OT - Cleaning the Natural Way - You, Your Mask, Your Home

[Guest]

Gasp said:
I think it is possible to feed our entire population with local farms.

Here's why you're wrong about that - particularly in the US:

WE PAVE OVER OUR ARABLE FARMLAND AT AN ASTONISHING RATE!

Particularly in YOUR neck of the woods, m'dear. Hate your county...

One reason my former employer was started was because of the concurrence of the 1974 gas crisis with a major trucking strike. East Coasters will recall barren grocery shelves when local food supplies were exhausted and trucked-in goods unavailable.

West Coasters will NOT remember this - as we HAD more farm land under till at the time. Not true anymore. Anyone remember when the Kent Valley was a major food producer? Not in MY lifetime.... And that's some of the best soil ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

Oh, just go read some stats here. Alot of them I developed. Lemme find my work for you....

Main:
WWW DOT farmland.org

Well dang! They finally replaced MY pages! Shoot!

Well, go look up your own state. For example, check out this scarey chart for Washington:

WWW DOT farmland.org/resources/fote/states/map_washington.asp

Notice how the high development areas are centered right smack over some of the richest farmland in the world....

Well, anyway, I'm not making a dime from them anymore, so I'll get down from my soapbox.

Cheers,
Babs

[roster]

Hmmm ... why is it that the OSA patients that find themselves as members of this forum appear to be the smartest of the human population ... even with Rooster lacking any brains and all

When I get to thinking highly of my opinions, my wife points me to that post from yesterday:

Sometimes we go west and put on cowboy boots. The cowboys say they might have cow sh*t on the outside of their boots but we have it on the inside.

[goose]

Hey Babs,
You kind of hit the nail on the head -- so to speak

IF we the people, in 1973, had forced the hand of the "powers that be" regarding the oil crisis then (Washington, Detroit et.al.), we wouldn't be talking about it today because we'd not be using oil!!!! We'd have done what is necessary NOW to get the needle out of our arms!!! Solar, Wind, Water, re-cycle to name a few......
That's one of my buttons!!! I've been doing alternative energy research for years!!!!

You are also correct about the "food shortage" not really affecting California that much because we grow the food.....or at least used to.
The asphalt jungle encroaches!!!!! Everywhere!!
A lot of our produce is now imported -- even in California!!!! Sad but true.

Being one that considers Nevada to be in the east, I about fell off my chair when I found out a head of lettuce in Boston cost $5!!!! Holy Cow!!! It was $0.39 at the time here on the left coast.....We all take so much for granted!!!

VTBO (An "organization" I started over 20 years ago. Means: Vote the Bas**rds Out, or Vote the Bums Out)......

Better stop there -- the soapbox is getting rickety.......



cheers
goose

[gasp]

Gasp said:
I think it is possible to feed our entire population with local farms.

Here's why you're wrong about that - particularly in the US:

WE PAVE OVER OUR ARABLE FARMLAND AT AN ASTONISHING RATE!

Particularly in YOUR neck of the woods, m'dear. Hate your county...

One reason my former employer was started was because of the concurrence of the 1974 gas crisis with a major trucking strike. East Coasters will recall barren grocery shelves when local food supplies were exhausted and trucked-in goods unavailable.

West Coasters will NOT remember this - as we HAD more farm land under till at the time. Not true anymore. Anyone remember when the Kent Valley was a major food producer? Not in MY lifetime.... And that's some of the best soil ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

Oh, just go read some stats here. Alot of them I developed. Lemme find my work for you....

Main:
WWW DOT farmland.org

Well dang! They finally replaced MY pages! Shoot!

Well, go look up your own state. For example, check out this scarey chart for Washington:

WWW DOT farmland.org/resources/fote/states/map_washington.asp

Notice how the high development areas are centered right smack over some of the richest farmland in the world....

Well, anyway, I'm not making a dime from them anymore, so I'll get down from my soapbox.

