I’m sure just yet if I find it amusing, insulting, annoying, or all three. After reading a post about canning tomatoes, someone posted this in a group I belong to on LinkedIn:

Urgent! Jerri, This is NOT a safe and approved method to can tomatoes. Research in food safety shows that it is vital to add bottled lemon juice to each jar before processing to ensure the correct level of acidity for safe water bath canning. Add 1 Tablespoon per pint – 2 Tablespoons per quart. The processing time is for under 1,000 feet elevation. For altitudes 1,000 to 3,000 feet add 5 minutes processing time, for 3,001 to 6,000 feet add 10 minutes, for 6,001 to 8,000 feet add 15 minutes and from 8,001 to 10,000 feet add 20 minutes.

These are instructions from an earlier time before we understood that tomatoes vary greatly in their acidity. Variety, soil fertility, weather conditions and ripeness all factor into PH levels in tomatoes.
Please use only the most recently approved methods. They can be found at The National Center for Home Food Preservation.
[http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3www%2Euga%2Eedu*3nchfp*3publications*3publications_usda%2Ehtml/sYEi?_t=tracking_disc ]

Here’s the thing. The instructions are from an earlier time, and they work just fine. Not an approved method? Not approved by who?

Why is it urgent? Are rural folk dropping dead because they ate canned-tomatoes without lemon juice? Geez, maybe we should start digging graves before winter gets here, what with low-acid tomatoes and swine flu and all.

I don’t put lemon juice or anything else besides salt in my tomatoes. But, readers be advised that the government-approved way is to add lemon juice. There, I said it. But I don’t do it. If I drop dead tomorrow, you’ll know why.

The temperatures are climbing, along with the humidity. While the rest of the world above the equator views summer as a time for vacations in exotic places and frolicking on beaches full of tourists, those of us with livestock know that summer can put just as much physical stress on animals as harsh winter conditions.

On our dairy farm, we’ve noticed that our dark animals, especially the Holsteins, have more difficulties than the other cows. One of the problems we have is a lack of shade in our pastures. It took a little innovating, but we finally came up with a couple of ways to keep the milk from curdling in the cow on hot days. Here are a few tips for keeping your small herd cool and healthy in scorching summer temperatures:

• Let the cows graze in lowland pasture. Cool air sinks, so the lower portions of the pasture will be cooler.
• Hook up a sprinkler just like you do for the kids. Set the sprinkler outside of the fence so it doesn’t get stepped on and let it spray on the cows in the pasture for a few minutes every hour.
• If it’s incredibly hot and muggy, put the cows in a barn or shed with a fan or two. Even if you only have small fans, it’s better than nothing. Getting them out of the sun is great, but keeping them in a stifling shed is counterproductive. If space is an issue, bring in the older and darker cows and leave the others out.
• Have plenty of water available. The drinking trough shouldn’t run dry on hot days.
• Have plenty of real lemonade on hand (for you not the cows.) It gets hot herding everyone into the barn. See the recipe below for a great glass of lemonade.

Hot weather also decreases milk production, but that’s okay, since the biggest demand for dairy products is in the fall. Pushing cows to produce more milk in the summer by feeding them grain can cause serious digestive problems. Limit the grain and make sure there is plenty of grass and long-stemmed hay available. Then kick back and sip some frosty lemonade. Here’s the recipe from Yankee Harvest:

Grandma’s Real Old-Fashioned Natural Lemonade

Makes about 8 cups

A Old-Fashioned Summer time treat …!
Great pick-me-up, thirst-quenching, and not too sweet.

Lemon Juice, freshly squeezed from 8 large lemons (1-1/2 cups)
1/2  cup of sugar, granulated – more or less to taste
5  cups cold well water
1  large lemon, cut into small wedges or thin cartwheel slices

Freshly made Ice cubes. Make fresh ice cubes, as they may pick up freezer odors over a period of time, if not used regularly.

In a large pitcher, combine the freshly squeezed lemon juice, granulated sugar and 2 cups of cold water; stir briskly to dissolve the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients and stir briskly again.

To make a Honey Flavored Lemonade:
Substitute your favorite “honey” for the granulated sugar. Adjust more or less to taste.

To make a Pink Lemonade:
Add a few drops of grenadine syrup.

