High Park Fire

Two weeks ago a lightning strike during a thunder storm in the foothills some 25 miles west of us started a fire.  15 days on, it has burned over 81,000 acres and is still going strong.  Depending on the wind, we can wake up, as we did this morning, with the house full of smoke.  

We have been short of rain this spring and the ground is extremely dry.  Temperatures have been steady in the 90s and have exceeded 100 several days in the last week.

While looking online for the latest news on the fire this morning, I came across The chirpy headline:

"Colorado's High Park fire competes with blazes across the state" with this map:

And this after reading about the rain and floods Britain has been experiencing.  Nothing like a bit of contrast.

Shaggy Dogs

Such a long time since my last post.  One recent thing that has been keeping us busy is below:

Thing One and Thing Two

Or, as you can see, two things.  These are MacKenzie and Mabel.  Two Lhasa Apso dogs that Sally is fostering for the local Humane Society (I suppose this is the equivalent of the RSPCA).  These two little doggies are puppy mill refugees and probably not the best thing to initiate us dog virgins into the wonderful world of doggie care.  We were told that they were mother and daughter, Mabel being about two years old and MacKenzie about nine months.  Mabel is very protective of MacKenzie and will follow her around, which is useful, as neither of them will tolerate a lead.  If allowed, they would sit in their crate all day coming out only when no one is looking to eat or evacuate.

Mabel & MacKenzie

They are sweet and mild mannered in the extreme.  We are slowly, slowly acquainting them with the big outdoors, and have, after about a week of fostering, finally seen an upright tail.   We've had some small success in house training; I fear Sally in inclined to sleep too late to really knock this on the head.  No idea how long they will be with us.  But kinda fun for now.

Another year....

No one could accuse me of being a dynamo when it comes to housekeeping or decorating.  Self knowledge was one of the reasons that I was so reluctant to buy the house we now live in, for, although pristinely maintained, it is a true child of it's time.  1976 - the decade that taste forgot, as one of my acquaintance calls it.  Not having pots of money for remodeling, my own idleness (along with that of other unnamed members of the household) has me trapped in the tasteless.  So I am particularly pleased to have finally finished a truly green renovation of our family bathroom.  Green, for obvious reasons (see colour of bath and toilet) but green, because, rather than remove these perfectly working monstrosities, I was able to see past my prejudice and realise that this particular green is in decorating vogue at the moment.  I was able to choose from dozens of fabrics that matched the hue exactly.  Much less wasteful to add a bit of matching fabric and a lick of paint.  Substantially less expensive.  Finally livable.

After

 Before

After

Before

The real reason I'm posting these here is because although my bothersome brother can make it up from Colorado Springs to Loveland, he cannot manage to make it up my stairs to admire my handiwork.

So there you have it.  One room down, 11 more to go.  Sigh.  Actually I have just started removing the most bizarre wallpaper from my workroom.  It is a large plaid pattern of mustard yellow, pale green of the toilet colour variety, and ochre with minute flecks of gold string.  Oddly, there is something about it that I have come to rather like.  It is a heavy vinyl, easily removed, and I think I may just try to sell it on e-bay to some 70s enthusiast.  (I know you're out there.)  Although as I write, I realise that I have made the most colossal mistake of not having photographed it in situ first.

On the subject of bathrooms, before we bought this house, we referred to it as the Japanese basin house, as it has a fairly bizarre basin in the cloakroom.   Our little cat, princess decided recently that it was just the perfect size for her.  How silly is that?  (Maybe so, but you have to agree, that apart from anything else, doesn't it bring out the colour of my eyes?)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving sees us at my sister's in Laramie again. She has a handsome flock of four hens and two ducks. Sally and Spencer were very happy to feed them and both remembered with fondness our own hens in Leigh.

The Homeowners' Association where we now live prohibits poultry - heaven alone knows why - There is a level of gentrification to which they aspire I imagine. As I am on the HOA committee, perhaps I can persuade them of the error of their thinking. (This would probably work better if I kept my plot in immaculate condition - I don't.)

In any event, the birds were unaware that, as they were being fed here, a cousin was being readied to feed us for our Thanksgiving feast. How callous, but very tasty it was.

Autumn in the Rockies

This is Spencer walking home from school earlier this week.

One day it was 80 degrees, the next we had 8 inches of snow.

Today it was 17 degrees when we woke up. Of course, this is not all that unsual. It’s not an annual occurrence, but it happens often enough for everyone to have their own story about 19sometime or other when….. The most heartbreaking thing is that this sort of snow, falling before the leaves have had a chance to, weighs so heavily on the branches of trees that they break. A neighbour had the most beautiful young oak tree. It was a perfect shape, and was only just beginning to turn from green to the brightest red imaginable. At least three of the main branches have split from the trunk.

