Aaaarrrrggghhhh… this thing of having two opposing views in my head is so aggravating. I just wish that everyone would act right and we wouldn’t need the governmental oversight that so bothers me.
The Organic Institute is looking for its first-ever consumer ambassador to serve as a spokesperson for all those who are passionate about organic agriculture and products. All we need is a 30-second audition video from you making your pitch.
Participation is easy:
Through May 8, join our YouTube group and submit a 30-second video at www.youtube.com/group/organicidol explaining the moment you realized organic products are worth it. Make us smile. Make us cry. Make us laugh. Make us think. Heartfelt, creative and quirky videos are welcomed, and encouraged.
Once your video is posted, tell your friends to view it! That’s because the Organic Institute’s board will consider the top 12 videos with the most views by May 8 as the initiative’s finalists.
Members of the Organic Trade Association will select from the 12 finalists who they feel is the best fit as our consumer ambassador. We’ll notify the winner in May, and he or she will be unveiled June 17 in Chicago at the All Things Organic Trade Show.
In addition to receiving a trip for two to Chicago for the trade show, the winner’s story will be shared on this Web site. And, he or she will be featured in the Institute’s next consumer advertising campaign, currently set for Fall 2009.
It appears that the people with the most courage
were the first to die here.
Maybe that is true everywhere ~Elena Filatova~
‘Landscapes of Fear’ is a truly horrifying book documenting human rights abuses and natural disasters that have plagued mankind for millenia. The psyche of man might be constructed to always have to fear. In the history of man, has there ever been a time that we as a species were not always on the verge of annihilation through starvation, climate changes, species die-offs, and predation by neighboring peoples? When a people has lost fear…. might they be the most likely ones to be killed? The ones who refused to store foods during times of plenty…. the ones who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t. Such ones fail to pass on their ‘brave’ genes to the future generations. So we as a species even when the going is easy, tend to exhibit irrational fears and anxiety. But since this is part of what makes us successful as a species… we must observe and learn from this behavior. And one of the largest issues of anxiety is the political process. Just as any new despot or King will cause anxiety among all subjects until they fully understand the agenda… so we have people worried that the present new US administration in its seeming zeal to nationalise the monetary and some businesses will also nationalise the agricultural system.
The seeming locus of this ‘take-over anxiety’ is a new bill HR875 and S425 wending its torturous way through the House. Folks, don’t worry so much about this… the Feds are not likely to nationalize agriculture, nor will they be arresting homeowners for planting home gardens such as some people seem to fear.
Some of the videos I have seen seem to point to some regulations that the Feds wish to implement that will regulate what farmers can put into their soil, what pesticides they can use, and what medications to give their animals. This is nothing new… once we went for a Federal system of organic standards, it was an open invitation to have people 2,000 miles away tell farmers how they must maintain their soil. We have been under the umbrella of Federal standards for about five years now…. we have had to modify some of our cultural practices to fit with the scope of what non-farming administrators a continent away desire. We have been ‘encouraged’ to allow the grasses and weeds to grow between the plants to build up the carbon levels in the soil. Yet we are encouraged not to import additions such as manures and mulches, all of these inputs might contain pathogens or pesticide residue that would be put into the soil. This is the kinds of regulations that the new farm bill will likely contain. Nothing new… once the people holler that they want governmental oversight on farming systems, you will get governmental interference. The only thing the farmer can do is modify his practices to suit his overseers and keep out of trouble…. any additional costs must be passed on to the consumer…. it’s the same story that’s gone on since the advent of agriculture. It’s the ‘Golden Rule’, those who have the gold, make the rules.
Don’t worry about the videos such as these below….
Now, for the record, I am all for organic agriculture, I do not go along with some who say we cannot feed the population with organics. I also don’t like GMO at all, and would wish to keep all GMO’s out of our county. These bills would prohibit any county from declaring GMO’s prohibited in that county, but really, is this any different than the Feds always assuming control as they have done for the last eighty years? The Federal gov’t is bigger than the state governments, and can kick their butts anytime it wants to (it’s been done before). So while there might be a great many things in this bill that I disagree with…. based on the history of our country, and the increasing Federal role in all our lives (and seemingly begged for by ‘The People’), it is not a big stretch at all to have the Feds telling us what we can and cannot put in the soil. In short, don’t worry that this bill if passed (I hear rumors it is already dead in Assembly) you will have to record any plant you planted in your home garden, be prohibited from raising your own meat animals of have some beaurocrate come along and tell you when and what and how you must combat insect pests. It comes down to the landscape of fear…..just as the body has a need to defeat pathogens, and might turn on itself if kept in a ‘too-clean’ state, we humans have a need to fear, and when most of the trauma has been taken from our lives by handing over power and control to the government, then the Boogeyman must become the government…. until the government wants you on its side and transfers fear from it to another Boogeyman.
