In a crisis, listen to those who are prepared…

The last time I felt the atmosphere of crisis was in the morning of October 31, 1984. I was shopping for antiques in the crowded market, Chandi Chowk when suddenly a ripple of alert seemed to flow through the bazaar. The Indian guide with me told me, “our Prime Minister has been shot!”

I was perplexed about what to do: I was on a buying trip for the small boutique I ran and I had about 2 days’ more work to get done and plane tickets reserved. If I went back to the hotel, I’d lose a whole day. The guide was urging me to get off the street and the atmosphere did seem slightly menacing. Because I had my two year old daughter with me, I decided to err on the side of caution and took a taxi back to the hotel.

It was a nice hotel with a large lobby and several restaurants. The workers in the lobby didn’t have any idea what, if anything would happen as a consequence of the shooting and it wasn’t until several hours later that we learned that Indira Gandhi had died.

By the next morning, we could see pillars of smoke from a view off the roof of the hotel. Motorcyles and rikshaws laden with noisy men armed with sticks and clubs circled the roundabout in front of the hotel. I ventured down to the lobby and asked the employees if they knew what to expect. Right about that time, I could hear the sound of breaking glass: someone had thrown a rock at a window and broken it. I looked at the unguarded door and had a realization: no one was prepared for this, and no one is getting the people here talking to one another so that they can respond appropriately to the crisis.

I vowed that if, in the future, I ever experienced an atmosphere of crisis, that I’d do whatever it takes get people talking to one another with the intention of mitigating any potential threat to everyone’s welfare.

We are now in an atmosphere of crisis.

Just as in New Delhi in 1984, people reacted to the crisis by taking a “wait and see what happens” attitude, similarly people now seem to withdrawing within themselves, hoping that the crisis will pass and not examining what they could be doing to prepare them for any eventuality.

Please be clear, the crisis is not the so-called Corona virus. If whoever is presenting this crisis is being truthful about the lethality of the virus, it would have been best dealt with by having older, vulnerable folks isolate themselves. The fact that the Powers that Be strutted their tejas (prowess) by showing the world that they were so powerful that they could get millions of people to hide in their homes by telling them a Lame Story that they had about a one-in-ten thousand chance of dying if they ventured outside. It worked, even when people were without food, kitty litter and toilet paper. Now They’ve brought the Crisis accompanied by the Lame Story to the West.

The danger is not a disease that kills magnitudes fewer people than automobiles, but rather that the Powers that Be choose the Lame Story to disguise the fact that the economy had to collapse due to the National Deficit and the policy of Quantitive Easing.

No one knows what will happen, but we don’t have to take a “wait and see” attitude, either. No mater what happens, all we really need is food, water and shelter. If we create a reality in which those things are readily available in our immediate environment, there is no loss, regardless of “what happens.”

I urge anyone reading this to think seriously about his/her situation. What will you do when there is no more food in the grocery stores and no gasoline at the gas stations? If you can’t answer that question in a very practical manner, I suggest that you beg advice from someone who is ready to meet this crisis, someone who was following Srila Prabhupada’s instructions regarding the second half of his mission.

New Video Channel!

Billy and I are happy to announce that we have started a video channel called “Simple Living, High Thinking”. Here is a link to an introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_ereLA-eJ4&feature=youtu.be Please subscribe and comment to help us promote our project.

What Really Causes Mental Disturbances and Addictions

When I meet someone who seems to be happy and well adjusted, I’m coming to the realization that if I got to really know that person, I’d realize that he/she is actually a little crazy. Marilyn, a former neighbor, seems to be a well-meaning, hard working nurse, but when she invited me into her house, I realized she was actually a hoarder: I had to walk sideways to make it through the hallway due to all of the boxes piled floor to ceiling, I couldn’t see her dining table for all the plies of clothes and bags of groceries and the kitchen looked more like a multi-family garage sale than a place to prepare food.

I’d asked her if she had a kitten that we could adopt and when she took me to the shed where she kept all of her “rescue” cats, I almost cried: sixty cats in cages and the smell made my eyes burn. That was 12 years ago and we still have Nicky, although he never completely recovered from the rhinotracheitis that he had when we got him and tends to have crusty eyes and an occasional cough.

