A Swedish man has been pulled barely alive from his snow-covered car having survived on nothing but snow for two months in sub-zero temperatures.

Peter Skyllberg, 44, had eaten nothing but handfuls of snow since December 19 when his car became bogged down in drifts near the town of Umea in northern Sweden.

Pictures of the vehicle’s interior show the dashboard and seats covered in ice after temperatures plunged to -30C.

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Igloo effect: Peter Skyllberg somehow survived inside this icebound car for two months by eating handfuls of snow as temperatures plunged as low as -30C

Baltic conditions: This picture shows just how much ice had built up inside the vehicle. Mr Skyllberg also appears to have had food and drink supplies, albeit limited ones

Frozen in: The Swede’s car was found covered in 2ft of snow after getting trapped in drifts on December 19

Trapped: Mr Skyllberg was eventually discovered near the town of Umea on the north-east coast of Sweden

Experts think he went into a kind of human hibernation which slowed down his metabolism and pulled him through the ordeal in what they have described as the ‘case of a lifetime’.

Mr Skyllberg had driven off the main road on to forest tracks where his car became stuck fast

On Friday a passing man on a snowmobile stopped to scrape snow from the windscreen of the vehicle and saw movement inside.

As he recovered in a hospital today details emerged of depression and debts piling up on him and it is thought he might have been trying to take his own life.

Police initially thought he was a nature lover who had become trapped in the snow while on an expedition to photograph elk.

But now it emerges there was a court judgment against him in December because of debts totaling £150,000. 

Neighbours of his in the town of Orebro in central Sweden said he had also broken up with his girlfriend and had lost contact with his father and other family members 20 years ago.

‘We now have to wait until he is better to try to find out what really was in his mind,’ said police officer Ebbe Nyberg.

Mr Skyllberg survived by taking handfuls of snow from the roof of the car.

The only other things found with him were cigarettes and comic books.

Some protection: Mr Skyllberg did at least have warm clothes and a sleeping bag with him (left) in his car

‘Absolutely incredible that he is alive, in part considering that he hasn’t had any food, but also bearing in mind that it was really cold for a while there after Christmas,’ said a member of the emergency services team deployed to rescue him.

MIRACLE SURVIVAL: IGLOO EFFECT OR BEAR-LIKE HIBERNATION?

The case of Peter Skyllberg is so extraordinary doctors and medical experts are still trying to establish exactly how the 44-year-old survived in such extreme circumstances.

One theory being put forward by Dr Stefan Branth, from Uppsala University, is that Mr Skyllberg’s metabolism may have slowed down ‘like a bear that hibernates’, making it easier to go without food.

But Ulf Segerberg, the chief medical officer at Umea University Hospital, said it was more likely because of the insulation provided by his vehicle.

‘It is not possible for humans to hibernate like a bear,’ he said.

‘In the car, he had very warm clothes, he had a warm sleeping bag, and as the car was snowed under, that would have made it more like an igloo.

He was emaciated, barely able to move and could barely speak.

‘He was at the end of his tether,’ said a police spokesman. ‘It was doubtful he could have survived one or two more days.’

He was wrapped up in a sleeping bag in the car but he had no other warmth; the fuel had run out long ago as he kept the heater running to try to survive as the thermometer plunged on some nights to -30C.

Pictures also show food wrappers and drink cartons , which suggests he may have had supplies with him for at least some of the time.

Mr Skyllberg is recovering in the intensive care ward at Umea University Hospital where he is being fed liquid proteins.

He has hypothermia and is severely malnourished. He was never registered as missing, for which there is currently no explanation.

Policeman Nyberg added: ‘He was in a very poor state when we found him.

He could not speak, just a few broken sentences and the words snow…eat. And he managed to say he hadn’t eaten anything since December.’

[Via DailyMail.co.uk]

The new result comes from Gallup’s Oct. 6-9 Crime poll, which also finds public support for personal gun rights at a high-water mark. Given this, the latest increase in self-reported gun ownership could reflect a change in Americans’ comfort with publicly stating that they have a gun as much as it reflects a real uptick in gun ownership.

Not surprisingly, republicans pack more heat than democrats. Perhaps it is best not to piss too many off…

Republicans (including independents who lean Republican) are more likely than Democrats (including Democratic leaners) to say they have a gun in their household: 55% to 40%. While sizable, this partisan gap is narrower than that seen in recent years, as Democrats’ self-reported gun ownership spiked to 40% this year.

Read Full Article

The executives at Chevrolet can rest easy for now. Since the Roberts was constructed in an age before Henry Ford’s mass production, the 115-year-old electric car is one of a kind.

But don’t let the car’s advanced age let you think it isn’t tough: Its present-day owner, who prefers not to be named, told The Daily Caller it still runs like a charm, and has even completed the roughly 60-mile London to Brighton Vintage Car Race.

If you didn’t know there are electric cars as old as the Roberts, you aren’t alone. Prior to today’s electric v. gas skirmishes, there was another battle: electric v. gas v. steam. This contest was fought in the market place, and history shows gas gave electric and steam an even more thorough whooping than Coca-Cola gave Moxie.

But while the Roberts electric car clearly lacked GPS, power steering and, yes, air bags, the distance it could achieve on a charge, when compared with its modern equivalent, provides a telling example of the slow pace of the electric car.

Driven by a tiller instead of a wheel, the Roberts car was built seven years before the Wright brothers’ first flight, 12 years before the Ford Model T, 16 years before Chevrolet was founded and 114 years before the first Chevy Volt was delivered to a customer.

As the New York Times reported September 5, “For General Motors and the Obama administration, the new Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid represents the automotive future, the culmination of decades of high-tech research financed partly with federal dollars.”

Like “green technology’s” most powerful proponent, President Barack Obama, the 1896 Roberts was made in Chicago. Obama, who supports the $7,500 tax credit for the Volt, is not fazed by its 40-mile electric limit — he only drove the car 10 feet.

[Via DailyCaller.com]

Rats, mice, foxes, owls, pigeons, moles, snakes and pheasants: the makings of a pleasant episode of Winnie the Pooh, an autumnal diorama of woodland life at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia — or, for one 44-year-old UK man, 30 years worth of dinner.

Jonathan McGowan, a professional taxidermist, started eating roadkill at age 14, when he found a dead adder on the side of the road and decided to cook it, reports the Daily Mail. That first snake wasn’t very tasty, but he was intrigued. Over time, McGowan came to see the ecological and culinary benefits of eating only meat he found dead on the side of the road. (It seems his forager-instincts were limited to the flesh: he would buy fruits, vegetables, grains, spice and so forth like any other person.)

McGowan detailed the logistics of his diet in a rollicking essay in The Guardian last spring. He writes:

Rabbits, badgers and pheasants are my most common finds. Rabbit is actually quite bland. Fox is far tastier; there’s never any fat on it, and it’s subtle, with a lovely texture, firm but soft. It’s much more versatile than beef, and has a salty, mineral taste rather like gammon. Frogs and toads taste like chicken and are great in stir-fries. Rat, which is nice and salty like pork, is good in a stir-fry, too – I’ll throw in celery, onion, peppers and, in autumn, wild mushrooms I’ve collected. Badger is not nice and hedgehog is hideous.

In a way, McGowan’s roadkill-centric diet is the logical terminus of a few recent strands of thought in the culinary world. He is at once a locavore forager in the tradition of Rene Redzepi, a nose-to-tail carnivore like Fergus Henderson and a freegan in the same vein as Gio Andollo. (Never mind that he embarked on his unusual project decades before any of those figures rose to prominence.)

McGowan doesn’t fess up to any negative consequences of his roadkill diet, except for the occasional grimace from a friend or acquaintance. So if you’re feeling cavalier, eco-conscious and in the mood for meat the next time you see a deer carcass on the side of the highway, you might want to consider following his lead — at least after reading this guide to roadkill on Slashfood.

McGowan’s story was featured on CNN Monday. Here’s the clip:

[Via HuffingtonPost.com]

College student Lauren Liggett -- a coupon newbie -- has filled up her parents' house with staples, such as this stash of tomato sauce.

Lauren Liggett, a 22-year-old college student from Carthage, Mo., found herself hooked the moment she saw the pilot episode of the TLC reality show “Extreme Couponing” in December. She began scouring the Internet for couponing websites, bought copies of the Sunday newspaper for the circulars, and headed to the grocery store to shop for her family — her mom, Joyce, a realtor, and her dad, Larry, a retired IBM engineer who works part-time as a car salesman. The Liggetts are not struggling financially — they have a low-six-figure income — but since Lauren lives at home and her parents are paying for college, she wanted to help out. On that first shopping trip, she presented her coupons to the cashier and felt the adrenaline rush of watching her total drop from $263 to $50. “Pretty good for my first time!” she recalls.

Today Lauren has slashed her family’s monthly grocery bill from $400 to $100, and the bulging cupboards, pantries, and spare room can make the Liggetts seem like survivalists bracing for nuclear war: 288 rolls of toilet paper, 80 jars of tomato sauce, and 40 bottles of men’s body wash.

Read Full Article Here

***This article was contributed by Chrystle Poss a.k.a. “Survival Girl”, a Survival Spot Blog Guest Author and devoted Prepper. She has been writing articles on survival and emergency preparedness since 2006. You can find her work on various websites and publications.***

Charges against Julie Bass over her garden have been dropped, but other charges remain for failing to license her two dogs, officials said Thursday.

City Prosecutor Eugene Lumberg said he dropped the misdemeanor citation against Bass for growing cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables in raised beds in her front yard.

The situation garnered Bass an army of international supporters after she began writing about it on a blog and a friend put up a Facebook page, “Oak Park Hates Veggies.”

