to market without inspection and visits from the food police. The government agents assumed that anyone participating in the extension programs would be getting the latest, greatest food science and therefore conform to the most modern procedural protocols, which created its own protection.
As the Virginia Slims commercial says, “We’ve come a long way, baby.” These conciliatory overtures to maintain healthy and vibrant local food economies exist no more. Today I can’t sell any of those things at a farmer’s market, and even if I take eggs some bureaucrat will come along with a pocket thermometer and, without warrant or warning, reach over and poke it through my display eggs to see if they are at the proper temperature. If they aren’t, no amount of pleading that those are for display only can dissuade the petulant public servant from demanding that I dump those display eggs in a trash can on the spot. I don’t sell at farmer’s markets anymore.
In 1975, when I graduated from high school and began plotting my farming career, I figured out that I could hand-milk ten cows, sell the milk to neighbors at regular retail prices, and be a full-time farmer. This was before most people had ever heard the word organic. But selling milk was illegal. In those days, we didn’t know about herd shares or Community Supported Agriculture or even limited liability corporations.
As a result, I went to work for a local newspaper and became the proverbial part-time farmer—working in town to support the farming passion. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over the fact that the government arbitrarily determined to make it very difficult for me to become a farmer. That seems un-American, doesn’t it?
Isn’t it curious that at this juncture in our culture’s evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not? With legislation moving through Congress demanding that all agricultural practices be “science-based,” I believe our food system is at Wounded Knee. I do not believe that is an overstatement.
Make no mistake, as the local, heritage, humane, ecological, sustainable—call it what you will (anything but organic since the government now owns that word)—food system takes flight, the industrial food system is fighting back. With a vengeance. By demonizing, criminalizing, and marginalizing the integrity food movement, the entrenched powers that be hope to derail this revolution.
This industrial food experiment, historically speaking, is completely abnormal. It’s not normal to eat things you can’t spell or pronounce. It’s not normal to eat things you can’t make in your kitchen. Indeed, if everything in today’s science-based supermarket that was unavailable before 1900 were removed, hardly anything would be left. And as more people realize that this grand experiment in ingesting material totally foreign to our three-trillion-member internal community of intestinal microflora and -fauna is really biologically aberrant behavior, they are opting out of industrial fare. Indeed, to call it a food revolution is accurate.
But revolutions are always met with prejudice and entrenched paradigms from the about-to-be-unseated lords of the status quo. The realignment of power, trust, money, and commerce that the local heritage-based food movement represents inherently gives birth to a backlash. By the time of Wounded Knee, Native Americans no longer jeopardized the American reality.
But to many Americans, these Natives had to be crushed, extinguished, put on reservations. Would America have been stronger if European leaders had listened to wisdom about herbal remedies and consensus building? The answer is yes. But to Americans, the red man was just a barbarian because he didn’t govern by parliamentary procedure or ride in horse-drawn stagecoaches along cobblestone streets. In fact, he was considered a threat to America. Just like giving slaves their freedom in 1850. Just like imbibing alcohol in 1925. Just like homeschooling in 1980.
The ultimate test of a tyrannical society or a free society is how it responds to its lunatic fringe. A strong, self-confident, free society tolerates and enjoys the fringe people who come up with zany notions. Indeed, most people later labeled geniuses were dubbed whacko by their contemporary mainstream society. So what does a culture do with weirdos who actually believe they have a right to choose what to feed their internal three-trillion-member community?
The only reason the right to food choice was not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is because the Founders of America could not have envisioned a day when selling a glass of raw milk or homemade pickles to a neighbor would be outlawed. At the time, such a thought was as strange as levitation.
Indeed, what good is the freedom to own guns, worship, or assemble if we don’t have the freedom to eat the proper fuel to energize us to shoot, pray, and preach? Is not freedom to choose our food at least as fundamental a right as the freedom to worship?
How would we feel if we had to get a license from bureaucrats to start a church? After all, beliefs can be pretty damaging things. And charlatans certainly do exist. Better protect people from those charlatans—bad preachers and raw milk advocates.
But what does a society do when the charlatans are in charge? In charge of the regulating government agencies. In charge of the research institutions. In charge of the food system.
That is a real conundrum, because if health depends on opting out of what the charlatans think is safe, we are forced into civil disobedience. When the public no longer trusts its public servants, people begin taking charge of their own health and welfare. And that is exactly what is driving the local heritage food movement.
Lots of folks realize they don’t want industrialists fooling around with something as basic as food. People like me don’t trust Monsanto. We don’t trust the Food and Drug Administration. We don’t trust the Department of Agriculture. We don’t trust Tyson. And we don’t think it’s safe to be dependent on food that sits for a month in the belly of a Chinese merchant marine vessel.
This clash of choice versus prohibition brings us to today’s Wounded Knee of food. The local heritage-based food movement represents everything that is good and noble about farming and food culture. It is about decentralized farms. Pastoral livestock systems. Symbiotic multi-speciation. Companion planting. Earthworms. It is about community-appropriate techniques and scale. Aesthetically and aromatically sensual romantic farming. Re-embedding the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker in the village. And ultimately about health-giving food grown more productively on less land than industrial models.
Certainly some of this clash represents the difference between nurturing and dominating. The local heritage food movement—the raw milk movement—is all about respecting and honoring indigenous wisdom. The industrial mind-set worships techno-glitzy gadgetry and views heritage food advocates as simpletons and Luddites. Or dangerous criminals.
In this wonderful exposé The Raw Milk Revolution, David Gumpert employs the best journalistic investigative techniques to examine this clash from the raw milk battlefront. Be assured that the same mentality exists toward homemade pickles, home-cured meats, and cottage industry in general. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the food system, but it is harassed out of existence by capricious, malicious, and prejudiced government agents who really do believe they are doing society a favor by denying food choice to Americans.
The same curative properties espoused by raw milk advocates exist in a host of other food products, from homemade pound cake and potpies to pepperoni and pastured chicken. Real food is what developed our internal intestinal community. And it sure didn’t develop on food from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and genetically modified potatoes that are partly human and partly tomato. Long after human cleverness has run its course, compost piles will still grow the best tomatoes and grazing cows will still yield one of nature’s perfect foods: raw milk.
One of our former apprentices has just started a ten-cow herd-share arrangement with our customers. Here is a young, entrepreneurial, go-get-‘em farmer embarking on his dream, serving people who are enjoying their dream of acquiring unadulterated milk. Can any arrangement, any relationship-between farmer and cow, cow and pasture, customer and producer be more honorable, respectable, open, and trusting? Everything about this is righteous, including respecting the individual enough to let her decide what to eat and what to feed her children.
Let the revolution continue.