Phosphorus ban would help lakes reduce algae

Jan. 9, 2009

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Measure would ban phosphorus from lawns

By Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel


Fertilizer that contains phosphorus could be banned from Wisconsin lawns, golf courses and other grassy areas by next year.Phosphorus stimulates plant growth and has long been a component in most traditional fertilizers. It is the middle of three numbers used to describe ingredients on fertilizer packages.

Key Democratic lawmakers will hold a news conference detailing the legislation.Lawmakers have tried to advance a phosphorus ban in the past, but the prospects for passage improves this year because Democrats now control both the Senate and the Assembly.

Rep. Spencer Black (D-Madison) and Sen. Mark Miller (D-Monona) are the leading co-sponsors of the legislation. Black said Friday the legislation is part of an "ambitious environmental agenda" in the new session aimed at attacking an array of water-quality problems.

In the case of a phosphorus ban, advocates hope that limiting its use will reduce algae blooms on lakes and other waterways.If approved, the bill circulating among lawmakers would go into effect one year after passage.Farm use would not be affected.

Dane County and 31 villages and towns, including a dozen in southeastern Wisconsin, already restrict the use of phosphorus-based fertilizers by property owners, according to the Wisconsin Association of Lakes.They include the town, village and city of Oconomowoc, Village of Chenequa, Village of Nashotah and town and city of Delavan.

"(Phosphorus) is essentially plant food," said Tami Jackson, a spokeswoman for the association, spurring algae blooms, crowding out useful plants and eating up oxygen that causes fish kills.Dane County banned phosphorus in fertilizer in January 2005.Sue Jones, watershed management coordinator for Dane County, said it was premature to judge whether the ban is improving water quality.

And that's the problem, said Karl Schimmel, president of Lawns of Wisconsin Network, a trade group.He described phosphorus bans as "feel-good legislation."

The group agrees phosphorus can harm lakes and streams but believes fertilizer gets a bad rap when other sources of phosphorus, such as manure runoff and goose and duck feces, also contribute to the problem.Lawn-care companies have been offering fertilizer without phosphorus in recent years as the demand for the product and local restrictions have grown, Schimmel said.

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the largest business lobby, hopes a compromise can be struck. Scott Manley, director of environmental policy, said a statewide ban is preferable to patchwork regulation. But he said language in the bill puts the onus on retailers and should be placed on fertilizer users.

There are limitations in the legislation. Phosphorus-based fertilizer could be used on new lawns and grass where soil is deficient. Milorganite brand fertilizer also gets a reprieve, according to the bill. Milorganite contains 2% phosphorus.

Jeff Spence, director of marketing for Milorganite at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, said that phosphorus from organic sources tends to leach slower into water than synthetic fertilizer.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/37341199.html

A ready-made vehicle idling campaign

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/idling/material/campaign-resources.cfm?attr=16

I didn't know that this existed.

Massive EU crackdown on the use of scores of toxic pesticides

December 21, 2008

Massive crackdown on the use of scores of toxic pesticides

New EU rules, opposed by Gordon Brown, will phase out use of cancer- causing compounds in Britain

Britain is to get its toughest crackdown on toxic substances in food and the environment, despite determined resistance to the safety measures from Gordon Brown.

Scores of pesticides suspected of causing cancer, DNA damage and "gender-bender" effects are to be phased out under new EU rules, which are being hailed as a revolution in the way the public is protected against poisonous chemicals.

The use of all pesticides in public places is to be dramatically reduced, with aerial spraying banned anywhere in the country.

Yesterday environmentalists hailed the measures – to be adopted following long negotiations between the European Parliament and individual governments – as a "landmark", while the National Farmers' Union called them "devastating". The agrochemical industry has bitterly resisted them, backed by the Prime Minister, who has voiced his concern that they would damage agriculture and food production without significantly benefiting health or the environment.

Almost half of all food eaten throughout Europe has been discovered to be contaminated by pesticides, with six of the most dangerous substances among the 10 most frequently found.

The European Parliament has long been pressing, with strong cross- party support, for radical controls, despite opposition from some governments, especially Britain. The new measures are the result of a compromise between the two sides, hammered out last week.

