Categories
Homesteading

Green Holiday Tips

Decorate with LED lights

Decorate with LED Lights
These ENERGY STAR-qualified decorative light strings can help make your holiday decorations more earth friendly. The EPA says these lights:

  • Can last up to 10 times longer than traditional incandescent strands.
  • Are cool to the touch, reducing the risk of fire.
  • Do not have moving parts, filaments or glass, so they are much more durable and shock-resistant than other light strings.
  • Are available in a variety of colors, shapes and lengths.
  • Come with a three-year warranty, meaning fewer light string replacements.
  • Are independently tested to meet strict lifetime and electrical requirements.

If you’re stuck for ideas on how to make your holiday green this year–that is, how to make it friendly for the environment–the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) offers a few suggestions, especially for the holiday shopping season:

  • Travel efficiently

    • Map your shopping route to make a number of stops in one trip instead of one stop in a number of trips.
    • Take public transportation.
    • Hitch a ride with a friend or family member.
  • Shop for green decorations and gifts

    • Give gifts and decorate your house with electronics that have earned the Energy Star rating
    • Unplug your gifts and decorations when not in use
    • Choose gifts that have less packaging.
  • Extend the useful life of gifts

    • Before tossing the old to make room for the new, check to see if you can donate it, reuse it, or recycle it.

For more ideas and to share yours, too, visit the EPA blog.

Categories
Crops & Gardening

Crop Profile: Sweet Potatoes

sweet potatoes
USDA/Flickr

Sweet potatoes are surely one of the most misunderstood vegetables. Often confused with yams, usually thought of as just a holiday-dinner side dish (never mind the degrading marshmallow accompaniment), sweet potatoes are frequently referred to as “easy house plants for kids to grow in their schoolrooms.” Hummph! Somebody needs to hire a public relations rep for this vegetable and sing the praises of one of the most versatile and nutritious vegetables in the world.

Sweet Potatoes vs. Yams

Yams and sweet potatoes are not synonymous. Real yams are native to Africa, while sweet potatoes are native to the United States. (Actually, the vegetable’s most ancient ancestors came from South America.) People say the confusion between sweet potatoes and yams started when African slaves used their word for African edible roots, “nyami,” to describe the edible roots that were native to North America. But while both sweet potatoes and yams are edible roots, there are many differences between the two crops.

Yams are a common crop in many parts of the world, and although popular in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific islands, they are almost never grown in the United States. They are monocots (grasses) of the Lily family and the genus Dioscorea. Sweet potatoes are dicots (broad-leafed plants) of the Morning Glory family and the genus Ipomoea. Yam tubers, which grow up to 8 feet long and weigh 100 pounds, are generally larger than sweet potatoes, which average less than 1 foot in length and weigh less than 1 pound each.

Yams are dry, starchy and far less nutritious than sweet potatoes. The active ingredient for many birth-control pills is derived from yams. Sweet potatoes have no such effect.

A government labeling rule that allows some sweet potatoes to be labeled as yams came about when orange-fleshed sweet potatoes were first introduced in the 1950s. Marketers in Louisiana, where the orange-fleshed varieties were first grown, wanted to distinguish them from the traditional yellow or white-fleshed types, then grown on the East Coast. The USDA was amenable and now allows the orange varieties of sweet potatoes to be labeled as yams, though that label must also contain somewhere, at least in small print, the words “sweet potato.” In general usage, including most U.S. cookbooks, the names yams and sweet potatoes are interchangeable, and the orange-fleshed varieties are the most popular type for home cooking.

Nutritional Value

Sweet potatoes are an amazingly nutritious vegetable. A medium-sized sweet potato is virtually fat-free, cholesterol-free, sodium-free and provides more than the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A, along with high levels of protein, fiber, complex carbohydrates, folic acid, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, beta carotene, and vitamin C, E and B6.

