Sisters

Strawberries are starting to come in. As usual, the girls are very eager to harvest them at this time. After a few weeks, not so eager anymore, even though they still need to be harvested...

I said to Sena and Aiyana, "Let's take some nice pictures of you two". But none of us are very good at posing. I said "Try to look natural", which never works...But I like the pictures anyway.

 Finally, relieved to get away from me and my camera.

The rhubarb is the right size to harvest, so Sena made a delicious strawberry-rhubarb crisp. But before that, she and Aiyana had some fun with the rhubarb leaves.

Peace

A message from Sena (time sensitive)

This is a message from Sena, 12-year-old Shundahai daughter:
 

Yesterday my parents and I went to the Real Art Ways theater in Hartford to watch the movie Sonic Sea. This movie is a little depressing, but more than anything else it made me want to do something to help.
 

The movie is about what the sound of cargo ships, navy sonar, and off shore drilling in the ocean is doing to the whales. Whales are beaching themselves to get away from the sound.
 

I am writing to you to ask you to go to Real Art Ways in Hartford to see this movie that I found so inspiring. It will be playing at 6:00pm today and tomorrow. You can find more information at  http://www.realartways.org/event/sonic-sea/2016-05-23/
 

 

I hope you can make it, and please let me know what you think.

Sena

Farm newsletter and Sena special guest at movie

We just published our latest Farm Newsletter with lots of details of what's been going on at the farm.

On the topic of whales: on Tuesday, we are headed to Hartford to see Sonic Sea, a movie about sonic disturbance in the ocean and its impact on whales and dolphins.  CSI (Cetacean Society International) invited Sena to attend the movie as a special guest. Sena is super excited, as she will be meeting people that are involved with helping the whales on different levels: educators, scientists, and activists. The movie will play at Real Art Ways Monday through Thursday and is open to the public. We'd love to see you there!

Here is CSI's latest newsletter, which Sena was invited to write for. Her article is on page 11.

I already know I'm going to cry at the movie. The trailer is disturbing enough, so I'm bracing myself. The harder part is how is Sena going to deal with it? She really cares, and so is deeply affected by what she sees. But hopefully, meeting people that are actually doing something to help the whales and the oceans will compensate, give her hope, and inspire her to keep on with her work.

Peace

Sunny days, and everything is the brightest shade of green

Tomatoes are in the ground

Cows are happy in the orchard (it's a little far, but Jasmine, the black cow is giving mama Opal a kiss in this picture)

 Strawberries are turning red after having escaped multiple threats of frost

 Many, many strawberries

Cilantro bunched for Fiddleheads food coop in New London and Oyster Club in Mystic

Sena leading a farm tour for pre-school children. We all loved having the kids here, they're adorable and so eager to learn.

 Checking out the cows

And the vegetables

 Harvesting greens for sale yesterday morning

Sena and Aiyana fixing their chicken coop. They both know how to use a screw gun, something I didn't know until I was in my 30s. It's part of their homeschooled education.

 Fixing the chicken coop in a beautiful green setting

Peace

Bo Staff on the farm

I have an old crappy camera, so the quality of the videos is poor, but if you don't enlarge them you can see decent.
Sena

Aiyana (with rooster crowing in the background)

Peace

Incredible speech from a 12 year old addressing the UN

It made me cry. Check out this video. What do you say to this girl?
She's right, as a parent, can I honestly tell my kids that everything's going to be allright, knowing what I know, seeing what I see? The best hope I can give them and myself is that some of us, maybe enough of us, will wake up and care enough to act.

Peace

Do what you can. YOU have the power.

One simple, powerful way to help ourselves and our world:

https://www.facebook.com/AwarenessAct/videos/1302962993051568/

-1:51

Spring rains, wild mushrooms

Jaron, who's been farming with us this year, is a mushroom forager, and knows quite a bit on the subject. This is great because I do want to learn more about mushrooms myself. He collected these King Stropharia, or wine cap mushrooms, on our property.

One of my conchs.

Oshi

Jetty with his mama Jasmine. They're still together a lot, but mama will have another calf in June and we'll see how that changes things.

