Megan has been reading a new book titled Last Child in the Woods.  It has just been updated and rereleased.  The main premise is that our children, and society in general, is suffereing from nature deficient disorder.  In other words, we are losing our connection to nature and in doing so we are compromising our health and sanity.  It really isn't that hard to agree with, but the book does cite a lot of research to back up its claims (see here and here.) 

This had me thinking about my self being nature deficient.  I spent the first six years of my working life taking care of 40 acres at Canterbury Retreat Center.  I remember thinking that I would always work outside.  No way I was going to sit at a desk and punch buttons (aka push papers.)  I loved the nature connection.  While there I started studying Florida flora and joined the Native Plant Society.  It was at a Native Plant Society annual conference that I realized I wanted to work with agriculture.  I guess I thought I would work outside in that field as well.  As of late, I spend most of my time behind the screen (like now.)  I'm actually suprised I chose this path.  Lately I have been realizing that I need to make more of an effort to be outside.  Maybe it's the having kids thing helping me to reexamine my life and priorities, but I'm hoping it's more than that. 

Today we went to the park and just kicked around for a while.  I hoisted Ruby into her first tree, a magical moment (not in the Disney sense.)  She plunked herself down amid moss, pinecones, sticks and stuff.  It felt good, really good.

In other news, we went to Portland's International Test Rose Garden to meet Ruby's aunt and uncle for a picnic last Saturday.  They are moving back to Florida to be closer to friends and family.  Their west coast family is going to miss them a lot.  Have a safe trip and best of luck!

On eOrganic, we offer all sorts of tools for groups to use for project management, things like group pages, forums, image gallery, profile pages, task lists, and blogging.  We hope that groups involved with sustainable and organic agriculture join us and become part of our community to have access to these tools.  And what I'm talking about here is not a social network per se, although that is naturally a part of it, but a place to work together. But what if you're not working in sustainable or organic agriculture?  What is available online, and free, for your project group to use? 

There are two different paths you could take, either one-stop shopping (like what eOrganic offers), or a mix of online applications.  Of course, there's also the buy-in aspect from members of your group.  One place to start would be to survey the group and see what online tools they are already using.  This could avoid duplication on their part and increase the likelihood of adoption.  Plus if they are already using some of these tools it's easier to get them involved with your efforts.

One-stop shopping

• Google - There is much to be had with using Google from Groups to Sites and Docs plus  the Calendar.  There are lots of options and ways to do project management, it just depends on your goals.  The amount of tools you get for free is astounding.
• Wetpaint - Combing common social apps with a wiki, Wetpaint offers a great solution.  They have a forum, images, profiles, to-dos, plus the wiki.  Another nice feature is a weekly newsletter they email you with a recap of the week's activity.
• Basecamp - This starts as a free service but is scalabe to include much bigger groups.  Has a host of features like chat, calendar, to-dos, document sharing, contacts organization.  Let to the development of Ruby on Rails. 

Stand-alone

• Ning - clean, social networking with lots of options
• Flickr - can create groups for photo sharing
• Netvibes - What I like about netvibes is a way to bring in information from other places on the web.  It is set up around an individual, but that could represent a group.
• phpbb - forum-only, not as pretty as others but has lots of options and settings

 I'm sure there are many more that I'm missing.  Plus once you delve into the world of pay for service or private hosting, there are many more options.  Identifying what you needs are is the critcal step.  Then find out if everyone is one board, otherwise you just spent lots of time and you will still end up emailing Word documents around. 

I've been thinking about how food prices have been rising.  At our co-op I've noticed the price of the bulk grains increasing.  Also, the source of origin of our organic oatmeal now also includes Sweden?  The reasons I've heard about why food prices are going up include things like 25% of U.S. corn being used for ethanol, rising fertilizer costs (tied to rising energy costs), increased shipping costs (energy costs again), and severe weather patterns to name a few.  Things are so bad in Haiti that people are eating mud cakes, that's right dried up disks of mud.  They say it keeps the hunger pains down.  People are facing starvation there in the next 6-12 months because they can no longer afford the food. 

I found a recent chart that compares the percentage of income people in different countries spend on food and food-related items for 2006.  The U.S. was the lowest at 5.8%.  Some other countries spend upwards of 20, 30, 40, even 50%!  In Mexico its 25%, Italy 15%. 

Let's think about these numbers for a minute.  Let's say I make $40,000 dollars a year.  This would work out to be about $200 a month.  That seems a little low.  But if I lived in Italy that would be $500 a month.  So now increase you monthly food bill by 2.5 times and that's what it's like living in Italy (minus the good food to start.) 

The amount Americans spend on their food has been steadily decreasing in recent history.  That may now be changing.  What  needs to accompany that change is our attitudes towards how much we spend on food.  I think we've all become used to the idea of spending as little as possible on our food.  The other day I was in Freddies and someone accidently tried to purchase an organic head of lettuce, until they noticed the price, $1.79 versus the usual $0.99.  "No way, I'm not paying that much," she offered.  Granted this was an industrial organic head of lettuce, but again, if we were in Italy that lettuce would have been $2.50 if it was conventional.  The price of cheap food however is something that we pay for in the health of our soil, local economies, clean air, and clean water.  Local sustainably produced organic food has the ability to change all of those negatives into positives. 

It may cost more, but if you look at the price of food on a global scale, it is still a bargain.  That's a bargain I'm willing to pay for.  After all, what is the real price of cheap food. 