In fact, many claim the sweet potato is the single most nutritious vegetable grown on the planet. During the first two centuries of European settlement in North America, sweet potatoes were prized by colonists and European royalty alike, prescribed by doctors as a perfect food for children, and highly valued by mariners who were concerned about scurvy and food storage.

Although most nutritional calculations are based upon the measurements of cooked pulp, the edible skins of sweet potatoes are highly nutritious and are eaten with enthusiasm in many households. The skin does in fact contain even higher amounts of many of the sweet potato’s legendary nutritional elements, such as beta carotene.

Sweet Potato Varieties

There are two main types of sweet potatoes: dry flesh and moist flesh. In general, the older varieties on the East Coast are of the yellow, dry-flesh type, whereas the newer varieties grown in Louisiana are of the orange-flesh, moist type.

Beauregard is the predominant variety grown in Louisiana and will produce satisfactory yields over a wide range of soil types. Another popular variety of the moist-fleshed type is the Centennial, which was also developed in Louisiana.

The Jersey and Jewel sweet-potato varieties are representative of the drier yellow-fleshed types, and are still commonly grown in North Carolina and other eastern areas. In the 1960s, California growers faced a serious virus problem called Russet Crack disease. The University of California, Davis, started a breeding program and now provides virus-free stock to growers. Most southern states have similar university-based sweet-potato breeding programs.

As is the case with many other crops, new sweet potato varieties appear frequently and take the place of older favorites. New growers will want to contact local extension and university programs to get the latest variety news.

Growing Sweet Potatoes

American Indians on the Eastern coastal plains and the Mississippi River delta were growing sweet potatoes when Columbus discovered the New World, so it’s no real surprise that North Carolina and Louisiana are now the leading producers in the United States. But Mississippi is a large and proud contributor, Georgia grows a hefty amount, and as usual, California produces a fair share, too.

Sweet potatoes like warm weather, sandy soil and a long growing season. They are planted around May and harvested in October. The tubers form best in loose, well-drained soils, as soggy soils will not produce good tubers. The crop has a relatively low nitrogen requirement, as excessive nitrogen fertilization produces heavy top growth but fewer underground tubers.

Most sweet-potato growers produce their own cuttings for transplant from seed potatoes selected from the previous year’s crop. The small seed potatoes are planted about 2 inches deep in the seeding beds when the soil temperature reaches 65 to 70 degrees F, usually sometime in March. Some growers cover the rows with plastic film to warm the soil and encourage earlier sprout production.

By April, the sprouts are large enough (12 to 14 inches tall) to take the cuttings. Cuttings should be taken at least 2 inches above the soil; using “clean” cuttings (instead of rooted cuttings) helps guard against the spread of diseases from the seeding bed to the field. These rootless cuttings will develop roots quickly when planted 4 or 5 inches deep in warm soil. Growers often continue taking cuttings and transplanting them to the fields throughout April, May and June. Plants are spaced a foot apart in the fields, with rows being constructed on slightly raised beds about 3 to 4 feet apart.

Weeding, Feeding and Watering

As the sweet-potato crop starts to grow, farmers usually need to do some surface weeding in the rows before the vines cover the beds and shade out the weeds. Any irrigation or fertilization is usually performed during the early stages of crop growth to encourage a robust young root system and thick vines. When the plants start getting larger, growers often pile soil up around the stems, in much the same manner as regular potatoes are “hilled.” This practice goes well with later weeding work, provides more loose soil for tuber formation, and also seems to help reduce sweet-potato weevil problems.

Sweet Potato Pests and Diseases

The main sweet-potato pests are insects, nematodes and diseases that affect the roots. Fusarium wilts cause vascular systems to collapse and become unable to transfer water and nutrients up from the roots.  Root-knot nematodes cause deformed roots and tubers. The sweet potato weevil is an insect whose larvae can feed inside stems, where damage is relatively minimal, but they can also infest tubers, which is a serious problem. Weevil-damaged tubers develop bitter substances that prevent the tubers from being used even as animal fodder.

