In article
.net,
says...
Well, our ancestors also did a lot of stupid destructive things, like
slash and burn agriculture, and farming out the land then moving on to
somewhere that hadn't been sucked dry of nutrients, and letting sheep
and goats destroy pasture and thus soil (the middle east wasn't a
desert until a couple thousand years ago, you know -- it got that way
from wandering tribes and their goats.

Well, the goats helped, but there was a little thing about a
climate change that did most of the damage :-).

--
Where ARE those Iraqi WMDs?

On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 18:16:36 GMT, Frogleg wrote:

On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 01:31:34 GMT, fitwell
wrote:

p.s., I'm also concerned about one thing. _If_ older seeds from a
long time ago do germinate now yet new seeds don't, one has to wonder
about modern growing practices, too!

Stories of wheat sprouting from seeds found in ancient Egyptian tombs
seems to be mostly apocryphal, 'though there is good evidence for a
few sprouting seeds of 100 to possibly 1000 years old.

http://www.kew.org/msbp/msbfaq/msb_a12.html

Mustn't forget that our
ancestors did things the right way - more in accordance with nature's
laws, esp. before the industrial revolution! They may not have had
the "science" of this, as we supposedly do, but they had no choice.
They grew organically, etc. g

And the average lifespan was 47 years. :-)

Not genetically, no. We have a biological/genetic lifespan of about
120 years, roughly. That hasn't changed over time. (We still have
same genetic makeup now as we did millenia ago.) Unlike the whole
grains in the tomb thing, which I only saw that program about that one
time, this has been documented around the world to one degree or
another. Those who practice healthier lifestyles have shown this,
too. Also, 2 pockets of people are known - the Vilcabambians and the
Abkhazians though I don't know if their lifestyles have been corrupted
unduly in very recent times.

I know that this is going to throw a whole monkey wrench into this
discussion and, for all I know, an uproar sigh but I had to mention
it as we have the idea that how we live now and the length of that
life is normal. And the shorter lifespan of those living in recent
history is always thrown out. I'm glad to say that that's not a
normal lifespan either.

Incidences of longevity are not abnormal, they are the norm IF we
don't live unnaturally beyond a certain point. Which just goes to
show ... also, there's no question that sanitation and medical
practices do have an impact, which considering we generally eat worse
than our ancestors did (when did they ever eat boxes of
chemically-laden foods?), probably can account for a lot of the
difference in lifespan.

And as for the other re farming/grazing practices, I can't believe
that agribusinesses with their chemicals and unhealthy practices are
not worse than all those shepherds and sheep and cows, etc., etc. But
I guess I can say anything and someone will always come back with an
answer like that. All I personally know is, of course, what I've
experienced. Though I'm sure someone will argue with what I'm about
to say, I know what I have found ... My parents now live in Mexico
and they moved there in the 70s, so this isn't something recent.
Whenever I travel to visit them and eat the food there, I find it much
more flavourful than what we get here. To get the quality of the
fruits and vegetables I see at any ordinary restaurant there, I have
to eat at an expensive organic vegetarian restaurant here to get the
same types of exploding flavours! And I'm not talking about food
preparation, just the inherent flavour of the fruits/vegetables.

Though I'm sure Mexico is learning from us and their methods are
changing, every single time I visit, I find that this is still the
case in ordinary restaurant food or that prepared in homes of my
family.

Anyway, thanks everyone for taking the time to respond. I appreciate
it.

Xref: kermit rec.gardens.edible:72406

writes:

And the average lifespan was 47 years. :-)

This had little, if anything, to do with what they ate or the way it was
grown. Sorry. They would have surely lived much longer if good health
care were available.

Figured into those statistics are such things as three of great
grandparents:
One grandmother died a few days after childbirth of blood poisoning from
the tear caused by the birth; the baby also died because of lack of
knowledgeable care and lack of proper nutrition.
One grandmother died a few days after childbirth because of weakness from
the flu she had at the time of childbirth; the baby also died shortly
thereafter. They were both victims of a flu epidemic that claimed many
hundreds of other lives that same season.

These for people, two women in their twenties and two infants are part of
the statistics that make up that average of 47 years, or whatever other
average at which researchers might arise.

Added to that is my great-grandfather who died of pneumonia as a result of
being kicked by a mule and laying unconscious in the field behind his plow
until after dark when he was missed and found.

