The end of the line

We've officially ended this version of our blog...go to our new one and let us know what you think.

Don't forget to grab the new feed

Blog for food month

From Good Stuff NW:

One of your elderly neighbors said, "It’s either buy food or take your medicine. It’s a real hard choice."

Another neighbor, a young mother with her kids, said, "There are times when you have to choose between milk and diapers."

You can choose to listen, or you can ignore them. But these are real Oregonians facing real choices, and it's time for those of us who can to take real steps to do something about it.

"These Oregonians have been feeling the economic downturn long before Wall Street plummeted," said Rachel Bristol, executive director and CEO of Oregon Food Bank. "We believe we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. As the recession continues, we anticipate the need for food assistance will climb for months to come. In these troubled times, we need everyone to do whatever they can to help their neighbors in need...because no one should be hungry."

That's why 38 Oregon bloggers are joining together during the month of February to raise funds for the Oregon Food Bank, the hub of a network of 915 hunger-relief agencies in Oregon and Clark County, Washington.

Each is displaying the Blog for Food logo and asking readers to click to donate whatever they can to help relieve hunger in Oregon. And so we can track your donations and report on how it's going, we're asking that you enter "Blog for Food" in the "Tribute Gift: In honor of:" space on the donation form.

As President Obama said in his inaugural address, "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

This is a good way to start.

Flawed grassfed beef study

Recently a study was done by Oregon State University to evaluate the appeal and cost effectiveness of bringing grassfed beef into the local school system. This is a great step, and I was excited to see that the effort was being made. Unfortunately, once I dug into the details of the study, I was disappointed to see that they didn't actually test for what they claimed

The grass-fed beef the students tasted in the surveys came from Portland-based SP Provisions, which processes a brand of beef called Cascade Natural Beef. It's made from Angus steers in Oregon and Washington that are raised on grass, but for the last four months of their lives are fed grain and corn to fatten them up, said Jim Register, the general manager of the company.

This results in an animal that is more expensive to raise, since there's the longer time to get to a harvestable weight, which is a result of grassfed production, and then switched to grain, which negates any of the health and taste benefits (scroll down) that result from a grassfed and grass finished animal. It essentially takes the weaknesses of both production types, and calls it grassfed. No wonder it didn't work out.

While farm to school programs are an excellent way to help farmers and get healthy, local food into our kids, studies such as this one distort the costs and benefits of the program...hopefully they'll get a more robust study underway to really measure the costs and appeal of grassfed meat.

(via)

last snow pics

I wanted to post the last few photos from the crazy snow that we got last month. By the time these were taken, we had lost our electricity (which stayed off for a week), and couldn't post anymore.

The first 3 were taken on 12/22, and the last one was on 12/25. It's kind of hard to see, but notice that the picnic table is completey covered by snow in the 2nd pic. (If you scroll down to the pics from earlier that week, you can see the progressive increase in snow.) And after the 17-18 inches on the bench on the 20th, we got another 8 or so inches.

I think we've mostly recovered, apart from the roof on our bedroom deck, which partially collapsed. At least the barn roof held up!

The fundamental rethink

In a fascinating convergence, Tim O'Reilly has a post up about Wendell Berry's essay 'In distrust of movements'. Fascinating because while Tim is a pretty visionary hi tech guy, you don't often find that crowd crowing about the nitty gritty of our food system. That, plus the fact that he also mentions Dmitry Orlov's recent work shows just how deep and fundamental the ongoing financial turmoil is affecting people's thinking about food, sustainability, and values. While there's a lot of pain in the current economy, perhaps we'll get something good out of it as well.

Happy New Year!