Third Day

Today was a great kick-off for the General Conference, which I started at the Trade Show. There are many organic gardening and farming suppliers, seed companies, local food organizations, and gardening/farming tool suppliers.

My first session was on mushrooms. Not only did we learn about mushrooms as a food crop, the instructor also taught us how mushrooms may be used as a filter for toxic chemicals, such as pesticides and herbicides, and "sponges" to soak up heavy metals like lead and mercury. Fungi mycelia act as "scissors" which cut substances into smaller molecules, which can often result in removing toxicity. Mushrooms can grow in pure motor oil, and will break it down into organic chemicals. Mushrooms can even render dioxins harmless- dioxins being the potent poison (causes severe health problems and birth defects) inherent in Agent Orange and any other 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T herbicides.

Next I went to a session called "Growing New Growers", which was about hiring help and, very often, assisting those employees to start their own farms. Labor has been a big topic at the conference; it seems that many farmers need help but don't think that they can afford to hire it.

My third session was on composting. It was very helpful, although I was familiar with most of the concepts. The section on vermiculture- worm growing and composting- was the most interesting to me. The instructor shared the story of a man who makes his living creating worm compost. He built a $90,000 worm bed building and payed it off in his first year of production.

Finally, I went to the Alabama Networking Session. This was extremely exciting and encouraging. There were over 100 people, both farmers and local food advocates. The sustainable/organic, fresh, local food movement is gathering steam in Alabama. We Cullman growers most likely have a market capable of supporting several more farms, and we're working on ways to cooperate and combine our abilities and resources in order to create a whole that is greater than its parts. We would love to provide all of the food for as many families as possible.

The rest of the family went to the Aquarium today. It sounded like they had lots of fun seeing sharks, penguins, otters, and butterflies. I told them to take pictures, but they were neglectful of our blog reader(s) and didn't do so. Sorry! I know that these posts are pretty boring without pictures, but I will try to make a nice post when we get home. Until tomorrow,

~Sherlock