Most of these sweet-potato pest problems can be overcome by good sanitation and cultural practices, including the use of disease- and weevil-free seed potatoes for transplants, rotating sweet-potato fields to discourage yearly pest carry-over, and using rootless cuttings for transplants.

Moving sweet-potato cuttings and seed potatoes from one county to another in sweet-potato growing areas (particularly within Louisiana and North Carolina) is often illegal, due to the high value placed upon preventive practices. Keeping pests out of a growing region has proved to be a far more successful strategy than any post-infection treatments.

Harvesting Sweet Potatoes

Healthy sweet-potato vines produce a bushel of sweet potatoes from a 25- to 30-foot-long row, with an average yield of 320 bushels per acre. The first tubers are ready for harvest in late August, and the harvest usually continues until early November.

Most of the increase in tuber size occurs during the last three or four weeks before harvest. Potatoes that remain in the soil continue to grow and increase in size until the weather cools. Surprisingly, one problem new growers sometimes have is that they fail to harvest before the potatoes become too large for market preferences.

During the actual harvest, it is important to make every effort to minimize injuries to the tender skin on the roots. Undamaged potatoes will sell better and have a much longer storage life. Automatic harvesters are sometimes used, but they cause excessive skin injuries, so a majority of the sweet potato fields are ploughed and then the tubers are harvested by hand.

It is important to avoid freshly harvested sweet potatoes being exposed to the sun for more than 1 hour. Growers often shade the harvested boxes of potatoes with cut vines while they remain out in the fields. At the late end of the season, growers are careful to harvest before frost kills the vines, because if the crop remains in the field after a frost, the roots may begin to decay.

Newly harvested sweet potatoes are not very sweet. They require one or two months of storage and curing before they will develop the sweet, moist taste you associated with the vegetable. Freshly harvested sweet potatoes can, however, be candied or made into pies, and many growers sell part of their crop in this uncured green state.

Sweet potatoes are best cured by storing them in a humid, dark and warm (80 to 90 degrees F) room for a week or so before being moved to temperature-controlled (ideally, 60 degrees F) long-term storage. If the temperature in the storage area is too cold, the tubers will develop a hard center, but if the temperature is too hot, the tubers may shrivel and sprout.

Overall, the nutritional value of sweet potatoes, the relative ease of culture, and the strong storage and shipping capacity of the crop are factors that make the sweet potatoes one of the most unique crops in the U.S.

This article first appeared in the August/September 2003 issue of Hobby Farms.

Categories
Crops & Gardening

Keep Garden Pests Away with Companion Planting

Some plants, like marigolds, can be planted alongside your garden vegetables to attract beneficial insects or deter insect pests. Photo by Rachael Brugger (HobbyFarms.com)
Photo by Rachael Brugger

Whether flea beetles are making lace out of your eggplants or tomato hornworms are stripping your favorite slicing tomatoes, we’ve all battled insect pests in the garden. Fortunately, besides handpicking, relying on organic insecticidal soaps or employing lightweight floating row covers, organic gardeners have another weapon in their integrated pest management arsenal: companion planting. With the right combinations of companion plants and decoy plants, you can rid your garden of destructive pests and enjoy your favorite vegetables with fewer worries.

How Does Companion Planting Work?
By planting particular plants near one another, you can keep some insects at bay. Some companion plant combinations drive insect pests away, while others attract beneficial insects that, in turn, help keep the numbers of harmful insects in check. Still other combinations work to “trap” or isolate certain kinds of insects. Some companion-plant combinations can even do all three!

For the best results, you should have a good mix of perennial herbs and flowers along garden borders and interspersed with your vegetable crops. While it’s true that companion planting won’t guarantee pest-free produce, it certainly can help to make a dent in the numbers of problem insects.

