Flip of the Coyne

Save Bill C-474 on April 14! Your new action can stop the biotech industry from defeating this Bill!

Dear Spencer,

Your actions are making a huge difference. The biotech industry has launched a heavy lobbying campaign to stop Bill C-474. Despite this industry pressure, the Liberals spoke in favour of Bill C-474 tonight – but their voice was not strong enough to drown out Conservative opposition, yet. The Conservatives voted against the Bill, but Bill C-474 is not dead yet. The official vote on Bill C-474 will happen on April 14!

Bill C-474 would require that “an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.” The Bill could stop GE alfalfa and GE wheat.

The industry association CropLife is so worried about the influence of your letters that they have copied CBAN’s campaign, asking their own public to write to MPs as well. (You can have a peek at the copy-cat campaign here: http://www.croplife.ca/web/english/biotechnology/Bill_C-474). We also know that key Liberal MPs have been under a lot of pressure from the biotech industry, including a steady stream of calls to their offices. But your voices are still being heard!

Here are some ways you can make a difference, today:

1. We have set up a new action. You can write an instant letter to Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party leader from CBAN’s website http://cban.ca/liberalact474 Ask him to make sure all Liberal MPs are present on April 14 to vote in favour of Bill C-474. Tonight, the Liberal Party spoke in favour of a transparent debate on the Bill in the Agriculture Committee but will they vote for the Bill on April 14? (The NDP and Bloc support the Bill.)

2. You can also send your MP another letter from http://cban.ca/474action – Your continued pressure is important.

3. Below is an action alert that you can send around to your family, friends, and around your community. For more information and other action see http://cban.ca/474

4. Please consider supporting CBAN’s work with a financial contribution so we can continue this strong campaigning. CBAN is a small organization that is entirely funded by charitable donations and small project grants. CBAN has limited resources but is up against well-financed corporate giants like Monsanto. Donate online to keep this work going and to help us start our new campaign to stop the GE “Enviropig™” at http://cban.ca/donate

Please join us to stop GE crops from causing untold harm to Canadian farmers.

Thank you for your continued action and support, Best regards

Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network

P.S. Contact me any time at 613 241 2267 ext.6 or coordinator@cban.ca

I was able to plant my tote garden on Friday the 19th after leaving the bin in front of the fire for a while.  I wanted to let the soil warm

up before planting my seeds in it.

Shortly before noon on Friday I planted my seeds.  Carrots, spinach, lettuce mix, swiss chard, green onions, basil and parsley and a few radishes mixed in for good measure.

Planting my little inside garden was a greater experience that I had originally thought it would be but not for the reasons I originally thought.  My 6 month old son got to sit beside me in his excuser-saucer and watch me.  I was a great moment we got to plant our first seeds together.

I have been keeping the tote as warm as I can.  I placed it where it gets a good amount of sun light but not so that it takes up the entire window.  I did this on purpose.  I wanted to provide the amount of sunlight that someone in an apartment may have.  So I have just pushed over the kitchen table a bit giving the tote half the window.  At night I close the blind to keep some of the draft off and I have a small lamp that I turn on to provide some light and some heat.

Sunday I came in the house around 3pm and was surprised to see that sometime in the past 24 hours the radishes, lettuce and 1 swiss chard were already coming up.  I couldn’t believe it, I know that it doesn’t take long but with the cool nights you never know if the seeds will sprout fast or take their time.

Monday (Today), even more lettuce, radishes and swiss chard is up. I am excited that things are coming around so fast.  To be honest I almost thought that I may have to start over I have used some seeds that are not exactly new, some may even be a few years old.

More updates in the days to come as I am sure that even more activity is coming soon.

Tonight I watched part one of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution USA.  Jamie has a big task ahead of him by the looks of things the people of Huntington W. Va do not seem to receptive to the British Chef and Food Activist.

