Cooper blogs on sustainable living issues as well, ranging from creating your own solar power to choosing sustainable fish, and urban hens to smart meters.

You can find her website at eatkamloops.org.

In a joint effort to raise awareness about local eating in Kamloops, she and I have joined forces and my sustainable food in Kamloops map now includes the farms and ranches from her website, showing in visual form where they can be found.

Check it out.

A. The main use of the TRASH KNIGHT has always been to keep animals out of residential garbage, but it does other things as well.

1. The rolling and towable models are an excellent mobility aid for older folks or a simple convenience for anybody who doesn’t want to make multiple trips to the curb lugging heavy trash cans. Your garbage can be taken out on ‘trash night’ (the night before your trash service comes), to avoid having to take it out before dawn on ‘trash day’ for fear of animal intrusion.

2. The TRASH KNIGHT can get your garbage cans out of the garage. Tired of that odor when you go to get in your car?

3. The TRASH KNIGHT opens your cans for you. No more prying unsanitary lids off. Taking the garbage out is now ‘touchless’. Germaphobes rejoice!

4. Reduce your trash can expense. The Rubbermaid BRUTEtm trash can is an extremely  tough commercial grade product. They are expensive, but last a very long time, and the Trash Man can’t throw the lids when they are attached to the unit. In fact, my trash man likes the fact that he never has to pick up my trash so much that he has agreed to gently place my cans back in my TRASH KNIGHT rather than tossing them on the ground.

5. The TRASH KNIGHT can be used for storage of animal feed of almost any type. From rabbits to horses, one of our models can simplify feeding time and ensure varmint proof storage.

For more information about the Trash Knight garbage system, please visit www.trashknight.com.

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• Feed Me Garbage (weirdomatic.com)
• Saddle Up Graffiti Cowboy (neatorama.com)

HatTip: http://howthehellshouldiknow-wallyworld.blogspot.com/2012/05/more-drones-over-america.html

We’ve all been appalled at the notion of U.S. and local governments using drones – unpiloted flying aircraft – to take pictures or fire rockets or…  Haven’t we?

Even the USDA is considering (or are they doing it already?) flying drones over farmers’ fields to monitor compliance with the hundreds of federal regulations governing farms and ranches.

Comes now the WSJ in a  small story published a couple of days ago about getting people to drive less. The headline on the print edition was “The Road Not Taken May Be A Key to Driving Less” by Yuliya Chernova, who is billed as a special writer in New York for Dow Jones VentureWire.

Companies hope to use behavioral-modification techniques gleaned from psychology to influence how people use energy. Conservation start-ups such as Tendril Inc. and People Power Co. have hired behavioral scientists to help them figure out how to motivate people to better manage their daily electricity usage.

We already knew about some of these techniques – congestion-pricing for example on highways and for electricity usage. Somehow it seems more ominous when put in the stark terms used above.

Another article notes that auto insurers are doing the same thing – monitoring your driving habits. Oh, goody. Watch this. As usual with this kind of nonsense, the trend is being fostered by the enviros, who like all “liberals” believe that less (driving) is more.

For More Info Contact For Maui Real Estate Listings

William B Moffett Jr.

Cell:(808) 870-6794
Moffett Properties
Buz@SurfingRealty.com

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Enthusiastic Dallasites gathered for a watch party Wednesday night inside Oak Cliff’s historic Texas Theater to see if history could repeat itself. TNT’s new version of the iconic TV show “Dallas” kicked off its first season.

The original show from the 1980s helped define the very city it was named after. For tourists such as Karl Bossert and Tom Hogeland of Florida, it’s an image that persists to this very day.

“We thought we’d see a few cowboys roaming around the streets,” said Bossert. Hogeland anticipated the same thing. “Cowboys and wide-open ranges,” he added.

The original version of the show painted a tall tale of cowboy hats, big ranches and oil tycoons with Texas twangs. If you still don’t believe that image hangs over the city, consider the phone call Amy Ramos of the Dallas Regional Chamber took.

The London Times called to ask if the new “Dallas” show would perpetuate stereotypes. Ramos was quick to respond. “We’re excited about the press, but we’re no longer oil men driving around in really large cars with cattle horns on the front of them,” said Ramos.

Many locals consider Dallas a cosmopolitan city with an up-and-coming Arts District and home to plenty of Fortune 500 companies that have nothing to do with oil.

Dallas Film Commission Director Janis Burklund hopes this latest take on the legendary show will convince Hollywood to stop buying into the old legend. “Just the opening credit sequence alone is our money shot. The city looks gorgeous on television. It’s going to show more and more the new Dallas,” explained Burklund.

That depends on if the show sticks around. The reviews have been mixed, while Hollywood has been quick to cancel several other shows with Dallas-based themes, including “GCB” and “The Good Guys.”