“I want to look at it, I want to see the facts, I want to see where this vegetable garden is going and make a determination of whether or not to prosecute under the existing ordinance, write a new ordinance and (examine) the public welfare,” Lumberg said.

Asked if that meant this case could be resurrected, Lumberg said he couldn’t predict what would happen.

“She may decide to grow a cornfield,” Lumberg said. “If she plows up a compost heap, what are (we) going to do?”

But Bass’ attorney, Solomon Radner, suspects the charge for the vegetable garden was dropped because Oak Park wants to get out of the international spotlight. Last week, Bass’ plight went viral, and city officials acknowledged they were barraged with emails and even threatening phone calls as the suburban mother and gardener faced a $100 fine and up to 93 days in jail.

“Charges are dropped for the time being,” Radner said. “Based on the games the city has been playing, I would not put it past them to drop the charges just to get the media off their back.”

Read Full Article From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110715/METRO02/107150397/Charges-dropped-against-Oak-Park-woman-over-veggie-garden

This story involves a woman named Julie Bass, whose front yard was dug up during sewer line construction. After the construction project was completed, instead of planting grass, she thought it would be far more practical to plant a vegetable garden. Watch the brief news reports on this at:
http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=1D577A9747A66FE9316E584F7E781867
http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=09F5170370D594E931B4423BAB17634A

Vegetable gardens not only provide organic, high-nutrient live foods to those who grow them, studies have also linked gardening to enormous health benefits such as sharp reductions in the risk of breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/025280_cancer_breast_women.htm) and even lung cancer. They also create an environment of food security while promoting eco-friendly practices. There’s no food that’s more “local” than the food grown in your own front yard, right? It’s good for public health, great for the environment, and fantastic for teaching children useful skills that get them out of the house and away from the X-Box.

Thou shalt not grow food in Oak Park

None of this seems to matter to Kevin Rulkowski, the city planner for the city of Oak Park, Michigan. With a nasty arrogance that seems to be increasingly common among ignorant bureaucrats, he complains in a video news report that Julie Bass’s garden is in violation of city code and Julie has to dig up her entire garden or face punitive enforcement actions by the city (which could include jail time).

City code says, “All unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass, shrubbery or other suitable live plant material.”

But city planner Kevin Rulkowski, who really just comes off as an arrogant bully in his attacks on Julie Bass, proclaims, “If you look in Webster’s dictionary, suitable means common. And you can look all throughout the entire city and you’ll never find a vegetable garden that consumes the entire front yard.” (http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=1D577A9747A66FE9316E584F7E781867).

Hold on a minute, Mr. Rulkowski. Suitable does not mean “common.” Suitable means appropriate within the context in which it is being used. Check any dictionary and you’ll see the definition of “suitable” being either “appropriate” or “proper.”

Even the Webster’s dictionary Mr. Rulkowski quotes in his news report doesn’t define “suitable” as “common.” It defines “suitable” as “proper, able, or qualified” and gives examples such as “The dress was a SUITABLE choice.”

Well what could be more suitable to a family with a yard than teaching children how to grow some of their own food right at home? That’s suitable! It’s the most suitable (and natural) thing in the world, in fact. What’s weird is to grow nothing but grass and then spray your lawn with toxic chemicals to kill all the weeds, and then mow the lawn every week burning up fossil fuels and polluting the air just to keep your lawn manicured. That’s bizarre (and terrible for city air quality, by the way).

Gardening, on the other hands, is eco-friendly, health-friendly and great for the air quality of the city! What could be more suitable to a city than people growing more of their own food right at home, right on their front lawns?

Read the Rest Here: Natural News

Stig and Dinah Mason bought Muxbeare Orchard after a sudden windfall allowed them to quit their impoverished lives on a Hertfordshire council estate two years ago.

The Masons have transformed what they described as a derelict four-acre plot into a haven of self-sufficiency boasting a 400 sq m allotment, a polytunnel and greenhouses to grow fruit and vegetables, chickens for egg production and an orchard they have regenerated by planting around 14 new apple trees of various species.

The couple, who have two boys, aged eight and nine, say because they moved onto the site in order to work the land, Mid Devon District Council is turfing them off as officers do not consider them to be conserving an agricultural area.

They faced magistrates on March 31 when they were served with an injunction to leave within 28 days from June 1.

Dinah, 35, who spent a year with her husband clearing four-foot high nettles and thistles which engulfed the four-acre site, said: “How anybody can say the orchard was being conserved before is beyond my comprehension.”

Dinah works while Stig, 34, as well as making sure the children get to school on time, tends to the land on a daily basis where peas, potatoes, garlic, strawberries, raspberries and various produce have been growing since 2009.

Vegetarians Stig and Dinah claim council officers offered them bed and breakfast accommodation in Cullompton at taxpayers’ expense and suggested they live on take aways, which are likely to cost around £20 for each family meal.

Dinah’s income currently provides the family with everything they need which they cannot grow themselves but is unlikely to stretch to cover kennelling costs for their dog, Moo.

They say they currently receive no state hand-outs but by giving up their “off grid” way of life, they fear they will end up in a council house, claiming housing and council tax benefits, as well as seeking grants to help pay for high utility bills.

Stig, chairman of the Willand Composting Scheme and a member of the primary school’s PTFA, sells eggs, produce, and hopefully cider in the future but explained that planning permission to live and work on the land was refused in 2009 which they are appealing against.

He said one of the council’s reasons for refusal was based on a belief the couple had did not have a “sound enough business plan.”

As well as plans to sell more produce locally, the couple say it is only likely to take them a further two years to get to a stage where they will be able to grow six to eight months’ worth of vegetables.

Dinah, who is a community care worker, cub leader and also a member of the PTFA, said: “To live in an agricultural area you need to have a financial need, but this gives us enough to live on, but our whole ethos is not about making money.

“The council is saying by us living here it becomes mixed-use and is therefore no longer deemed agricultural.”

Dinah was bequeathed money from the sudden death of her aunt and £47,000 was spent on the land to create the smallholding where wood burners and solar panels provide their energy needs.

Dinah said removing them from their land will render them homeless and is concerned they will have to pull their children out of Willand Primary School if they have to move out of the area.

But several people from across the country have written to the council in support of the family’s retention.

Anne Wallington, whose family has had an interest in the village for 44 years, wrote to the council in support of the Masons by praising their hard work in reclaiming what was “rapidly becoming derelict land.” David Thompson, who also lives in the village, said “they are trying to live up to the Government’s pledge to take better care of the environment and this is the last orchard in the vicinity of Willand.”

John Clarke, planning enforcement officer, said: “To get planning permission to move onto agricultural land, you have to prove first there is a need for someone to live there, for example, to tend livestock and look after crops, and second, that the enterprise can provide living income for at least one worker.

“Neither condition was met and therefore took the necessary action to protect the nature of the rural landscape and prevent unlawful habitation.”

The council said it cannot comment on individual cases of housing need and said bed and breakfast accommodation is offered if people are homeless.

SOURCE

(Photo c/o Rosie Bolin)

A week ago, we noticed a comment our Food, Inc. Facebook wall from a commentor called “Road to Simplicity”:

We were VERY inspired by Food, inc to the point that we moved to a 30 acre farm and started growing/raising our own food….

We love stories like these. We followed up.

The commentor, Rosie Bolin, is a mother, a farmer, and—in our eyes—an activist. She has a great story to tell, and she shared it with us so we could share it with you. Prepare to be inspired. You might just find yourself digging into the dirt any day now…

TakePart: You told us that Food, Inc inspired you move to a 30-acre farm and start growing and raising your own food. Was seeing the movie the first time you had thought about farming your own food?

My husband, Lee, grew up on a small farm in the foothills of the North Carolina mountains. His family has farmed in that part of the state for countless generations. He really wanted no part of that life, went to college, moved to the “Big City” and became an engineer with IBM.

I, conversely, grew up in a more urban setting, and always wanted to be a farmer’s wife. I won, and Lee has discovered that you can’t escape your roots, which is a good thing, because they not only keep you grounded, they nourish you.

So…we had decided, prior to watching Food, Inc. that we wanted to seriously simplify our lives. We wanted to move out of the suburbs, but were on the slow train. After we watched Food, Inc., we hopped onto the bullet train and made the move.

Which parts of “Food, Inc” affected you the most?

We knew about animal cruelty on factory farms, but the only way we, personally, were making a stand was not eating at KFC. After seeing the film, we just couldn’t, in good conscience, support an industry that so mistreated animals.

Joel Salatin [one of the farmers in Food, Inc.] said that his animals are happy every day but the last. That’s what we wanted. The other thing that horrified us was learning about GMOs [genetically modified organisms], specifically Monsanto. We are so impressed at the public outcry that was inspired by Food, Inc. shedding such a prominent light on this issue.

'I grew up in a more urban setting, and always wanted to be a farmer’s wife. I won.' (Photo c/o Rosie Bolin)

What was it like transitioning to farm life? How did you get started?

We did a great deal of research. We homeschool our teenage boys, so we had them do presentations on raising animals. We bought several homesteading books, joined a local homesteading meet-up, and scoured the internet for any information we could find.

We started very slowly, adding just one type of farm animal at a time. Our first was a bull calf. Because Holsteins are primarily dairy cows, we found that buying young bulls is very inexpensive. Ours was only $75. Grass feeding is pretty much free, so that has been an amazing return on investment.

The Bolins managed to get most of their materials for building and landscaping for free on Craigslist. Talk about sustainable! (Photo c/o Rosie Bolin)

Next, we got goats. We found that there were many goats, mostly male, that were free or cheap on Craigslist. We got two females and four males that way. We mated both of the females; one gave birth to two kids in March, and the other is due in July. Whew, what an adventure that has been. Goats are fun, hysterical to watch, and very friendly, but they sure have a tendency to get themselves into trouble!! If there’s a fence, they’ll either leap it, or get stuck trying!