Under the deal, a list of 22 particularly hazardous chemicals used in scores of herbicides, fungicides and insecticides will gradually be phased out to avoid abrupt withdrawal from the market. The chemicals will be given a further five years' grace if banning them would put crops in serious danger. Pesticide use is to be kept to "a minimum" in parks, playgrounds, schools and near hospitals. Aerial spraying will be banned unless given exceptional approval by safety authorities.

Industry will have to release the results of any studies that show harmful effects, and there is to be better protection for bees, whose numbers have been falling alarmingly across Europe.

The National Farmers' Union said that the measures – which will have to be finally confirmed by the Parliament and EU leaders early in the new year – "will have a devastating effect on the horticultural industry and will see a reduction in crop yield and quality", and would also force up prices.

But environmentalists dismissed this as "scaremongering", pointing out that only a small minority of the 507 substances in pesticides would be banned. Though they would have liked even tougher controls, they still hailed the agreement as a breakthrough. Hiltrud Breyer, the German Green MEP who steered the proposals through the parliament, called them a "milestone for the environment, health and consumer protection". "The EU is setting a global precedent by phasing out highly toxic pesticides," she said.

Yesterday, Nick Mole, of the Pesticides Action Network, said: "This is a landmark, the biggest ever crackdown on poisonous chemicals... It says that anything hazardous to health or the environment will have to go, rather than taking the position... that if it is used properly it can be tolerated."

[iCopyright] © 2008 Independent News and Media. All rights reserved.

http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MjI0NTI5OA%3D%3D

--  <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.haliburtonfolk.com">http://www.haliburtonfolk.com</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.environmenthaliburton.ca">http://www.environmenthaliburton.ca</a> ---------------------------------------------- `·.¸ ><((((º> .·´¯`·.¸.·<º))))><¸.·´¯·.¸ `·.¸.·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º> ¸.·´¯`·.¸><((((º> <º))))><·.¸.·´¯`·.¸><((((º>·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸ ·..·´¯`·. <º))))><.¸.·´¯`·.¸.·<º))))><   Eric Lilius Box 27 (1563 Eagle Lake Road) Eagle Lake, ON  K0M 1M0 CANADA W78.34.12/N45.07.09 705-754-9873 705-754-9860 (fax) mobile: 705-854-0311 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="Skype:ericlilius">Skype:ericlilius</a> -------------------------------------------------------------- What you people call your natural resources, our people call our relatives. Oren Lyons, Onondaga elder  "How can we best serve all the children of all species for all time?” William McDonough  If it can't be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted,  then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production. Pete Seeger     

Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists - Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html

A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.

 

By Jasper Copping
Last Updated: 2:39PM GMT 29 Nov 2008

Existing technologies require an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots Photo: AP

The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.

Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots.

The new device, which has been inspired by the way fish swim, consists of a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs.

As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity.

Cylinders arranged over a cubic metre of the sea or river bed in a flow of three knots can produce 51 watts. This is more efficient than similar-sized turbines or wave generators, and the amount of power produced can increase sharply if the flow is faster or if more cylinders are added.

A "field" of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-storey house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Just a few of the cylinders, stacked in a short ladder, could power an anchored ship or a lighthouse.

Systems could be sited on river beds or suspended in the ocean. The scientists behind the technology, which has been developed in research funded by the US government, say that generating power in this way would potentially cost only around 3.5p per kilowatt hour, compared to about 4.5p for wind energy and between 10p and 31p for solar power. They say the technology would require up to 50 times less ocean acreage than wave power generation.

The system, conceived by scientists at the University of Michigan, is called Vivace, or "vortex-induced vibrations for aquatic clean energy".

Michael Bernitsas, a professor of naval architecture at the university, said it was based on the changes in water speed that are caused when a current flows past an obstruction. Eddies or vortices, formed in the water flow, can move objects up and down or left and right.

"This is a totally new method of extracting energy from water flow," said Mr Bernitsas. "Fish curve their bodies to glide between the vortices shed by the bodies of the fish in front of them. Their muscle power alone could not propel them through the water at the speed they go, so they ride in each other's wake."

