William Pilgrim

First of all, Paul, I could be that doctor, I'm so disgusted with everything having to do with our agricultural, medical, financial, legal, and political systems in the US I could spit. Actually, I intend to leave the country for good very shortly, but that's for another thread.

I'm curious, why is any of this of any importance to anyone? The chemicals that they have dumped everywhere, and continue to dump, are deadly, what more do you need to know. The world according to Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, et al, is so completely contaminated with so-called "empirical" BS that they have created that there is hardly a point in trying to sift through it. The difference between 100% and 1000% would be of no value except as propaganda, and that's not where our energies are best spent. Like the famous old racist, Dr. Albert Schweitzer said, "make your life your argument". Continue to share and try to educate at least one new person every day and eventually the worm turns, as it has been doing for the last 50 years or so.

One of my best friends was a big deal economist at the CDC, who ironically died from pancreatic cancer at the ripe old age of 55, and he is one of six friends who died before the median from that same previously unusual cancer that I know, along with all three of the "conventional" orchardists that I knew, along with half of their immediate families, of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and other blood-related cancers. We live in the middle of one of the most heavily agriculturally sprayed areas in the country, where cancer IS the predominant killer, but even the County level health authorities bulk at the idea of collecting and correlating any hard data on the scourge.

While transporting friends and neighbors to various health care facilities outside of our third world, here on the Delmarva Peninsula, I've heard tell in every cancer treatment provider in our region that they have become so familiar with these cancers from the shore that they have literally begun referring to them as "Farmer Cancer". The FAA, who issues the flight permits to the aerial applicators, before they get their meaningless State license (simply a revenue mechanism for the State, but no real regulation or attention is paid to anything that these asses do) refer to the pesticides collectively in their own code as "Economic Poisons". WTF else do you need to know?

This notion that we need to support common effing sense with empirical absolutisms that do not exist in order to somehow validate our reasoning is absurd! The focus should be to do whatever we can to force these chemical and drug manufacturers to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that anything and everything that they want to sell is 100% guaranteed NOT to cause any harm, but they cannot and will not do that, so they must be shut down, and that requires political change, not another status quo jackass interested in promoting their party's power while stuffing their pockets with both hands.

When the masters of the money can buy whatever political and judicial influence that they desire, is it any wonder that they find it so easy to take over the land grant universities and control every aspect of the academic bullshit that they produce. Real science is for all intents and purposes dead with regard to anything having to do with environmental or health impact of drugs and chemicals, or the entire energy sector, the military industrial complex, mining, and manufacturing in general. So what is the point of searching out the third type of lie?

As for the idea of trying to somehow qualify and quantify all of the innumerable variables affecting your desired statistics, and then trying to somehow accurately correlate those factors with some undefined period in the past, are you kidding me? What exactly is your ultimate point?

Life's too short. Go plant a tree and teach someone how to care for it - time better spent. Cognitive dissonance and the natural inertia of the apathetic are not going to be noticeably deflected in the least by a presentment of statistics, so the only people who might embrace the outcome will likely be the echo chamber that requires no convincing. As Mr. Sagan once said,

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

So we're better off setting a good example and offering to educate while the herd continues to thin as a result of their having fully embraced the bamboozle. Let Darwinism run its course and hopefully what survives will be worth your effort.

Chris Kott wrote:Whoa, there. 400% or 400 times?

Also, I agree with the idea that it's complicated. What has happened to the mortality rate in that time, and in childhood mortality? What has happened to reporting in that timeframe, vis a vis unexplained death or death by, what was at the time, unexplained issues?

I am not disagreeing with the idea that there could be more cancer today, nor with the idea that the unnecessary additions to our environment and food could be causing higher levels of cancer than previously experienced, but there are many variables that could change cancer rates, and it's important to be specific and thorough in order to determine what's what.

-CK

Could be causing higher levels of cancer?!