Our chickens came next. We bought seven-week-old Rhode Island Red and Buff Orpington pullets. We love the chickens and keep them in fully-enclosed tractors, which we move every two weeks so they are both protected from predators and have constant access to fresh grass.

Farming has become a family activity. (Photo c/o Rosie Bolin)

We also feed them table scraps. When we toss in their favorites, one piece at a time, it’s like a football game. One will grab it and run across the yard, dodging the others. There is, inevitably, at least one turnover, where the competition will grab it and run the opposite direction. We find this much more entertaining than actual football.

This month we’ve added 20 more pullets and 6 breeder rabbits, which are also housed in mobile tractors. We should have our first baby bunnies in two weeks. Can’t wait for the show!

As for gardens, last year we were way too ambitious and planted two acres of everything. We didn’t have irrigation (other than me with a hose), so I ended up watering, by hand, for two hours every night during one of the hottest, driest summers in North Carolina history.

'Our big lesson was to shift to a lower-impact, higher-yield method, so we’re moving most of the crops to aquaponics.' (Photo c/o Rosie Bolin)

Sadly, the two hours weren’t enough, so some of the late crops never came in. While we were thrilled with our tomatoes and cucumbers, we only got a handful of peas and beans, and the 100 pumpkins we planted failed to fruit. Our big lesson was to shift to a lower-impact, higher-yield method, so we’re moving most of the crops to aquaponics.

In July, we plan to start selling our eggs on the property. We’re making educational trails so people can view and learn about the various animals. We have been so inspired to make a positive change that we are anxious to share this journey with others. If people would like to follow our farm online and get tips on simplifying their own lives, they can go to Road to Simplicity on Facebook. The cool thing is, regardless of your living situation, you can incorporate some of the farm into your life.

'We’re making educational trails so people can view and learn about the various animals.' (Photo c/o Rosie Bolin)

Paint us a picture of your farm. What does it look like? Which animals do you raise? Which crops?

Our farm was formerly a commercial dairy farm on 30 acres just outside Raleigh, NC. The property was owned by the same family for generations. My favorite outbuilding is an old tobacco barn made from hand-hewn logs cut down on the property. Funny, the previous owners added a stable around the tobacco barn many years later. The stable is about to fall down, but the tobacco barn is still standing strong—a real testament to old-fashioned craftsmanship.

We have two other well-used old barns, two of the most beautiful stocked ponds I’ve ever seen, and acres of rolling field and woods. When I look out my kitchen window while washing dishes, I can see the pond, rabbits, goats, chickens an old pear tree, more birds than I can name, barns that look like they inspired Norman Rockwell, and if I’m lucky, a herd of deer. That’s the payoff, and I wouldn’t want any other job!!

What do your kids think of the change?

Rosie's son poses with a new member of the family: one of their calves. (Photo c/o Rosie Bolin)

They love it. Riley, 13, wants to be a vet, so he really enjoys the animals. Just as they showed Joel Salatin doing on his farm in Food, Inc., we process animals on our property. Riley has taken part in this with curious amazement. Sheesh, talk about a biology lab!

Adam, 16, is much more interested in the gardens and fields. He loves nature photography and spends a great deal of time noticing things in the grass that most of us would pass by.

More importantly, this experience has taught them responsibility and work ethic. It doesn’t matter if you stayed up until 2 a.m. talking to a girl on the phone. When the sun comes up, the animals need food and water. When we first moved here, they complained about how physical, hot and dirty the work was. Now, they brag about their muscles. (Farmers don’t need to join a gym.)

What advice do you have for someone who wants to opt out of the industrial food system and grow their own food?

The internet is an amazing source of information. A lot of it is contradictory, so much of what you learn is through trial and error. If your beans don’t grow this year, try again next year. Life doesn’t happen in half-hour increments, but in seasons. Enjoy them all!

SOURCE

Martin Griff / The Times of TrentonThree-year-old Giuseppe Panzittia of Pennington is handed a Red Star hen to hold by John Hart at Rosedale Mills in Hopewell Township on Wednesday. In the background is a portable chicken coop sold by Rosedale Mills which is owned by Hart's family.

Male fowls would be allowed into the henhouses 10 days a year under an ordinance introduced by the township committee Monday night. No rooster would be allowed to stay more than five consecutive nights and any crowing would be strictly prohibited.

“You can bet if you have one rooster in there with six hens, he’s going to be crowing,” chuckled John Hart, a beef farmer who sits on the town Agricultural Advisory Committee that helped draft the ordinance. “Only in Hopewell Township would we waste the time and money on chicken legislation. Other towns are laughing at us.”

Hopewell began working on the law several years ago when a father came to town hall to inquire about rules for keeping chickens in the backyard to teach his children about the cycle of life. That ruffled feathers among the town officials, who decided the laws on chickens were ambiguous and needed to be clarified.

Three years and countless legal hours later the ordinance was unveiled for consideration.
The draft ordinance lays out the rules for keeping backyard fowl; the only livestock permitted on township properties less than five acres.

Under the law, up to six hens would be allowed on half-acre lots; but mature roosters would be forbidden.

“They make too much noise,” Hart said. “They’ll be out there crowing at a full moon.”

The male fowls would be allowed limited time on the property “for purposes of fertilization” but they’d have to keep quiet while they were there. Any rooster caught crowing for a prolonged period of time would subject the property to a two-year moratorium on all rooster visits.

Hens do not need roosters around to lay the unfertilized eggs used for eating. Each hen will lay an egg a day on average.

The law also regulates how to shelter chickens, store their feed and dispose of their waste.
Proponents say the ordinance is needed to prevent any squabbling among neighbors in places where suburbanites want to try their hand at chicken farming.

Hart, who owns the Rosedale Mills feed store on Route 31, says it’s a growing trend among people looking for a healthier diet of homegrown food.

“Most people keep the chickens so they can have fresh eggs,” Hart said. “We used to sell 1,000 chicks a year. Last year we sold more than 3,000.”

Hart also sells chicken coops to people all over the state. One couple comes in from New York to buy supplies for a pair of chickens they keep on an outside deck, he said.

He also hosts a Chicken Chat in the spring and the fall for people to share ideas about raising poultry.

He recounted a conversation last spring between a little girl and an old-time farmer who attended the gathering. The child was asking for advice on what to do with a hen that pecked and broke the eggs laid by other hens.

“The guy said, ‘I just wring their necks,’” Hart recalled. “I told him ‘No, no, no, you can’t tell people that. These people think of their chickens as pets!’”

Mayor Jim Burd said the ordinance is a good balance between the town’s suburban lifestyle and rich farming history.

“Our agrarian roots are the backbone of the township and we want to do what we can to keep that going,” Burd said.

[Via NJ.com]

Courtesy PPJ Gazette

HB 365 Utah : NIB or Not?
February 18th 2011 Lynn Swearingen

I received a tip this morning with a curious request “Can you make an anti-NIB of Utah’s HB 365″. I tried, I really did. The Title of this Bill looked very promising:

Federal Regulation of Local Agricultural Products

As one can see from the PDF there is no text, although apparently an Attorney (Peter Asplund) was paid to draft HB 365.

1. FEDERAL REGULATION OF LOCAL AGRICULTURAL
2. PRODUCTS
3. 2011 GENERAL SESSION
4. STATE OF UTAH
5. Chief Sponsor: Bill Wright
6. Senate Sponsor: ____________

Not content with a title only, I did a bit of looking about and discovered this little snippet from Lexology:

Utah State Representative Bill Wright (R-Holden) has reportedly introduced legislation (H.B. 365) that would exempt from federal regulation all foods grown and consumed within the state’s borders.

Finally I discovered a bit more about HB 365 and yes, I believe this should be an anti-NIB – something supported by Utah citizens.

Proposal would exempt Utah food from federal regulation

But now he fears farming is in jeopardy, threatened by the heavy hand of federal regulations that could drive farmers out of business and jeopardize Utah’s food supply.

So in the latest bid to flex the state’s muscle, Wright is proposing legislation that would exempt food grown and consumed entirely within the state from any federal regulation.

“Within the state, it’s state’s rights. We already have regulations over those items,” Wright said in an interview. “We function well now. We don’t think they have a right or authority to regulate those items that are not interstate commerce, as long as they’re grown within the state, packaged in the state and remain in the state.”

The bill is in large part a response to the Food Safety Act, which Congress passed late last year and, Wright said, could greatly expand the Food and Drug Administration’s powers and subject all sorts of agriculture — from farmers markets to a person’s garden — to new, onerous federal rules.

and how refreshing is this?

Wright says that, in his experience, federal regulators are more heavy-handed and intent on issuing fines, compared to state regulators who are more willing to work with farmers.

“They regulate by intimidation and extortion and threatening everybody,” he said.

Of course he has his detractors at this point. Mr. David Plunkett (Center for Science in the Public Interest) gave his $2 worth (marked up from 2 cents due to the non-inflationary period we live in):

“The premise is just popular politicking. This is somebody who’s playing to people’s fears and misrepresenting the facts and doing it for political purposes,” said Plunkett, whose group recently gave Utah a “D” grade for its ability to detect food-borne disease outbreaks.

Why is the name Plunkett ringing a bell? S 510 had him hanging out at various blogs and MSM stories making comments such as the following:

The commentor above is confusing the terms “healthy” and “safety.” When consumers make the commendable choice to buy fresh, healthy and local foods they have an expectation that the food will also be “safe” from microbial contamination. Bacteria don’t check to see if the vegetables are growing on a small farm or an industrial farm. Bad practices that can lead to bacterial contamination don’t just happen on big farms. The fact that it is harder to identify the source of a foodborne illness when it affects a handful of people in one state, doesn’t make local food “safer.”

