The weather held out for the Morgan’s Grove Market this morning…

… with a passing rainfall not happening until after the 12 noon close. All-in-all it was a beautiful day at the market. Plenty of fresh vegetables and plantables… 2 new baking folks set up in two different pavilions (what do you call those fabric things? Tents? Rooftops?)… and the Speakeasy Boys, local favorites, playing the blues and country-tinged music for the crowd.

Elly recruited two more people for the Community Garden… people who made up their minds to take a plot or two after seeing the garden from the Market platform and visiting with her while she was planting.

This was a pleasant way to start Memorial Day Weekend Saturday. Play at Full Circle tonite.

From our sister blog, Panhandle Vegan:

Fighting the Battle of the Fruit Flies…

It’s that time of year… getting warmer outside but still not so hot that we have to close up the house and turn the Air Conditioning on. That’s something we avoid until the last minute.

The problem, however, is that, in this weather, the fruit flies start to swarm around the vegetable and fruit scraps waiting to go out into the garden and make our cooking area very unpleasant.

This morning we started our campaign which was 100% successful last year over a couple of days. We built fruit fly traps which draw the little devils in by the gross and get them out of our way.

We start with a small Ball jar. Into that we put about 1/2 cup of cider vinegar, a little water and a few drops of dish soap. Some people add a piece of banana to the mix – something fruit flies love – but I haven’t found it necessary.

On top of the jar we stretch tightly a piece of plastic wrap, or a small sandwich bag, and seal it around the neck with a rubber band. Then we take a toothpick and poke about 7 or 8 holes in the top.

That’s it.

Put the Jar (or 2 or 3 of them) in the infestation area and pretty soon the problem will be gone… and you can count the number of bugs either floating on top (new captures) or lying dead on the bottom. I’m up to around 60 with one jar which I set up about 3 hours ago.

A jar with the vinegar/soap mix lasts a couple of weeks and then can be refreshed with a new mix. Keep the traps going until the problem disappears or the start of heavy air conditioning season (you may have to overlap the two.)

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Big Coffee Drinking Men are Avoiding Prostate Cancer…

From the LA Times:

A Harvard School of Public Health study of nearly 48,000 men found that those who drank more than six cups of coffee per day had a 60% reduced risk of developing lethal prostate cancer compared with nondrinkers.

The reduction in lethal prostate cancer risk was similar between decaf and regular coffee drinkers. Thus, the researchers conclude, caffeine isn’t the wonder element — good news for those who already consume far too much caffeine (you know who you are).

The results were published online Tuesday in the “Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The researchers write in the discussion of their paper:

“An association between coffee and lower risk of advanced prostate cancer is biologically plausible. Coffee improves glucose metabolism, has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, and affects sex hormone levels, all of which play roles in prostate cancer progression.”

OK… I’m back on the coffee binge!

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I am curious about the Conservative concept of “Socialism”

“Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike.”

– William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice,  1969

Whenever one of the Conservative (read Republican) members of our Congress, or those campaigning for the Presidential nomination, discuss Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid. or unemployment funding, you are certain to hear the word “socialism” pop up with an extremely negative cloaking. It has happened so frequently that the word has lost any of it’s original meaning (“a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole” – Webster’s) and, indeed, has been connected to everything from community farming to Communism.

Socialism appeared as a concept in the early 19th Century in France (“socialisme’) which came from the concept of “social” (needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities : we are social beings as well as individuals) or “society” (the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community)…a term which itself goes back to the 16th Century.

The fact that our 21st century civilization shows that the need for the companionship of individuals, states and countries in order to face potentially devastating changes in climate, creating non-polluting energy methods to protect our air and water and educating our children to eventually take over the mess that has been made on our watch, is so obvious that many don’t see the forest for the trees.

Our job should be to make the trees visible to all, and especially to the people we elect to office… the people who make the rules and allot the funds to give us those necessary services.

