An arugula flower; if I were a bee I think I’d find this pretty irresistable…

I was thinking about the zinc ointment my mother used to apply to our childhood contusions, Dr. Chase’s Ointment, it was called, which led me to stumble upon this strange recipe for a toad salve for sprains, which sounds ghastly. Can’t help but wonder how he devised the recipe in the first place. Why toads? Why 4 of them? What did it smell like as it ripened?

For sprains, strains, lame-back rheumatism, caked breasts, caked udders, Etc. Good sized live toads, 4 in number; put into boiling water and cook very soft; then take them out and boil the water down to a 1/2 pt. and add fresh churned, unsalted butter 1 lb. and simmer together; at the last add tincture of arnica 2 ozs. This was obtained from an old Physician, who thought more of it then any other prescription in his possession. Some persons might think it hard on toads, but you could not kill them quicker any other way.

I am greatly entertained by my new soil-blocker, which I used to make cubes for seeding my winter veg. It all looks oddly like brownies at this point.

Though I ran out and bought one, soil-blockers take many forms and can be made in various ways, as in these instructions.

On a more edible note, Campbell’s Soup company is stepping into the realm of grow-your-own, by donating seeds to the National FFA Organization (formerly known as the Future Farmers of America) in the US. Visit the Help Grow Your Soup page to click them on their way.

Some nice things on the farm stand at Haliburton this week:

A series of unfortunate discoveries have led me to learn all about the spinach leaf miner, which is wreaking havoc on my spinach, chard and beets. Here is the innocuous appearance of one infected chard leaf.

Holding leaves up to the light shows the perpetrators at work. The little brown patch at right is a clutch of eggs.

A nasty case on some spinach.

Evil grubs (now deceased).

There appears to be no organic solution other than to remove damaged leaves (not into the compost!), check for eggs on the backs of leaves and get rid of them (but make sure you do not knock them into the soil, where they can still hatch).

The new food movie, Food, Inc. is rumbling towards us, putting the North American food story into a form fit for mass public consumption. So galling are its discussions of large scale corporate interests that it’s provoked Monsanto into posting a page about the film; protesting, one senses, a bit too much. Pretty good PR for the film-makers in any case. Looks like it will get lots of media interest, with features out already from Salon to the New York Times to the Rolling Stone with more certain to follow as the releases roll on.

Bonnie sent me this link to National Geographic’s thoughtful assessment of the irreconcilable ratio between global food production and population growth: The Global Food Crisis: The End of Plenty.

Back here in “real” life, lest I think sometimes I’m spinning my wheels and accomplishing nothing, Haliburton Farm lets me see progress in my actions. Here’s a row of peas surrounded by smartweed

And the same field an hour or so later:

And a heron, which despite Anton’s attempts to make it fly-baby-fly, carried on minding its own business and finding much to munch in Cadboro Bay: