On Wednesday we reviewed some of the qualities of soil. To do this, we looked at a soil profile, and we also made our own edible version. A soil profile is a view of the different layers of soil from the side, so it’s easy to separate each one. These layers are also called horizons, and [...]
If you enjoyed “The Meatrix,” then you’ll enjoy this short parody too…
I told folks I’d handle scribe post duties today, so here goes. We made lists of organic farming techniques that students viewed at green.tv in the Food for Life videos (homework). While these videos were based on the UK’s Soil Association organic standards, they are almost the same as the USDA National Organic Program organic [...]
(If you want a brief summary on meat production, look at the diagram below). We are what we eat. For Americans that means we eat a lot of processed foods. When you pick up a bag of potato chips, its easy to see that the product is unnatural, the chip didn’t fry itself and dip [...]
So for those of us not in class Thursday, (Meaghan…) we finished King Corn–> kingcorn.net and discussed the environmental and economic advantages and disadvantages associated with industrialized agriculture. Summary (sorry if there’s overlap, I can’t remember where we stopped Wed.): When we last left Ian and Curt, the pair was in Brooklyn investigating high fructose corn syrup [...]
So, since we introduced the idea of cover crops, I thought I would mention my garden. We moved last fall, and so I decided to start a new veggie garden in my back yard last spring. I grew tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, carrots, onions, potatoes, and herbs–all in a 10 x 20 foot plot. Here’s a [...]
Today was an exciting day in APES. We continued out discussion on by far the most exciting topic in the book, soil degradation and conservation! Now, before accusing me of being uneccesarily sarcastic, let’s look at why soil degradation and conservation is such an important topic. First, we did a quick review of soil horizons/layers [...]
