That is a question I hear often, it was great to come across a web page that explains it well…. so now you can find about about what the standards for ‘organic’, sustainable, and other categories on the food that you might find in the market.
How often have you ever heard people asking “Why did God create ticks”? Now a daring and bold writer has gone out into the world asking this retorical question to some of the country’s leading scientists. And she put it into an article, go to ‘The Life Story of a Tick’ by Constance Casey for the inside scoop. You will likely find out a lot of little tidbits of tick info.
Organic farming is difficult to do on a huge basis. Part of the tenet of organics is the pull away from a monoculture environment wherein all the plants in a field, on a farm are of one variety or species. With diversification on a small organic farm, there is more interaction between the groups of plants, more rotation that might be practiced, and the movement from host to refuge plant for the good and bad bugs. This overall can have a very healthy effect on the plants and help to keep pest populations within manageable limits without the farmer having to resort to ‘control’ methods.
Part of the problem with the modern organics movement is the plethora of large farms now signing on as ‘organic’ and trying to revert to the organic production of their grandparents. Unfortunately, organics is more difficult on a large scale, and these folks who are coming in often seem to be chasing the organic dollar rather than entering into agreements for organic production based upon philosophical reasons.
Just recently this has been brought into the forefront due to a large cattle operation that is accused of violating organic standards and falsifying records. You can read the entire article at ‘USDA’s Organic Factory Farming Scandal Continues to Unravel’.
is one of the pests that causes us some problems in our cactus plantings. The adults eat the tops of the leaves, leaving holes here and there. I suspect that they also lay eggs in the plants and this causes the entire plant to die.
I looked at a number of websites that describe this insect pest, here are some of the best….
Bug facts site has a great article on this pest.
OK State University has a short articlethat also shows the insect in its larval stage where it would be described as a white worm or grub. This is the stage where they enter into plants near the ground, and tunneling through cause damage and rot to follow usually killing the entire plant.
The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service has among the best articles on this little critter.
Yeah, they are a pest alright. And since we are organic, about the only thing we can do is put out sticky traps of yellow. But that would only be a small percentage gain. So we’ve just suffered through it, they are a constant headache, but cause only a small percentage of damage, still, you want all the leaves to be beautiful, but such is never to be. We live in a world in which nearly half the harvest is lost to insects, diseases, animals, mismanagement, theft and confiscation. I guess I’m lucky that all we get is the occasional deer, gopher, ant, scale and cucumber beetle.
This is from the newsletter I sent out this morning….
Our cactus is one of those plants that puts out growth spurts depending on the weather and seasons.
At this time, we have more growth coming off the plants than what sales can keep up with. This is when we start reaching out to restaurants and markets to sell our excess leaves.
Of course, anyone who wants to buy larger lot sizes should be getting a substantial discount on the prices.
So we now offer our Commercial Grade Nopalea grande cactus at a special price for those who need the boxes big and heavy.
Thirty five pound boxes of cactus for forty five dollars. And you pay the UPS shipping costs. You can go to http://www.rivenrock.com/bulknopal.htm to see the page with the details.
This is a very substantial discount, and one we are sure most bulk buyers will be happy to get.
We offer you the opportunity to take advantage of this special offer… but it will not last long. As I’d mentioned before, this offer is based upon the growth patterns of the plants, and when they stop this current flush of growth, we will get caught up with the cycle of output/demand, and take this offer off the table to await the next flush of growth.
This is what I find so good about this newsletter, I am able to notify buyers and potential buyers of the availability, and help them to take advantage of the growth spurts the cactus put out…. using this tool, I am able to more effectively keep up with the growth of the cactus, and the plants are happy because the demand will more easily meet their output.
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Also, for those of you who don’t really know… we are big on the concept of people knowing where their food was grown and the growing practices of the grower. This is somewhat possible to do in a Farmer’s Market setting, or perhaps even through your local co-op that might post notices detailing who grew the particular sustenance you seek. But what of foods bought over the Internet and sent thousands of miles away through the mail? We want you to know who we are, and what we think.. to that end we offer you a glimpse into our lives through our blog at http://www.nopalcactusblog.com/ . This way you can get an idea of the people who grow your cactus, and what our soils are like, our cultural practices, and the overall look of our countryside here on California’s Crown jewel, the Central Coast.
We live in a special spot, and we like to show off our home, do pop in and take a look.
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If you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter to be notified when we have special buys, the link is at our main cactus sales website at www.rivenrock.com, or from the link below…
We’ll not be sending out mails to you all the time, this newsletter is just for an occasional ‘heads up’ when there are availability issues, or the occasional flushes of growth that tempt us to pass on savings to our customers who wish to take advantage of the temporary overabundance of cactus leaves.