Marilyn’s personal appearance is neat and clean, she drives a nice car, has a respectable home and is apparently a reliable employee in a responsible job. Yet she is clearly a little loopy. Similarly we found out that Mark, a comrade in our community garden group, is actually mentally abusive to his family and Sarah, a great Mom who is always cheerful and helpful, suffers from depression and is taking Prozac. The scariest thing about this apparently ubiquitous loonyness is that I have to admit that I’m not immune: sometimes I’ll lose my temper over trivial matters and that mental attitude will severely affect my ability to be peaceful and happy. It even seems like my condition is contagious to the other person in our house.

“Farm Surplus” stand opens, catching a bee swarm, Ra Ra’s skin condition, patty mats, Help!

Here are the latest pictures from New Nandagram with more detailed information below:

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1. & 2.  We decided to open a Farm Surplus stand for several reasons.  For one, we really do have more plant starts, dairy products and wood working items than we need.  We also are interested in introducing neighbors and tourists to our project in hopes that others will be interested in participating.  The last two photographs in this slide show are of the brochure we hand out.  We also have Srila Prabhupada’s books available.  Our first visitors to the stand happened to be from Bangladesh and they were able to experience milking a cow, riding a horse and taking prasadam.  We hope to see a lot more of them in the future.

3.  Ra Ra has an itchy, scaly rash, possibly from the very wet weather, exacerbated by his nylon collar (removed).  I’ve treated it with cow pee and we’ll see how it responds.

4.  & 5. Billy alerted me to the presence of a large swarm of honey bees who decided to inhabit an empty topbar hive.  They got right to work.  This is our second swarm caught passively this year.

6. We take a daily japa walk by Riffe Lake (about a half mile away) and the whole area currently has a beautiful aroma from all the clover.

8. Almost every year I have to raise baby starlings who are pushed out of their nests by cowbirds, a parasite.  At first we returned the baby starlings, but soon found that the parasites just pushed them out again.  So now I raise them and release them when they’re grown.  We have one failure, Snarky, who didn’t want to be a wild bird, so she sings to us inside.

9. Clouds lining up like this are increasingly common, yet I haven’t been able to find examples of such clouds in old paintings.  So it might be a fairly new phenomena, perhaps caused by gravity waves or HAARP.

12.  I wrote an article about a gardening method that was accepted by Mother Earth News Magazine.  It is in the current edition.  Basically I lay straw or old hay on the ground and slather it with a slurry made of cow pies.  The slurry dries into a hard mat that it almost impenetrable to weeds and holds water, so I basically don’t have to water my outside plots at all.  Or weed very much.  All thanks to our generous cows and a little garden serendipity.

Help!:  Although our cows are currently fat and happy eating lush pasture, we will need to feed them hay for about 150 days this winter when the pasture doesn’t grow.  In the future we’re hoping to have a community that works the oxen to harvest hay, but currently we do have to rely on purchasing hay from a local hay farmer.  They eat about 6 bales/day (for the herd of 9 cows), so we’re looking at spending close to $5,000 this year to buy hay.  Unfortunately our coffers are completely empty and so we’re going to have to rely on Krsna for a miracle to be able to feed the cows this year.  I was just reading that Krsna is very kind when he makes an aspiring devotee depend on Him, so Krsna is being especially kind and additionally making us experience the humility of begging.  If anyone reading this wants to donate to a legitimate project that is pleasing to Srila Prabhupada, I am confident that our project is in line with Srila Prabhupada’s desires for the 2nd half of his mission.  In fact I can’t think of many other projects where devotees are protecting cows, endeavoring to produce their own necessities, striving to start a community and following an unchanged philosophy.

In the First Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam, Maharaja Yudhistira asks Arjuna is the cause of his distress is due to being unable to give charity when asked.  If you are reading this and are unable to help, this plea was not meant to cause any distress.  However if you are reading this and able to help, we truly need it.  We do have some plans to sell some assets such as our horse trailer, but we’d prefer to be able to keep the trailer so that if we have to move a large animal in an emergency or want to take oxen to a parade, etc., we’ll be able to do so.  The hay will be harvested in the coming weeks and if they can load it directly into our barn the price is much lower than if they have to move it twice.

