The Kitchen Sink #7
A Publication of the Whole Farm Co-operative
Editor, Author and Plumber; Tim King
Big Farm Tour Members and staff of Hampden Park, Seward, and Wedge Coops and their familiesand friends are invited to tour WFC member farms on Saturday, August 18th.The tour, organized by environmental consultant and long time WFC customerand friend John Vickery, will visit Herman and Mary Ann Hendrickson's vegetableoperation, Marty and Georgianne Primus' poultry, hog, and dairy farm, DaveJacobson's amazing prairie wetland restorations and hog farm, and Ron Wienhold'sprivate arboretum and Japanese gardens along the Sauk River. You'll findthe Primus and Hendrickson farms profiled on the WFC web site at wholefarmcoop.com. The tour starts from Sauk Center at 10 a.m. You can make the two hour drivefrom the Twin Cities on Saturday or you can stay at the historic PalmerHouse Inn, the quaint Gopher Prairie Motel, or the perfectly ordinary AmericInnin Sauk Center Friday night. Picnic lunch on Saturday will be a potluckwith chicken provided by WFC farmers. If you'd like to go on the tour andmeet some tremendously innovative land stewards - who happen to be providingfood to WFC customers - check with the tour coordinators at the co-ops.At Hampden Park you can email Lisa MacDonald at gemydig@hotmail.comor visit Melissa Lindholm at the store. At the Wedge Community Co-op checkwith Christine Gomez in the meat department, 871 3993 or email her at chris@wedgecoop.com.At Seward Communtiy Co-op talk to Katy in groceries or email her at sewardcoop@aol.com,(612) 338-2465. There will be a charge for the tour. That's currently beingworked out and the contact people at the co-ops can give you full informationregarding that as well as rendezvous sites in Sauk Center. WFC productswill be for sale at one of the farm stops. Thanks to John Vickery, LisaMacDonald, Christine Gomez, and everybody else who has organized the tour. Note: Some WFC products are availableat all three of the participating co-ops. |
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Bt and Monarchs Update As farmers began planting the 2001 corn crop information on the resultsof last seasons studies on bt corn and its effect on monarch butterfliesis trickling in. Although none of the studies have been published in scientificjournals yet scientists are willing to discuss the general outline of theirfindings. One study, conducted by University of Minnesota Professor ofEntomology Dr. Karen Oberhauser and U of M graduate student Michelle Prysby,lays to rest the idea that not many monarch eggs get laid in corn fields.Oberhauser and Prysby found that a large portion of the monarchs rearedin corn country come from corn fields. Another study found, according toOberhauser, that pollen from the most commonly used by corn varieties,Bt11 and Mon810, may not be lethal to monarch larvae at levels commonlyfound in corn fields. Oberhauser, who has been studying monarchs for sixteenyears, believes that the result of these two studies suggest that bt cornmay pose environmental risks to monarch butterflies but that there probablyhas not been any significant damage done to monarch populations by thegenetically modified corn so far. "My take is -- we're not 100 per centsure - that the licensing decisions for bt corn were made prematurely,"she says. "They were based on the argument that the monarch larvae weren'tgoing to be exposed to the pollen. Our findings were clearly there werea lot of monarchs in the field during the entire season. But, in the end,there may not be a big impact because Bt11 and Mon810 are better at killingcorn borers than they are at killing monarchs." Monarch researchers aren't100 percent sure because studies of the effects of bt corn pollen on monarchsmay not have used the same method of presenting the pollen to the larva.An Iowa study, done during the 1999 growing season, showed bt corn pollendid kill monarch larva. "Hansen and O'Brickey (the Iowa researchers) carefullymeasured the amount of pollen and they also put the larvae into the field,"Oberhauser said. "They found in a lab study where they were putting pollenonto the leaves that monarch larvae were killed when they consumed levelsof pollen that were found in the field." But the study conducted last summerdiscover that Bt11 and Mon810 pollen at field level quantities weren'tlethal. "It's possible the Iowa study had some other plant tissue mixedwith the pollen," she says. "The preparation of the pollen may have beendifferent." The issue of different pollen preparation approaches is buggingresults that Oberhauser has had done in her University of Minnesota laboratoryalso. Some monarch larvae she and her students fed Bt11 and Mon810 pollendidn't die. But the researchers did observe that those larvae developedmore slowly. When the larvae reached