Here are some variables for ya; everything that you eat impacts your gut biome, which is your immune system, so how do you adjust for just the variety of diets? Once our DNA has mutated through successive generations of breeding the new mutations are now reflectant of a completely different species. We see it happen in just a matter of two or three generations of grazing animals, where those born of feedlot animals are never able to thrive anywhere near the degree to which their pure pasture reared cousins do, so how do you correlate that? Vegan, organic, fast food junkie... and what about the impotent diabetics who are more regularly going to continue to under-represent in terms of their subsequent progeny? A necrotic Willy does not an off-spring make, no matter how many little blue pills and pumps are involved. So just on that basis alone, we apples to the oranges that were our great great grandparents, so what's the point?

We're much, much better at killing brown and black and yellow skinned people than we used to be (although we had already managed a pretty thorough job of irradicating red), so how do we account for that? WWI was a man-made a tragedy, but it could be argued that so was the Spanish flu that partnered with it. War created the circumstances that promoted its growth and spread, but of course, war-time propaganda also makes it impossible to assess any real data since the governments involved couldn't afford for their populations to know the truth of just how many folks were dying. Had they realized that without firing a shot 5% of their numbers would perish, they might not have been as willing to be led off of that cliff. From there WWII was just a continuation of the first, but how could one possibly collect and correlate any kind of relevant data from the period when whole swaths of a single gender were wiped out in some cultures, and select ethnicities from others?

What does remain as incontrovertible truth is that we are sick and dying, of things that DO absolutely correlate directly to the endocrine-disrupting garbage that permeates every facet of our life and world, and more importantly, that where any peoples have been even moderately successful in creating a buffer between themselves and "modern" drugs, fossil fuels, and agriculture, they simply live longer and healthier lives. Do you really need to split hairs for a more well-defined truth? Common sense appears to completely abandoned the building.


If you insist on gathering meaningless data, here's some for you:

https://www.pancan.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/incidence_report_2012.pdf

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-pancreatic-cancer-is-on-the-rise/

https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/pancreatic-cancer/statistics


And to help focus the hopelessness of creating a statistical analysis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjs3hsIFCHw&t=387s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qnRDefVXvE&t=631s

Contrary to "conventional wisdom" and practice, alfalfa is NOT an appropriate forage or feed for growing pigs. Alfalfa contains saponin and tannin antinutritionals that actually function as growth inhibitors in swine. Processed meal can be used to supplement gestating sows later in their pregnancy, but given its limited use, we avoid it altogether. The reason the meal is acceptable for gestating sows is that they have a more fully developed gut bacteria than growers. Folks tend to assume that what is good for ruminants is good for monogastric pigs.

Lots of stuff to chew on here. First, all of this changing of energy forms is always going to be at less than 100% efficiency, and then you need to account for filtration and flow restrictions within the design character (fluid dynamics). Pretty much all of Newton's laws are conspiring against you, so embrace it and go buy a super efficient pump. Air lifts still require an energy consuming air pump to overcome the static pressure, and I think the rest of the near perpetual motion devices all suffer from impracticability when applied to any kind of functional scale, even with a little helper.   The waste water of flow through designs are just that, a huge waste, and most "semi-closed" systems' aren't much better, what with all of their regular water changes of huge amounts, and the general misuse of the resultant affluent.

Having worked with aquaponics, intensive aquaculture, and a wide variety of different types of systems I've become somewhat jaded in my orthodoxy regarding latest crazes such as has been the recent re-treading of aquaponics, so please take no offense, this is in no way intended as personal.

IMNSHO aquaponics is, as a means of efficiently raising fish, a waste of time, energy, and resources. It is at best a compromise between the ideal environment for the fish and that of the plants in the system, but more typically a simplistic way of trying to keep fish alive while the plants under-perform. Beginning with issues such as differing optimum pH levels, the two can survive while sharing resources, but in general neither thrives, and certainly not to their fullest potential, and that is where the waste of resources comes into play. You can make anything work if you have a big enough hammer, and waste enough energy and water in the process, but if sustainability and conservation of resources is any part of the equation you're better off raising true aeroponic or hydroponic plants and keeping the fish in a hyper filtered recirculating system all unto themselves. There may be some opportunities for fish/plant synergies in terms of de-nitrification or oxygenation and feed production, but as a means of raising food crops for people, there are much better ways. Aquaponics is simply the beneficiary of a lot of interest from a lot of earnest and fairly newly interested back to the land types who are being fleeced by the schmucks selling systems, books and seminars. Murray and Judith are making a great living off of it, but as a model for food production it pretty much sucks.

