Membership Drive | Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund News. Thanks for visiting this page. The membership drive gift offer is now over. Thank you for your interest in and support of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund! Membership in the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) has its benefits including access to quality legal guidance, possible representation in court and the popular 15% discount in the shopping cart…But the true and lasting benefit of membership in FTCLDF is to join a healthy, active, thriving food freedom community that is focused on setting our out-of-whack food system straight.We’re rolling up our sleeves and diggin’ in to sow seeds of food freedom.
Some of these freedoms we won’t see in our lifetime, but our children and grandchildren will. It’s up to us, and now is the time. We can’t wait. . • Paying for expensive litigation to save a small farm and its community. • Having attorneys answer Farm 911 phone calls in the wee hours of the morning. • Suing the FDA over unfair small farm regulations. That’ll take some doing. Welcome to CERES Environment Park.
Adopting an Eco-centric Perspective Over an Egocentric one ~ Become the Tipping Point, Part 1. “Nature is not mute; it is man who is deaf.” –Terence McKenna In his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcom Gladwell defined a tipping point as “a moment of critical mass, a threshold, a boiling point.” As it stands, we have over seven billion “little things that can make a big difference” walking around on this planet, each with the power to become a tiny tipping point of their own. Indeed, with the power to change the world. The ego-centric perspective is based upon self-bias on the micro level, one-right-way dogma on the cultural level, and human-bias on the macro level.
It does this over and over again, on both micro (individual) and macro (cultural) levels, leaving nothing but burnt-out husks in its wake – be those husks people or land, it matters little to the all-consuming “mine, mine, mine” baby-whine of the egocentric machine. Atlas Now enter the ecocentric perspective. Small Acts What we need is to put the “eco” back into economy. Atlas. Sustainability | The Lexicon of Sustainability. Running Squirrel is a native Cherokee who carries tribal knowledge passed down from his ancestors. Foraging helps connect him to these lost traditions, to sustainable lessons first learned in his childhood. near Dougan Falls Skamania County, WA 29 September 2010 Respect Mother Earth. Respect the land.
Learn from the animals. When foraging always leave something behind for whoever comes next. In this way you’re sure to find something when you come back. “If only the top three leaves are taken, a plant will regrow. WHEN THE INDIANS CAME UPON A NEW LAND AND DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO EAT, THEY ASKED MOTHER EARTH FOR GUIDANCE. ABOUT RUNNING SQUIRREL Running Squirrel’s parents arrived to Chinook country when he was about 10 years old.
Mikuni Wild Harvest Forage SF Forage LA. Farmer: 'It was the system that failed us' Missouri dairy farmers sell off cattle because of the droughtUSDA official: Legislation is needed to provide help U.S. is in one of the worst droughts in at least 50 yearsDairy farmers are particularly vulnerable; most are uninsured Mountain Grove, Missouri (CNN) -- Thunder clapped and rain fell just before Bionce, Sassy and the rest of Mark Argall's prize-winning dairy herd went up for auction. Had the storm come a few weeks earlier, and if the drought had eased, it might have saved the cows -- some of which were named with a bit of poetic license ("You can spell names however you want," he said) for pop-culture divas and celebrities.
As it was, however, Argall's pasture was so dry that his cattle had nothing to eat, and the farmer was losing $75 a day just trying to feed them. Five generations of his family have milked dairy cows in this secluded stretch of Missouri's Ozark Mountains, but the inch or so of rain that fell on this recent Thursday was too little, too late.
"We didn't fail. Bhutan Bets Organic Agriculture Is The Road To Happiness : The Salt. Hide captionA Bhutanese farmer puts her harvest of chilies on the roof of a shed to dry and protect it from wild boars, deer, and monkeys in 2006. James L. Stanfield/National Geographic/Getty Images A Bhutanese farmer puts her harvest of chilies on the roof of a shed to dry and protect it from wild boars, deer, and monkeys in 2006. The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan drew international attention a few years back for saying gross national happiness should trump gross domestic product when measuring a nation's progress. If you're going to prioritize happiness, the Bhutanese thinking goes, you'd better include the environment and spiritual and mental well-being in your calculations.
