Posted on 02/09/2009 12:36:11 AM PST by nw_arizona_granny
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
-Winston Churchill
Jalapeno Pepper Jelly
2 cups green or red jalapeno chilies, seeded, rough chopped and liquefied in processor or blender.
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
6 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
2 pouches liquid pectin
green or red food color
Place chilies, pepper, sugar, and vinegar in a large saucepan. Bring to rolling boil. Boil for five minutes. Remove from heat, add pectin and color. Seal in hot sterilized jars with sterilized lids and rings.
I sterilize my clean jars in the dishwasher on the water heat, and heat dry setting.
If you like it with less heat, remove the ribs as well as seeds and reduce cayenne to 1/2 teaspoon.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FoodPreservationDryingCanningAndMore/
Flu causes a runaway reaction in your body in which the antibodies that fight the virus go on and also destroy your lungs. Vitamin D regulates the antibodies and keeps them under control. If you are on dialysis you need extra vitamin d because if your kidneys don’t work, they don’t send out the vitamin d you need, when you need it.<<<
Thanks that is good advice.
People are rising up and speaking out. Our lone RINO Congressman Mike Castle had a town meeting in Georgetown - in out southernmost county (a more conservative area)- usually only 20 or 30 (mostly politicos) usually are the only attendees. Well, he was totally shocked when over 200 vocal constituents filled the room to overflowing.<<<
Wonderful, I knew the “Tea Parties” were making folks wake up and pay attention to what is going on.
If the politicians get the idea that we are waking up, then maybe they will pay attention to what we really want.
Like a duck, I seem to be paddling furiously under water in order to be calm and undisturbed on the surface when my lifestyle may change-not by choice. I’ve tried to “tell it like it is.” Hopefully my readers can get the vision of what is ahead in some areas. With additional research and preparation, none of us need fear the future. We can be a prepared people.<<<
More and more folks are catching on to the need to be prepared.
All your reports are good, thanks for finding them.
You are doing better than I am, for I have been looking for the article to use to open and do not like any that I find, must be nap time, for me.
OK, we don’t need a new thread.
I got the new one all ready..............
And when I tried to post, discovered that I had chosen a banned source.
So no more effort on my part for tonight, it is too much stress and now I am not breathing.
Maybe we will just go on with this one.
>>>So no more effort on my part for tonight, it is too much stress and now I am not breathing.
Maybe we will just go on with this one.<<<
Relax...
There is no pressure to do it till you are ready AND have found the one that really suits.
A German Lady Remembers and Speaks
by Lori Kalner
In Germany, when Hitler came to power, it was a time of terrible financial depression. Money was worth nothing. In Germany people lost homes and jobs, just like in the American Depression in the 1930s, which we have read about in Thoene’s Shiloh books. In those days, in my homeland, Adolph Hitler was elected to power by promising “CHANGE.” He blamed the “Zionists” around the world for all our problems. He told everyone it was greedy Zionist Bankers who had caused every problem we had. He promised that when he will be leader, the greedy Zionist bankers would be punished. The Zionists, he promised, would be wiped off the face of the earth. So Hitler was elected to power. A coalition of political parties in parliament made him supreme leader. Then, when he was leader, he disgraced and expelled everyone in parliament who did not go along with him.
Yes. CHANGE came to my homeland as the new leader promised it would. The teachers in German schools began to teach the children to sing songs in praise of Hitler. This was the beginning of the Hitler Youth movement. It began with praise of the Fuhrer’s programs on the lips of innocent children. Little girls and boys joined hands and sang these songs as they walked home from school. My brother came home and told Papa what was happening at school. The political hymns of children proclaimed CHANGE was coming to our homeland and the Fuhrer was a leader we could trust.
I will never forget my father’s face. Grief and fear. He knew that the best propaganda of the Nazis was on the lips of little children. That evening before he said grace at the dinner table, he placed his hands upon the heads of my brothers and me and prayed the Living Word upon us from Jeremiah 1:4-5. ‘Now the Word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to The nations.”