And it’s not like the anti-socialist campaign of the current Conservative is something new, urged on by Corporations that are concerned… apparently by Federal regulation… only of making profits for a limited number of shareholders and executives. Justice Douglas’s quote from over four decades ago points out that it has been present for awhile. In fact, if we go back further to when Eisenhower warned us about the “military industrial complex”, something his whole career had given him great insight into, we see our post-WWII economy as a challenge we never met.

Have you wondered why, in all the discussions of the budget and raising of the debt ceiling, we have not heard people yelling for cuts in the military expenditures that keep our remaining industrial giants flowing in dough.  As a whole “community”, the military/industry mix is about as socialist as you can get. Add to that the VA medical system which provides the closest thing to “socialized medicine” (another concept that Conservatives would like to deny the average guy) that exists in the world today. This system, by the way, is praised by just about every politician, probably out of guilt from sending so many of our young soldiers into a life of crippling disabilities.

It is time to make a strong change of focus in our social environment, something which is not going to happen if we leave the decisions and actions to politicians. Republican or Democrat, they keep their jobs because of election funds for advertising and lobby persuasion with highly focused corporate contributions. As we saw, for instance, in the 1940s and 1950s, many cities lost the public transportation systems of mini-railroads that gave people inexpensive commuting transport … without parking, fuel and other expenses… due to the money spent by the automobile industry on lobbyists and state and federal (and local) political campaigns. General Motors even bragged about it in public.

The question is “how do we do it?” There are no easy answers, but I’m pretty sure it will take a lot of time and will begin on a very local level. Here in Shepherdstown, WV, our recent completion of a 10,000 square foot Community Garden allotting 10′ by 10′ growing plots to locals who have no planting areas in their town houses or  downtown apartments is a good example of modern socialism.  At a very low fee (starting at $20 and going up to $30 if you take three plots), which has paid for deer fence construction and publicity to get members, and with volunteers for construction of the fence (and the donation of land and so much more from a local entrepreneur who has created a neighboring public market to serve local farmers and craftspeople), community interdependence has resulted in community celebration.

This only one concept of local change which can be achieved. Tie that together with activities that follow such as expansion of public libraries (which is part of both education promotion and public interaction), involvement in schools beyond their operations budgets, group purchase alignments for reduction of basic living costs, etc., and you have a good start at what can then expand to the state level… and eventually to the national top. This can also, I would hope, be the start of a new political structure, beginning in local government and expanding upward over time.

Now… if we can only protect ourselves from corporate corruption and maintain the basic concept of “socialism”… that our community organization is controlled by ALL of it’s members and not the artificial “Citizens United” persons funded by the corporate bankbook.

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A Beautiful Day for the End of the World…

The sun is shining and it looks like a nice day for the Morgan’s Grove Market and the final side of the Community Garden deer fence.

But wait! Today is the Rapture according to Harold Camping, no? All those fine, saved people (and the bodies of the buried, saved people, arise from the ground and float upward) should be headed to heaven to sit at the feet of the Lord.

Except, it has not happened yet. Maybe later today.

I’m off to the Market in an hour or so. Elly is subbing for Ruth at the Four Seasons Book Store booth (which doubles as the Sustainable Shepherdstown handout area) and I’ve pledged to sit in for Joy at her ceramics booth while she uses her truck and the Fence Puller to stretch the last side.

Anyway, come Hell (which has been predicted for the likes of me) or High Water, we will get something accomplished today. Hope you do, too (unless you are taken up in the Rapture… if so, bask in the pleasure of knowing I was wrong.)

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Want to get your ire up this morning?

Take a look at these figures (I picked this up at Talk and Politics):

These are the big oil companies we are paying billions to subsidize while the cost of the gasoline they are putting out has made it more expensive to go to work, or to the grocery store (where prices have gone up do to the transport of food products suffering from increased gas and diesel prices), or to the mall for clothes shopping for kids. Don’t even mention driving on summer vacations around the country.

It makes me wonder what kind of protests can we do that would effect the big oil companies and the government that subsidizes them. We could cut out driving for a week and show that we can reduce their income, but this probably hurts us more than them. We can get on the phone with our Representatives (Federal AND State, both of whom set gas taxes) and smother them with complaints and demands that they eliminate subsidies, make federal reserves available, and, finally, regulate prices so that oil companies can’t raise them (these have all been done before and have worked.) E-mail flooding can be used here, too.