S. 510 is a good bill that balances the need to protect public health with the desire to encourage healthy eating habits. It will give all farmers (big and small) guidance on safe practices that protect their customers against foodborne disease. Practicing safety is something every farmer should be doing anyway, so it is hard to understand how the bill imposes a burden on small farms as some have claimed. Certainly, the charge that Senators have not listened to small farmers is unfair and uninformed. Many of the Senate sponsors are from rural, small-farm states and have worked for years on issues important to sustainable and organic farming. They have listened and because of concerns voiced by the small-farm community the bill has been amended several times since its introduction. These changes protect small, sustainable and organic farming from unintended consequences without surrendering the public health protection that is the cornerstone and purpose of S. 510. FDA will only have authority to write safety standards for fruits and vegetables that are known to carry a risk of foodborne disease if improperly handled during growing and harvesting. Those standards are to be science-based and the minimum necessary to protect against contamination. FDA has to take the needs and practices of small and organic farming into account when writing farm safety standards. The preference for state oversight to continue as the best way to ensure local farms are practing safety is preserved. On-farm recordkeeping is limited to records that farms will keep anyway as a matter of good business practices. Most importantly, the bill provides a mechanism for States to apply for variances from the standards when practices or conditions in the State make it difficult to meet the FDA issued standard.

Opponents have charged that S. 510 will create a one-size fits all regulation for farm production. If you read the bill, you will see that claim — while it might have held some water when the bill was introduced — is no longer true. The bill will help all farms (big and small, industrial and sustainable) practice safety. In doing so, S. 510 will ensure that when consumers make the wise choice to buy fresh, healthy and local food, they can rest assured it is also “safe” for them to eat.

Wow! The only thing Plunkett didn’t throw in was the cure for cancer, a global warming panacea, and next weeks lotto numbers. Although according to Reason Magazine:

“The typical CSPI report takes one or two plausible concerns, blows them way out of proportion, and throws in several dangers that are trivial, unlikely, or highly speculative, all in an effort to scare people into the one course of action CSPI knows to be right.”
— Jacob Sullum, writing in Reason magazine, June 2003

Ouch. But surely with our “Public Interest” at heart those places that track the actions of groups like CSPI would know if something just wasn’t quite right – wouldn’t they?

MORE:
_______________________________________________________________________

Senate Bill S.510 Food Safety Modernization Act Imminent Would Outlaw Gardening and Saving Seeds

VT Tells Feds to Shove S.510 Will Other States Follow?

Wyoming, Maine Introduce Food Freedom Legislation to Combat S.510
_______________________________________________________________________

CSPI complains about so many foods and beverages that it’s hard to think of anything that has escaped their wrath. Even so, the group has a special animus towards a few common foods. CSPI co-founder Michael Jacobson considers caffeine such a blight on civilization that he complains about people socializing over coffee. Unsurprisingly, he suggests that Americans patronize a “carrot juice house” instead. CSPI’s in-house food policies are so strict that Jacobson once reportedly intended to get rid of the office coffee machine—until one-third of his 60 employees threatened to quit.

CSPI also has a bias against meat and dairy. Jacobson, himself a vegetarian, wrote in an issue of CSPI’s Nutrition Action Healthletter that proper nutrition “means eating a more plant-based diet … It means getting your fats from plants (vegetable oils and nuts) and fish, not animals (meats, milk cheese, and ice cream).” In keeping with his personal vegetarianism, Jacobson quietly sits on the advisory board of the “Great American Meatout,” an annual event operated by the animal rights zealots at the Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM). Alcohol, even when consumed in moderation, is perhaps CSPI’s most hated product. The group’s Healthletter has asserted that “the last thing the world needs is more drinkers, even moderate ones.” CSPI wants hefty increases in beer taxes, increased restrictions on adult-beverage marketing, and even poster-sized warning labels placed in restaurants. George Hacker, who leads CSPI’s anti-alcohol effort, has accused winemakers of “hawking America’s costliest and most devastating drug.”

Here are a few more professional opinions:

Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, argues that CSPI’s “obsession” with a low-fat diet reflects “a paternalistic idea that the public is not smart enough to distinguish between types of fat.” Food critic Robert Shoffner puts it more directly when he describes CSPI’s approach this way: “People are children and have to be protected by Big Brother or Big Nanny from the awful free-market predators … That’s what drives these people—a desire for control of other people’s lives.”

I’d have to agree that this is an anti-NIBs worthy of Utah Citizens involvement. If you think so, take up a glass of coffee wine carrot juice and contact Representative Bill Wright. You might thank him for introducing something that will confirm Utah’s State Sovereignty. Ask him to release the text of the Bill so we can all enjoy this joyous moment! After the text is released, comment here so we may all review – Citizens of Utah can then decide if this is a NIB (or anti-NIB) worth contacting their legislators for a Yea or Nay vote.

After all – as public citizens we actually “read the bills” without needing some resolution to encourage it or some crazy 72 hour proposal to do so.

SOURCE: The PPJ Gazette

Rising food prices have been cited among the driving forces behind recent popular revolts in north Africa, including the uprising in Egypt and the toppling of Tunisia’s long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

And in its latest survey, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said its index which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples averaged 231 points in January — the highest level since records began in 1990.

“The new figures clearly show that the upward pressure on world food prices is not abating. These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come,” FAO economist and grains expert Abdolreza Abbassian said in a statement.

The Index rose by 3.4 percent from December — with big increases in particular for dairy, cereal and oil prices. The rises were most significant in China, India, Indonesia and Russia, data from FAO’s monthly report showed.

“There are a lot of factors that could spark turmoil in countries and food is one of them,” Abbassian said, pointing out however that several countries have become better at managing prices after a series of riots in 2007 and 2008.

“They have learnt from previous episodes,” he said, adding however: “These are obviously not very easy times. There is now no hope that prices will return to anything we can consider normal, at least until the summer.”

Read Full Article

Stephanie Van Parys, director of the Oakhurst Community Garden, likes the Georgia Right to Grow bill.

On the right: a Republican legislator who thinks people should have the right to use their land, by God, any way they want. On the left: the bandana-and-sandals set who embrace urban gardening as green and globally correct.

In the middle: chickens, goats, corn, beans, tomatoes and just about anything else that thrives in Georgia’s red dirt. Rep. Bobby Franklin (R-Marietta) and his newfound political cronies agree, to their mutual surprise, that those plants and animals should be able to grow wherever landowners want.

But local authorities don’t always see things the way locavores do, sometimes frowning on too many crops or certain livestock being raised in city neighborhoods. Thus a state lawmaker like Franklin gets involved, and suddenly finds himself in an alliance he didn’t anticipate.

“I’ll take allies where I can find them,” said Franklin, who admits he cannot grow a weed.

One is Decatur resident Stephanie Van Parys, executive director of the Oakhurst Community Garden. Van Parys, who can grow just about anything (organically, of course) is bemused to find herself in the same patch, legislatively speaking, as a lawmaker who once defended the right of Segway riders to carry firearms. When Franklin filed the Georgia Right to Grow bill, Van Parys supported it.

“I’d really like to get into his head and know what his reasoning was,” she said.

Going green, sort of

Franklin, 52, is happy to explain.

“I’m a city boy, through and through,” said Franklin, a small-business consultant raised outside Birmingham. “Make that a suburban boy, I guess.”

Yet he knew about rural Alabama, and how it had sustained people through the Great Depression. Back then, people didn’t have money, but they had corn and beans growing in the fields. They had chickens scratching in the backyard. They had food.

“These days, we think food comes in Styrofoam trays,” said Franklin.

Chickens at the Oakhurst Community Garden.

In most places, homeowners can grow food to eat, except where local ordinances prohibit the practice. Franklin’s bill, if it became law, would have superseded those ordinances, allowing homeowners to grow their own — chickpeas as well as chickens.

He dreamed up his bill last year. Why not have a law ensuring that all Georgians could grow their own food, much as Depression-era Americans sustained themselves through those lean years with home-grown edibles? House Bill 842 began germinating in his mind.

Franklin teetered into territory where the blue state-red state dispute is secondary to the state of how green a garden grows. From one coast to the other, more people than ever are embracing the backyard garden and the coop where chickens produce breakfast on a regular basis.

In the metro area, Decatur is probably the friendliest municipality to backyard gardens and animals; neighborhoods in Atlanta also are home to creatures that quack and crow.

Backyard gardens are getting more popular, said Gil Landry, director of the UGA Center for Urban Agriculture. Founded 10 years ago, the center advises growers on everything from ornamental shrubbery to edible produce. It does not keep figures on the number of urban growers in Georgia, but Landry says inquiries from people wanting to grow their own food have increased.

Most people ask about plants, he said. And chickens? “That’s a sensitive issue in some urban areas,” he said.

‘Lightbulb’ moment

This coming Saturday, backyard chicken raising across metro Atlanta will be celebrated during the 2010 Urban Coop Tour, sponsored by the Oakhurst Community Garden Project, Georgia Organics and the Atlanta Backyard Poultry Meetup Group. But home-grown fowl have not been welcomed everywhere.

Dunwoody officials recently banned chickens. Roswell council members revised an ordinance to limit the number of birds a resident can have. A Johns Creek resident settled a lawsuit the city brought against her for having chickens too close to a neighbor’s property.

So what? For Franklin, the decision to file a home farming bill was a “lightbulb-coming-on moment.”

Yet others did not see the light, and criticized the bill as big government overreaching itself. The Georgia Municipal Association’s response was typical.