Common Companion Plants
Marigolds and pot marigolds (aka calendula) re some of the most well-known companion plants. The scent of marigolds deters cabbage maggots, Mexican bean beetles, aphids and many other pests, and calendula turns off tomato hornworms and asparagus beetles. Plant both along crop rows and between plants for a little extra color and added insect protection.

Other herbs, while be delicious additions to the dinner table, also double as great companion plants. For trouble in the cabbage patch, try thyme, which is thought to ward off cabbage worms, and peppermint, to help keep cabbage butterflies away. Plant catnip amongst your potatoes, as it repels the pesky Colorado potato beetle, or near your cucumbers and eggplant, as it drives off flea beetles and squash bugs, too. Nasturtiums, likewise, can deter squash bugs, assorted beetles and some types of aphids.

Interestingly, some of the very plants that are repellent to insect pests—like peppermint and thyme—are quite attractive to beneficial insects that feed on aphids, mealy bugs and other troublemakers.

If you have a particular insect foe, use the companion plants below to keep them at bay:

Aphids
Sometimes found feeding on young cabbage heads, on the undersides of lettuce or spinach leaves, or even on sweet corn tassels, aphids are among the most common insect pests. Thankfully, the larvae of green lacewings and ladybugs, as well as adult ladybugs, will eat large numbers of these soft-bodied freeloaders. Plants with clusters of tiny flower heads, like yarrow, coriander, Queen Anne’s lace, fennel and dill, will attract both ladybugs and green lacewings.

Caterpillar
Many types of caterpillar wreak havoc on cabbage, as well as broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and assorted greens. The good news is that you can enlist predatory wasps to do them in. To attract the tiny, stingless helpers, try many of the same plants that appeal to lacewings and ladybugs along with lemon balm, parsley, chamomile, peppermint and catnip.

Leafhoppers
While eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes and beans often fall victim to leafhoppers, leafhoppers, in turn, can fall prey to the larvae of hover flies, which are attracted to many of the same plants as predatory wasps. Hover flies also will gravitate to English lavender, buckwheat, statice and sweet alyssum.

Trap Crops
You can protect your produce in one other particularly tricky way. By growing “trap” crops—plants well-known to attract specific insect pests—alongside any plants you wish to protect, you can divert attention away from your veggies and isolate the damage that problem insects can do.

Scented Geraniums and Four O’clocks
While Japanese beetles can be especially troublesome, you can draw them away from your green beans or those prized roses by planting scented geraniums and four o’clocks nearby. Although the adult beetles love to eat both, the flowers of scented geraniums and the leaves of four o’clocks happen to be toxic to them. Although it won’t kill them, borage is also said to be another good Japanese beetle lure. Should you plant it as a trap crop, be prepared to handpick the insects daily to knock down their numbers.

Nasturtiums
Another popular trap crop, nasturtiums will attract large numbers of black aphids; to control their populations, you can handpick regularly or periodically treat with an organic, insecticidal soap. For very heavily infested plants, simply rip them out and discard well away from the garden.

Extra Vegetables
Planting an extra row or two of whatever vegetable you wish to grow can also work to trap and isolate insect pests, as most insect pests stay on or near the host plants from which they originally hatched. Mixing low-growing herbs in between individual vegetable plants and between rows of tomatoes, potatoes and other crops can further help to throw insects off the trail of potential host plants.

Of course, despite our best efforts, it’s normal to experience some losses in the garden, though with the right combinations of companion and trap plants, we may not have to share as much of the harvest with insect pests.

About the Author: Susan Brackney writes about gardening, beekeeping, environmental affairs, the natural world and more from her home in Indiana.

 

Categories
Crops & Gardening

A Snowman in the Garden

SnowmanHaving a three year old in the house is a great excuse to act like a kid.  We spent two hours yesterday playing in the yard, taking a walk, and building this snowman. 

Quite regal isn’t he (the snowman, not the three year old)?

Thanks to some quick packing snow, it only took us about 10 minutes to get him standing. 