October brings the annual round of cider making. This year was perfect autumnal activity, but had to be split into two weekends, as, after a few hours on the first Saturday, the motor for the press broke. My clever and capable brothers sorted it out, and we proceeded the following Saturday with a total pressing of some 230 gallons.

The cider press

The Barn with the washing tumbler and apple masher on the right.

Fort Collins hosts something called ‘The Sustainable Living Fair’ every year. I have taken it upon myself to volunteer at the fair, which enables me to spend half a day working amongst like-minded people, and the rest of the day wandering around the fair (and has nothing to do with the fact thats they provide volunteers with lunch and a draft [Colorado sports an admirable number of small independent brewers]). To be honest, the majority of the stuff is greenwashed consumerism, but there are bits and pieces that are worthwhile. I was working in the “Eat Local” tent, where one talk was about hunting. Not quite up my street, but to be fair, what more honest way to obtain sustainable and wholesome meat? A second talk was by the local chapter of the Weston A Price Foundation. Now I’ve known about the Weston A Price Foundation since Sally was small, and have a great deal of time for them. I had no idea they had local chapters, however, and was delighted to discover this one. I’m a fully paid member now and this will probably lead me further down my path of obsessive quality food procurement.

To that end, I have finally organized the purchase of a cow share, so that I can buy raw milk – that being the only way to do so in Colorado – each state has it’s own laws about whether or not and how citizens may buy and consume this dangerous substance.

What is most peculiar is that this milk does not sour quickly. When I drank raw milk obtained from Bore Place, it would sour after three or four days. Here, for some reason, the milk is fresh and drinkable for up to ten days. What could be the difference? Bacteria in the air? Altitude? Aridity? It bewilders me as much as the fact that I have difficulty in getting my clothes clean here, despite the fact that the water is so much softer. Spilled tea on my shirt: something I never thought twice about in Leigh, must be stain-treated prior to laundering, and even then it may not come clean.

Halloween is almost upon us, and I have some serious concerns about my son. He was asking me the other day whether he had to go Trick-or-Treating. I suspect the query had something to do with my refusal to buy him a $50 costume.

Another Summer Comes to a Close

Summer ends and I am remiss about posting here. Was supposed to have written about our journey to Santa Fe in early June. Sally spent a week there with my sister (she of the straw bale house) and Andrew, Spencer, my brother, Jim, and I drove down to spend a weekend and bring her home again. Here is Spencer in Santa Fe Market.

Last week she began classes at Front Range Community College, which is just 11 miles up the road from us. She chose to go this route for two reasons: 1. She hasn’t yet decided what she would like to study, but wants to carry on with higher education. She can undertake general studies here which she will be able to apply to whatever degree course she ultimately chooses, and 2. Community College tuition is easily half of standard university tuition, and Colorado universities guarantee to accept with full credit, the courses taken at Colorado community colleges. Moreover, those courses tend to be smaller and more individualized than Uni courses. It’s really a no-brainer.

She got a job at McDonald’s in late June, but it has been most unsatisfactory from day one, when she turned up for her orientation along with five others and waited for 45 minutes before being told the orientation was cancelled, to the five week delay in providing her with her first paycheck. which she received only last week.

I have been working nearly every day including Sundays for some six weeks. A colleague passed away quite suddenly, and I have been working several of her shifts. In addition, the library is undertaking a project and we all have the opportunity to pick up some extra hours.

I had my bike retrofitted with a motor so that I could ride to work. The library is just under four miles away, so within easy distance, but there is this major hill on the way home. Of course it is on the way to work as well, but obviously one way is down which is no problem, and the other way….. Anyway, I employ the motor for just one minute up this hill each day. One still pedals, but it feels no more onerous than pedaling on a flat surface. It’s terrific. The only downside being the weight of the batteries; they must weigh 40lbs, making the bike seriously heavy.

Graduation

One down and one to go - although it will be some eight years before Spencer holds his own diploma. He is goo-gooing around here with his sister's mortarboard.

And here she is before the ceremony. If we hadn't booked and paid for the gown several months ago, I'm sure she wouldn't have bothered attending the ceremony. Something I knew, having done this too long ago to remember, is that all American graduation ceremonies are accompanied by Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance/Land of Hope and Glory. Sally was astonished when she heard it at the rehearsal. "That's English! What are they playing that for?" Yet it has been used for American graduations since 1905 - just three years after it was written. Another thing the two countries have in common and most probably don't know about.

