Last Saturday we had a successful pour of 49 cubic yards of redi-mix concrete.  This concrete became the footing and floor of our 30’ x 70’ crowdfunded on-farm Equipment Repair Shop.  Now, we are working on forming up for the short concrete kneewall atop which the metal shop building will be constructed.
     Local newspapers carried word of our shop progress.  Also, the local TV station came down last week as we were working, a couple of days before we poured the floor. Here’s a short (1:57) news clip which WAGM-TV produced.
     Thanks for everybody’s wonderful support!  We’ll keep you updated on our Shop project progress.

 Jim & Megan

Pouring Our Shop Floor.  Note the orange half-inch radiant floor tubing snaking its way through the concrete floor. The half-mile network of such tubing will carry non-toxic antifreeze - heated by a wood stove - through the 100 ton heat-sink-concrete floor.  Doing this will effectively heat both the floor and provide steady radiant heat for the entire building.

     Proposition 37 is the critical ‘Right-To-Know GMO Labeling Initiative, which California  will vote on this November 6.  Nearly one million signatures were collected in order to place this measure on the ballot.  California voters themselves will make the final determination as to whether this citizen initiative will pass or not.  National polls indicate massive public support – in the range of 70-90% in favor - for mandatory labeling of GMOs – ‘genetically modified’ or ‘laboratory-gene-spliced’ foods.  Biotech is pulling out all stops to short-circuit the people’s Right-To-Know.
     The ramifications of the California passing Prop 37 will have significant national consequences and the organic community is solidly behind the effort.  Biotech and their Big Food backers have initiated a major and massively-funded disinformation campaign designed to confuse and defeat the people’s Right-To-Know initiative.  The organic community has become angered that Big Food corporations who have bought their way into the organic industry are funneling funds to their biotech buddies to defeat Prop 37.       
     Our friends at Organic Consumers Association are calling for a boycott of seven such corporations, targeting organic brands owned by Kellogg’s,  Dean Foods, Smuckers, General Mills, Coca Cola, Pepsico and Safeway.  Read the details here.

Click here for our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Cereals.

     Just back from our Direct Gardening Association Summer Conference and Board of Directors meeting in Chicago.  DGA is the 77-year-old non-profit association of the best internet and mail order companies which sell garden goods directly to consumers.

     One of the highlights of our conference was Tuesday’s guided tour of UPS’s gigantic Chicago Area Consolidation Hub (CACH). Twenty years ago UPS – one of the three shippers Wood Prairie Farm uses to ship your orders – converted a former General Motors/Fisher body stamping plant into its state-of-the-art central hub computerized sortation-facility for national destination ground shipments.  The CACH site is 240 acres and that includes the sprawling building footprint of over 34 acres. Inside are 65 miles of computerized conveyer belts and rollers.  Over 1000 outbound bay doors service the 1.3-1.5 million packages daily received from 3500 tractor trailers, many of which arrive as intermodal shipments on railroad flatbed cars.

     The facility runs four part-time shifts 24/5 and - thanks to union membership - each of those 6000 UPS employees receive full benefits. Most packages take just 15 minutes to wind their way through this facility.  If your home is anywhere north, west or south of Chicago, if we shipped your order via UPS, then it went through this massive facility.

Jim

Click here for our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Seed Potatoes.