(Not everyone in Bhutan is happy, and many leave as refugees, as Human Rights Watch and others have noted.) But Andre Leu, an Australian adviser to the Bhutanese government and the president of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, says it's very doable. Grizzly Bears’ Taste for Chicken Puts Them in Danger. Start a 1-Acre, Self-Sufficient Homestead - Modern Homesteading. Everyone will have a different approach to keeping a self-sufficient homestead, and it’s unlikely that any two 1-acre farms will follow the same plan or methods or agree completely on how to homestead. Some people like cows; other people are afraid of them. Some people like goats; other people cannot keep them out of the garden. Some people will not slaughter animals and have to sell their surplus stock off to people who will kill them; others will not sell surplus stock off at all because they know that the animals will be killed; and still others will slaughter their own animals to provide their family with healthy meat.
For myself, on a 1-acre farm of good, well-drained land, I would keep a cow and a goat, a few pigs and maybe a dozen hens. Raising a Dairy Cow Cow or no cow? On the other hand, the food that you buy in for this family cow will cost you hundreds of dollars each year. 1-Acre Farm With a Family Cow Grazing Management Intensive Gardening Half-Acre Crop Rotation. Sustainable Farmers - Stewards of the Land.
Polyface farm. Handy farm devices and how to make them. Vid: Back to the Garden. Full Circle. Creating Sustainable Agriculture Without Government Subsidies. I first met farmer, author, entrepreneur, thinker, and self-described “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic” Joel Salatin at his rural Virginia farm, Polyface, in 2009. We sat in rocking chairs in his home office and talked about everything from food and agriculture to law, regulations, and the Bill of Rights.
I’ve seen Salatin several times since—in Washington, DC, and Little Rock, Arkansas and, most recently, back at his farm—and have even invoked his unsubsidized farming practices to argue that he and farmers like him should serve as the model for supporters of sustainable agriculture—meaning farming that eschews government subsidies while both minimizing environmental impacts and also turning a profit. Salatin’s books include Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, probably the best book on the crushing regulatory burden faced by small- and medium-sized farmers in America.
Full Disclosure: Salatin is a member and supporter of my nonprofit, Keep Food Legal. Invermere Valley Echo - Final push to raise funds to protect Lot 48. Dutch ‘Repair Cafes’ keep stuff out of the trash by fixing it for free. In the Netherlands, there are more than 30 “Repair Cafes” — groups that meet once or twice a month to repair (for free!) Clothes and gizmos and tools that might otherwise be discarded.
The New York Times visited the original Repair Cafe, which began two and a half years ago, and found that people want to keep their stuff — even cheap stuff, like H&M skirts. They just don’t know how to mend it themselves: “This cost 5 or 10 euros,” about $6.50 to $13, [Sigrid Deters] said, adding that she had not mended it herself because she was too clumsy. “It’s a piece of nothing, you could throw it out and buy a new one. But if it were repaired, I would wear it.” The group repairs electronics, too — everything from big-ticket items like vacuums and washing machines to the little gadgets that go haywire, like irons, toaster ovens, and coffee pots.
Repair Cafes are mainly driven by the time and efforts of volunteers who pool their skills to fix what needs fixing. Crazy, or crazy like a fox? Toronto Becomes First City To Mandate Green Roofs. Summer is just around the corner, and for those who live in big cities, that means spring warmth will soon give way to searing heat.
Green roofs can help regulate city temperatures, giving people, and the electrical grid, a much needed break. Toronto is the first city in North America with a bylaw that requires roofs to be green. And we're not talking about paint. A green roof, also known as a living roof, uses various hardy plants to create a barrier between the sun's rays and the tiles or shingles of the roof. The plants love the sun, and the building (and its inhabitants) enjoy more comfortable indoor temperatures as a result. Toronto's new legislation will require all residential, commercial and institutional buildings over 2,000 square meters to have between 20 and 60 percent living roofs.
Under the direction of Mayor Richard Daley the city of Chicago put a 38,800 square foot green roof on a 12 story skyscraper in 2000. Image via Flickr/pnwra. Welcome.