Soon the children’s songs praising the Fuhrer were heard everywhere on the streets and over the radio. “With our Fuhrer to lead us, WE CAN DO IT! We can CHANGE the world!” Soon after that Papa, a pastor, was turned away from visiting elderly parishioners in hospitals. The people he had come to comfort with God’s Word were no longer there. Where had they vanished to while under nationalized health care? It became an open secret. The elderly and sick began to disappear from hospitals feet first as “mercy killing” became the policy. Children with disabilities and those who had Down syndrome were euthanized. People whispered, “Maybe it is better for them now. Put them out of misery. They are no longer suffering.And, of course, their death is better for the treasury of our nation. Our taxes no longer must be spent to care for such a burden.” And so murder was called mercy.
The government took over private business. Industry and health care were “nationalized.” (NA-ZI means National Socialist Party) The businesses of all Jews were seized. Surely you remember our story in Berlin on Krystalnacht. The world and God’s word were turned upside down. Hitler promised the people economic CHANGE. It was, rather, Lucifer’s very ancient delusion leading to destruction.
What began with the propaganda of children singing a catchy tune ended in the deaths of millions of children. The reality of what came upon us is so horrible that you in this present generation cannot imagine it. Our suffering is too great to ever tell in a book or show in a newsreel. When I spoke to my friend about some of these things, she wept and said she could not bear to write them. Perhaps one day she will, but I asked her, “who could bear to read our suffering?” Yet with my last breaths I warn every Christian and Jew now in the name of the Lord, unless your course of the church in America is spiritually changed now, returning to the Lord, there are new horrors yet to come.
I trembled when I heard the voices of American children raised in song, praising the name of Obama, the charismatic fellow who claims he is the American Messiah. Yet I have heard what this man Obama says about abortion and the “mercy killing” of tiny babies who are not wanted. There are so few of us left to warn you. I have heard that there are 69 million Catholics in America and 70 million Evangelical Christians. Where are your voices? Where is your outrage? Where is passion and your vote? Do you vote based on an abortionist’s empty promises and economics? Or do you vote according to the Bible? Thus says the Lord about every living child still in the womb. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”
I have experienced the signs of the politics of Death in my youth. I see them again now. Christians! Unless you stand up now, you will lose your freedom of religion. In America priests and preachers have already lost their freedom to speak openly from their pulpits. We see danger in politicians. They cannot legally instruct you of which politician holds fast to the precepts of scripture. American law forbids this freedom of speech to conservative pastors. They may lose their tax exempt status. And yet I have heard the words of Obama’s pastor damning America!
I have heard the words of Obama damning and mocking all of you in small towns because you “Cling to your religion.” But I am a woman whose name is unknown. My life is recorded as a work of fiction. I have no fear of reprisal when I speak truth to you from the pages of a book. I am an old woman and will soon go to be with my Lord. I have no fear for myself, but for all of you and for your children, I tremble. I tremble at the hymns to a political leaders which your children will sing at school. (Though even now a hymn or a prayer to God and our Lord Jesus is against the law in public school!)
I pray that you will personally heed this warning for the sake of your children and your grandchildren. Do not be deceived.
The Lord bless you as you bless Israel by standing in defense of her right to exist on the land given to the Jewish people by the God of Israel. Lets pray that Israel will turn back to their God. Do not be silent, but share this with your fellow Christians, share it with your pastors, and with anyone you have a chance to speak to. Lets also pray for that breakthrough to the Muslims, and please remember to pray for all of the soldiers in the IDF - they are defending and fighting for the Kingdom of God.
From The CARMEL ALERT July 17th 2009
http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/july2009/jim717-1.htm
America’s ‘disappeared’: The homeless of the big cities
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
(WMR) — They were always seen by all who passed by, broke and idle in a number of Washington, DC, parks and grassy nooks. After 9/11, however, they began to disappear and in large numbers. “They” were the familiar faces of Washington’s homeless.
From Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, to Virginia Avenue across from the State Department, and Franklin Square, amid the city’s glass and steel towers housing DC’s power elite to tony Georgetown, many homeless people, both those truly down on their luck and those who were mentally ill, began to disappear.
As one Washington homeless advocate told this editor, “These people simply vanished.”
The disappearance of homeless people from the streets of Washington began under the administration of Mayor Anthony Williams and continues in force under that of Adrian Fenty. Both African-American mayors, Democrats but beholden to deep-pocketed land developers in a city that rarely elects Republicans to office, began to quietly make it tougher for the homeless to survive in the nation’s capital. Last year, Fenty announced that the Franklin School Shelter at 13th an K Streets would be phased out, leaving the homeless residents of that shelter little choice but to move to the streets.
