TobyWollin

There has been quite a bit of discussion out there about American manufacturers bringing business and jobs back to the United States. I’ve written about this before because I have an especial interest in American manufacturing and small business in particular. Before we either break out the champagne or lock ourselves back into the closet, [...]

40 Billionaires have signed up to give 50% of their wealth to charity.

And another great day! Now that we’ve all gotten over the Clinton Wedding (review: Yes, for all of everything, it really WAS all about Bill and Chelsea – why Vera Wang? I mean, now REALLY?), time to get back on the horse or the bike or whatever to talk about food:

I was reading a post on Facebook the other day with regard to farmers markets and one commenter wrote that every town needed one and that her city did not.

On the face of it, that sounds like something out of a ‘say wha?” sort of experience. Doesn’t every place have a farmers market? Someplace?

OK, it’s mid-July here at Chez Siberia and it’s been horrifically hot. And dry. And the garden is not, shall we say, looking its best. We’re still harvesting but there are parts of beds that have been picked over, harvested out. There are lettuces that have bolted. (the photo above is basil – which does not look picked over or harvested out – but I’m going to start taking cuttings anyway so that I have fresh basil this winter)

In short, time to clear the decks to start things for a fall garden.

Well, after struggling through the heat of this past week I’m ready to go out in the garden again (OK, I realize to readers from places like Texas and Arizona, I sound like a whiner – and I AM a whiner but I’m from Upstate New York. 99 degrees, heavy humidity and no AC is [...]

Today’s lesson is a discussion of ‘Where Rocks and Food Intersect’. No, we are not going to discuss salt mining in the Finger Lakes. I’m still stuck on the Marcellus Shale (Aunt Toby is a tad obsessed). A story appeared in papers regarding an announcement by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, quarantining a herd of cows on a Wellsboro, PA farm, due to exposure to used fracking fluid (sometimes called ‘brine’) when the wall of a retaining pond used by East Energy in their drilling operations leaked.

Rather than argue about workers’ lack of skills versus offshoring work to countries with lower skill sets, wouldn’t it be simpler to expect employers to do something that they used to do? Like train workers?

Thomas Jefferson died in 1826 – but he and Aunt Toby are gardening siblings under the skin. This is a ghost that if he visited Chez Siberia today (middle of the night, out in the garden or up on the hill with the chickens, lambs and turkeys), would definitely pull up a chair and want to discuss the garden, what works, and what definitely does not. Lessons from Jefferson’s Monticello Garden

Jefferson was a gardener who had a lot of experience with failure, but he also has a lot of lessons for gardeners today:

Okay boys and girls, it’s time for a little more “energy-based geology” courtesy of your Aunt Toby. You didn’t know that I know anything about geology, did you? Well, I had better since I live smack dab in an area which given the amount of natural gas formation there is, has the potential to make the BP oil volcano pollution look like small change.