If you are interested in helping (any amount is appreciated), checks can be sent to: Anuttama Budd, 151 Anderson Rd., Glenoma, WA 98338 or Paypal: anuttamadd@gmail.com  For more information, call: 360-496-0058

Billy is happy that the winter killed an apple tree, Twasheek’s condition improving, seed saving:

Here are this week’s pictures with more detailed descriptions below:

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3., 4. The winter killed an apple tree on the electric company’s land and they let Billy take it.  He will make some nice turned bowls and carved spoons.  Apple wood tends to crack as it dries, so Billy is taking extra precautions to slow down the drying process to minimize cracking.  He couldn’t resist roughing out a spoon. This spoon will have to dry for some time before it is ready to be finished.

17.,18.,19.  The experiment has convinced me that something poison is in the peat I bought last year.  The results are compelling, however in order to prove that it is poison in the peat, not peat in general that stunts the growth I’m growing some seeds in peat that I bought this year.  The plants (wheat) have just emerged and this year’s peat is already ahead.

20.  We’re planning on selling our surplus products such as veggies, flowers and seedlings at a stand on our farm.  I’m in the process of making signs for the highway to let people know that we’re here.

Cows out to pasture, peat experiment preliminary results, spring medicinals.

Below are this weeks pictures from New Nandagram, with more thorough descriptions below the slideshow:

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1.-4.  We had to keep the cows in the goshalla and a small paddock over the winter because if we let them on the pasture, they turn it to mud.  It wasn’t really dry enough to let them out, but it was mid-April and they are usually out by the beginning of April.  I’m always careful to check on them when they change feed suddenly–in this case from hay to grass, but they did fine.  I thought they’d run and buck when they got out, but they just dove into the grass and couldn’t graze fast enough.  Our neighbor lets us use his 5 acre pasture and because it is mostly canary grass, we let them there first.

7. Morel mushrooms appear at this time of year.  They are hard to see because they blend in with their surroundings, but I understand people can train themselves to be able to spot them readily.  I didn’t harvest these, primarily because they are growing in a place where I know they spray Roundup every year.  I also personally don’t care for the taste of mushrooms, although I understand that Srila Prabhupada enjoyed them.

8.-11. It is time to harvest nettles, a common plant in our forest.  Nettles are easy to identify because if you accidental touch them, they sting severely.  However they are a healthy and delicious vegetable when prepared like spinach and when dried make a pleasant tea, particularly when mixed with mint.  Nettles do have some mild medicinal value as an antihistamine, but we harvest them more as a food and a tea.

13. Billy was suffering from acid reflux, and a tea made from the root of the avens weed gave him immediate relief.  This is the time of year to harvest avens root.  After thoroughly cleaning the roots, they can be dehydrated and used to make tea.  They have a spicy flavor, something like cloves.

16. and 17.  Last year I started my seeds in a mixture of potting soil and peat and was dismayed with abysmal results in spite of providing great conditions for germination and growth.  This year when I started my first flats in the incubator with pure peat from the same bale as last year and although the seeds germinated, they failed to grow, even after 2 weeks of careful care.  I developed an experiment to determine if the peat was contaminated with the herbicide 2.4D.  After one week, my experiment has some preliminary results.  The growth on both the monocots and the dicots was very stunted from the seeds grown in the peat compared to garden soil.  Because the dicots (wheat) were also stunted, I can conclude that the culprit was not 2,4D, but rather something else.  I did run into a friend in town and mentioned the experiment and she’d also had trouble starting seeds in a potting soil/peat mix last year.  She was so disappointed with the stunted growth that she didn’t start any seeds this year, never suspecting the peat.

From April 14, 2017:  We’re very concerned about what is happening with starting seeds in our seed incubator.  Last year I had a difficult time getting seedlings to grow and attributed the problem to a willow tree growing on the north side of the greenhouse that had partially covered the top of the greenhouse.  This winter we removed the offending limbs so I was dismayed when we seem to be having the same problem in spite of having almost ideal conditions both within the incubator at night and in the greenhouse during the day.  The seeds will germinate, but they fail to grow.

