Sharing an article shared with me, the importance of which cannot be overstated!

Stuart from A Few Good Plants recently sent me the following e-mail and link. I think once you have had a chance to read the article you too will see the relevance of the danger that is currently smaking us in the face:


Alan

Read this piece carefully and I think you'll see this is one of the most sobering--and given its author, authoritative--essays on the seriousness of our predicament that I have seen.

Stuart

http://energybulletin.net/stories/2011-01-26/bee-keeping-energy-descent-future

La Bonne Terre

This past week I have been busy harvesting worm castings for this springs crop of soil amendments, soil blocks, and potting soil mixes. It's a painfully slow process, but so worth the work and to boot, even on cold days when the temps are in the teens it's at least fifty five in the wormhouse (so long as the sun is out). On days like today where the outside temp is in the fourties, it just darn near feels like late spring in the wormhouse with temperatures approaching 80 degrees.


I have been vermicomposting for about four years now, trying new means and methods here and there as I go, having started out on the small scale with a couple of totes bought from the dollar store, moving up to 20 of those in what is now the primary turkey shed, and now with 13 4 x 4 x 4 wooden bins located in a 20 x 36 greenhouse called appropriately "The Wyrm".

Vermicomposting is a form of cold composting, a form of composting inherently better for plant fertility since you are not loosing valuable micro-biological life to extreme heat or loosing nutrients as readily via off gassing. There is a trade off in that you can if not carefully choose to feed diseased plants into the bins and the diseases then get passed into the plants that you fertilize with worm castings, however a few things in a worm bin are working on our side other than just the worms. The micro-biological rich humus organisms do a lot to fight off disease, both plant based as well as diseases which can occur in nature and infect humans, couple the work of these microbes with the action of black soldier fly larvae and sow bugs which are capable of digesting and destroying heavy metal particles and disease particles and your good to go!


As you can see above, the Homegrown Worm Harvester talked about on the blog here many times is still being put to good use. Currently I am in the process of harvesting 3 bins of material with a further two ready to go. The material in the bins is close to 95% finished castings, the only issue is that much of this material is still wet which means that once it is run through the harvester it has a tendency to "stick" together in moist balls. There is a solution, but it is, as said above, painfully slow. The first step in harvesting a bin is to create a refuge for the active worms to escape into which can be moved into a new bin, this started on December 1'st 2009. We use bread racks from a convenience store and place new organic material on it moistened down to attract the worm heard into the new material, after a month many of the worms have moved into this material which you can then pick up and move into a new bin. Afterwords I remove the top inch of material into a new bin as well just to pick up some of the worms that were a bit slower than the others, since most of the composting worms work within a couple inces of the top of the compost this method works pretty good, but you will never "rescue" all of them and you'll be surprised at the numbers left in the remaining finished compost.


Since I have not yet found a cheap and convenient continuous flow system the castings on the bottom do have a tendency to get waterlogged so the first thing we have to realize is that there is going to be a "drying time" for the castings. We let them set without water for the entire month of December while the worms are moving into their new bedding, once the worms are moved we begin the harvest. On the first pass through the harvester you only get about 8% of the bulk of the material as harvest able due to the moisture, we usually run one wheelbarrow worth through the harvester three times, pulling off about 15% of the bulk. At this point the other material, which is completely finished but wet, is bulked into empty worm bins where it will set for 1 to 2 weeks while we allow the worms to break it up again without the aid of any water wherein it will be harvested again with a gain from the bulk of 80% pure castings, the remaining material then goes into a new worm bin.

One of the big advantages of the initial harvest is that air is allowed to work it's way into the material that was located in the bottom of the bin and is the most moist. This turns portions of the bin that were a bit anaerobic to material in an aerobic state facilitating the breakdown of the majority of the material that was left undigested as well as accommodating a quicker dry down of the finished material.