Once our Frosty was upright, I searched the garden looking for things to use to build his face:

  • Rocks are always easy to find around here, so those became his eyes.
  • His hair consists of Lawson’s cypress branches and St. John’s wort stems, and
  • His grin is made from hibiscus seed pods. 
  • My son insisted that snowmen only have carrot noses and made me remove the tulip tree seedpod I had centered on Frosty’s face and replace it with a carrot (of course to do this, I had to take my boots off and go inside and get one out of the fridge – ugh). 

Though I don’t think of winter as a time to focus on gardening, it always seems to work its way in there somehow. 

Even just walking through the perennial bed looking for snowman features I found myself thinking about whether or not I’m going to plant so darned many zinnias this year; and walking down the street made me wonder if the neighbor is going to want to swap seeds again. 

At least in my brain, the gardening season never really ends.

So, winter is here for a bit longer and I’m going to enjoy it. 

There is something comforting about winter to me.  I think it’s because there are so many familiar, home-centered things happening this time of year – and so many good excuses to play.

Like every other gardener I’m going to ogle the catalogs, start my seeds, and plan for the spring.  But I’m also going to make snow angels…just because I can.

« More Dirt on Gardening »

Categories
Farm Management

How to Create a Farm Newsletter

Follow these four steps for creating a farm newsletter; photo courtesy iStockphoto/Thinkstock (from HobbyFarms.com)
Courtesy iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Are you searching for an easy and effective way to promote your farm? Are you eager to market your farm business but would prefer to stay behind the scenes? Do you want to maximize your farm’s marketing budget to get the most bang for your buck? 

A farm newsletter is one of the best ways to increase business while developing lasting relationships with your customers. Newsletters are not as hard to create as you might imagine. Even those with limited computer knowledge can create a simple newsletter. With a host of programs available that make designing a newsletter as easy as a click of the mouse, there is no excuse not to utilize this effective farm marketing tool.

Newsletters connect you with a target audience that wants to read about you and your farm business. By reaching out to these eager customers, you can easily increase clientele, as Kelly Harding of Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrenceville, N.J., discovered.

“Instead of spending money on newspaper advertising, which is a broad, shotgun type of advertising, our newsletter is targeted to people who have made some effort to contact us and who have taken an interest in what we’re doing,” Harding says.

Although newsletters are an excellent farm marketing tool, you should first realistically evaluate your business to decide if the effort of creating a newsletter is warranted. If most of your business comes from selling directly to wholesalers, restaurants or other businesses, a newsletter might not be the best use of your time and energy. However, if most of your business comes from selling to the public, newsletters can bring in more business and encourage repeat guests.

Once you have decided that a newsletter could benefit your farm, you have a few decisions to make before designing and publishing your newsletter.

Newsletter Format
The first decision in creating a farm newsletter is choosing aformat to use. According to Carol Luers Eyman, author of How to Publish Your Newsletter, newsletters can be published in one format or a combination of five formats: print versions; webiste pages; text emails; HTML emails, which are similar to text e-mails but have graphics and design elements; and downloadable PDFs, which are documents that need to be read through Adobe Reader, an easily downloaded program that many computer users already have. 

What format you use depends on how technologically savvy you are, how much time you have to create your newsletter and what type of format your customers will actually read. If you live in a community where residents are more likely to read a printed handout than turn on the computer, your efforts will be best spent in producing a printed newsletter. If you can budget only two or three hours a month to create your newsletter, it’s probably worthwhile to use computer software with newsletter templates in which you just need to insert your text and photos, and hit send.

Producing a text or HTML newsletter could be the easiest way to launch your farm newsletter.

“Electronic newsletters are faster and less expensive to produce and distribute, and that’s why they are becoming more and more popular,” Luers Eyman says. “Print newsletters are better if you need to publish lots of material in each issue. Also, if you want to distribute the newsletter at a retail outlet like a farm stand, print works better.”