I’m beginning to suspect that the peat moss that I start the seeds in is contaminated with 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4D), a common herbicide that is used to kill trees.  The bale of peat that I have has some chipped wood in it which may have been treated with the poison. So I’ve devised an experiment which will determine if I’m correct.  2,4D only affects dicots, plants with broad leaves. Monocots which are grasses including grains are unaffected.  I’m going to plant 4 pots and start seeds from monocots in 2 of them and dicots in 2 of them.  One of the monocot pots will have the suspect peat as the medium and one of the dicot pots will have peat as the medium.  The other 2 pots will be started with regular garden soil devoid of any suspect peat.  Of the 4 pots:

• one with monocot (wheat) seeds in suspect peat
• one with monocot (wheat) seeds in garden soil
• one with dicot (sprouting mix including alfalfa) in suspect peat
• one with dicot (sprouting min including alfalfa) in garden soil

If I’m right, the wheat seeds grown in the suspect peat will flourish, but the alfalfa grown in the peat will fail.  Both the garden soil seeds should be fine.  We’ll have the answer next week.  Stay tuned!

This week’s photos with more detail below:

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1. and 2.  I was dismayed that the seeds I started on March 22 germinated just fine, but failed to grow.  Normally 2 weeks after sprouting, these tomato and lettuce plants would have their first true leaves.  These plants have had ideal growing conditions: in the greenhouse during the day and in the warm incubator (with a fan) at night.  There is no excuse for this lack of enthusiasm!

3.,4. and 5.  The experiment using monocots and dicots, peat and soil.  We’ll see…

6. I made mozzarella with about 9 gallons of milk.  This picture shows the cut curds being slowly heated to 98º F

7. The cooked curds culture at room temperature over night and then are ready to melt and stretch.  I’ve found that if I freeze them at this stage I’ll get a completely fresh product when they’re defrosted and stretched.  Mozzarella doesn’t keep as well as an aged cheese and needs to be offered within 10 days.

8. and 9. We got 3.5 lbs of ricotta cheese from the whey left over from the mozzarella and used it in pancakes, a creamy pasta sauce and some apple/walnut/ricotta bread (it’s cake, really).

10. We’ve been soaking Twasheek’s foot in an epsom salt bath to help draw out the infection.  It may help a little, but he is still lame and infected.  He’s been on antibiotics and pain meds for 3 weeks.

11. One of our biggest battles here is the battle of the morning glories.  They send out runners that are like a freeway exchange in Los Angeles and want to take over the garden.  This year I’ll be covering them with patty mats (cow manure mulch), but I thought I should get as many out as possible, first.  While digging in the raised beds, I uncovered this monster.  He’s a salamander and he was very lucky that I didn’t hurt him with the tools.  I found him a nice damp hole after taking a selfie with him.

12.  This is the number of morning glory runners I found in about a 4′ x 8′ section of garden.  They are being relocated to a FEMA camp.

14.  We have a wonderful walnut tree that didn’t produce any walnuts the first year we were here.  I’ve been putting all the extra whey from cheese making on it and giving it cleaning from the horse stalls.  I leave the horse stuff in piles to encourage worms and then after a few months, Billy spreads it around the tree.  We’ve had great walnut crops the last few years. Hopefully our generous tree will give us another nice harvest this fall.

15. There is a wildlife area about 1/2 mile from our house where they release cage-raised pheasants every Friday in the fall so that hunters can come an shoot them.  A few escape the hunters, but they’re usually prey to coyotes or eagles within a month or so.  This guy has survived the winter and hangs with our chickens.  He fights with the roosters and may be a baby-daddy for some of the chicks.  If he survives much longer, we’ll probably give him a name.

16., 17. and 18.  Willow bark tutorial:  The first step is to identify a willow tree.  This should be done the prior year because the bark should be harvested just as the leaves are coming out.  In the winter, sapling sized trees all look alike.  They have thin, alternate leaves and tend to prefer moist locations.  We have several on our property.  I recommend googling “willow tree identification” to become familiar with the types of willows.  The willows growing in the swamp in the corner of Dee’s pasture have the strongest medicine, I’ve found.

Once you’ve positively identified a willow, find a newish branch that has a rubbery bark, rather than the thick, rough older bark.  I use a potato peeler and peel of long strips from a clean(ish) area of the branch.  If you collect the bark from all around the branch, you’ll kill the branch above where you took the bark,  That’s not the end of the world for the willow because they love to send out new branches. I usually just harvest from one side of the branch, however.

