The March issue of "Mother Earth News" had some articles worth commenting on. As usual they give a very positive and simplified view of our world. Staff of Life, the simple art of baking bread. This is an article about baking yeast breads. The article made bread baking sound like fun and i assume it this is part of self-reliance. If we approached this topic from an ecological standpoint i think the article would have been very different. Things like the energy use and the advantages of flat breads would sneak in along with more information about health. At one time the nutrition loss in commercial flours was discussed but i have not seen anything on this for many years. To PV or not to PV, Solar power, utilities, and the beauty of backwards spinning meter. This chronicles ones families experience with PV. They utilized a contractor and paid $32,865 for the system. Is this typical? I don't know, but doubt most people would want to spend all that money. Our system did not cost anywhere close to that amount. This article doesn't appeal to my self-reliant side and is marginal from the ecology end. If they had talked about conservation it would have given the readers a path to reduce costs and possibly change attitudes about energy. Oh well... we have become a rich society and magazines write for those who have money. The Three Sisters, The nutritional balancing act of the Americas. This article describes planting corn, beans, and squash together. The author (Jonh Vivian) did his homework on this one. The article is full of history. From a ecology standpoint home grown food is a good choice and native crops are usually preferred. The one problem might be corn which is a heavy feeder. It is difficult to grow corn on the same site without adding nitrogen back. No problem for those who compost or have animals but for everyone else corn may be a eco-problem. jeff
