2 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010 commercialappeal.

com

What’s in this issue ...

How green is your Bard?
4 Shakespeare scholars gather at
Rhodes College to look for
environmental message in his work

Busy as bees City buzz

7 The Underhills of
10 Urban beekeepers take
Arkansas employ the green movement to
thousands of workers a higher level

The nitty gritty of compost

12 Getting organic matter to decay properly
isn’t as easy as you think

Turning cow poop

14 Riding the raw
milk wave
17 into power

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Going Green is a special online publication of
The Commercial Appeal. We welcome your comments
and suggestions. Follow Going Green on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/GoGreenMemphis.
Editor: Roland Klose, 529-2776,
goinggreen@commercialappeal.com
The Commercial Appeal Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN 3

The Green Page

Join the
conversation
Several weeks ago, Going
Green met with a group of
readers who are active in
local environmental efforts.
They urged us to find a
way for Memphians to
trade ideas and expertise.
What’s the best source
of local information on
recycling or organic
gardening? Where can you
find local eco-friendly
products and retailers?
Who can you call to deal
with an environmental
problem?
In response, Going Green
launched an online forum
to serve as a virtual town
hall for our active readers.
Just go to greenforum.
commercialappeal.com.
It’s easy to register —
and easy to be green.

Events Check out the wildflowers on the 3-

The Sierra Club Chickasaw Group
presents “Reckoning at Eagle Creek — The
Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland” at
6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Benjamin L.
Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar Ave.
For information, contact Susan Routon
at susan.routon@gmail.com or
(901) 413-3888.
Take an hour-and-a-half-long family
hike at the Strawberry Plains Audubon
Center in Holly Springs, Miss., this
Saturday. $10 per family. Space is
limited. To reserve a spot call (662) 252-
1155 or e-mail kboyle@audubon.org.
To submit items for The Green Page, e-mail goinggreen@commercialappeal.com.
mile hike through T.O. Fuller State Park,
1500 Mitchell Road. The hike, sponsored
by the Sierra Club, starts at 10 a.m.
Saturday at the park’s visitors center.
For more information, contact Sue
Williams at (901) 274-0524.
Walk the Old Forest at Overton Park
on March 28. The guided 1.5-mile trek,
sponsored by Citizens to Preserve
Overton Park, starts at 10 a.m. at the
end of Old Forest Lane, next to the
Rainbow Lake parking lot. For
information, e-mail naomi@spiny.com or
call (901) 278-2396.
4 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010 commercialappeal.com

How
green
is your
Bard?
Scholars to discuss
literature of ecology
By Leah C. Wells
Special to Going Green

THOREAU WENT TO THE WOODS to live

deliberately.
Jon Krakauer, in his book “Into the Wild,” chronicled
the peripatetic life of Chris McCandless who ventured solo throughout
North America.
John Candy and Dan Aykroyd took their fictional families on a camping
trip to get closer to each other and to nature in “The Great Outdoors.”
The Eco-Challenge sends teams of people to pit their survival skills
against some of nature’s toughest terrains.
“Getting back to nature” is a familiar modern theme but not a novel
idea. In fact, it is one that has been pondered for centuries.
The Commercial Appeal
We can trace the
evolution of ecological
thought by rereading
literature from previous
eras, to see how various
authors dealt with the
subject of human
interactions with nature.
Dr. Robert Watson,
professor of Shakespeare
and English Renaissance
poetry at the University of
California, Los Angeles, is
coming to Memphis to
discuss his research on
ecology and literature.
Watson was educated at
Yale and Stanford, taught
at Harvard, and was the
recipient of the 2006
Elizabeth Dietz Memorial
Prize for the year’s best
book in Renaissance and
Early Modern Studies, as
well as the winner of the
Association for the Study
of Literature and the
Environment prize for the
Best Book of Ecocriticism
of 2005-2006.
His March 26 lecture at
Rhodes College, “Green
Shakespeare:
Environmental Criticism
and the Bard,” will focus
on the play “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream.”
Shakespeare’s life
bridges the Renaissance
and the Age of
Enlightenment, a time
early in the development
of empirical science when
Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN
humans were beginning
to explore the ways in
which they could gain
mastery over the natural
environment.
Through ecocriticism, a
field of study also known
as “green cultural studies”
and ecopoetics, scholars
evaluate contemporary
ecological problems and
Dr. Robert Watson will
present “Green
Shakespeare:
Environmental
Criticism and the
Bard” at Rhodes
College on March 26.
locate solutions through a
close reading of
interdisciplinary literary
sources.
Through the works of
Shakespeare and others,
we can learn how people
made sense of mysterious
processes like sleep and
dreams, healing wounds
and curing illnesses, as
well as social forces like
5
technological
developments, changes in
religious perspectives and
the rise of Protestantism,
and development in the
economic system.
And we may be able to
apply their wisdom to
current problems.
“Nature,” says Watson,
“is a kind of code for lost
intimacy with real
experience. ‘A
Midsummer Night’s
Dream’ is a parable for
ecological consciousness,
a pre-scientific way of
thinking of the ecological
aspect of human life.”
Examination of
Shakespearean
perspectives on early
green themes is not
simply an academic
exercise, however.
According to Watson,
some contemporary
debates can be unlocked
through historical
examination. Scientific
rifts over issues like
climate change and
environmental
stewardship have become
entrenched in society and
have divisive political
ramifications.
Furthermore, these issues
are so complex that it is
nearly impossible to
disentangle
environmental questions
from other issues like
6 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010 commercialappeal.com