Take your peeling strips and spread them out in a dry, airy location that is at least room temperature.  When they’re crispy dry they can be stored in a sealed jar in a dark location and maintain potency for up to 2 years.  Whenever I’m trying a new medicine, I take the precaution of taking a tiny amount and seeing if there is any adverse reaction.

For a headache or muscle ache I make a tea using as many strips as I think would make a heaped teaspoon if it were powdered.  I simmer the strips in about 2 cups of water for about 10 minutes and let it cool.  Then I strain and drink with a little honey to mask the astringent taste.  That is equivalent to about 2 aspirin, depending on the strength of the particular willow.

For more weekly pictures from New Nandagram go to: https://newnandagramcowprotection.wordpress.com/

Kalindi’s Dairy Diary

Kalindi’s Diary of a Dairy Cow

September 14, 2014

I remember feeling squeezed and then my nose felt a new sensation, something that I soon learned was cold. My tongue was hanging out of my mouth and took the brunt of the cold breeze. More squeezing, and suddenly I was in a new environment and it was so cold. I was shivering, but I felt a raspy tongue and when I figured out how to lift my head, there was Mom. She was licking me and making quiet loving noises as she worked at drying me and warming me up. Somehow I knew that I had to figure out how to work my legs to stand and find food. Mom kept working on cleaning me as I struggled to find my balance, but after several attempts, I was up and began nudging all around her to find the food. The food was lower than I initially thought, but once I latched on, I had a desire to suck and suck until my belly was full. By that time, I had dried off and it wasn’t so cold any more, so I crumbled down to the ground and the last thing I remember was the song of the frogs and crickets as I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I could feel the warmth of the sun on my fur and looked around for Mom. There she was, grazing on the lush grass. Other cows were nearby, too, grazing, but all of them were facing my direction and I felt curiosity coming from them about my sudden appearance. I stood up, much more easily, this time and went right for the food. Mom groaned and strained as I sucked, as if she were in pain, but she licked me as I stood against her body. I filled my belly and then tried out my legs to see if I could run. I could! I could even buck! The other cows crowded around me and some of them even touched me with their noses. Then I was tired again and crumbled down to the soft ground.

New Puppy Falls of Cliff into Deep Water

The day after we brought our new puppy home,  I took him and Ruger, our other dog for a long walk through the forest.  Raksha had never been in such a wild place with so many smells and his hackles were up for the whole 3 miles.  I had to carry him across a stream, but he stayed with me and Ruger.  I did have to carry him across a small, brisk stream, but he was alert and excited.

The next day we were unable to go on the same walk because it was Saturday and there were at least a dozen cars at our trail head due to hunting season.  So I decided to walk along Riffe lake.  It was a flat walk along a road that formerly led to the town of Riffe.  Riffe is now under water because of a dam, but the road makes a nice walk leading to the lake.  When we reached the lake I decided to follow Rainey Creek for a while before taking the road back to the car.

Due to recent rainfall, Rainey Creek was running quite high, and there were places where the stream bends and floodwater carves out cliffs.  I happened to notice that the drop off one of such cliffs was about 10 feet and made a conscious decision to walk away from the creek due to the danger that a dog could fall.  Right when I made that decision I heard a splash and then a couple of seconds later a plop-plop-plop sound that sounded like a dog trying to swim.  I looked down over the cliff, and sure enough, there was little Raksha swimming and trying to keep his nose out of the water.

It was late November and the wind was blowing quite hard.  I had a long, retractable leash that I made into a noose, but was unable to get it over his head because the wind kept blowing it against the cliff.  The nearest place where I could conceivably approach the water was only 15′ away, but even there it was extremely steep.  So the choice was to jump into the water (in November) to rescue him, or try to get him to swim towards the less steep place.

Blind Spots

There is an amazing phenomenon that I call “blind spots” that occurs when people are confronted with information that is contrary to their cherished beliefs. People are unable to process or to remember facts that contradict what they believe to the point that they are literally blind (or deaf) to the truth. To illustrate this concept, think of a belief as a bubble and any information that contradicts the belief is outside the bubble. If the belief is trivial and has no emotional value to the believer, such as the belief that lemmings commit mass suicide, the bubble may as well be made of soap film and can be popped with some documented evidence, or information from a trusted source. (Lemmings are actually well-adjusted rodents who like to go swimming as a group). However if the belief is cherished, such as the belief that our government stands for truth, freedom and justice, the bubble may as well be coated with Kevlar armor. Documented information that stands contrary to the belief will be unable to pierce the armor causing the person with the cherished belief to be unable to hear, see or remember the information.

