Monthly Archives: April 2013

Very Photogenic

Here is Basil today out at the farm looking very queenly.  She LOVES it out here.  While we are out working on projects she is tearing around like a crazy woman sniffing everything she can get her nose to.  Of course, if there is one thing on the entire 40 acres you would rather she not get into, that is precisely what she’ll find…. i.e.  the pick-up sized piles of manure that were left from the previous owners (fertilizer!).  Not only is it soft and stinky she can play “queen of the castle” on it as well!

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Dog Royalty

Dog Royalty

Pandora’s Lunchbox

One of my most recent reads was a book entitled, “Pandora’s Lunchbox”.  I thought I would put in a plug for it and also post a link to an interview with the author.  One major reason for the JAZ Farm’s existence is an absolute revulsion over our current food system.  If the weak links in food production like GM crops and animals raised in CAFO’s (Confined Animal Feed Operations) isn’t enough to wake you up one only has to turn to the processed food industry.  This book is a great primer, along with another I just finished entitled Salt, Sugar, Fat.

Vitamin D in milk from wool?  Really?  We have got it all wrong.

Occupy the Food Supply!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bettina-elias-siegel/pandoras-lunchbox_b_3085974.html?utm_hp_ref=@food123

The Farm Dog

Right around the same time that we purchased the farm we also found Basil.  She is a pure bred Yellow Lab.  Basil was born in Wichita, Kansas on September the 11th, 2012.  It didn’t take long for her to win over all of our hearts.

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My Beloved Uncle Henry

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
— Henry David Thoreau[3]

It would be negligent of me not to post from one of my favorite American philosophers – Uncle Henry.

The launch of JAZ Farm Blog April 17, 2013

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This is the beginning of the photographic, written, and philosohical journey of the development of our homestead and living true to our worldview.  This is JAZ Farm.  In this blog we hope to not only chronicle the development of our life in the country and our work toward a more self-sufficient and sustainable life, but the reasons for its creation.  There will be simple entries about what we have done to the place and photos of the progress, but as importantly, why this is something that has allowed us to “live true”.  JAZ Farm is a dream come true; but in every sense of the meaning it is a continual work in progress.  For those who have expressed an interest in its development this is for you.  For those of you who know us there will also be some hard hitting critiques of our country and our world that have made the JAZ Farm project so important to us.  Feel free to pick and choose through your favorite sections.   We decided that in a desire to write and to put our words out into the world, this was the best avenue from which to proceed.  We hope you enjoy the diary, the photo albums, and the philosophy of the most wonderful place on earth for our family…. JAZ Farm.