Yet another factor to consider when deciding on a format is how you will collect the addresses of newsletter subscribers and how you will distribute your newsletter. If you would like to send it through the mail, you must have a system set up to collect addresses through your store, by phone or on your website. If you decide to create electronic newsletters, many programs that offer newsletter templates also offer you the services of electronically subscribing and unsubscribing addresses.

Newsletter Content
The second decision in creating your farm newsletter is deciding what type of information to include. This is how you can personalize a newsletter and showcase the products you offer.

Cherry Grove Farm sells grassfed beef, lamb and pork, so Harding includes recipes and articles about the meat industry in his farm newsletter.

“If we seem to be getting a question over and over, we try to address it in the newsletter,” Harding says. “One thing we tackled was why our farm is certified organic but our meats are not.”

Alternatively, the Iron Horse Farm in Sherborn, Mass., uses their newsletter to promote the products and classes offered on their fiber farm.

“We usually feature something from our farm co-op gift store; our store hours; policies for visiting the animals; classes, workshops and private lesson information for the month; as well as any upcoming events we host and where we are appearing as vendors,” says owner Debbie Smith.

Regardless of what type of farming you do, there’s a wealth of information that can be included in a newsletter.

Recipes are always a favorite in newsletters and encourage customers to buy more of a product in order to try it out.

If there are any special events taking place on your farm or in your region, be sure to include them in a newsletter several weeks before the event so customers can make travel plans.

Many newsletter readers enjoy receiving special discounts and coupons; they might visit your farm to redeem a coupon when they wouldn’t have visited otherwise.

“We put a coupon for a free product in the newsletter one time and we got around 70 coupons back,” Harding says. “That brought some people in who have never been here before.” 

Articles about daily activities on your farm and profiles of farm animals are interesting reads for non-farmers.

“People who don’t farm find the silliest things interesting and entertaining,” Harding says. “Write a story about what you do daily and that’s interesting enough for most people.”

If you’re a dairy farmer, profile one of your cows and include its name, when it was born, its milking record, et cetera. If you grow tomatoes, write about the chores that must be done each day to ensure a healthy and bountiful crop. Many people don’t realize how much work it takes to run a farm, so not only will you be educating your newsletter readers, you all will be instiling a newfound appreciation for your work.

Photos offer a personal touch in your newsletter and can entice people to visit your farm. Including photos is easier than you might think. If you have a film camera, you’ll need to develop the photos and then scan them onto your computer. If you have a digital camera, you can simply upload the photos. Once you’re familiar with the process of how to upload images to your computer, you can quickly add photos of your farm products, employees, et cetera. If you would rather not use photos, you can use clip art, which can be purchased in a book, on a CD or downloaded from the Internet.

Newsletter Frequency
The third decision to make regarding your newsletter is how frequently to create it. If you would rather sit down a few times a year and create a newsletter chock full of information, a quarterly newsletter is ideal for you. If you want to update your customers on what crops are available for purchase throughout the year, you’ll probably want to send a newsletter at least once a month. Sometimes a weekly newsletter is appropriate. For instance, Full Belly Farm in Guinda, Calif., provides a newsletter with recipes using its products and payment reminders in with its weekly delivery of produce to members of its community-supported agriculture program.

Remember occasionally to create newsletters during your off-season, as well. Even though your farm might close for several months, keep building relationships with your customers through newsletters describing the activities on the farm in preparation for harvest next year, as well as updates about new products or varieties you intend to debut.

Newsletter Design
Once you’ve decided on your farm newsletter’s format, content and frequency, your next step is to design it. 

If you have decided to publish a print newsletter, you will need to focus on the layout and graphics. One of the easiest and least expensive options is to use newsletter templates. Templates, which can be found in page-layout software or purchased individually, allow you to easily insert text and photos into pre-fabricated slots without worrying about design.

