Free Republic

I bought a hummingbird feeder. I wonder if anyone knows what I ought to put in the feeder.

Washington D.C. (IMpossible News) - Have you been so fortunate as to have played any of the land developing games found at Facebook.com? There are several like Farmville, Frontierville, Cityville and so forth. The object is to settle in, set up shop or manage the land and resources in a way that increases your points and levels of experience. My wife, the real estate tycoon has been at it longer than myself, the hobby farmer. I think these games have tremendous merit when it comes to teaching the basics of freedom and free enterprise. You basically make your own choices...

Yes, You Can Survive The Coming Economic Nightmare – One Family In California Grows 6,000 Pounds Of Produce On Just 1/10th Of An Acre If you work hard and get prepared, you can survive the economic nightmare that is coming. All over the United States and around the world there are millions of people that are learning how to become more self-sufficient. For example, there is one family that is actually producing 6000 pounds of produce on just 1/10th of an acre right in the middle of Pasadena, California. In fact, they grow so much food that they are able...

California is the unfortunate testbed for almost every new lunatic idea promulgated by the radical left—which is to say, every idea they offer—the complete explanation for why the state is such a train wreck. One of the worst examples is California’s oppressive environmental statutes. In combination with these, Agenda 21 has spread like cancer throughout California. Today I received some explicit examples of how this is playing out in Ventura County. The county Board of Supervisors is attempting to impose, almost word-for-word, the Wildland Project’s despotic edicts that will turn wide swaths of rural private property into complete wastelands. A...

I live in a wonderful suburban community on Long Island. My three children attend the excellent public schools in our district. As the two oldest children have made their way through middle school, though, I've been bothered by the rather flimsy instruction they've received on the subject of "global warming." Both my 14 year-old daughter and 11 year-old son have been shown Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth in sixth grade, but have been given nothing to suggest that some of the information in the movie is either controversial or misleading. So I've decided to put together this bullet point...

We've all seen 'em. You know the ones. The folks who walk into the local big-box garden center looking to fulfill their dreams of growing 4 pound tomatoes or blue ribbon-worthy pumpkins. Whatever their motivation - from a yearning for simplicity, a desire to eat more organically, or frugality - they've now decided to put in a garden. And could there be anything more inviting to a salesperson than the sight of the new gardener staring at the mountains of plants and supplies? Whether they grew up on a farm or could rival Billy Crystal for the lead role in...

. . . . . Last night I sent out an email to all on my list about the rising price of food in our supermarkets.  It included a post by Director Blue. This morning, as I was hearing Glenn Beck -- in a lead in to a commercial spot for a food storage company -- give out some facts and figures about how much food prices have risen, I was reading the responses to my email.  (I've  included them at the end of this post). Friends, I went shopping for groceries last Friday -- green peppers were $1.24 each...

Which is more important: reduce America’s dependence on foreign energy sources, or add 2.85 million acres to the existing 200 million acres of protected areas? According to the United Nations, 27% of the total land area in the United States is already locked up in some kind of protected area and 67% of the total marine area. This means, of course, that there can be no development of energy or other natural resources in 27% of the nation’s land and 67% of the nation’s marine resources. Only the most avid preservationist, or the most anti-American, could possibly choose to lock...

In the not-too-distant future, chocolate will become a rarefied luxury, as expensive as caviar. John Mason, a Canadian expert on cocoa, first made this prophesy six years ago from his base in West Africa, the epicenter of production. He was confident enough to repeat it, over and over, to the directors of the biggest chocolate companies in the world. “Sometimes they were rude. Sometimes they were polite,” he said. “Behind me, they were sort of snickering.” Today they treat him like a guru. An influential set of senior industry heavyweights flew to Ghana last week to hear him speak; the...

"... There is every reason to believe that at least some sizable portion of the 95% of Blacks who voted for Obama did so in hopes that a Black president would jab his hand into America’s pocket and pull up a wad of money to be turned over to the decedents of slaves. This has been a dream of Black America at least since the 1890’s when it was fought and defeated by the Union veterans who felt they had given former slaves enough on the Civil War’s battle fields, and who could disagree. The Union dead statistics were a...

This summer Andrew Breitbart, publisher of a number of conservative news sites, found himself in the throes of a media scandal of dramatic proportions — and one which he later discovered went far deeper than a mere contextual snafu. For those unfamiliar with the story, in July, when liberals, the media, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were slamming Tea Partiers as racist, Breitbart released a now infamous video of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) official Shirley Sherrod’s speech before the NAACP describing how she had discriminated against a white farmer. Her comments were...