Those five people, whose stories I know for fact, are part of the "average
life span" figured in that type of statistic. Their early deaths had
absolutely nothing to do with anything except proper health care, or
rather lack of it. With proper health care, all five might well have
lived well into their eighties or nineties . . . and they all ate
organically grown food! There are several in the same bloodline that have
lived to be past one hundred; however, they didn't get figured into those
statistics because their age at the time of surveys was used, not their
life span.

It doesn't matter how you cut it, food grown without commercially prepared
chemicals is going to be better for the human body (an organic creation)
than chemically altered food. Few people dispute research that
demonstrates over-cooked food is not as healthy as properly prepared food
or that vitamins ingested through diet are better than those in a pill.
Even the drug companies admitted that with the caveat that "if you don't
get it in your diet, take our vitamin pill."

As for over-grazing, there is no question it can cause a problem.
However, that land that is over-grazed is soon abandoned for nature to
have her way with it; we humans are, after all, opportunists. The comment
made about Wyoming should be supported by more, and credible, research
rather than a supposition. The truth is that there have been many barren
places on this planet that were once lush greenways long before humankind
and its practices. Prairies and deserts existed before people. Climate
change has more to do with that sort of thing than does anything else.
Sadly, what we have in our day and age is that what humans are doing is
affecting some of the climate changes that take place.

Artificially produced chemicals are not the best thing going, regardless
of what they might do or not do. I can use ladybugs, etc., and birds for
pest control. I can use horse or steer manure and compost for fertilizer.
I can use a pair of gloves and some bending for weed control. Why would I
need chemicals in my own garden? The answer is that I don't. The less
one does to upset the natural order of things, the better for our planet
and our own health. We can do lots of natural things to keep things on
track.

The owners of Millennium Farms say, "Chemicals, never have, never will."
If they can operate their greenhouses and farm with no chemicals, we ought
to be able to do it with our gardens. We just need to pay more attention
and not use the throwaway attitude that so many of us in the U.S.A. have
created and practice. Sadly, we are all guilty of it to some degree, some
just more of others. I've often thought without a remote for a television
(or maybe even a television), we'd all be better off, maybe we'd have
better learned to do things differently.

Glenna
stepping off soapbox for now

Artificially produced chemicals are not the best thing going, regardless
of what they might do or not do. I can use ladybugs, etc., and birds for
pest control. I can use horse or steer manure and compost for fertilizer.
I can use a pair of gloves and some bending for weed control. Why would I
need chemicals in my own garden? The answer is that I don't. The less
one does to upset the natural order of things, the better for our planet
and our own health. We can do lots of natural things to keep things on
track.


{Clapping hands for a great comment}

In the middle of landscaper-chemicaled suburbia, I get funny comments from some
of my neighbors all the time because I use a push mower to cut the grass, grass
shears to trim it, and the Edward Scissorhands hedge clippers to tend the
bushes.

I kill weeds in the lawn by pulling them up, or pouring boiling water on them.
I don't want kids or dogs walking through chemicals instead of green grass.

I compost or use as ground cover as much as I can. I rake leaves by hand, and
pile most of them behind the bushes in the front of the house, where, by
spring, they are reduced enough I can use them as mulch in my garden. I use all
the flowers from our Magnolia tree the same way.

We own an electric weedwacker, and I will confess to using it maybe once a
month during the growing season because I just can't get some of the edges
otherwise. We owe both a gas and an electric lawnmower, but neither have been
used at all since I bought the reel mower.

I do not spray for insects. I sometimes use soap, and I use coffee grounds to
keep the slugs off the strawberries, and marigolds to keep the cutworms and
whatever else from the tomatoes. That's all.

I think about the butterflies and the bees when I get tempted to spray in my
yard.

My kids used to get annoyed with me because I refuse to by them those little
boxes of juice drinks, and buy as little as possible that is not recyclable.
I've now got them looking at containers and pre-wrapped snacks and so on.
Hopefully the lesson will rub off.

One brownie point for me - the guy next door is an excellent small engine
mechanic. He's got a constant parade of lawnmowers and the ilk being dropped
off by people that know him because they no longer work and they don't want to
just toss them out. He fixes them and passes them on, and saves the best for
himself.
Until a few weeks ago, anyway. One of his co-workers had an ancient reel mower
that they were throwing out. He asked for it, got it, and just had it
sharpened. Seems he likes my idea of not having to lug around gas cans and
getting a little exercise....



