18 Jul 2009
Sheep in the News - Local Edition

Mild Thing dropped her lambs yesterday evening about 7pm... a ram and a ewe, both healthy and doing fine. Her sister (Wild Thing) is due any day as well, as is J, our youngest Scottish Blackface ewe. All three were bred to a fine looking Horned Dorset buck when they went visiting earlier this year.

We'll try to get some pictures uploaded once all lambs are on the ground.

13:43 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety

I would note this as "unbelievable", but being familiar with the existing nightmare of food regulation, I can't in all honesty say that: it's entirely believable, and it's just going to get worse.

Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare - spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.

(link) [San Francisco Chronicle]

via Overlawyered

07:53 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link