Organic?????

"humanure" is perfectly safe organic fertilizer.

would you buy food grown with humanure?

or food grown with human urine?

its organic. yum!

if the product isnt BETTER, its not worth any more.
better for you is debatable.

uh oh

For those of you growing veggies or raising meat, if you are interested in an alternative to USDA Organic then check out Certified Naturally Grown at http://naturallygrown.org

That is the program we got our certification through. Essentially the same as Organic but better in a number of respects and not as expensive for the farmer. They also have a better logo you can use on your labels, brochures, etc.

As a consumer, be aware that the USDA Organic Certification is getting watered down for Big Ag as the USDA allows non-organic ingredients and unacceptable conditions. Organic used to mean something positive but it has become taken over by large corporate farms for their own benefit. Support your local farmers by buying locally.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

I live down the road from South Texas Organics. A Farm that covers several hundred acres. Dennis who owns the company and the farms, Is A TRUE beliver in what he does , His compost piles are Huge. 10-12 feet wide 20 feet long and 8 feet high. He has several semi loads of produce shipping weekly. He is A example of how to do it right! Plus we can see the benifits as his feilds are right on the highway!!!

Like it or not, one things for certain. After TSHTF, or more properly TEOTWAWKI, we (by which I mean, living human beings) after the first year, will all be Organic farmers!!!!!! Yeah, or the Boleyzian Yay!!! As there'll be no more 13-13-13 or ammonia nitrate, or name your chemical fertilizer of choice, or many pesticides or herbicides left. We'll all be organically farming... probably with old folks and little tykes constantly weeding and debugging the garden, and the infirm sitting out under a shadetree keeping the crows and other birds from eating everything. And someone'll get to sleep out there during certain weeks of the year, to keep coons, possums, and coyotes away.

That is, rich folks will... rich in that they have stored enough grub for a lot of people to survive the first season... After the first hard winter, the 'arts' will suffer, and everyone that likes to eat will be directly involved in farming!!! {in my Jon Lovitz voice... "Organic Farming"} Man, I'd hate to have to live in my garden, in order to survive. Would sure beat the heck outta of starving, though, I reckon. I think I'd have to fall back on organic catfish, organic perch and shad, cattails, and the tons of acorn mast that falls each year.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

It's about the environment stupid!!!!!!

Organic foods are not better for the consumer, they are better for the environment. They cost more because they don't keep as long and cost more to produce. If you are a farmer raising organic food your production decreases so in order to make up the difference they have to charge more for it.....Chemicals and fertilizers poision the soil and watershed in an area, they also release carbon when manufactured. Nutrient wise an organic and non-organic tomato are the same except for the trace minerals that come from the soil that it is grown in. The biggest scam in organic foods is honey.......I don't believe in organic honey because we cannot control the source of the nectar that the bees are using. You can however buy treatment or chemical free honey which just means that no chemical meds. are used on the bees while the honey was being produced.

I might add that we ran our dairy farm organic for the past few years we had it. We couldn't treat any of our pastures or crops for three years and had to feed our cows organic feeds for the same period before they certified us.

The label means nothing. We intend to stay small enough that people can still stop on by and say hi, see how we do things, and not have to rely on a label to tell them that we run a tip top operation. Our chickens and gardens are raised without chemicals,sprays,medicines(in the pharmaceutical sense). Anyone that has a question is welcome to come ask. If they have to ask if it is "organic" then I don't really need them as a customer. I sell to friends, family, and through word of mouth we get referrals. I work hard to deliver the best food possible, and my products are well worth 3x the money for anything bought in a grocery store or Walmart supercenter, etc.
I cannot afford to sell at walmart prices, but my good are made in Warren, Maine, USA, not CHINA. They will have to pay real, uninflated prices or do without the best food in the world.

mark

Much safer than something grown with hexamexakillusall sprayed all over it or ethyldeathylruinthetaste used to ripen a totally green fruit/veg right before shipping

Thanks Jenn.

I'm starting my own humanure compost system right now, and while I thought like CN before reading the humanure handbook (I was fecophobic), I'm not any more. What could be more natural that doing what nature has been doing since the beginning of time. And if you are healthy, your humanure will also be healthy. And why do people not have a problem using compost from animal manure, but from humanure they do? Once it is composted back into humus, it is just soil again, after all...and nutrient rich soil at that.

