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From the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance:

The USDA has announced that it is dropping NAIS!
2/5/2010

This is a major victory for the grassroots!!   Thank you to the thousands of people who called, wrote, organized meetings, and more.  Dozens of organizations, from across the country and the full range of the political spectrum, worked together on this common cause.
And we succeeded in making our voices heard.

USDA has stated that it is refocusing its efforts on “a new, flexible framework” that will apply only to animals moved in interstate commerce and encourage the use of “lower-cost” technology.  During today’s conference call with USDA, I asked whether the agency would continue using federal funding to pressure states to adopt the program through cooperative agreements.  In response, Secretary Vilsack stated that USDA has gotten a “failing grade” on NAIS and that he does NOT intend to try to implement it through the back door.

You can read more details from USDA at: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/animal_health/content/printable_version/faq_traceability.pdf

We still have more work in front of us.  As USDA develops its new framework, we must be involved and vocal, so that agribusiness does not develop yet another high-tech, big-industry boondoggle.  We must be active at the state level to ensure that the state agencies do not implement unnecessary and burdensome rules.  And we must work to roll back the unfair requirements that have already been implemented in Wisconsin and Michigan.  Ultimately, it is up to us – as animal owners, homesteaders, farmers, ranchers, and consumers -- to build a positive vision for our farms and our food.

Thank you all!

Support Our Work Please help us be a strong voice for independent agriculture by joining or donating here


And more from OCA:

Victory of the Week

USDA Drops "Big Brother" National Animal ID Program

Under pressure from small farmers and organic consumers, the US Department of Agriculture announced on February 5, 2010, that it is suspending its controversial National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and offering a new approach to tracking animal disease and food contamination. This is a major victory for the Organic Consumers Association, our allies, and organic farmers and ranchers, who have complained that the USDA's goal of tagging every farm animal in country wouldn't do anything to prevent disease, would be unnecessary and expensive for small and organic farmers, and couldn't be enforced without violations of privacy and religion.

Already, the implementation of NAIS in Wisconsin has resulted in an Amish farmer and a small-scale cattle rancher being charged and fined for not registering, and in Michigan a cattle farmer's herd was put under quarantine and forcibly tagged when he wouldn't submit to the state's mandatory NAIS program.

Go to OCA's No NAIS campaign page for more information



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Chicken Tails 01/27/2010
 

Chicken Tales...or Tails...or...
Some (really lame) Gothic Humour!


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I discovered the following article from a Slow Money posting yesterday on Facebook. This is really exciting and is in Time Magazine...no less!

GP: Note: Highlights and italics mine

How Cows (Grass-Fed Only) Could Save the Planet

ENLARGE PHOTO+ Cattle on this Hardwick, Mass., farm grow not on feedlots but in pastures, where their grazing helps keep carbon dioxide in the ground

On a farm in coastal Maine, a barn is going up. Right now it's little more than a concrete slab and some wooden beams, but when it's finished, the barn will provide winter shelter for up to six cows and a few head of sheep. None of this would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the people building the barn are two of the most highly regarded organic-vegetable farmers in the country: Eliot Coleman wrote the bible of organic farming, The New Organic Grower, and Barbara Damrosch is the Washington Post's gardening columnist. At a time when a growing number of environmental activists are calling for an end to eating meat, this veggie-centric power couple is beginning to raise it. "Why?" asks Coleman, tromping through the mud on his way toward a greenhouse bursting with December turnips. "Because I care about the fate of the planet."

Ever since the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released a 2006 report that attributed 18% of the world's man-made greenhouse-gas emissions to livestock — more, the report noted, than what's produced by transportation — livestock has taken an increasingly hard rap. At first, it was just vegetarian groups that used the U.N.'s findings as evidence for the superiority of an all-plant diet. But since then, a broader range of environmentalists has taken up the cause. At a recent European Parliament hearing titled "Global Warming and Food Policy: Less Meat = Less Heat," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued that reducing meat consumption is a "simple, effective and short-term delivery measure in which everybody could contribute" to emissions reductions.

And of all the animals that humans eat, none are held more responsible for climate change than the ones that moo. Cows not only consume more energy-intensive feed than other livestock; they also produce more methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — than other animals do. "If your primary concern is to curb emissions, you shouldn't be eating beef," says Nathan Pelletier, an ecological economist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, N.S., noting that cows produce 13 to 30 lb. of carbon dioxide per pound of meat. (See where cows eat and what it means for the environment.)