the adult stage the butterflies thathad fed on bt corn pollen ended up being smaller than adults from larvaethat hadn't eaten bt corn pollen. "That didn't happen in some other labs,"Oberhauser said. "The difference might have been in the way the pollenwas prepared. We don't know yet." Oberhauser and Prysby had been researchingmonarch larval ecology and abundance prior to the summer of 2000. Theirfield work last summer didn't set out to establish whether or not bt cornpollen was harmful to monarch larvae, however. They simply wanted to seeif monarch larvae were in corn fields when corn plants released pollen. "All the initial licensing information that the EPA and the USDA used saidthere wouldn't be monarchs in the field when corn pollen was being shedbecause the females would not find the milk weed (to lay their eggs on)in the field when the corn canopy closed," Oberhauser said. What they discoveredwas that the females not only had no problem finding the milk weed plantsunder the corn canopy but that there were as many, or more, larvae on milkweed in corn fields as there were in milk weed in ditches, CRP fields,and other non-corn land. As a result, they estimate that more monarchsare raised in corn fields in the corn belt than in any other type of land.That surprised the two researchers. Even if bt pollen from the most commonlyraised bt corn plants ultimately is shown to cause no significant harmto monarch larvae Oberhauser thinks that the discovery that midwesterncorn fields are major monarch nurseries should send a message to farmers,environmentalists, and agricultural policy makers. "We tend not to thinkof agricultural land as habitat for other organisms," she says. "But nowdays so much of the landscape is covered by corn and soybeans but if thatland is managed in the right way it can produce other things. It's possiblefor human use and other uses to over lap. We need to look at how to maximizebiological diversity while we're producing food for humans." (Originallypublished in The Land - www.the-land.com) NOTE: Dr. Karen Oberhauser isa long standing WFC customer. Michele Prysby was the keynote speaker atthe WFC annual meeting in March. end |
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Dave who? Dave Verdoorn has been working with Whole Farm Cooperative since it wasthree or four months old. In fact, he was our first employee. Somewherealong the line Dave was given the title of Operations Manager. What inthe world does an Operations Manager do at a farmer owned cooperative? Dave says the most important thing he does is fill customer orders. Hedoes that with the assistance of Sue ........ But he says the thing he'senjoyed the most was when the cooperative moved into it's present basementlocation. "It was really fun building the freezer," Dave remembers. Thefreezer he built, with assistance from our members, was from panels RoyPerish bought from a grocery store that went out of business. It's bigenough to park three or four pick-up trucks in. Dave's the kind of guythat can build a huge freezer and then turn around and do the book keepingon the co-op's new automated invoicing and book keeping system. "When Istarted I didn't know anything about computers," Dave said. Now days hewhizzes around the accounting and business software like a 16 year oldcyber whizz kid. "I'm always learning new things about the program," hesays. Besides doing bookkeeping, filling orders, and building freezersDave is responsible for maintaining inventory on hundreds of differentproducts and working with the butcher to get the cuts of meat right. "Workingwith the butcher has been challenging," he says. "Figuring out what cutsto sell and how to get the nitrates and MSG out of the meats and get thelabels adjusted has taken a lot of effort." In his spare time Dave doestruck repairs and maintenance in the store. Before working for Whole FarmCooperative he owned a farm, an hotel, and a dry cleaning business. "Ireally appreciate that we're able to sell locally grown chemical and anti-bioticfree products to our customers," Dave said. |
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Dust Bowl, USA, a Book Review Dust Bowl, USA explores the idea of how the stories we tell ourselves sowe can make sense of the world in turn effect who we are. The earth usedto be flat. That, at least, is what our ancestors told themselves. Andthey organized much of their lives, from their theology to their commerce,around their belief in a flat earth. Now days we live in modern times andour lives revolve around a round earth belief. Flat earth people were differentcreatures than round earth people. But both groups of people were strugglingto create stories to help themselves comprehend the world. Brad D. Lookingbill,an assistant professor of history at Columbia College in Missouri and