Mom's Diet During Pregnancy May Alter Infant's Allergies

By Joene Hendry

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Feb 19 - Eating lots of vegetables and fruits during pregnancy may lower the chance of having a baby with certain allergies, hint study findings from Japan.

Greater intake of green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruit, and veggies and fruits high in beta carotene may lessen the risk of having a baby with eczema, Dr. Yoshihiro Miyake at Fukuoka University and colleagues found.

Foods high in vitamin E similarly may lessen the risk of having a wheezy infant, they reported online January 22nd in Allergy.

Beta carotene and vitamin E are two of many antioxidants thought to benefit health. But prior investigations of maternal antioxidant intake and childhood allergies offered conflicting findings. This area of research "is still developing," Dr. Miyake noted in an email to Reuters Health.

In the current study, Dr. Miyake's team evaluated vegetable and fruit intake during pregnancy in 763 women, as well as eczema or allergic wheeze in their infants.

The women were 30 years old on average and about 17 weeks pregnant at enrollment.. When their babies were between 16 and 24 months old, the women provided birth and breastfeeding history, number of older siblings, and exposure to smoke.

The team found that 21% of the youngsters wheezed or had a "whistling in the chest in the last 12 months," and fewer than 19% had eczema.

According to the investigators, mothers who ate greater amounts of green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruits, or beta carotene while pregnant were less apt to have an infant with eczema.

For example, after allowing for other eczema risk factors, eczema was more common among infants whose mothers ate the least versus the most green and yellow vegetables - 54 and 32 infants, respectively.

Likewise, higher intake of vitamin E during pregnancy was associated a reduced likelihood of having a wheezy infant -- a finding that supports previous investigations from the U.S. and U.K.

Boosting intake of green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruits, and antioxidants such as beta-carotene and vitamin E among pregnant women "deserves further investigation as measures that would possibly be effective in the prevention of allergic disorders in the offspring," the researchers conclude.

Reuters Health Information © 2010

CROP MOBS ~ TODAY'S GENERATION OF BARN RAISERS

By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

“Who brought their own wheelbarrow?” Rob Jones asked the group of 20-somethings gathered on a muddy North Carolina farm on a chilly January Sunday. Hands shot up and wheelbarrows were pulled from pickups sporting Led Zeppelin and biodiesel bumper stickers, then parked next to a mountain of soil. “We need to get that dirt into those beds over there in the greenhouse,” he said, nodding toward a plastic-roofed structure a few hundred feet away. “The rest of you can come with me to move trees and clear brush to make room for more pasture. Watch out for poison ivy.”

Bobby Tucker, the 28-year-old co-owner of Okfuskee Farm in rural Silk Hope, looked eagerly at the 50-plus volunteers bundled in all manner of flannel and hand-knits. In five hours, these pop-up farmers would do more on his fledgling farm than he and his three interns could accomplish in months. “It’s immeasurable,” he said of the gift of same-day infrastructure.

It’s the beauty of being Crop Mobbed.

The Crop Mob, a monthly word-of-mouth (and -Web) event in which landless farmers and the agricurious descend on a farm for an afternoon, has taken its traveling work party to 15 small, sustainable farms. Together, volunteers have contributed more than 2,000 person-hours, doing tasks like mulching, building greenhouses and pulling rocks out of fields.

“The more tedious the work we have, the better,” Jones said, smiling. “Because part of Crop Mob is about community and camaraderie, you find there’s nothing like picking rocks out of fields to bring people together.”

The affable, articulate Jones, 27, is part of the group’s grass-roots core, organizing events and keeping them moving. The Mob was formed during a meeting about issues facing young farmers, during which an intern declared that better relationships are built working side by side than by sitting around a table. So one day, 19 people went to Piedmont Biofarm and harvested, sorted and boxed 1,600 pounds of sweet potatoes in two and a half hours. A year later, the Crop Mob e-mail list has nearly 400 subscribers, and the farm fests now draw 40 to 50 volunteers.

The Crop Mob works well partly because the area around Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham is so rich in small-scale, sustainable farms, and the sustainable-agriculture program at Central Carolina Community College draws students from across the nation who stay put after graduation.