“It [opposition] has nothing to do with farm animals or gardens,” said Amy Henderson, a spokeswoman for the association, whose membership includes more than 500 Georgia cities and towns. “It has to do with communities being told what to do by the state.”

Most municipalities, she noted, have no problem with home gardens; it’s only when residents want to raise chickens or other creatures that some city councils say no.

Others, such as Dunwoody blogger and gardener Pattie Baker, embraced Franklin’s bill. A gardener growing some of her own food since just after 9/11, she watched, dismayed, as her City Council last month shot down a proposal to allow chickens to be raised in backyards. Mayor Ken Wright cast the tie-breaking vote, 4-3.

OK, said Baker, the idea didn’t hatch — not this time, anyway. She thinks the City Council, as well as state lawmakers, may come around. “I guess the fact that it was discussed at all is a big step forward,” she said.

Sandals vs. wing tips

This would seem to be an issue that begs for stereotyping: the in-town crowd, with their Volvo wagons and organic cotton tees, vs. the suburbanites, with their Chevy Suburbans and polo shirts. One group is all for the right to grow food on their property; the other worries more about property values.

Those stereotypes, insist the grow-your-own adherents, aren’t fair.

“This is not an East Coast-West Coast sort of thing, with the rest of the country in the middle,” said Lisa Munniksma, managing editor of Urban Farm magazine. Launched last year, the Lexington, Ky., quarterly celebrates sustainable city living. “This is happening all over the country.”

Some people, said Munniksma, think landowners ought to be allowed to grow whatever they want on their own land, government prohibitions be damned. “That’s pretty conservative,” she said.

Conservative and smart, says Franklin. Forbidding Georgians from using their land to feed themselves, he said, is “Soviet-style, centralized planning.”

An unlikely champion

The afternoon light, captured in half-full wine goblets, glowed like church windows. A handful of friends toasted day’s end while their kids played nearby. Behind them, a guy yanked weeds from a plant bed. A little farther away, three women readied eggplant seedlings for replanting. A Volvo wagon, of course, was parked at the curb.

Time seemed to slow at the Oakhurst Community Garden, a co-op where people have been growing good stuff since 1997.

A bunch of closet socialists, anti-gun and pro-goat? Garden member Kathy Allen laughed. “Well,” she said, “no one’s said that to my face.”

Some garden members applauded when word got around about Franklin’s bill. Then they learned more about their champion, a man who thinks Ronald Reagan set the standard for the American presidency. Yet Franklin, they discovered, wasn’t above turning to another public figure — a woman, and a Democrat, at that — to plug his legislation.

“If Michelle Obama can grow food at the White House, then no Georgia family should be denied the right to grow their own food, “ Franklin said last month, after the bill cleared the House Agriculture Committee. He and others then watched it wither and die in the House Rules Committee.

The grow-your-own crowd sighed and turned back to their seed catalogs. Franklin started planning, too.

To him, the logic behind the bill is as simple as a tomato sandwich. He had something good, served it with hardly any adornment and hoped his peers would gobble it up. They did not.

So Franklin will bide his time. Another legislative season, he knows, will come. Some ideas, like tomatoes, chicken and goats, just need time to mature.

[Via AJC.com]

UNIONDALE, N.Y. (CBS 2) — He was arrested for protecting his property and family.

But it’s how the Long Island man did it that police say crossed the line.

He got an AK-47 assault rifle, pulled the trigger and he ended up in jail, reports CBS 2’s Pablo Guzman.

George Grier said he had to use his rifle on Sunday night to stop what he thought was going to be an invasion of his Uniondale home by a gang he thought might have been the vicious “MS-13.” He said the whole deal happened as he was about to drive his cousin home.

“I went around and went into the house, ran upstairs and told my wife to call the police. I get the gun and I go outside and I come into the doorway and now, by this time, they are in the driveway, back here near the house. I tell them, you know, ‘Can you please leave?’ Grier said.

Grier said the five men dared him to use the gun; and that their shouts brought another larger group of gang members in front of his house.

“He starts threatening my family, my life. ‘Oh you’re dead. I’m gonna kill your family and your babies. You’re dead.’ So when he says that, 20 others guys come rushing around the corner. And so I fired four warning shots into the grass,” Grier said.

Grier was later arrested. John Lewis is Grier’s attorney.

“What he’s initially charged with – A D felony reckless endangerment — requires a depraved indifference to human life, creating a risk that someone’s going to die. Shooting into a lawn doesn’t create a risk of anybody dying,” Lewis said.

Grier said he knew Nassau County Police employ the hi-tech “ShotSpotter” technology in his area and that the shooting would bring police in minutes. Cops told Guzman he was very cooperative.

Grier also said he was afraid the gang outside his house was the dreaded MS-13. And Nassau County Police Lt. Andrew Mulraine, head of the gang unit, said MS-13 has 2,000 members in the county.

“They’re probably the most organized. They almost have a military hierarchy within the gang, so they are the most organized gang we encounter on a daily basis,” Mulraine said.

You may think a person has the right to defend their home. But the law says you can only use physical force to deter physical force. Grier said he never saw anyone pull out a gun, so a court would have to decide on firing the gun.

Police determined Grier had the gun legally. He has no criminal record. And so he was not charged for the weapon.

That ShotSpotter technology pinpoints where a gun has been fired within 35 feet. Police said it also detected two other shootings in nearby Roosevelt that night.

[Via CBS]

Shannon Hayes in the kitchen with her daughter, Saoirse. Photo by Bob Hooper

by Shannon Hayes
posted Feb 01, 2010

Long before we could pronounce Betty Friedan’s last name, Americans from my generation felt her impact. Many of us born in the mid-1970s learned from our parents and our teachers that women no longer needed to stay home, that there were professional opportunities awaiting us. In my own school experience, homemaking, like farming, gained a reputation as a vocation for the scholastically impaired. Those of us with academic promise learned that we could do whatever we put our minds to, whether it was conquering the world or saving the world. I was personally interested in saving the world. That path eventually led me to conclude that homemaking would play a major role toward achieving that goal.

My own farming background led me to pursue advanced degrees in the field of sustainable agriculture, with a powerful interest in the local food movement. By the time my Ph.D. was conferred, I was married, and I was in a state of confusion. The more I understood about the importance of small farms and the nutritional, ecological, and social value of local food, the more I questioned the value of a 9-to-5 job. If my husband and I both worked and had children, it appeared that our family’s ecological impact would be considerable. We’d require two cars, professional wardrobes, convenience foods to make up for lost time in the kitchen … and we’d have to buy, rather than produce, harvest, and store, our own food.

The economics didn’t work out, either. When we crunched the numbers, our gross incomes from two careers would have been high, but the cost of living was also considerable, especially when daycare was figured into the calculation. Abandoning the job market, we re-joined my parents on our small grassfed livestock farm and became homemakers. For almost ten years now, we’ve been able to eat locally and organically, support local businesses, avoid big box stores, save money, and support a family of four on less than $45,000 per year.

Wondering if my family was a freaky aberration to the conventional American culture, I decided to post a notice on my webpage, looking to connect with other ecologically minded homemakers. My fingers trembled on the keyboard as I typed the notice. What, exactly, would be the repercussions for taking a pro-homemaker stand and seeking out others? Was encouraging a Radical Homemaking movement going to unravel all the social advancements that have been made in the last 40-plus years? Women, after all, have been the homemakers since the beginning of time. Or so I thought.

The Origins of Homemaking: A Vocation for Both Sexes

Housewives and husbands were free people, who owned their own homes and lived off their land.

Upon further investigation, I learned that the household did not become the “woman’s sphere” until the Industrial Revolution. A search for the origin of the word housewife traces it back to the thirteenth century, as the feudal period was coming to an end in Europe and the first signs of a middle class were popping up. Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan explains that housewives were wedded to husbands, whose name came from hus, an old spelling of house, and bonded. Husbands were bonded to houses, rather than to lords. Housewives and husbands were free people, who owned their own homes and lived off their land. While there was a division of labor among the sexes in these early households, there was also an equal distribution of domestic work. Once the Industrial Revolution happened, however, things changed. Men left the household to work for wages, which were then used to purchase goods and services that they were no longer home to provide. Indeed, the men were the first to lose their domestic skills as successive generations forgot how to butcher the family hog, how to sew leather, how to chop firewood.

As the Industrial Revolution forged on and crossed the ocean to America, men and women eventually stopped working together to provide for their household sustenance. They developed their separate spheres—man in the factory, woman in the home. The more a man worked outside the home, the more the household would have to buy in order to have needs met. Soon the factories were able to fabricate products to supplant the housewives’ duties as well. The housewife’s primary function ultimately became chauffeur and consumer. The household was no longer a unit of production. It was a unit of consumption.

Housewife’s Syndrome

The effect on the American housewife was devastating. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, documenting for the first time “the problem that has no name,” Housewife’s Syndrome, where American girls grew up fantasizing about finding their husbands, buying their dream homes and appliances, popping out babies, and living happily ever after. In truth, pointed out Friedan, happily-ever-after never came. Countless women suffered from depression and nervous breakdowns as they faced the endless meaningless tasks of shopping and driving children hither and yon. They never had opportunities to fulfill their highest potential, to challenge themselves, to feel as though they were truly contributing to society beyond wielding the credit card to keep the consumer culture humming. Friedan’s book sent women to work in droves. And corporate America seized upon a golden opportunity to secure a cheaper workforce and offer countless products to use up their paychecks.