Parents were given a bossy little list of things they were and weren't allowed to do. One wasn't allowed to take photos in the stadium - that was the preserve of a professional, who would then charge big bucks for prints. One also wasn't supposed to use air horns (a more modern form of the vuvuzela), sparklers or other fireworks. One parent decided that party poppers would be just the ticket, and pulled a few of them when their darling collected his or her diploma. This foolhardy act set off the fire alarm and the ceremony was duly interrupted so that we could all evacuate until the serious breach was investigated. What a world we live in. It'll make for a mildly amusing anecdote in years to come I suppose.

So the children are out of school, the neighbourhood pool is open, and we have three months of summer holidays to look forward to. More of which later.

Happy Easter

I regularly get e-mails from American contacts lamenting the loss of respect for the Christian values and traditions upon which this country was built (much like England then...), but where are these people when it comes to Easter? This country is business as usual this time of year. No acknowledgement of Good Friday - school as usual for the children - nor of Easter Monday. Sunday, most people are off anyway, and if you want to go shopping, try to spend plenty of money - it's good for the economy! Shameful.

For some years I have decorated an egg or two to add to my collection of eggs to hang on some branches brought inside. Last year my cats knocked the whole thing over, and I haven't had the heart to set it up this year, although I made the effort to buy some white eggs (most of the market in eggs here is white - I never saw a brown egg growing up - but, now, most organic eggs are brown.) for a lemon curd dessert just so that I could blow and decorate the eggs. I did so beautifully yesterday, only to knock the hollow shells (all but one) onto the floor during a careless moment making dinner last night. No better than my cats.

I made hot cross buns Friday, and, having found some marzipan that didn't cost the earth at the funny grocery store mentioned in yesterday's post, had planned to make a simnel cake, but that hasn't risen to the top of the list yet, perhaps an Easter Monday activity? There will be a family dinner at a brother's house this afternoon, but this won't be without drama, as he has omitted to invite one member of the family over a petty disagreement - which he and his wife obviously don't feel is petty at all. Families - who'd have'em?

April Snows!

I woke up this morning (23 April for crying out loud) to this unwelcome sight, and the wrenching realization that I’d left my fuchsia and euphorbia outside last night. Fortunately, they have both survived and will recover the cold damage suffered. The snow had melted by 10am, and so we must think of it as nothing more than sorely needed precipitation. I prefer rain.

I’ve just been listening to a podcast of The Food Programme which always serves to add to my ambivalence about the food differences between the USA and UK.

On the one hand, I have been buying organic apples and pears for $1/lb or less since January. I have also discovered a local ‘re-store’ that stocks food that is minutes away from its sell-by date at significantly reduced prices. You never know what you will find on the shelves, but can be assured that you will find new and interesting products that you wouldn’t ordinarily buy, but they are inexpensive enough that you are happy to give it a try.

Who knows where they get this stuff (actually a brief conversation with the owner confirms that there are international brokers for this kind of food – who knew?). In any event, last week saw Lyon’s digestive biscuits – both chocolate and normal – on the shelves at .99c and $1.29 respectively, and now I have something like 20 packets of each stored in my garage. Digestive biscuits are not something we even miss that much, but it’s nice to have access to them for just a taste of home. We also found some thin rice cakes – something we miss enormously, but hadn’t otherwise been able to find, which led to an internet search of the brand and a purchase of a case from Amazon no less.

On the other hand I wanted to buy some crème fraiche yesterday only to discover that it is stocked only in the deli section for a mere $7 for 4oz!!!!. (I bought some cream and buttermilk to make my own - 8 oz for $3) Cream is not an item commonly bought in the USA. The only cream available is ‘heavy whipping cream’. No single or double. It is always ‘ultra-pasteurized’ – even the organic varieties. Sigh. Americans are so very happy to lie down and accept whatever big business sells them. This is not to say that Farmers Markets don’t exist, nor that you can’t find small producers who do produce quality food, just that they are harder to find, and that their prices are more like I use to pay in the UK, and when you convert that UK price to dollars, the number seems horrific.

The UK consumer seems to have more influence than their American counter-part. It might be because they are better informed – who knows? I do know that if I ever start spouting off about GMO foods here, people’s eyes glaze over, and they look bewildered that I should be concerned

Too busy to say much

Oughtn’t let another month go by without some signs of life. I wish I saw more of them outside. These interminable (albeit sunny) winters are on my Sad To be Here list. Having said that, I went out to pick the first shoots of parsley (from last year’s plants) yesterday to put in a salad, and to my great delight, spied the first shoots of my tarragon. It is meant to be hardy, but you never know around here. Neither the rosemary or the sage are showing any signs of life. Nor do any trees, despite the official start of spring 10 days ago.

