67% of USA Covered in Snow

As of January 1, 2013, we have more snow on the ground in the U.S then in the past 10 years!

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And records only go back 10 years calculating the percentages.
January 1 2013: 67%
January 1 2012: 20%
January 1 2011: 50%
January 1 2010: 61%
January 1 2009: 39%
January 1 2008: 47%
January 1 2007: 43%
January 1 2006: 29%
January 1 2005: 25%
January 1 2004: 29%

More interestingly, while there were only a few local spots below normal for the month of December, most of the nation was ABOVE normal. Snow cover went from 13% on Dec 1 to 66% of the U.S covered with snow on Jan 1.

Now where is the food growing?

Yup, I'm in that 67% in Eastern Washington, BUT last summer started a solid greenhouse, not finished, but it will enable what has been impossible for the last few years, to actually grow many veggies in the soil inside the greenhouse.

EMP Attack Could Wreck Havoc

'Most Americans do not know this, but a single EMP attack could potentially wipe out most of the electronics in the United States and instantly send this nation back to the 1800s. If a nuclear bomb was exploded high enough in the atmosphere over the middle part of the country, the electromagnetic pulse would fry electronic devices from coast to coast.

The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone calls and virtually all commerce across the entire country is brought to a complete stop. A nation that does not know how to live without technology would be almost entirely stripped of it at that point.

Yes, this could really happen. An EMP attack is America's "Achilles heel", and everyone around the world knows it. It is only a matter of time before someone uses an EMP weapon against us, and at this point we are pretty much completely unprepared.'

NOTE: Life after an EMP attack would roll by time to that of our ancestors, without electronics, no transportation as we know it, food deliveries etc. For those living artificial lives in cities it will be devastating. For those of us living rural lives, things will continue as they have. Most people grow much of their own food and if you don't have it your neighbor does. Many of us already ride horses, and our ancestors rode horses or wagons into town less than 100 years ago.

In many ways it would be a smaller, simpler and perhaps healthier world. At any rate, we won't get to pick and choose, those decisions will be made by the dominant deciders.

Greeks Returning To Living Off The Land As Born Again Farmers

"Here you can go a week without spending a single euro over here,” says a man who moved back to Crete two years ago to live in the village of his birth. “You get fresh food from your farm and if you need something extra, like olive oil for example, you can get it from a fellow farmer. You only need money to pay for your gas and bills,” he says.

He is not alone. For the first time in years, Amari Valley in the island’s Rethymno district has turned green again as fields have been cleared and put back to use as farms.

Recent data on farming in Greece show that the number of jobs in the sector has gone up by 38,000 between 2008 and 2010. This increase is in stark contrast to the grim statistics regarding rising unemployment across most other sectors.

However, a closer examination of the data shows that these born-again farmers are for the most part pensioners trying to make some extra money -- particularly by cutting down on their cost of living. Between 22 and 32 percent of those who have taken up farming in the past couple of years are aged between 45 and 64 years old. Some 70 percent of the latecomers in the Epirus region in northern Greece are over 65.

Urban Chickens

Permaculture is a system where everything works in harmony and little is wasted. In the age of “fast, cheap, and easy” and planned obsolescence, it's not surprising that sustainability would be a concept out-of-step with the way our society currently functions. Somewhere along the way, we've become a nation of consumers, not producers.

Thankfully, recent years have provided a counter-trend – a soaring demand for local and regional food and an attempt to rebuild America's food culture.

The idea of sustainability isn't one exclusive to rural areas...it's one that is taking hold in urban settings. Yards are being transformed into edible landscapes - raised beds offer up produce, a small greenhouse supplies cold tolerant crops for the winter, and plants are thrown onto a compost pile which will be added back into the garden to replenish the soil...and keeping chickens is one more step in that sustainability model.

NOTE: Chickens are wonderful, gentle, predictable birds who will improve your soil, fertilize it, remove insects, control flies AND give you delicious, deep yellow yoke eggs. They ask for little in return.

Want To Be An Earthineer?

Earthineer is a website. The most glib description might be "Facebook for farmers." It's an online site where gardeners, beekeepers, home brewers, small herdsmen, orchardists, alternative-energy technicians, and do-it-yourselfers can meet, swap information, read about each others' accomplishments, and eventually even set up trade networks. Dan Adams calls it "a social network for sustainable living."

