Good Food is Everybody's Business
Written by well-known plant breeder and organic seed expert John Navazio, The Organic Seed Grower is the most up-to-date and useful guide to best practices in this exciting and important field. (Ed. Note: And – best of all – John is an all ’round really nice guy!)
Without organic seed, we won’t have organic vegetables; it’s as simple as that. And because the “Big Seed” companies like Monsanto and Syngenta are buying up seed producers – AND organic seed producers – we will see fewer and fewer heirloom, locally developed, and “open pollinated” organic seeds for growers and gardeners.
Dave Christensen has spent 40 years rescuing this corn from extinction and breeding it to find or create the hardiest, most nutritious varieties. Someday, he hopes, it could feed millions. He grows multicolored heirloom corn on 12 different plots scattered across Montana. Mainly dried and ground, the kernels are highly nutritious and chock-full of antioxidants.
A grassroots campaign has been launched in Washington State for the adoption of a labeling law for genetically engineered foods (a.k.a. GMO or transgenic foods). The grassroots initiative seeks support for I-522, which would mandate labeling of transgenic crops or foods containing GMOs. You can read the full text of the proposed initiative below this commentary. The I-522 movement is led by a diverse group of consumer advocates, organic farmers, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and has recruited a wide variety of endorsements from NGOs, municipalities, faith-based groups, farmers and farmer associations, seed savers and exchange groups, plant breeders, and well-known and respected elected officials.
Lambing was going very well, and by March 20, Bluebird produced twins, and as usual they were both ewe lambs! A few days later, her daughter, #146, who had quints the previous year, delivered a set of quadruplets: 3 ewes, and 1 ram. Another thrill! Two days later her twin, #145, delivered twin ewe lambs. No wonder our ewe flock was growing by leaps and bounds!
We had begun calling these two ewes “Big Mumbo,” (#146), and “Big Jumbo,” (#145), they were both good sized ewes, capable of carrying a lot of lambs! I made sure I gave “Big Mumbo” extra rations, and she raised all four lambs herself and did a good job of it!
We came through the lambing with no lambs lost, the second time for that joyful event,
