In article , tomj wrote:

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 20:02:26 -0800, (Jan Flora)
wrote:

. I'm waiting right now for a show about John Wesley
Powell going "Down the Colorado" to come on PBS.
I did too...I've waled and rafted much of the canyon and found the
program fascinating. I live within 200 miles of the canyon...now if we
could get rid of those helicopters....

Gawd, yeah. There are towns in Alaska that are outlawing chopper flights
over their towns. (The cruise ship sheeple take them to look at glaciers.)
Do they run the choppers in the winter down there?

I was disappointed in that show, but the photography was great. After reading
a heavily footnoted copy of "Beyond the 100th Meridian" by Stegner, I thought
the show glossed over too much. (The footnotes in my copy were installed by
my MIL, who grew up hearing about Jack Sumner and that trip. A baby in this
family was just named "Jameson," which was Jack Sumner's real name.) The
photo they showed of the unnamed "mountain guide" who talked to Powell
about the river was Sumner.

I walked down the Kaibab and up the Bright Angel in, oh, 1975 in July (!) Had
to lay in Bright Angel Creek all day, then start up the trail at first light the
next morning. Sucking on a smooth pebble sure helped me from drinking too
much water and foundering. (Getting sick.)

Does Georgie White still run the canyon? I met her at the boat show in San
Francisco, as a little girl, and thought, "I want to grow up to be like her."
You could see in her eyes that she lived in wild country and didn't like cities
worth a hoot.

I think that canyon trip influenced my decision to be a geology minor in
college.
The history of the earth is in those walls. I've never run the canyon. It's on
the list : )

Jan

Someone upstream in this thread mentioned leaving out manures of any kind,
because of the danger. The agricultural extension of our local college
composts the local leaves in fall, mixes them with pig manure from their
farms, and then sells it to us locals. They've never had any problems.


Went to the agro-farm the other day and asked if I could muck their stalls and
throw the nastiness in my pickup bed. The guy looked at me like I was insane,
laughed, and said "suit yourself."





Andrew

In article , Andrew McMichael
wrote:

Someone upstream in this thread mentioned leaving out manures of any kind,
because of the danger. The agricultural extension of our local college
composts the local leaves in fall, mixes them with pig manure from their
farms, and then sells it to us locals. They've never had any problems.


Went to the agro-farm the other day and asked if I could muck their stalls and
throw the nastiness in my pickup bed. The guy looked at me like I was insane,
laughed, and said "suit yourself."





Andrew

We're selling 30-50 year old composted cow manure. (Forgive me if I'm
repeating myself. It's been a long month. We're haying.)

Anyway, an organic gardener showed up with 2 dumptrucks to get the composted
cow poop. She was ecstatic, because it's ready to till into her beds and
she didn't
have to shovel it out of barns herself -- we loaded her dumptrucks with our big
farm tractor. (Her husband is a trucking contractor, so she got her kid & nephew
to come out after work with the trucks.)

I've been digging the compost into my garden beds. Everything looks like it's
on steroids.

You can imagine the logo I want to run with: "Get a load of our sh*t," but
I don't
think my SO will let me do it... *sigh*

Jan

In article , tomj wrote:

On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 01:47:36 -0800, (Jan Flora)
wrote:

I have a cousin who is a vegan, who always looks too thin & puny.


LOL i top 250!!! hardly sickly...

Good Lord -- you're a full-sized fellow! Do you eat cheese, milk, eggs and
everything but, what, red meat, poultry and fish? I think I need to get some
recipes from you, Tom.

One of the local ranching families is famous for big men. When the long, lost
brother was coming home to work for us at the Soil & Water Conservation
District here, his older brother said, "Yeah, it's a shame. He never did come
into his full weight." (The long, lost brother weighs a whisker under 200 lbs.
His brothers are all far closer to 300, but they're still hard-working men.
They're just big & tall guys. Their mom just turned 80. She's still running the
ranch and putting her hay up this week. She's 5'6" and 130 lbs. and _none_
of her sons mess with her. She's awesome. *g* She sold the cattle and runs
wapati now.)

Jan

In article , tomj wrote:

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 20:02:26 -0800, (Jan Flora)
wrote:

I'm not trying to convince you to eat beef; just trying to let you know that
we aren't all heartless corporate slash & burn, overgrazing, phone book, dead
chicken & sheep "by-product" feeding monsters. (Yes, they feed old
phone books
to cattle now. Isn't that special? =:-O Ruminants can digest cellulose,
but you
won't catch me feeding cardboard or phone books...)



Not a chance in the world I'd be a part of eating anything killed for
food. I do accept my decision as a personal choice and have
appreciated your "style" and grace for providing a kinder gentler
alternative.