Jetty

Mushroom growing in woodchip mulch in the orchard

Dandelion in the orchard (cows love them)

A beautiful mushroom passed its prime

Peace

Leave them alone

A good friend brought over this recent article from the NYT "A conversation with whales", for Sena to read. I ended up reading it today during my lunch break. It's an article about scientists using a daring method (free diving) to conduct research on whale communication. I am torn: one part of me is fascinated, and loves reading this interesting information about these amazing creatures. Another part of me, however, cringes, and all I can think is "Leave them alone".

Call me jaded, but I fear that the research we are doing on whales is going to cause them more harm than good. It will open our awareness about them, yes, and that can be good because it may make more of us care about them. But it will also allow us to invade their space, interfere with their lives, and most likely someone will figure out a way to profit from this research, and that cannot be good for the whales. Just leave them alone.

Why can't we just be OK knowing that there are things out there that we don't know, that we should not know? Why can't we just appreciate the mystery of life, but always try to control it and interfere? We've caused too much suffering already with our scientific research. There are so many examples of research being used to make a profit, causing terrible suffering for animals: just look at the meat industry; or animal testing.

But going back to the whale article: if, as is suggested in the article, someday we find a way of communicating with whales, what do you think they would tell us? Do you think it's anything we don't know already? Anything we can't figure out by having an honest look at the world and inside ourselves?

Peace

Working with the girls

It's spring and everything is growing

The cows are happy eating grass

And there is plenty of work to do.
The girls and I transplanted hundreds of tomatoes and peppers yesterday. It took us a few hours, but we took a break halfway. Aiyana made her special strawberry lemonade, with strawberries from last year's crop. It was delicious.

Sena's got farmer hands, and is proud of them (although she says she does not want to be a farmer when she grows up).

LT the cat loves to be around us when we work. She comes to say hello first, then curls up in a warm spot nearby and dozes.

We had our GMO event yesterday

Yesterday at our farm, Tara Cook Littman from GMO Free CT came to speak, and about 18 people came to hear her. I must admit that after sending out an email announcing the event to over 450 people, having posted it on Facebook, my blog, and at the Willimantic Food Coop, I was pretty disappointed when only 12 people responded and said they would be coming. But after thinking about it, I realized that even if this event reaches only a handful of people, that's to be grateful for. And in the end more than 12 came.

We had a beautiful day, and held the talk out in our orchard, on green grass studded with bright yellow dandelions, among fruit trees coming into bloom. Tara, the speaker, was great. She spoke spontaneously, and easily, sharing her personal story, how she came to create and devote her time and energy to GMO Free CT from formerly being a prosecutor in NYC. Having been a prosecutor, her public speech skills are outstanding, and it's really inspiring to hear her talk. Besides telling us how she got to where she is now, and sharing anecdotes from her meetings with high profile political figures at the state and federal levels, she spoke about Genetically Engineered Organisms, or GMOs, what they are, where they're found, and why GMO Free CT is fighting to get GMOs labeled on all of our food products (like they are in Europe and many other countries around the globe, including China and Japan). She talked about the current status of GMO labeling legislation in CT (which is that mandatory labeling is currently on hold until a trigger clause is met), in other states, and at the national level. VT is the first state that will start labeling GMOs as of this coming July. I love VT; setting a great precedent.

For me personally, one thing that Tara said that moved me the most, is that when you're trying to tackle on an issue like labeling GM food, or anything else that you want to change, it's not a one time effort. You don't just send a petition and be done with it. She said that it's a continuous effort, over and over, and sometimes you just have to be a pain in the ass to your representatives, the people that are supposed to work for us in government, and let them know what issues are important to you and how you want to be represented by them. On the topic of GM food in particular, Tara said that poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans want to know what's in their food, they want GMOs labeled, yet industry interests have so far swayed the decisions of most (not all) of those in power, to make labeling laws.
 
If you'd like to know more about GM labeling, which by the way, is also an issue in Canada, check out GMO Free CT.

I am happy that we were able to bring Tara to our farm, so she could speak to members of our community who want to know more about the issues she is working on. As I said at the beginning of yesterday's event, our farm grows food, but as Sena put it when she was 8, maybe as important or more importantly, "The purpose of our farm is to teach people about the Earth so that they can help the Earth". Having Tara here was a small step towards Sena's goal, and I hope there will be many more.

Peace