Category Archives: Corn

Popcorn at Valdosta Farm Days

Gretchen picked this popcorn yesterday, popped some to test (yum!), and bagged the rest for Valdosta Farm Days 9AM to 1PM today Saturday 6 September 2014 at the historic Lowndes County Courthouse in downtown Valdosta, Georgia.

Pops either in a pan with a little oil (grapeseed oil is good), or stick it in a paper bag (I shelled that test corn) with a touch of oil and microwave it.

-jsq

Roundup bred mutant pigweed

With GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds. This has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants. We can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying, using plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead.

Mark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont, Crop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance, Continue reading

Canning corn and peaches at Lowndes High School 2014-07-12

Even more fun and twice as many people at  my second canning class at the Lowndes High School Canning Plant.

Thanks to James Perdue and the   Valdosta Community Garden Group for organizing.

300x225 Coring peaches, in Canning corn and peaches at Lowndes High School, by Gretchen Quarterman, for OkraParadiseFarms.com, 12 July 2014 These pictures are also on my facebook timeline.

See also shelling peas at the 19 June 2014 class.

-gretchen

Valdosta Farm Days –Gretchen on WALB

Gretchen is at the old Lowndes County Courthouse now, setting up for Valdosta Farm Days, 9AM to 1PM today.

By Colter Anstaetts reported from Okra Paradise Farms for WALB yesterday, Lowndes County farmers ready for “Farm Days”,

Lowndes County farmers will be at the courthouse in downtown Valdosta from 9 a.m.to 1 p.m. selling their crops. This is the fourth year for the “Farm Days” program, and Lowndes County farmers are looking forward to it.

“I’m definitely looking forward to Farm days,” said Gretchen Quarterman, a farmer in Hahira. “It’s an excellent opportunity for farmers, not only to sell but for local people to get local, fresh food. And, when we buy from local farmers we support the local economy.”

-jsq

Roundup and gluten sensitivity

Likely effects of dousing 90+% of all corn, soybeans, peanuts, and cotton grown in Georgia (and elsewhere) in Roundup and other toxic chemicals, often drifting onto other people’s land, schools, shops, and churches. It’s not that hard to grow the same crops without those poisons and without the toxic seeds that require them; not that hard and more profitable.

Yes, I know Jeffrey M. Smith is not a biological scientist or medical doctor. But many of the sources he cites are.

Posted by MyScienceAcademy 29 November 2013, GMOs linked to gluten disorders plaguing 18 million Americans – report

The IRT release also indicated that glyphosate, a weed killer sold under the brand name ‘Roundup’ was also found to have a negative effect on intestinal bacteria. GMO crops contain high levels of the toxin at harvest.

“Even with minimal exposure, glyphosate can significantly reduce the population of beneficial gut bacteria and promote the overgrowth of harmful strains,” the report found.

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Agrochemical drift causing diseases and death in Argentina and Georgia

Pesticide poisoning has rapidly increased in Argentina as Monsanto-seed pesticided crops ramped up. Meanwhile in Georgia, 90+% of common crops already are doused in pesticides. What effects are all those poisons having on our own children and adults?

Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko wrote for AP today, Argentines link health crisis to agrochemicals,

Argentine farmworker Fabian Tomasi wasn’t trained to use protective gear as he pumped pesticides into crop dusters. Now at 47, he’s a living skeleton.

Schoolteacher Andrea Druetta lives in a town where it’s illegal to spray agrochemicals within 550 yards of homes, and yet soy is planted just 33 yards from her back door. Recently, her boys were showered in chemicals while swimming in their backyard pool.

Sofia Gatica’s search for answers after losing her newborn to kidney failure led to Argentina’s first criminal convictions for illegal spraying last year. But 80 percent of her neighbors’ children surveyed carry pesticides in their blood.

Meanwhile, German researchers found pesticides in all samples of urine, and back in the U.S.A. and Canada, researchers found pesticide metabolites in 95% of schoolchildren tested.

90+% of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and corn around here are doused in agrochemicals, and even Continue reading

Squirrels in Prius

At the Toyota dealer today:

Service Rep 1: Excuse me, ma’am, can you follow me please?

Me: Ok. (walk walk walk… to the garage part of dealer) You want me in the garage?

Service Rep 1: Yes, your car is over there. (pointing)

Me: Ok. (Hood is open to what you see in photo.)

Nesting

Me: Ha. Squirrels.

Service Reps (there was a crowd of them standing about): bemused looks on faces…

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Blue corn and Terry Davis

Terry Davis points out the bonnets (angled leaves on the corn ear) are a sign of Indian corn, with video:

Terry and the Indian corn bonnets

This is blue corn because Gretchen spent a lot of time last year selecting the blue kernels. Terry indicates which ears to save for seed corn (chest high, two ears per stalk, robust stalks, good condition), with video:

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