a new crop

Gun nuts.   They seem to grow on trees these days.  When they ripen, they must fall off the tree  headfirst.  That seems the only logical explanation for Wayne LaPierre and his fellow afficianados.  What makes me crazy about this whole debate is even the most passionate advocates of gun control always start the conversation with the tacit admission that virtually anyone who is not a criminal or batshit crazy should be able to own guns.  That is a stupid position.  In a large city, there is no good reason for citizens to own firearms.  The thought of a heavily armed, poorly trained phalanx of people who fantasize they are Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie is more than vaguely disquieting.  If we must allow such idiocy, then it must be tightly controlled.  Potential gun owners must be trained in firearm safety, they must be registered, insured and must pay fees which will fund the system of background checks necessary to keep the crazies from acquiring the means to slaughter innocents.  We need to revisit the 2nd amendment and define what a "well ordered militia" means vis-a-vis gun ownership.  We have overplanted the gun nut crop and we need to prune the trees.

lawns into gardens

NYT food and nutrition columnist Marc Bittman opines this morning we should convert as many lawns as possible into vegetable gardens.  A laudable sentiment, but one which most Americans would look upon as about as doable as a moon landing.  On moving to the NCR (North Country Riviera) in 2001, I converted about 1000 square feet of my lawn into a garden over the objections of the divine Mrs. M.  The resulting bounty convinced me to expand over the years to about3000 square feet.   My better half is still not convinced of the beauty of a kitchen garden, especially in late winter when the dessicated broccoli stalks poke through the snow or mud.  I'm convinced she would definitely approve a conversion back to grass.  Meanwhile,  I can count on the fingers of one hand how many of my neighbors in a 5 mile radius have a garden that is visible from the road.  I know a few people who have a small patch with a few tomato plants, but they are a distinct minority.  According to Bittman, the total square miles of lawn in the US add up to an area the size of New York State (50,000 square miles) so there are abundant opportunities for people to garden, but the effort and time involved will probably keep the majority of my countrymen on their couches or playing on their lawns. 

salads, etc.

One of my manifold duties is answering customer complaints for a packaged salad maker.  The number of complaints is usually small, and varies somewhat with the season and the quality of the raw materials.  Too much rain, heat, cold, etc. can play havoc with the quality of the salads.  Another problem is insects and their eggs.  To those customers who grew up in towns and never gardened, the most horrific scenario is opening their salad and coming face to face with a grasshopper or other insect.   Having dealt with insects in produce all my life, I sometimes find it hard to sympathize with my city cousins and their phobias.   Yes, if the salad is washed and inspected you have a reasonable expectation the container should only be filled with lettuce or spinach leaves.  However, until salads are grown under factory conditions with totally artificial inputs, there is a small but not negligible chance you will encounter wildlife with your greens.

Real Carrots for Doctors

A column in the NYT this morning says we should provide more carrots for doctors.  This sounds like a worthy cause, until you read the thing and find out he really means carrots as in financial incentives.  That may be well and good, but as the columnist states later, we already pay nearly twice as much for the services and tests as most industrialized countries.  It seems that our multiplicity of payers gives leverage to the firms doing the tests as well as the doctors providing the services.  A single payer would obviously by more efficient, but socialism!   To get back to my original observation, more vegetables would probably improve health outcomes also.  But the typical doctor is about as knowledgeable about the health benefits of diet as the average taxi driver.  To most people, a calorie is a calorie whether it comes from a jelly donut or a carrot.  Until we break through this barrier of fundamental ignorance, people will continue to die or live unnecessarily shortened lives dut to dietary choices.

Economic Impacts

While the cold here in the northeast is slowing economic activity and depressing demand for fresh veggies, the same type of weather on the west coast will ensure the current high prices for said veggies will continue despite the low demand.   Most receivers are pushing for lower prices, but the glut of trucks sitting in the Yuma area argues the shortages are not over and more cold weather and rain is moving in for the weekend.  The present situation poses an interesting question.  If the present variability in the weather continues or gets worse, will we see a fundamental shift in the price of fresh fruits and vegetables which will reflect the increasing risks to production.  Cheap prices are fine for everyone when yields are increasing, but growers cannot supply low cost product when they are liable for huge losses when weather conditions decimate crops.  The input costs for land rent, seeds, fertilizer and labor are orders of magnitude greater than the halcyon days of the 50s and 60s of the last century.  It used to be said a farmer had to start out with enough capital to survive 7 lean years.  To amass that much money nowadays you would need a venture capitalist to back you and they don't invest in low return industries.