Cheers,
Babs

You're so right!!! ". . . and make certain they have the land to farm. . . and developers snatch up farmland and turn it into high density housing. AND pave over land at a worse than alarming rate!!

I have intended in the past to attend development public meetings but never made it. I will make more of an effort to do it in the future.

My county is a tax gobbling monster that even uses our taxes to subsidize developers! It allows developers to put in massive developments and only two lane roads with the public bearing the cost of widening the road when the development is full of residents. Sheesh.

[Guest]

Gasp - this is why I hate your county:

They put in the State's first Conservation Easement program, to pay farmers to put an easement on their land ensuring that land will remain in agriculture use only in perpetuity - the farmers took the money - and then the county allows the farmers to break those easements and sell their farmland to rich folks on the eastside so they can build massive soccer fields.

And THEN they allow certain un-named tribes to build massive entertainment venues without building any infrastructre to support the traffic snarls, and effectively cut off nearby farmers. Not only have those farmers lost traffic that used to buy directly from them, they are hampered in farming operations from endless car snarls.

Now here's another thing that rubs - we as a country have set up this great idea "conservation easements". An entity (government or non profit) pays a farmer to buy the development rights on that property. This means cash in the farmers hands NOW, and the entity (and the public) gets the assurance the land will remain in agriculture.

However, most CE's are considerably less cash than selling that land to a developer.

AND, what do you do when governments won't hold up the easement, and allow development ANYWAY?

Personally, I think it's up to US as neighbors to hold the government to maintain that easement.

And I think it's up to us as taxpayers to insist our governments fund easements at fair market value, so that farmers and their families are not facing destitution as they retire.

AND I think that more people need to be encouraged and supported to take up farming. Part of the problem lies in farmers families who do not want to continue farming, and when Dad dies, the farm lays fallow, there is no buyer other than a developer, and there are heirs and debts to consider.

Unless we socialize farming, I don't see any other way to ensure we don't pave over that land then to adequately fund easements and do aggressive education with both the general public and the farming community.

Again, sorry, soapbox... sorry...

To see a good view of how this all works very well, visit Skagit County. Former AFT coworker of mine was the head of the County Farmland Leagcy Department. She just left there recently to go back into private farmland protection.

W W W DOT skagitcounty.net/Common/asp/default.asp?d=ConservationFutures&c=General&p=main.htm

Cheers,
Babs

[socknitster]

Our county has a real problem with development. It has caused us to be the dead last place in the entire country with respect to property values and sales. They keep building and building and who is going to buy a used home when they can get a cheaply built new one for $100K? And the urban sprawl is insane. Vacant buildings of old businesses sit there--in prime locations--while the developers take urban sprawl farther and farther out into what used to be countryside.

And, being Indiana, there have been lots of controversies over farms that were supposed to be protected that have been completely eaten up and around to make farming impossible on the land.

Why must we be so short sighted? So disheartening.

Jen

[Guest]

Nothing much exciting, just had to report on a natural product that is really working for me.

I'd previously posted that I was using Nature's Gate deoderants. Well, I've given them up. I started working out, and discovered they really didn't work at any better than just going "nekkid".

While cruising Safeway, I stumbled upon a Jason brand stick and thought I'd try it:

Tea Tree Deodorant Stick
jason-natural.com/products/deodorants.php

YOWZA! This stuff works! Bears will eat me now! (As in, I don't stink so much that bears WOULDN'T eat me, which is what happened with the Nature's gate products.)

Very pleased after a month or so trial. Works well, doesn't add any weird fragrance to me, and keeps me smelling like I didn't even work out at all.

Suitable for boys and girls both.

LOL,
Babs

[gasp]

Nothing much exciting, just had to report on a natural product that is really working for me.

I'd previously posted that I was using Nature's Gate deoderants. Well, I've given them up. I started working out, and discovered they really didn't work at any better than just going "nekkid".