There are of course plenty of permie applications where water storage ponds and impoundments are doing double duty as very low intensity fish farms, but the general lack of sanitation is ultimately going to doom the ponds to fail in almost every case. As the fish grow they will of course eat more and of course produce more waste. The effect is that as the fish grow their environment continues to degrade, until it reaches a point where illness and disease sets in, and then people get real stupid and start all sorts of inappropriate treatments to try and save the day. The result of course is that the fish usually die and/or they end up with chemically contaminated water and fish. Attended a Sea Grant funded seminar a year or so back that was supposedly going to feature a bunch of PhD types with loads of experience in the field. Ended up being just another circle jerk of academic grant fraud, where they all acknowledged (eventually) that they had no experience at all, and even less empirical proof of anything that they had plagiarized in their presentations. I know and have worked with people who have been involved in this since the early 70's, and to a person everyone of them abandoned aquaponics decades ago, but they'll still happily take your money if you insist (as many do) on trying it.

Okay, my anti-aquaponics diatribe aside, raising fish in a closed system depends upon a lot of parameters being rather precisely maintained, but none so important as water quality, and this is where most systems fail. Each time that the water completes a circulation cycle it needs to be made 100% clean and pure or trouble will ensue. The best analogy would be that of a snowball rolling down a hill. If you filter 99% of the organics for example in just one pass, what happens to the remaining 1%? It becomes like radioactive half-life in reverse. The problem with that is that as it accumulates it begins to decompose at a geometrically progressive rate, which in turn creates an ever increasing ammonia cycle load where the necessary aerobic bacteria are constantly losing the race to catch up. This in turn begins to create a pH shift, problems for the fishes ability to perform osmosis, more stress, then physiological responses in the fish and before ya know it they're barely alive or floating. An over simplification of a much more complex process of synergies, but that's the gist of it.

If you want to see how to grow really spectacular hydro plants, look at the weed growers, and if you wanna see how to keep water in a closed system super duper clean, look to the intensive aquaculture and high end koi folks. Anybody can raise tainted, nutrient deficient tilapia and lettuce in toilet water, but that doesn't mean that ya should.

These hyper efficient closed systems may run contrary to much permaculture doctrine and dogma, but that's the problem with doctrine and dogma, and it does conserve resources better than the alternatives if dialed back from the bleeding edge and manged at lower stocking density levels. Philosophically I would consider a better long term solution to be one that is the most sustainable, and that comes with improved fish health, taste, and nutrient profiles. Raising fish in a closed system where the fish are provided with the highest purity water, that converts solar energy into fish while also providing for the production of their food on site seems the pinnacle of that ethic. I don't see much good in growing fish using pelleted commercial feed that gets trucked and hauled half way round the world, like most of the industrial people food. So whatever your concept goals, if efficient, quality food production in a sustainable way is a part of that, I would drop the focus on trying to reinvent the Roman aquaducts and concentrate more on how to make it all keep working without having to source inputs from off site. Not only will it provide a better quality food fish, but a more rare niche foodstuff that should sell at a considerable premium if you're so inclined.

Just my 2 or 3 cents, and I wouldn't blame ya in the least if you just ignore it, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  

Electric is certainly the most flexible long term, once you get them trained. We use a woven wire fence with stand-offs to keep the dogs, pigs, whatever, to keep from panicking and charging ahead when they catch a wire and get stung. Some breeds might be more prone to getting caught behind the eyes and get confused about which way to run, so the wire fence behind the electric helps keep that from happening.

We also sometimes just use bigger batteries and swap them out every couple of days in winter when sunshine goes away for days.