Both my wife and I watched in horror as Jamie walked into the schools lunch room where they were serving the children pizza for breakfast then for lunch they had chicken nuggets and flavoured milk.  I was personally outraged when Jamie makes his first fresh lunch and the principal tells him he needs 2 breads with the meal even though he has brown rice.  It really is scary that grains has been turned into breads.  White bread should not count as a grain it should count as a sugar!

The show premiered on ABC tonight at 10 pacific time but you can watch it on A Channel and Access in Canada if you do not want to watch it on the American network.  Check out http://abc.go.com/shows/jamie-olivers-food-revolution for more information about the show or to see clips from the show.  You may be surprised.

I have been talking the talk for a long time but I have not really been a container gardener. I thought that today I would change that not only to show that it can be done but it can be done cheaply too.

Fresh Food From Small Spaces

Rather than reinvent the wheel I dug out my book Fresh Food From Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal to find a design for a container garden that uses a tote.  So off town to find an affordable tote that I can cut up for my project.  I found myself in the local Fields store where I found exactly what I was looking for a tote for $12.00 but thanks to a 10% off sale I got the bin for $12.10 with taxes.

The next thing I would be a colander and some sort of cloth to cover the water feed tube.  I ended up at Princeton’s Loonie Bin (don’t worry it is just the local dollar store) where I found a plastic colander for $2.00 and a package of cheese cloth for $1.00.  Things were looking up.  The next thing I would need would be some soil but it is the middle of March where would I find a bag of potting mix this time of year.  I decided to check out the local Home Hardware which was the right choice.  Home Hardware had bags of soil for just $3.69 each so I picked up 2 sacks for a total of $7.75.

Soil

I was surprised that my total so far is as low as it is at $23.21.  Now I have not bought seeds yet, to be honest I am not going to I have a big box of seeds sitting in my living room and I really don’t want to buy any more.

I have bought all the parts to this project that I needed and then I looked around my place for the rest.

What I was missing was a couple of pieces of 2×4 roughly 10 inches long and a piece of pipe or a tube 18 inches or longer for the watering tube.  Of course I will need something to hold the tube in place and some tools.

The tools I will need are a jig saw, hack saw, electric drill, marker and tape measure.

mark out where you need to cut

Step 1 to my container garden.

Put your 2×4′s in the bottom of your tote standing on their side.  Measure the dimensions of the inside of the tote from where the 2×4′s sit.

Step 2

Take your maker and mark on the lid of the tote the dimensions that you just measured.  Place the colander in the centre of your lid and trace around with your marker.

Step 3

With your lid on the tote cut the centre out where you traced for the colander cut a little inside the mark so that it will not fall all the way through.  Then cut the rest so you get the bottom of your inside.

Floor to your container garden

Once you have cut your lid to the right size then you need to attach the 2×4′s on their side on the bottom of the new floor.  There is a reason to do this.

Step 4

Take the pipe that you have and put it in one corner of the tote.  This will be for future watering.  On the bottom end of the pipe take some of the cheese cloth or you can use burlap if you have any and cover the end.  Attach it with something that will keep it there, a rubber band, wire, string what ever you have.  You will need to make one last cut to your lid where in the corner where the pipe will go.

When you secure the pipe in it’s corner make sure it is not directly on the bottom of the tote you want to have some room so water can still drain out.

Step 5

Put the floor in place.  Once you have the floor in it’s place put the colander in the hole you cut out.  You may have to cut the handle off it is has one if not carry on.

just before the soil is added

Now that everything is in place dump 1 bag of soil into the tote.  Depending on what you are going to try and grow in your new tote garden will determine how much soil you will need to add.  The bags I used the first one gave me 6 inches of soil I then added another inch from the other bag.  6 inches should be enough but I wanted to make sure since I am going to try carrots in my tote garden.