Last August, a number of homeless activists picketed Fenty’s home over the plans to close the Franklin shelter. WMR was told by one spokesperson for the homeless that one of the protesters, John McDermott, has also now “vanished.” The spokesperson added that there are many cases of people known to live on the streets of Washington simply “disappearing” without a trace.
Some major cities, including New York and Atlanta, have been discovered to be “dumping” their homeless residents on other smaller towns and cities. Others threaten their homeless with prison unless they leave town with usually a one-way bus ticket provided.
However, there is no evidence that Washington, DC, has been dumping homeless on other cities or paying their transportation out of town. The homeless spokesperson interviewed by WMR said that DC’s homeless are simply “vanishing” without a trace. DC officials in charge of the homeless are very tight-lipped when asked about the fate of unaccounted for homeless in the city.
Although the best-case scenario is that these unfortunate people have, in fact, been relocated to other areas, the spokesman ended the interview on a chilling note. He said with federal camps and a high demand for any usable body parts by the lucrative transplant industry, he feared the worst may have befallen some of DC’s “invisible residents.”
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4882.shtml
I haven’t made rosemary salt (which sounds wonderful), but I do make my own gomasio, which my hubby puts on practically every vegetable I make (as well as some foods that I don’t think it should be on, lol).
1 jar of sesame seeds (regular size, should be around 99 cents in the cheap spices, or you can get the bigger container at Sam’s)
Very coarse sea salt
In a dry, but seasoned cast iron skillet, pour sesame seeds in an even layer and put on high heat. Heat on high, stirring constantly, just until seeds start lightly turn color, then turn temp down to medium or lower. Keep stirring until seeds are mostly medium to darkish brown, and remove from heat. (If they make popping noises, turn your heat down immediately). Allow seeds to cool slightly, then add sea salt to taste (about a teaspoon for the whole jar of seeds is plenty) and lightly grind with a mortar and pestle just until you have some whole seeds, some broken, and some crushed. Keep in an airtight container, and put on whatever foods need a little zing. I think it’s best on green beans and on salads.
Seventy percent of doctors do not get a flu shot.
Flu virus exists in people year-round, and new strains seed a population during the “off-season.” In the northern and southern temperate zones, flu epidemics occur in the cold part of the year, October–March and April–September respectively. Flu epidemics occur in the tropics during the rainy season.
Explanations for why flu epidemics occur in the winter when it is cold – people being indoors in close contact, drier air dehydrating mucus and preventing the body from expelling virus particles, the virus lingering longer on exposed surfaces, like doorknobs, with colder temperatures – do not explain why flu epidemics occur in the tropics.
Something that can explain why flu epidemics also occur both in warm and cold climates is this: During a flu epidemic, wherever it may be, the atmosphere blocks ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation from the Sun. In the temperate zones above latitude 35 degrees North and South, the sun is at a low enough angle in the winter that the ozone layer in the atmosphere absorbs and blocks the short-wavelength (280–315 nanometers) UVB rays. In the tropics during the wet season, thick rain clouds block UVB rays.
Skin contains a cholesterol derivative, 7-dehydrocholesterol. UVB radiation on skin breaks open one of the carbon rings in this molecule to form vitamin D. The activated form of vitamin D (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D) attaches to receptors on genes that control their expression, which turn protein production on or off. Vitamin D regulates the expression of more than 1,000 genes throughout the body. They include ones in macrophages, cells in the immune system that, among other things, attack and destroy viruses. Vitamin D switches on genes in macrophages that make antimicrobial peptides, antibiotics the body produces. Like antibiotics, these peptides attack and destroy bacteria; but unlike antibiotics, they also attack and destroy viruses.
Vitamin D also expresses genes that stop macrophages from overreacting to an infection and releasing too many inflammatory agents – cytokines – that can damage infected tissue. Vitamin D, for example, down regulates genes that produce interleukin-2 and interferon gamma, two cytokines that prime macrophages and cytotoxic T cells to attack the body’s tissues. In the 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 500,000 Americans, young healthy adults would wake up in the morning feeling well, start drowning in their own inflammation as the day wore on, and be dead by midnight, as happened to my 22-year-old grandmother and my wife’s 24-year-old grandmother. Autopsies showed complete destruction of the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract resulting, researchers now know, from a macrophage-induced severe inflammatory reaction to the virus. In a terribly misguided way, these victims’ own immune system attacked and killed them, not the virus, something in future pandemics vitamin D, in appropriate doses, can prevent.