Before long, the second family income was no longer an option. In the minds of many, it was a necessity. Homemaking, like eating organic foods, seemed a luxury to be enjoyed only by those wives whose husbands garnered substantial earnings, enabling them to drive their children to school rather than put them on a bus, enroll them in endless enrichment activities, oversee their educational careers, and prepare them for entry into elite colleges in order to win a leg-up in a competitive workforce. At the other extreme, homemaking was seen as the realm of the ultra-religious, where women accepted the role of Biblical “Help Meets” to their husbands. They cooked, cleaned, toiled, served and remained silent and powerless. My husband and I fell into neither category, and I suspected there were more like us.

Meet the Radical Homemakers

Backyard chickens in downtown L.A.? Shannon Hayes found that “radical homemaking” is transcending urban-rural divides. Photo by Shannon Hayes

I was right. I received hundreds of letters from rural, suburban, and city folks alike. Some ascribed to specific religious faiths, others did not. As long as the home showed

no signs of domination or oppression, I was interested in learning more about them. I selected twenty households from my pile, plotted them on a map across the United States, and set about visiting each of them to see what homemaking could look like when men and women shared both power and responsibility. Curious to see if Radical Homemaking was a venture suited to more than just women in married couples, I visited with single parents, stay-at-home dads, widows, and divorcées. I spent time in families with and without children.

A glance into America’s past suggests that homemaking could play a big part in addressing the ecological, economic and social crises of our present time. Homemakers have played a powerful role during several critical periods in our nation’s history. By making use of locally available resources, they made the boycotts leading up to the American Revolution possible. They played a critical role in the foundational civic education required to launch a young democratic nation. They were driving forces behind both the abolition and suffrage movements.

Homemakers today could have a similar influence. The Radical Homemakers I interviewed had chosen to make family, community, social justice, and the health of the planet the governing principles of their lives. They rejected any form of labor or the expenditure of any resource that did not honor these tenets. For about 5,000 years, our culture has been hostage to a form of organization by domination that fails to honor our living systems, under which “he who holds the gold makes the rules.” By contrast, the Radical Homemakers are using life skills and relationships as replacements for gold, on the premise that he or she who doesn’t need the gold can change the rules. The greater one’s domestic skills, be they to plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, provide one’s own entertainment, cook and preserve a local harvest, or care for children and loved ones, the less dependent one is on the gold.

Preserving food at home lets “radical homemakers” eat local, organic food year-round—even on limited budgets.

Photo by Shannon Hayes

By virtue of these skills, the Radical Homemakers I interviewed were building a great bridge from our existing extractive economy—where corporate wealth has been regarded as the foundation of economic health, where mining our Earth’s resources and exploiting our international neighbors have been acceptable costs of doing business—to a life serving economy, where the goal is, in the words of David Korten, to generate a living for all, rather than a killing for a few; where our resources are sustained, our waters are kept clean, our air pure, and families and can lead meaningful lives. In situations where one person was still required to work out of the home in the conventional extractive economy, homemakers were able to redirect the family’s financial, social and temporal resources toward building the life-serving economy. In most cases, however, the homemakers’ skills were so considerable that, while members of the household might hold jobs (more often than not they ran their own businesses), the financial needs of the family were so small that no one in the family was forced to accept any employment that did not honor the four tenets of family, community, social justice and ecological sustainability.

While all the families had some form of income that entered their lives, they were not a privileged set by any means. Most of the families I interviewed were living with a sense of abundance at about 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s a little over $40,000 for a family of four, about 37 percent below the national median family income, and 45 percent below the median income for married couple families. Some lived on considerably less, few had appreciably more. Not surprisingly, those with the lowest incomes had mastered the most domestic skills and had developed the most innovative approaches to living.

Rethinking the Impossible

The Radical Homemakers were skilled at the mental exercise of rethinking the “givens” of our society and coming to the following conclusions: nobody (who matters) cares what (or if) you drive; housing does not have to cost more than a single moderate income can afford (and can even cost less); it is okay to accept help from family and friends, to let go of the perceived ideal of independence and strive instead for interdependence; health can be achieved without making monthly payments to an insurance company; child care is not a fixed cost; education can be acquired for free; and retirement is possible, regardless of income.

Each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would ripple out for everyone.

As for domestic skills, the range of talents held by these households was as varied as the day is long. Many kept gardens, but not all. Some gardened on city rooftops, some on country acres, some in suburban yards. Some were wizards at car and appliance repairs. Others could sew. Some could build and fix houses; some kept livestock. Others crafted furniture, played music, or wrote. All could cook. (Really well, as my waistline will attest.) None of them could do everything. No one was completely self-sufficient, an independent island separate from the rest of the world. Thus the universal skills that they all possessed were far more complex than simply knowing how to can green beans or build a root cellar. In order to make it as homemakers, these people had to be wizards at nurturing relationships and working with family and community. They needed an intimate understanding of the life-serving economy, where a paycheck is not always exchanged for all services rendered. They needed to be their own teachers—to pursue their educations throughout life, forever learning new ways to do more, create more, give more.

In addition, the happiest among them were successful at setting realistic expectations for themselves. They did not live in impeccably clean houses on manicured estates. They saw their homes as living systems and accepted the flux, flow, dirt, and chaos that are a natural part of that. They were masters at redefining pleasure not as something that should be bought in the consumer marketplace, but as something that could be created, no matter how much or how little money they had in their pockets. And above all, they were fearless. They did not let themselves be bullied by the conventional ideals regarding money, status, or material possessions. These families did not see their homes as a refuge from the world. Rather, each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would ripple out for everyone.

Home is where the great change will begin. It is not where it ends. Once we feel sufficiently proficient with our domestic skills, few of us will be content to simply practice them to the end of our days. Many of us will strive for more, to bring more beauty to the world, to bring about greater social change, to make life better for our neighbors, to contribute our creative powers to the building of a new, brighter, more sustainable, and happier future. That is precisely the great work we should all be tackling. If we start by focusing our energies on our domestic lives, we will do more than reduce our ecological impact and help create a living for all. We will craft a safe, nurturing place from which this great creative work can happen.

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Shannon Hayes wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Shannon is the author of Radical Homemakers, The Farmer and the Grill, and The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in upstate New York and hosts two websites, grassfedcooking.com and radicalhomemakers.com. Copies of her books are available through those websites.

Portions of this story are excerpted from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture, Left to Write Press, 2010.

When the recent “snowpocalypse” blizzard swept through central Virginia, Mark Lilly was ready to grab the opportunity. While others were huddled inside with movies and mugs of cocoa, Lilly ventured out into the storm to provide the people of Richmond what he knew they’d want: fresh food straight from the farm.

“Many trucks that bring food to grocery stores have canceled deliveries,” he posted on his Facebook page for the benefit of his 1,500 fans. “The bus is on the road! … we still have food! and snow tires! … I will be delivering today, get all your neighbors together and call me or text me directions.”

His phone started ringing right away, and he pointed his old school bus packed with a cornucopia of fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy and baked goods in the direction of the first caller. The one-man Farm to Family company had just launched into one of the best days in its six-month history.

“It was one of the busiest days I’ve had,” Lilly says. “They would get the whole neighborhood involved. I’d go and everyone would come.”

Country Store on a School Bus

The inside of the Farm to Family bus is designed like an old-fashioned country store, with reclaimed barn wood and burlap creating a down-home ambiance, and the shelves lined with everything from potatoes to peach cider.

“Hydroponic lettuce, tomatoes, eggs, bacon, sausage, barbeque, potatoes, apples,” Lilly lists, ticking off a few things he’d be carrying on a typical day in February.

Winter, he says, “is great. I’ve got butternut squash, chestnuts, collard greens, kale, onions, sweet potatoes, apples, milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, spaghetti squash. I have people who bake pies and breads and cookies for me. I’ve got maple syrup, apple butter, apple cider, peach cider….”

Shoppers, who find out his location or request a visit via Facebook and Twitter, are generally amazed when they first climb aboard. “The whole concept of being able to shop and get local fresh produce right in their neighborhood right off a school bus just really blows them away,” Lilly tells Tonic. “They say ‘Wow!’ Then they say, ‘This is really cool’ or, ‘This is a great concept.’”

Children enjoy playing with the rabbits and chickens he brings, while adults select from some of the freshest, healthiest food around. Lilly has a relationship with Polyface Farm, Joel Salatin’s establishment made famous by Michael Pollan’s popular book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the movie Food, Inc.

Lilly also builds relationships with other area farmers and sells produce from his parents’ large organic garden. 
He believes that what he sells on the bus is all one needs to live a healthy life. To prove it, he and his wife plan to spend an entire year eating straight from the bus, a project that will serve as fodder for an eventual book.

More Than Just a Food Store

Lilly started Farm to Family when he lost his job as the manager of a restaurant last year. By the time of his lay-off, he had already purchased the old bus — inspired by extensive research on the dire condition of America’s food system, done as part of a Masters program in emergency management and disaster science.

The food system, he said, “is going to fail. It’s unsustainable. It’s horrible. It’s killing people.” He pointed out that the farming industry uses more petroleum than any other entity besides the automobile industry. There’s also only so much water and land to go around, all of which we are using up rapidly to produce far more low-quality, processed food than we can eat. “If we rely on finite resources to produce vast quantities of food, then that’s a system headed for failure,” he said.

The bus enables shoppers to support a locally oriented food system, providing business to small, organic farmers who care properly for the land and grow healthy, high-quality food for a limited customer base, unlike the ever-expanding agricultural empires of the industrial system.

So while the bus venture is a business like any other, meant to profit its owner, it is also a method of changing a broken system for the better.

Part of that effort is education. Invited to bring his bus to local schools to get the students interested in what he’s doing and why, he finds them woefully uneducated about fresh food. “A lot of the little kids are like, ‘Is this real food?’” he says. “I say, ‘Yes,’ and they pass it around, and they’re like, ‘Eewww, it’s got dirt on it! Eewww!’”