poverty and economics. ECOCRITICISM

However, Watson contends that there are
ways in which people can understand the value
of nature. The issue is not solely about getting
back to nature, but of having experiences that
are real and meaningful, unmediated by
technology and apolitical.
In other words, it is possible to conceive of
the man versus nature debate in a highly
personalized way without overtly political
implications.
The social connections that sustain
projects like the Greater Memphis Greenline,
Memphis Farmers’ Market, Sow to Grow or
GrowMemphis are evidence of this.
Despite the rise in urbanization and
decline in rural residence in the past century,
urban gardens and dedicated green spaces
have begun to flourish in former brownfields.
While more people live in cities,
populating concrete jungles thick with smog,
filled with noise and light pollution and
distinctly separate from the natural world,
individuals are making concerted attempts to
bridge urban and rural.
Some reasons are pragmatic, such as the
desire to know that vegetables are pesticide-
free or that animals for food were treated
humanely. Other reasons are aesthetic, such
as the simple joy of pondering
photosynthesis not solely for the nutritional
gains or the bounty of the plants, but for the
experience of seeing nature at work and
contemplating our place in the natural cycle.
Or, as Watson says, “The art of what we’re
doing in ecocriticism is not just to tell people
to join political campaign under an
environmental banner, but rather our best
service is to awaken people to the beauty and
complexity of nature and tolerate a more
complex vision of the world we inhabit.”
Leah C. Wells is a staff member at
BioDimensions and is pursuing a doctorate in
political science at the University of Mississippi.
SYMPOSIUM
Rhodes College’s symposium
on ecocriticism brings together
several international scholars to
discuss how ecological concepts
and “green” issues apply to the
interpretation of William
Shakespeare’s works.
The free symposium will be
held from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Friday, March 26, in Blount
Auditorium of Buckman Hall.
The event begins with a
keynote lecture by Dr. Robert
Watson (University of California,
Los Angeles) on the “Ecology of
Self,” or permeable human
boundaries in “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream.”
His lecture will be followed by
a roundtable discussion with four
participants: Daniel Brayton
(Middlebury College); Simon
Estok (Sungkyunkwan University,
Republic of Korea); Sharon
O’Dair (University of
Alabama-Tuscaloosa); and Karen
Raber (University of Mississippi).
The symposium is
co-sponsored by the Pearce
Shakespeare Endowment and
Rhodes’ Environmental Program,
with additional support from
Rhodes’ Center for Outreach in the
Development of the Arts (CODA).
For more information, contact
Prof. Scott L. Newstok at
newstoks@rhodes.edu, or
consult the Shakespeare at
Rhodes Web site at
rhodes.edu/shakespeare.
The Commercial Appeal Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN 7

Busy
Arkansas couple turn retirement
activity into a thriving business
with thousands of workers
By Jonathan Devin

as Special to Going Green

When Richard Underhill of Proctor, Ark.,

decided to retire from BellSouth four years
ago, his wife Rita knew she needed to find
something to keep him busy.