A creditable hypothesis that explains the seasonal nature of flu is that influenza is a vitamin D deficiency disease. Cannell and colleagues offer this hypothesis in “Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D” (Epidemiol Infect 2006;134:1129–40). They quote Hippocrates (circa 400 B.C.), who said, “Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year.” Vitamin D levels in the blood fall to their lowest point during flu seasons. Unable to be protected by the body’s own antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that this gene-expresser engineers, a person with a low vitamin D blood level is more vulnerable to contracting colds, influenza, and other respiratory infections (e.g., respiratory syncytial virus).
Studies show that children with rickets, a vitamin D-deficient skeletal disorder, suffer from frequent respiratory infections; and children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get a cold. Given vitamin D’s wide-ranging effects on gene expression, other studies, for example, show that people diagnosed with cancer in the summer have an improved survival compared with those diagnosed in the winter (Int J Cancer 2006;119:1530–36).
A growing body of evidence indicates that rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults (both a softening of bones due to defective bone mineralization) are just the tip of a vitamin D-deficiency iceberg. Tuberculosis and various autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, and type I diabetes have a causal association with low vitamin D blood levels. Vitamin D deficiency plays a causal role in hypertension, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, and stroke. It is also a risk factor for metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes, chronic fatigue, seasonal affective disorder, depression, cataracts, infertility, and osteoporosis. At the bottom of the vitamin D iceberg lies cancer. There is good evidence that vitamin D deficiency is a causal factor in some 15 different common cancers. (NEJM 2007;357:266–81.)
The increased number of deaths that occur in winter, largely from pneumonia and cardiovascular diseases, are much more likely due to vitamin D deficiency than to an increased prevalence of serologically-positive influenza virus (which also results from vitamin D deficiency).
Experts reckon that an optimum blood level of vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) is 50–99 ng/ml. (Children need a blood level >8 ng/ml to prevent rickets. It takes a concentration >20 to maintain parathyroid hormone levels in a normal range. A level >34 is needed for peak intestinal calcium absorption. And in elderly people neuromuscular performance steadily improves as vitamin D blood levels rise to 50 ng/ml.) The government’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamin D is 400 IU (international units) a day, an amount sufficient to prevent rickets and osteomalacia but not vitamin D’s other gene-regulating benefits. To achieve all of vitamin D’s benefits one has to take an amount ten times the government’s RDA – 4,000 to 5,000 IU a day.
A light-skinned person will synthesize 20,000 IU of vitamin D in 20 minutes sunbathing on a tropical beach, at which point vitamin D synthesis shuts down for the day (it takes a dark-skinned person 6 to 10 times longer to make this amount). Human breast milk does not contain vitamin D, since, from an evolutionary standpoint, our African ancestors’ infants, reared near the equator, could readily synthesize this gene regulator from sunlight in their skin. Food contains very little vitamin D. (The highest concentrations are in wild salmon, mackerel, sardines, and cod liver oil.) Federal regulations now require that some foods, like milk, be fortified with vitamin D. But one would have to drink 200 glasses of milk to obtain the amount of vitamin D a light-skinned person can make in 20 minutes sunbathing.
The majority of Americans are vitamin D deficient, with a 25-hydroxy D blood level <20 ng/ml, or insufficient, with a level of 20–<30 ng/ml. Cheap vitamin D supplements (D3, not D2) provide the only way most of us can maintain a year-round vitamin D blood levels greater than 50 ng/ml. That requires taking 4–5,000 IU of vitamin D a day (50,000 IU every ten days or 150,000 IU a month).
Taking vitamin D in these doses is safe, far safer than a flu shot with all the bad chemicals it contains. Concerns about vitamin D toxicity are overblown. One can take a 10,000 IU vitamin D supplement on a daily basis without any adverse effects. In healthy persons, long-term consumption of more than 40,000 IU a day is necessary to cause an elevation in the blood calcium level (hypercalcemia), the first manifestation of vitamin D toxicity (Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:694–97). Check your vitamin D (25-hydroxy D) blood level. People with granulomatous diseases like sarcoidosis should also check their blood level of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, the active form.
Can a shot (or tablets) of vitamin D prevent influenza better than a flu shot? There is good reason to believe that it can.