Beginner or experienced, it doesn't matter. It's all about connecting with people who want to take care of themselves and their families. There's even an interactive equivalent of "Ask Jackie" — with multiple experts standing in the place of that one irreplaceable woman. Dan says, "I've always been fond of BHM's 'Ask Jackie' column. We could all use a mentor like her. Community Questions are like an 'Ask Jackie' question that is posted for the whole community to answer.

Earthineer will even help find the 'experts' for you. If you have a beekeeping question, for instance, Earthineer will email anyone who says they can answer beekeeping questions and direct them to your post."

Parts of the site are still in development, but might prove very handy once they're online. A trading feature is in the works, for example, which could help you sell your wares and find others to sell you (or barter for) what you don't produce for yourself.

Here's how it will work. You'll create seasonal lists of goods. Out of that list, you'll select items that you have to trade, then items you're looking for. For example, let's say that you have chickens and can trade eggs. You'd like to find someone who can provide cheese. Search for local trading groups within driving distance, join one (or several), and post your list there. People can then respond and — voila! — you have others to trade with.

Grow Garlic In Small Area

In less than an hour last fall, I tilled up a 4x8 foot garden bed and planted 250 seed cloves of Chesnok and Russian Red garlic. I've been doing it this way for several years, and am very satisfied with the yield, which gives us plenty of garlic for the table, as well as seed for the next year.

A few years ago I found a 4x8 foot piece of treated wood lattice. The holes are approximately four inches on center, which is excellent spacing for planting garlic and other crops, too. I till up a different spot in the garden each year, smooth it off, and lay the lattice flat.

I put one garlic clove in each hole and poke it into the ground (the pointy end goes up). Just poke them all in — don't spend a lot of time trying to cover them. After all the holes are filled, remove the lattice and put it away for next time. I keep it hanging on a couple of screws on the side of the garden shed.

Now cover the bed with about an inch or so of good compost and tamp it down, then mulch the whole bed with two or three inches of pine needles. The needles will settle over the winter, and the garlic comes up right through them in the spring. Pine needles will keep the weeds at bay for most of the summer. The only other maintenance comes during the summer, when I cut the scapes to ensure larger bulbs. (Scapes are the flower stalks that grow on hardneck garlic varieties.) Those scapes are good in stir fry, so don't toss them.

NOTE: Some type of garlic will be easy to grow in almost any area. In my area, the hardier ones that can withstand below zero temps do the best. Nothing could be easier. I get them in the ground at least a couple of weeks before major snow. Do nothing to them all winter or early spring.

After that they need to be keep damp, not wet.

If you're a garlic lover, this is a wonderful activity. Easy to grow, delicious. Not like the irradiated junk in super markets. There are some excellent garlic articles online.

Urban Vegetable Gardens

Putting lettuce on the table in Cuba during the summer is often a dream that can only come true by visiting urban vegetable gardens, the popular “organoponics,” a network of more than 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of land plus points of sale that supply tons of greens, fruits and herbs to consumers every year.

For several years urban agriculture has helped make up for the chronic lack of rural crops that has forced Cuba to depend on immense quantities of imported food.

“The national program of urban agriculture has had a lot of impact across the country, not only in guaranteeing the food supply, but also as a significant way to improve people’s agrarian, food and environmental culture,” the director of urban agriculture at the Institute of Basic Research in Tropical Agriculture, or Inivat, Nelso Companioni, said.

At present close to 80 percent of leaf vegetables in the Cuban diet are produced this way, which, according to its promoters, seeks the year-long “stabilizing” of some 56 varieties of crops now being grown organically without the use of chemical fertilizers.

But besides supplying fresh vegetables and widening the scope of culinary culture, the movement has spawned more than 1,000 small canned-food industries and has become a “large and secure” source of jobs that currently employs more than 380,000 people on the island, including more than 10,000 professionals, Companioni said.

This system, which also includes a suburban agricultural program, fits in perfectly with the reform plan being promoted by the government of Gen. Raul Castro with the aim of “modernizing” the island’s economic model.

The plan includes the use but not the ownership of idle lands as one of the chief projects for reviving the nation’s agriculture.

The authorities consider increasing food production in Cuba a matter of “national security,” because in recent years more than $1.5 billion have been spent on food imports, most of which could have been produced on the island.

In Havana, where more than 1,000 points of sale have been set up, consumers can also buy certain tropical fruits like guava, lemons, plantains and avocados, and even the more exotic apricots and passion fruit.