Not all print newsletters need templates or require the purchase of additional computer software. Many newsletters are produced with word-processing program Microsoft Word. If you’re searching for a basic format that includes a few columns, some graphic elements and the ability to import pictures, Microsoft Word can probably handle your beginning needs. If you would rather present a more professional look, you might want to use templates or purchase software, such as Microsoft Publisher, Serif PagePlus, Adobe InDesign or Quark XPress.

You can print your newsletter on your home printer, print one copy and photocopy the rest at a print shop or email your newsletter file to a print shop for printing. If you will be sending your newsletter to a print shop, save it as a PDF first or make sure your software is compatible.

For PDF newsletters, you will design a layout much like a print newsletter. Once it is created, you then save the file as a PDF document that can be sent as an e-mail attachment or linked online.

For Web newsletters, you will create a Web page just as you created pages for the rest of your website. Check with the Internet service provider that hosts your website to see if they offer templates you can use to easily create Web pages and newsletters. If your ISP doesn’t offer templates, or if you prefer to design your own page, you can purchase software such as Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia DreamWeaver; however, these programs will take some time to learn and might be too advanced for people who desire to produce a simple newsletter in a short amount of time.

Text email newsletters can easily be created in a word-processing program or in a text editor, such as Windows Notepad. Once you’ve written the content, you would simply copy the newsletter to your email account and send it to your subscription list. 

HTML email newsletters can be created through a Web-development program and copied to your email account. However, according to Luers Eyman, there’s a much easier way. 

“For HTML e-mail newsletters, the trend among small businesses is to use one of the list-hosting services,” she says. “Their fees usually include the use of newsletter templates that are relatively easy to plug text and graphics into. … They are quite reasonable for someone just getting started.”

List-hosting services, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact and Vertical Response, not only make creating email newsletters easy, but they also take away much of the hassle of the tedious tasks of subscribing and unsubscribing email addresses.  If you choose not to use a list-hosting service, you can manually add and delete addresses from your email account, purchase distribution software or find free services that can handle smaller distribution lists.

With a myriad software and website services that allow anyone to create a professional-looking newsletter in a matter of minutes, your farm can easily begin reaping the rewards a newsletter offers.

Seven Ways to Stretch Your Newsletter Budget
From How to Publish Your Newsletter, by Carol Luers Eyman (Square One Publishers, 2006). Reprinted with permission.

Worried how much money a newsletter will cost to produce? Luers Eyman suggests the following ways to stretch your newsletter budget.

  • Use a free online mailing-list service for Web or email newsletters.

  • Use one of the newsletter templates that come with page-layout software instead of paying a graphic artist to design one.

  • Instead of using expensive color ink, add visual appeal to your newsletter by printing it on colored paper.

  • Check with the postal service to see if printing on a lighter-weight paper would reduce your postage costs.

  • If you’re mailing more than 200 pieces, look into using the reduced Standard Mail postal rate.

  • Apply mailing labels to envelopes before adding postage so you don’t add postage to more pieces than you need to mail; such costly mistakes add up.
  • Use the U.S. Postal Service’s address correction and return services to update your mailing list. This will help prevent future mailings to incorrect or nonexistent addresses.

About the Author: Kimberly Button is a freelance writer in Lake Lure, N.C., and the author of The Disney Queue Line Survival Guidebook.  Visit www.kimbutton.com for more information.

This article first appeared in the November/December 2006 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.

Categories
News

Canning Farm Fresh Vegetables

Canning and Preserving Farm Fresh Produce
©Sharon Fibelkorn, top

Interested in canning vegetables. Want to learn how preserve fruit? Are you up to your elbows in farm fresh vegetables and fruit? Or maybe you’re worried about the safety of canned foods?

Whatever the reason, find out how to can and preserve fruit and vegetables in your own kitchen.

Visit “Food and Kitchen” to read:

Categories
News

Veterinarian Shortage Reported

Get some basic information about caring for your animals. Read “In Your Hands” by Dr. Lyle G. McNeal. The Jan/Feb 2007 Hobby Farms article helps livestock owners recognize and care for illness in their herds, outlining basic animal husbandry skills that can help you maintain your animals health and keep your vet bills down.