Odd Daffodils started blooming last week. They are funny creatures, their stems rarely exceeding six or seven inches, and whenever I see a clump, I imagine they are miniatures, because they are so short.

I have managed to procure a job at the Loveland Library. Part-time, minimum wage, no benefits. Woo Hoo! It is what I had been working for (having volunteered there since last May), but it is severely depressing to think that, at the age of 54, I am working for minimum wage. I did the same job 33 years ago for my university work-study award (a guaranteed job at university to help students pay for their tuition and fees), and was paid better than minimum wage then. Sigh. The good news is that the people are lovely, and it’s a pleasure to go to work.

We have added two zebra finches to our household. My sister has a number of finches, and some of them are breeding. She gave a pair of her offspring to Sally. These are only 3 months old now, and already I have removed six eggs from their nest. (removed because I’m advised that they are not ready to breed before they are a year old) You can imagine what fun the cats are having.

New Year's Eve

As the annual influx of Christmas circular letters arrive in my letterbox (those things I neatly – or otherwise – avoid by pointing people to this page), I think back to the highlights of my own year and realise that there are a few things I haven’t written about but pop up in my mind instantly as significant bits of the year.

Small things - For example, in March, Sally and I both had our hair cut. I found a salon in Ft Collins that would cut hair for free if you acted as a model. Sally was a model for an apprentice to practice on. I was a model for the stylist to demonstrate to the apprentices how to deal with a client. We both loved the results and for me anyway, it saw a fairly fundamental change in my look. This photo was taken two months later in Glenwood Springs.

In April, Sally asked me to take her to a Jonsi concert in Denver. A little reluctant to go (such a palaver, driving to Denver – and what a wonderful time for our GPS to pack up!) I was, never the less, pleased that – apart from needing a ride to the concert – she would actually tolerate going with me. In the event, it was fantastic, and we are both big fans now of this music, and more often than not, it is our music of choice on car journeys.

Spencer signed up for a basketball team in November and we managed to find a free-standing basketball hoop on freecycle. He has been out most days shooting a few. The first game was a heartsinking 42 – 2 score, but his team won every other game they played.

That's him with the arrow pointing at his back.

Andrew had two trips to the UK, the second of which saw a meeting that, in his words “could not have gone better if I had scripted it myself.” So perhaps that will prove the beginnings of a highlight or indeed, life-changing deal for next year. (what?, income?) You’ve all been told so many times to watch this space. I continue watching as I have no choice.

Can it really be ten years since we celebrated the change from the 20^th to the 21^st century? This new year’s eve will see us driving down to Longmont to join in a traditional family dinner followed by card games and a white elephant gift exchange. My mother normally hosts this jamboree, and it is strictly over by 10pm – which I love. This year, my youngest brother will be hosting, so we may stay until 10:30

Happy New Year to you all.

We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing...

Thanksgiving spent in sunny Laramie, Wyoming with my sister & her family again this year. Laramie is about 70 miles north, but some 2000 feet higher in altitude, and significantly colder whatever the time of year. My sister told us to bring warm clothes so that we could take the children sledding.

Warm clothes were required, as the temperature was in the teens (well below freezing) and the windchill took it to below zero F. This is my brother, Jim, Sally, and Spencer getting ready to break necks. When you inevitably careen off the sled, the resulting face-full of snow melts on contact, but then freezes almost immediately again, so you are left with mini-icicles on your eyebrows and eyelashes. I see from the news, that Britain is in the grip of cold temperatures and snow again, but we really don't know we're born when it comes to cold.

This sledding area was just 15 minutes or so from the town. Sally, a senior in high-school now, is in the process of making applications to universities. She applied to the Univ of Wyoming, which is in Laramie (my brother-in law is a professor at the Uni, which is why they live there). Tuition and fees are quite a bit less expensive there than in Colorado. However, before we had even arrived at my sister's house, Sally said there was NO WAY she wanted to spend winter in Laramie.

I dunno - you can go cross county skiing in the same park, and it costs nothing other than equipment and time.

She'll kill me for posting this, but it is a tradition in the USA for seniors in high school to have a portrait taken. Nowadays it is almost compulsory to have them taken outside, draped around a tree or fence or something, which neither Sally or I particularly wanted. I wasn't expecting Mona Lisa either.....

