JW JW

Joel Hollingsworth wrote:
I have an old copy of the Tassajara bread book, which is very good about giving you the information you need to improvise, rather than setting down fixed recipes.

I've had good luck with flatbread made with mung bean or garbanzo bean flour, mixed in varying proportions with whole wheat. I have also mixed rolled oats into long-rise sourdough bread, which worked very well.

The general rule is that harder wheat can make up for a greater proportion of substitution: bread flour plus a certain proportion of amaranth will knead and rise about like all-purpose flour, and semolina would need more amaranth for the mix to feel the same.

HTH

Hmmm... they sell that here... Maybe I'll splurge. 

This thread is very interesting.

paul wheaton wrote:
Pasture is usually grasses and dozens (hundreds) of species of other plants.  Sometimes called "weeds".

Intercropping doesn't go quite far enough.  And crop rotation is definitely not polyculture.

So... All grass fed beef is polyculture by the nature of pasture? Is that what you are saying?

There's probably somewhere I can read specifics, can you point me in the right direction for that?

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:
It depends on what kind of cedar they are -- different trees are called 'cedar' in different parts of the country.  In the Pacific Northwest, we have Red Cedar and Alaska Yellow Cedar, which are both slow-growing valuable timber trees, highly desirable.  I don't think that's what you have, though!  Can give no advice on yours, except to see if they are useful for anything you want to use them for, and then go from there.

Kathleen

We have exactly two ceder trees in our woodlot and we cherish them (one at least, the other one... I don't know if it's gonna make it. We hope in time we can cultivate more, it's a good habitat for them, seems like there was a lot more but got logged 40+ years ago and never recovered. We'll have to thin some lodgepole and grand fir to give young ceders any chance at all...

nedwina wrote:
If the cinnamon method doesn't pan out, 4 oz of hydrogen peroxide to 1 gallon of water does the trick.  Mix up a batch & use it every time you water- it won't harm the plants. 

I also grind up those skeeter dunks (which has the right kind of Bt) and throw about a tablespoon in a gallon of water & use that if the infestation is mild.  The bits will stick to the sides, but that's ok- if it dries out, fresh water will reactivate the Bt.  I don't bother cleaning out the gallon containers, I just add more periodically & give it a good shake.

I just got over a tremendous infestation and had to bump up the H2O2 to 6 oz/gallon.  From "play sand" that I was storing beets in.  Unbelievable amounts of fungus gnats.  Totally gross.  But after dumping the crocks & treating the plants for a few weeks, they're all gone now.

http://www.umass.edu/umext/floriculture/fact_sheets/pest_management/fungnat.html

I think the hubby's done that some, but not every time he waters, for fear of hurting the plants, I'll let him know it's safe.

paul wheaton wrote:
Saywhat?!!!

You are able to get polyculture food at your grocery store?  This is the first I have ever heard of any grocery store carrying any polyculture food other than grass fed beef. 

Tell me how it is labeled.

I'm a little confused. I've done some reading on polyculture and it seems to me that employing crop rotation and/or intercropping and/or multiple cropping are the ways polyculture is achieved with regard to plant crops. Is this true or is it more complicated than that? I would say most farmers I know (the growers that sell to us at the Co-op and at the markets in town) use crop rotation, but I don't know many that use intercropping or multiple cropping, are the last two necessary to be called polyculture? 

What is necessary for calling grass-fed beef polyculture? I'm sure it's not any cattle raised on grass, but what is it specifically?

(those Polyface farm youtube videos are quite long so I didn't watch them yet, maybe it says this information in there?)

charles johnson "carbonout" wrote:
speaking of rawfood i was reading about rats who ate only raw produce with  there calories cut in half 
it  gave them an average life span 25% higher than control rat

side note: i have read similar studies on sleep, and temperature,

translation    Cold ,Tired, And Hungry  makes you live forever

Calorie restriction, apparently, is incredibly effective in animal tests at increasing life-spans. I'm not sure a life of constant hunger is all that worth living, but I am an American and we aren't really trained to put up with that sort of thing. 

Oh, and very much exercise will decrease life-span. It's all very strange.

marina phillips wrote:
I must admit I'm curious about what a vegan would would expect after posting in a thread titled "bacon and cholesterol" and reading all the "pro-meat" posts.  Jess sayin! 

I have always had a hard time keeping my mouth (or fingers, as the case may be) shut. I don't usually say anything to folks about their food choices, whatever they happen to be, but if vegetarianism gets brought up... I try not to, I really do, but I usually respond. Not just on the internet, in real life too, I'm a loudmouth.  ops:

I just responded because I hear the whole "the vegetarians I've known seem to be unhealthy..." a lot, and honestly, I do resent it. I've known people who are looking right at me saying they've only known pale sickly weak vegans, and it's so insulting! I'm a thin woman, always have been, but I spend nearly every day lifting fifty lb boxes. I am strong! I ride my bike and walk everywhere, I am fit and healthy, and I feel like when people say they don't know healthy vegans I want to be an example for that. I've only known healthy vegans. It's just who we are deciding to remember.

I did say that it was my fault for posting as a vegan on a pro-meat site, but still, I felt really bad like I was being picked on.

There is certainly room for improvement in my foods, I recognize that. That's why I'm working to change it and live in a way that I feel good about, but that would not be by using animal products, because I could never feel good about that. 

"Jess sayin!"  I should use that.

We once planted some incredibly old black beans, like ten year old commodity beans from the government, and they they did very well.

Then we decided we needed to eat our stores of food more regularly.   

Scott Reil wrote:
We have had no reports of ill effect to plants and we have been doling this cure out for a while to all sorts of plant owners. We've found just a dusting to be an effective curative to both the algal and insect symbiots.

While cinnamon is technically a volatile oil, you will not need anywhere near a plant lethal dosing to be effective...

Scott

Great, thanks. It's smelling very exotic lately, and hopefully we'll see improvement. We have so many plants, hopefully the gnats don't get in them all.