The number of veterinarians who care for livestock in the United States are increasingly in short supply. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the number of veterinarians focusing on large animals has dropped to fewer than 4,500 from nearly 6,000 since 1990.

The association also says those doctors now make up less than 10 percent of private-practice veterinarians. A recent study predicted that by 2016, 4 out of every 100 food-animal veterinary jobs would go unfilled.

Why the Drop?
Reports indicate the drop in large animal veterinarians is due in large part to the following:

  • More money to be made in caring for cats and dogs. Dog and cat owners can be more willing to pay for expensive surgery and treatment and small animal vets can fit more appointments into their daily schedule; large animal vets must often travel long distances between farms and ranches; this mean fewer appointments and less money earned.
  • Fewer students come from farm backgrounds and fewer gravitate to rural jobs.
  • The physical challenges of large-animal care, such as bad weather conditions and managing the size of the animals.
  • The inclination for more veterinarians to be women, who are generally less inclined toward large animals

The AVMA’s president Dr. Roger Mahr calls the situation a “crisis” with serious consequences for both farmers’ and animals’ well-being, as well as the potentially for food safety and the impact of non-native diseases like bird flu.

According to Mahr, 75 percent of emerging diseases found in people in the last 25 years were were transmitted from animal; veterinarians are the ones to identify those diseases in animals first.

What Can Be Done?
Some efforts to improve the situation have included:

  • Congress enacted a law in 2004 offering to repay the student loans of veterinarians working in underserved areas, but it has received little financing.
  • States with loan repayment or grant programs under way or proposed in Kansas, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, Texas and elsewhere. Other states are considering tax breaks for large animal vets.
  • Some veterinary schools try to entice entice teenagers to become rural veterinarians by visiting county fairs and 4-H meetings.

To cope, some farmers will choose to sacrifice valuable animals they have tried to save in the past, treating it as a business expense. Others take advantage of training sessions designed to teach farmers basic livestock care, such as tips on giving cows anesthesia and pumping their stomachs.

To learn more about the crisis, watch a video (look for “Veterinarian Shortage for Farms” in Latest Video Reports) provided by the New York Times (registration required).

Categories
News

America Recycles Day

Just in time for America Recycles Day, the EPA reports:

  • Americans in 2006 recycled and composted 82 million tons (about 32.5 percent) in 2006. 
  • A total of 251 million tons of municipal solid waste generated. 
  • Of the 4.6 pounds of waste each American generates every day, 1.5 pounds were recycled. 
  • In addition, approximately 31 million tons of municipal solid waste was combusted for energy recovery in 2006.

With large numbers like those, you are encouraged to recycle more than aluminum cans and those empty water bottles that have been in the news so often lately. American Recycles Day is an effort by the EPA to get Americans think and learn about recycling.

After all, recycling helps everyone reduce climate change, save energy, and conserve natural resources. For example:

  • Recycling just one ton of aluminum cans saves the energy equivalent of 36 barrels of oil or 1,655 gallons of gasoline.
  • Using recycled materials instead of new materials saves energy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Using recycled glass instead of new materials consumes 40 percent less energy.

Recycling reduces costs to businesses and creates jobs. According to the EPA:

  • The American recycling and reuse industry is a $200 billion dollar enterprise.
  • There are more than 50,000 recycling and reuse establishments.
  • Recycling-related businesses employ more than 1 million people.
  • Recycling businesses generate an annual payroll of approximately $37 billion.

America Recycles Day- November 15thMore from EPA

Municipal solid waste generation and recycling rate information

America Recycles Day Information

Where do I recycle all that stuff!
Not sure where to take all those old video camera batteries. earth911.com shows you!
Connect to details on recycling everything from paint and antifreeze to toys and electronics–in your own locality.

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