We are now at a time when government of the people, by the people and for the people is standing a desperate test. The prominence of and political control by corporations ( who have been backed by the Supreme Court and whose high contribution rates put our representatives in their pockets), that are concerned ONLY with profits, are the major competitors with the seemingly weak middle and lower class voters… that’s US. If we don’t act now, we deserve what we get.

In this year prior to major elections we can express dissatisfaction at town meetings where these representatives show up to appear people-oriented. Or we can picket capitol buildings. Or we can plan with each other the kinds of things that haven’t been tried before.

Whatever happens, at least we would have made ourselves heard.

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Saturday Morning… Market, Voting, Making Pie

Elly is off at the Hagerstown Community College graduation with the rest of the faculty, leaving me and the dogs behind. The weather is threatening… right now there is an ongoing drizzle, but it is threatening thunderstorms. Even so, after feeding and taking the dogs for their morning walk, I left for the second week of the Morgan’s Grove Market.

Because of threatening weather about half of last week’s vendors didn’t show up… attendance was lower as well, although about half the parking area was filled. In general, the weather was not terrible, so it was a shame that more folks didn’t show up.

The Entertainment, billed as Gregorio and Friends (there were only 2 of them, so I guess some friends were absent), arrived and started playing.

Al Thomas was doing a demonstration of old-fashioned, hand turned wood which he was happy to answer questions about…

After helping Ruth Robertas out at her Four Seasons Bookstore booth for a few minutes so she could go and get a donut (I sold seven lottery tickets for the community garden!), I took off to go and vote in the Governor primary (this was an unusual Saturday election day).

Then I came home to further develop my Vegan Key Lime Pie recipe.

Tonite we’re going to see 1776 at the Apollo Civic Theater in Martinsburg.

Busy Saturday.

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Picked this up from Art.com on Facebook…

Behold: Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” in bacon!

Instructables member and bacon-enthusiast, CopperTwist decided to take a porcine point of view on post-impressionism by recreating Vincent Van Gogh‘s, “The Starry Night” completely in bacon.

To make one of your own, go here.

Mother’s Day Brunch in Frederick, MD

We drove down to Frederick to meet Bud and his fiancee, Rachel, who came up from DC, for Mother’s Day lunch at the Cafe Nola.

Bud and Rachel

I hadn’t eaten here before, but Elly has been here several times as her AIGA meeting takes place around the corner twice a month. The Nola has plenty of vegetarian and light selections (I had a great French toast) and their coffee was particularly good.

After brunch we walked over to Frederick’s Community Bridge Mural, the great trompe l’oile painted bridge that looks amazingly like three dimensional stones, statues, gates and crests. Bud and Rachel were surprised when they got up close and found everything was relly flat and just painted on.

A section of the Bridge Mural

Bud, Rachel and Elly looking at the Mural

If you get the chance and are in Frederick, MD, this is worth visiting.

You couldn’t have asked for a nicer day…

… for the opening of Morgan’s Grove Market. The sun was out, it wasn’t too warm , and people showed up to fill the parking lot.

Elly and I went for a little more than the first hour… bought some vegetables, talked to people and had a great time.

And everyone seemed so happy! This is going to be a regular Saturday morning thing until the late Fall…and we have to hand it to Peter Corum who organized the whole thing and really pulled it off.

Can’t wait until next week… it’s going to be fun.

Following our visit to Morgan’s Grove Market, we drove over to Boonsboro Maryland for their Green fest, primarily because Elly wanted to buy two more composting bins for our gardening.

We walked around the park, spoke to some of Elly’s colleagues from HCC and came back home to feed the dogs and have lunch.

Nice day all around. Hope yours was, too.

Busy day today… in an ecological way…

Off to the opening of Morgan’s Grove Market at 9:00 (open til noon if you are going), then off to Boonsboro where there is a sale on Recycling bins at their local event.

Looks like a nice day here in the Eastern Panhandle.