While cruising Safeway, I stumbled upon a Jason brand stick and thought I'd try it:

Tea Tree Deodorant Stick
jason-natural.com/products/deodorants.php

YOWZA! This stuff works! Bears will eat me now! (As in, I don't stink so much that bears WOULDN'T eat me, which is what happened with the Nature's gate products.)

Very pleased after a month or so trial. Works well, doesn't add any weird fragrance to me, and keeps me smelling like I didn't even work out at all.

Suitable for boys and girls both.

LOL,
Babs

Let's see if it works. When you come to visit you can sleep outside and see if you draw the local bears : )

[socknitster]

Babette,

Is the Jason product aluminum free? I have found a lot of that brand is the same as box store equivilents with "health food store" type scents added to make you think it is different. For example, their shampoos, last I looked, still had a primary ingredient of sodium laurel sulfate.

BTW, I gave up on not shampooing my hair anymore a few months ago. My hair started getting this waxy feeling and nothing would get rid of it except shampoo. I now rotate thru three shampoos when I wash (every other day) and they are: baby shampoo (only when my hair is not feeling terribly dirty because it doesn't do much in the cleaning department!), a soap-based shampoo and a very mild version of sls shampoo.

My hair is still curly--in fact it is probably curlier than before. I discovered the real issue is how I dry my hair. If I follow the recommendation of the Curly Girl book and use the clips and let it air dry as long as possible (usually no more than 1/2 an hour) then add a light mousse spray and dry with a diffuser, it is lovely and curly. My hair is growing rapidly now with the pregnancy. It is getting close to shoulder length.

The pregnancy also caused me to have the acne outbreak of a lifetime. I went from having a mild problem to having an extreme problem. The doctor prescribed a safe for pregnancy cream and it helped some but didn't do much but keep it from getting worse (and I know it would have because for the first time in my life I have started having breakouts on chest and back!).

About a week ago I started light therapy. I have mentioned it here before. I bought a $300 unit that produces light at two different wavelengths. The blue (or actually violet) kills p. acnes bacteria and the red wavelengths promote healing of skin. It doesn't use UV light. Since I had noted that my face always clears up when exposed to the sun, but also that I am predisposed to melanoma, this seemed like a good way to try to control the acne, especially since we have zero sun here in the winter.

There have been two scientific studies showing how well this therapy works. It is supposed to take 12 weeks to clear the face, but I am seeing real results after only a week. Any new pimples are much smaller and just whiteheads and the older lesions that were much larger and each involved multiple pores are now just fading pink spots. The downside? I have to sit in front of this thing for 1/2 an hour every day. But it seems to be working, so the incentive is there. Since there isn't any other option safe for pregnancy, I'm glad to do it. I just listen to a book on tape and relax while I do it. THe name of the machine I bought is called the BeautySkin and it is made in Germany.

Another issue, pertanent to this thread came up in my life. As you all may remember I suffered terribly with morning sickness and fatigue throughout my first trimester, now blissfully over by three weeks. It wasn't just the sickness and fatigue though. I felt mentally and emotionally ill as well. My limbs felt leaden as though just picking up the remote was too much trouble. I knew these sensations well and they sent a frisson of fear through me--I was beginning to be depressed, really, really seriously clinically depressed. We had planned this baby, desired this baby for so long and I was finding myself regretting it, feeling trapped and wishing I could find a way out. I knew it was likely that the morning sickness and fatigue were contributing to this feeling and hoped like hell the feeling would go away as soon as the first trimester was over.

But it didn't immediately go away. I had some good days, but more bad days. I was extremely irritable and hard to live with. My son also began to exhibit some of the same symptoms, as an impressionable 4 year old will.

Then a few things started falling into place.

First, I discovered that the prenatal vitamin prescribed to me was not actually a full prenatal--but a supplement, meant to be taken WITH a prenatal. It was a high vitamin B6 supplement intended to combat the nausea, which it did very well. But if anyone told me it was not intended to replace my regular prenatal, I didn't hear it. So I went back to taking my prenatal. Luckily I was only off prenatals for about a month when I discovered this. And in the first trimester, the baby is so small and my diet was still relatively good despite the nausea and food aversions that I am actually not too worried about that.