bees She took him to a meeting of the Memphis

Area Beekeepers Association and before long,
the couple had become regional experts on
bees and turned their farm just west of Earle
8 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010
into Peace Bee Farm, with
100 hives producing pure
honey.
But the honey is only
half of the story.
After knee surgery
forced Rita to slow the
pace of her work with the
bees, she decided to
spend more time making
products from beeswax,
which in its own way
takes plenty of effort.
“It’s very labor-
intensive and people
don’t realize how hard it
is to get the beeswax and
then how hard it is to
clean it after you’ve got
it,” Rita said.
Honey is sealed inside
the honeycomb with wax
and Richard collects it by
scraping off the wax caps,
a process beekeepers call
“capping.” Much of the
wax is eventually
returned to the hive as a
liquid painted on the
frames. The rest is melted
down and painstakingly
The Underhills
take several
hundred
pounds of
beeswax off
the hives each
month.
Rita Underhill works among the farm’s 100 hives.
cleaned for use in Rita’s
all-natural cosmetics and
other products.
Rita pours the refined
wax into brick-shaped
molds and stores the two-
pound blocks of mustard-
colored wax.
Rita makes candles,
hand cream, body balm,
lip balm, face cream, soap,
furniture polish, boot
polish, saddle soap and
even one-ounce blocks of
commercialappeal.com
wax which people use in
sewing, to lubricate
furniture drawers, or for
encaustic painting.
Her products use only
vitamin E as a
preservative, so the shelf
life is just about one
month when they are not
refrigerated. But Rita
noted that beeswax does
not support the growth of
bacteria or microbes.
“I don’t use anything in
them that you couldn’t
eat,” Rita said. “It makes
it more expensive, but
most people, if they are
attuned to anything that’s
going on in the world, are
willing to pay for that.”
Each week she operates
a booth at the farmers
markets Downtown and at
the Memphis Botanic
Garden, as well as a market
at St. Jude Children’s
The Commercial Appeal Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN 9
“If people are like me, they become conscious of turning everything
over and seeing ‘made in Taiwan’ on it. That really bothers me.”
RITA UNDERHILL, owner of Peace Bee Farm

Rita makes candles, hand cream, body balm, lip balm, face cream and soap, as
well as furniture polish, boot polish and saddle soap.

Research Hospital that is
not open to the public.
Friends sell her products
at the farmers market at
the Agricenter, and a
handful of shops in
Memphis, West Memphis
and Marion sell her honey,
including The Cupboard,
Muddy’s Bake Shop and
the Center for Southern
Folklore.
“Her body balms are
the absolute best,” said
Sherri McCalla, an
PEACE BEE FARM
Address:
37 Peace Farm Road
Proctor, AR 72376
Web site:
peacebeefarm.com
assistant horticulturalist
at the Memphis Botanic
Garden. “You used to have
to take your fingernail and
scrape it out, but I figured
it out — I took a knife and
cut it out of the container
and held it in my hand like
a bar of soap and your
body heat would melt it
down, but she makes it
softer now so you don’t
have to do that.”
McCalla is fond of a
balm containing shea
butter, vanilla and gold
flakes. She also
volunteered to test an
insect repellent, which is
not yet for sale.
“I don’t like how DEET
10 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010
burns,” McCalla said. “It didn’t
work quite as well as DEET, but
considering that I wasn’t absorbing
really nasty stuff, it was fine.”
The beeswax business isn’t set up
to make anyone rich, though, Rita
said.
“We’re probably almost breaking
even, maybe a little bit over, but
we’ve done better than I thought
we’d have done because it costs a
lot to make the products,” Rita said.
While the Underhills take several
hundred pounds of beeswax off the
hives each month, it takes a lot of
labor to collect and many hours
more to keep the bees producing.
“To make a pound of honey, bees
visit 2 million flowers and that’s
55,000 miles of flight,” Richard said.
“To make an ounce of beeswax, they
eat a pound of honey.”
To make it worth the effort, the
price point goes up. A pair of
generic 12-inch taper candles made
in China and sold in a chain
discount store sell for about $4.
Similarly sized candles made by
hand of purified beeswax cost $15.
Rita has taken orders via the
Internet from Georgia to New York.
Recently she supplied a wedding in
Indiana with votive candles and
honey sticks, straws sealed at both
ends with a spoonful of honey inside.
The bride, Rita said, is from
Arkansas and she wanted
something from her home state in
the wedding.
“If people are like me, they
become conscious of turning
everything over and seeing ‘made in
Taiwan’ on it,” said Rita. “That
really bothers me.”
commercialappeal.com
Urban bees
enjoy life
at the top
Rooftop hives preserve
D.C. honeybee population
By Dagny Leonard
McClatchy-Tribune
Walking up to the roof of the Fairmont
Hotel in Washington, D.C., is not a jaw-
dropping experience. Exit the door and
you are confronted with a sea of roof tiles
and empty space — nothing that really
captures the eye. But walk around the
corner, and you will discover something
that a handful of other D.C. rooftops have
in common — a faint buzzing.
The little house-like structures from
which the sound comes are the homes of
the Fairmont’s 105,000 newest residents
— Italian honeybees that buzz in and out
of the three hives: Casa Bella, Casa Blanca
and Casa Bianca.
“At this point it’s all kind of
experimental,” said Aron Weber,
executive pastry chef and co-chief
beekeeper at the Fairmont.
The bees in the Fairmont’s hives might
be among the most high-profile members
of the district’s honeybee community, but
they are certainly not the only bees to
grace the city with their buzzing.
Beekeepers, or apiculturists, have been
The Commercial Appeal Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN 11