So how can Coleman and Damrosch believe that adding livestock to their farm will help the planet? Cattleman Ridge Shinn has the answer. On a wintry Saturday at his farm in Hardwick, Mass., he is out in his pastures encouraging a herd of plump Devon cows to move to a grassy new paddock. Over the course of a year, his 100 cattle will rotate across 175 acres four or five times. "Conventional cattle raising is like mining," he says. "It's unsustainable, because you're just taking without putting anything back. But when you rotate cattle on grass, you change the equation. You put back more than you take."

It works like this: grass is a perennial. Rotate cattle and other ruminants across pastures full of it, and the animals' grazing will cut the blades — which spurs new growth — while their trampling helps work manure and other decaying organic matter into the soil, turning it into rich humus. The plant's roots also help maintain soil health by retaining water and microbes. And healthy soil keeps carbon dioxide underground and out of the atmosphere.

Compare that with the estimated 99% of U.S. beef cattle that live out their last months on feedlots, where they are stuffed with corn and soybeans. In the past few decades, the growth of these concentrated animal-feeding operations has resulted in millions of acres of grassland being abandoned or converted — along with vast swaths of forest — into profitable cropland for livestock feed. "Much of the carbon footprint of beef comes from growing grain to feed the animals, which requires fossil-fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides, transportation," says Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. "Grass-fed beef has a much lighter carbon footprint." Indeed, although grass-fed cattle may produce more methane than conventional ones (high-fiber plants are harder to digest than cereals, as anyone who has felt the gastric effects of eating broccoli or cabbage can attest), their net emissions are lower because they help the soil sequester carbon.

From Vermont, where veal and dairy farmer Abe Collins is developing software designed to help farmers foster carbon-rich topsoil quickly, to Denmark, where Thomas Harttung's Aarstiderne farm grazes 150 head of cattle, a vanguard of small farmers are trying to get the word out about how much more eco-friendly they are than factory farming. "If you suspend a cow in the air with buckets of grain, then it's a bad guy," Harttung explains. "But if you put it where it belongs — on grass — that cow becomes not just carbon-neutral but carbon-negative." Collins goes even further. "With proper management, pastoralists, ranchers and farmers could achieve a 2% increase in soil-carbon levels on existing agricultural, grazing and desert lands over the next two decades," he estimates. Some researchers hypothesize that just a 1% increase (over, admittedly, vast acreages) could be enough to capture the total equivalent of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.

This math works out in part because farmers like Shinn don't use fertilizers or pesticides to maintain their pastures and need no energy to produce what their animals eat other than what they get free from the sun. Furthermore, pasturing frequently uses land that would otherwise be unproductive. "I'd like to see someone try to raise soybeans here," he says, gesturing toward the rocky, sloping fields around him.

By many standards, pastured beef is healthier. That's certainly the case for the animals involved; grass feeding obviates the antibiotics that feedlots are forced to administer in order to prevent the acidosis that occurs when cows are fed grain. But it also appears to be true for people who eat cows. Compared with conventional beef, grass-fed is lower in saturated fat and higher in omega-3s, the heart-healthy fatty acids found in salmon.

But not everyone is sold on its superiority. In addition to citing grass-fed meat's higher price tag — Shinn's ground beef ends up retailing for about $7 a pound, more than twice the price of conventional beef — feedlot producers say that only through their economies of scale can the industry produce enough meat to satisfy demand, especially for a growing population. These critics note that because grass is less caloric than grain, it takes two to three years to get a pastured cow to slaughter weight, whereas a feedlot animal requires only 14 months. "Not only does it take fewer animals on a feedlot to produce the same amount of meat," says Tamara Thies, chief environmental counsel for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (which contests the U.N.'s 18% figure), "but because they grow so quickly, they have less chance to produce greenhouse gases."

GP: Note:  Our friends did NOT find the above paragraph to be true. They tethered their yearling calves on pickets and grass-fed them exclusively all Spring and Summer. They grew well and were big robust calves ready for processing by the Fall.

To Allan Savory, the economies-of-scale mentality ignores the role that grass-fed herbivores can play in fighting climate change. A former wildlife conservationist in Zimbabwe, Savory once blamed overgrazing for desertification. "I was prepared to shoot every bloody rancher in the country," he recalls. But through rotational grazing of large herds of ruminants, he found he could reverse land degradation, turning dead soil into thriving grassland.