authorof Dust Bowl, USA: Depression America and the Ecological Imagination, examinesthe web of stories our ancestors told themselves as they tried to cometo grips with the decade long drought experienced by the Great Plains statesduring the 1930s. Listen to these two different threads of the larger story- Lookingbill calls the big Dust Bowl story a metanarrative - that theauthor's research unearthed. "I saw not a solitary thing but bare earth,and a few lonely, empty farmhouses . . . There was not a tree, or a bladeof grass, or a dog or a cow, or a human being - nothing whatever, nothingat all but gray raw earth and a few farm houses and barns, sticking upfrom a dark gray sea like white cattle skeletons on the desert," wrotejournalist Ernie Pyle on his trip through the Dakotas and Kansas in thesummer of 1936. Eugene A. Howe, editor of the Amarillo Globe of Texas,wrote a column, called the Tactless Texan, under the pen name Kernal ErasmusR. Tack. Kernal Tack liked to say that the dust storms that were killingpeople from dust pneumonia were high in vitamin K and thus good for folk. "Howe's parodies repeated other homespun anecdotes, including one abouta man discovering a cowboy hat on a sand dune. Under the hat appeared acowboy's head. The cowboy appeared to be doing fine, although he quippedthat he was on horseback." Pyle's story, that he took back to his urbaneastern readers, was that an uninhabitable desert had been wrought on theGreat Plains. Many of the conclusions from stories told by Pyle, and hiscolleagues in the press and the arts, either cast the inhabitants of theDust Bowl as fools or victims to be pitied. Kernal Erasmus R. Tack's storysuggested to his readers that things might be bad but that a Texan laughedin the face of a dust storm and could darn well take care of himself. Nopity required here, pardner! We got things under control. Did the people inPyle's stories and Tack's Texan's experience the same phenomena, one wonders? You'd think humans could agree on something as straight forward as theDust Bowl. They couldn't. At first they couldn't even agree on a name forthe thing. Pyle called it a drought bowl and others called the area theSeared Lands. Brad Lookingbill turned a lot of stones over to find storiesabout how Americans - in less than 100 years - went from calling the GreatPlains first the Great American Desert, then the World's Bread Basket,then the Dust Bowl, and back to the bread basket notion. He looked at newspapers,photographs, novels by John Steinbeck and Fredrick Manfred, Ole Rolvaag,paintings, preachers sermons, films, poems, personal letters, and otherartifacts of the time. His well organized chapters move the reader throughstories about the settlement of the area to the Dust Bowl disaster itselfand the to stories about how the nation convinced itself that governmentbureaucrats and scientific management could fix the problem. On at leastone occasion he captures a sense of the absolute terror that Great Plainsresidents must have felt as year after year they went rainless and sawthe black towering blizzards rise up from the fields to smother everything.And he captures how many of those frightened and confused people turnedto Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the solutions of the New Deal: "No crackedearth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers are a permanentmatch for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wivesand children, who have carried on through desperate days and inspire uswith their self reliance, their tenacity, and their courage," Rooseveltsaid from his fire side broadcast on September 6, 1936. Brad Lookingbillunderstands the need humans have to make stories to interpret the worldaround them. And Dust Bowl, USA is a fine discussion of how our nearlyoverwhelmed country men of the 1930s struggled to craft stories so as tocome to grips with the decade's environmental and economic disaster. But,on occasion, the reader may have to have tenacity like FDR's farmers asthey struggle through Lookingbill's dense thickets of academic prose. Allin all, however, Lookingbill's excellent and well organized research, hiswell executed ideas, along with the books interesting photographs and extensivelist of suggested readings make it well worth reading. (Originally publishedin The Land - www.the-land.com) end |
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Lamb Enchilada Recipe 1 pound ground lamb 1 cup cottage cheese 1/2 cup chopped ripe olives 3 cloves garlic Sauce: Brown ground lamb and drain. Combinewith cottage cheese, olives, and garlic powder. Place about one third cupfilling down the center of each tortilla and roll up. Place seam side downin a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Saut*' onion, green pepper, and garlic inoil until tender. Stir in tomato sauce, chili powder, chilies, cumin andbring to a boil. Pour over tortillas and bake for twenty minutes at 350degrees. Top with cheese and return to the oven for another ten minutes.Remove and garnish with chopped cilantro and parsley. |