I first became aware of this phenomenon several years after 9-11 when my husband, Billy, asked me to watch a video of the third skyscraper that collapsed on 9-11. We don’t have a TV, so on 9-11 we had gone to a neighbor’s house to watch the event unfold. We had never heard about a third skyscraper collapsing, but the video, posted several years later on YouTube did a good job verifying, through several news clips, that in fact a third World Trade Center (WT7) skyscraper did fall down. Additionally it showed videos of several buildings that were demolished through a controlled demolition, followed by a video of WT7 collapsing. Any reasonable person would conclude that the collapse of WT7 was identical to a controlled demolition. The fact that the media apparently didn’t pursue the story of the odd collapse and the government didn’t investigate how the building collapsed by testing the dust for accelerants such as nano thermite, made me suspect that there was a larger conspiracy afoot.

Don’t Feed the Ghosts!

When I’m confronted with knowledge that goes against what I’ve accepted to be true, I rely on synchronicities to verify/substantiate the knowledge. Synchronicity is defined as “…a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are ‘meaningful coincidences’ if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related.”

This article is about my journey, which has been fraught with synchronicities. It has led me to conclude that probably all mental illness/addictions/depression are caused or exacerbated by ghosts and that having negative thoughts attracts ghosts the way that blood attracts sharks. I’ve learned that I am sometimes influenced by these unseen miscreants and the ability to banish them has enriched my quality of life immensely—like going from staying in a fleabag hotel to a five star resort.

A new arrival!

Last night Dhana presented us with a sweet little girl.  We haven’t named her yet because some of our friends may decide to become her guardians.  This was our first unusual presentation: the hind legs came out first.  But she was so small, it was a quick delivery.  We did get her a selenium shot because she has tight tendons on her front legs.  However she’s up and nursing  following her Mom all over the pasture.

This calf was unplanned.  Apparently her brother was more mature at 9 months old than we realized.

Christmas at the Budds

Pedal operated water pump

Recently a friend asked me what I thought she needed to do to be more self reliant and I replied that although she lives on a river, she doesn’t have an easy, convenient water source in the event of a prolonged electrical outage.  She has a well with an electric pump.  The pump in this article could be used to pump well water into an elevated storage tank which could gravity-feed a house and garden.  It is reasonably priced for what it does:  http://www.resilientcommunities.com/a-human-powered-water-pump-you-have-to-see/

Tuki’s one month old!

My daughter sent me these pics from when Tuki was only a few days old:

He is doing very well and drinking most of his Mom’s milk.  Soon we’ll separate them at night so that we get some milk, too.

Rain, Tuki’s grandmother (now Reina) just had a calf at the Sisters’  here are some pics of little Ra, a full brother to Makani:

Reina’s udder is enormous.  I sent the Sisters a link to a cow bra!

Banyan bridge in India

Tracy posted this on their Self Reliant site:

Cider Pressing at Jack Wasson’s Place

Last week our Self Reliant Community group was invited to Jack’s place.  He has a large, sturdy press and the 8 or so attendees were kept busy washing, halving, loading, pressing and bottling the juice.  Our 3 bushels of apples yielded about 5  gallons of juice.  I canned same, and am letting some turn to vinegar if we are able to leave it alone!  After the pressing we enjoyed cheese, cake and of course apple juice!

Jack’s place was historically the valley’s cider pressing place, in fact there is even a poem about it:

Wasson’s Cider Mill

Frank Carleton Nelsom

It’s hard to say just why it is, but

’round this time o’ year,

There’s something ’bout the autumn

days and in the atmosphere,

That takes me back to olden times in

memory, you know,

And once again I seem to live my

youth of long ago.

And greatest of the great events that

as a boy I knew,

In ecstasy that’s near divine, again

I’m living through,

For on that top-box wagon load of

apples comes a thrill,

Of riding o’er the dusty road to

Wasson’s cider mill.

And though the distance wasn’t

great, in miles exactly four,

The gait the horses jogged along, it

meant an hour or more

And long before we reached the spot

the odor in the air,

Proclaimed beyond all human doubt

that Wasson’s mill was there.