Five years ago Kim and I decided no chemical would touch our soil again, creating thermophilic compost on farm and a worm farm went a long way, but there was never enough of this material to take care of all of the crops, for the first year in those five years we will not have to supplement our compost harvest with any bought manures or organic amendments with the exception of course of lime. We currently also have 5 4 x 4 x 4 containers in thermophilic mode of chicken/turkey/ and guinea material as well.

We will use these castings for just about every purpose here on the farm, fertilizer, potting soil, and soil blocking recipes, as follows are the methods we use to produce Bishop's Homegrown "La Bonne Terre" (the good earth) in it's many variations.


La Bonne Terre Soil Blocking Receipt:
We have struggled in searching out a way to create potting and soil blocking mixes completely self sustainably from material here on the farm. It wasn't easy, but we have found something that works well for us.

We use 2 parts worm castings (1 part is roughly four gallons by volume)
2 parts garden loam - Heavily amended clay based soil
1/4 part sand
1/4 cup bat guano
1 cup of lime
1 cup diatomacious Earth

Mixed together well and moistened this holds together as well if not better than any store bought mix or "homemade" mix with blood meal and imported coco-coir (food miles self sustainable guys?) or the non renewable sphagnum. We feel this also makes our plants far more adapted to their future planting than any other method we have ever used, and trust me, I've used all of it. To sterilize the garden loam and prevent fungal disease, weed seeds, and insect damage to plants or seed we use an old wash tub filled with garden soil to which we add 2 five gallon buckets of water and place above a fire on our outside wood pit. We heat it to 160-170 degrees for sterilization purposes. Works wonders and costs nearly nothing minus the lime. This is the same mix we use for potting soil with the exception of adding leaf mold and Forrest dander for water retention as well as gravel at the bottom of the pots for drainage.


La Bonne Terre Soil Amendment/Fertilizer
This is our main fertilizer at this point. In previous years we have added composts directly to the soil along with unprocessed animal manures which have led to many seed and plant pests as well as weed issues. Until this year we have never had enough of any self produced material to create this mix on a large enough scale to feed all the crops including the new orchard crops and raised bed greenhouse crops.

It works like this:
one part castings, 1/8 part bat guano, a cup of lime per five gallons, 1/8 part screened high nitrogen compost (poultry litter), mixed with one cup diatomacious earth per five gallons. The diatomacious earth eliminates seed and root destroying pests. We have found this mix to be perfect for every crop that we grow, some have thought it might be two high or two low nitrogen for some things but we have found the ratios to be about ideal for an already decently balanced soil. We should point out that our soils have been heavily amended over a five year period with probably close to 40 tons of organic matter added if not more, to the entire area of cultivated land. It should also be pointed out that the worm herd gets fed a very diverse diet, mostly composed of high nutrient feed stocks as opposed to bulking material like sawdust and cellulose as is fed to most commercial worm heards, this gives us access to most of the micro nutrients that are missing from most commercial casting mixes as well as access to higher NPK numbers than commercial castings. The last test that was done ran 3-3-3. We also have to realize this isn't a nutrient shot like commercial fertilizers, the nutrients are slow release but they are active and more available to plants than in almost any other type of fertilizer. About a month after planting everything will get side dressed with another dose of La Bonne Terre and occasionally we make a tea to feed to certain plants. I should also point out that last year we placed several bat houses around the farm from which we ethically harvest bat guano for on farm use. This material as well as the castings contain Chitin's, the broken down proteins of the exo skeleton of insects, known to be an insect repellent.

Humanure/Solar Shower Project And Composting Chicken Litter and Bread.

First up, some pictures from my birthday (Feb. 22) adding 600 loaves of out of date organic bread to the existing chicken litter compost pile. The temp outside was in the 30's but the compost was hitting 140 F!









Second, the new on site, "outside" composting toilet facilities/Solar Shower room complete with water catchment and "dug in" active and passive bins for composting (to catch and prevent leachate from entering groundwater




Just a quick update of on farm projects.

In the interest of self sufficient farmers, Independent thinkers, and fighters for true freedom and intellectualism I propose.....