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Fresh Pork Project/good dealon roasts Some customers may have noticed WFC's pork roast sale. We've been selling- and will continue to sell - pork roasts for $1.98 per pound. We've gota lot of pork roasts because three or four months ago we went into thebusiness of delivering fresh pork to Chet's Taverna restaurant in Minneapolisand to Seward Community Cooperative. Seward has also been purchasing alot of our frozen products such as smoked bratwurst. Selling fresh porkhas increased the cooperative's sales but it's created challenges as well.Both Seward and Chet's Taverna want somewhat specialized cuts. On a weeklybasis they order just short of one and a quarter pig. Since pigs come fromthe farm in complete units folks at WFC have been left scratching thereheads about what to do with the left overs after the weekly slaughter. "Adjusting the inventory is kind of a juggling act and we're kind of runningout of options," Dave Verdoorn, WFC's inventory juggler, says. Some ofthe juggling acts have worked. Like the pork roast sale. Customers lovedit. But the sale on fresh ham slices and ham steak - (for $1.98/lb) hasbeen a real sleeper. "We put on some new cuts like country style ribs whichyou can take from any part of the pig," Dave says, "But we've got plentyof those in inventory now. What we need is to increase our fresh pork sales." Does anybody know a restaurant or store that wants high quality pork frompigs who just said no to drugs? If you do contact Kristin Wilson at: whlefarm@rea-alp.com |
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Energy and Agriculture Fair-- September 15th On September 15th the Long Prairie River Stewardship Project will be hostingthe first ever Windy River Renewable Energy and Agriculture Fair alongthe banks of the Long Prairie River in Long Prairie, Minnesota. The fairwill be held at Lion's Westside Park and will run from 11:00 a.m. to 6p.m. We'll have wind and solar electric displays, a bicycle petting zoo- including a solar bike, a micro saw mill for sustainable forestry, andhopefully an experimental electric car. There will be a farmer's market,food from Whole Farm Cooperative, sustainable and low energy building constructiondisplays, and much more. One of the focal points of the fair will be aconcert by folk musician Charlie Maguire. Maguire will be playing two setsduring the afternoon. Following the Windy River Fair and starting aroundsix p.m. on September 15th is Todd County's gala Mexican Independence DayFiesta. The mariachi music is superb, the flamenco dancing incredible,some of the best Mexican cooks in the Midwest prepare the feast, and theCorona is crisp and cold. Last year this event was so big a senior representativefrom the US State department came. You can get your tickets through us.But hurry. They go fast. More info: Contact Tim King, head plumber andNuez Grande at: timking7@rea-alp.com |
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September Critter WatchingConferencescheduled for St. Paul Watchable Wildlife Inc, along with the Minnesota Office of Tourism andthe Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, is hosting the WatchableWildlife Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, September 14 - 17, 2001. Thetheme of the Conference, "A Vision for Wildlife Viewing" will focus ondeveloping a successful wildlife watching program for communities, (bothurban and rural) and for tourism. How? Hands on presentations and problemsolving will focus on the fictional community of Grackle Junction, a medium-sizedcommunity in middle America with a declining rural economic base and anaging population. Conference attendees will choose one of three learningtracks: * Natural Resource Conservation and Management; * Wildlife TourismDevelopment and Management; or * Site Development and Management. The Conferencewill open with the presentation of a wildlife viewing site (that overlooksthe Mississippi River) to the City of St. Paul. The site is being developedwith Watchable Wildlife Inc., Wildlife Forever and the City of St. Paulas a permanent example of the value and importance of wildlife viewing.On Sunday, September 16, field trips will be offered; participants canchoose from a wide-range of Minnesota activities. This conference is achance to evaluate the practices and presentation necessary to providea positive experience for both people and wildlife. For more information,please call the Minnesota Office of Tourism at 800-657-3637 or 651-297-2333.Or see their website: http://www.wildlife2001.com/about.htm |