And then we’d have to wait and wait

sometimes an hour or two,

And when our turn would come at

last to run our apples through

My dad would grab the monstrous

scoop and work with all his might,

While I would watch the cider flow

and drink to my delight.

Of sanitation, I’ll admit, we’d really

never heard,

As far as cider makin’ went, there

wasn’t such a word,

For in the hopper often dropped the

bad ones with the good,

And well I knew they didn’t do

exactly as they should

But after all it said and done

regardless of the way

Of doing things long years ago and

doing them today,

I’d love to take a pitcher now and

sit and drink my fill

Of cider as they made it then at

Wasson’s cider mill.

This Indiana poet grew up near the Samuel Wasson farm.

Melamine in pet food, human food?

A friend in North Carolina recently bought a healthy puppy that within a few days began to have trouble urinating.  He took the puppy to a vet who confirmed that the puppy had an obstructed bladder and recommended putting the puppy down.  It died on Monday.  The symptoms are similar to what happened to our cat, Romeow.  Our neighbor across the street recently spent over $800 on vet bills trying to save her cat with identical symptoms.  The vet told her that it was due to feeding her cat Frisky’s cat food.

Is it possible that pet food is sometimes tainted with melamine?  I found this article: http://www.truthaboutpetfood.com/articles/is-it-melamine-again.html that substantiates that the FDA has turned away many imports including cookies, soya protein and other food products because they are tainted with melamine.  It also explains that the FDA only tests about 2% of the food imported.  So there is a potential for many foods that we and our animals consume are tainted with melamine.

It seems that different individuals have different tolerances for this melamine.  In individuals who process it like my kitty, Romeow and my friend’s puppy, it collects in the bladder and clogs the bladder, leading to death.

Buying food that is made in the USA doesn’t guarantee that all of the ingredients are made in the USA.  It isn’t required for food manufacturers to label that some ingredients are imported.  Of course there is also no guarantee that USA manufacturers don’t adulterate their products with melamine, either.  This is a sad state of affairs, but it confirms our commitment to growing everything we consume.

It’s a boy!

The Budds are happy to announce the birth of little Tucaram who was born this morning.  Mom, Lani Moo, and baby are doing fine.  This is Lani Moo’s first, so she had to learn about standing still when her calf was trying to find the meal faucet, but that seems to have been resolved.  This evening we’ll find out if Lani Moo is agreeable to being milked.

We did have to assist this birth and Billy even got out his comealong, which fortunately wasn’t needed.  When the calf was out and being “cleaned”, Lani Moo reached over and gave me a lick, too.  I think she was thanking us for the help.

Little Tucaram getting cleaned up.

Tucaram was named by our friend Karah who speaks a different language.  She told us that “Tucar” means strong.  This calf is destined to become a strong working ox.

Autumn Pictures

We’ve been harvesting squash, wheat, beans and more.  And of course riding Dee:

 

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Friendliness vs. Wariness

Here is an ad that I placed on craigslist:

While distributing the neighborhood newsletter door to door the other day, I noticed that people give subtle cues regarding their:
1) level of friendliness
2) emphasis on security

While many properties are neutral on these matters, I wanted our property to reflect that we are very friendly and yet also maintain a high level of security. Because we have large, loud dogs, we keep our gate closed at all times. This can be regarded as non-friendly. To moderate this non-approachable/friendly identity, I made the sign in the picture. For people approaching our property with good intentions, they know that all they have to do is to honk to get our attention. This removes the stigma that honking is obnoxious. People with bad intentions will be hesitant to honk and draw attention to themselves. If they don’t honk, we will naturally suspect their intentions and will be more wary of such people. If they do honk, we’ll be alerted to their presence.

I have made a stencil of the sign which measures 28″ x 21″. If you would like a sign, it can be painted any color, but I only have the orange color shown in the picture in exterior semi-gloss. I do have a cream semi-gloss in interior enamel and a light yellowish/beige in interior enamel. For an extra charge I can buy paint in any color, however, or you can provide the paint.

Here is a link to our blog: http://www.billyandanuttama.wordpress.com and to our neighborhood newsletter blog: http://www.theglenomagem.wordpress.com

Phone: 3 six 0, 496 zero zero 58

Here is a link to the craigslist ad: http://seattle.craigslist.org/oly/grd/3296291126.html