That we the people of the soil reinterpret and represent in the truest sense of the phrase.....The Yeomen Farmer.





Now, before someone jumps the gun and pulls the trigger on their moral pistol, let me point out that yes, indeed, Thomas Jefferson was a conflicted man. Yes, Mr. Jefferson's idea of the Yeomen was a tiny bit convoluted, but you can not blame a man for the times in which he lived and the passion ("all men are created equal", the arguments over weather slavery would be legal or not) which he did attempt to pass into the declaration which consecrated and concreted this country. While Jefferson did indeed keep slaves and probably did little to work the land himself (at least in the capacity of working the entirety of his estates), he did have a good grasp on what would make our country great and did once make our country great, and I personally find myself identifying and agreeing with his doctrines more than those of any other founding father. Mr. Jefferson's United States of America would have been another animal completely from the concrete jungle and material obsessed land of mediocrity we now live in, that is of course if there weren't so many politicians so obsessed with the very material idealism of "power".

Of course in today's world of left and right, red and blue, and "special interest" groups it is popular to decry Thomas Jefferson and vilify him while singing the praises of Washington and then latter Jackson (our nation is obsessed with war after all and who better to personify this total lack of morality and respect than Mr. Jackson) and Lincoln. Nay, say those who would have you think of Jefferson as a less than stellar president for he greatly expanded the power of the president by purchasing the Louisiana Territory and ignored relations with the outside world in trade and barter. Aha, says I who realizes he did what he had to do to keep us out of a conflict between Britain and France that would surely destroy our young and "in debt" country, by purchasing the Louisiana territory he assured that we would have the assets we needed to produce everything we needed without any outside inputs while having an excess in order to trade for our wants! That my friends signifies three things, a man concerned with self sufficiency, a man convinced that each nation can and should take care of itself and communities and run an independent economy not reliant on outside inputs while also avoiding war and trading for wanted items at our leisure, and probably most importantly that this man should have been walking around with a wheelbarrow to hold his two incredibly large and proud testicles.

OK, so I digress, the Yeoman in my eyes has little to do with only the United States and instead should encompass the entirety of the global self sustainable farming movement. It is we who feed the world, we who tend the soil, we who save the seeds and ensure genetic diversity, we who are last to let go of the pockets of diversity and culture that we represent and who keep these delicate and time honored traditions alive, teach them to others, and pass them on, it is also we who are disconnected from and yet ever the more aware of the failings of our society and governments as a whole.

As we all are working towards the same goals, let us all take on the same name, regardless of nationality, political persuasion, skin color, or other polarizing and yet insignificant differences.

We are all the Yeomen, but we must redefine it's meaning and before we can do that we need to define what Yeomen has meant in days gone by, the best examples we can disertain are from Jefferson himself, regardless of whether we agree with his points or disagree we must first look at what he and those of his ilk believed about agriculture so as to re-imagine those ideas in the spirit of what we represent, as such here are some quotes in that spirit, here we go!

The Virtues of Agriculture

"Agriculture... is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1787. ME 6:277

"The cultivators of the earth are the most virtuous citizens, and possess most of the amor patriae. Merchants are the least virtuous, and possess the least of the amor patriae." --Thomas Jefferson: Answers to de Meusnier Questions, 1786. ME 17:116

"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1785. ME 5:94, Papers 8:426

"The pursuits of agriculture [are] the surest road to affluence and best preservative of morals." --Thomas Jefferson to John Blair, 1787. ME 6:272

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:229

"An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings, whether moral or political, than a lazy lounger, valuing himself on his family, too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labor which is the sacred fund of the helpless poor." --Thomas Jefferson: Answers to de Meusnier Questions, 1786. ME 17:91

"Agriculture... is the first in utility, and ought to be the first in respect." --Thomas Jefferson to David Williams, 1803. ME 10:429