Like him, Coleman now scoffs at the environmentalist vogue for vilifying meat eating. "The idea that giving up meat is the solution for the world's ills is ridiculous," he says at his Maine farm. "A vegetarian eating tofu made in a factory from soybeans grown in Brazil is responsible for a lot more CO2 than I am." A lifetime raising vegetables year-round has taught him to value the elegance of natural systems. Once he and Damrosch have brought in their livestock, they'll "be able to use the manure to feed the plants, and the plant waste to feed the animals," he says. " And even though we can't eat the grass, we'll be turning it into something we can."

Read article



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We so appreciate people who are out there doing that paradigm shift groove thing and coming up with great new ideas and innovations! Since we now have new chicks and more chickens and turkeys on the way, we've been reading up on poultry raising and happened onto several great sights with info on making chicken tractors or 'arks', egg-mobiles or this one...and various styles of coops and hen houses.



What's also really wonderful to see is the country life reaching the cities and suburbs with so many ingenious and old-fashioned-made-new-again ideas! One of my absolute favorites in 'suburban homestead style' is Patti Merino...The Garden Girl...who's taken her home in Boston suburbia to all new green levels turning it into her own little farmette in the city. She's produced lots of short video clips on everything from shearing her angora bunny and handspinning the fur into yarn...to 4 season gardening...to a chicken tractor over raised beds...to vertical gardening...to living with small livestock...to much much more...all in her own backyard! Also see her fresh from the garden recipes! She's very upbeat and her enthusiasm and concepts are contagious! I promise you...you'll love her!!



Another great find along these lines are the Poultry People in the UK. The video above is one of their chicken ark designs that you've just got to check out! It honestly can be this simple! They obviously enjoy their chickens, too, with quirky videos on the 'chicken life'...here below Chicken Meets Fox...quite humorous!




Oh and you'll get a kick out of this one, too...


Once you're done with the chuckling...or chu, chuk, chukking...notice how they've actually constructed this one:  A triangle with roosts and metal roof. Gotta love that little heart, too!


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Spring Updates 05/17/2009
 
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Sorry for the absence, but you know how busy Spring can be! The photo above is a view of our 'backyard' now as the leaves are just coming in. Nothing like Spring Green!

So what have we Green Pioneers been up to? We're now making our first go at brooding our own chicks. The children are loving this new form of entertainment! We've also been out foraging fiddleheads that have grown prolifically in the woods on our land!

We have some updates and info to share with you, too!

1. Update on NAIS

From the Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance:

Federal Updates USDA Announces Locations For Listening Sessions USDA is holding a series of listening sessions to get input on NAIS.  USDA and Congress appear to be headed straight towards a mandatory NAIS program.  These listening sessions are an important opportunity to show the widespread opposition to NAIS and to get press attention on this issue!  PLEASE COME! 

You can also submit written comments online - more information is below.

Read Rest of Article

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2.  Natural Care
These are a couple of great sites I've found recently on Natural Horse Care...as well as natural care for other pets and livestock:

Natural Horse Magazine
Shirley's Wellness Cafe


I'm developing a section for this site dedicated to alternative (i.e. non-allopathic) care for pets and livestock. We'll also provide exposure to animal abuses perpetrated by the factory farms and big-pharma companies. There's much we need to understand that many a vet and/or extension agent will not tell us...either through ignorance or slave-to-the-industry mentality.

Vaccines Dangerous to your animals!
Natural Hoof Care and Rehab
Natural Hoof Care.net
Benefits of Paddock Paradise!
Dirt and Clay good for horses and other animals? Check it out!

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3.  A New Challenge!

Freedom Gardens has a new challenge brewing for 'green' gardeners! Here's their intro:


Collective Growing and Harvesting Effort

Path to Freedom and Freedom Gardens aim to show people that they don’t need acres of space to begin growing food, and that gardening can reduce your food bills, food miles and create a more sustainable way of life right in your own backyard.

Last year we launched the successful 100-foot Diet Challenge encouraging individuals and families to eat at least one homegrown meal a week. The overwhelming response led to the creation of Freedom Gardens, an online social networking community of nearly 2,500 gardening enthusiasts who are fed up with foreign oil, frequent food miles and high food prices—and who want to band together with like-minded folks.