Such vibrations, which were first observed 500 years ago by Leonardo DaVinci in the form of "Aeolian Tones", can cause damage to structures built in water, like docks and oil rigs. But Mr Bernitsas added: "We enhance the vibrations and harness this powerful and destructive force in nature.

"If we could harness 0.1 per cent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people. In the English Channel, for example, there is a very strong current, so you produce a lot of power."

Because the parts only oscillate slowly, the technology is likely to be less harmful to aquatic wildlife than dams or water turbines. And as the installations can be positioned far below the surface of the sea, there would be less interference with shipping, recreational boat users, fishing and tourism.

The engineers are now deploying a prototype device in the Detroit River, which has a flow of less than two knots. Their work, funded by the US Department of Energy and the US Office of Naval Research, is published in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering.

EcoDriving USA

http://www.ecodrivingusa.com/#/be-an-ecodriver/

--------------------------------------------------------------
What you people call your natural resources, our people call our relatives.
Oren Lyons, Onondaga elder

"How can we best serve all the children of all species for all time?"
William McDonough

If it can't be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted,
then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.
Pete Seeger

Food Storage as Grandma Knew It

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/garden/06root.html
By MICHAEL TORTORELLO

In a strictly technical sense, Cynthia Worley is not transforming her basement into a time machine. Yet what’s going on this harvest season beneath her Harlem brownstone on 122nd Street, at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, is surely something out of the past — or perhaps the future. The space itself is nothing special: Whitewashed granite walls run the width and depth of the room, 16 feet by 60 feet. A forgotten owner tried to put in a cement floor, but the dirt, which takes a long-term view of things, is stubbornly coming back. “It’s basically a sod floor,” Ms. Worley said. What’s important is that the shelves are sturdy, because Ms. Worley and her husband, Haja Worley, will soon load them with 20 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of onions, 30 pounds of butternut and acorn squash, 10 heads of cabbage, 60-odd pints of home-canned tomatoes and preserves, 9 gallons of berry and fruit wines, and another gallon or two of mulberry vinegar. The goodies in the pint jars and the carboys come from the Joseph Daniel Wilson Memorial Garden, which the Worleys founded across the street. The fresh produce is a huge final delivery from a Community Supported Agriculture farm in Orange County, which they used all summer. Packed in sand and stored at 55 degrees, the potatoes should keep at least until the New Year. The squash could still be palatable on Groundhog Day, and the onions should survive till spring. Ms. Worley, who counsels and teaches adults for the New York City Department of Education, and Mr. Worley, a neighborhood organizer and radio engineer, will let their basement-deprived friends store vegetables, too. The Worleys, like a number of other Americans, have made the seemingly anachronistic choice to turn their basement into a root cellar. While Ms. Worley’s brownstone basement stash won’t feed the couple through the winter, she said, “I think it’s a healthy way to go and an economical way.” According to a September survey on consumer anxieties over higher fuel and food prices from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames, 34 percent of respondents said that they were likely to raise more of their own vegetables. Another 37 percent said they were likely to can or freeze more of their food. The cousin to canning and freezing is the root cellar. “I’ve been doing local food work for a long time,” said Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center, who conducted the study. “And I’m seeing an increase in articles in various sustainable ag newsletters about root cellaring.” According to Bruce Butterfield, the research director for the National Gardening Association, a trade group, home food preservation typically increases in a rotten economy. In 2002, the close of the last mild recession, 29 million households bought supplies for freezing, drying, processing and canning. Last year that number stood at only 22 million — a figure Mr. Butterfield said he expects to rise rapidly. Root cellars have long been the province of Midwestern grandmothers, back-to-the-landers and committed survivalists. But given the nation’s budding romance with locally produced food, they also appeal to the backyard gardener, who may have a fruit tree that drops a bigger bounty every year while the refrigerator remains the same size. While