Advantages of Agriculture

"The wealth acquired by speculation and plunder, is fugacious in its nature, and fills society with the spirit of gambling. The moderate and sure income of husbandry begets permanent improvement, quiet life and orderly conduct, both public and private." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1787. ME 6:277

"Were I to indulge my own theory [on the expediency of encouraging our states to be commercial], I should wish them to practice neither commerce nor navigation, but to stand with respect to Europe precisely on the footing of China. We should thus avoid wars and all our citizens would be husbandmen. Whenever, indeed, our numbers should so increase as that our produce would overstock the markets of those nations who should come to seek it, the farmers must either employ the surplus of their time in manufactures, or the surplus of our hands must be employed in manufactures or in navigation. But that day would, I think, be distant, and we should long keep our workmen in Europe, while Europe should be drawing rough materials, and even subsistence from America. But this is theory only, and a theory which the servants of America are not at liberty to follow." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, 1785. ME 5:183, Papers 8:633

"To remove as much as possible the occasions of making war, it might be better for us to abandon the ocean altogether, that being the element whereon we shall be principally exposed to jostle with other nations; to leave to others to bring what we shall want and to carry what we can spare. This would make us invulnerable to Europe by offering none of our property to their prize, and would turn all our citizens to the cultivation of the earth... It might be time enough to seek employment for them at sea when the land no longer offers it." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XXII, 1782. ME 2:241

"It is essentially interesting to us to have shipping and seamen enough to carry our surplus produce to market; but beyond that, I do not think we are bound to give it encouragement by drawbacks or other premiums." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Stoddart, 1809. ME 12:250

"The United States... will be more virtuous, more free and more happy employed in agriculture than as carriers or manufacturers. It is a truth, and a precious one for them, if they could be persuaded of it." --Thomas Jefferson to M. de Warville, 1786. ME 5:402

"With honesty and self-government for her portion, agriculture may abandon contentedly to others the fruits of commerce and corruption." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Middleton, 1813. ME 13:203

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442

"A prosperity built on the basis of agriculture is that which is most desirable to us, because to the efforts of labor it adds the efforts of a greater proportion of soil." --Thomas Jefferson: Circular to Consuls, 1792. ME 8:352

Ok, now that's out of the way, let us discuss what a Yeomen farmer should be?

I'd love to read your comments, and don't think that your excluded if you aren't from or living in the U.S., I only used Thomas Jefferson as an example because he was the easiest supporter of the Yeomen to find quotes by, don't think of this as a a nationalist idea as the Yeomen extends much beyond that and spans many continents and centuries worth of history.

Thus far here are my criteria:
-Self sufficient, producing more than you need, trading for your wants and or needs
-Any cultivator of the soil using self sufficient methods regardless of the size of allotment and or weather you actually own the allotment
-A creator of ones own destiny and reality
-Keeper of the culture and traditions of your people and region and lifestyle
-Seperate from and yet aware and interactive to a degree with society at large.

Please leave comments.

And yet another new idea concerning Terra Preta!

I was replying to a post over at Patricks Bifurcated Carrots blog about his response to my Terra Preta blogs and decided I should probably post part of the relevant text here for others with an interest in this ancient technology to see:

Basically my new idea is; why bring the worms to the charcoal when you can bring the charcoal to the worms. In other words I will create my charcoal, soak it in a nutrient solution and then apply it to my worm bins in the new and improved worm house I recently blogged about. In this way the charcoal (which will be buried in the 36″ deep bins) will be able to absorb nutrients from the worm castings/compost and will also be inoculated by the beneficial soil microbes. Of course this will be applied in a two layer hill system as described in my original blog and will still entice the local endemic earthworm populations as well as the local endemic soil micro-organisms to come check things out but then there will be less waiting as the majority of the nutrients will be laying in wait for use by plants, as the nutrients escape the worm castings they will be caught up by the charcoal (which is slowly releasing the nutrient it was soaked in as well as the worm casting/raw compost nutrients), In such a way I will have created a time released version of worm castings/compost and implemented a very simplified form of Terra Preta on my farm.