So, this year, we want to expand the scope and impact of the 100-foot Diet Challenge and think big--
really big! Are you ready for the 100-foot Diet Challenge 2.0?

1 MILLION POUND FREEDOM HARVEST CHALLENGE

Read More!


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"Please do away with the NAIS altogether. We don't need this invasive form of
legislation and law. Even though this program is said to be "voluntary" at the
present time, the logistics and practice of it are far from being "voluntary" at
all. Thank you for your prompt attention to this very serious issue in relieving
the U.S. citizenry from this insidious legislation."

Regulations.gov
Contact Your Legislators

I found the article that I was searching for yesterday and have put it below. As much as this information is intimidating and even immobilizing...at least it is for me!...I try to take courage in those who have come before us. Here's a quote from Mary Pride's book, The Way Home, describing how we can take advantage of our windows of present opportunities:

As for the future, I'd like us to follow the example of Philip Henry, the father of the great Bible commentator Matthew Henry. When the English government lifted restrictions on Nonconformist preaching, Philip Henry's friends begged him not to preach openly. They warned that the government could then tag him as one of the men to crack down on when they brought back the old penalties, which everyone expected they would. "Many thoughts of heart he had concerning this use he made of the liberty," wrote his son, "not knowing what would be in the end hereof; but after serious consideration, and many prayers, he saw his way very plain before him, and addressed himself with all diligence to the improvement of this gate of opportunity. Some had dismal apprehensions of the issue of it; and that there would be an after-reckoning. But saith he, "let us mind our duty, and let God alone to order events, which is his work, not ours." The government did briefly suspend preaching liberty again, as his friends had feared. But the upshot of it all was that although Mr. Henry suffered some personal abuse and loss of property, the Noncomformist ministers had made such good use of their liberty to preach when they had it that England never again put a believing Christian to the flames.

None of us is at risk of being burned at the stake....at least not at the moment anyway...that's a joke, I'm kidding...I think. And my husband and I walk a constant tug-of-war between how much political activism is the answer and how much is just making lifestyle decisions...opting out of the system as much as we can...and educating ourselves, our children, and others as to what issues we're facing today in America and our impact on a global scale. Our choices, actions, and decisions do have ramifications...they do have a ripple effect. At the same time, however, we do find ourselves in a country that calls itself a representative form of government. That implies that our legislators act on behalf of their constituency. So on some level, we do have a responsibility to at least make our beliefs and desires known to those legislators who are sworn to represent us. But our leanings are couched way more on the personal responsibility and choices as opposed to a constant political activist battle. We fear God, not man, and we put our ultimate trust in Him.

OUR LAND - COLLATERAL FOR THE NATIONAL DEBT  

 



Derry Brownfield
August 17, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

I consider Wayne Hage one of the most intelligent men I ever met. On our very first visit he was explaining the World Bank, the International Monetary fund and how the world bankers planned on collateralizing the world debt with land. Not just the U.S. national debt, but the “WORLD” debt. A listener sent me a copy of a report of the FOURTH WORLD WILDERNESS CONGRESS, which was held in Denver in 1987. Over 1500 people from sixty countries were told that wilderness lands were to protect the reindeer, the spotted owl and other endangered species. Ninety percent of the group consisted of conservationists, ecologists, government and United Nations bureaucrats. The other ten percent were world banking heavyweights, such as David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank, London banker Edmund de Rothschild and the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, James Baker, who gave the keynote address. George W. Hunt, an investment councilor, served as official host and sat in on all the meetings. It was George Hunt that wrote the report from which I have gleaned much of my information.

During the first three days, the group was told that the WILDERNESS CONGRESS was about beating the ozone deterioration and bringing the rain forests back. The following days were closed to the public. With only the bankers in attendance the topics discussed centered around the creation of a “WORLD CONSERVATION BANK” with collateral being derived from receipt of wilderness properties throughout the world. This bank would have central bank powers similar to the Federal Reserve. It would create currency and loans and engage in international discounting, counter-trade, barter and swap actions. Rothschild personally conducted the monetary matters and the creation of this WORLD CONSERVATION BANK. This bank would refinance by swapping debt for assets. A country with a huge national debt would receive money to pay off the debt by swapping the debt for wilderness lands. The plan was to swap one trillion dollars of Third World Debt into this new bank. In the long term, when the countries won’t be able to pay off the loans, governments from around the world will give title to their wilderness lands to the bankers.