horticulture may be a science, home food storage definitely can carry the stench of an imperfect art. According to the essential 1979 book, “Root Cellaring,” by Mike and Nancy Bubel, some items like cabbage and pears do best in a moist environment below 40 degrees (though above freezing). To achieve this, a cellar probably needs to be vented, or have windows that open. Winter squash and sweet potatoes should be kept dry and closer to 50 degrees — perhaps closer to the furnace. Other rules of root cellaring sound more like molecular gastronomy. For example, the ethylene gas that apples give off will make carrots bitter. As a general principle, keeping produce in a cool chamber that is beneath the frost line — the depth, roughly four feet down, below which the soil doesn’t freeze — can slow both the normal process of ripening and the creeping spread of bacterial and fungal rot. These are the forces that will turn a lost tomato in the back of the cupboard into a little lagoon of noxious goo. But if you leave that green tomato on a vine and drape it upside down, it will gradually turn red in three or four weeks. “I’ve had fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving,” said Jito Coleman, an environmental engineer who practices the inverted tomato — which should be a yoga pose — in a root cellar he built in the house he designed in Warren, Vt. People who squirrel away vegetables tend to be resourceful, and they do not limit themselves to the subterranean. Anna Barnes, who runs a small media company and coordinates the Prairieland Community Supported Agriculture in Champaign, Ill., says squash hung in a pair of knotted pantyhose stay unspoiled longer than others. Here, the cold is optional, too. It’s the bruising that comes from a squash sitting on a hard countertop, she said, that speeds senescence. (“You wouldn’t want to do it in the guest closet,” Ms. Barnes said. Or, presumably, wear the pantyhose again.) Taken to a do-it-yourself extreme, lots of places can become stockrooms. Margaret Christie has surrendered countless nooks in her 1845 Federal-style home in tiny downtown Whately, Mass., to laying away the crops she grows in the family’s half-acre vegetable plot. Ms. Christie, 44, a projects director for Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, a nonprofit that supports community farming in western Massachusetts, also feeds her husband and three children from their milk goats, laying hens, pigpens and lamb pastures. This year, she swapped a lamb for 40 pounds of sweet potatoes, 40 pounds of onions and 40 pounds of carrots from a neighbor’s farm. This cornucopia has colonized the basement, along with the family’s own potatoes. “They’re sitting next to the Ping-Pong table,” she said, in “five-gallon buckets with window screens for the lids.” Onions, garlic and pumpkins dwell in an uninsulated attic — except in midwinter, when that space drops below freezing. Then the vegetables move into the guest bedroom. If that space has already been claimed, they occasionally hide out under the bed of her 11-year-old son. Their homegrown popcorn kernels have a way of turning up everywhere, courtesy of the neighborhood mice, who have developed their own taste for locally grown year-round produce. The contemporary American, for whom a pizza delivery is seldom more than a phone call away, is an oddity in the annals of eating. Elizabeth Cromley, a professor of architectural history at Northeastern University, said that at one time, “just about every house had special facilities for preserving food.” Professor Cromley has finished a book called “The Food Axis: Cooking, Eating, and the Architecture of American Houses,” which is to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2010. She said that understanding food preservation is not a frivolous pursuit. More than 400 books instructed 19th-century Americans on how to plan a functional house, with a practical larder, basement and outbuildings, she said. “You’re not going to die if you don’t get a new dress,” she said, “but if you don’t know this, it will kill you.” Harriet Fasenfest, 55, who lives in Portland, Ore., has been playing with her food for a long time. A semiretired restaurateur, she started “hacking up” her small city lot in the Alberta Art District to grow food. (Her husband asked, “Where will we play Frisbee?” and Ms. Fasenfest replied, “The park.”) She also teaches classes on canning and created the Web site portlandpreserve.com. There is no digging a dry refuge from the seep and suck of a Portland winter. So in lieu of a traditional cellar, she applies the scientific method. “Last year I tried an experiment with four different varieties of apples,” she said, “to see how long it took them to rot. So I put them in a box in my shed and then they rotted. It worked!” When she’s not filling her 10-foot-by-10-foot shed, she experiments in the cubbyholes that sit alongside the outdoor cellar stairs. Copra onions, Ms. Fasenfest has found, store