I genuinely think I might be onto something with this. After all the heating of "the Wyrm" house will produce the needed bi-product of charcoal to place in the bins making it a one stop process in the digestive section of the new worm house!

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

Wake up America!

Your local farmer, produce suppliers, and mom and pop stores need you more than ever, and chances are your going to need them!

A call to end “Big Box” mentality in America!
Written by: Alan Reed Bishop of Bishop's Homegrown and Hip-Gnosis seed development.
February 28, 2008


Hey America, it’s time to wake up! Your dollar value is dropping, your waists are expanding and you’re a generally unhappy bunch of folks from what I have seen. And that my friend is from the mouth of an American himself. Alan Reed Bishop.

I’m not here to berate anyone, surely what I’m about to say even applies to myself and I’ve got a lot to learn so that I too don’t sound like a hypocrite. What I’m here to say is something that probably won’t set so well with many blue collard American folks, but it is the truth. A hard truth that if not faced will bare the consequences of an even more uncertain future.

What I’m here to ask, is just exactly how long will it take the fact that we are destroying our own culture, food supply, and future by shopping at the corporate owned big box stores, to set in? You may not realize it, but every time you drive to your local Wal-Mart, Meijers, K-mart, Home Depot or whatever and drop one of those dirty dollars on the counter, you are further eroding the very culture and substance of the American way of life. How many news reports about poisonous toys and unsafe food do you have to hear before you get it? It seems so obvious. Many of you may think that loosing the mom and pop owned five and dimes is of little consequence to your bread and butter, but look what happened to their bread and butter when you took your dollar elsewhere, and guess what, other consumers suffer due to your bad decisions as well, being forced to pay higher prices for lower quality products and food. A damn shame if I do say so myself.

In my profession I’ve seen it time and again. The local produce business can be quite fickle at times, particularly when it comes to un-informed customers. Now, don’t get me wrong, people will have to eat regardless, and I will be able to stay in this business on that fact alone, however the hurt is really being put on the local farmers and co-ops by the Wall-Marts and Jay-C-Food stores of the world and their supposedly “organic” produce, and perhaps more importantly, you the consumer are feeling the burn as well. Prices on organic food keep on sky-rocketing while quality keeps sinking. Perhaps you believe that the much coveted “organic” label actually means something to the big companies who use different names to market “organic“ versions of their products? If so, you‘d be dead wrong. You see, the USDA and the Corporations of the world don‘t care about what the word “organic“ means as long as it equals money in the pocket. That‘s why there are 35 non-organic substances allowed in the production of USDA “Certified Organic“ food production. Thirty five substances which may or may not be any better for you than conventional products. Thirty Five substances which may or may not have been outlawed in other countries around the world due to their links with rates of cancer and environmental damage. Thirty five substances that mono-culture farms half the world away and in your own backyards would rather you never know about.

I’m not here to bash “Organic farming” at all, as a matter of fact I consider myself to be an Organic farmer in the truest sense of the word. In that my produce and products are produced and protected using only the most natural of methods and minus gas to local venues and diesel for my tractor, my carbon foot print on this farm is pretty small. The USDA, big box stores, and corporate agriculture however don’t see “Organic” in this way, as a matter of fact their measure of the word “Organic” would be much easier summed up in monetarily inspired numbers. As anybody knows, self sustainable, nutritious, and organic food is right up my alley and I try my hardest everyday of my life to further improve my systems of delivery, production, and self sustainability in an attempt to treat the earth and it’s inhabitants with the utmost respect and dignity while also providing a premium product LOCALLY, and therein lies the problem.