He not only educates schoolchildren, but also chats with shoppers on the bus about the health benefits of what he sells, and gives advice on its preparation. He has food-related books and movies available, and hands out free seed packets to visitors’ children to help them start their own gardens.

Hungry for Options

It is clear to Lilly that people are hungry for options other than the centralized, industrial food system that supplies them with processed junk and pesticide-laced vegetables bred for durability instead of flavor. There is so much interest in what he’s doing that he’s planning to start a second bus and hire employees to run it.

“I have people calling me from all over the state who want me to come to their city or town or location, but quite frankly I could have ten other buses in cities that I’m working now and still probably not cover everybody that wants it,” he says.

When asked whether he feels this model could represent a serious new possibility for food distribution in our country, Lilly responds with a resounding “absolutely.”

The proof, he said, “is in the pudding. I’ve already gotten hundreds of messages from people all over the country and the world. There’s no reason why this bus couldn’t work in any town or city. It’s wanted by everybody.” Office complexes, hospitals, universities, health clubs and all manner of other institutions and groups regularly call Lilly requesting a visit.

A Humble Kind of Savior

The model of a roving vegetable salesman is, of course, nothing new. “I’m not recreating the wheel,” Lilly said. “I’m just packaging an old system really nice. People have been delivering produce for thousands of years.”

It was the industrial revolution and the mechanized, centralized food system it spawned, he says, that disrupted that effective system of person-to-person delivery.

The disruption of simple, local forms of distribution makes for a population anxiously dependent on corporate food companies that can’t be trusted to have customers’ best interests in mind. Lilly’s tricked-out bus represents an unusual lifeline in this predicament, and Lilly a humble kind of savior.

Heck, his work is even affecting people’s dreams: “I’ve had two random people come up to me and tell me they had dreams that there was no food,” Lilly says. “All the supermarkets were out of food and the only place they could get food was on a school bus.”

Imagine that.

Photos courtesy of Farm to Family

[Via Tonic.com]

It’s true. At 631 Cypress Avenue, there is not one thing that cannot be eaten. Nothing. Kale, chives, pepper, pineapple, guava, Swiss chard, even edible flowers along the side of the house, and into the back yard.

It is Jules Dervaes’ fifth of an acre. His little family farm, in the midst of American suburbia, his way of breaking free without really going anywhere.

“We eat rich, I’m telling you,” said Dervaes. “And the way we live, it just seems like something you would dream of.”

The “we” he speaks of are his kids, who grew up on the farm. Three out of four of them have stayed on into their 20′s and 30′s, and they don’t have other jobs either because what they don’t eat, they sell.

Neighbors: ‘What’s Up With Your Dad?’

Not that it was easy for them when they were little, and their dad, to save money, stopped watering the front lawn and started preparing to plant crops there.

“We had a rough go in the neighborhood,” said Dervaes, chuckling. “My children had issues with other children wanting to know, what’s up with your dad?”

He is able to laugh now partly because his property became quite beautiful, but also perhaps because of the independence it gives him.

“The world has become more dependent on supermarkets, on corporations, on the gasoline station, on government, and we’re just trying to do it ourselves,” said Dervaes. “We’re trying to make ends meet — we’re trying to put food on our table just like pioneers did in the old-fashioned west not so long ago.”

Dervaes isn’t an anarchist. And he doesn’t hate money. What he hates is working 9 to 5 for someone else and being a slave to paying bills.

“Growing your own food is recession-proof,” said Dervaes. “You don’t have to worry about the prices. When you depend on other people, you become powerless. You get a pink slip. Now what do you do? You know, where are you going to get a job? You get high gas prices and you can’t afford it, what do you do now? So we figured this was the answer, just to see how much we could do ourselves.”

It’s something he aspired to most of his life, as a beekeeper in New Zealand, a small-scale farmer in Florida, and always something of a free spirit seeking independence.

Second-hand Clothes, ‘Inherited’ Furniture

But food is only one small part of it. Practically anything that the typical Americans spends money on, Dervaes and his kids figure out a way to either, make borrow, or buy cheaply.

For their clothes, “we go to the stores like the thrift stores that we can,” said Dervaes. “We like second-hand goods. They’re well-made and we can make good use of them.”

Most of the furniture in the house was inherited, so to speak. Some was lifted from various curbsides before the garbage truck got there.

Then there’s the question of heat and light. For that, the Dervaes’ have solar panels on the roof and outdoor showers where the water’s warmed by direct sunlight.

“The water goes into irrigating the fig tree and the banana and all the flowers around here,” said Dervaes. “It doesn’t ever go into the sewer.” And in the kitchen, which has no electrical appliances except for the refrigerator, there’s even a hand-cranked blender

And the real money-saver lately is their car. It’s a diesel engine, but they never buy fuel. Instead, his son, Justin, makes it out of waste vegetable oil he collects from local restaurants. It costs them a dollar a gallon.

From Curious Neighbors to Eager Patrons

And at a certain point, the car, the crops, and their persistence made the family, rather than strange, into an interesting part of the community. Neighbors began dropping by to buy eggs and vegetables. Schoolchildren visit on field trips. They even have an Internet business selling earth-friendly farm tools and products. The family of four lives on $30,000 a year.

“We eat rich, I’m telling you,” he said. “And the way we live — it just seems like something you would dream of.”

Late one afternoon, Justin gassed up the car with his home-brew fuel, and the Dervaes family made the rounds of restaurants they supply with fresh vegetables. One such eatery is Elements, a new restaurant with a superb chef named Onil Chibas, who loves their produce and names one of his salads after the family.

Branding Their Lifestyle

The Dervaes’ lifestyle at this point depends on there being enough people who will pay 13 dollars for a salad. Otherwise, they don’t have that market for their vegetables. They also depend on nature being nice to them. They need rain.

Then there are the social consequences of their profound frugality. How or where are these three young adults who are at home all day every day going to get to meet other people?

“We’re looking for farmers,” said Anias Dervaes. “I’m looking for a farmer, my sister is looking for another farmer. But farmers are hard to find in LA.”

And so her dad who likes solutions has been organizing potluck dinners for like-minded folks, in part to expand the family’s social horizons and of course the entertainment doesn’t cost a dime, but more important, it’s homemade, homegrown, practically a part of the garden.

[Via ABCNews.com]

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid’s target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.

“I still can’t believe they took our yogurt,” said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. “There’s a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they’re raiding us because we’re selling raw dairy products?”

Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities — the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths.

On one side are government regulators, who say they are enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing field for producers. On the other side are ” healthy food” consumers — a faction of foodies who challenge government science and seek food in its most pure form.

They want almonds cracked fresh from the shell, not those run through a federally mandated pasteurization process that uses either heat or a chemical to kill off salmonella and other possible contaminants. They hunger for meat slaughtered on the farm. And they’re willing to pay a premium — $6, $8 or more — for a gallon of milk straight from the cow.

So despite research outlining the dangers of consuming raw milk and other unprocessed foods, they’re finding ways to circumnavigate federal, state and local laws that seek to control what they can serve at the dinner table. Such defiance, they said, comes from growing distrust of a food sector that has become more industrialized and consolidated — and whose products have been at the root of some of the country’s deadliest food contamination cases.

“This is about control and profit, not our health,” said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, co-founder of Rawesome Foods. “How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?”

Scientists and regulators point to epidemiological evidence linking disease outbreaks to raw milk: The milk can transmit bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, campylobacter and listeria, which can result in diarrhea, kidney failure or death.

“This is not about restricting the public’s rights,” said Nicole Neeser, program manager for dairy, meat and poultry inspection at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. “This is about making sure people are safe.”

Demand for all manner of raw foods — including honey, nuts and meat — has been growing, spurred by heightened interest in the way food is produced. But raw milk in particular has drawn a lot of regulatory scrutiny, largely because the politically powerful dairy industry has pressed the government to act.

It is legal for licensed dairies to sell raw milk at retail outlets in California and 10 other states, according to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty states allow people to buy unpasteurized milk directly from farms, or take part in a “cow sharing” program (in which a person buys part ownership of an animal and gets some of its milk).

But in the case of Rawesome, regulators allege that the group broke the law by failing to have the proper permits to sell food to the public. While the raid was happening at Rawesome, another went down at one of its suppliers, Healthy Family Farms in Ventura County. California agriculture officials said farm owner Sharon Palmer’s processing plant had not met standards to obtain a license. Palmer could not be reached for comment.

Rawesome’s fans, though, shrugged off such concerns.

“I always had problems with my stomach and digestion with normal milk,” said Darin Nellis, 41, who runs a nonprofit production company in Culver City and has been a member of Rawesome for three months. “I like how raw goat milk tastes, and I feel better.”

Such sentiments exasperate officials at the Food and Drug Administration, which bans interstate sales of raw milk and advises that both milk and honey should be pasteurized.

The debate has boiled at the state level for years. Alta Dena Dairy founder Harold J.J. Stueve fought for decades to help keep raw milk sales legal in California. This year, Wisconsin legislators approved a bill aimed largely at allowing the state’s struggling small farmers to sell more raw milk products. But Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed that bill under pressure from large producers. In neighboring Minnesota, whose official state drink is milk, authorities recently raided a private club similar to Rawesome in south Minneapolis.

Such battles have had a chilling effect on some retailers. Whole Foods Market used to carry raw milk and raw milk products in California and three other states. But in March, the chain pulled all but a few cheeses off its shelves. Part of the reason, it said in a statement, was “the realities of the very high additional costs for liability insurance … because of the potential risks from selling unpasteurized milk and milk products.”

Rawesome was born of consumer frustration. In 1998, James Stewart — a vegetarian who drank raw milk — couldn’t find the stuff in Southern California grocery stores. So he started making road trips to dairies in northern California and to Whole Foods in San Jose, which at the time carried raw milk. Word spread. Family and friends wanted it too.

