herbiejuan

Hawkman Great to see you, this definetly added to my happiness!! I'm flat broke but ya know happiness is more a state of mind than the state of the pocketbook. Take care n stay safe Mikey

At the request of the college and my own ambition I will be taking UWG's MPA program starting next spring. At the rate I am going I should have my Doctorate by the time I'm ready to retire...but with the local economic initiatives I'm involved with I shouldn't have much trouble staying busy during my *golden years*. The West Ga. Winery Association took a winery tour yesterday and we are anticipating growing that industry here, we are also looking into building a cannery in Bowdon to augment the vegetable and meat production in the area...loads of fun for all involved

Gen-2 Glad to see someone remembers the old tongue...my mother was fluent unfortunately she did not pass the gift along to me, however I did get to kiss the blarney stone which probably accounts for my motor mouth. I think that if the government stepped in to resolve this crisis it would place the responsibility for the clean up on the good old US, something akin to another federal bailout, not something politically feasable these days... besides who is better equipted to deal with the problem than the comopany that started it...

My youngest is just down the coast from Pensacola, he manages a tourist oriented restaurant and is thinking of moving to Texas if the oil kills tourism in PC. So sad to see this happening, spent many a summer catching the rays on Fla beaches...

It took forever to figure out arcmap, especially since I wasn't familiar with excel but it worked out ok. The data for the map came from Georgia Organics membership surveys and became the basis for their Local Food Guide. I reworked the ppt's for the first session perhaps they will upload now...Soils1.pptSoils2.ppt Basicly the ppts say build healthy soils and grow healthy plants...there I just saved you several hundred dollars and 100 hrs of classtime ;)

GIS Course Presentation.pptOK here is the first session of the class, please keep your questions till the end of the class chuckle snort snicker ;)I'm also attaching my graduate project that sorta set the stage for this whole project, viewed by county commissioners and other local officials is sets in stark reality the thinking behind the Sustainable Growers School and other efforts statewide. Well the soils session didn't upload properly, pesky debbil spurts...

Krys thans yes it is a wonderful feeling to see this thing take off, I think the timing of these projects with the economic mess we are in just made sense to those who have the power to change things, in some regards we have embarked on an economic redevelopment plan for the county, something thats been needed for some time, things just had to get bad enough for folks to want to make the change, kinda exciting eh?

luna what a fine idea, a planned community, there is one in south fulton county called Serenbe, it is acutally a small town with a community farm and working farm, shops services residential homes and townhouses, its quite impressive I wish you good fortune in your venture. My schooling was in sustainable development Tugwells planned communities caught my eye as a cool way to work out the details before moving folks in. Sir I also have a worm ranch, sometimes it takes me several hours to rustle them up for a fishing trip...municipal composting crossed my mind a few years ago, I think at somepoint in the future we'll institute that at the technical college, they are already catching rainwater and have a garden on the roof of one of their buildings. Just found out yesterday that a local family is interested in purchasing the farm just south of here, converting part of it to a water quality institute (through the local U) and donating the balance @200acres to the program... I'm just going with the flow at this point ;)

Thanks luna and Mark. Developing this program just made alot of sense since Carroll County is #1 in chicken and meat goat production and #3 in cattle in Georgia. Several of us met yesterday to formalize the West Georgia Wine Grape Growers Association (not necessarily the final name) Nitra just north of where I live used to be a major producer of wine grapes before prohibition and with several small wineries opening up in the area we decided it would be good to work together as a group to build this industry back. We have been hiking the woood looking for heritage vines and have found several *mother* vines that date back to the 1800's. We are particularly exciteed about our find as these viens ahve been tested and prove to be immune to Pierces disease and most other diseases (havind survived 100 yrs in the wild without any human caretaking) I've got @ 40 cutting budding and as a gorup we ahve over 1000 so perhaps this too is off to a good start. I did not find the gardening 101 course online (that started out as a victory garden training project for our inmates) that @ 800 folks have taken so far but I do have some powerpoints from my Sustainable Growers School program that I will post online if/when I can figure out how to do so, The program won't answer all questions as it is in short note PPT form but when it's up if there are any questions you may email me Mike@thegrowersschool.org and I'll answer the questions the best I can. Mikey

Polar I suggest you 1) Measure the square footage of your garden area 2) Get your soil tested (your county extension service can do this for you 3) Ask said county agent to explain the soil test results in plain english and to figure out how much of any recommended ammendments should be added for your size garden AND 4) Add those ammendments to your soil Most plants require 6 - 8 hours of direct sunlight Plant varieties adapted to your region and use least toxic mterials to control the buggies, no all buggies are bad and some of the most weird looking ones are actually beneficial insects, I think our gardening 101 course is online I'll check and see and if it is I'll post a link to it, Happy growing

Too big to fail, too big to screw up? Seems a bit arrogant to me but it's the capitalist way, get big or get out, thats what James Watts told farmers back in the day, look where that got us, imported junk from china that's contaminated, large tracts of farmland in Calif ruined from salts. BP isust one more example of bigger is not always better, especially when prudent oversight is neglected or circumvented... go figure

The porch light is on however I am worried that the stuff in my fridge will go bad so get yer arse down here before the milk sours; Fame...sometimes I think its over rated, all the damn work, worry and uncertainty that goes into treading the road not taken...

LOL good chatting with ya too, the bathroom light is always on unless its daytime in which case ya gots to find it all on yer own :) I finally found the coffee pot after day two, sure was nice to enjoy a cup of java without having to walk 2 blocks to the local Tom Thumb... I reckon CNN and the others will show up eventually, prolly once the program gets going, just remember I've brought in 9 partners for this venture, ranging from the county government to the local hospital to schools etc, tho to be fair it was "US" that brought them together. Anyways take care and enjoy the spring weather.

Here is the link to the latest reincarnation of the program https://coned.westgatech.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?~~11SSUSAGRI01 I'm taking a vacation next week, gonna go to Fla n visit with the youngest and family...