Thanks for all the input.

namaste,
tomj

I respect your decision to not eat meat. In America, that's a conscious
choice that takes some courage, as I'm sure people give you a hard time
about it sometimes. In too much of the world, folks eat anything that's
moving slower than they are. Americans have *no idea* how fortunate
they are to have the choice of what to eat, unless they've travelled or
worked in the 3rd world.

The part I left out of my whole narrative is that I refuse to work killing
our steers. I did it once, when the SO was out of town and a guy was getting
married. He was Russian. He prayed, shot the animal, prayed, bled the
animal, I swung the steer onto clean grass with the front end loader and
left. Came back an hour later, weighed the quarters of beef and took
the money. I _hate_ the smell of blood and _hate_ to see my animals die.
At least my Russian neighbors know that God is watching, so they treat
the animals with respect and say the proper prayers as they go.

I'll help the cows be born, nurse them when they're sick, stay up all night
in a blizzard tending them, feed them in blizzards or bitter cold, track them
through the woods when they decide to calve out where God lost her shoes,
put up with raging hay fever while I'm putting up the hay it takes to feed
them all winter, ride unbroke horses to drive them down to the grazing
lease and back home again, chop holes in the creek ice all winter so they
have water, fix *miles* of fence to keep them out of mischief, but I
*will not* be a party to killing them. I've been here nine years and still
won't help butcher. I'll do every stinking, rotton, unthankful job there is
on this ranch, but I will not kill the steers. (But I'll kill one who's dying.)

That said, I have to kill my old saddle horse pretty soon, as she's crippled
with navicular syndrome (her front feet are shot and it's painful). It's time.
I can do that. I'll be doing Red a kindness to kill her. I shot my 14 y/o dog
last summer. It was time. She was suffering. I see no reason to pay someone
to do that for me. It doesn't make it any easier.

I grew up in San Francisco, where water comes out of the faucet and meat
comes in little packages from Safeway. I'm not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

I'm just grateful to have landed with people who do this stuff right.

Jan

I find a lot of hypocrisy with the vegetarians. My friend won't eat eggs,
but she eats cheese. She won't eat meat but she sure wears leather! She is
hindu and supposedly devout, but she had an exterminator kill all the moles
in her yard.
I could go on and on, and I bet a lot of you could, too.
roz

In article ,
(Jan Flora) wrote:

In article , tomj wrote:

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 20:02:26 -0800, (Jan Flora)
wrote:

I'm not trying to convince you to eat beef; just trying to let you know
that
we aren't all heartless corporate slash & burn, overgrazing, phone book,
dead
chicken & sheep "by-product" feeding monsters. (Yes, they feed old
phone books
to cattle now. Isn't that special? =:-O Ruminants can digest cellulose,
but you
won't catch me feeding cardboard or phone books...)



Not a chance in the world I'd be a part of eating anything killed for
food. I do accept my decision as a personal choice and have
appreciated your "style" and grace for providing a kinder gentler
alternative.

Thanks for all the input.

namaste,
tomj

I respect your decision to not eat meat. In America, that's a conscious
choice that takes some courage, as I'm sure people give you a hard time
about it sometimes. In too much of the world, folks eat anything that's
moving slower than they are. Americans have *no idea* how fortunate
they are to have the choice of what to eat, unless they've travelled or
worked in the 3rd world.

The part I left out of my whole narrative is that I refuse to work killing
our steers. I did it once, when the SO was out of town and a guy was getting
married. He was Russian. He prayed, shot the animal, prayed, bled the
animal, I swung the steer onto clean grass with the front end loader and
left. Came back an hour later, weighed the quarters of beef and took
the money. I _hate_ the smell of blood and _hate_ to see my animals die.
At least my Russian neighbors know that God is watching, so they treat
the animals with respect and say the proper prayers as they go.

I'll help the cows be born, nurse them when they're sick, stay up all night
in a blizzard tending them, feed them in blizzards or bitter cold, track them
through the woods when they decide to calve out where God lost her shoes,
put up with raging hay fever while I'm putting up the hay it takes to feed
them all winter, ride unbroke horses to drive them down to the grazing
lease and back home again, chop holes in the creek ice all winter so they
have water, fix *miles* of fence to keep them out of mischief, but I
*will not* be a party to killing them. I've been here nine years and still
won't help butcher. I'll do every stinking, rotton, unthankful job there is
on this ranch, but I will not kill the steers. (But I'll kill one who's
dying.)

That said, I have to kill my old saddle horse pretty soon, as she's crippled
with navicular syndrome (her front feet are shot and it's painful). It's
time.
I can do that. I'll be doing Red a kindness to kill her. I shot my 14 y/o dog
last summer. It was time. She was suffering. I see no reason to pay someone
to do that for me. It doesn't make it any easier.

I grew up in San Francisco, where water comes out of the faucet and meat
comes in little packages from Safeway. I'm not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

I'm just grateful to have landed with people who do this stuff right.