One of the biggest issues facing sustainable agriculture is that it’s “way, way, way more labor-intensive than industrial agriculture,” Jones said. “It’s not sustainable physically, and it’s not sustainable for people personally: they’re working all the time and don’t have an opportunity to have a social life. So I think Crop Mob brings that celebration to the work, so that you get that sense of community that people are looking for, and you get a lot of work done. And we have a lot of fun.”

“It’s good to get off the farm you’re farming,” said Jennie Rasmussen, a 25-year-old Indiana native who traded an office job for community gardening before moving to the area to farm. “It’s great to meet other people who have the same challenges and just network and build community.”

“Networking” and “building community” popped up in almost every conversation I had that day, and it never came across as slick or earnest. Both have real context here, as these mostly farmless farmers hear about internships, learn about affordable land and find potential dates. For those who don’t farm, it’s a way to explore getting their fingernails dirty. One woman, who recently moved to the area from New Jersey after losing her job in the financial-services industry, was eager to plug in to the vibrant local food scene. “I’m trying not to hinder the effort,” she said with a laugh as she distributed twigs on a hügelkultur bed made from dead trees.

The farmer Trace Ramsey, who is part of the Mob core as well as its documentarian, has watched the young-farmer phenomenon explode. “People are interested in authentic work,” he said. “I think they’re tired of what they’ve been told they should accomplish in their life, and they’re starting to realize that it’s not all that exciting or beneficial from a community perspective or an individual perspective.” At 36, Ramsey joked that he’s the old man of the project — remarkable considering the average American farmer is 57. But as people of all ages become involved, he said, “what started as a young-farmer movement is just becoming a farmer movement.”

By the end of the afternoon, the transformation was remarkable. The towering piles of soil and mulch had dwindled to child’s height. The greenhouse beds were filled and the walls framed out by older volunteers who knew what to do with the table saw. The Tamworth pigs had a new fenced-in grazing area to uproot. Thickets and trees were removed from the edge of a field, a bonfire built from the haul. Garden rows were tidied while someone sang. And the hügelkultur beds were handsomely finished. The dreary mess of winter had been cleared to make way for a well-ordered spring.

There was even time for a pecan-tree-planting demo before the buffet lunch. (Farmers are required only to feed the workers; no money is exchanged.) Tucker, bleary from exhaustion, thanked the smiling gang. The group then threw around ideas for which farm should be Mobbed next. When it was agreed that a volunteer’s employer would win the reciprocal-labor lottery, she hopped around in excitement.

The idea is catching on, Jones said. Requests for advice on starting mini-Mobs have come in from around the state. Two Crop Mobbers are traveling to Spain to talk to farmers. In cities, Jones added, there’s no reason that backyard and community gardeners can’t mob, too. Because anywhere there’s dirt, a community can grow.

Mia and Grace ~~ Great Restaurant in Muskegon

Just wanted to let everyone know that Mia & Grace will start serving dinners on March 3rd, on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. If you haven't heard of Mia & Grace you need to check them out. They are located in downtown Muskegon on Third Street. They purchase from local food sources as much as they can.

Let them know you saw this on our blog!

CSA Update soon!

We will get our CSA info up on the blog soon. Seeds are purchased and I'm getting the early things planted. We have a lot of plans, just haven't finalized anything yet.

Greenhouse work

I planted 144 cells of celery and 288 cells of celeriac today. Whoohoo! Lots of tiny tiny seeds, 1 per cell. It was hard to do even with my reading glasses on. They take about 3 weeks to sprout, and have to grow for 10-12 weeks before transplanting outdoors.

Onions are sprouted and growing well. And a few lettuces and other greens are growing. I have a lot more to plant in the next week.

FACTORY FARM SUPER BUGS

A band of radicals

Along with their usual rations of grain and prepared feed, factory-farmed hogs and chickens in the United States also dine on a steady diet of antibiotics. The animals are given the drugs, not to prevent or cure illness, but simply because low-level doses of antibiotics stimulate them to grow faster than untreated animals. This may be good for agribusiness’s bottom lines, but an increasing body of research shows that it might be very bad for public health.

Several scientific examinations of pork and poultry operations in this country have shown that anti-microbial-resistant “superbugs” such as flesh-eating methicilin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and certain tough-to-kill strains of E. coli are showing up, not only in farm animals, but in the humans who tend them—and even in members of their families who don’t work on the farms.