better than Walla Wallas. An indoor heating vent can cure butternut squash so effectively that it can probably last in cold storage until the economy turns around (whenever that is). Nevertheless, even those who rhapsodize about the pleasures of eating locally grown food year-round have to admit that the effort doesn’t always seem worthwhile. Ms. Fasenfest has been forced to conclude that the labor that went into growing and storing the 30 pounds of russet potatoes now beneath the stairwell was not really adequate to the reward. “If we had to survive off of those,” she said, “we’d be dead.” By MICHAEL TORTORELLO IN a strictly technical sense, Cynthia Worley is not transforming her basement into a time machine. Yet what’s going on this harvest season beneath her Harlem brownstone on 122nd Street, at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, is surely something out of the past — or perhaps the future. The space itself is nothing special: Whitewashed granite walls run the width and depth of the room, 16 feet by 60 feet. A forgotten owner tried to put in a cement floor, but the dirt, which takes a long-term view of things, is stubbornly coming back. “It’s basically a sod floor,” Ms. Worley said. What’s important is that the shelves are sturdy, because Ms. Worley and her husband, Haja Worley, will soon load them with 20 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of onions, 30 pounds of butternut and acorn squash, 10 heads of cabbage, 60-odd pints of home-canned tomatoes and preserves, 9 gallons of berry and fruit wines, and another gallon or two of mulberry vinegar. The goodies in the pint jars and the carboys come from the Joseph Daniel Wilson Memorial Garden, which the Worleys founded across the street. The fresh produce is a huge final delivery from a Community Supported Agriculture farm in Orange County, which they used all summer. Packed in sand and stored at 55 degrees, the potatoes should keep at least until the New Year. The squash could still be palatable on Groundhog Day, and the onions should survive till spring. Ms. Worley, who counsels and teaches adults for the New York City Department of Education, and Mr. Worley, a neighborhood organizer and radio engineer, will let their basement-deprived friends store vegetables, too. The Worleys, like a number of other Americans, have made the seemingly anachronistic choice to turn their basement into a root cellar. While Ms. Worley’s brownstone basement stash won’t feed the couple through the winter, she said, “I think it’s a healthy way to go and an economical way.” According to a September survey on consumer anxieties over higher fuel and food prices from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames, 34 percent of respondents said that they were likely to raise more of their own vegetables. Another 37 percent said they were likely to can or freeze more of their food. The cousin to canning and freezing is the root cellar. “I’ve been doing local food work for a long time,” said Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center, who conducted the study. “And I’m seeing an increase in articles in various sustainable ag newsletters about root cellaring.” According to Bruce Butterfield, the research director for the National Gardening Association, a trade group, home food preservation typically increases in a rotten economy. In 2002, the close of the last mild recession, 29 million households bought supplies for freezing, drying, processing and canning. Last year that number stood at only 22 million — a figure Mr. Butterfield said he expects to rise rapidly. Root cellars have long been the province of Midwestern grandmothers, back-to-the-landers and committed survivalists. But given the nation’s budding romance with locally produced food, they also appeal to the backyard gardener, who may have a fruit tree that drops a bigger bounty every year while the refrigerator remains the same size. While horticulture may be a science, home food storage definitely can carry the stench of an imperfect art. According to the essential 1979 book, “Root Cellaring,” by Mike and Nancy Bubel, some items like cabbage and pears do best in a moist environment below 40 degrees (though above freezing). To achieve this, a cellar probably needs to be vented, or have windows that open. Winter squash and sweet potatoes should be kept dry and closer to 50 degrees — perhaps closer to the furnace. Other rules of root cellaring sound more like molecular gastronomy. For example, the ethylene gas that apples give off will make carrots bitter. As a general principle, keeping produce in a cool chamber that is beneath the frost line — the depth, roughly four feet down, below which the soil doesn’t freeze — can slow both the normal process of ripening and the creeping spread of bacterial and fungal rot. These are the forces that will turn a lost tomato in the back of the cupboard into a little lagoon of noxious goo. But if you leave that green tomato on a