Jan


An utterly fascinating account that jumps off the page and right into
the hearts of us tenderfeet. Thanks for sharing that.

Phae

On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 05:28:13 -0800, (Jan Flora)
wrote:

Do you eat cheese, milk, eggs and
everything but, what, red meat, poultry and fish?
None of the above, far too much pasta and olive oil, but I'm working
on it....for now it's live food only!

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 09:26:20 -0700, wrote:


I find a lot of hypocrisy with the vegetarians. My friend won't eat eggs,
but she eats cheese. She won't eat meat but she sure wears leather! She is
hindu and supposedly devout, but she had an exterminator kill all the moles
in her yard.
I could go on and on, and I bet a lot of you could, too.
roz

Silly Roz, how ever can you judge the world of vegetarians by one
friend. Kind of shallow don't you think?

Aaron Baugher wrote:
Pat Meadows writes:
[...]
: the theory or practice of living on a diet made up of
vegetables , fruits, grains, nuts, and sometimes eggs or
dairy products

This definition is at least consistent: no food which required an
animal to die. [...]

I once read of 'fruititists'. I think that's the word, but I've been
unable to find it in a dictionary here. Practiced in some areas of India,
the theory is that you don't eat anything which requires animal *or* plant
to die. Allowable foods mentioned were milk, honey, nuts, fruits.

Eggs sold for eating are normally unfertilized, so they were never
alive. [...]

I wondered where eggs fit in, but if they're eating nuts, fruits and
seeds, they should in theory be OK with unfertilized eggs.

Another way to categorize vegetarians is by motive. I see
(1) ethical - believe it is morally wrong to use animals;
(2) dietary - do not believe certain foods are healthy in a diet;
(3) aesthetic - meats, seafoods or dairy do not appeal to them, or leave a
bad taste or unsettled stomach after eating.

Of course even with the same motive, there are differences of opinion as
to what should be excluded from a vegetarian diet.

--
Willondon

Willondon said:

Aaron Baugher wrote:
Pat Meadows writes:
[...]
: the theory or practice of living on a diet made up of
vegetables , fruits, grains, nuts, and sometimes eggs or
dairy products

This definition is at least consistent: no food which required an
animal to die. [...]

The act of farming is always detrimental to some animal. The 'murders'
are more remote, though. The mice turned up (or crushed) in their nests,
the groundhogs the farmer shoots, traps, or gasses, he deer hunted
to protect the crops (extra permits are available to farmers and orchardists
for taking deer) -- and so on. (What about all the animals killed/evicted
in clearing the land of native vegetation for farming?)

I once read of 'fruititists'. I think that's the word, but I've been
unable to find it in a dictionary here. Practiced in some areas of India,
the theory is that you don't eat anything which requires animal *or* plant
to die. Allowable foods mentioned were milk, honey, nuts, fruits.

Fruitarians.
And aren't they killing all those potential baby trees (nuts)?

(Has anyone here read "Murder in the Kitchen" by Alan Watts?)
--
Pat in Plymouth MI

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(attributed to Don Marti)

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 00:17:45 -0400, Willondon
wrote:


Another way to categorize vegetarians is by motive. I see
(1) ethical - believe it is morally wrong to use animals;

There are at least two subsets of ethical vegetarians:

(1a.) those who believe it is wrong to use so much land to
produce meat while any people in the world are starving.

It's true that in general you can produce non-meat protein
with much less land but this does not account for marginal
land suitable to grazing but not raising crops. On the
whole, though, given modern meat production methods, it's
true. We raise lots of grain and feed it to animals,
getting less protein and calories back than if people had
eaten the grains directly.

(1b.) those who don't object to killing animals in order to
eat them (everything has to die sometime) but who do object
to the extreme cruelties of modern factory farming.

Think of the poor damned chickens confined in tiny cages all
their life! They're supposed to be running around in grass,
catching bugs, having a social life, etc.

It's similar for other livestock, maybe even worse. I
shudder with horror at the giant CAFOs (Concentrated Animal
Feeding Operations) in which most pigs are now raised.
They're fellow-mammals, they're intelligent, and we stick
them in animal-concentration camps and wreak unspeakable
cruelties on them before we kill and eat them.

(2) dietary - do not believe certain foods are healthy in a diet;
(3) aesthetic - meats, seafoods or dairy do not appeal to them, or leave a
bad taste or unsettled stomach after eating.

Of course even with the same motive, there are differences of opinion as
to what should be excluded from a vegetarian diet.

Pat

No, tom, ain't shallow. I used her as an example, but there are many
others.
Don't jump to conclusions.
roz

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 11:54:39 -0700, wrote:

Don't jump to conclusions.
roz
OK Roz I won't emulate you and jump to outrageous conclusions....

whatever.....