Frigid Redux

It is another cold one on the NCR.  Even hard by the still open waters of Lake Champlain it was -12 this morning.  The valley in which the town of Saranac Lake sits recorded -31.  Some ski areas in Vermont and New Hampshire were forced to shut down due to excessive wind chill.  This kind of weather was once the norm for this area, but is now seen as an unwelcome guest.  Even new cars are hard starting in this regime.  Aside from the sheer discomfort, excessive cold slows down normal economic activity, including purchases of fresh fruit and veg.  While some of us long for more vegtables on our dinner plate, many people forgo them entirely, especially when the prices reflect weather problems in western growing areas.  The annual junk food orgy associated with Super Bowl Sunday is gearing up, and the only veg invited to the party will be a few celery sticks on the plate of buffalo wings and a mostly ignored veggie platter.  Been there, done that.  Spring can't come soon enough.

Combing for Beaches

It's a clear cold dawn here on the NCR.  -6 degrees (Farenheit) for those of us keeping score.  Easily the coldest day in the past couple of years and cold enough across a broad swath of the country that the climate change deniers and their media enablers will be in full voice today.  Meanwhile, a group of scientists are looking for and finding ancient beaches up to 100 miles from today's coastlines.  It seems that during the Pliocene era approximately 3 million years ago, most of the icecaps in the northern hemisphere and a good part of the Antarctic ice sheet had melted in response to volcanic activity over a period of many thousands of years.  The result was a rise in sea levels of up to 90 feet.  This was a gradual rise, but it inundated coastlines around the world.   Meanwhile, mankind has increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to levels comparable to those of the Pliocene in a mere 200 years.  Scientists are predicting a rise in sea levels of six feet by 2100, and are already saying that may be a conservative estimate.   A redrawn map reflecting the full melting of the Greenland ice cap and a large part of the Antarctic shows the east coast of the US a full 100 miles west of the present boundaries.  Large parts of Florida are underwater, and probably 35-50% of the population would be displaced.  That is a sobering thought, especially if you are under 20 years of age and can expect to have to deal with your elders' refusal to accept scientific evidence of an impending catastrophe.

A Paen to Progressivism

The President obviously had one eye on posterity yesterday.  He let his inner liberal out to play for a few minutes and the Republican dowagers were clutching their pearls and calling for smelling salts.  Equality for gays, strengthening the social safety net, working against (gasp) climate change.  It was a call to arms for those of us who believe people have value and science provides validation of concern for the future of our existence on this planet.  The same idiots who criticized the previous inaugural speech for high flying rhetoric are now crying yesterday's speech was a partisan wish list which demonized the president's opponents.  These are the same people who also made it their main agenda to deny Obama a second term.  Go figure.
Today, it is 1 above 0 degrees and we should have a high of about 8.  Time to dream of spring!

New Pages

Today, we turn a new page in our history.  A black American (despite what the birthers say) is being sworn into the office of the Presidency for the second time.  He will be unshackled from the necessity of pleasing marginal groups of voters in order to win crucial votes in a re-election campaign.  Now, we should see who the real Obama is;  the community organizer with sympathy for the powerless, or the suckup to the powerful on Wall St. and the moneyed interests.  He found out how grateful the hedge fund operators and banks were in the run up to the recent election.  75% of their money went to Romney, as the mild, rather toothless reforms proposed by the administration were perceived as an attack on the privileges of the plutocracy.  Will Obama flip the bird to these people and stand up for the 99% or will he continue to buckle in the face of Republican obstruction.  So far, it looks like the populist in his nature is winning.  Time will tell, but I think the vast majority of Americans are looking for the kind of leadership this country has been lacking since FDR's time.  Let's hope the President has made the same calculation.

Cold Friday

It's the end of a forgettable week in the heart of winter.  It's cold, the markets are terrible, the politicians are worse and the wrong football teams are playing for the right to make this a Super Bowl to not remember.  The only bright spot is the sun peeking over the horizon at 7:15 this morning.  The small pleasures of winter on the NCR!   The marketers in Yuma are still beating the drum of shortage and frost damage, but few in the east, where most winter veg is consumed are drinking that Kool Aid, so there is a start/stop feel to this deal.  Meanwhile, this weekend, it is seed catalogs, summer dreams and hot chocolate by the fire for me.

money and martyrs

The president introduced some common sense answers to the problem of gun violence in this country and the predictable uproar has ensued.   The usual suspects, mostly those with money at stake are crying the country is being emasculated by the Kenyan, socialist usurper.  Meanwhile, more than 60% of the American people either agree with him, or feel his prescription is not strong enough medicine for what ails us.  The crux of the opposition to reasonable gun regulation is the feeling that banning assault weapons and high capacity gun clips is infringing on an imagined freedom.  When pushed to the wall, the gun nuts admit their fantasy of single handedly taking on jack booted government operatives as they land and jump from their black helicopters with the intention of taking away patriots' guns and then....what?  It seems they never get beyond the epic confrontation which involves shooting thousands of rounds of ammo from high powered rifles.  I went to Catholic school for eight years, public high school and university and rarely if ever encountered these caricatures of an involved citizenry.  Who are these fools and how did they get this way?   Who is making the money from this scam?   These are questions we should be asking  ourselves?

