Touchdown

(On my travels)

a few of my favourite Beatrix Potter mycology illustrations 🍄✨🐇

Eremophila alternifolia

Eremophila alternifolia is another shrubby species with a broad area of occurrence in Australia. It differs from E. glabra in having narrower deep green leaves - almost needle-like. The attractive violet-pink flowers have darker spots, and they are produced over a long period from spring to fall.

there it is, again

Commercial orchards in the U.S. grew about 14,000 unique apple varieties in 1905, and most of them could be found in Appalachia, says William Kerrigan, author of Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard and a professor of American history at Muskingum University.

For Appalachian farmers and homesteaders, “a diverse orchard was fundamental to survival and good-eating alike,” says Brown. Residents were expert gardeners and developed varieties that matured at different intervals, tasted unique, and catered to specific culinary functions.

“The goal was to be able to pick fresh apples from June to November, and have a diverse supply of fruit throughout the year,” says Brown. Thick-skinned, late-ripening varieties provided wintertime pomaceous treats. Others were tweaked for applications such as frying, baking, dehydrating, making vinegar, and finishing livestock.

But Appalachian traditions around heritage apples were eroded and ultimately destroyed by urban migration, factory farming, and corporatized food systems. Conglomerates negotiated national contracts and switched to apples that matured fast and were suited to long-distance shipping. By 1950, most smaller orchards had been forced out of business—Milton’s grandfather, for instance, sold the family’s Wise County, Virginia, orchard to a coal company to save his cattle farm. Gardens began to disappear.

By the late 1990s, U.S. commercial orchards grew fewer than 100 apple varieties—and just 11 of them accounted for 90 percent of grocery-store sales. Experts estimated 11,000 heirloom varieties had gone extinct.

“It upset me to learn about that,” says Brown. Two-hundred-fifty years of culinary culture had been squandered. “These were foods that people had once cared about deeply, that’d been central to their lives. It felt wrong to just let them die.”

Farmers who the Morrison government says were “acting in good faith” when they underestimated their income will have $51m in income support debts waived.

Prof Kay Cook, a social security expert at Swinburne University of Technology, did not oppose the debt waiver for farmers but said it showed “vastly different treatment for benefit recipients in a similar situation”.

Cook said single parents on family tax benefit part A payments also had varying income, particularly from sources such as child support.

This could “vary wildly” if their “ex-partners do not lodge their tax return”, she said.

“In these cases, women can be retrospectively deemed to have received too much FTBA and are required to pay it back,” Cook said.

“Like farmers predicting crop yields and prices, it is equally difficult for women to estimate child support income that they have no oversight or control over.

“They are similarly acting in good faith, but they are vigorously pursued by the government to pay this money back.”

Just like Gerry Harvey, here is another section of the community getting a free ride whilst the poor get robodebt and wage theft.