Lastly making gates is pretty easy if you create a square box of electric wires on step-in posts just inside a physical gate that's big enough to allow the gate full in-swing. That way the critters don't crowd the physical gate while you're trying to come and go, a sort of gate within a gate, or foyer if you will that works as a back-up if somebody manges to get past.

Our most adventurous layers are free ranging Rhode Island Reds, and when and where we need to keep them contained or out of something we've found that they will happily flutter up onto a four foot wire fence, but at five foot they tend to loose almost all interest, and when a hotwire is added just above that we've never had one go past. We also use one or two hotwires on the outside of our permanent perimeter woven wire fences for predator control, but the laying of re-purposed chain-link flat on the ground along the outside works as an excellent dig defeater. Coyotes get spooked walking on it and nobody else seems interested in trying to tunnel that far (most of what I get I cut to about 24-30" and then hog ring it at regular intervals to the bottom of the vertical woven wire fencing.

Also never had any real experience trying to train Huskies, but other chicken killers were brought around using a method I can't recall the origins of. The idea was that you get the dog to trust you rolling them on their back, which hearkens to something submissive or that their mother did when they were pups. Some are more trusting than others to this and that in and of itself can sometimes take a good while to encourage. Once the dog is comfortable with you doing this you then introduce the chickens by holding it above the dog and gradually bringing it closer over time (again minutes or over days, depends on the dog). I think it was a combination of teaching the dogs not to get excited or anxious over their proximity to the birds' flighty and/or erratic behavior, as well as some kind of possible dominance and submission thing. We've used it several times with a high strung Aussie, a Healer and a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, all with good results, but the Bay took weeks. Once it took though they just ignored the birds altogether, and we feed rabbit and chicken in our diet (although cooked, not raw).

Lastly, our neighbor raises some really special Bearded Collies that are wonderful. They're comfortable with our small sized pastured pigs, as well as small ruminants and all of our birds (everything from ducks and chickens to turkeys, geese, and guineas). Extremely alert and friendly with energy to burn and a coat that keeps them comfortable in all types of weather. Even had them work as ratters for us out in the barn. One of my daughters had two Huskies and I honestly couldn't see a use for them on the farm, unless I was someplace that got plenty of real snow. Down here on the mid-Atlantic coast they just seemed miserable. People really do need to learn to pick dogs that are appropriate. Our Aussies were rescues from knuckleheads that lived in the suburbs and kept them penned up all of the time and then wondered why they were "trouble". Workin' dogs need to work, and I would suspect that the Huskies suffer from a lot of that same kind of boredom leads to "trouble" when not allowed to live in their natural element.

First of all, birds don't have the receptors to "taste" the heat from capsicums, so wate of time there.
Second, how do ya suppose the "conventional" farmers manage? If the patch is small enough, just mulching with straw generally works. Helps retain moisture and protect the seed. Make sure to use chopped straw in areas due to lots of wind or the wind will catch the longer straw and tend to roll it up on itself. Sprinklers or some sort of irrigation ona timer also helps.

For larger areas there's an implement known variously as a cultipacker that is available with a simple clevis hitch for towing smaller ones (4-6' wide and weighted with concrete blocks) behind an ATV or riding mower, or the larger ones that are set up for 3 point hitch use on a tractor. The device has one or more steel rollers with what looks like squared off teeth covering the drum surface. The teeth break up dirt clumps and fills voids while creating shallow depressions in the soil to catch your seed. It also does a great job of tamping shallow set seed and giving it good soil contact.  

The ultimate, and by far much superior method, is to plant using a seed drill. This device is pretty pricey, so you might do better looking for a neighbor who owns one and paying them to plant for you. The implement provides the best control of precise seed placement which not only saves on seed, but prevents over seeding, which actually decreases germination rates due to too much competition between the seeds that you do want to grow.

Industrial farming may seem crazy with many of its means and methods, but they do have some of the coolest tools and gadgets. Our biggest challenge was finding someone organic who owned one, since the petro-chemical "conventional" farmers all use treated seed that leaves a decided and undesirable residue from their seeds' fungicidal treatments.

