Rosco Missed the Bus!

Rosco, the smallest and shrewdest of the adolescent chipmunk "punks", showed up only after I had relocated both parents and three siblings. As you can see here, Rosco narrowly escaped the first encounter with my "peanut-butter gangplank", but after a few minor adjustments, fell into the trash can and took a special ride to the forest on Basalt Mountain, to join the family. Bye bye, Rosco!

BUSTED PUNKS!

I built a simple gangplank hanging over a tall trash can, and held the back of the gangplank down with pushpins, so the punks would learn to trust it, and venture out to eat the peanut butter I'd placed on the end.

My thinking was that I could catch all three of them this way, and release them altogether. I set my rig up and got them quite used to it in the first 24 hours. I figured I'd give them two full days of the illusion, and pull the pins on the third day. However, on day two, I came back from a morning meeting, and one of them was already in the bucket. It must have fallen in when all three of them were crowding the end of the gangplank to get some PB. Oh well, I thought, I guess I'll have to pull the pins today, and so I did.

Within an hour, there were skid marks in the peanut butter, and all three chipmunk punks were in the bucket. Looks like day three is relocation day!

Chipmunk Punks

Happy Fathers Day!
I awoke early for a bike ride up Basalt Mountain to release the second chipmunk where I left the first one a couple days before, thinking I'm finally rid of them eating my garden. I returned the have-a-heart trap to Jerome, who asked, "So, did you catch them all?"
"I don't know about all", I replied, "but I got the two I knew about".
Sure enough, when I got back home, I saw first one, then two, and later all three adolescent chipmunks. Frickin' adorable! They have come out of hiding, and are investigating the places where they smell either their parents' scent, or the smell of the plants their parents were feeding them. They romp around, jumping and landing clumsily, rolling in the dirt pile in our alley project, and of course, standing in the lettuce patch and eating their fill of our salad crop.
For Fathers Day, I broke up a chipmunk family, and now must temporarily adopt their babies. I guess I'll have to build a safe trap in which I can catch all three, and take them away together, to the forest where I left their parents. Either that, or I must share my garden with them.

Bread Class

March is leaving at the end of April, to find employment in the medical community, and to live with college friends in Seattle. She asked if I would teach her to bake bread, just as I was beginning to mix up some dough this morning. I turned the whole operation over to her, and these are five out of the six loaves she baked today.

Guess what happened to the sixth loaf?

2008 CSA Farm School Video

Danny Brown, young farmer and artist, made a beautiful documentary of our 2008 CSA Farm School, of which he was a star student. Check it out:

2008 CSA Farm School Video

Gift Economy

It all started for me when I began brewing beer at home, in my kitchen, and threw a party with a few other brewers, and a pile of friends. I had brewed and bottled a wide variety of beer styles, the bottles all labeled with fun titles and cool photos, and I offered a half-dozen mixed six-packs of my homebrews, to the first half-dozen friends who brought an appetizer to the party. It worked like a charm. I brewed, they cooked, and we all went home happily after the party.

A friend of mine who is a professional coffee roaster, likes my bread and my beer, as much as I like his coffee. Another friend, my business partner and a master in the art of growing food in greenhouses, enjoys my bread as much as I enjoy his salad greens, another friend has a flock of laying hens whose eggs we love, and another has beehives, from which he harvests a hundred pounds of honey every year. All of them enjoy getting gifts of my beer, bread, jam, and occasionally my apricot sorbet, and my pantry is stocked with their gifts to me.

A local retired MD, Dr. Will Evans, asked me to be interviewed on his KDNK Radio talk show, "Shifting Gears", to be aired at 4:30 pm Mountain Time, on Thursday, May 7. You may catch the show on streaming audio at: http://www.kdnk.org/

It's like Christmas all year long around here! I need to buy more flour for my bread, more malted grains for my beer, and continue "printing edible curency" in my kitchen.

Meaning of Life

Love Living,

Live Loving.

.

MT

Playing For Change - Peace Through Music

See "Playing For Change" Peace Through Music, an interview by Bill Moyers, of Mark Johnson, a young man who created a moving documentary, recording and mixing 100 street musicians all around the world, simultaneously playing songs we all know and love.

Love, Michael

"Farmer in Chief", by Michael Pollan (my hero!)

Michael Pollan, author of "Omnivore's Dilemma" and "Botany of Desire", two incredible books about our global human relationship with FOOD, has written a "letter to the next President Elect", in the NY Times Magazine, Oct.9, 2008.
For this important and visionary essay, Jerome believes that Pollan deserves a Pulitzer Prize. Here he tells the next President of the US that we must completely rebuild our food production and distribution system, not just nationally but globally, and that this effort will form primary solution components for health care, environmental quality and global warming problems.
Click on the chapter you want to hear below, then click "play" on the next page, and I will read Michael Pollan's essay for you. You may also click "download", and put these audio files on your ipod. (the player "loops", so you must actively hit "stop" at the end, or just "play" the next chapter)
1. Dear Mr. President-Elect: (play time 10:22)
2. How we got here: (play time 07:06)
3. Re-solarizing the American Farm: (play time 16:48)
4. Re-regionalizing the Food System: (play time 09:10)
5. Rebuilding America's Food Culture: (play time 12:52)

Thank you for listening, and for helping build a sustainable future!

Homebrewers Impasse

Here's the story of the "Great Beer Accident", for your listening pleasure.
Just click here, click "play" on the next page, and I'll read it for you.
(playing time 8:07)
Enjoy listening!
MT