An’ in the springtime of the year
When the trees are crowned with leaves
When the ash and oak, and the birch and yew
Are dressed in ribbons fair.
When owls call the breathless moon
in the blue veil of the night
When shadows of the trees appear
amidst the lantern’s light.
We’ve been rambling all the night
and sometime of this day
Now returning back again
we bring a garland gay.
Who will go down to those shady groves
and summon the shadows there
And tie a ribbon on those sheltering arms
in the springtime of the year.
The sounds of birds seem to fill the wood
and when the fiddler plays
All their voices can be heard
long past their woodland days.
We’ve been rambling all the night
and sometime of this day
Now returning back again
we bring a garland gay.
And so they linked their hands and danced
’round in circles and in rows
And so the journey of the night descends
when all the shades are gone.
A garland gay we bring you here
And at your door we stand
Here’s a sprout, well budded out
The work of our Lord’s hand.
We’ve been rambling all the night
and sometime of this day
Now returning back again
we bring a garland gay.
This song hearkens back to a dark time… a time when the people were hand-to-mouth from month to month, forever worrying about food supplies, plagues and attack. In those times, one bad harvest might mean starvation for years…. so it must have always been a very relieved people who saw the first signs of spring… the budding of the trees, the greening of the vegetation… the hope and promise of new life. At this time they would dress in strange costumes and roam the countryside partying and praying for a good summer and harvest.
The feelings of those ancient peoples cannot be truly appreciated by those of us in Western society… or can it? This last week, seeing the plethora of fresh leaves, so early in the season, such a promise of a large harvest…. it is unimaginably humbling to realize that I am a mere little nothing in the cosmos, that so much of what happens to me is so much out of my control… one big freeze, one huge storm, one locust invasion and we’re wiped out for months….. yes, this week I had just a taste of the enormity that is heaped on rural people overall… and the long-ago inhabitants of the world in which there was no social safety net beyond the village, and when the village is hurting, everyone is hurting.
Spring is here.. hope, renewal, promise, and plenty.
Some of our best soil is in the little arroyo where we grow many of our plants. The nutrient-rich clay particles tend to unravel from the rock strata, and work their way into the arroyo where the rich gravelly soil provides the perfect blend of nutrients and moisture conditions.
But life doesn’t always lay everything you want at your feet, sometimes you need to go up that hill and work.
So, I build terraces on the hillside. The native soil on the hill is still very good for cactus. I just need to make it a bit better, and get water to it. there is a danger however in working hilly land. Newly disturbed soil is very prone to washing or blowing away… and this risk is increased exponentially with the degree of slope involved. For this reason, it is good to make a series of flat areas on the hillside, these are referred to as terraces.
Each terrace will provide a level and firm area that I will be able to get equipment onto to maintain the ground, add amendments, run irrigation and harvest from comfortably and safely.
The terrace will also help reduce soil and moisture loss. Ideally, when it rains the terraces will hold the water allowing it to infiltrate into the soil, adding to the groundwater, and making up for some of what I pull from the ground with the well pump. Under the best conditions, this hillside should have no water run off.
There are many ways to build terraces, and I have used several of them. We’ve built terraces using chicken wire and re-bar to hold the soil, we’ve also used galvanized metal as backing, and we’ve made terraces using tens of tons of waste concrete pieces from demo projects. But now as I work my way higher up the hill, carting tons of concrete uphill by hand is seeming like less a viable option. So now I am building the terraces with themselves. Yes, the ground alone will provide the backing for these structures.
Building in such a way is slower than using concrete or other backing material. You must allow the soil to heal after disturbance and placement… you should allow the local grasses to dig their roots into the terrace to help stabilize it. It is best done a bit at a time, over the course of a few years. This will give you the time to till the soil yearly, letting the grasses grow thick and strong locking the soil into place, then you come and till along the growing spots, leaving the structural areas of the terrace undisturbed. Year by year, this tiling can be done, allowing the soil to become more suitable to plant growth, until the time comes that you wish to plant. I think five years is a good time to consider proper from initial building, to the final planting of the crops. If necessary of course, a person could plant sooner, but that would be best done with many inputs to improve the soil. Since I am working so high up the hill, away from inputs, I prefer to work slow, with one tilling yearly as the soil slowly grows healthier, and one day, when I need the growing ground, we can easily plant and increase our harvest.
