Coastal Clean-up!

There's nothing like getting up early, breathing in the fresh morning air, and sitting in a lawn chair in front of a huge dumpster. That's what we here at Radio Acres like to do to keep our canyons (and thus, our oceans) clean. Kim and Groundworks SD are hosting sites in Shelltown and at the Earth Lab where the neighborhood can drop off any trash they have.
We at Radio know nothing of miscellaneous yard waste, building supplies, old appliances, and junk that builds up in the small hiding places around the farm. (*that is a lie.) No, we are NOT hoarders. I promise. Free garbage dumping is a pretty awesome thing, especially when it can free up extra space around the farm, and keep it out of the canyons (where we often have to maneuver around mattress, seats out of old cars, furniture,  and God only knows what else wrapped in garbage bags and smelling like death.)
So, if you live in the area and have some trash to unload, come and hang out with us!
Dump spots are at:
Boston and 40th
38th and Z St.
Alpha St and 38th
Alpha St. And 41st
and at the Earth Lab

Labor Day Reflections

In honor of Labor Day, Jeremy and I slaughtered the last two of our meat birds. We may have some roosters that we hatched ourselves lurking in our flock, ready to crow at dawn on some unsuspecting Saturday, but for now, the meat bird raising project is officially done.

With my hand deep in the warm innards of a newly-dead rooster, and on this holiday that celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers, I thought for a moment about the men and women working in the often unbearable conditions of our meat factories. Think Tyson, Jimmy Dean, a big packet of ground beef that you bought for tacos. When you kill your own chicken, you understand the sad, smelly, and complicated work harvesting meat is. Imagining doing that 8-hours a day (or more), in deplorable working conditions, and with little compensation make me realize how cheaply we get the meat that we eat (in America, daily or every other day).

It is often immigrant or refugee communities that take these types of jobs. When I was working with Sudanese refugees, many were moving to the midwest, towns that had big meat-packing factories, because there was steady and available work.

Thankfully, we are caring more about the way that our meat is raised... free-range, grass-fed, hormone and pesticide free. This no doubt affects the working conditions of the people that harvest and package our meat as well. But let us continue to care about and figure out ways to advocate even more fiercely for the humane working conditions of our meat as well. And collectively, let's say a prayer of thanks and protection for the workers that are doing the hard job of providing us all with the meat we love to eat.

If you'd like a more hands-on experience of how hard it is, I can call you when the next rooster crows...

More information on the meat packing industry.

A rat just ate our tomato!

So BJ and I just got back from a night expedition of setting rat traps around the property. We have probably collectively caught about 28 rats over the course of last 3 months.  They have eaten a good  30% of our tomatoes, devoured our new pakistani mulberry tree down to stubs, crapped on our shelves, munched our compost, stolen our peanut butter traps and generally have given us the middle finger every chance they possibly can.  Now if you are a Jainist, or a hardcore Vegan I aopologize for what I am about to say.  If I could press a magic button and electrocute the bastards off our property I would.  And mind you I consider myself a pretty compassionate guy. I save spiders and carefully remove them from bathtubs to the safety of the outdoors. I used to live catch mice at our old house and take them to a local canyon to be released.  (Come to think of it maybe I was releasing them in Radion Canyon).  I was a vegetarian on moral grounds for almost 13 years.  I idolize Gandhi and have heard the Dalai Lama speak in Central Park.  My compassion credentials run deep.  However I also am a firm believer in situational ethics and I pride my self on being an occasional hypocrite. So yes I don't get along with rats. Well except my pet rat Merlin in 6th grade but he could do tricks and didn't eat my tomatoes. 

I must admit my hatred for rats goes back to the late 90's in Indonesia when a rat we tried to posion in our thatched hut ate through a hand carved bamboo drum I had bought just a week before.  I still have it in our room.

The eradication of rats on Radio Acres is a now a nightly past time.  So instead of stressing anymore about our nocturnal nemesis I decided to  let my feeling out like my Psychologist tells me to do. She says I have musophobia or murophobia but I don't believe her.  I have shared dark dreams with her about rats spontaneously combusing on our property. I hope I can make it through this.