Doctors in India and Canada give people a once-yearly injection of 600,000 IU of vitamin D (MJA 2005;183:10–12). That would be better, and safer, than having a flu shot. Daily, weekly, or monthly vitamin D tablets work just as well. For more on this subject see my article “Vitamin D in a New Light” and visit Dr. Cannell’s Vitamin D Council website.
Investigators have completed one double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial that shows vitamin D prevents colds and influenza significantly better (P <0.002) than a placebo pill (Epidemiol Infection 2007;135:1095–6). A large multi-center randomized trial conducted over multiple flu seasons comparing vitamin D to a flu shot can show conclusively which is better, and safer. But given the financial stakes underpinning flu shots, and unpatentable vitamin D, who will fund it?
In the meantime, considering what is most likely to be the outcome of such a trial, if it is ever conducted, I recommend that you avoid flu shots and take vitamin D instead.
(snipped)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller27.html
WHAT “TIPPING POINT” WILL PUSH AMERICANS TO THEIR LIMIT?
By Mary Starrett
July 19, 2009
NewsWithViews.com
Here’s what we’re looking at:
Massive taxes, unprecedented government spending and full bore amnesty. Add to that a proposed state-run health care system which will force a “surtax” on folks who dare to be financially successful, will require employers to foot the bill for their worker’s health insurance- in essence penalizing business owners for having employees. (Great job stimulus, isn’t it?) The “healthcare” plan advocated by our president by its very nature will necessitate rationed services and guarantee mind-boggling bureaucracy along with the wasteful spending that is attached to all government programs. We’re facing a so- called “Cap and Trade” scheme which will further bankrupt this country by raising utility bills and reducing quality of living while exporting jobs. We have a Supreme Court Justice nominee who makes rulings based on skin color and who doesn’t think the 2nd amendment means what it says.
Our president has engineered the direct deposit of our tax dollars into the accounts of the baby-slaying industry giants, we confront acceptance as “normal” of the perversion of homosexuality through “marriage,” a ramped-up effort to play Globo-cop in Afghanistan to the tune of an additional $91 billion dollars, continued nation-building in Iraq, more government secrecy (called “transparency” by the Obama machine), corporate welfare, paybacks to union thugs via “card check” work place coercion, ,ramped up political profiling of so-called “Right wing extremists”, stealth “hate crimes “ legislation ( S 1390) designed to ”punish pastors and protect pedophiles” which is hidden in the National Defense Authorization Act (a favorite hiding place for scary and unconstitutional flotsam), more usurping of power from the executive branch and that’s just the thumbnail.
But you’re painfully aware of all that.
The question is what’s the final straw? What has to happen or what has happened that has you constructing your Maginot line?
In other words, what will cause you to tip when other events thus far haven’t?
The popular book Tipping Point examined epidemics, trends, events and movements to determine why some “tipped” and others didn’t. For instance, what made Hushpuppies a popular shoe when the brand languished for years with poor sales? Why did a routine outbreak of Syphilis in Baltimore turn into a full blown epidemic? Analyzing occurrences such as these, Malcolm Gladwell determined that something pushes the ordinary to become the extraordinary.
Gladwell showed that the overarching critical mass necessary to “tip” people and things doesn’t happen with one particularly major event. It is the little things before the “event” that causes the tip.
When did you say “that’s it”? Have you said it yet? When did you determine that you’ve “had enough” of servility and abuses by the powers that have corrupted your government?
Like the proverbial frog in the pot, have you kept upping your tolerance for what’s “too hot”?
Some say their tipping point will be when their guns are physically taken from them. Hard to imagine many of us will protest when for years we’ve allowed a steady eroding of our 2nd amendment rights and continued to elect and re-elect gun-grabbers on the “right” like John McCain. One by one, our fingers have been pried off the grips and now we hold onto our weapons with weakened, anemic grasps. Was it too close for comfort when the New Orleans area homeowners defending their property from looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were asked to hand over their guns?
Or was that something we could dismiss because it was “down there”? How about foreign troops on U.S. soil? Will that tip us? Perhaps the FEMA exercises planned for July 27th, 2009 will cause some mild reflux. Or maybe we will explain away yet another questionable act by federal overlords hell bent on making us all one Pangea-like serfdom. Later this month, the folks in FEMA region VI (Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.) will be offering up their renowned hospitality to troops from a number of countries in what’s called NLE 09.