This is one terrace we cut into the hill some four years ago. We let the native grasses grow thick on this soil, and we till a strip down the center every spring. This will improve the soil where we will plant a row of cactus (someday). The grasses getting tilled in will slowly rot and release humic acid. The acids will etch the native shale rock, helping to break them down. I will then weed-whack the grasses on both sides in such a way that the grasses lay down over the exposed and vulnerable soil, acting as a protective mulch to prevent the wind from ripping along the hillside carrying away the soil I work so hard to build up. Year by year this soil becomes more amenable to planting…. I could plant cactus into this soil at any time I need the extra space.
terrace building
This is the same terrace with the weeds cut down to lay a protective blanket over the open soil. This soil will now sit through the summer, the weeds slowly rotting into the ground and some laying over the top. When the rains come again in the winter, the weeds will quickly grow in this improved soil, and we will repeat the process.
terrace building
This is the next terrace up the hill.
It is important that the native plants, and later introduced plants be allowed to fully colonize the soil with their roots. the plants are a large part of what keeps such a soil together.
Terraces much be maintained…. there are many places in the world where the young people have walked from their remote villages to make their fortunes in the cities, and now the world of terraces is full of old folks who cannot properly maintain the terraces that in some cases might be thousands of years old.
My thinking is that in this age of rising population, and scarcer resources, small hand-built terraces will again be seen as a viable agricultural alternative.
Alrighty then…. We’ve been getting rain, so that means no work outdoors…. I should be preparing my income taxes, but it seems a big portion of the Obama economics plan seems to be to hire people who don’t pay their taxes, whereupon they will immediately pay any taxes due. So from today until April 14 when I’ll totally freak out and run the taxes to the Post Office, I am not paying income taxes, and am declaring my desire for a ‘Cabinet-Level Post’.. preferably as Secretary of Agriculture…. but I’ll take Ambassadorship to Germany if the other post is taken. As soon as I am nominated I’ll send the tax forms on to the IRS…. I should have them done by the end of this month.
So what’s a none-tax preparing, stuck indoors during rain… cactus grower to do? Well, just in case I’m not going to D.C. or Germany and getting lots of money for that… I should try to sell more cactus. Since it seems tortoises are a large potential market for us, I should try to sell to zoos and reptile houses and such. So I have been working on a marketing postcard to send out. I posted a version of it a few days ago… but now it is in its final, indeed, submitted version. Yes folks, we’ll soon have a box of these coming to our house and ready to send out once we have our final mailing list compiled.
Here’s the postcard….
Cactus tortoise sales postcard, 2009
Now I’m on the look for likely groups of people to send these to. I am getting a list of zoos together, and also tortoise clubs would be good. I am pulling in various names and addresses for these groups from the Internet…. these will all go into a large mailing we expect to be making within the next month or two, timed to arrive as the new flush of leaves is starting to mature. We’ll be taking some of those names and sending a postcard to them once a month or so through the summer. It is said that repetition is the key to successful marketing. The first ad might be summarily trashed, the second might merit a cursory glance as it triggers some memory (“Have I seen this before”?) before being trashed, the third might cause the person to examine and think about their need for cactus before they throw it away. And it might be the fourth or the fifth that might actually cause the person to decide to examine the issue.
Also, if the postcard is colorful and eye-catching, it is more likely to stand out and be looked at… and certainly it will be recognized more quickly the second time. That is why I’ve used such blaring glaring colors. And I tried to put out all the concepts and messages in that front image… the tortoise, huge and determined, the ‘USDA Organic’ logo, our own logo which we hope to brand as ‘cactus’, and the fine cactus leaf itself. This should show people that ‘This is not your father’s cactus’… hey wait… did I just make up a great one-liner or what!!!??? I have a ‘Call to action’ in the form of the “LET THEM EAT CACTUS!”… and the ‘hook’ is the “$5 off” offer which hopefully will cause them to at least think about getting a nine pound box and see ifthe tortoises like it. Frankly, people are amazed at how much their tortoises love cactus…. and although I mean this as human food, and raise it with that end in mind…. ‘buyers is buyers’, and anyone who is stoked to buy our cactus is welcome!
By the way…. when I send these out and am giving ‘five dollars off’, anyone on the mailing list will also be given the same opportunity. I do not believe in offering a special deal only to new customers…. it is the old customers who buy month in and month out who are the ‘bread and butter’ of any business…. so join the mailing list to get notified of specials such as this one. We always welcome new business, but we also desire to keep old customers happy… so I’d not usually give any discount to lure new customers and not also offer it to the folks on the mailing list.
I know a few people who are super skilled and creative at advertising…. and they are always very interesting to talk to. I get such valuable input from them. And this postcard is a bit of the culmination of my marketing plans for this year… meager though as it may be.