Apologies to those of you who received our Christmas card at the end of LAST month. Andrew took another trip to the UK then, and I thought we might save a bit by having him take Christmas cards over and buy postage there. He was to have asked a friend to post them at the beginning of December, but he forgot that bit, and thought he'd be helpful by posting them himself in October. Sigh.

Autumn arrives

September is nearly over and our second summer saw me participating in the County Fair. Frankly, it’s nothing like as nice as the Leigh Summer Show. I may be accused of nursing sour grapes because I only won second place for my entry (but get a load of my official ribbon!).

What I didn’t like is that you hand over your entry for judging, and then the show officials take on the task of staging your exhibit. I have to say the staging was such rubbish that I couldn’t find the exhibit that won first prize in the class I’d entered. In addition, the county is so large that it’s all anonymous. You’d have to enter for years before you began to have an inkling of who your competitors were.

Spencer might have given some people a run for their money this year with a cabbage he grew. In order to encourage children, some organization or other provided these vegetable starts to school children and devised a competition to see who could grow the biggest cabbage. Having never grown cabbage before (I’ve always rather felt with cabbage, there was not much point for some reason), I am amazed at the size of this thing. You can see that the slugs were also very appreciative.

I've started a bit of volunteering. A couple of hours a week at the library, and during August, at ‘The High Plains Environmental Center’, which undertakes work comparable to that at the wonderful Bore Place, which I still miss daily. Hoping in either case that the volunteering may lead to paid work at some stage, but I’m not exactly holding my breath. We were told this month that the recession officially ended LAST July. As the news itself took a year to trickle down, I’m rather thinking that it will take another year for the reality to do so, and perhaps by this time next year, a job will come begging. Ho!

Two Years On

And so it has been two years now since we arrived on these shores. Things have a way of repeating themselves, however, making it seem as if little has changed – or maybe as if we are in a version of the film ‘Groundhog Day’.

This time last year, Andrew had gone off to the UK for two weeks, and I was doing some census work. This year, Andrew has gone off to the UK for two weeks, and I am, again, doing some census work. Go figure. If I am doing census work this time next year, somebody shoot me.

Sally and Spencer started school last week; both looking forward to it after 12 weeks of lolling around here. Spencer is in the 4^th grade, but would have been in year 5 at Leigh school. Sally, a senior in high school, and due to 'graduate' is busy looking at ‘colleges’ to attend – although has no specific 'major' or field of study in mind to my knowledge. She is leaning towards art courses – I would hope she might do more with it than I.

We are still having temperatures that skirt the 90s, more often, now on the cooler side of that figure, but today it is a cloudy and chilly 66 out there. Who’d’ve ever thought one might consider 66 degrees chilly? And I discover, when I wake sometime between 5am & 6am that it is darker and darker. Sigh, with kiddos in school, cooler temperatures, and shorter days, I’m already going into an autumnal funk.

I can be brought out of it fairly quickly though when out in the garden harvesting. Yellow summer squash (sometimes known as crookneck or straightneck) is a personal favourite – for some reason not grown or marketed in the UK - and my one plant has produced so much that the children are pleading for us to have something else for once. Loads of cucumbers – grown outside no less – are also proving troublesome. I juice one most days, but what to do with the rest?

We are amply able to appreciate seasonal produce from the grocery store as well, and it is with great delight that we find that Colorado Peaches are ripe and can be had for 99c(64p)/lb. Imagine. Cantaloupe melon is also another Colorado stalwart and is in the market now for, perhaps $1 a melon or 30c/lb. And while these items can be had at any time of the year, it seems that prices reflect the seasonality of foods here to a much greater extent than they did at home.

Those of you who pay attention will notice that even after two years, I still think of Leigh as home. Now there was a garden.....

Summer holidays

Here is one time of year that I find I’m very 'glad to be here', as we realise that for many of our English friends, the summer holidays have just begun this week, whereas we have already enjoyed two glorious months of summer holidays.

June 26^th, saw us making a three-hour drive to Avon, Colorado. This is just three miles or so from Vail, which most of you will have heard of, and less than a mile away from Beaver Creek. Colorado Ski country. I didn’t know much about this area, despite growing up in Colorado, but made the unremarkable discovery that it’s lovely (if you can ignore the rape of the mountainsides that the ski-runs necessarily entail).

My mother has a time- share condominium in Avon, hence our stay, but as cheap holidays go, the expense of doing anything in this part of the world geared to tourism made it unsuccessful on that score. Other than hiking, which is largely free, any other activity usually involved an expenditure in the range of $200 for the four of us.

However, I can highly recommend the 18 mile bike ride down Vail canyon and would do it any day of the week. Here is Sally, at 17 and one day, who probably enjoyed herself as well.

