Alfred Reed Bishop and Doris William Butler

The picture above is the very tap root of Bishop's Homegrown/Face Of The Earth Seed. My grandparents shortly after moving to Pekin Indiana from Greensburg KY in 1947 where they purchased the farm that is now Bishop's Homegrown. This picture was taken in Pekin in front of the old co-op next to the old railroad depot, neither of which exist today.

Search This Blog

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Live in Washington County Indiana?

Then be sure to give us a call this fall and winter for your produce needs.

We will have the following available at various times this winter:

Tomatoes, grown fresh and "eco-logically" in our two production greenhouses, using non-hydrophonic growing systems. Our systems guarantee the same great garden fresh flavor you expect out of summer tomatoes!

White Alpine Strawberries: Smaller and more delicate than your average garden strawberry with three times the flavor! Very fragrant and beautiful white and yellow strawberries of the most excellent quality. Must be special ordered. Give us a call or e-mail us!

Collard Greens, Kale Greens, Turnips, Winter Radishes and leaf lettuce mixes of the finest quality. You can't buy stuff at this at the store and if you could it would be a lot more expensive!

We will also have farm fresh eggs available weekly. Give us a call to place an order.


You can call or simply stop by the farm anytime between 7:30 A.M. and 7:00 P.M or e-mail us anytime!

You can sometimes find our products available at crossroads store located at the corner of Voles and Mann Road in Pekin Indiana as well as the Lost River Market and Deli located in Paoli Indiana. More stores coming soon!

Call us: 1-812-967-2073
E-Mail: bishopshomegrown@gmail.com
Find Us: Bishops Homegrown
5604 S. State Rd. 60
Pekin IN 47165



Seeds can still be ordered, scroll down

New GMO High Anthocyanin Tomato.

Just thought I'd give those into the GMO issue the heads up. Over on our message boards (http://alanbishop.proboards60.com) as well as all around the net on blog sites and garden related message boards there is an ongoing hot debate about a recent press release detailing the creation and possible future release of a high Anthocyanin producing "purple" tomato. The issues at hand are many within the gardening community, at the top of the list is why such a creation is of any importance and how this will affect the "blue" tomato currently being bred by Jim Meyers and his students at OSU who have used traditional plant breeding methods to come up with a high Anthocyanin producing tomato fruit over the past several years. Check it out in the "Soapbox" forum of http://alanbishop.proboards60.com and leave your thoughts.


Here are my thoughts on the subject (to be expanded upon shortly)

I am currently and probably for the foreseeable future anti GMO. My reasoning is thus; too much power in too few hands with too few independent tests searching for actual specific side effects of gene splicing, an art I might add that is not present whatsoever in the record of natural agricultural history as opposed to spontaneous crosses and man made crosses.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand there could be merits to this "fast food" version of plant breeding, I get that, but I also know that those who have the power to make such decisions very rarely have positive intentions in mind and instead have money regardless of consequence in mind. For example see any of the following, Monsanto, Big Pharma, Big Box Stores, Big Government.

The problem I have with this particular "creation" is that there is
A. No sport in what was done.

By this I mean that it isn't like other natural sources of Un-monopolized, anthocyanin producing crops don't exist. See blueberries, purple carrots, purple flour, flint, and sweet corns, purple peas and so on, which brings me to part B.

B. A traditionally bred alternative already in the pipeline

In many ways I can see this hurting Jim Meyers research at OSU. I mean this guy has worked his butt off on the P-20 lines and here somebody just bypasses the work of one of the few remaining land grant schools doing actual plant breeding work without consideration for the novel and appreciable idea that Jim Meyers had. I'm sure the reason that so few land grant schools still exist with plant breeding and experimentation arms is due to the monopolization of agriculture by big business, most recently those dealing in GMO's and and big PHarma. Couple this with the fact that this new blue tomato will probably be PVP'ed and you've just signed the death warrant for the OSU project.

Now, the reason there is so much opposition by others to GMO's?


Probably because very little of any positive developments have come out of this technology since it was first implemented and most likely because they have been lied to so many times by the big companies of the world about what is "safe" and "unsafe" that there is no reason to any longer trust these folks. It's the boy who cried wolf story if you will.


Seeds are still available, scroll down to order and help fund the ongoing research by Hip-Gnosis Seed Development :)

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Finally A New Post!


Howdy everyone!

We are once again back from a long and hard growing season here in Southern Indiana!

This year has definetly been a challenging one with all the strange weather, pest problems, and breeding projects. We most definetly have learned a lot this past season, particularly about using our organic systems to better utilize pest and disease control and we greatly look forward to next season!

With that said, we didn't have much of any time to update our little blog site here over the past several months, but no need to worry about that becoming a trend as we have made a solemn promise to keep this site updated at least once and maybe twice a week from here on out!

If your wondering what we've been up to here on the farm, here is a short update that we will empasize on later:

-Lots of trialing and new food plant and flower breeding this year!
-Experimenting with new methods of pest control
-Implementing further permaculture and bio-intensive design elements
-Creating and increasing seed stock for our farm, community, and for sale
-Working with our new flock of chickens and guineas!
-Learning how to properly incubate and hatch eggs!
-Helping get a local store up and going by offering some of our products exclusively there!
-Working on the new Hip-Gnosis Seed Development seed database
-Working on an all new online purchasing store which will offer all kinds of our exclussive seeds, red worms, worm castings, hatching eggs, and chicks!
-Re-vamping the greenhouses to prepare for winter
-Cutting a tremendous amount of wood that was taken down by the reminants of hurricane Ike
-Working on a new system of Thermophillic composting
-Working on creating an "Echo" system of renewable, local resources
and much more!

Needless to say, there will be lots of blog postings and pictures coming soon, along with trialing and plant breeding notes, links to other blogs, links to local resources and businesses, updates on what we currently have available here on our farm weekly and at the markets, and an all new online store!

-Keep in touch friends!

-Alan