I won't try to sell food that has been grown in humanure without telling people. But we have a lot of education needed in this country about how we are spoiling our ground water and how we are wasting our precious natural resource (humanure) by the way we process human waste now.

Funny...when animals do it, it's fertilizer...when humans do it, it's waste? How many of you have livestock and gardens, and would even consider not composting and adding that to your gardens?

Because of disease risks.

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There are no disease risks if humanure is properly done...just as in nature...once it's humus, it's safe. You might want to read the humanure handbook. It really is informative and interesting.

I agree with you. But would you trust big agrifarms to properly handle it?

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They wouldn't be doing the composting. They would be using the finished compost. There are other countries who are starting to do this...with pick up of human waste from the home...and then it goes to a composting site. We will be forced to follow suite eventually, as we run shorter and shorter on water. We are wasting so much water today it's unbelievable.

You hit the Nail on the head Water. Its the most important part in life After Oxegen? I re use the grey water for everything ecept the Comode!! Right now I have A large quanity of Finished compost. Quite A bit of it is from leaf mold ,from the Mesquite trees. The poultry keeps the piles turned. I need to get some Dolimite lime to add to the piles. With luck I can get the Fall planting in useing the compost ONLY and Grey water to irrigate it!!!

Humanure? Trust? Wasn't humanure one of the Soprano Family's businesses?

I "know" Tony would do the right thing, so I guess humanure's (anything coming out of the city) gotta be okay...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Hey, if you live in the country, and grow your own veggies, it's not an issue anyway is it? You make your own, and you know just what goes into it and how it's done.

if you have city water, its often toilet water thats been refined and cleaned up.

yum.

Numb, if only it were just toilet water, it wouldn't be so bad. It's also all the chemicals every one dumps down their sinks, toilets, tubs, and in the gutter. Lots of stuff that is illegal to dump in the drains goes down them. It all ends up in the same place. In our ground water.

When you live in the country, and only use organic cleaners and recycle what's necessary, and compost humanure, and water your lawns or flower gardens with gray water; you are using the resources the best way possible and keeping the environment clean too. Isn't that sort of what we are all about? Not being wasteful, caring for what we have, and trying to live a healthy lifestyle and keep our environment healthy too?

YAY!!

The best that we have been able to do towards having 'organic' eggs is 'forest-freerange'.

Our chickens are free-range all summer out in a forest. The entire flock is given one cup of feed each evening, as an encouragement to go into the coop at night. Otherwise they feed themselves out in the forest. So they are not 'organic'.

In the winter we must feed them. That feed is the regular 'layer' feed. Our feed store has no 'organic' layer feed. As far as I am aware, to find an 'organic' layer feed, we would need to go out of state and then to ship it. Which would be prohibitively expensive. 'Organic' eggs are very difficult and expensive.

Our chickens did seem to have a high worm count, so I recently needed to deworm them. That was a chemical pesticide treatment. The 'organic' and 'herbal' dewormer treatments do not appear to have any effect in this area of the country.

During the summers our chickens eat very little commercial feed, so their diet is primarily the bugs and flora in the forest floor. Folks appear to be very happy with buying those eggs, and paying a bit more for them.

However I do not see an 'organic' alternative for us that would be viable for chickens.



We have been trying to do an organic garden for the past two years. This last week we even underwent our first annual inspection by the state organic certifying group.

While our garden is 'in', it is not producing. The inspectors appeared very understanding, as the soil has never been farmed. It is forest soil that has never been used for crops.

The word we got from those inspectors is that the bulk of the local organic producers are either farms that have been in operation for three or more generations and only recently converted over to organic; or they are hot-houses.

Since we do not wish to pin our hopes on finally producing a crop in three generations; we are now discussing building hot-houses next winter. And operating our gardens with timed-lighting, under-heat, and hydroponic watering.

When you have to pay money to: build these hot-houses; to provide the lighting, to heat the beds, to pump the water, etc; then somewhere the price that you get for the crops must be higher. In the hopes of breaking even.