Now, a group of researchers at Boston University has discovered a mechanism that causes these superbugs to develop. It could mean that the problem with antibiotic-resistant bacteria is even worse than previously imagined. Their results are reported in the current issue of the journal Molecular Cell.

In earlier studies, the scientists had found that drugs which kill bacteria do so in part by stimulating the production of free radicals in those bacteria—not unlike the ones in humans that contribute to heart disease, cancer, and other maladies. However, when antibiotics are administered to the bacteria at low levels, as they are on factory farms, instead of killing the bugs, the free radicals cause genetic mutations—far more than would normally occur. Some of those mutations lead to new strains of bacteria that can survive what were once-lethal doses of drugs.

“Our work indicates that it is much more dangerous than previously thought,” said Jim Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering and one of the paper’s authors. “The low-level antibiotics are boosting up the mutation rate and not killing off the bacteria. As result, you have created a zoo of mutants.”

Before the Boston study, scientists generally viewed the mutations that led to resistance as chance events. “A mutation would emerge randomly in a bacterial population, and the antibiotic would kill off everybody but that guy, and that guy would breed, creating a resistant strain,” Collins said. “We now know that the antibiotics are acting as mutagens themselves.”

But it even gets scarier. The brave new bugs that result from these mutations can carry resistance not only to the antibiotic that had been administered, but to others as well and even to multiple antibiotics. “You could have antibiotic A being delivered to the bacteria and have a mutant bug arise that could still be killed by high levels of antibiotic A, but now has mutations that give it resistance to antibiotic B, antibiotic C, and antibiotic D,” said Collins.

There is a simple solution to agriculture’s contribution to this problem: Outlaw the use of subtherapeutic antibiotics on farm animals. The European Union did it in 2006. Somehow they still manage to produce hogs and chickens there. So a ban here is hardly what I’d call a radical idea.

This is from this blog.

Our Local Harvest Listing

Please check out our listing at Local Harvest and add a review of our farm and products. Thank you! Click here

New calf!

Now how did that happen?? How did the bull get with that heifer 9 months ago??

Ah well. It's nice that Mike and Bill cleaned out the grey barn yesterday. They made a huge compost pile and then bedded down the barn with fresh straw. The smart Mama had a nice dry place out of the wind to have her first calf. We don't think the rest are due to start being born till March.

Beef for sale by the quarter

We have beef quarters for sale. Email or call us for more info.

We do a mixed half so you get a variety of cuts - steaks bone in or out, short ribs, ground beef, roasts, cubed or round steak, stew beef, organ meats if desired.

The quarters we have available now are $384, $389, and $450 depending on size. It is all vacuum packed and frozen. That price is picked up at the Market or our Farm.

Check out Ebels Market . They are a great family-run business and appreciate serving you all and us.

January 2010 photos

Our friend Chris Mccarus from michigannow.org took these pictures at the Farm last week. Check out his website!

Our chickens have access to the outdoors all year round.

Ear corn, grown and harvested on the Farm, fed to our chickens, cows, pigs.

These steers are almost 2 years old, born and raised on our Farm. They will be butchered in the next few months.

In winter, chickens lose feathers, quit laying and hunker down for a month or so. That's why egg production drops. It's called moulting.

Yum. This is a good way to make friends.

Save the Planet: Eat More Beef

Monday, Jan. 25, 2010

Save the Planet: Eat More Beef* By Lisa Abend

On a farm in coastal Maine, a barn is going up. Right now it's little more than a concrete slab and some wooden beams, but when it's finished, the barn will provide winter shelter for up to six cows and a few head of sheep. None of this would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the people building the barn are two of the most highly regarded organic-vegetable farmers in the country: Eliot Coleman wrote the bible of organic farming, The New Organic Grower, and Barbara Damrosch is the Washington Post's gardening columnist. At a time when a growing number of environmental activists are calling for an end to eating meat, this veggie-centric power couple is beginning to raise it. "Why?" asks Coleman, tromping through the mud on his way toward a greenhouse bursting with December turnips. "Because I care about the fate of the planet."