[Yes, and what country is in debt to China to the tune of trillions of dollars? What country is racking up more debt in "bailouts" to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars?]

George Hunt wrote: “Title to the lands will go to the World Wilderness Land Inventory Trust. This Trust will float into the World Conservation Bank by the unanimous decree of the world’s people, saying, God bless you for saving our reindeer. Those people at the congress were ignorant. They don’t suspect anything. They’re very naïve. Not stupid, ignorant. I’m talking about the 90% that were not the world banking heavyweights.”

Hunt goes on to say that World Bank loans, as they stand now, are not collateralized. They’re saying, we want collateral, so when we loan-swap this debt, we’re going to own the Amazon if you default. They’re going to make their bad loans good by collateralizing them after the fact with all of this land and somebody is going to end up with title to twelve and half billion acres. They have multi-trillions of dollars upon which they can create currencies and loans and they’re going to begin to barter and counter-trade and loan-swap against the United States. The World Conservation Bank is a scheme to monetize land. This will function as a world central bank and out of that bank there will grow a one-world fiat currency.

This isn’t some scheme conjured up during the Bushes’ and Clinton administrations. The United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development was created in 1982. The commission published the “BRUNDTLAND REPORT” setting the stage for unlimited enactments to take over ecology, and environmental and pollution laws throughout the world. The report stated: “We will have a proposal for very harsh, quasi-spiritual ecological laws for MOTHER EARTH. A MOTHER EARTH COMES FIRST mentality will arise throughout the world.”

When James Baker made his keynote speech in 1987, he stated that, “No longer will the World Bank carry this debt unsecured. The only assets we have to collateralize are federal lands and national parks.” Baker’s definition of federal lands includes Heritage sites, of which there are about 20 in the United States. I say “about” 20, because they are being added on a regular basis. As I write this article Congress is about to vote on a proposed Rim of the Valley National Park that would include over 500,000 acres of National Forest land and 170,000 parcels of private property including many farms and ranches. At the same time there is a bill before Congress called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act that would increase the acreage of designated wilderness by 50% in the lower 48 states. *** While our Heritage sites take in quite a large amount of territory, such as Yellowstone National Park and Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon and the Everglades, other countries have much greater areas. Brazil for example has the Amazon Conservation Complex and Canada has the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks. As I write this story the list includes 851 properties in 141 countries, comprising over one third of the earth’s land mass. Will all this land collateralize the world’s debt? Probably not, so along comes NAIS (the National Animal Identification System).

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “The first step in implementing a national animal identification system (NAIS) is identifying and registering premises that are associated with the animal agriculture industry. In terms of the NAIS, a premise is any geographically unique location in which agricultural animals are raised, held, or boarded. Under this definition, farms, ranches, feed-yards, auction barns and livestock exhibitions and fair sites are all examples of premises.” That may be the definition some government bureaucrat will give you, but the word “premises” under the “international Criminal Court Act 2002- Sect 4, states: The word “premises” includes a place and a “conveyance.” Why check with the International Criminal Court Act? Because on June 8, 2007 under Secy. of Ag. Bruce Knight, speaking at the World Pork Expo in Des Moines, is quoted as saying, “We have to live by the same international rules we’re expecting other people to do.”

Throughout the entire Draft National Animal Identification System Users Guide, land is referred to as a premises and not property. A “Premises” has no protection under the Constitution of the United States, while property always has the exclusive rights of the owner tied to it. Property rights are protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

The word “Premise” is a synonym for the word tenement. A definition of the word tenement in law is: Property, such as land, held by one person “leasing” it to another. Webster’s New World Dictionary 1960 College Edition defines “Premises” as the part of a deed or “lease” that states its reason, the parties involved and the property in “conveyance.” Webster then defines “conveyance” as the transfer of ownership of real property from one person to another. It is quite obvious that the bureaucrats in Washington had a very good reason to use the term “premises” and never mention “PROPERTY.”

Let’s take another look at the wilderness areas and the World Bank’s plans to collateralize its loans. While the wilderness areas cover about one third of the earth’s surface, they are wilderness areas for a good reason – they were useless or difficult to homestead, farm or use in a constructive manner. Worldwide the best and more valuable land is occupied by farmers, ranchers and people with the ambition to produce. Wouldn’t the World Bankers rather have some productive property than mountains, deserts and swamps?