The National Level Exercise “will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants (emphasis mine). “The NLE 09 scenario will begin in the aftermath of a notional (sic) terrorist event outside of the United States, and exercise play will center on preventing subsequent efforts by the terrorists to enter the United States and carry out additional attacks. This scenario enables participating senior officials to focus on issues related to preventing terrorist events domestically and protecting U.S. critical infrastructure.”
Note the absurdity of an exercise that purports to “prevent ...efforts by...terrorists to enter the United States.” ( Psst, hey terrorists- the southern border’s a cinch!) However, if an American citizen happens to have a standard size tube of toothpaste in his suitcase at the airport or one that’s not encased in a quart size plastic bag, the TSA federales can be counted on to protect the citizenry first by a proper wanding and then confiscation of the hazardous dentrifice.
The FEMA advisory contained this bit of irony:
”FEMA leads and supports the nation in a risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation, to reduce the loss of life and property and protect the nation from all hazards including natural disasters, acts of terrorism and other man-made disasters.” (emphasis mine).
Disasters like crime, economic decimation, environmental degradation, cultural demise and health threats that have resulted from our “man-made” immigration policies?
Tipping Point author Gladwell uses Paul Revere as an example in his book. He points out that the famous American silversmith was known to be up on where and how King George’s men were moving around the northeast.
A stable boy who overheard rumors of British troop movement shared that information with Revere who then took it on the hoof late one night. Paul Revere was instrumental as a “connector” and oh what a tipping point that midnight’s ride turned out to be!
http://www.newswithviews.com/Mary/starrett204.htm
Outbreak of Fungus Threatens Tomato Crop
July 17, 2009
By Julia Moskin
A highly contagious fungus that destroys tomato plants has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined, according to federal and state agriculture officials.
Photo: Green tomatoes affected by the spores of highly contagious fungus, called late blight. (Meg McGrath/Reuters)
The spores of the fungus, called late blight, are often present in the soil, and small outbreaks are not uncommon in August and September. But the cool, wet weather in June and the aggressively infectious nature of the pathogen have combined to produce what Martin A. Draper, a senior plant pathologist at the United States Department of Agriculture, described as an “explosive” rate of infection.
William Fry, a professor of plant pathology at Cornell, said, “I’ve never seen this on such a wide scale.”
A strain of the fungus was responsible for the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century. The current outbreak is believed to have spread from plants in garden stores to backyard gardens and commercial fields. If it continues, there could be widespread destruction of tomato crops, especially organic ones, and higher prices at the market.
“Locally grown tomatoes normally get $15 to $20 a box” at wholesale, said John Mishanec, a pest management specialist at Cornell who has been visiting farms and organizing emergency growers’ meetings across upstate New York. “Some growers are talking about $40 boxes already.” Tomatoes on almost every farm in New York’s fertile “Black Dirt” region in the lower Hudson Valley, he said, have been affected.
Professor Fry, who is genetically tracking the blight, said the outbreak spread in part from the hundreds of thousands of tomato plants bought by home gardeners at Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot and Kmart stores starting in April. The wholesale gardening company Bonnie Plants, based in Alabama, had supplied most of the seedlings and recalled all remaining plants starting on June 26. Dennis Thomas, Bonnie Plants’ general manager, said five of the recalled plants showed signs of late blight.
“This pathogen did not come from our plants,” Mr. Thomas said on Wednesday. “This is something that has been around forever.”
Mr. Draper said the diseased seedlings, found in stores as far west as Ohio, were at least one source of the illness, but, he added, “It’s possible that we are looking at multiple epidemics.”
Mr. Mishanec said agricultural pathogens can easily spread when plants are distributed regionally and sold by big-box retailers.
“Farms are inspected, greenhouses are inspected,” he said, “but garden centers aren’t, and the people who work there aren’t trained to spot disease.”
Authorities recommend that home gardeners inspect their tomato plants for late blight signs, which include white, powdery spores; large olive green or brown spots on leaves; and brown or open lesions on the stems. Gardeners who find an affected plant should pull it, seal it in a plastic bag and throw it away, not compost it. Unaffected plants in home gardens and commercial fields should be sprayed with fungicide to prevent the spread of the disease. (More information can be found at a Cornell Web site, http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu.)
In Rhode Island, some farmers have plowed tomato fields under at the first sign of blight, said Kristen Castrataro, an extension agent with the University of Rhode Island.