Ever since the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released a 2006 report that attributed 18% of the world's man-made greenhouse-gas emissions to livestock — more, the report noted, than what's produced by transportation — livestock has taken an increasingly hard rap. At first, it was just vegetarian groups that used the U.N.'s findings as evidence for the superiority of an all-plant diet. But since then, a broader range of environmentalists has taken up the cause. At a recent European Parliament hearing titled "Global Warming and Food Policy: Less Meat=Less Heat," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued that reducing meat consumption is a "simple, effective and short-term delivery measure in which everybody could contribute" to emissions reductions. (See the top 10 green ideas of 2009.)

And of all the animals that humans eat, none are held more responsible for climate change than the ones that moo. Cows not only consume more energy-intensive feed than other livestock; they also produce more methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — than other animals do. "If your primary concern is to curb emissions, you shouldn't be eating beef," says Nathan Pelletier, an ecological economist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S., noting that cows produce 13 to 30 lb. of carbon dioxide per pound of meat. (See a graphic about where cows eat and how the environment is affected.)

So how can Coleman and Damrosch believe that adding livestock to their farm will help the planet? Cattleman Ridge Shinn has the answer. On a wintry Saturday at his farm in Hardwick, Mass., he is out in his pastures encouraging a herd of plump Devon cows to move to a grassy new paddock. Over the course of a year, his 100 cattle will rotate across 175 acres four or five times. "Conventional cattle raising is like mining," he says. "It's unsustainable, because you're just taking without putting anything back. But when you rotate cattle on grass, you change the equation. You put back more than you take." (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009.)

It works like this: grass is a perennial. Rotate cattle and other ruminants across pastures full of it, and the animals' grazing will cut the blades — which spurs new growth — while their trampling helps work manure and other decaying organic matter into the soil, turning it into rich humus. The plant's roots also help maintain soil health by retaining water and microbes. And healthy soil keeps carbon dioxide underground and out of the atmosphere.

Compare that with the estimated 99% of U.S. beef cattle that live out their last months on feedlots, where they are stuffed with corn and soybeans. In the past few decades, the growth of these concentrated animal-feeding operations has resulted in millions of acres of grassland being abandoned or converted — along with vast swaths of forest — into profitable cropland for livestock feed. "Much of the carbon footprint of beef comes from growing grain to feed the animals, which requires fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides, transportation," says Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. "Grass-fed beef has a much lighter carbon footprint." Indeed, although grass-fed cattle may produce more methane than conventional ones (high-fiber plants are harder to digest than cereals, as anyone who has felt the gastric effects of eating broccoli or cabbage can attest), their net emissions are lower because they help the soil sequester carbon.

See the top 10 animal stories of 2009.

See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2009.

From Vermont, where veal and dairy farmer Abe Collins is developing software designed to help farmers foster carbon-rich topsoil quickly, to Denmark, where Thomas Harttung's Aarstiderne farm grazes 150 head of cattle, a vanguard of small farmers are trying to get the word out about how much more eco-friendly they are than factory farming. "If you suspend a cow in the air with buckets of grain, then it's a bad guy," Harttung explains. "But if you put it where it belongs — on grass — that cow becomes not just carbon-neutral but carbon-negative." Collins goes even further. "With proper management, pastoralists, ranchers and farmers could achieve a 2% increase in soil-carbon levels on existing agricultural, grazing and desert lands over the next two decades," he estimates. Some researchers hypothesize that just a 1% increase (over, admittedly, vast acreages) could be enough to capture the total equivalent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.

This math works out in part because farmers like Shinn don't use fertilizers or pesticides to maintain their pastures and need no energy to produce what their animals eat other than what they get free from the sun. Furthermore, pasturing frequently uses land that would otherwise be unproductive. "I'd like to see someone try to raise soybeans here," he says, gesturing toward the rocky, sloping fields around him.

By many standards, pastured beef is healthier. That's certainly the case for the animals involved; grass feeding obviates the antibiotics that feedlots are forced to administer in order to prevent the acidosis that occurs when cows are fed grain. But it also appears to be true for people who eat cows. Compared with conventional beef, grass-fed is lower in saturated fat and higher in omega-3s, the heart-healthy fatty acids found in salmon. (See pictures of the world's most polluted places.)