I also had a fabulous time spotting and trying to identify wildflowers, which were out in profusion. These are columbines (no one here calls them aquilegias), the state flower, which were accompanied

by wild delphiniums, geraniums, violets, orchids, huckleberries, penstemons, and dozens of others I don't yet know. To my great delight, one day we took a trail which led us alternately through two aspen groves and pine forests, only to have the third aspen grove carpeted with bracken. It was my first sighting of bracken here, and, even though one is aware of it's reputation as a thug, I was thrilled to see it as it reminded me of home.

Summer is Here

It’s disorienting somehow to think back to just over two short weeks ago and recall that snow was falling from the sky. We had two snowstorms in early May, and yet, on Saturday last week, I was helping out at the neighbourhood swimming pool, getting it ready for the kiddos to splash around. And, as it was a hot 80 something degrees, splash around they did.

They finished school last Friday, 21 May, and I’m so happy to have them home. Sally is trying to find a summer job in the hope that we can get an additional car for her when she obtains her drivers’ license sometime in July. I have signed Spencer up for a short ‘summer camp’ (for this is what the Americans like to call any arrangement for children during the summer months – even something like this five mornings in early June) called something like ‘Grow a Rainbow’ where he will learn a little about vegetable gardening.

Yesterday saw me making final preparations to my newly dug vegetable bed, where I planted a row of beets, carrots, spinach, and some spring onions. My pre-sprouted squash, cucumbers, and possibly some cantaloupe, are now fending for themselves in the garden along with tomatoes and my goodness it’s lovely to be out in the dirt.

I hedge with ‘possibly some cantaloupe’ because while I had the seeds nestled safely in their cells on top of the washing machine earlier, one of the cats decided to jump up and toppled the entire tray off onto the floor. Some of them had already sprouted, and I did my best to save what was there, but the labels, by then, were useless. I expect I will recognise them when they start fruiting

Not me today, but a Mercola.com article I read and copy in full below. I thought I was reasonably clued up on Agra business, but the size of these subsidies made my eyes pop. I think it may be time to write a letter. One is sick of hearing politicians wring their hands about obesity, and more of us need to be aware. I'm sure the situation is mimicked to an extent in the UK, and in any event, that good old American influence pertains. It's long, but worth reading.

OBESITY CONSPIRACY: The U.S. Government Scandal that's Really Making You Fat

A decade ago, an American woman's waist, on average, was close to two inches smaller than. Eighteen year olds are 15 pounds heavier than they were in the 1970s.
One reason is federal subsidies for food production. Take a look at these numbers:

Meat/Dairy -- 73.8 percent
Grains -- 13.2 percent
Sugar/Oil/Starch/Alcohol -- 10.7 percent
Nuts/Legumes -- 1.9 percent
Vegetables/Fruits -- 0.4 percent

That’s right – just 1.9 percent for nuts and legumes and 0.4 percent for fruits and vegetables. As a result, a salad often costs you more than a Big Mac.
Sources:
Treehugger March 15, 2010
The New York Times April 26, 2010

This Treehugger article contains several interesting charts and graphs that are well worth taking a closer look at. But it should come as no surprise that federal subsidies for certain kinds of food will directly influence the production and subsequent consumption of that food.
As you can see in the list above, the US food subsidies are grossly skewed, creating a diet excessively high in factory-farmed meats, grains and sugars, with very little fresh fruits and vegetables or healthy fats from nuts and seeds.

The Root of the Problem

I believe many of our society’s chronic health problems could be resolved if attention was paid, at the highest levels of government, to the root problem – our agricultural subsidies.
If growers of subsidized fresh vegetables were in a clear majority, you might start to see some fine advertising campaigns promoting the consumption of those veggies…
Unfortunately, the Department of Agriculture is deeply entrenched with the agri-business, and current legislations protect the profits of these large industries at the expense of public health.
In fact, the agriculture lobby is more powerful than even the pharmaceutical industry! You don’t hear about it as often, but the ramifications of their political influence are just as hazardous to your health as that of Big Pharma.
Sadly, you also see this influence in nutrition science. It is actually not designed to help you make sound dietary choices but rather to allow food companies to make health claims to increase profits, and this is a primary reason why you cannot get sound dietary advice from your government.
Take the Food Pyramid, for example. Back in 2005, when the updated food pyramid was unveiled, nutritionist Luise Light, a former USDA insider and contributing architect of the original version of the Food Guide Pyramid, exposed how the US government bows to industry interests and plays a key role in the obesity epidemic.
As this recent New York Times article states, “Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that we’re supposed to eat less of.”