modestly keeping bees

within the city limits for
years, their fear of being
discovered slowly
dissipating as places like
the Fairmont and the
South Lawn of the White
House jump on the
bandwagon.
And so the secret life of
urban beekeepers is not
so secret anymore.
Toni Burnham, an urban
beekeeper in the district
since April 2005, has let
her secret slowly seep out Dagny Leonard/MCT
with her blog and activity Italian honeybees buzz in and out of the three hives
within the community. — Casa Bella, Casa Blanca and Casa Bianca — on the
“I’ve not been very good rooftop of the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, D.C.
at keeping a secret, that’s
for sure,” Burnham said as Dr. Eric Mussen, extension environment. Plus, there’s
she spoke fondly of “her apiculturist at UC Davis. the added benefit of all-
girls,” the worker bees Mussen said that hobby natural, hive-grown honey.
who are kept “teenagers beekeeping clubs in the In fact, Burnham said,
for life” by the queen bee. San Francisco and San bees raised in the city
Burnham estimates that Diego areas are often are healthier than
there are around two continuing to grow. those raised in the
dozen beekeepers in the Major cities like New suburbs or in rural areas.
D.C. area. York also are a part of the “There seems to be a lot
And the trend is not beekeeping trend. The less pesticide use in the
limited to the nation’s green movement has been city,” Burnham said. “A lot
capital. taken to a whole new level of the chemicals they use
“What I have found is at by urban beekeepers, who, for mosquito control in the
least here in California, the with each rooftop suburbs, they actually kill
noncommercial beekeeper community, help preserve pollinators.”
numbers seem to have the honeybee population The buzz continues to
increased quite a bit,” said and, in turn, the increase as more people

