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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Master Gardeners

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Dan Conine <dconine@dotnet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Master Gardeners
  • Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:34:04 -0600

Thanks for posting this:
From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] pesticide pusher? Grab your hip boots,
it's getting deep
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <200610291202460841.03450AD6@mail.lobo.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"


Thank you. I don't pass judgment on other states' extension programs, not
knowing all the details. But in this state I'm not going to pay to be a
volunteer pesticide pusher. We have hundreds (thousands?) of unknown
poisons in our bodies already and babies are born with them through the
mother. In addition, I don't like the threatening tone of that MG
application. Nor am I passing judgment on every person in the program. But
really, they ought to have sense enough to realize that short course does
not make them experts or make them qualified to give anybody advice. Some
no doubt have good intentions. But as my grandpa used to say, the road to
Hell is paved with good intentions. Many of us on this list have studied
and experienced a hundred times as much as so-called Master Gardeners, and
we don't claim to be "Master" anythings.
paul tradingpost@lobo.net
I wasn't sure that your original post was sarcastic at first, and was holding my tongue. -;-)

Our local Extension has something that sounds similar. It is mostly a bunch of elderly folks who have time on their hands and are doing some very good things for the looks of the local community. They don't discourage pesticides as much as I would like, but they tend toward neutral right now, and the Wisconsin university system is jumping on the organics bandwagon with the Yuppie money and the networking of the universtity towns in Organic coop stores, CSA groups and the Corporate interest in organic dairy money. I got my interest piqued by their Beginning Market Gardener class (which did focus on organics and holistic pest management methods). The BMG class is attended by people looking for change in local foods and how to get started themselves, rather than the Master Gardener certification, which is more of an ego boost for the attendees (not necessarily in a bad way, just differently motivated).

Dan






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