. independent . fame .

Hello fellow Americans,

This email looks long, even to me, but I’ll just put it out there and read what you want…there’s some stuff I learned I thought some of you might enjoy, and I wanted to get it all in there! If you don’t want me bothering you with emails, well….this is probably my last one, but just email me to let me know anyway!

A lot has been happening down here on the farm. Last weekend, Tim and Vicki took me to a film screening at a barn in a nearby town. It was actually the Canadian premier of the film “Michael Schmidt – Organic Hero or Bioterrorist?”. Basically, Michael Schmidt is a dairy farmer who sells raw milk to people in Toronto and the surrounding area. The problem? The sale of raw milk (aka unpasteurized milk) is illegal in Canada. So, the authorities aren’t too happy with him. He tries to get around the law by selling “cow shares” – shares of his cows, specifically, their teats. People pay $300 a teat for a season’s supply of raw milk. That way, he isn’t selling the milk directly; but technically, it is still illegal. The film basically dealt with the issue of freedom and choice; Michael Schmidt didn’t use the film as propaganda for raw milk, but instead sent the message that people should be able to choose what they drink. Many people don’t like to drink pasteurized milk, because some think the pasteurization process kills many of the nutrients and bacteria that make milk what it is – a natural drink that builds the immune system. Many cancer patients have claimed that switching to a diet of raw milk has helped them go into remission, and apparently, drinking raw milk is what guards against the development of allergies. What I found most surprising is that lactose intolerant people can drink raw milk; their intolerance of lactose is actually an intolerance of the pasteurization process. However, their are some people (like officials in the Canadian government) who believe that raw milk is dangerous and deadly, because, if handled improperly, can contain potentially lethal bacteria. In the film, Michael Schmidt introduces evidence that raw milk, when handled properly, is completely safe, and claims the reason the government is against raw milk is because it poses a threat to large dairy corporations. Large dairy corporations like pasteurized milk because it can keep longer, which aids them in transporting it; but if many small, local dairy farms could cut into dairy corporation’s revenues. I don’t know if I’ll switch to raw milk, but its interesting to think about the subject, and how Canada is not as untouched by governmental strife as Michael Moore portrays them to be, haha.

Anyway, enough about raw milk. While all you guys celebrated America’s independence on the 4th, I got to celebrate Canada’s independence on the 1st of July! Tuesday was Canada Day, and to celebrate, Canadian’s basically do exactly the same thing we do: set off fireworks and barbeque. Tuesday was extra awesome for me, though, because while Tim was out on his CSA delivery run, Vicki revved up the big tractor and took Stephanie, Jocelyn and I for a tractor ride to a blueberry field a few kilometers away. If you’ve never ridden on a tractor before, I highly recommend it. The blueberries weren’t quite ripe…they should be good to go by this Thursday. But there were some that were nice and fat and dark blue, and they tasted amazing. Still bitter, but in a delicious, biting kind of way. To add to the joy of Canada Day, when we got back, Vicki’s friend had come over and randomly brought us a ton of ice cream. Sweet. At night, Tim, Vicki, Stephanie, Sage and I went over Vicki’s aunt’s house, which is actually a cottage right on Lake Ontario. It’s view is one of the best I’ve seen; you can see all the way to the lights of Kingston (an hour and a half drive away), and then right out over the lake in the direction of Rochester New York! Some of Vicki’s cousins went out on the dock and set off fireworks (don’t know how safe that was, but I was on shore so oh well?) and it was really beautiful watching them explode over the water.

Besides that, we’ve been picking strawberries almost every day to get the last of them out of the bushes, planting a LOT of lettuce because our last batch is growing bitter-tasting, planting some cardoons, and weeding the beets. We also made another 113 containers of pesto out of the garlic scapes (when Vicki and TIm first harvested them, they had 260 lbs!). The spinich is all gone, sadly, so we’ve been using beet tops to make dinners. Tim’s also been teaching me a lot about the political things that are going on with farming. He gave me a very interesting article in Acres US, some farming magazine I’ve never heard of, and it talks a lot about what’s going on with corporate agriculture. We started the conversation because we passed a field of canola on our way to visit Tim’s aunt. Vicki mentioned that, currently, all canola grown is genetically modified (GM). Heirloom (non-genetically modified) canola doesn’t really exist because farmers growing GM canola let the seed blow into non-GM fields and contaminate the heirloom crop. So, there’s that. And now, argribusinesses are starting to patent the seeds they create (known as GMOs) and charge the farmers for the use of them. One company, Monsanto, sued a small farmer who was growing genetically modified wheat they claimed was theirs. The farmer claimed their GM seed had blown into his field and contaminated his crop, because his family had been saving a certain kind of wheat seed and growing it for generations. Although I think his claims were probably true, he lost anyway, and Monsanto bankrupted him out of business. The article Tim sent me also described how companies are developing something called “Termination technology” in their seeds. Normally, farmers can save the seeds of corn, soybeans, wheat, and other plants and use them to grow new crops year after year. This termination technology would be implanted into GMOs and cause the seeds to “terminate” after one year….so the plants, in effect, produce useless seeds that the farmers can’t save and grow beyond one season. This could mean that US corporations could control the food supply of entire countries; first, these countries have to pay for the rights to use the patented seeds, and then, if they do something the US or the corporations doesn’t like, the companies could refuse to sell them seed, and the farmers can’t save seed from plants they have just harvested thanks to this termination technology. Stuff like this just makes me want to be a lawyer even more, so I can kick these bastards in the ass. I hate them! I’m really glad intellectual property as a subject can apply to both agriculture law and music law, because I love both. I’m finding that we talk a lot about music here, and when I first got here, I used shared musical tastes to kinda make friends and start conversation. Plus, we have a lot of disco dance parties. It made me realize how important music is to society, and how integral it is to the enjoyment of everything we do. So that’s good!

The rest of the week was tamer. I had a slight cold, which is all gone thanks to some homeopathic healing by Vicki. She gave me a bunch of teas mixed from varied herbs, and did some “touch therapy”…which doesn’t actually involve any touching at all….it’s weird, but I let her try it, and something worked I guess! I think I really got better when all the girls and I went to this field on Friday morning and attended a Chi Gong class. Chi Gong is related to Tai Chi, I believe, and it’s all about moving different types of energy around your body. It was actually really relaxing, and kinda felt like I was giving my body some kind of spiritual steam bath. It also helped that I was in some huge, expansive, gorgeous field overlooking the water. I’m thinking of looking for some Chi Gong sessions in Central Park when I get home. I don’t know if I actually believe it moves energy around, but the experience was really pleasant nonetheless. Everyone here is very into spiritual and homeopathic remedies, and they seem to work for a lot of people here. One woman who is friends with Vicki has cancer, and she has switched to a completely raw diet and homeopathic treatment after two rounds of chemo did not work for her. Her cancer is slowly disappearing. In the future, I might try more homeopathic medicines just because they seem to be less harsh on your body…but if I’m really sick, I’m gonna want Sudafed and that’s just the way it’s gonna be.

Alright, that’s enough for now. Hope everyone is doing well: write back!

~Shayne