I am convinced that the word “premise” will put an encumbrance on your deed. The bankers say they want to monetize land. It’s your land and my land they want to monetize.


The bankers are in the process of accumulating the wealth of the world. Very few privately owned assets can be termed “real wealth.” According to scripture, God made Abraham very wealthy, giving him LAND, CATTLE, silver and gold. (Genesis 24:35) Four thousand years later, wealth continues to be LAND, CATTLE, silver and gold. I don’t know where the world deposits of gold are stored, but I’m sure the bankers have them in their control. That only leaves LAND and CATTLE which I believe could be next on the list. Genesis 47 describers how Joseph had storehouses full of grain to feed the people but he didn’t have a welfare program. During the first year of the famine, Joseph took “ALL THE MONEY” the people had for only one year’s supply of grain. The second year he took all their cattle for another year’s supply of grain. The next year they said, “We have nothing left but our bodies and our land. Buy us and our land in exchange for food and we and our land will be servants to Pharaoh.” Genesis 47:21 states, “And as for the people, he removed them to the cities and made slaves of them.”

James Madison made a statement concerning how our people could lose our freedom by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power. Is it possible that those in power today are gradually and silently in the process of removing the people to the cities to make slaves of them? Federalizing our land and our cattle would certainly be a step in that direction.

© 2007 Derry Brownfield - All Rights Reserved

Derry Brownfield was born in 1932 and grew up during the depression. He is a farmer and a broadcaster. Derry attended the College of Agriculture at the University of Missouri where he received his B.S. and M.S. degrees. He taught Vocational Agriculture several years before going to work as a Marketing Specialist with the Missouri Department of Agriculture. Derry served as Director of the Kansas City Livestock Market Foundation at the Kansas City Stockyard prior to establishing himself in farm broadcasting.

Derry started farming when he was 16 years old and received the Future Farmers of America State Farmer degree in 1949. Since that time the Brownfield Farm has grown to over 1000 acres maintaining a herd of 200 registered Charolias cows.

Web Site: www.derrybrownfield.com

Find this article here

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Stop NAIS 03/12/2009
 

We must act now on this National Animal Identification System (NAIS). This is to be moved from "voluntary" to "mandatory" some time this year...with discussions starting this month. I found a blog site called The Yeoman Farmer (based on Thomas Jefferson's term and respect for the small agrarian farmer) that does a nice job of outlining the program with some good links as well.

As with everything this present government goes about sticking it's fingers into, the program ends up having much more far-reaching implications than merely the disease control of animals that it professes to be protecting. It basically gives the government access to all whereabouts of your animals at all times...even if it's just a 4-H event for your youngsters or an afternoon trail ride on your horse. Yes, I'm serious. Anytime your pets or livestock go "off premises" or "changes premises" or goes to the vet or is given to your nephew, Big Brother demands to know about it. This includes backyard bunnies to chickens to elk and deer...if you can honestly believe it. But it's the facts.

The web sites No NAIS.org and this article by Joyce Morrison goes into much more depth pertaining to this very unnerving issue. The privacy factor is disturbing enough...but what really gets to me is that we're talking about our food here. That's the bottom line. And our right to raise, grow, nurture, and process our own food on our own land without the government regulating this basic right to our own food right out from underneath our fingertips. Growing our own food is not some privilege bestowed upon us from Big Brother. It is our basic right...one of many according to our increasingly defunct and ignored Constitution.

How do they accomplish this? Very slyly and subtly but also at lightning speed with which they hope will prevent us from acting quickly enough to make any difference in the outcome. One thing to really look out for is the terminology they use in all of this jargon...especially the word "premises" that they're bantering around so much. The Constitution protects our rights to our own property. Now all property owners please pay attention. Their loophole is in substituting the word "premises" for the word "property"...very subtle but very large difference. A "premises" is NOT protected by the Constitution. If you as a landowner begin filling out and signing a 5 foot stack of papers or registering under the NAIS somewhere in there declaring that your property is now a "premises"...and that you are a "stakeholder"...well, you may have just lost the right to your own land that you've sweat and paid for on the basis of word substitution, a slight of hand in legal-eze, and our ignorance of what the Constitution actually protects. This sounds arcane but here's a brief overview of what I'm describing...and here's another, NAIS Latest Attempt to Steal Your Land. I read a great article pertaining to this very important subject several months ago. I can't locate it at the moment, I'm desperately trying to find it again, but there are several out there if you do a search on 'NAIS premises is not protected under Constitution.'