The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has been holding “listening sessions” in rural communities throughout the country. He has visited with industry representatives in Missouri, Colorado, and Pennsylvania to name a few. But, curiously enough, the good Secretary didn’t come anywhere near Wisconsin. You would think he’d want to visit the first state to make compliance with the NAIS mandatory; wouldn’t you? It seems Secretary Vilsack is afraid to get in the ring in Wisconsin. Not surprising. I’m pretty sure that any “listening session” here would quickly turn into a cage match, with Vislsack and crew soundly outnumbered and defenseless against the public pummeling they’d receive.

Wisconsin’s family farmers and small-scale producers have not gone quietly into the abyss of bureaucracy; they drug us by the hair, kicking and screaming. Organizations like Family Farm Defenders and the Weston A. Price Foundation, have made tremendous efforts to keep the pressure on Madison while keeping family farmers across the nation informed.

So what did Tom Vilsack “hear” on his “listening” tour? Pretty much the same old kissing up from government-funded agencies, all of whom are more concerned with keeping their cushy offices jobs than helping farmers. Of course, corporate agriculture is well-represented at these “listening sessions.” Afterall, theses so-called listening sessions are really nothing more than a public relations tour where big industry and big government get to parade around as champions of the people.

One group representing citizen-based agriculture tried to get in the ring. R-CALF USA, a group that advocates for American cattle producers offered a comprehensive, yet simple plan for controlling the threat of livestock diseases. The basics of the plan call for common sense measure that would prove effective in both cost and outcome:

1. Adopt the surveillance and identification components of the preexisting brucellosis program, including the metal eartag and tattoo that identifies the state-of-origin and the local veterinarian who applied the identification devices, and require breeding stock not otherwise identified through breed registries to be identified at the first point of ownership transfer.
2. State and Tribal animal health officials should be solely responsible for maintaining a statewide database for all metal tags applied within their respective jurisdictions and should continue to use the mailing address and/or the production unit identifier determined appropriate by the attending veterinarian to achieve traceback to the herd of origin should a disease event occur. Under no circumstances should the Federal government maintain a national registry of U.S. livestock or require the national registration of producers’ real property.
3. The federal government should enter into agreements with State and Tribal animal health officials to pay for the States’ and Tribal governments’ costs of identifying breeding stock and maintaining the State and Tribal databases, as well as bolstering disease surveillance at livestock collection points such as livestock auction yards and slaughtering plants, including increased surveillance for BSE.
4. The federal government should coordinate with the States and Tribes to establish electronic interface standards and to establish improved communication protocols so it can more effectively coordinate with the States and Tribes in the event of a disease outbreak.
5. The federal government should coordinate with the States and Tribes to establish improved protocols for the retention and searchability of State and Tribal health certificates, brand inspection documents and other documents used to facilitate interstate movement of livestock.
6. Establish specific disease programs and focus increased resources toward the eradication of diseased wildlife in States where wildlife populations are known to harbor communicable diseases. R-CALF USA’s plan also includes measures to bolster the U.S.’s resistance to the introduction of foreign animal diseases and to improve food safety.
7. Prevent the importation of serious cattle diseases and pests from foreign sources by:
   1. Prohibiting the importation of livestock from any country that experiences outbreaks of serious diseases.
   2. Requiring all imported livestock to be permanently identified.
   3. Requiring all livestock imported into the United States to meet health and safety standards identical to those
      established for the United States.
   4. Requiring TB testing and quarantine of all imported Mexican cattle.
   5. Reversing USDA’s efforts to carve out regions within disease-affected foreign countries in order to facilitate imports from the affected country before the disease of concern is fully controlled or eradicated.
   6. Increasing the testing of all imported meat and bone meal to prohibit contaminated feed from entering the United States.
8. To address the challenge of increased incidences of tainted meat products, Congress and USDA must substantially reform the current hands-off inspection system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP). HACCP has fundamentally failed to ensure adequate sanitary practices at major slaughterhouse establishments.Read the whole proposal here>>>

While the Secretary and industry hacks visit, and family farm advocates struggle to stay in the ring, there is another, inexpensive, time-tested solution that the USDA team is overlooking. I’ll discuss it in depth in the next post. For now, suffice it to say that there is a way to force the NAIS crowd into a cage match with no way out.

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