You see, when you walk into Wall-Mart and see those big blue organic labels, your looking at a lie. Your looking at a money grubbing scheme to both take your money for a sub-par product, run local farmers out of business, and further erode the meaning of the “organic” label, while at the same time making you feel all warm and fuzzy inside because you just bought something “organic”. So, what’s the problem with that organic food? Well there are a lot of problems with it. Much of that “organic” food comes from other counties around the world, particularly third world countries where “organic” standards are much less observed and regulated. Another problem is that there are several organically approved, yet none the less dangerous chemicals that are allowed to pass as suitable for “organic” production systems and in the preparation and processing of those foods, mostly because the USDA Organic law is catered to large mono-culture farms. And last but not least, most of the “organic” food that your buying on those nasty, dollar inflated Wall-Mart shelves that is actually grown in the USA is grown by large corporate farms, owned by multi-million dollar companies that you already know well by their more common brand names, in systems that would make a septic sludge pond look organic, by folks who have little to no respect for local farmers and business and the local economy,environmental concerns and health of the consumer, and to boot the food is then shipped hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away to those big ugly boxes, effectively leaving a carbon foot print so large it should immediately affect the value of that food as “organic” to any clearly thinking human being. And yet many people continue to shop in these huge emporiums of low-grad crap.

Do you know how many times that market farmers hear the phrase, “well, I’ll go to town and buy that at Wall-Mart cheaper.” ? Does that even make sense to anyone? You’d rather eat poisonous food from 1,000 miles away than to pay an extra $0.25 for quality, local products that you know support the local economy and that you can trust? Not to mention the fact that you are only lowering the value of the dollar and putting wealth and power in the hands of countries which are not exactly on friendly terms with us? I mean to me it doesn't make any sense, you would rather buy food from someone you don't know from a thousand miles away than to actually talk to and see the face of the very person who grew the food? This country is a long strange trip indeed!

I can understand now why so many little mom and pop stores have shut down. People stop supporting them and drive to town, paying more for gas, inflating the economy of the rich corporate stockholders and countries with horrible track records like China, while depleting our own country of natural resources, a healthy lifestyle, community, and yes even culture. For as much as a mom and pop store, a farmers market, or a local feed mill is a source for material goods it is also a source of knowledge and local and regionalized culture. Not only that, but I get a distinct impression that the materialism of this country drives one even more so to go out and buy the latest fashions and gas guzzling vehicles, so one can be trendy and “fit in” while at the same time pretending to “know“ and “care“ about global warming, politics, and the economy. Well America you go ahead and keep drowning our economy, keep pumping yourself full of dangerous chemicals, keep saying that the big box stores are good for us, keep thinking that you need all that crap that you waste your money on, keep playing into the game, keep destroying your history and culture, just keep right on conforming. Soon we can just go ahead and close down all the mom and pop stores, replace everything with “organic” Mc. Donald’s and Taco Bells, put a big Wall-Mart on every street corner and change the name of the United States of America to The Amalgamated states of Conformity. Me, well, I’m going to do the best I can to inform myself and those around me to make the right decisions while meanwhile continuing the god given work that I am doing and not pretending to be anything I am not. I’ll be your valuable market farmer, the source for your healthy food and lifestyle, your alternative to “New America”, I’ll just keep right on being the plant breeding, worm ranching, truly organic, seed saving, hill-Billy, ridge running farmer that I have been, and when the shit hit’s the fan, I’ll be sure to plant a little more for the extra needy and pray that those of you that have caused this can take the crash course in survivalism to protect yourselves and your families from the terrorism that you have inflicted on your own country.

So, here is my question, who are you going to turn to when things take the deep downturn we are headed towards? Is it going to be the mom and pop stores you put out of business? The farmer that couldn’t afford the tools he needed to get the job done?

Really, we have no one to blame for our health, our economy, our loss of morals and our horrible leaders other than ourselves. We have lost sight of what made this country great. Local culture and ideas. Self sustainable family owned business that care as much about the community as they do the money that they make. Independent people with independent ideas who stand up for what they believe in! When the last family farm falls, will you be there to say, this is our fault?


P.S. If you don’t believe that this country is in a sad state then take the time to rationalize that instead of working on national issues, congress is currently more interested in holding hearings regarding steroids in sports. You tell me, where are the priorities?