I rarely interact with the popular media anymore.  Since we moved into our current house last September, the TV was resigned to the basement where it has sat ever since.  We knew that we didn't want it around while Ruby was young.  I have a bit of a TV habit.  If it's around I tend to watch it, poor self control I guess, so it's best that it sits gathering dust underground.  Not that we even had cable before so I watched reruns of Seinfeld or PBS pretty much.  I find with more options, the more it gets watched. 

When I was younger, I found out about TV turn off week.  It was launched by Adbusters over ten years ago and it was picked up around the world and now has millions of people who participate in it.  It has already happened this year, so this isn't an advertisement for it.  At the time, it was rather difficult for me to observe.  When I was a teacher I asked my students to voluntarily participate and many of them did (OK, maybe like 5 out of 130.)  Now I guess Adbusters has stepped it up a notch and has made it Mental Detox Week.  Yikes!  Am I up to the challenge?  Of course, I would have to take the week off of work too.  Although, that would make a great match. 

I started this post because I have been really turned off this year by any media coverage I've seen of the Obama/McCain campaigns (not actually on TV but the web.)  The behavior that a presidential contest brings out into public is a sad commentary of our political machine.  It seems that most people I know are getting more and more cynical about politics lately, me included.  Just tell me when it's over will ya?

Turn off you TV, and live you life

As of late, Megan has been reading some books (here and here) about food and our relationship to it.  One of my favorite things to do is to hover over her shoulder while she reads before sleep.  Not sure how much she likes it though.  It is hard for me to keep up with her.  I end up having to do some scanning so I can make it to the bottom of the page before she turns the page.  If I'm really sleepy she can read a whole page faster than I  do.  Some nights I manage to keep up.  There's this one term that I keep going over in my head that I read in one of these food books.  It's food-like.  It's the idea that most food in the grocery store is not actually food at all, but reconfigured, reconstituted, remade food that bears little resemblance to the food it once was.  For instance, think about ruffles potato chips.  Yeah, they're made from potatoes, but they're not really potatoes are they.  And what about those foods that aren't even food to begin with, just a mix of chemicals created to taste like food.  Soda/Pop?  I guess that's a beverage, but maybe you can think of a better example.  I wonder what would happen if folks just decided to go back to eating non-processed food?  What would advertisers do with all the extra time on their hands?  Same goes for the packaging industry.  It might lead to a lot of job loss.  I guess people would have more time to spend tending their gardens. 

We're going to the coast for a few days.  Can't wait, been two years since out there, too long.  It will be a nice break from the heat we've been having.  Here's Ruby ready to go...

The new Smithsonian exhibit about soil opens July 19.  I would love to see it.  I am very excited by the fact of how many school kids are going to see it.  When I was a TA for the soils department (sorry crop and soil sciences department), I had the unique opportunity to teach non-science majors the wonders of soil science laboratory.  Now most of you are thinking something about how exciting can dirt really be, and that's the first place to start!  It's not dirt!  One thing that I am proud of about teaching middle school is that all of my students knew the difference between dirt and soil.  Dirt is something you get on your shoes or in your eye, not the complex ecosystem that makes terrestrial life possible.  I love soil!  And if you would like to discuss it further I am happy to. 

Here's the new rig.  Well the bike isn't new (8 years young now) but the trailer is.  Just an entry-level trailer that can hold two kids with adapters to make it a stroller (thanks Gainers!)  One thing that really helps keep Ruby's head from falling forward is a rolled up blanket behind her back. You see the seat is straight up behind her but the helmet she wears sticks out in the back so it hits the seat back forcing her head forward.  The blanket provides some room behind her to make space between the helmet and the seat back.  Another trick with the helmet is to put a tight fitting stocking cap underneath; this helps keep the helmet in place on her head. 

I haven't been able to go mountain biking yet this year (bummer), but I take Ruby out in the rig on the weekends once or twice.  The first two times she cried while getting in then settled in okay once we were rolling.  Today I put her in and she did this hip dance letting me know that she wanted to go.  Great!  I was hoping that she would take to this and she loves it now.  I ride on a paved trail next to the Willamette River.  She enjoys the view and loves watching all of the birds.  Since we usually go in the morning is it quite peaceful since no one is out and about yet.  Actually, I have never seen that trail used much at all (except by the homeless), pity since it is so nice, a bit short, but nice. 

Last weekend before I went to KY, I installed a drip irrigation system for our yard.  I ordered the heart kit from Dripworks and then added on the garden kit and one other one that escapes me right now.  We have two beds of herbs/perennials and then 3 small rows of veggie stuff, totally about 30 feet.  The system went in pretty easily, only minor cursing involved.  I have a combination of emitter tubing (a small hose with openings at regular intervals) plus some drip emitters that are essentially little spouts right in the main tubing, these are good for individual plants while the drip tubing is good for veggies in rows.  I was a little worried that the rate of water coming out of the two types of emitters would make the system unbalanced, with the perennials getting too much water or the veggies not getting enough.  But maybe the perennials need more water anyway?  There are a lot of factors that come into play including which areas are mulched or not.  Needless to say I didn't put much thought into it and just went for it.  All the plants seem happy so far but we are just getting into the dry season here in western Oregon, where it won't rain for 3 months or so (very dry).

This is a the emitter tubing that has 12" between emitters, next time I would probably go with the 6" spacing.

Working from Louisville this week with eXtension, the umbrella organization that eOrganic is publishing with (in the near future).  There was a great speaker that taught us about really great web 2.0 tools like netvibes, kaltura, jott, among others.  Check out the awesome website he set up for his class here.  Here's the eXtension website, check them out.