Now that you have read my really bad directions I bet some of you are still trying to figure out why the false floor, the pipe and the colander.  Well it is really simple and actually pretty ingenious.  The colander is to put dirt all the way into the bottom of the tote.  The false floor provides a reservoir for water and that is why you have the pipe.  The pipe will provide water directly to the reservoir and with the soil being in the water it will allow the soil to draw from the water source as needed so on those hot days when you put your tote garden in the sun you shouldn’t have to worry about it drying out too fast.  The colander should also act as a drain when you are watering from the top down allowing the water to drip out and into the reservoir below.

Well that is part one of this little experiment I will update as progress is made and I will take more time to ensure that it is up to snuff I know this entry is a little poor.

If you want to know more about container gardening or you want a better set of plans than the ones I provided I strongly suggest you get the book Fresh Food From Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal it is packed full of information.

Just finished reading Michael Pollan’s book Food Rules An Eaters Manual. This book is a great little read it has 64 Rules that will help you eat better and it is a great book to help make the argument for eating locally.  For example Rule #3 Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry. 

You should pick up a copy of this book if you are looking for a light read.  It will only take you an hour maybe less if you have no distractions it is only 140 pages long and really is an easy and in some places a funny read.

We live in one of the greatest areas in the world for local food production yet our restaurants have yet to realize this and capitalize on it.   There are a few great locations like the Bench Market in Penticton, the Bonfire Restaurant and Bar West Kelowna or the Cabana Grille in Kelowna but these seem to be only a few acceptations out of the  many many establishments in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys.  Some of the Wineries have began to utilize local tastes to accompany their wines but for the casual diner the experience is still few and far between.

With 2010 here I would like to see our local restaurants add at least 1 local meal to their menu.

When we are lucky enough to have world class local wineries and micro breweries in our region we should be celebrating it with great local cuisine.

As some of you may already know I have been on a quest ever since I read “The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating” by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon winter 2007/08. Well that and a combination of other things that were taking place in my personal life at the time. I had been reading a lot the couple of years leading up to that book. Books like Urban Meltdown that looks at how we build our communities to books on global warming and sustainable economy.

I had gardened before in fact growing up on our family farm the garden had played a large roll in my early memories. I grew up with eating locally but had never paid it much attention until I moved back to Princeton. It had become noticeable that the local food economy had started to disappear but it wouldn’t be for a few years until I really understood the consequences of what was happening around me.

So back to my quest, when I was reading the 100-Mile Diet I had already decided to plant a garden that year. So when I read the book it solidified my resolve to start eating locally. There was one little flaw in my plan but unlike the authors in the book I was not about to jump into this project blind, nope I had read the book and saw how hard it was for them to find food other than potatoes when they had decided to start their 100 mile journey. The biggest problem for me is, well Princeton seems to be in the middle of no where.

Luckily for me and the rest of us on this 100 mile quest you do not use road miles rather you draw your circle as the crow would fly,

meaning straight line. This was a great relieve when I learned this because unlike living in Greater Vancouver Area where there is the dairy farms of the Fraser Valley or their potato production, and other basic necessities I am in Princeton and all of these areas would be out of my reach by the highway mile method.

So here is what I am going to do and I will document it along the way, I am going a 100 mile diet quest. I am not going to jump into this without educating myself first and I am not about to start in the dead of winter with nothing local other than some canned cherries, beets and some frozen pumpkin. Nope I am going to find what grows and is produced within my 100 mile range, what I cannot find I will try to grow myself. And I am going to change the rules a little since we live so close to the US border much of my 100 miles is south of the border. With so many regulations and restrictions on what you can bring to Canada from the US I am going to make some allowances in other areas to cover some of the mileage that I am going to lose to the south. Another rule I am going to make is that if you go on a trip your food should be within 100 miles of the place you are visiting, if you visit an area for more than a day then you can bring home food from that area. For example if I visit Vancouver Island for a few days then I can bring home some food that was produced on the Island.

If you do follow my quest I hope it encourages you to join me.