The green movement has been taken to a whole new

level by urban beekeepers, who help preserve the
honeybee population and, in turn, the environment.
12 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010
become aware of the
impact bees have on the
environment. The
pollination bees provide
is a vital aspect of
agriculture. Those bees
residing on rooftops not
only provide honey, they
also help keep plant life
healthy and happy.
According to a study
conducted at the Bee
Research Laboratory in
Beltsville, Md., in 2008,
there were approximately
3.2 million honeybee
colonies kept by U.S.
beekeepers.
However, there is still
a stigma around bees in
the eyes of many city-
dwellers.
“There’s a lot of fear
out there. People react
to nature as a strange
thing,” Burnham said.
In New York City,
though some beekeepers
prevail, beekeeping is
illegal. The New York
City Health Code states
that no person can
“possess, harbor or keep
wild animals,” which
encompasses “all
venomous insects,
including, but not
limited to, bee, hornet
and wasp.”
But the more publicity
beekeeping gets, the
easier it is to educate
people about the
benefits of keeping bees.
commercialappeal.com
‘Hot’ composting
success takes care
But effort pays off in your garden
By Vincent Standley requires vigilant
SimpleS teps.org stewardship. Location,
aeration, high carbon and
Composting not only nitrogen content,
reduces the waste stream sufficient depth and
and minimizes the moisture are key elements
production of greenhouse to a successful compost.
gases, it produces Here’s how to care and
nutrient-rich humus, a maintain your hot
key ingredient to any compost pile:
sustainable agriculture. Bin: Should be
All organic matter will approximately 3 feet tall,
biodegrade with or wide and deep, and well
without human ventilated, with easy
intervention, but a little access to the pile for
structure and oversight turning with a pitch fork
ensures it happens more or shovel. Bins are
efficiently. readily available from
At home you can build many municipal recycling
a cold or a hot compost. programs and most home
Cold composting and garden stores or you
requires little can build your own.
maintenance and is best Location: Keep away
for leaves and grass from areas that collect
clippings, which can be water. In cooler climates,
piled up and turned once a avoid constant shade. A
month. It works well when spot near the garden will
there is no immediate save on labor.
need for the compost. Aeration: In
Hot composting is addition to a well-
much quicker, producing ventilated bin, adding
usable humus in as little thicker, woody material
as four weeks, but will keep air flowing
The Commercial Appeal
A little structure and oversight ensure organic
matter will biodegrade more efficiently.
throughout the pile.
Carbon and nitrogen:
Maintain a 30-to-1
carbon-to-nitrogen ratio.
Manure or organic
fertilizer can be added to
boost the nitrogen level.
Moisture: The pile
should always be moist
but not soggy. During dry
spells the pile may be
watered; when it’s rainy,
cover to maintain aeration
and prevent leaching.
Temperature: Center
should reach 130 to 160
degrees. Turn the pile
before it exceeds 160
degrees; the temperature
will rise and fall as the
material is turned and
breaks down. The highs
and lows support
different kinds of bacteria
Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN
The Commercial Appeal file photo
important to the process
of decomposition. Too
much nitrogen will make
the pile so hot many of
these bacteria will die.
Here are materials to
compost and the carbon-
to-nitrogen ratios:
Household waste:
fruit scraps, 35:1;
vegetable scraps, 15-20:1;
coffee grounds, 20:1; tea
leaves, 25:1; eggshells,
15:1 (however, the
available nitrogen is much
lower because they take
so long to break down);
and paper, 170-200:1
Yard and garden
waste: deciduous leaves,
20-60:1; pine needles, 60-
100:1; grass clippings, 15-
25:1; and weeds, 25:1.
Other: horse and cow
13
manure, 20-25:1; sawdust,
200-500:1; seaweed, 19:1;
straw, 40-100:1;
mushroom substrate,
13:1; healthy garden soil
contains many desirable
microorganisms and can
be added in small
quantities; ground sea
shells, egg shells, and
lime are low pH and will
help make compost or soil
less acidic.
Materials to avoid:
human and pet waste; meat
and meat byproducts; oil;
dairy products; diseased
plants; invasive plants
gone to seed; yard waste
treated with pesticides and
conventional fertilizers.
Finally, the last 20 years
have seen enormous
strides in municipal
composting. Much of
what can’t be added to an
apartment worm box,
community garden or
backyard compost pile,
can be taken to a city-run
compost.
The next frontier is
cutting into the enormous
quantity of biomass still
going to landfills.
Although the EPA, the
USDA, and many city
governments are making
inroads in this area, the
obstacles remain
formidable.
For more sustainable
living tips, go to
simplesteps.org.
14 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010 commercialappeal.com

Make mine natural

Texas dairy reaps benefits of raw-milk movement
By Sam Hodges
Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — Like most

The FDA’s Web site states that drinking milk that
has not been pasteurized “is inherently
dangerous,” but a growing number of raw-milk
disciples in Texas beg to disagree.
any mom with young
children, Iliana Cantavella is
used to making a run for a
gallon of milk.
But she goes to the tiny
store at Lavon Farms, the last
dairy left in Collin County,
Texas. There, for $8 a gallon,
she buys milk that comes
straight from the registered
Guernsey and Jersey cows
grazing in the fields around.
No pasteurization. No
homogenization. And no
approval from the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration.
Raw milk, it’s called, and
Cantavella is a walking
infomercial. “Since we
switched to raw milk, they
don’t get sick anymore,” the
mother of three said,
standing outside the farm
store with her latest three
gallons. “They used to get
ear infections all the time.”
Although the FDA and
other health agencies
couldn’t be plainer that they
consider milk unsafe until
it’s gone through bacteria-
The Commercial Appeal Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN 15

