Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[<pbunch@cox.net>]

I heard an interesting piece on what is being termed super normal stimuli the 
other day. Basically hard wired behaviors that  were adaptive during human 
evolution which have become non-adaptive in recent times. Things like the 
drive to consume high fat, high energy foods. When these are taken advantage 
of by industry they become very powerful tools. there are a lot of other 
examples and most are associated with the consumption related problems we 
face as a society today. 


---- Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com> wrote: 
> Couldn't agree more, except I don't think its just those 3 industries that 
> 'own' government. I think its anything with artificial wealth, nor do I 
> think its just congress its government in general. Government (as are many 
> people) is attracted to shiny things, substance is not always shiny. Maybe 
> government and most people are crows.
> 
>  I also think there's something about the species itself that as a whole 
> cannot or will not limit itself appropriately, and watching the voles in 
> one of our local parks the last few months has made me think were closely 
> related. 
> 
> Early in the year when we got lots of late rains plants (local grasses and 
> such) went sort of wild, so the voles (most of society) went nuts and bred 
> themselves into a frenzy - food was plentiful and the weather was good. At 
> first you didn't see them since their food was nearby (mainly oat grasses 
> and buckwheats and such I think). As the nearby sources were consumed the 
> voles began at daily mass transit which was truly stunning (this reminded 
> me of our culture of imported agriculture).
> 
> Fields became thick with voles at around 5 in the afternoon scurrying 
> around moving farther and farther from their nests. They developed literal 
> vole freeways which you could see when cut back some of the oat grasses. 
> They kept breeding, but food finally was too hard to acquire. Then they 
> started starving. This meant they sat bug eyed in the open almost unable to 
> move, some of them actually tried climbing bunch grasses 6 at a time (we 
> called them vole trees) to get at the last few bits of seed. Others changed 
> their diet going so far as to eat yellow star thistle and medusa head 
> grasses from time to time. Things got worse as the summer drought hit, they 
> tried hiding under cars, they would run up to you and stand on your shoes 
> hoping I think you would drop some food. They would chirp at you , perhaps 
> begging for some sort of help. A few were still strong,you could see 
> because they moved characteristically quickly. Most had become weak. Even 
> though they
>  were rodents it was still tough to watch. 
> 
> Finally nature took action. Predators sensed this weakness and closed in ( 
> I expect we do this to ourselves with wars and by paying homage to ever 
> expanding industries, and by giving up our freedoms). Suddenly rattlesnakes 
> started appearing in droves, kites began a nightly ritual of descending on 
> them in ever bigger numbers. As of last week hundreds of fat  complacent 
> rattlesnakes, and hawks of all sorts can be found were the vole masses once 
> roamed without fear or concern. But the numbers of voles have dropped 
> staggeringly. What nature will chose to do with the rattlesnakes (who are 
> now starting their little breeding dances themselves) one can only guess. 
> Some voles are still left, but only a fraction of what I saw last month.
> 
> Anyway it all reminded me of us and I've been watching it for a while now, 
> so I thought I'd share.
> 
> --- On Wed, 8/11/10, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:
> 
> From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Lester Brown on rising temperatures
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010, 8:56 PM
> 
> 
> IMHO, from all I see going on it's impossible to restrain the powers that 
> be in this economy. Congress is paralyzed and wholly owned by financial, 
> insurance, and real estate (FIRE). So we'll be restrained when mother 
> nature does the restraining - at terrible cost. Some say the tipping points 
> have already been tipped and nothing can be done now anyway; I don't know. 
> But people will always need food and learning better ways of producing it 
> under adverse conditions with low tech is my course. 
> 
> On the hopeful side a local market we need has been reborn under new 
> management, after flaming out last year. We restarted there today and it 
> was one long day. What drives us growers is hard to pinpoint but maybe it's 
> the personal chemistry between growers and customers - nothing  of the sort 
> in supermarkets of course. Otherwise I can't explain our ridiculously low 
> profit per hour taking into account the months of growing and tending 
> before we ever get to market. It's all uphill in this big ag subsidized 
> economy and cheap, toxic food onslaught.
> 
>      "As long as we value healthy food and cooking so much less than 
> doctors and hospitals, we will keep paying more and more for doctors and 
> hospitals."
> 
> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
> 
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
> 
> On 8/11/2010 at 2:22 PM Pego Rice wrote:
> 
> >Hi Paul
> >
>