Marketing 101

The frozen tundra of Yuma, Az. is the latest challenge for produce sales.  After seeing more pictures of frozen lettuce yesterday, it seems like a no brainer the market must go up.  It would seem like shippers with No. 1 lettuce should be able to name their own price.  But wait, it seems the frozen lettuce is not unsaleable after all!  Most of the shippers have decided they will peel the lettuce back to the unfrozen core and sell whatever is left at whatever price they can get.  They are quoting lettuce with "heavy frost damage" and taking whatever they can get for it.  For shippers with good lettuce this creates a marketing problem.  There should be a huge difference in price for good lettuce as opposed to the drek being shipped by the majority.  However, the price for the crap is verging on $30.00/carton FOB, and there seems to be little incentive for receivers to pay more, even if the difference is night and day.  Probably the majority of loads quoted with freeze damage will be discounted at destination, or worse, but that is cold comfort to quality shippers who should be enjoying historic markets.

Stop the madness

Isn't everyone sick of hearing the talking heads on TV preface every statement about the NRA, "I'm a loyal member of the NRA and I believe in the 2nd Amendment".   I'll bet most of them have never read the damn thing in the first place, especially if they believe it entitles everyone to the assault weapon of their choice, including, I suppose an RPG and a shoulder launch SAM.  What a bunch of idiots.  Are they so afraid of the NRA they can't use common sense, or is it the common wisdom among the media elite that the masses must have their weapons, along with their religion to keep them pacified.  This would be the "Bread and Circuses" theory of keeping the declining American Empire manageable for a few more years.  Maybe the administration can break out of this circular logic with its new recommendations.  It will take a little moral courage to weather the predictable outrage from the usual suspects, but without resolve, there will be no progress.  When the next Sandy Hook happens, and it will, the very people who will fight every new regulation will wring their hands and cry the loudest.

Tough Sledding

It's 50 degrees at 7 a.m. on a January Monday.  Most of the snow cover is gone and it looks like no replacement is immenent.  Temps will fall through the week and we should be near seasonal norms by the weekend, but the January thaw has brought back the reality that winter is not what it used to be here on the NCR.  The outdoor columnist for the local paper lamented on Sunday that many of the local ice fishing derbies, a staple of wintertime sports in the North Country will likely be cancelled or postponed.  Whiteface mountain will be living up to its nickname, "Iceface", as temps fall and most of the rest of the winter sports will be on life support.  Fortunately, it is also seed ordering time, so my sport of choice is sitting in a warm living room surrounded by catalogs with pictures of beautiful produce.  Daydreaming of peppers, tomatoes and melons and temps in the 80s.  That is my wintertime sport of choice.

The beat goes on

The weather is getting more and more crazy according to an article in the NYT this morning.  -50 degrees in Siberia.  +129 degrees in Australia and all kinds of extreme weather in between.  People are now finding out that global climate change is not a steady increase in temperature, but also a wild variability in the weather.  A case in point is the climate in Yuma, Az., the winter salad bowl of the US and Canada.  Temps below freezing are predicted for 3 successive days this weekend.  If the mercury goes below 28 degrees for more than a few hours, you can kiss your salads goodbye for at least a month.  A head of iceberg lettuce will become an extravagant luxury, costing 5 dollars or more.  Most other vegetables will become very scarce.  Of course, if you can't pump diesal fuel in Russia because it is too cold or gasoline in Australia because too hot, you may not have much sympathy for salad challenged Americans, especially since the policies of our goverment are causing much of the environmental turmoil the rest of the world is going through.