zapping pasteurization, more and more spread with fields, creeks, barns, silos
people have reached their own and farm houses, as well as stone gates
conclusions and want their milk raw. inscribed with the year the Moore
Influenced by their experience, and family took possession — 1936. But
by documentaries and books making the these days the place is nearly
argument against processed food, they surrounded by development along a six-
see raw milk as natural, healthful, better lane stretch of road that sees an average
tasting, eco-friendly and supportive of of 12,600 cars a day.
small farms. Few stopped at Lavon Farms until it
The trend has given hope to dairies like began selling raw milk. Now, drawn by a
Lavon Farms, which began selling raw plain “Grade A Raw Milk For Sale” sign, or
milk in September and sold 122 gallons by word of mouth or Internet intelligence,
one recent Saturday — its best day yet. the dairy’s store is often hopping.
“We’re finally getting Spend a couple of hours
retail for our product,” “It’s possible to get inside and you’ll hear
said Todd Moore, the everything from nostalgic
third-generation owner of sick from any food. stories about drinking raw
Lavon Farms, which earns ... People should be milk on Grandma’s farm to
about $1.60 a gallon for testimonials about such
milk sold to a cooperative allowed to make milk’s advantages in
that in turn sells to big their own choices homemade yogurt and
processors of pasteurized, cheese. Some swear it
store-bought milk. about what they relieves eczema and
States vary in arrests kids’ tooth decay,
regulating raw milk, with eat and drink.” and can be drunk with
some allowing it in ease by those who thought
JUDITH MCGEARY
groceries and others they were lactose-
raw-milk advocate
forbidding its sale intolerant.
altogether. Texas permits Mallon Noland, a Plano
sales only at the dairy. chiropractor, has become
Just two years ago, Texas had 11 a Lavon Farms regular and said he is
dairies with a Grade A raw-milk retail delighted to have an outlet 10 minutes
license, and nearly all sold only goat from his house.
milk. Now, there are 21 selling cow “I’ve been looking for raw milk for a long
milk, including Lavon Farms. time,” he said, adding that his reading
Cooperatives such as Raw Milk convinced him that it’s nutritionally
Dallas, whose members take turns superior to pasteurized milk.
driving to a dairy to buy for the group, But there’s no fight like a food fight,
are also popping up. and the debate about raw milk is
“Our biggest order was for 86 gallons, conducted across the Internet and
and we average about 40,” said Tiffany beyond. The FDA states on its Web site:
Rider, who as co-op leader often makes the “Raw milk is inherently dangerous, and
11/2-hour run to Nors Dairy in Hill County. it should not be consumed by anyone at
Lavon Farms is a rolling, 200-acre any time,” then lists pathogens that raw
16 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010
milk can contain,
including E. coli and
Listeria.
Echoing the FDA’s
concern is
the Centers
for Disease
Control and
Prevention,
which links raw
milk
consumption to
1,505 illnesses,
185
hospitalizations
and two deaths
between 1993 and
2006.
Gene Wright, milk
group program manager
for the Texas Department
of State Health Services,
said state inspectors visit
raw-milk dairies about
every six weeks and take
samples for lab testing. He
contends that
pasteurization is one of the
great public health success
stories and strongly agrees
with the FDA that
drinking unpasteurized
milk is too risky.
Roberta Anding is a
registered dietitian and
professor at Baylor College
of Medicine in Houston.
She’s a fan of local produce
and small farms, but
unconvinced by claims of
special nutritional benefits
for raw milk, and shares
safety concerns.
“You almost have to
commercialappeal.com
Garland, and his “Lucky
Layla Farms”
drinkable yogurts
and specialty
cheeses, made
from pasteurized
batches of his
cows’ milk, are
sold at Whole
Foods and local
farmers markets.
He and wife
Deanna give their two
young boys raw milk,
and he’s eloquent on why
he prefers to let his cows