But not everyone is sold on its superiority. In addition to citing grass-fed meat's higher price tag — Shinn's ground beef ends up retailing for about $7 a pound, more than twice the price of conventional beef — feedlot producers say that only through their economies of scale can the industry produce enough meat to satisfy demand, especially for a growing population. These critics note that because grass is less caloric than grain, it takes two to three years to get a pastured cow to slaughter weight, whereas a feedlot animal requires only 14 months. "Not only does it take fewer animals on a feedlot to produce the same amount of meat," says Tamara Thies, chief environmental counsel for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (which contests the U.N.'s 18% figure), "but because they grow so quickly, they have less chance to produce greenhouse gases."

To Allan Savory, the economies-of-scale mentality ignores the role that grass-fed herbivores can play in fighting climate change. A former wildlife conservationist in Zimbabwe, Savory once blamed overgrazing for desertification. "I was prepared to shoot every bloody rancher in the country," he recalls. But through rotational grazing of large herds of ruminants, he found he could reverse land degradation, turning dead soil into thriving grassland. (See TIME's special report on the environment.)

Like him, Coleman now scoffs at the environmentalist vogue for vilifying meat eating. "The idea that giving up meat is the solution for the world's ills is ridiculous," he says at his Maine farm. "A vegetarian eating tofu made in a factory from soybeans grown in Brazil is responsible for a lot more CO[subscript 2] than I am." A lifetime raising vegetables year-round has taught him to value the elegance of natural systems. Once he and Damrosch have brought in their livestock, they'll "be able to use the manure to feed the plants, and the plant waste to feed the animals," he says. "And even though we can't eat the grass, we'll be turning it into something we can."

A great article

We provide many of these veggies in our CSA. Wish we could grow the exotics, too!

HEALTH

Well: The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

By By TARA PARKER-POPE

Published: June 30, 2008

An unusual list of foods that probably aren't in your shopping cart.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/the-11-best-foods-you-arent-eating/

Beet Salad Dressing

My current favorite. Thanks, Hop and Lila! We miss you!

1 beet grated

3-4 cloves garlic

1/3 cup good olive oil

3 TB cider vinegar

1/3 cup water

2 tsp salt

1-2 pitted dates

1/2 tsp rosemary

I also add some honey, and usually more vinegar. Play with it till it tastes best to you. The color is vibrant and it really dresses a salad.

“When farmers are going broke, it’s wrong to expect them to reform the system,”asserts Wendell Berry, “In fact, there are too few actual farmers left to reform anything… Reform is going to have to come from consumers. Industrial agriculture is an urban invention, and if agriculture is going to be reinvented, it’s going to have to be reinvented by urban people.”

Beautiful weather!

I don't think we had many August days as nice as today and yesterday! Wow. I could use about a week of this.

Bill and Mike built our new sugar shack shed off the new shop and have most of it painted. We picked out the new syrup arch and pan to order from Sugar Bush Supplies. We skipped Spring 09 syrup-making, so it will be good to make it in Spring 2010.

Bill picked the first small field of corn and we moved all the brood cows and calves into it this evening. They will glean the stalks and missed corn - we try not to waste much on this farm. All the cows will get run through the shoot tomorrow, pregnancy checked, and retagged if they've lost their tag. They will get a good look for health, age, etc., and some may be marked for culling (ground beef). The calves look great this year! All the rain made lush pastures and good milk.

We still have the younger bull, but butchered the older bull a few weeks ago.

I got all the potting soil made for next years' seedlings to be started in the greenhouse. More garden is cleaned up. Rye is sprouted in the fields for green manure crop. All the carrots and parsnips for winter storage are mulched thickly with straw and will be dug throughout the winter. It's always a chore to move the snow, straw, and then freeze hands while digging them out of the cold soil, but they are so tasty sweet! We have tried to put in a large enough crop to have some for Sweetwater Market through the winter.

Fully Fallen

Whew! Wow! Holy s#*+! Yeah, at different times of the seasonal cycles that's about all I can say. Please forgive my internet absence. Its been quite a year and hunting and pecking my way through regular communication entails more energy then I want to spare.

Autumn is completely here. This year it came in the way of one long cold raindrop. October 31st, after dumping another 3" from the rain gauge, the monthly total here on the farm exceeded 11 inches. At one point the weather man commented that "for 24 days so far this month there has been measurable precipitation on 17 of them."

