Arete Acres

Some clips from the article for those who aren't gonna click:

And as someone who fucking hate mainstream Contemporary country (bro country and pop country, and that shit Post Malone's putting out lol) and loves the interesting takes we're seeing lately from artists like Beyonce and Lil Nas X, these points hold water. Traditional country groups, folks doing modern outlaw country and folk country, like Orville Peck, Colter Wall, and Goodnight, Texas, are completely different in their styles of country than what's considered the mainstream right now, the stuff getting all the spins on Spotify and hitting the charts and shit, and excellent artists are getting lost under comparatively louder and flashier ones because they're competing in the same space in spite of being basically apples and oranges at this point. The genre gulf is wide enough that imo it'd be like calling The Interrupters (3rd wave ska) and Wind Rose (power/folk/symphonic metal) the same genre because they both branch from Rock.

And while, yes, this does have the strong potential to make one category much less diverse than the other (you sadly don't see a lot of black outlaw country artists which is a bummer because that would kick ass imo), but I feel like that's more a mechanism of demographics for subgenre rather than direct intent. (Not to say that there wasn't some racist motivation for finally pulling the lever on finally splitting the categories after years of people pushing for it, with Beyonce's win as motivation, of course, but it's not something that can be said as objective truth, merely assumed based on precedent in industry attitudes.)

The Brahma, a popular giant known for its massive meat production and comically large eggs.

The cochin, seen here with gold and black 'lace' pattern

The barred plymouth, an incredible forager for lightly wooded terrain

The fayoumi, often regarded as The Oldest Breed of chicken

The wyandotte, a particularly good forager as well as a bulky, meaty bird.

The Minorca, a Spanish bird with stunning black feathers

And of course, the famous indonesian ayam cemani, which has black meat and bones

"our great grandmas fed their entire families with their knowledge. they didn't need the government telling them how to do it."

great grandma also lost babies for want of vitamin k shots and antibiotics and would have had fewer babies to start with if she'd had the option to access birth control.

great grandma did the best with what she had and knew.

why can't we do the same 😭😭

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@princessxombie an excellent point!

the reason for a preference of bottled lemon juice over fresh squeezed for canning (as reported through the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach): "It is a USDA recommendation that bottled lemon juice be used.  And consistent with the recommendation, reputable canning sources will agree that the best source of lemon juice for canning is commercially bottled lemon juice, as opposed to the juice of a fresh lemon. The reason for the recommendation is that bottled lemon juice has been uniformly acidified or standardized per FDA regulations: “lemon juice prepared from concentrate must have a titratable acidity content of not less than 4.5 percent, by weight, calculated as anhydrous citrus acid.” With a guaranteed pH...there is a consistent and known acid level which is essential for the critical safety margin in canning low-acid foods and for making jams gel properly. "

as for resources:

the usda guide to canning (revised in 2015). you used to be able to find it on the usda website but for SOME reason (two guesses as to why 🙄) that website is now routing to a broken error 404 page not found. fortunately, it's available other places! here it is hosted on the internet archive! if you want it printed in color and spiral-bound, you can also purchase it for $25 from perdue university.

if you want more resources, the university of utah has a whole section of their preserve the harvest extension website dedicated to safe food storage practices including freeze drying, fermenting, drying, etc.

ball (the mason jar company) also has a section of their website dedicated to canning 101, including the basic process, recipes, a glossary of terms, and videos for their tutorials if you're a visual learner. they also offer free online recipes broken down in a way that's meant to be easy even for new canners.

yes! an excellent thing to point out!

as reported through michigan state university: "The acidity of a tomato is considered borderline between a high- and low-acid food. Tomato varieties have been changed through the years and as a result, many now have milder flavor and lower acidity than in the past. Testing has shown that some current tomato varieties have pH values at or above pH 4.6; a few have values of pH 5 or even higher."

for reference (thank you, university of georgia): "The bacteria that cause botulism poisoning can grow and produce toxin in sealed jars of moist food at room temperature if the pH (measure of acidity) is above 4.6."

The older lines were able to lift huge loads without superfluous bulk. They were also easier to load and unload with low beds. The new lines are so tall that getting them loaded is actually harder.

Not to mention temperament has gotten way out of hand. Trucks used to be incredibly docile- for such a large automotive a good disposition was paramount to the breed. But the current lines are unacceptably territorial, making them a danger to other cars around them.

The very tall hoods also pose a real risk to their handlers and pedestrians, I think the trucks get skittish about how little visibility they have and act out which is unfair to them and those they threaten out of fear.