roam free, eating mostly
grass, some grain, but
come down with the never giving them growth
FDA,” she said. hormones or keeping
But raw-milk advocates them in close-quarter
such as Judith McGeary, containment, as is typical
of the Austin-based Farm with big dairies.
and Ranch Freedom Moore is elated at his
Alliance, want to make raw-milk sales and thinks
raw milk more widely the income could help
available. keep the Plano farm as a
“It’s possible to get working dairy.
sick from any food. If you But he agrees raw milk
want to stop food-borne can be risky. He invites
illness, stop eating,” she customers to check out
said. “People should be his milking parlor and
allowed to make their says he does his own
own choices about what safety tests on every raw-
they eat and drink.” milk batch.
In the middle, “We welcome
interestingly enough, is regulation.... If somebody
Moore, of Lavon Farms. gets sick and dies from
He’s a small-dairy, raw milk, it’s over for
local-foods champion who everybody,” he said.
has won national titles For now, raw milk is
showing his Guernseys. riding high, and Lavon
Some years back, he Farms’ unpaved driveway
established a creamery in is getting a workout.
The Commercial Appeal
Manure-to-energy plan causes stink
By P.J. Huffstutter
Los Angeles Times
STANISLAUS COUNTY, Calif. —
Central California is home to nearly 1.6
million dairy cows and their manure —
up to 192 million pounds per day.
But for dairyman John Fiscalini, the
dung on his farm is renewable gold: He’s
converting it into electricity.
At his farm outside Modesto, a torrent
of water washes across the barn’s
concrete floor several times a day,
flushing tons of manure away from his
herd of fuzzy-faced Holsteins and into
nearby tanks. There, bacteria consume
the waste and release methane, which is
then burned in a generator capable of
producing enough power to run
Fiscalini’s 530-acre farm, his cheese
factory and 200 additional homes.
But Fiscalini’s efforts to convert cow
pies into power have sparked
controversy. State air quality control
regulators say these “dairy digester”
systems can generate pollution
themselves.
The idea of turning biological waste
into fuel has been around for centuries.
Technologies vary, but the idea is to
extract methane from decomposing
organic material, remove impurities and
burn it for heat, light or transport.
But air regulators point out that
methane is not the only worrisome gas
that pollutes. Like an internal
combustion engine in a car, the
generators used to convert the methane
into electricity produce nitrogen oxides,
which exacerbate smog problems. In the
Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN 17
San Joaquin Valley, which has some of the
country’s dirtiest air, officials say it is
their job to curtail ozone pollution.
That stance has come as a shock to
dairy farmers such as Fiscalini, whose
$4-million digester system was set up
out of frustration with regulators
wanting him to fight methane pollution.
He believed that digester systems,
especially ones that converted the waste
into electricity, would eventually be
mandatory.
“I figured I might as well try to do this
now and do some good,” Fiscalini said.
He received $1.5 million in grants
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
and the California Energy Commission,
which was promoting the use of biogas
digesters, and started construction in
2007.
But in 2008, when work was halfway
complete, officials from the San Joaquin
Valley Air Pollution Control District
blocked the farm from firing up the
engine.
The concern: nitrogen oxides.
Fiscalini then spent several hundreds
of thousands of dollars on a catalytic
converter and other filtering equipment
to meet the air district’s limit of 11 parts
per million of nitrogen oxides for new
digester systems.
But his worries are far from over. The
digester has been running for only nine
months, and he’s already had to replace
some of the filtering equipment and
repair the generator twice.
“I wonder, sometimes, why I ever
thought this was a good idea,” Fiscalini
said.
18 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010 commercialappeal.com