I suggest in all these articles discussing the NAIS and other relevant issues that we use the proper legal terminology. It is our property...not our "premises" and we are landowners or property owners not "stakeholders" where we must maintain the right to raise and grow our own food. This is extremely fundamental to our freedom as a people in this nation.

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Winter Readiness 10/28/2008
 

On the homestead, the seasons roll through with a rythm and pace of their own. Once Autumn arrives, the harvest must quickly come in, wood is chopped and stored in the shed...or under the porch, butchering is done, and the canning of jellies, pickles, and preserves are neatly stored...row upon row of shiny glass jars gleaming from the shelves.

The animals are also tended to and nestled in for the coming months of winter cold. I promised you a tour of the Mere's marvelous chicken coop once it was complete. So here it is!

Karyn and I both relish the tidied up, all-snug-for-the-winter feeling. Come with me as we wander about their cozy homestead...as the bustling last days of harvest are slowing and the bounty is simply waiting to be enjoyed.

The low hinged door...easily accessible to little hands for egg gathering...

They've just started getting their first soft greenish-blue colored eggs from the young Araucana hens...that happen to be very docile, sweet-natured chickens!


The screen door acts as a perfect gate to the outdoor coop...


Chicken ramp into the backdoor of the chicken house...

Are there any chickens in there?


The meat poultry (broilers and turkeys) are now frozen in the freezer along with those scrumptious berries from the summer, and the rest sits prettily in baskets and jars...awaiting the winter feasts.

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Cagey Ideas 10/05/2008
 

One of our fair-weather projects was to get the bunny cage expanded and make it a little easier for the kiddos to access and clean. Andrew used cedar posts with fencing on the ground (to prevent digging) as well as around and above. The board top from the old cage now slides over half of the new cage. It's very solid and the children have spent way more time with the bunnies now that they're easier to get to!

We happened upon the idea for using the cedar posts a.) because we had a bunch, and b.) because our friends and neighbors have used them for their cages with nice success. For example, the Meres have tried a variety of cage ideas...

They used branches to create the posts for the turkey cage then added the leafy limbs on top...

And used the lightweight pvc pipe idea for a chicken tractor...

They've now decided to majorly upgrade and enlarge the chicken coop using very large tall cedar posts along with a spacious new adjoining chicken house that has some nice features as well.

The door they're using was an extra one they had in their shed. Now painted a dark blue, it looks great! The wooden screen door will be used to enter the coop area - another advantage of the tall posts. Steve put a low, horizontal pull-up door along the lower half of the chicken house opening to where the nesting boxes are situated, so that their little ones could easily get to the eggs without having to actually go inside - we all know how messy chicken houses are! They even landed the wooden nesting boxes for free at a yard sale this summer. With a few adjustments they fit in perfectly!

Now Karyn feels that all she lacks is a nice birch-branch wreath to bedeck the wall or door of their new coop. We'll have to remedy that quick! I'll give you the full tour when it's completed.

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Thank you so much for dropping by! We're very excited about what we're learning and the people we're meeting who are also on a journey toward more self-sufficiency and a truly more independent, quality lifestyle!

As you can see, we're still very much under construction here, but we've got some interesting, intriguing information coming up very soon. So please put on the hard hat and keep popping in as we continue to construct what we hope to provide as plenty of encouragement, ideas, and inspiration for green pioneers pursuing the green frontier!

Also feel free to leave your e-mail address on our contact

In the meantime, you're welcome to catch up on our recent blogs on homesteading, life in Maine, Root Cellars, and the progress on our Log Home.

Also scroll on down and peruse the site links in the side bar below. Although we certainly don't subscribe to all the various sentiments and viewpoints expressed by the green community at large (as well as what gets interlaced into some of these web sites), we continue to glean good information where we can find it.

For more on our adventures into the homestead, homespun, home school, home life, check out Debbie's web site, The Romantic Mom.com page for updates and new information. We look forward to meeting you and learning about your adventures or interests in this exciting new frontier!

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