Responsibility

So it looks like the streets of Cooperstown will be short on the Hall of Fame excitement this summer.  The sure fire class of 2013, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Mike Piazza are all under the cloud of steroid suspicion.  The government, the self righteous sports writers and many devoted sports fans have demonized these players as cheaters, unworthy of the Hall.  Lance Armstrong will be on Oprah next week to perform a mea culpa for his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, or not, since pending litigation could open him up to huge liabilities.  However, for some reason we celebrate the steroid enhanced football players who clash each week in gladitorial combat.   Why the dichotomy?   I would make the case that football players are unapologetic about their drug use, and we have been sold on the spectacle of  freakishly huge players in a video game like format of violent confrontations.  For some reason, we think of baseball players and cyclists as ordinary guys, just like us.  We could be out there chasing down fly balls and riding the Tour De France if only we ate more Wheaties and got a little more excercise.  I can't think of any other explanation which fits the story we see playing out.
     Meanwhile, the public rescues AIG during the financial crisis and the sociopath who ran the company at the time now want to sue the government because the terms of the bailout were too harsh.  He claims we gave better terms to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, et. al.  It seems the big banks were on steroids also, but like the NFL, they have convinced us they need steroids, or in their case public guarantees of their solvency no matter what risks they take.   It seems only baseball players and fools need to take responsibility for their bad choices. The banks and football players are too important to our national identity to trouble with conscience or legality.

Up next

No, it's not the cleanup batter.  It's the temperature, stupid.   Last year was by far the warmest ever recorded in the continental US.  By a full degree.  Usually these records are broken by a tenth of a degree.  At 55.3 degrees average, even the most skeptical observers have to admit this is more than a fluke event.  It seems the new normal is to break daily high temperature records about 5 times as often as we set record lows.  The corollary is the record dryness we are experiencing.   61% of the country is now in a moderate or severe drought.  These statistics argue for a more robust engagement of the government in the nuts and bolts of climate change.  One can only hope our elected officials get in the game before the ninth inning.  However, I think it would be prudent for farmers to assume there will be no leadership on this issue and plan accordingly.

Lightening up

No, I don't mean the New Year's resolution to lose a couple of waistline inches is kicking in.  As I left the office yesterday, the sky was still light in the west and this morning at 6:15 a.m. the sun was trying to lighten up the January gloom.  It is certainly not my favorite time of year, but one of the best things about mid to late January is the increasing daylight which counteracts the otherwise miserable combination of darkness and cold temps.   I celebrated by ordering far too many onion and shallot seeds for the coming gardening season.  Reacting to the various failures of the past season is my modus, and the  onion crops were by far the biggest fail in last year's garden.  It is back to transplanting from the cold frames this spring, since the direct seeding of most varieties resulted in less than optimum stands.  Beans will also be among the early seed orders this year, as except for the last seeding, there was a lot of fail in that category also.    Meanwhile, in fresh produce, the lettuce,cauliflower and broccoli deals are alive and well in the southwest as cold temps and a predicted harvest gap are driving prices to levels not seen in a couple of years.

Vegetarianism anyone?

It looks like the carnivores at Casa Monzeglio will soon be limited to the cats and the dog.  It seems that the latest documentary on the cruelty meat production in this country has inspired the divine Mrs. M and Ms. M to declare flesh eating is over.   I'm not philosohically opposed to vegetarianism, but it will come as a shock to the system.  I did get a dispensation to use up any frozen supplies of meat, so it will not be a "cold turkey" type change, but there are also rumbles of veganism on the horizon.  I'm not so sure I'm on board with that much orthodoxy.  

Winterlude

Amazingly enough, it is 40 degrees warmer today than it was yesterday at this time.  The fact it is still below freezing should tell you all you need to know about yesterday.  This climate cliff diving is worse than the figurative fiscal cliff, at least in concrete physical terms.

Hibernation time

When the local temperatures scrolling across the bottom of the screen on the weather channel go into negative territory, you have to take extra precautions for even a momentary trip outside.  First, make sure you are wearing gloves and a hat.  Failing that, make sure your hands are absolutely dry, or they will stick to the first metal you touch.  You don't want to experience that sensation.  Second, plan your itinerary, or you will run out of heat before you finish.  Ten below zero is not too bad, but we haven't experienced it on the NCR for a couple of years, so it was a shock to the system.  The best part was there was almost no wind, so exposed areas of your face did not begin to freeze immediately.  I think it is time for this to be over.

New Year's Resolutions

Always a problem this time of year for produce salesmen and gardeners.  Produce sellers always make brave resolutions to start the new year.  Let's cut out the dead wood, only sell customers who pay a reasonable price for their produce, and so on.  That resolution lasts until the first truck you need to fill out has 5 pallets open and the jerk you promised yourself not to sell is the only customer who is "willing" to help you.  So you swallow hard and that resolution is down the drain.  As a gardener, it is much tougher to make a resolution that sticks.  Every year you receive dozens of catalogs with beautiful  illustrations of tasty vegetables and fruits and the temptations start.  Just a few more square feet and I'll stop there.  But of course it doesn't stop there.   I need to resist more than ever this year.