a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Contaminated Farmland

    Today there were many articles like this one from NPR: China Admits That One-Fifth Of Its Farmland Is Contaminated. The details of the report by the Chinese government are stunning.

    The report, issued by the ministries of Environmental Protection and Land and Resources, says 16.1 percent of the country’s soil in general and 19.4 percent of its farmland is polluted with toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic. It was based on a soil survey of more than 2.4 million square miles of land across China, spanning a period from April 2005 until December 2013. It excluded special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau.
    In a dire assessment, the report declares: “The overall condition of the Chinese soil allows no optimism.”

    Earlier this year we saw images of large portions of China smothered with heavy smog as in this article by Scientific American.

    SmogOverChina

    When reading reports regarding pollution or global warming, some often comment that the report is being alarmist and imply that we should disregard the report. This report by the Chinese government is more than alarming, it is calamitous. But will things change tomorrow? Will the industries and coal power generators that are causing the Chinese farmland to become toxic stop polluting tomorrow? And so ever increasing amounts of Chinese farmland will become toxic.

    So what does that have to do with me living many thousands of miles away from China? For one, the air pollution in China doesn’t stay there. For one, according to The Smithsonian, some of that air pollution is reaching the west coast of the US where I live. Two, the US imports some four billion dollars of food products from China every year. Here are some numbers from the US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, these are a listing of food products whose imports from China exceeded $350 million in 2011:

    Agricultural Product US Dollar Value Imported from China in 2011
    Fish $2,646,757,166
    Fish Fresh Or Prep $1,817,861,314
    Shellfish $804,745,740
    Vegetables & Preps $626,224,026
    Fruit Juices $547,044,940
    Grains & Feeds $527,784,428
    Fruits & Preps $518,397,511
    Apple Juice $504,059,866
    Fruits – Prep Or Pres $499,317,088
    Other Fruits – Prep Or Pres $478,258,430
    Animals & Prods $449,291,071
    Vegetables-Prep/Pres $382,588,727
    Feeds & Fodders, Ex Oilcake $372,015,556

    The US imports a huge amount of agricultural products from China, and if nearly twenty percent of the farmland in China is contaminated, what percentage of the agricultural products imported from China are also contaminated with heavy metals and other toxins?

    Enjoying a beautiful day here at a man and his hoe® it’s easy to think this is a problem that doesn’t affect me, but it affects all of us, not matter how far, far away.

  • First Post Child Rearing Egg

    Hens lay special eggs at times. There is the very first egg they lay, which is a tiny egg. There is the first egg they lay after their winter lull. These eggs also tend to be smaller. And then there is the first egg they lay after raising chicks. And today this mother laid her first egg after raising chicks for three weeks. That is on the early side. Most hens take more than a month before they go back to laying eggs.

    I get the sense that this mother may not be raising her chicks much longer. They are getting very independent and at times during the day they stray tens of feet from her. When she was up on the nest laying her egg, her five chicks huddled together and waited patiently for her to come back down.

    FirstPostPartumEgg

  • Egg Day

    Today is Thursday, the day I deliver eggs to Tweets in Edison, WA. Most of the eggs are destined for their kitchen and many will end up on the breakfast plates of lucky customers. A few cartons are available for sale, so if you want eggs laid April 16 and 17, and are headed to Tweets this weekend, this is your chance to snatch them before anyone else does. It’s also your opportunity to see how refined your palette is. Can your tongue taste the difference between an egg laid on the 17th versus the 16th? When you buy eggs from a man and his hoe®, you’ll always know when your egg was laid, and often which hen laid it.

    EggLabels
    EggsInside
    SingleCartonOfEggs
    EggsAtTweets

  • Liquid Gold

    ChickenFat

    A remarkable feature of the chickens from a man and his hoe® is the golden fat on the birds. It’s more like oil or butter than the fat you find on beef and pork. At room temperature it is liquid and makes a delicious fat for frying.

  • Popup Garden

    While out plotting new vegetable plots for this year’s planting, I stumbled on this exquisite miniature garden. The tiny, fresh leaves were dotted with fresh raindrops.

    MiniGarden

    From a distance, it’s easy to miss the beauty nature poured into a cement block.

    MiniGardenOverview

    But up close, it’s every bit as calming as sitting on the veranda of Nanzenji in Kyoto. If you ever make it to Kyoto, Nanzenji 南禅寺 is a temple worth visiting, though with more than a thousand temples in Kyoto, and with hundreds you just have to see, you might think of planning a very long vacation there.

    Nanzenji

    Not to be outdone is the garlic patch here at a man and his hoe®. You don’t have to get on a plane and travel across the world to encounter exquisite beauty. Sometimes you just need to look down and see what’s growing at your feet.

    GarlicField