NOTE: This program expanded during the period of economic sanctions against Cuba. They turned a period of adversity into permanent abundance. All natural food, readily available, not imported. While the US and it's corporate industrial giants seek to limit availability to real food, in lieu of GMO garbage.

Potential Radiation Risk Video

Is radiation cloud from Japan’s damaged nuclear reactors eventually reaches the western United States, it could pose a threat to American crops and the people who eat them, nationally known neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock tells Newsmax.

He also says the radiation could pose a cancer risk, and explains steps to take to protect against the damaging effects of radiation exposure.

Farm Aid

The warning serves as a wake-up call to Americans to take back their land and begin growing more food on the local and regional scale. According to statistics from Farm Aid, a family farming advocacy group, roughly five million US farms have been lost since the 1930s, and about 330 farmers every week leave their land. If this trend continues, the situation will only worsen.

Factory farming operations have essentially replaced local farming throughout the country. And government policies like subsidization of genetically-modified (GM) crops only continues to drive small-scale farmers off their land and exacerbate the problem.

To learn more about how to support local farming and regain food independence, visit:

Poop Power?

According to the
San Francisco Chronicle, "American dogs and cats create 10 million tons of waste a year, and no one knows where it's going."

Will Brinton, a scientist in Mount Vernon, Maine, and one of the world's leading authorities on waste reduction and composting, was quoted as saying. "Most of our pets' poop either winds up in a landfill purgatory, where it's embalmed practically forever in plastic bags, or sits on the ground until the next rainstorm washes it into the sewer where it can drift on down to rivers and beaches."

And so San Francisco has become the first city in the country to consider turning Fido's droppings into methane, which can heat homes, cook meals and generate electricity. "Poop power? Yes, it's possible to produce electricity, natural gas and even fuel from Rover's poop and other waste material,"

By the way Happy Tails composts and considers it a valuable resource for pastures. Our compost temps far exceed 150 degrees which kills all pathogens.

Green Dog Cleaning Company of Portland, Oregon is an innovative, energetic new Pet Waste Professionals company that offers a variety of services at very reasonable prices that include scooping your poop and turning it into compost!

They were even the focus of an article in Oregon Live With dogs in the city, doesn't it make more sense to compost rather than to enshrine poop in plastic bags that are not biodegradable? Don't we need to become more creative with our disposal methods? We always wonder where "away" is when we talk about throwing "away.."

United States Dept of agricultural

National Resources Conservation Services releases Dog Waste Composting Guide The average dog can produce 274 pounds of waste each year. Composting dog waste is a simple and inexpensive method for disposing of dog waste that can enhance the environment. This guide will show you how. USDA Alaska Dog waste is a safe soil additive for revegetation and landscaping when composted properly.

What is Composting?

"Composting is the controlled breakdown or degradation of organic material into a product known as humus. Dog waste composting is a natural process that requires air, water, organic matter, microbes and a little human intervention."

"REMEMBER: It takes at least 10 dogs, preferably 20, to generate enough waste to maintain a bin.

A large pile (3 to 5 foot cube) is needed to provide insulation and keep temperatures high in the piles' center. For fewer dogs you can keep a separate compost bin for dog waste and add grass clippings or other nitrogen sources to increase the volume. Treat the finished compost as you would other composted dog manure."

Happy Tails uses 4 pallets to contain the material, we rarely have to cover it because it gets hot enough without a cover. No odor, no flies, no mice etc.

Best way to collect is to add a carbon source (sawdust, chopped straw, bedding) to the dog waste as you collect it and mix it after being placed into your bin. There won't be any composting until water is added. Choose your location and bin, gather your materials and never use those non disposable plastic bags again!

Recipe

For every two shovels full of dog waste, add one shovel full of sawdust or other carbon source and mix thoroughly after each addition.

Add water in small amounts until the compost mixture is as moist as a wrung out sponge. Continue adding ingredients until the compost is two to three feet deep.

Once a bin is full, do not continue adding fresh materials. You may be surprised how quickly the contents seems to shrink, we rarely fill our 4 x 4 area.

Place a cover on the compost mixture. Microbes will begin breaking down the organic materials. As the microbes go to work, they release heat and increase the temperature of the compost pile.

Mature compost has a dark rich earthy color, it's moist, crumbly, and truly has a pleasant earthy odor. Dig in and use this valuable natural resource!