-=epm=-

In matters of truth and justice,
there is no difference between large and small problems,
for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
- Albert Einstein

On Sat, 05 Jun 2004 12:08:32 -0700, (Glenna Rose)
wrote:

writes:

And the average lifespan was 47 years. :-)

This had little, if anything, to do with what they ate or the way it was
grown. Sorry. They would have surely lived much longer if good health
care were available.

Did you notice the smiley, Glenna? I was commenting on the illogic of
'old seeds' benefitting from old agricultural practices. Of *course*
there are many reasons for our modern (average) lifespans. Just as
there are many reasons why last year's parsnip seeds are unproductive
while a 500-yr-old melon seed germinates.

writes:
On Sat, 05 Jun 2004 12:08:32 -0700, (Glenna Rose)
wrote:

writes:

And the average lifespan was 47 years. :-)

This had little, if anything, to do with what they ate or the way it was
grown. Sorry. They would have surely lived much longer if good health
care were available.

Did you notice the smiley, Glenna?

Geez, I didn't. My only excuse is being so tired from all the yard work.

Glenna
blushing

In article , (EvelynMcH) wrote:
One brownie point for me - the guy next door is an excellent small engine
mechanic. He's got a constant parade of lawnmowers and the ilk being dropped
off by people that know him because they no longer work and they don't want to
just toss them out. He fixes them and passes them on, and saves the best for
himself.

Sounds like me and computers... I take in homeless computers, and
transplant the better body parts into my own machines

~REZ~

In article , Larry Blanchard wrote:
In article
k.net,
says...
Well, our ancestors also did a lot of stupid destructive things, like
slash and burn agriculture, and farming out the land then moving on to
somewhere that hadn't been sucked dry of nutrients, and letting sheep
and goats destroy pasture and thus soil (the middle east wasn't a
desert until a couple thousand years ago, you know -- it got that way
from wandering tribes and their goats.

Well, the goats helped, but there was a little thing about a
climate change that did most of the damage :-).

True, but there is also some thought that the climate change was
exacerbated or possibly even triggered by the goat damage. Deserts
tend to creep, once they get started.

I've seen a wind pattern completely changed by urban growth -- back
when Santa Clarita was small, you could set your watch by the ocean
wind that cleared out the hot air, every afternoon at 2.30pm. As the
city grew and filled the narrow valley, adding lawns and other sources
of humidity (thus "heavy air"), the afternoon wind got weaker and
weaker, and now no longer does clears out the valley at all (barring
storm conditions). So instead of cooling off every afternoon, it now
stays still and hot til sundown.

~REZ~

Sounds like me and computers... I take in homeless computers, and
transplant the better body parts into my own machines

Yep. Us too. Make better stuff out of one from the dead bodies to donate
elsewhere, or scavage for the kids. (One of my friends has a day care center
and she can always use more machines able to run at least Win 95 - and what she
can't use, she knows someone who can.)


-=epm=-

In matters of truth and justice,
there is no difference between large and small problems,
for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
- Albert Einstein

Frogleg wrote:

Just as there are many reasons why last year's
parsnip seeds are unproductive while a 500-yr-old
melon seed germinates.


I typically let a few parsnip go to seed every six or seven
years, and, while I sow seed generously, I always get excellent
yields even with seven year old seed. I don't understand why so
many people say that parsnip seed lasts less than 1 year. I
store the seed in a lidded cardboard can containers in the
basement.


Rick

In article ,
says...
Sounds like me and computers... I take in homeless computers, and
transplant the better body parts into my own machines

Yep. Us too. Make better stuff out of one from the dead bodies to donate
elsewhere, or scavage for the kids.

As a retiree, I'm always looking for bargains. I found an ATX
motherboard with a 300mhz Celeron in it for a buck at a garage
sale. Seller says he upgraded and the board worked when last
used. Now all I have to do is find some memory and an ATX case
and I can get rid of my 200mhz Pentium :-).

---
Where ARE those Iraqi WMDs?

In article ,
says...
Sounds like me and computers... I take in homeless computers, and
transplant the better body parts into my own machines

Yep. Us too. Make better stuff out of one from the dead bodies to donate
elsewhere, or scavage for the kids.

As a retiree, I'm always looking for bargains. I found an ATX
motherboard with a 300mhz Celeron in it for a buck at a garage
sale. Seller says he upgraded and the board worked when last
used. Now all I have to do is find some memory and an ATX case
and I can get rid of my 200mhz Pentium :-).

---
Where ARE those Iraqi WMDs?