Get outside and have fun.

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Saturday Projects…

Given the first good, thunderstorm free Saturday in a long time, everyone was outdoors taking care of our long delayed projects. I started the day by cutting the grass in our front yard (which is very small… I use a rotary trimmer, don’t need a lawnmower) and took down the really overgrown grass.

Then Elly and I went over to work on the Community Garden fence installation. We were there before ten and original only had a couple of small neighbor boys (one who, incidentally, has reserved a garden plot for himself) to get the fifth post in.

By the end of the day, after Peter Corum and some of the other volunteers who came at 10 AM helped with the rest of the posts until all four corners…12 posts… were now in the ground.

The other project today, which our group participated in as well, was the building of a barn-like structure on the Morgan’s Grove Market Platform ( which used to be the foundation of a burned down restaurant.)

Al Thomas of Joint Efforts had cut and notched the pieces and had actually set up a lot of the structure himself before the team showed up.

But once everyone was there they made significant progress in getting the bracings up for the roof (it took four people on each side at the top of the rigging and a couple of people checking for accuracy below.

This is where it was when Elly and I left:

Market opens May 7th.

F.A.R.M. (Food Art Revolution Media)

Went to a very interesting lecture and panel discussion on the need to expand locally grown organic food and the battle against companies like Monsanto and Dow that are poisoning our food supply.

The speakers were Dan and Melinda Hemmelgarn out of Columbia, Missouri, and they combined the skills of photography and dietetics with a heavy dose of activism. They were co-presented by AHA and the Source. Although the audience was fairly small, the excitement of the discussion after the 7:00 PM presentation lasted until close to 10 PM.

Even after the panel there was still continued discussion over a variety of delicious goodies.

—

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Clips from the web

A little bit of this, a little bit of that… more than I can get around to. Click on the authors’ links to read their whole posts

Rhode Island House Republican Leader Robert Watson is the latest living example of the Republican difficulty with practicing what they preach. Watson is fervently anti-Marijuana, but last Friday night he was pulled over and arrested for DUI and marijuana possession.

According to The Providence-Journal, “After handcuffing Watson and placing him under arrest, the arresting police officer said he found “a small plastic sandwich bag containing a green leafy plant-like substance and a small wooden marijuana smoking pipe” in Watson’s right pants pocket.”

– from Politicus USA

– and –

John Boehner

Speaker Boehner says the Ryan plan “transforms Medicare into a plan that’s very similar to the President’s own healthcare bill.”

Only older people are sicker and more expensive to cover and Ryan doesn’t provide the funds for seniors to buy care. Beside that they’re identical.

 – Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

– and –

The wage squeeze is putting most households in a double bind. Before the recession, they’d been able to pay the bills because they had two paychecks. Now, they’re likely to have one-and-a half, or just one, and it’s shrinking.

 – Robert Reich

Easter… I’m over at my daughter’s house…

Both my daughters, Cassandra and Penny, are at Penny’s house for Easter with all my grandsons. So that’s where I am this morning.

I’m on Penny’s Mac and she uses Safari which I can never really get used to (I’m a Firefox guy)… I started on her iPad, but since I use a lot of  Adobe’s Flash on my blog, the Home

Page won’t even come up.  Anyway, here I am stumbling my way through.

We’re all going over to Blue Moon for lunch, then Cassandra, Matthew, and my grandson, Milo, are heading back on the 4-hour drive to Connecticut. Milo has school tomorrow and they need to get back early enough so he gets some sleep tonite.

Elly and I, of course, don’t really celebrate Easter, being certified non-believers, but seeing the kids ransack their Easter baskets is a treat. I grew up in the Easter season when mu father sold Easter baskets in his drugstore and we set up at home for about a month making them… filling them with candy and a big chocolate rabbit in the middle, then putting colored cellophane and a bow on them. What I remember most, heh heh, was sneaking into the dining room where we made the baskets, and taking candies from the stacks and stacks of boxes we got from the distributor. And there was a HUGE box of loose jellybeans… my favorite… to grab a handful from.