So Stewart and Vonderplanitz created a private food club where, for a $25 annual fee, members “lease” the land and livestock directly from a farmer. Then, members pay an additional service fee attached to each grocery item, which they say covers the cost of transporting each food item from the farm to Venice.

The pair reasoned that they didn’t need to obtain a license from state or local agencies because they weren’t technically retailers. In 2004, Rawesome opened on Rose Avenue in Venice. “We’re just a place where people come to pick up the products they already own,” Vonderplanitz said.

The L.A. County Public Health Department didn’t see it that way. Vonderplanitz said that in 2005 the agency told Rawesome staff they needed a food-business license. Vonderplanitz said that he objected in a letter, and that the county never replied or followed up. (County officials declined to comment.)

Five years passed. Rawesome now boasts 1,600 members, who battle for street parking every Wednesday and Saturday when the club is open.

Squeezed between a coffee shop and a vintage guitar store, Rawesome looks from the outside like a forgotten storage unit. A tiny club sign hangs on the 10-foot-tall corrugated fence that hides the windowless storefront.

But inside, the shop is bright and airy, a bohemian farmers market surrounded by burnt-orange walls and a white tarp roof to keep out the rain. Boxes of coconuts and ginger from Hawaii sit nestled next to crates of California squash. Labels identify where each bite of produce was grown: onions from the Viva Tierra farm in Harlingen, Texas, and King’s Crown Organic farm in King Hill, Idaho.

The members — a mix of tattooed young people and middle-aged executives in Italian shoes — chat as they head to the walk-in cooler in the back. It is jam-packed with meat and dairy. Ziploc bags are filled with chicken, beef and pork. Many don’t have an expiration date. The other side is stocked with Amish buttermilk ($7.95 a quart), Amish cream cheese ($12.75 a pound) and whole milk ($8.59 per half-gallon).

Agencies that participated in the raid on Rawesome included the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Investigators confiscated the club’s computer and 17 coolers packed with, among other things, 24 bottles of organic honey, 10 gallons of raw whole milk and two bottles of raw cane syrup. Stewart said the health department slapped a closure notice on the club’s front door that said it was “operating a food facility without a valid public health permit.”

The health department, district attorney’s office and the FDA declined to comment, citing the pending investigation. The state Department of Food and Agriculture, which was the agency of record on the search warrant, said it continues to work with the district attorney’s office.

Co-op members are undeterred. Four days after the raid, Rawesome reopened its doors. The shelves were restocked. They have remained so ever since.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, the line stretched halfway down the block. A stern young man in baggy cargo pants and sunglasses guarded the entrance, checking drivers’ licenses. Lela Buttery, a Rawesome volunteer and professional biologist, handed out legal waivers to sign.

One woman, digging into her green grocery bag for a pen, asked, “You guys got shut down last week?”

“Yes,” Buttery said.

“That’s nuts,” the woman replied. “You’re not going to stop, right?”

Buttery grinned. “Can I see your membership card?”

[Via LATimes.com]

Check out this YouTube video of a news report out of Salt Lake City, Utah, about the issue. It’s illegal in Utah to divert rainwater without a valid water right, and Mark Miller of Mark Miller Toyota, found this out the hard way.

After constructing a large rainwater collection system at his new dealership to use for washing new cars, Miller found out that the project was actually an “unlawful diversion of rainwater.” Even though it makes logical conservation sense to collect rainwater for this type of use since rain is scarce in Utah, it’s still considered a violation of water rights which apparently belong exclusively to Utah’s various government bodies.

“Utah’s the second driest state in the nation. Our laws probably ought to catch up with that,” explained Miller in response to the state’s ridiculous rainwater collection ban.

Salt Lake City officials worked out a compromise with Miller and are now permitting him to use “their” rainwater, but the fact that individuals like Miller don’t actually own the rainwater that falls on their property is a true indicator of what little freedom we actually have here in the U.S. (Access to the rainwater that falls on your own property seems to be a basic right, wouldn’t you agree?)

Outlawing rainwater collection in other states

Utah isn’t the only state with rainwater collection bans, either. Colorado and Washington also have rainwater collection restrictions that limit the free use of rainwater, but these restrictions vary among different areas of the states and legislators have passed some laws to help ease the restrictions.

In Colorado, two new laws were recently passed that exempt certain small-scale rainwater collection systems, like the kind people might install on their homes, from collection restrictions.

Prior to the passage of these laws, Douglas County, Colorado, conducted a study on how rainwater collection affects aquifer and groundwater supplies. The study revealed that letting people collect rainwater on their properties actually reduces demand from water facilities and improves conservation.

Personally, I don’t think a study was even necessary to come to this obvious conclusion. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that using rainwater instead of tap water is a smart and useful way to conserve this valuable resource, especially in areas like the West where drought is a major concern.

Additionally, the study revealed that only about three percent of Douglas County’s precipitation ended up in the streams and rivers that are supposedly being robbed from by rainwater collectors. The other 97 percent either evaporated or seeped into the ground to be used by plants.

This hints at why bureaucrats can’t really use the argument that collecting rainwater prevents that water from getting to where it was intended to go. So little of it actually makes it to the final destination that virtually every household could collect many rain barrels worth of rainwater and it would have practically no effect on the amount that ends up in streams and rivers.

It’s all about control, really

As long as people remain unaware and uninformed about important issues, the government will continue to chip away at the freedoms we enjoy. The only reason these water restrictions are finally starting to change for the better is because people started to notice and they worked to do something to reverse the law.

Even though these laws restricting water collection have been on the books for more than 100 years in some cases, they’re slowly being reversed thanks to efforts by citizens who have decided that enough is enough.

Because if we can’t even freely collect the rain that falls all around us, then what, exactly, can we freely do? The rainwater issue highlights a serious overall problem in America today: diminishing freedom and increased government control.

Today, we’ve basically been reprogrammed to think that we need permission from the government to exercise our inalienable rights, when in fact the government is supposed to derive its power from us. The American Republic was designed so that government would serve the People to protect and uphold freedom and liberty. But increasingly, our own government is restricting people from their rights to engage in commonsense, fundamental actions such as collecting rainwater or buying raw milk from the farmer next door.

Today, we are living under a government that has slowly siphoned off our freedoms, only to occasionally grant us back a few limited ones under the pretense that they’re doing us a benevolent favor.

Fight back against enslavement

As long as people believe their rights stem from the government (and not the other way around), they will always be enslaved. And whatever rights and freedoms we think we still have will be quickly eroded by a system of bureaucratic power that seeks only to expand its control.

Because the same argument that’s now being used to restrict rainwater collection could, of course, be used to declare that you have no right to the air you breathe, either. After all, governments could declare that air to be somebody else’s air, and then they could charge you an “air tax” or an “air royalty” and demand you pay money for every breath that keeps you alive.

Think it couldn’t happen? Just give it time. The government already claims it owns your land and house, effectively. If you really think you own your home, just stop paying property taxes and see how long you still “own” it. Your county or city will seize it and then sell it to pay off your “tax debt.” That proves who really owns it in the first place… and it’s not you!

How about the question of who owns your body? According to the U.S. Patent & Trademark office, U.S. corporations and universities already own 20% of your genetic code. Your own body, they claim, is partially the property of someone else.

So if they own your land, your water and your body, how long before they claim to own your air, your mind and even your soul?

Unless we stand up against this tyranny, it will creep upon us, day after day, until we find ourselves totally enslaved by a world of corporate-government collusion where everything of value is owned by powerful corporations — all enforced at gunpoint by local law enforcement.

[Via NaturalNews.com]

Though Detroit’s landscape seems pretty bleak, the city’s starting to experience a regrowth — literally. Community groups and businesses are reclaiming those 33,000 vacant lots and other areas to plant gardens and start farms. Detroit may not roll out many cars anymore, but the fruits and veggies the city produces keeps the town’s breadbaskets full. The effort puts people to work, generates healthy and ecologically farmed foods, and gives the city a much-needed facelift. As The Guardian recently reported, “Like in no other city in the world, urban farming has taken root in Detroit, not just as a hobby or sideline, but as part of a model for a wholesale revitalization of a major city.”

Take the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which Change.org columnist Jason Mark recently wrote about. The organization operates a two-acre farm in a city park. Another organization, Earthworks Urban Farm, grows food to sell in farmers’ markets and a co-op, and also gives some produce to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and local health clinics. These are just a couple examples of a city that is literally bursting with grassroots, sustainable food groups.

These urban farming ventures provide local food that’s produced in an ecologically sensitive way — a major accomplishment in and of itself. But what’s more, a lot of these groups help further revitalize Detroit by offering historically disenfranchised groups training and jobs, incorporating them as a vital part of the workforce. Urban farms, therefore, don’t just provide food—they help grow employment, profits, morale, and spruce up a city that is, for lack of a better word, ugly.

It’s not just small, community groups taking root in Detroit, either. Michael Score’s Hantz Farms is currently planning to build the world’s largest urban farm in the city. Another large-scale proposal comes from Self-Help Addiction Rehab, Inc. The rehabilitation facility proposed RecoveryPark, a 10-year, $220 million venture that would create organic farms in four impoverished neighborhoods.

Color me seriously impressed with Detroit’s farming efforts. But these innovative concepts don’t need to exist solely in the Motor City bubble. Lots of American cities are experiencing post-industrial decay, like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Memphis. While they may lack quite as much vacant space as Detroit, trust me, it’s there. It may sound strange to hear it, but when it comes to agriculture, American cities would do well to model themselves after Detroit.

Photo credit: bagaball via Flickr

[Via Change.org]