So, I was gradually feeling better. Started leaving the house more and went to walgreens looking to see if any prenatals existed with a bit less iron that the one I was taking--can you say constipation? While there I perused the fish oil supplements as I always do. I had discontinued fish oil supplementation upon discovering I was pregnant, worried about mercury exposure toxicity which is so dangerous in the unborn.

I found a fish oil supplement by the manufacturer Natrol which said it was

1.) USP certified (meaning and independent lab checks their formulas to insure they are what they say they are and safe

2.) Chemically distilled to eliminate mercury, pcbs and other environmental toxins

3.) The oil was derived from small fish like anchovies and sardines instead of big fish (which can build up lots of toxins in their longer life spans).

4.) The supplement also contained plant based formes of omega-3s and other essential fatty acids including the rare Gamma Linoleic Acid.

I decided to buy it and felt confident it would be safe for the baby and would actually be good for both of us.

Within a week I was feeling better and better and actually, except for a bit of fatigue that is to be expected, NORMAL!!!!!

So, over the holiday we started a massive cleanup and organization of three rooms which included going through all our books and I came across a book I had, but probably never read all the way through, called Beyond Prozac, by Michael Norden published in 1995. I read it in less than 24 hours and found that in one of the chapters he attributed some depression to lack of certain essential fatty acids leading to poor functioning of the prostaglandin/hormonal system. The supplements he recommended were the exact ones I was taking. He said some people felt relief in mere days.

I don't know for sure if I was destined to feel so much better by now, but given the level of dispair I was feeling just a couple of weeks ago, it seems unlikely. I really beleive the fish oil supplement needs to take most of the credit. That I found out afterwards that there is science behind it was just awesome. I had heard of a study in Britain using fish oil to combat depression months ago, but their working theory was related to inflamation and didn't include GLA.

Anyway, you would have to be living on a desert island not to have heard that fish oil is good for you, so if any of you think you might be depressed, I would advise giving it a try and maybe checking out this book at the library. At first I thought, 1995, how could there be anything pertanent there? But it was a fascinating read.

Ok, sorry for the novel. Been long time, no write.

Jen

[Guest]

Hey Jen, thanks for another one of your terribly useful posts!!! Glad you're feeling better.

I don't think it has Aluminum in it, but you'd be a better judge of that than I. The ingredient list is so small, I can't really read it. I have vision damage that doesn't let me use a magnifier. Hey, if I've just gone back to using standard chemical anti-perspirant, I'm gonna be annoyed.

Gasp, good test!

LOL,
B.

[MrSandman]

Here is the number 1 replied to thread of all time ! Posted by BABE-ette our wild and crazy lady on the board .

[dsm]

Here is the number 1 replied to thread of all time ! Posted by BABE-ette our wild and crazy lady on the board .

Sandman - what are you up to ??? - you are close to being zapped as spam. Why are you picking out the most popular threads & posting a near identical comment re each.

We are well aware here that spammers target the past most popular threads & you seem to be doing that this time ???

DSM

Just wondering !

[MrSandman]

I didn't know the spammers worked that way? Just a curiosity I posted after rediscovering how to sort threads. Besides, I didn't post any spam so I doubt it would be removed.

[dsm]

I didn't know the spammers worked that way? Just a curiosity I posted after rediscovering how to sort threads. Besides, I didn't post any spam so I doubt it would be removed.

Thats fine - I was wondering what was happening - thought is this a new tactic - after checking your other posts I could see it was not likely to be spam related

Bumping these threads is fine

Cheers

DSM

[Babette]

If ever a thread needed to die, it's this one. It's 99% chitty-chat between me, Socknitster, and Jen.

Let it go people, let it go.....
B.