A few weeks have passed since my last post, mostly due to a viral upper respiratory infection that just would not go away.  I rarely "catch" anything, but this time I did and I was basically flattened for several weeks.  Thanks to good friends and good neighbors who looked after me, I am doing much better.  I am greatly relieved to be moving around and functioning somewhere close to normal again.

While I was lying around, hoping to feel better, I read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.  I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found it very informative.  The book is described as "A Plant's-Eye View of the World".  Michael covers the history, culture, and propagation of apples, tulip, marijuana, and the potato.  Michael is also a gardener and writes in a grounded, humorous, as well as factual manner.  He referred to bees often, particularly in relationship to pollination and genetic adaption.  I learned that bees see colors in the ultraviolet range which must be quite a show for a bee flying around in a garden. I also learned that there were no bees in North America when the colonists arrived.  Bees were brought over later from England and Europe.  After reading Michael's graphic description of the soil condition on agribusiness potato farms, I became even more determined to buy organic produce, especially potatoes.

You can find a link to this book and others in the left hand column,  Earth Sense Books and References.  This will take you to my Amazon.com pages where you find a number of books.  You can also search all of Amazon and purchase any products.  Your purchases on Amazon, through this link, help support this blog.

My dad grew wheat, oats, alfalfa, and raised cattle in southwestern Oklahoma.  He farmed by conventional methods, but always kept the cattle on pasture rather than in a feed lot.  However, after the cattle were sold, who knows whether they ended up in a feed lot or not.  My dad would end the day, sitting in his recliner, reading farm magazines, doing his best to keep up with the latest agricultural developments.  After I was grown, we had several discussions about going "organic".  At that time, he was farming about 900 acres and felt there was no way he could afford the time (minimum of 7 years) and the expense to convert to organic production.  I knew the cost of farming was high and that profits were often small depending on crop yield and the price per bushel at harvest.  I have always wished that we could have found a better way to farm.  My dad and I were very aware that pesticides, herbicides, and nitrates were not the answer for healthy crops and farms.

In the next post, I will continue with bees, pollination, the problem of colony collapse, and how it relates to our food supply.  I hope everyone had a bountiful and organic Thanksgiving.  We certainly did and I am more than ever grateful for the efforts of organic farmers and all the people in between who work so diligently to bring us healthy food.

Have a wonderful week,

Mary Christopher

Comments and additional information are always welcome.  The comment link is in faint gray type at the bottom of this post.  MC