President Obama earlier this month signed into law a measure to pay American Indians and black farmers a total of $4.6 billion to cover decades of government mistreatment. Now, a Republican congressman says the GOP-controlled House next year will hold hearings to investigate the settlement, which he says amounts to “reparations.” Conservative Rep. Steve King of Iowa told local radio station KCIM that the Pigford settlement, which was part of the legislation, “is full of fraud” and “amounts to paying reparations to black farmers in America. We don’t do reparations in America.”

Andrew Breitbart held a press conference today on the Pigford controversy, and it began with high-profile Congresswoman Michele Bachman’s introduction. Bachmann asked why Eric Holder has yet to investigate the allegations of widespread fraud. Bachmann said that “people are milking the system for all it’s worth,” and that the money belongs to black farmers who actually suffered discrimination. “We have a tremendous story to tell today,” Bachmann said, calling it “a stunning story.”

Beck and others are telling you - TODAY at 7pm Senate is scheduled to vote. If passed, the misnamed Food Safety and Modernization Act would authorize the FDA to tell farmers how to grow their crops. Federal bureaucrats who likely know little to nothing about farming will set the guidelines on appropriate temperatures, what soil to use, how much water to use and what animals are allowed to be on certain fields. S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, gives broad powers to the FDA to regulate small farms and gardens.

Frank W. James demonstrates the proper way to blog about guns-specifically the 10MM Auto- as in how well they function in the context of a tool to carry to accomplish certain tasks. (CLICK LINK HERE) His comments remind me just how different is life out on the farm. About 10-15 years ago I started to hang around an Old Farmer’s “back 40″ on a fairly regular basis and came to appreciate how common views about guns and shooting over the course of my lifetime have become skewed in favor of complete foolishness. Whether the foolishness is the foolishness of “responsible...

“I hate to be an alarmist, but I have to tell you: there is a time for urgency, and the time is right now.” That’s how Kevin Murphy, founder and owner of Food-Chain Communications LLC (truthinfood.com), prefaced his remarks to cattlemen attending last month’s Feeding Quality Forum in Grand Island, Neb., and Amarillo, Texas. Murphy says production and economic issues won’t matter if agriculture is regulated out of business by the activist groups that he says are leading “an attack on agriculture that is literally unrelenting.

This past Tuesday, Nov 30th, the Democratically-controlled lame-duck House passed the $1.2 billion Black Farmer’s Settlement funding known as Pigford II. The previous week the bill had passed the Senate with assurances of strict measures to protect the taxpayers against the rampant fraud that has been widely documented from multiple sources in both the media and government. The bill passed the House 256-152, and is now headed to President Obama to sign: the man who single-handedly introduced the Pigford II legislation in 2007 to curry favor with rural black Southern voters, to which he was trailing significantly to then front-runner...

In March 2010, Nor-Cal Produce, a family-owned produce business in West Sacramento, was fined $32,500 by the California Air Resources Board (ARB, or CARB). The company was not charged with, or even accused of, illegal emissions; like many other businesses, it had merely failed to notice a new regulation posted by CARB requiring all semi-trailers, shipping containers, vans, and rail cars with diesel-powered refrigerators to file a report with the agency. “We had no knowledge of the law,” Nor-Cal’s Chief Financial Officer Todd Achando told CalWatchDog, a news blog that monitors California government. “My operations manager happened to see it...

Michelle Obama, who has planted a vegetable garden, swiveled a hula hoop, done yoga poses, lobbied Congress and crisscrossed the United States to promote the virtues of healthy eating and exercise, wants to take her campaign to reduce childhood obesity to a bigger audience: the global one. During a wide-ranging luncheon interview with reporters, Mrs. Obama said she intended to spend part of the coming year shaping a more international message, with a possible focus on issues of maternal and child health. She expects to talk about fighting obesity when she travels with President Obama overseas, she said. “What I...

Last week, Mexican authorities seized over 23 tons of ethyl phenylacetate, which is used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. The drug component was discovered at the Pacific port of Manzanillo, in a shipment from China. In April 2010, Mexican officials seized 80 tons of phenylacetic acid and its derivatives shipped from Shanghai, China. Imports of ethyl phenylacetate require authorization from the country’s health ministry, so the shipments are intentionally mis-labeled before leaving China. Last year, an anonymous U.S. official told Reuters that between October and November 2010, Mexican authorities seized 818 tons of chemicals used in making crystal meth. Due...