We raise Kunekunes, which are a smaller, slower growing pig originally from Nerw Zealand. They have evolved to be the perfect grazer. Their stubby upturned snouts make them better adapted to grazing while also minimizing the tendencies to root. Generally the will nose out a shallow well and figure out a way to dump their water into it to create a wallow when it's hot out, but beyond that they are the least destructive to pasture of any pig. They marble extremely well on pasture, making them the perfect homestead swine IMO. They are probably the easiest of any breed on fences, pasture, as well as not being the least bit aggressive with people. Quite the contrary, they crave human interaction and belly rubs. Yes they are cute, and our hairy little pigs are also quite personal, but in the end - they're tasty, tasty bacon, and ribs, and hams and sausage, and souse, and scrapple, and...

Another great thing about the Kunekunes is that they stay relatively small. Ours are predominantly a meat herd so they're selected for size, but a large full grown sow might hit 250 lbs., and a really large mature boar about 300. Typically they're harvested at 9-12 months of age, which with ours is about 150- lbs. live. They are also ridiculously easy to work, lead, load and train. You can also fall asleep under a tree in the pasture and not have to worry about waking up to a herd of pigs trying to eat your face. They ain't Craig's List feeder pigs, and require some investment, but they more than make up for it with their easy care and amazing pork. Just don't screw them up the way many do, by trying to fatten them faster with commercial feeds, corn and soy garbage. We feed ours pasture and barley fodder 'til the grasses are all dormant, then add more fodder and supplement through the winter with organic hay and some organic supplements (kelp, D.E, bentonite, spirulina, and charcoal) sprinkled on the fodder biscuits. The supplements are used by the tablespoon, so their cost is negligible, and the average adult gets about 8 lbs. of fodder each day. That amount of fodder requires about 1-1/4 lb. of dry barley to produce, so even using organic grain the cost is less than GMO laden commercial pig chow. It's also about 40% more digestible than the dry grains, so the pigs actually access more of the nutritive value that you're buying. To further manage our costs we produce our own algae and charcoal.
 
Our pigs are also known as "Head Pigs" and "Lard Pigs". Research cooking with lard because just as duck eggs are the absolute bomb for baking, lard is everything that Crisco was trying to be, plus it's infinitely healthier. The back fat and trimmings from our pigs make fabulously moisturizing soap, but the leaf lard from next to the liver is the absolute best for cooking. Coupled with raw milk butter and grass fed beef tallow, I can't think of any other fats you'll ever need, and none of it is hydrolized.

Great book for homestead livestock butchering:

https://www.amazon.com/Butchering-Poultry-Rabbit-Lamb-Goat/dp/1612121829/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478912672&sr=1-1&keywords=butchering

Think about sourcing non-lead bullets before the kill if you're planning on the brain shot. Also take a look at exactly where to place it. Never liked the idea of contaminating some of the best meat on the pig with a spray of gasified lead, but that's just me. Also, using a large pot to boil water and then soak towels in the boiling water and drape over the pig to loosen the hair for scarping is actually pretty simple if you don't have a scald tank available. You can skin the pig, but leaving the skin on produces a better finished product. The old Vol. One I think it was, Foxfire book had a good section on hog killin' as well. Many hands make the work light, but planning and good preparation also helps. Lots of small and medium knives and someone to keep sharpening them is a huge help.

Pigs provide so many culinary possibilities it's really hard to choose one over the other, but the Polynesian buried pig wrapped in banana leaves is epic. Spoiled Americans that we are we can get anything from Amazon, and that includes whole banana leaves in Ames, Iowa. Another good first timer route is slow cook the whole hog in a covered cooker above ground. Done as a whole you eat what ya want and vac bag the rest for folks to take home and freeze.

Recipe-wise fresh, uncured ham steaks are a favorite of mine, along with jowl meat bacon, and jalapeno/cheddar/salami. The possibilities are endless.