How well do you know

your fish sticks?
As healthy as fish can be for us to eat, with their lean flesh and
heart-healthy fats, for their survival it’s vital we make sustainable
choices. Test what you know about the fishes in the seas:

1. Which restaurant has more responsible fish choices on the

menu?
A) McDonald’s
B) Nobu
C) T.G.I. Friday’s

2. What method is the best for catching fish without harming

other organisms or ecosystems?
A) Trolling (dragging hook and line)
B) Trawling (dragging fish nets)
C) Dredging (dragging nets along the ocean floor)

Illustration by Jason H. Whitley/The Sun News/MCT

The Commercial Appeal
3. True or false: Fish are
not seasonal foods.
A) True
B) False
4. Who’s in charge of
protecting oceans and
coastal areas in the U.S.?
A) Regional governments
B) State governments
C) The federal government
D) All of the above
5. True or false:
Fishermen’s bait is often an
invasive species.
A) True
B) False
6. How much of the
world’s oceans are protected
from overfishing and other
destructive practices?
A) 10 percent
B) 5 percent
C) 1 percent
ANSWERS:
1. A. Although McDonald’s
isn’t exactly known for an
eco-friendly menu, the
pollock used in McDonald’s
Filet-o-Fish sandwiches may
actually defy your
expectations. The 43.2 million
pounds of fish the chain
purchases annually come
from fisheries certified as
well-managed by the London-
based Marine Stewardship
Council. Trendy restaurant
Nobu, on the other hand, has
made a successful business
of selling fish bordering on
extinct, like bluefin tuna.
2. A. Trawling is a method of
industrial fishing that involves
Sunday, March 21, 2010 | GOING GREEN
dragging fishing nets behind a
boat, sometimes along the
ocean floor and other times in
midwater. Dredging also
involves dragging large nets
along the ocean floor to
capture bottom-dwelling fish
species. Both methods can be
destructive to marine habitats
and coral reefs; bottom
trawling can clear an area of
ocean floor 150 times larger
than the amount of forests
clear cut around the world
each year. And fishermen who
use these methods throw back
an estimated 25 percent of
their harvest as “bycatch,” fish
that have no economic value
but are vital to maintaining
healthy ecosystems.
3. B. Anyone who’s heard
that you should eat oysters
only in months with R’s in
them should know that fish
have a season. But improved
methods of freezing and a
global fish market have made
it possible to get any fish at
any time of year. When you’re
eating fish, try to think locally
and seasonally, just as you
would with produce. Your local
department of natural
resources or fish and game
service should have a list of
what fish are available locally
and in season, but cross-
check those with local fish
advisories to make sure you’re
not consuming fish high in
mercury, PCBs, dioxin or other
environmental contaminants.
4. C. The feds are in charge
of watching over oceans and
coastal waters, but like most
areas the federal government
19
oversees, they’re governed by
a patchwork of 20 agencies
that have cobbled together
140 laws. That makes it
difficult to have coherent
agreement on how to protect
fisheries and other marine
habitats.
5. A. Recreational hunters
and anglers are among the
most active conservationists,
considering that their sport
depends on the health of the
environment. But fishermen
who use the wrong kind of
bait could be committing
unintentional harm by
releasing nonnative species,
like earthworms and crawfish,
into the aquatic environment.
These seemingly innocuous
creatures can eat up
underwater vegetation that
fish and other species survive
on, and many states now
regulate what types of bait
you can use. Before fishing,
check out your local
department of natural
resources, or whichever
agency authorizes fish
licenses, to find out which
baits are legal; bait shops can
slip invasive species past
local law enforcement.
6. C. Considering that
oceans cover two-thirds of
the earth’s surface, 1 percent
is an extremely tiny portion,
which is why making the best
seafood choices you can is
vitally important to
preserving fish populations
for your kids and grandkids.
For more sustainable
living tips, go to
simplesteps.org.
20 GOING GREEN | Sunday, March 21, 2010 commercialappeal.com

EARTH TALK

Nanotubes: Not your dad’s batteries

Dear Earth Talk: What is the potential of carbon have formed carbon
“nanotubes,” which have been described as the biggest molecules into tiny
breakthrough in battery technology in years? springs that store as
much electricity as same
The rechargeable than lithium-ion batteries sized lithium-ion batteries
lithium-ion batteries now while keeping their charge but can maintain a charge
so common in everything and remain durable for far while dormant for years
from iPods to hybrid cars longer. and work well in
can store twice the energy Technicians skilled in temperature extremes.
of similarly sized nickel- working with matter at Stanford University
metal hydride batteries the molecular (nano) researchers have created
and up to six times as much level can arrange pure ink made from carbon
as their lead-acid carbon molecules in nanotubes that can be
progenitors. cylindrical structures that drawn onto paper where
But these advances are are both strong and it serves as a high-
only a small evolutionary flexible. They can store capacity rechargeable
step from the world’s first more electricity than any energy storage medium.
battery designed by currently available And University of
Alessandro Volta in 1800. technology. Maryland scientists have
With battery technology These tubes, each only created nanostructures
advances long overdue, billionths of a meter wide, able to store and
researchers are racing to become highly efficient, transport power at 10
develop more efficient electrically conductive times the energy density
ways to store power. One pipes for storing and of lithium-ion batteries.
hopeful option is in the use providing power. Send questions to Earth
of carbon nanotubes, Electrical engineers at Talk, P.O. Box 5098,
which can store much the Massachusetts Westport, CT 06881 or e-mail
more electricity by weight Institute of Technology earthtalk@emagazine.com.

Just one thing

Buy energy-saving products in bulk to save money. Ask your co-workers or neighbors
if they want to buy pricier green products together — compact fluorescent light bulbs,
surge protectors, outdoor solar lighting — and then buy them through an online
wholesaler to save money. The more you order, the lower the per-unit cost will be. Be
sure to get everything shipped by ground; it uses less fuel than air shipping.