US Government Subsidizes Fast Food

The food crops currently subsidized are corn, soy, wheat and rice. What do you end up with?
A fast food diet!
And what many fail to remember (or don’t realize) is that the farm bill has a direct impact on what your child gets fed in school, for example, and what food assistance programs will distribute to poorer households.
It’s quite clear that the farm bill creates a negative feedback loop that maintains the status quo of the standard American diet. Because by subsidizing the farming of corn and soy, the US government is also actively supporting a diet that consists of these grains in their processed form, namely high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, and grain-fed cattle – all of which are known contributors to obesity and chronic diseases.
(In addition, let’s not forget that the vast majority of these two crops are also genetically modified, which in and of itself is a major health hazard!)
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is perhaps the most obvious example of how the farm bill destroys health, as opposed to promoting the production of food that is actually worthy of being called “food.”
HFCS is in TENS of THOUSANDS of food products. If it’s processed, it probably contains HFCS; oftentimes it’s one of the top three ingredients. With everything we now know about how HFCS and other sugars create obesity and chronic disease, it’s no wonder we have a health care crisis on our hands!
Our federal food policy reaches to the very core of our everyday lives; the core of our health. Unless the food policy is addressed and corrected, little progress will be made to improve the current health care crisis.
The links are clear: These food policies directly impact what and how we produce our food, which impacts disease rates, which in turn drive health care costs into the stratosphere.
The average American is now 10 pounds overweight, which translates into $250 billion in added yearly health care costs, not to mention a shorter lifespan.

Farm Bill Also Promotes Excessive Fossil Fuel Consumption

In addition to producing little else but fast food, this type of monoculture is also very dependent on fossil fuels. Because when you grow one type of crop almost exclusively, you deplete the soil, which means you have to use more fertilizer, which is made from fossil fuel.
Monocultures also invite more pests, which need to be treated with ever increasing amounts of pesticides – also made from fossil fuel.
Cheap food is actually incredibly expensive once everything is added up, including stratospheric health care costs, continued dependence on fossil fuels, and the destruction of the earth as a whole.

Opt Not to Play Along – Choose Health!

If you want to optimize your health, you simply must return to the basics of healthy food choices. And try as they may, industry lobbyists still cannot force you to buy these types of junk foods. The choice is entirely yours, and consumer demand will always win eventually, so the more people demand healthy, unadulterated foods, the more they must produce, one way or another.
I encourage you to support the small family farms in your area. You’ll receive nutritious food from a source that you can trust, and you’ll not only be supporting the health of your own family but the health of your entire community.
However, there is still much confusion about what is healthy – and in some cases, whether or not something is actually food. The easiest way to get confused and be led astray by misleading advertising is by focusing on individual ingredients or nutrients rather than the food as a whole.
In a nutshell, the easiest way back toward health is to focus on WHOLE, unadulterated foods; foods that have not been processed or altered from their original state. Food that has been grown or raised as nature intended, without the use of chemical additives, pesticides and fertilizers.
Whole, especially organic, foods contain so many nutrients that work together synergistically, making them superior to anything that contains only the active ingredient (and frequently as a synthetic version at that).
Now, if you don’t’ know what’s implied by “as nature intended,” then that should be a sign that you have gotten too disconnected from the natural world, and a refresher course in natural farming practices may be called for. (For example, corn is not, and has never been, a natural part of any cow’s diet. You will never see a cow nibbling on a corn stalk when out to pasture, no matter how much corn is growing nearby.)
Eating a diet of processed foods while popping vitamins and supplements, thinking you’re getting everything you need for health, is a reckless miscalculation that will extract its true cost in the form of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Remember, any amount of time and money you save today by stopping at a fast food restaurant, you’re bound to repay later when you’re too ill to lead an active life.

The cost of living

So when we started seriously thinking about moving here (can it really be three years ago now?) one attraction was that we should be able to enjoy a better standard of living. I mean, every time we came for a visit, we would pack an empty suitcase in our bags, because we knew that during our visit, we would pounce upon stuff that was so cheap we couldn’t not buy it. Oh, the money we saved – and by extension, the money we would save…..

Well it turns out that it was all a house of cards, as I’ve mentioned before, because, as a visitor, one never knew the cost of health insurance that burdens the American pocketbook. That alone is enough to bring the cost of living here in line with our UK expenses.

Of course, it made other things seem cheap in comparison. All those other things with which we used to fill our empty suitcase. (I can’t even think of one now….). And, of course, we all know the legendary low cost of petrol – Currently something in the region of $2.60 a gallon (43p a litre – actually more, as the American gallon is smaller, but I’m not clever enough – not bothered enough – to do the precise calculation).

