Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally

Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally -- NY Times

This article was in the NY Times today and discuss those devoted to eating local products, called "locavores" . The article also mentions several new books coming out including Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle".

FDA Was Aware of Dangers to Food

Today's Washington Post has a fairly worrisome article which states that the FDA knew of numerous food related problems including the latest ecoli outbreaks for years, and simply did nothing about it.
They don't have the staff or resources to really enforce anything related to food safety. Read it and worry. Make your best efforts to source your food locally to avoid this contamination which is now pretty much unavoidable in the industrialized food processing system.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/22/AR2007042201551.html?hpid=topnews

Daisy's New Little Sister, Zoey

Zoey is a new addition to the farm as of yesterday. We got her from the shelter in Morgantown, WV. I think we drove though every climatic condition on our trip there yesterday: snow,sleet, rain, fog, sun... you name it. She was apparently just too much energy for her senior woman owner and she was surrendered to the shelter. The owner was a widow and her son thought a pet might be good company for her. But it was likely a case of just too much energy in too little space. Daisy took to her right away and will look after her. We believe Zoey is a pure bred border collie, a great country dog. Although she came with no papers. Not that it matters to us. She seems to really like the farm, she'll have the room to roam that she needs, and she'll have plenty or work to do. She just 11 months old but her genetics is apparent as she was very anxious to round up the lambs.

View of the Farm

I was thinking this morning that many of the blog readers and some of our customers have not actually ever seen the farm, or perhaps may have not even been to West Virginia. The other day Ruth snapped this photo of the farm from the front road. You can see the house, garage, shop and barns. You can see that the area is a very nice pastoral view of basically woods and fields. At this time things have just started to get green again. Just behind the small grove of locust trees you can just make out our bee hives. In a few weeks when the trees all have leaves on them, it will be difficult to see the house from the main road. Our pasture begins at the fence line in the lower middle of the picture. Just off the frame to the left are the three churches of Three Churches, WV, and thus our farm name, Church View Farm. We'll try to get a photo of that view for the blog also. But for now, we'll say welcome to West Virginia by way of this photo of the farmstead.

Easter Eggs

Just a reminder that we have green eggs from our Easter Egg chickens, the Aracaunas. These are green but can also be light tan or even pick. So you don't even have to color the eggs for your Easter egg decoration. Just let us know if you need some. Happy Easter prep!

Bush Cherries

Its the start of cherry blossom season! Here are a few photos of our bush cherries. These are small bush type cherry trees originating from Asia. For example, one of the varieties is called Nanking. The famous cherry trees in Washington DC are of course Japanese. The ornamental cherries bloom first. Our sweet cherry full sized trees have not yet blossomed nor have the local wild cherry trees. The bush cherries seem to bloom just slightly later than the pure ornamental cherries, about the same time as forsythia. So they a good early spring sight. The bush cherries are a slightly tart cherry but they are loaded with Vitamin C. The honey bees are of course enjoying these blossoms.