At the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., half the year’s tomato crop was infected and has been lost, said Dan Barber, the center’s chef and creative director.
Tim Stark, a Pennsylvania farmer who specializes in tomatoes, said he spotted three affected plants — he has more than 25,000 in the ground — last week and was worried enough to spray them with synthetic fungicide for the first time in 14 years of farming. For good measure, he pulled all of his potatoes out of the field.
There are two strains of late blight — tomato and potato — but the illness can jump from one species to the other. It is highly contagious: A single open lesion on a plant can produce hundreds of thousands of infectious spores.
Fungicides can protect unaffected plants from disease, but there is no cure for late blight. Organic farmers, who are not permitted to use powerful synthetic fungicides like chlorothalonil, have very few weapons against this aggressive pathogen.
On Thursday morning, Chris Walbrecht, co-owner of the organic farm Garden of Eve in Riverhead, N.Y., on Long Island, found the first signs of late blight on a row of 800 Early Girl tomato plants; he said he might have to destroy them all, a major blow to the farm’s finances.
An acre of tomato plants can produce 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of tomatoes. “At $7 a pound, tomatoes are one of our most profitable crops,” he said.
Hot, sunny weather, which can kill late blight, could dramatically slow or eliminate the fungus’s spread over the next week, experts said.
“I see a day like today that’s overcast and windy, those spores are flying around everywhere, and rain tonight will bring it all down to the ground,” Meg McGrath, a vegetable pathologist on the faculty of the Cornell horticulture research center in Riverhead, said on Thursday. “The disease loves these conditions.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article included Gramoxone in a list of fungicides. It is in fact a herbicide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/nyregion/18tomatoes.html
From: http://www.millennium-ark.net/NEWS/09_Food_Water/090720.tomato.fungus.html
Subject: CZAR.
czar [(zahr, tsahr)]
The title of rulers or emperors of Russia from the sixteenth century until the Russian Revolution. The czars ruled as absolute monarchs (see absolute monarchy) until the early twentieth century, when a parliament was established in Russia. Czar can also be spelled tsar.
The following is excerpts from PRAVDA... Yes.. “The PRAVDA”
What a Change... Advise from Russia..
” It is a good thing that the US/UK public is ignorant not only of ancient history but also of recent history, otherwise they might start to worry. “
” The Commissars (Czars) of Emperor Obama, answerable to none but the Emperor, consolidate power on a level realizable only in the Marxist, Godless society of absolutes, not in a traditional Orthodox Christian monarchy.”
“So Americans can call them what they want, but we Russians and the US emperor know their true name: Commissar.”
and the link to full article:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/108218-0/
At your latitude you could be outside all day in January and never get enough sunshine. You have to take vitamin d supplements to get enough.
That is great!!
Think we can get the Mods to add this to the list of “daily” threads on the front page of FR?
Great article DW!
>>>At your latitude you could be outside all day in January and never get enough sunshine.<<<
Hmmm, maybe 3 4X8 sheets of plywood covered with tinfoil (Nekkid as Wneighbor would say)...
Actually, probably cheaper to stock up more on D3 vitamins.
>>>Think we can get the Mods to add this to the list of “daily” threads on the front page of FR?<<<
Gee, I have no idea... Maybe if Jim Thompson said so...
Actually, I don’t have a clue of the hierarchy or procedures necessary.
My thought was to possibly post a thread that points to one of the thread articles periodically, and to send something new to the ping list every week or two.
What do you think?
Hey, did you see where BATFE is trying to deny the states who passed their own gun bills their 10th Amendment Rights?
I think it was Montana and a southern state.
>>>What a Change... Advise from Russia..<<<
Geesh we are getting pretty low... Advice from Honduras voters even... At this rate, Hillery and Zero can just keep passing out the apologies. Maybe they ran out of Bush apologies and needed some new ones of their own.
How did you make out with the storm?
Hope the pickles are doing well.
After everyone here got their fill of chips - yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, etc. I kept on drying them and have made a couple of pounds of veggie powder (ran them through the blender) Added dried peppers and even some mushrooms I had dried - then tonight, I decided to give it a try... Added 2 tablespoons of powder for each pattie to hamburger - added some water and mixed... Great tasting burgers + we got a couple of servings of vegetables at the same time. Also reduced the amount of burger needed by about 30% or more. I am trying to dry the surplus of everything I don’t can or eat. Doing 10 trays a day.
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