I look at that now from my position as an aging diabetic and realize that I’ve gotten my just reward.

I’ll be back later to update the blog.

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Product of the Year! Lunch Bugs!

Did you know that lunch theft is a big problem? Apparently, people at work are finding their sandwiches being stolen from the coffee room refrigerator. Well here’s the solution everyone is waiting for: Lunch Bugs.

Lunch Bugs are sandwich bags with bugs printed on them to help deter lunch theft. They’re basically a variation of the already-existing mold-bags and will run you $7 for a 24-pack. That makes them almost $0.30 apiece. You may find this expensive… but, then again, it’s less expensive than going hungry at lunch time. And NOBODY will ever touch your sandwich!

You can buy them at Archie McPhee of course. I’ve got to get some of these.

Rain or Not, the Earth Day Festival goes on…

I just spent three hours at the Earth Day Festival in Shepherdstown’s Morgan’s Grove Park. Elly and the Sustainable Shepherdstown folks had a booth, as did most of the non-profits and craftsmen in town.

When I walked over to the park from my house (about a quarter mile away) there was a little bit of sun peeking through the clouds… but the weather said we’d have scattered showers and perhaps some thunder storms today, so I checked out the areas with decent coverage.

There was a fabric bandshell at the bottom of the hill from the Pavilion…the big protective area in case of rain… and they were warming up the mikes and checking the sound levels until it was time for the first act: a guy playing wooden wind pipes to recorded background music.

The next group to play was a country singer with an all-girl backup band – Lucas and the Lovelies – and they were pretty good.

Then it started to rain, which made the folks watching the music get under the pavilion so that they could see it without getting wet.

Meanwhile, Elly was selling cookies she baked this morning and Ruth Robertas’s Brownies under their tent top, raising money for Sustainable Shepherdstown and promoting the Community Garden. I watched the booth for a little while (sold some cookies/brownies) while she talked with some of their volunteers and with Peter Corum at the Morgan’s Grove Market Booth .

So I waited till the rain let up, then I walked home to feed the dogs. I think they’ll have a little more time without rain, but i do expect more before they close the booths in a couple of hours. It was fairly well attended, though.

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Went to Green Drinks in Harper’s Ferry…

Green Drinks is a group that gets together once a month so that people with interests in conservation, green energy and related subjects can interact with each other. Elly has been going to this since it relates to Sustainable Shepherdstown. Tonite I went along with her.

There was a speaker this evening, something I’m told doesn’t usually happen at these events. His name is John Amos and his company is SkyTruth. This is an organization which uses satellite and aerial photography to evaluate the effects of oil drilling and shale fracking and other destructive things that people do to the earth. He has been especially involved with viewing BP’s oil leak history in the Gulf.

Amos gave a slide presentation with amazing pictures that got us all worked up and had us considering what we could do to help correct the situation… not an easy thing to do.

More on the solutions later.

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How to identify Genetically Modified foods at Whole Foods…

 Whole Foods Market admits it sells genetically modified foods:

“The reality is that no grocery store in the United States, no matter what size or type of business, can claim they are GE-free. … we are not going to mislead our customers with an inaccurate claim…”

Whole Foods Market
Internal Company Memo 1/30/2011

Activists with the Organic Consumers Association‘s Millions Against Monsanto campaign went to Whole Foods Market in San Francisco to try to identify which foods are genetically engineered, but couldn’t get any help from store employees.

Check Out This Video courtesy of the Organic Consumer Association:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvU2yH4IpBo

For more information, go to: http://www.millionsagainstmonsanto.org

(also posted at Panhandle Vegan)

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Wasn’t Yesterday Nice? A family get together.

Bud and Rachel

Yesterday, Elly and I drove down to Leesburg, VA, which was in the midst of an outdoor flower festival… packed with people… where we met our son, Bud, and his fiancee, Rachel, plus My daughter Penny, her three boys and Rachel’s son (and Penny’s mother) to have lunch at Lightfoot.

Penny and 4 boys!

Lightfoot is a favorite restaurant of both Bud and Penny… Elly and I ate there once before (with Bud, I think).