Expect an e-mail newsletter perhaps every week or two in the spring and summer, less often in the winter.
A green ratsnake
Beehives near Avila Beach California…
Originally posted in Oct 2004We have a lot of brush and poison oak growing around the property. Every year we expand just a bit, adding a new set of terraces, or clearing some ground. Often I just knock the brush back a bit here and there, to give more fire protection and reduce the heavy brush in areas. This ‘mottling’ effect also has the good consequence of giving the wildlife some more open ground. Wildlife needs the mixture of open ground for grass, and the brush for cover and concealment. Well, I do a fair amount of brush clearing each year. Some years I try to extend zone three and four out another twenty feet or so. I kind of like weed whacking. Hour after hour spent with my whirling motor, cutting grass and light brush, walking along with my high rubber boots, the rain slicker on over me, the green weeds slashing their juices all over me as I wander through the hills listening to music on my ear protector/speakers headset.I was on the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) list of approved substances for Organic Farming, and saw that there are now several brands of herbicides that are approved for use organically. They are applied in the same way as Roundup, a liquid mixed with water and sprayed onto the leaves. They promise to achieve a good kill while not harming the environment and being made from non-synthetic sources. I must admit, it seems a labor saver to just spray the brush rather than pulling it up by the roots, like I often do. The brush would still have to be cleared in coming months, but it is easy to trample dead brush down, if this is done for a few years in a row the hillside would be pretty clear.There is also a type of pre-emergent herbicide that is made from corn gluten. This material has some natural property that inhibits germination of seeds. It must be applied yearly before the rainy season here. It has the added benefit of being 10% nitrogen. So it would be an ideal fertilizer for us. Nitrogen is about the only major nutrient we tend to be a bit low on. So this material would help us in the cactus plantings and the terraces. We could broadcast it over the mulch in the entire hillside orchard and terraces. Along the fence line also, and all paths leading to these areas. This would improve the soil fertility, while inhibiting the growth of weeds that we have to spend a lot of time pulling by hand.This is what the OMRI list says of Herbicides…HERBICIDES – NONSYNTHETICAllDown Green Chemistry Herbicide (KPT, LLC dba Summerset Products)Matran™ 2 (EcoSMART Technologies, Inc.)Xpress™ (Bio HumaNetics™)I found both Matran 2 and Xpress listed in a few online catalogs. I also found corn gluten.There is only caveat about the use of these items… while they are on the OMRI list; they are listed as ‘Restricted’ in use. This means that I have to have specific approval from my certifying agency (CCOF) to use them. They will need to know what the specific uses would be, and how much I might expect to use, and why I cannot use a less radical approach in my treatment of the specific problem. My respose is that I could use a little of this material to spray the heavy patches of poison oak, this would allow me to safely reduce the brush for fire safety. I also would keep the fencelines clear, and be able to spot treat a few areas where I have some crabgrass growing. Other than that I’d not be changing form my approach as it has been to this time.I’d also have the same argument for the corn gluten. I’d be able to keep the garden clear for the cactus, and not be affecting the environment negatively. This is area that is already cleared and cultivated, and adding this material will actually improve the fertility of the soil and allow me to devote more time to building terraces and not weeding them.Now, when the new Federal Organic Standards law came into being, we were told that only materials on the OMRI approved list were to be used. It was difficult at first because very few materials manufacturers were listed, so the choice of approved materials was small, and all materials had to be brought in and could not be purchased locally. But as the years have gone by, manufacturers have realized that the cost of getting approved by OMRI is more than made up for by the huge amount of business you have funneled to you by virtue of their patronage. Wow, talk about a captive market! The government has in effect made a huge racketeering scheme by saying you have to belong to a certifying agency who gets money form the people forced to join them, then the manufacturers get a huge amount of money because you are told that to buy from a non-approved manufacturer might mean a de-certifying of their operation. So you can only buy from the list given to you by OMRI.But now there are plenty of different manufacturers on the OMRI list, so I was pleasantly surprised to go there today and find the huge amounts of different materials that might help me or others in some way or another. This is a triumph of the capitalist system, and I am pleased to see that people responded in the appropriate way, buy registering their materials and getting in the lsit so they could sell their materials to people who need them. The government in co-operation with these other agencies has actually done a decent job at these new organic standards laws. I like the one big over-riding blanket of stability in law across state lines, rather than the patch work ‘every state has it’s own laws’ approach we had before. When it comes to an edible product traded freely across state lines the standards should be nationwide and uniform to a degree. |