This! All of this. Plus, not only does the excessive height make the beds harder to load, it also raises the center of balance, compromising stability and increasing the likelihood of injury to both truck and rider.

And then there's the wheelbase - in what I can only assume is an attempt to combat the balance issues without, y'know, breeding back to more reasonable conformation, everyone's breeding for doolies now. I don't know enough about truck health to know if it's inherently harmful for them, but it sure as hell does further compromise hauling capability, forcing them to bear taller loads (again damaging stability) that their more functionally bred ancestors could carry flat in a bed of the same length.

And the beds are so often shorter! Because prospective owners want a quad cab, so they can treat the truck as a family vehicle, without investing in the feed bill and space requirements* of a beast with a quad cab and a long enough bed. So you get all these behemoths whose anatomy forces them to struggle at their jobs - leading to boredom, anxiety, and aggression - while requiring more to maintain them than their smaller ancestors.

It is brutal, backbreaking labour. You're not just picking a punnet or two for the village fair, you're picking multiple ikea bags of those fucking things. Your container is a rigid plastic tub that isn't comfortable to hold no matter what the fuck you're doing.

It starts as light work. One hand grabbing, the other cutting the stem. 10 minutes later your hand feels stiff. 30 minutes, your hand hurts. You look at the tub, you've barely covered the bottom of it. 2 hours, your back is aching from bending up and down constantly. 3 hours, your knees are in agony. 4 hours, you're not certain you'll ever stand up again. Still 4 hours to go if you're lucky.

It is an especially shit time in this country for our farm workers and UFW is doing their best to help and protect them!

The guy was an institution all on his own; look at this.

The “A” profile in his soil is now 47 inches deep compared to less than 6 inches in 1971 and acts like a giant sponge for water infiltration and retention.

From 1971 through 1989 David used an average of 150-250 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre to grow his corn crops. After adding peas and radishes as a cover crop mix, he cut his nitrogen needs in half and was able to get it down to 125 pounds per acre.

When he added multiple species and became more aggressive with his cover crop mixes, he was able to achieve an additional drop in applied fertility. His starter fertilizer is now just 2 lbs of N, 4 lbs of P, and 5 lbs of K. His corn crop now only requires 20-30 lbs of N throughout the entire growing season. He requires no fertility for his soybeans, relying on fertility gained solely through his cover crops. He uses only 40 lbs of 10 N – 10 P – 10 K for his small grains.

Ten years ago (source study published 2019) David stopped using any fungicides and insecticides. This occurred at a time when fungicide and insecticide use has increased significantly with the average commodity farmer.

Four years ago he stopped using any seed treatment, including neonicotinoids.

His cash crop yields have been increasing by an average of 5% annually for the past 5-6 years, with far less fertilizer and no fungicides, insecticides or seed treatment.

So this is a picture of the soil horizons. The O profile/O horizon is stuff like fallen leaves, sticks, and so on, which are biodegrading into the A profile. A fair amount of soils might have no O profile at all.

If you are a gardener, the A profile is what you're concerned with most of the time; it's what we also call "topsoil." Your seeds germinate into it, and shallower plants might root into it alone without ever reaching the B profile. Worms and other small delvers live in it. It's what you're amending, what you're testing, what you're tilling, what you're trying to fill up with good microorganisms to work with your plants and provide you with food or flowers or cover.

I see this quote around sometimes, attributed to radioman Paul Harvey: Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

Without the topsoil, bluntly, we starve. And there are other problems, in places with a lack of it; without the topsoil, when the rains come, the water strikes hard soil. Hard soil doesn't accept water easily, so instead it pools and runs downhill. That action makes flooding, makes flash floods, makes standing water that carries disease, it contaminates the water table. Cholera is a huge problem in places with a low A profile that receive too much water at once.

We are seeing topsoil depletion across the US. I can't speak for other countries, but the heavy-tilling agricultural habits we've adopted here have obliterated inch after inch of our topsoil; in the 1800s the average depth was fourteen inches! Today it is six. Many suburban lawns have even less. This has knock-on effects we don't even consider on the day-to-day (for instance, there's some suggestion that the lower amounts of various minerals in vegetables and fruits today in comparison with earlier decades might be because of the lower amount of minerals in the soil for the plants to take up into themselves).

And this gentleman took soil that had been that abused and not only returned it to what it had been before the aggressive, destructive European agricultural policy had its way, but trebled that earlier depth.

His land protects the land around it from flooding. His land grows plants less susceptible to disease, because of all the various stressors and pressures those plants aren't confronted with. His land almost certainly has a considerably higher concentration of microorganisms and it would follow that we'd also see greater diversity of macroorganisms thereby.