The weather was lovely… the rain is gone for awhile after soaking our Saturday down, and it was warm. On the Courthouse lawn there was music and kids playing Frisbee and other older people (like me) just sitting around.

N. King Street, which is one of the main drags of Leesburg, was filled with tents and merchants an shoppers and people just walking and having a good time.

However, today is Monday and the regular world starts up again.

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Upcoming in Shepherdstown Next Week…

Saturday the 23d is Earth Day and Shepherdstown is having a big affair at Morgan’s Grove Park (which, of course, is right next door to the Community Garden that Sustainable Shepherdstown is setting up and the location for the new Morgan’s Grove Market which opens in May.)

Here is the poster:

Looks like great music… walk there if you can (I’m a lucky neighbor) or bicycle… cars pay $10.00 to park (which helps the Men’s Club maintain Morgan’s Grove.)

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An afternoon of Mushroom Innoculation…

Elly and I attended a great afternoon affair at Laurie and Bob’s five acre farm on Engel-Moler Road. And what was the purpose of this get together that drew a couple of dozen conservationists, Sustainable Shepherdstowners, and your average local mushroom enthusiast? Why, to innoculate oak logs with mushroom spores so that they can be put in the dark to grow and develop edible shitake mushrooms for the Fall.

The process is fairly simple, but requires a lot of muscle effort and concentration. The logs that have been cut and stacked which will be used for the innoculation are put, one at a time, across a couple of sawhorses. Then holes are drilled all around each log at approximately four inch intervals.

Once the holes are drilled, small pegs with the preset mushroom fungus in them are pounded into each hole with a hammer or a rubber mallet.

After the pegs are malleted into the logs, each one is covered with a coat of melted wax which is brushed onto the top of the peg. At the lower left corner of the close-up photo you can see the splotch of wax on top of the peg. In the upper right of the picture is an exposed peg that hasn’t been waxed.

Finally, the finished logs are stacked. They will be covered with a fabric sheet to keep the light out and the logs will be kept damp.

We followed up the afternoon activities with snacks and conversations and a mini-concert of bagpipes and drums. Lots of fun and learned a lot about growing mushrooms.

Related Articles

• MYcelium… (damedefleur.wordpress.com)
• Shitake mushroom workshop (sustainablegrub.wordpress.com)
• Growing Oyster Mushrooms, and a Recipe for Vegetarian Terrine (Video) (treehugger.com)

Return to being a Vegan

I’ll admit it… about six months ago I gave up the Vegan diet I had been on for close to two years and went off on a meat and cheese (mostly cheese) binge. But now, since my weight stopped coming off and I just didn’t feel as good, last Monday I returned to my Vegan diet (but I will miss that occasional top sirloin!).

et’s see how long I can keep going (says bill as he digs out his Vegan Chili recipe.)

Related Articles

• The Vegan Diet and Weight Loss (everydayhealth.com)
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• Vegan Foods That Are High in Vitamin B12 (fitsugar.com)
• Vegan, It’s What’s For Lunch (wdok.radio.com)

Western Spaghetti

It’s been a long time since I showed one of the great animations by PES. This is one of my favorites:

I needed this… the government is making me depressed and this lets me know that the real world is in our minds.

Shepherdstown Community Garden Update…

Today was the Sunday that the Garden Committee (see Elly and I Host a Community Garden Meeting) met on the field Peter Corum provided in order to mark out the dimensions and divide plots. The land, of course, was turned and fertilized a week or so ago, and the next step is getting a fence to protect the gardens from deer (7 1/2 feet high because these guys can jump.)

Peter Corum measures 100' sides from the corners.

We had a lot of kids with us today and I think they got a kick out of helping out… bringing flags to the adults who were marking measurements, for instance.

Setting up plots...

The weather was excellent for the project and everyone was out working for a couple of hours.

Imagining what it will be like...

We spent an unusually long time just figuring out which direction was north with two compasses built into iPhones. But we figured it out (the North End is for tall plants like corn.)

 

Sizing plots on the North side...

Now let’s hope we solve the fence problem soon so we can get started on planting.