Thanks, Mike, I have friends in SW Colorado who used to raise and slaughter elk -- not a big operation -- for retail sales. Our Dep't of Agriculture regs ended up shutting them down, not because anyone in the Department was anti- small farm, but because the regs, once written (with mega agriculture in mind) had to be enforced "impartially". I have no idea whether my friends were acting in any way that actually violated reasonable safety procedures or not, written or not.
My sea survival manual says that all seaweeds are non-toxic and therefore fair game for eating, though some must be pretty inedible. Can't say I've gone out of my way to nibble on them, other than in restaurants. I gathered from your discussion that the use of seaweed on your plots was labor intensive but ? worth it? Do you this within your family, or on a coop basis with neighbors? When I am at sea I already have to dodge large-area fishing fleet operations. I can imagine large scale seaweed cultivation at sea. There are some places in the oceans that are devoid of nutrients and thus of fish. I wonder whether seaweed can be grown anywhere, or would face similar regional limitations. Cheers, Lawry On Nov 30, 2011, at 3:31 PM, Mike Spencer wrote: > >> Thanks for the masterful contribution to the discussion. > > Thanks. [blush] I sent it before I received Mike G.'s note saying > that he had read and written over-hastily. > >> I kept thinking of my seaweed salad at our local sushi place, and >> wondering where it came from, business-wise. > > And I don't know that. [1] None of the 5 or so kinds of seaweed that > piles up on the local beach after storms is eatable (although one or > more may be technically edible.) The bulk is ptilota and desmarestia, > varying in proportion gradually over decades as the population > dynamics of seaweed and (so I'm told by a guy at Bedford Institute of > Oceanography) sea urchins vary with water temperature, disease and > $WHATEVER. Further down the shore they harvest Irish moss, the stuff > carrageenan comes from. But I don't know what they use in sushi. [2] > >> Can you say more about what is happening in Nova Scotia regarding >> "being regulated out of existence." > > I'd have to spend some time researching it to make a real think > piece. At the anecdotal level: > > + A local business [3] producing really good yogurt closed down > because regulators demanded that they meet in every detail the > standards of megadairy processing plants. This was a mom and pop > biz but not a back-yard, shade-tree operation. They had a proper > plant. > > + There's ongoing action to stamp out any consumption or > distribution of unpasteurized milk. Story in the Globe & Mail in > the last week, I think. (Re. Ontario, not NS.) > > + The supply management regulations for wheat, milk and > poultry. A decade ago, I bought roasting chickens from a > neighbor. When regulators began to enforce the regs more > vigorously, he told me that he could keep more than 20 birds > without getting involved in (I forget, license, quota, inspection, > other) so much bother and expense that he'd lose money on every > bird. So now he keeps a dozen or two for his and his son's > families but doesn't sell any. I'm inclined to think the Wheat > Board is a good idea but dairy and poultry are a very different > thing. > > + Neighbor raising, butchering and selling lamb and mutton, > butchering venison for hunters in season and some other livestock > production on a family-farm scale keeps getting snarled in > regulatory stuff better applicable to meat packing plants that > process a cattle carful of steers every 10 minutes. > >> Regarding eutrification and your lake: has the lake shrunk due to >> the build-up of soil/material in it, or lowering water table, or? > > Plants growing in from the edges. Very shallow lake, hill on either > side, farm on each hill. Neither farm is a big industrial operation. > It's lost perhaps half its open-water area in 40 years. > > The water table doesn't fall appreciably in NS and won't unless the > climate changes very dramatically. [4] We have so much rainfall that, > should the water level in our dug well continue to rise throughout the > winter at the same rate that it rises between September and November, > we'd have a tower of water 60 feet tall by spring. :-) > > > - Mike > > > > > [1] Is that a European swallow or an African swallow? > > What?! I don't know that! [Yowwwwwwwwwwwwwww....] > > [2] I used to have two friends with graduate training in phycology. > One is dead, the other moved on to other things. So anything I > say about seaweed that I can't easily observe for myself may be > wrong. Corrections always welcome. > > [3] > > > http://www.factsandopinions.com/Report/C2223F1B-C96B-4C36-A273-8769B8908E4A.html > > http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/04/05/ns_pennisula000405.html > > > http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8761410&mesg_id=8763064 > > [4] Not counting what might happen where fracking has been > undertaken. Two spots remote from me in NS. I haven't heard what, > if anything, has happened in those areas. > > > -- > Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. > /V\ > [email protected] /( )\ > http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