What about your cats you ask. Well Tilly the white cat had a tramatic childhood and she is better at catching leaves, and Sylvia is eating to much cat food and prefers to catch baby birds and baby gophers.  We do have a new cat  (Spooky) that might be a better strategic hunter when we let him outside.  We will have to wait on that one. So for now we will have to set traps.  If you have a better idea for the time being let us know. 

As Tom Waits said " You can drive out nature with a pitchfork but it always comes roaring back again...."

Discalimer:  We never use poison because of bioaccumulation (posion moving up through the food chain). We also have owls and hawks fly through the property regularally which is why we choose traps.

****We only use Certified organic peanut butter to snap their necks and the wood for the traps is sustainably harvested, FSC Certified and made in America by union workers.

Farm haps for the week

Hmmmm. It's been an insanely busy week around the farm,what with everyone winding up their summers with vacations and work travel. We've all hardly seen each other, but that will come to an end soon. The manic busy-ness can take over sometimes. Colin is back in town and back in our lives, at least for the time being. We just got finished with a marathon camping trip over the last week, so we are adjusting to a life full of hot showers and really coffee again. We've finally just about "processed" all of our roosters. I really hate that word, but can't think of one better. It was really fantastic yesterday morning when some started crowing right before 5:00 am. They were loud for about 10 minutes and then tapered off. I was restless and couldn't go back to sleep (remnant from teaching that 5:30 spin class for so long!). I looked at the clock at 5:30 and was contemplating rolling out of bed and working out. No sooner had I decided to pull the blanket back around me and attempt sleep when I heard a rustling in the kitchen and the sure drip of a fresh pot of coffee. I hopped out of bed to find a very wide-awake BJ.

"what are you doing, so wide awake this early?" I asked. I was grateful for the early morning company.
"well, I figure no better time than now to get a couple of roosters processed before getting going for the day" he says. Ha! I jumped on that boat and plucked some feathers as the morning light was breaking. I feel sadistic admitting that it was such a pleasant and meditative way to start the morning. I almost felt like a real farmer!

Moral of the story? I guess if you can't sleep, c'mon over and be productive for us! We've still got a half a dozen left.

Cute kitties.

About two weeks ago we were volunteering to do a neighborhood work day.  One of the guys from our neighborhood sets this awesome event up once a year.  He scours the neighborhood and asks for references, hoping to find a few people who REALLY need some help with some general house maintenance.  The house we happened to be working on this year was an elderly woman, along with her daughter and young grand children.  Men were visibly absent from the mix and it looked like they had lived in that same house for a LONG time.  The yard was full of trash and decomposing furniture.  Things like empty glass jars and children's toys looked like they'd been stored outside, uncovered since the '80s.  It was a real train wreck.  I didn't take any pictures, and for the sake of the family I wouldn't post them if I did.  There are a couple of sweet things that we took away from this house, though -

Two of the very cutest kitties ever!  They are finally about 6 weeks old and they could use a good home.  We are down with keeping ONE of them (maybe), but if you or anyone you know would love a very sweet baby kitty, please let us know!  The boy is all black and the girl is the gray tabby.  They were hiding behind a piece of old furniture outside the house, and we are very glad that we were there to take them and try to find them a good home.  Help us stop this vicious street-cat cycle and adopt your very own today...

What's on YOUR plate?

Hey, folks!  Just wanted to let you in on a little something that's going down at the farm this weekend...

We are SO excited to be doing this for Project New Village.  PLEASE make sure that you RSVP, either by giving a holler here in the comments section OR by logging on their website here at www.projectnewvillage.org.  Hope to see your faces!

Chicken Workshop and Victory Gardens!

Victory Gardens is offering an awesome workshop series at the Southeast Farmers Market, in case you haven't heard or didn't read my earlier blog post on it.  You really should consider checking out some of them!  Last week, there was a great one on growing berries here in San Diego.  It was extremely informative!  It's also a great way to network and connect with other people that are doing the same thing.  It's never bad to have people you can call when you have questions on this stuff!  We did one a few weeks ago on "How to Backyard Chicken".  Here are some pictures!  It was loads of fun, and Sarah has the .pdf that we handed out - she will post it as a link soon.