vine and drape it upside down, it will gradually turn red in three or four weeks. “I’ve had fresh tomatoes for Thanksgiving,” said Jito Coleman, an environmental engineer who practices the inverted tomato — which should be a yoga pose — in a root cellar he built in the house he designed in Warren, Vt. People who squirrel away vegetables tend to be resourceful, and they do not limit themselves to the subterranean. Anna Barnes, who runs a small media company and coordinates the Prairieland Community Supported Agriculture in Champaign, Ill., says squash hung in a pair of knotted pantyhose stay unspoiled longer than others. Here, the cold is optional, too. It’s the bruising that comes from a squash sitting on a hard countertop, she said, that speeds senescence. (“You wouldn’t want to do it in the guest closet,” Ms. Barnes said. Or, presumably, wear the pantyhose again.) Taken to a do-it-yourself extreme, lots of places can become stockrooms. Margaret Christie has surrendered countless nooks in her 1845 Federal-style home in tiny downtown Whately, Mass., to laying away the crops she grows in the family’s half-acre vegetable plot. Ms. Christie, 44, a projects director for Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, a nonprofit that supports community farming in western Massachusetts, also feeds her husband and three children from their milk goats, laying hens, pigpens and lamb pastures. This year, she swapped a lamb for 40 pounds of sweet potatoes, 40 pounds of onions and 40 pounds of carrots from a neighbor’s farm. This cornucopia has colonized the basement, along with the family’s own potatoes. “They’re sitting next to the Ping-Pong table,” she said, in “five-gallon buckets with window screens for the lids.” Onions, garlic and pumpkins dwell in an uninsulated attic — except in midwinter, when that space drops below freezing. Then the vegetables move into the guest bedroom. If that space has already been claimed, they occasionally hide out under the bed of her 11-year-old son. Their homegrown popcorn kernels have a way of turning up everywhere, courtesy of the neighborhood mice, who have developed their own taste for locally grown year-round produce. The contemporary American, for whom a pizza delivery is seldom more than a phone call away, is an oddity in the annals of eating. Elizabeth Cromley, a professor of architectural history at Northeastern University, said that at one time, “just about every house had special facilities for preserving food.” Professor Cromley has finished a book called “The Food Axis: Cooking, Eating, and the Architecture of American Houses,” which is to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2010. She said that understanding food preservation is not a frivolous pursuit. More than 400 books instructed 19th-century Americans on how to plan a functional house, with a practical larder, basement and outbuildings, she said. “You’re not going to die if you don’t get a new dress,” she said, “but if you don’t know this, it will kill you.” Harriet Fasenfest, 55, who lives in Portland, Ore., has been playing with her food for a long time. A semiretired restaurateur, she started “hacking up” her small city lot in the Alberta Art District to grow food. (Her husband asked, “Where will we play Frisbee?” and Ms. Fasenfest replied, “The park.”) She also teaches classes on canning and created the Web site portlandpreserve.com. There is no digging a dry refuge from the seep and suck of a Portland winter. So in lieu of a traditional cellar, she applies the scientific method. “Last year I tried an experiment with four different varieties of apples,” she said, “to see how long it took them to rot. So I put them in a box in my shed and then they rotted. It worked!” When she’s not filling her 10-foot-by-10-foot shed, she experiments in the cubbyholes that sit alongside the outdoor cellar stairs. Copra onions, Ms. Fasenfest has found, store better than Walla Wallas. An indoor heating vent can cure butternut squash so effectively that it can probably last in cold storage until the economy turns around (whenever that is). Nevertheless, even those who rhapsodize about the pleasures of eating locally grown food year-round have to admit that the effort doesn’t always seem worthwhile. Ms. Fasenfest has been forced to conclude that the labor that went into growing and storing the 30 pounds of russet potatoes now beneath the stairwell was not really adequate to the reward. “If we had to survive off of those,” she said, “we’d be dead.”

David Suzuki hosting The Current Friday.

David talks to the founder of Nowtopia, Bill McKibbon on 350, and bird experts about the importance of birds and the consequences of their declining numbers..

You can listen to this on the internet by choosing the more westerly time zones.
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/streams.html

The program will be available later from the website.
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/index.html