Whenever possible we us[sic] local meats, cheese and produce to provide our diners with fresh and dynamic flavors. Local products from the likes of Gayla’s Grits, Horner Farms, Sweet Grass Dairy and Thompson Farms allow Charlie Tripper’s to serve delicious and local farmstead fare year round. Menus are subject to change in order to accommodate seasonality and availability.
4479 North Valdosta RoadThis post owed to Buddy Boswell.
Valdosta, Georgia, 31602
229-247-0366
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This is the same “gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuriengensis (Bt)” used in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready cotton and peanuts and soybeans. Since Continue readingAn insecticide used in genetically modified (GM) crops grown extensively in the United States and other parts of the world has leached into the water of the surrounding environment.
The insecticide is the product of a bacterial gene inserted into GM maize and other cereal crops to protect them against insects such as the European corn borer beetle. Scientists have detected the insecticide in a significant number of streams draining the great corn belt of the American mid-West.
The researchers detected the bacterial protein in the plant detritus that was washed off the corn fields into streams up to 500 metres away. They are not yet able to determine how significant this is in terms of the risk to either human health or the wider environment.
Tom Philpott writes in Grist that
Industrial Ag Once Again Demanding a Free Pass to Crap in Your Backyard:
Industrial ag is admitting that it needs to trash its neighbors and the surrounding landscape to thrive. And it wants us to believe that there are no alternatives.His first example is Farm Bureau’s reaction to new EPA restraints on chicken farm factories around Chesapeake Bay, then he gets to Monsanto: Continue reading
West African farmers have succeeded in cutting the use of toxic pesticides, increasing yields and incomes and diversifying farming systems as a result of an international project promoting sustainable farming practices.Here’s the problem they are addressing: Continue readingAround 100 000 farmers in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal are participating in a community-driven training programme (West African Regional Integrated Production and Pest Management (IPPM) Programme) executed by FAO.
All that and paraquat doesn’t work on mutant pigweed, either. The whole “no-till” fable is unravelling.Monsanto’s Roundup, the agro-toxic companion herbicide for millions of acres of GM soybeans, corn, cotton, alfalfa, canola, and sugar beets, is losing market share. Its overuse has spawned a new generation of superweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as 2,4, D and paraquat. Moreover, patented “Roundup Ready” crops require massive amounts of climate destabilizing nitrate fertilizer. Compounding Monsanto’s damage to the environment and climate, rampant Roundup use is literally killing the soil, destroying essential soil microorganisms, degrading the living soil’s ability to capture and sequester CO2, and spreading deadly plant diseases.
In just one year, Monsanto has moved from being Forbes’ “Company of the Year” to the Worst Stock of the Year. The Biotech Bully of St. Louis has become one of the most hated corporations on Earth.
The article mentions scientific studies about bad health effects of genetically modified foods, and goes on to warn of Monsanto maneuverings through the EPA and the Gates Foundation. Then he points to the European Union as leading the way: Continue reading
So
first you pick and cook the beautyberries,
then you
strain them and cook them again,
and finally, you
can them in jars, as you can see Gretchen doing in the video linked
through the little picture to the right.
Here is one batch of beautyberry jelly jars:
Pictures and preserving of beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, by Gretchen Quarte rman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 Oct 2010
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So far we’ve picked and cook the beautyberries.
Now we want to pour it through a strainer to get out any remaining stems or skins.
That’s why it’s going to be jelly, not jam.
This strainer is an old pillow case.
First get it nice and bubbling.
Then strain it as in the first picture above.
Then cook it some more and add sugar.
To be continued….
Straining and cooking of Callicarpa americana by Gretchen Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 16 Oct 2010.
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Those small violet berries in the woods: it’s beautyberry, and you can eat it.
(No, not pokeberry; those are larger, and the stems are purple.)
Beautyberry grows in clumps that you can pick like you’re milking
the bush.
First, find some ripe ones:
Pick them and wash them:
And boil them:
To be continued….
Pictures of Callicarpa americana, Lowndes County, Georgia, 12 Oct 2010, as well as picking, cooking, by Gretchen Quarterman.
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Checking in Saturday morning, 13 Nov 2010,
at the Growing Local Conference organized
by Georgia Organics in Tifton, Georgia.
Janisse Ray and Leeanne Culbreath explain the conference.
Tom Philpott asks in Grist about
Why Monsanto is paying farmers to spray its rivals’ herbicides
…Monsanto has been forced into the unenviable position of having to pay farmers to spray the herbicides of rival companies.Roundup, trade name for glysophate, doesn’t work anymore because the weeds mutated: Continue readingIf you tend large plantings of Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” soy or cotton, genetically engineered to withstand application of the company’s Roundup herbicide (which will kill the weeds — supposedly — but not the crops), Monsanto will cut you a $6 check for every acre on which you apply at least two other herbicides. One imagines farmers counting their cash as literally millions of acres across the South and Midwest get doused with Monsanto-subsidized poison cocktails.
The move is the latest step in the abject reversal of Monsanto’s longtime claim: that Roundup Ready technology solved the age-old problem of weeds in an ecologically benign way.