Stop the Use of Deadly Poisons for So-Called “Predator Control”

By sarajean on 7/26/10 6:24am
Add Comment

Every year, the United States government consciously poisons bobcats, coyotes, bears, foxes, wolves, and many other animals in the name of “predator control.” The Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Program calls for these animals to be killed by the strategic placement of toxic poisons all across the nation’s public lands and national forests. That’s right—the same forests we lobby to preserve and protect are being treated with poisoned to kill the very animals that we should also be protecting.

Read more >

July is Smart Irrigation Month

By sarajean on 7/15/10 8:40pm
Add Comment

What exactly is smart irrigation? To me, it’s using water as sparingly, efficiently, and sustainably as possible. I am a huge hater of lawn sprinklers, for example. We don’t use one in our yard, though many of our neighbors do. I can’t stand to watch the water run and run just so they can have the “greenest” yards possible. Ours is actually pretty green just from the rain, though I’ve recently taken to using grey water, too.

I do understand that some areas need manual irrigation, especially in dry regions where people are growing food. (Golf courses, to me, are definitely not an excuse to waste millions of gallons of water; I’d rather we took out all the golf courses and made them into sustainable communities and co-ops for the homeless, myself.) If you do have to irrigate, how can you do so smartly?

Read more >

How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies

By sarajean on 6/30/10 12:01am
Add Comment

Fruit flies give me the heebie-jeebies, and not just because they are bugs. One summer, when I was at the tender age of 16 and spending most of my disposable, fast food-earned income on my menagerie of pets, we had a nasty bout of fruit flies in our home. My dad, fed up with it after a while and blaming it on my hamster’s food source—we never really did find the source, actually—sprayed my room with chemicals and killed all of my darlings—two frogs, fish, snails, and a hamster—save one, my spiteful little hamster, Diane, who always bit. My beloved Jack, “the sweet one,” was gone. So when I see fruit flies, I remember my poor, ill-fated pets and my ineptitude with dealing with the insect pests.

Read more >

Keep Strawberries Safe and Scrumptious

By sarajean on 6/14/10 3:59am
Add Comment

It’s one thing when a new pesticide, herbicide, or other chemical treatment has just been approved and people start using it. You don’t really know its side effects, you don’t know how harmful it is, but you go ahead anyway to only discover that it makes babies develop a third leg or lose an ear in the womb. Hey, nobody’s perfect; in this case, the blame is on sheer ignorance. Sure, the chemicals should’ve been fully tested before being used on anything in contact with humans, but we are human, and we do make mistakes. Big ones.

Read more >

looking for a career!!

By Anonymous on 6/7/10 7:34pm
Add Comment

I am from south east kansas and i am looking for a farm job in or around wichita ks, I have worked on the farm since I could walk. I am well qualified in running equipment. If anybody knows of anything it would sure be helpful!!!

What’s Your Poison?

By sarajean on 5/31/10 5:49pm
Add Comment

“As Americans, we know you have a wide variety of poisons, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, toxic chemicals, and people who talk like Glen Beck to choose from when it comes to selecting your neighborhood, and we appreciate you choosing our noxious area to raise your young.”

Wouldn’t that be a swell label to see on the disclosure forms for your new home before you buy it? Not only does it list that your basement is unfinished, with part of the floor made up of just dirt (yeah, we actually saw a house like that when we were looking)—you also live in an area full of arsenic and old lace!

Read more >

Put an End to Cruel Mulesing

By sarajean on 5/30/10 8:30am
Add Comment

As an animal activist, I usually consider myself pretty hip to the jive when it comes to animal issues. I’ve educated friends and family members about the horrors of foie gras, what happens to chicks in factory farms, and why they shouldn’t shop at Petco. I’ve participated in dozens of campaigns, am trying to raise my child in a humane education setting, and generally try to be aware of the issues surrounding all sentient beings.

It was astonishing to me, as you could guess, when I learned about the practice of mulesing. Why hadn’t I heard of this before? For one thing, it’s a weird word—if I’d skimmed it in my reading before, I likely would’ve chalked it up to cruelly making mules sing for their supper, as I knew a woman who once did with her several cats. (I think it was more creepy than cruel, myself; she reminded me of that old cat lady in Jeepers Creepers.)

Read more >

Locust Swarms Invade South Australia

By dfunzy on 4/22/10 6:52am
Add Comment

A video posted on the web this morning, April 22, show locust swarms attacking the crops of  farmers in the South Australian outback. When I saw this I thought: Keep this from Pat Robertson or he'll be making other half crazy statements about somebody, somewhere doing something or other and are to blame. Science be damned. The cause is that some of us just haven't been what we should have, and have been what shouldn't have. Please!

"Heavy rains that ended a long drought in north-eastern Australia has provided ideal breeding conditions for the bugs. Officials said the swarms that appeared in remote parts of Queensland had moved to more built-up New South Wales." (BBC)


Read more >

Composting: Freedom from the Ground Up

By lafeeverte on 4/15/10 12:15pm
Add Comment

Grow your own freedom!Grow your own freedom!

Read more >

A Plague of Grasshoppers

By dfunzy on 3/29/10 7:57am
Add Comment

A plague of grasshoppers. No, not little kids learning kungfu. Serious. Grasshoppers like in locust.

As if the economy and the people of the United States of America don't have enough problems. Now, today, March 29, 2010,  The Wall Street Journal, in a report warns us to expect a plague of locust this spring. Locust? Grasshoppers.

Read more >