New food act

It’s interesting reading what the senate in the USA is doing as often our own government follows suit, there is a ‘food safety act’ being taken through the senate currently, which changes the face of how the American population will be supplied with food. Now not only are the UK government trying to implement a number of food related bills, Codex for one, fluoride another, it’s not that unlikely any more I would think that total control over food supplies would be on the agenda!

Incredible really that after all these years of having safe food supplies, that when big agribusinesses get involved suddenly no longer is food safe any more. They give the farmers terminator seeds, now they are controlled, pesticides that only work with their seeds, more control, growth hormones, now your health is controlled, and GM, now your DNA is affected, and long term, well who really knows? It’s not going to be whilst companies like Monsanto are involved, our government needs to allow us to grow our own foods, make our own choices about how we heal ourselves, and allow us to be adults. Nanny state? I think it was Kissenger who stated that ‘those who controlled the food controlled the population’, and he is still working behind the scenes in American government. When bills are trying to be passed in the US which are controlling what you even grow for your own consumption in your own back yard, you know things are not for your benefit anymore.

Watch for our own government following suit and trying to do this in the UK. I for one want to continue to dictate what I want to grow, and eat, and not have it covered in all sorts of chemicals because someones bonus depends on it.

How a vegan came to not particularly like cats!

When I wasn’t bothered about the garden and how it looked, cats were a nice thing to have around, they kept the dog occupied, often giving her fleas, and would be something else to stroke and talk to. But now things are different, and I am becoming a hardened cat hater, particularly of the ginger tom from number 92 who is using our beautiful raised beds, shingled path growing arena as a large kitty litter tray. The ginger tom dug up our whole bed of strawberries, and this annoyed us, and then the salad veg, this angered us, and then the carrots, we became passionate cat haters at that point. This cat knows that we don’t like it, we have taken to leaving our dog in the garden, she doesn’t mind she can sleep anywhere, but it seems to know when she is around, and it’s only when we go out does the cat strike. It is truly infuriating to put in so much work to grow food to have it dug up by an uncaring cat.
This has left us with little option but to put netting over all the beds to prevent the cat from getting into them. This makes the garden look like its got rigging from a boat all over it, but seems to finally be preventing the cat from doing any more damage. What with the cat on the garden and now we have a fox digging holes on our allotment, its becoming animal wars, when all we thought we would be dealing with were slugs and cabbage fly at this time of the year.
Talking of cabbage fly, we are about to start cutting off our rhubarb leaves to soak them, this we will then use as a pesticide on our veggies which on the allotment are doing very nicely. The thing though that we can’t wait for are the sweetcorn, they look so lovely and have done so well, in our first allotment year as well! Setting up the garden last year, building the greenhouse and shed, and now another shed, takes up a lot of time, far more than we ever anticipated to be honest. We have a poly tunnel which we are about to put up to extend the growing time we will have, and are learning about aquaponics as another possible to add to our sustainable life mix. What is amazing is already we are noticing how our food bill is about 1/3 less than it was just 6 months ago. This is significant for us, and can only get better as we have only managed to turn over 1/3 of the allotment plot so far, and therefore have a lot of space still left over to grow on. We are really excited about the possibilities that this leaves us with, but are realising how living like this takes up time, and a lot of effort to keep going.