I’ve always had a ready reckoner when thinking about US prices in comparison with UK ones and that was that the figure was the same, just the currency sign differed: if something was £2.00, it would be $2.00. The savings, immediate.

But one has discovered a surprising number of other things that are more expensive here than they would be in the UK. Books, for some reason, are more expensive. I think there are no books here under $19.99. Any paperback: £13 - £14. And you pay sales tax on top of that. Here in Colorado, that’s in the region of 8% (you never know quite how much extra it will be, as it varies, not only from town to town, but I discovered recently, from area of town to area of town. A particular shopping centre may well charge an extra % in order to help pay for itself.)

Paint is more expensive. I’ve finally got off my backside to tackle some interior decorating and find that a cheap gallon of paint is $20 – again, £13 - £14. If you want environmentally friendly paint be prepared to pay three times that amount.

Phone, TV and internet connections seem astronomical to me. We don’t pay anything for TV viewing, as we rely on the (frankly pretty horrible) broadcast (as opposed to satellite or cable) services. But if advertisements are anything to go by everyone else in America is paying $29.95 a month for their cheap introductory offer for TV for the first year, then it goes up – to I don’t know what – and you have to tie yourself in for two years or pay a $350 termination fee.

Mobile phone networks tempt you with their astounding services at only $69.95 a month. Internet service providers want the same. If you bundle all these services together you can get a deal for maybe $100 a month (£60), but again, you’ll be locked into the contract for a couple of years where it will increase horribly in the second year, or pay a huge termination fee.

Our electricity, and gas bills seem comparable to what we used to pay. Our ‘property tax’ (council tax)” at $1200/yr seems comparable. I think most food is less expensive, and in any given week, some variety of organic apple or pear is on sale for $1/lb (60p/lb). I can buy a pound of organic salad leaves for $2.50. Bread and cheese cost more, with a decent loaf of bread in the $3.50/$4.00 region. Good cheese starts at $17/lb. But we can find grass fed or free-range meat for $4/lb.

And let's not even mention the exchange rate.....

Apparently April is the month when Colorado can expect more snow than any other. We have had two spring snow storms in March so far, with 9 inches falling last week. Wet and heavy, it was gone within a couple of days. This is a picture of a flock of robins in our neighbour's tree. You will see American robins are bigger, and nowhere as cute as English ones, but they aren't quite such bullies either, and are happy to roost together.

A year later....

It scarcely seems possible that this time last year I was marveling at how mild the weather was, with both Sally and Spencer out on their bicycles in just a light fleece. One knew at the time that the mildness was unrepresentative, but this February is rubbing my nose in it. We had yet another four inches of snow yesterday and are due more today and tomorrow. Earlier last week someone came along with yellow machinery to dig up the accumulated ice on the north sidewalks and road. There are one or two missed bits where you can see the ice on the pavement is a very solid three to four inches. So now I am sighing: Will this never end?

I am aware that Britain is also in the throes of a particularly cold winter as well. Some say it is all the fault of Barak Obama.*

Despite the cold, I returned home yesterday with a terrific sense of warm smugness, for yesterday, nearly two whole months before the deadline of 15 April, (a date which means nothing to you in the UK, but has every American quiver with dread as it is the day on which one’s tax must be filed), Andrew and I filed our tax returns. Every American, and resident alien (which is Andrew’s official status) must pay tax on their worldwide income. I fell off the radar many years ago in the UK, when, after taking hours to fill out these horrid, horrid forms, I repeatedly came up with the grand number of “0”. I rather thought both the IRS and I had better things to do with our time, and stopped filing. Latterly, of course, one’s personal income was so low so as to legitimately neglect the task.

Last year we discovered a service –provided by the IRS – where volunteers help you fill out and file your return for free! There are some qualifications: the service is meant for senior citizens (of which Andrew can proudly claim to be), and those on lower incomes (of which we can also – perhaps not so proudly – claim to be). But my goodness is it wonderful. We went along with a dozen bits of paperwork, and a nice lady put all the figures into her computer in the right places, and, Bob’s your uncle, we were done. In just over an hour. I can’t begin to describe the relief.

My Mother turned 80 this month, and we held a surprise party for her here. Family members number 23, and we invited another 23 friends and neighbours. She was duly surprised, and everyone had a good time. Proof that my moaning about the weather is all rubbish is this photo, which shows us all outside on 13 Feb on a balmy afternoon. These are the people, and this is the reason I am here.

*….”Hell will freeze over before a black man is elected president of the United States.”