We get a good number of people on the website daily (averaged some 750 users daily in 2008), but we know there are still many more people out there who need to find out about our cactus. So in the spring when the cactus that survived the winter have scars to prove it, the marketing should be to tortoise people and groups who just desire good healthy material for tortoises to eat. In the summertime when the plants are loving the hot weather, full sun and care we give them, they will out out the highest quality of cactus leaves anyone has ever seen. That is the time we should be marketing to health food stores and vegetable brokers. So my second phase of our 2009 marketing, to be implemented in late spring will be to those groups of people.
A friend suggested using a tortoise for that mailing also. The text would be above the tortoise saying something to the effect that ‘Cactus is the preferred food of tortoises… tortoises can live for over 100 years…. maybe they know something we don’t?’ I like that concept, and have started on that postcard… but have to work the text out yet.
So, this is a good, fun and productive way to while away the winter storm hours. In a few months we’ll have the highest quality fresh cactus growing out, and it’ll be good having new customers.
Speaking of that, we have been getting a good deal of new customers. So the marketing we placed at the end of 2008 seems to have done well. We’ll keep up those marketing strategies that seem to work, and continue to pursue new avenues that might appear promising.
However, none of my training or education was directed toward marketing in any great way, and it is not a natural inclination of mine to ‘toot-my-own-horn’ (so to speak)… but there is no way to let people know of our great cactus and its wonderful uses other than to introduce ourselves. So if anyone has marketing strategies and ideas… or ideas for mailing lists that might be beneficial, do let us know.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
I was looking some info on soil chemistry up, and going to a page of links…. I saw they had a link to a paper I wrote some years ago. It was fun seeing my whimsical piece put up with ‘The Big Boys’.
Here’s some of what they wrote about the piece… “Despite being a .com website, there is so much detail and interesting information that reading through it is well worthwhile. “
Well, thanks guys and gals. And ‘thank-you’ to all the researchers who do the important sleuthing work on soil and agrarian research. The same goes for the academics who compile and publish the results, and disseminate the knowledge that helps us produce more food while working within the parameters of soil and environmental constraints.
We sent out the latest Rivenrock Subscriber E-Mail Newsletter on Tuesday the thirteenth.
It is the Winter Cactus Forcast… information on how the edible cactus plants have fared through the winter so far.
We do this so that people can understand the cultivation techniques we use.
People nowadays do not have much contact with the people who grow their food… they are less likely to know the grower as a person, their philosophies on things and how they feel about growing things… since food is so essential to life, it seems reasonable to want to meet the people along the supply chain who grow and deliver your food.
Almost all human social gatherings feature food as the focal point of the gathering. Food cements friendships, people invite business associates over for food and an informal atmosphere to encourage ‘opening up’ and the blossoming of successful associations.
Since we sell throughout the country, and the majority of our customers are in other states, they will likely never get a chance to speak to us face-to-face to find out how the coming weather will affect the cactus, or other issues that might affect supply and quality. The newsletter is a way for us to give that information out, as well as occasional ‘special offers’ we might put out for the subscribers to the newsletter.
Now, I was supposed to have sent this -e-mail out a month ago the day after we had a big freeze and I performed some rather heroic measures to save the cactus from freezing…. the newsletter below has the information.
You also can sign up for the Newsletter, this will get you an occasional e-mail… usually with some information pertaining to the present or future cactus harvests. We also sometimes pass along ‘special offers’ to the newsletter subscribers… and we won’t deluge you with a lot of Newsletter E-Mails, in fact, we usually only put one out every month or so.
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Rivenrock Gardens
Rivenrock Gardens
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You are receiving this email because you are a Confirmed
and Valued subscriber to our mailing list.
Using Name: John
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This email is ONLY Sent To Verified Subscribers. ===============
The winter always causes a reduction in the quality and quantity of the cactus leaves we can sell for fresh eating.Last night as the freezing temperatures bore down on us, I turned on the sprinkler system to provide warm water to the plants and hope to forestall any freezing. The resulting thick layer of ice held in the warmth and reduced damage greatly. If I am successful in holding off severe damage this winter, we should be producing enough cactus
to meet demand through the winter.
However, the cold has done enough damage that we don’t want to try providing Grade ‘A’ cactus until the spring brings us the fine weather that gives us ‘near perfect’ cactus.We’ve removed the Grade ‘A’ cactus from the site. However we’ve not changed the prices of the grade B or grade C cactus.
If you have aspecific need for a particular maturity, you can always e-mail us, we’ll try to accommodate as well as we can depending on what the plants can give us.
So the purpose of this mail is to let you know that the cactus will likely be available through the winter this year.
During the cold snap this morning, I took several photos of the cactus plants with icicles several inches long hanging from them. I thought it was unusual and interesting enough to place into a free screensaver you can see at http://www.rivenrock.com/screensavers.htm