To quote myself from a few months ago "I wonder what the recharge will look like?" We were due, now here it is. The ponds, swamps and rivers are full. The local paper (17 miles away) had the precipitation for last month at 3.37" when we had over 8". North of us, they got 11 inches in one June rainstorm. Roads are still being repaired. The agricultural erosion and sedimentation created from that "rain event" will take years to repair.

Fortunately, here, we are just muddy. The sunny break in September allowed for some very good fieldwork and the new barley, rye and hay remain in good shape. The critters are still on pasture. Rain equals grass so the cattle have never looked better. For that matter the pigs look great too, following the steers, foraging acorns and rooting the soft ground wherever they please.

Obviously some work is delayed. There is compost that could have been spread and the home barnyard is pretty sloppy. Corn is yet to be picked and that will prove interesting. We may have to wait until it freezes. If necessary we could cross fence it and turn the cattle into a chunk at a time. If that happens we would probably winter some pigs to follow.

All that being said, there's still plenty to do before snow arrives. We have some building projects to finish and more firewood to bring in. Yesterday the sun came out and it was a beautiful day to work in the woods. And trees love the deep rains we've had. Bill

Haiku

Colored beauty past

The leaves now fully fallen

Contours are revealed.

Higher Grounds Coffee

We bulk order Higher Grounds coffee about every other month, plus I sell it in smaller quantities at Sweetwater Local Foods Market. I really like working with a truly Fair Trade organization. Here's a note from them today:

Higher Grounds is sending $4,200 to coffee farmers in the Mayan Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico!

Each year, Higher Grounds sends 15 cents per pound purchased to the coffee growers of the Maya Vinic coffee cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico. This is on top of the fair trade/organic green bean coffee price we pay the farmers. This year, we purchased 28,598 pounds of green beans from the cooperative to fresh roast as our Mexican Maya Vinic Medium Roast and use in many of our best-selling blends.

The total premium sent to Maya Vinic this year is $4,289.78, which will be used to support the co-op and the 500 farmers employed there. Higher Grounds was among the first coffee roasters to import Maya Vinic's fair trade and organic beans, and has been honored to partner with the people of Maya Vinic on a number of projects over the past seven years. We view this payment not as a donation but a reflection of the deep partnership between Higher Grounds and Maya Vinic to offer you the highest quality coffees grown by the most amazing fair trade and organic farmers in the world!

Fall in the Gardens

We got all the garlic planted yesterday - ~~ 1800 cloves. This is about a 100 more cloves of hardneck than last year, and a bit more green garlic.

The hoophouse is enclosed and things are growing in it. A lot of garden is cleaned up and cover crops planted. The new wash shed is almost done. Potatoes are all dug and sorted into seed and eating size.

The deer are wrecking the fall garden - eating the tops of cabbages. GRRR. They probably snack on them while on their way to the field corn for their main meal.

Bulk ground beef for sale in a few weeks

We will have lean ground beef for sale in quantity soon. The packages will be 1# and 2#, it will be USDA inspected, but not priced for individual package resale so put your orders in now! Minimum quantity will be 10# or there-abouts.

Whew!

I feel like I'm still in recovery and trying really hard to do other things than think about or work with vegetables. Of course, that hasn't happened, but I have let the blog slide for a couple of weeks!

Having a CSA is a huge responsibility. You trust us to grow food and we do our best with the enormity of that job. It presents different challenges all throughout the growing season, and from year to year. This year seemed especially hard for even experienced growers like us. If you've planted a garden of your own this year, please know this and don't lose heart - try again next year! We will :-).

The past 2 weeks have been busy with winter preparation. It would have been nice to have a warmer stretch into October. We've had to hustle to get the last of the tender crops in, the hoophouse rebuilt, ground cleaned up and readied for planting garlic and green manure crops. Long-season crops are being harvested, sorted, prepped for storage. We've finally dried and frozen and canned some food for ourselves, too. Bill has repaired a lot of fence and moved the cattle a few times, separating out the older bull and the steers.

Bill just got appointed to the MIFFs Board - Michigan Integrated Food and Farming Alliance.