What did you think about the new show? Did you even watch it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Actress Linda Gray spoke with KRLD’s Emily Trube about her renewed love of Dallas – the series and the town.

PLAY: Linda Grey of “Dallas” Part 1

PLAY: Linda Gray – Part 2

PLAY: Linda Gray – Part 3

Also Check Out:

• Aging Men Turn To Botox For Job Hunting Edge
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• Terrell Owens Released From Allen Wranglers
• Veterinarian Cares For Two Legged Dogs
• Pizza Shop Set To Start Spanish Only Promotion

Our goal is to grow healthy futures and the quickest way to do that is through diet.

Their goal is to list as many farms, ranches, restaurants, artisans, and farmer’s markets as possible that grow or sell local food in your communities. They provide the tools and resources so you can Find, Rate, and Share these businesses along with great articles, shopping tips, health and nutrition information and environmental news that impacts all of us. This site is meant to be interactive. It only works with your help! Now visit them.

http://eatlocalgrown.com

I used to wince when I saw homes that had a bunch of rusting cars, tractors, random pieces of rusting machinery and piles of 2X4′s strewn about in pristine pastures. Well, now I  get it.  I’ve scrounged around our property for 2X4′s to make roosts for my new chickens, I’ve repurposed some strange things in my short time here. You’ll need that crap someday, for some reason.

When you live hours away from Target and civilization in general, not only do you not buy useless crap, you don’t buy much period. You have to honestly factor in the gas it takes to go get that random throw pillow for your couch. And with gas prices even higher in rural areas, you bet your sweet bippy that throw pillow isn’t worth it.

Although, recycling is arguable…There is no recycling service around here. We do our part by using beer cans as shooting targets.

2. Yes, people do wear Wranglers, tucked-in plaid cowboy shirts, cowboy or ranch boots, big leather belts with even bigger belt buckles and cowboy hats. And it’s NOT a fashion statement. It’s what you wear when you are on your tractor or when loading cows onto a truck.

3. People stay out of your business, but they sure as hell are talking about you.

4. The best thing to do for an urbanite new-comer (like myself) is ask questions and listen. There is nothing more annoying than a person who thinks if they read the Encyclopedia of Country Living they know all there is to know about living in the country. My neighbors, whose family have been in this valley for over 3 generations, know more than any book I’ve read and I plan to listen to every word (until I’ve been here long enough to have my own opinions, understandings and ways to do things).

5. You are not in control. Mother Nature is. And she’ll remind you of that often. She’ll change shit up on you real quick, keep you on your toes. And yes, her winds will blow your small children away if you aren’t holding their hands.

6. Chickens do not follow you around because they love you and think the soft clucking noises you make to them are comforting. They follow you because you fill their feed container every morning and think you have more. Same goes for most other livestock, dogs, children and husbands as well.

7. Living on a ranch is WORK. Lot’s of work. And we don’t even have a working ranch. We’re just living “RanchLite”. You don’t have time to whittle on the front porch. You don’t have time to learn the fiddle. I’m busy taking care of 3 kids, running a household, working from home and ensuring my chickens aren’t going to freeze from a freak storm that blows in…on June 4th. My list of To Do’s around here has reached epic proportions.

8. It is slower here. I always felt like I was rushing EVERYWHERE in SoCal. I drove here, I drove there. I ran errands constantly. I was nervous, anxious. I had a tight feeling in my stomach all the time. I absorbed the anxiety that seems to permeate So Cal.  I was smart enough to be wary of any romantic notion that I would have more time living up here. I don’t have more time. And I have more to do than I ever have. But time doesn’t race by. It just ticks by, at the pace it is meant to tick. I’ve lost that rushing feeling…It’s subtle, but it is slower here.

9. I have to drive 15 miles to get the kids to school. In that drive, I see MAYBE 2 cars. And a tractor. And everyone waves.

10. I’ve never seen so many old barns in my life. I’m talking barns built in the 1800′s and are still being used. And if they aren’t being actively used, they are left standing (see #1).

11. Country music is not all that bad.

12. It’s DIY or die. You don’t hire landscapers, for example. If something is busted, you fix it. Or you ask a friend or relative and pay them back with a 6 pack and a BBQ. Bartering works well too.

13. I had a tendency to fill in pauses of conversation with conversation. Around here you don’t babble on. You say what you mean and mean what you say. Of course, the women are chatty, but men (especially the older generations of ranchers) don’t talk just to talk.

14. If I said I have a blog, I think I’d be met with the reply of “What the hell is a blog?” or “Why the hell would you want to do that?” (and I honestly ask myself the same questions)

15. Every morning I wake up and despite the crabby kids, the fact I didn’t have time to shower because I was up all night with the baby and I still have chicken shit on jeans I haven’t washed in a while, despite the churning in my brain of all the things I need to accomplish that day, I look out any one of our windows and think “My God, I live here?!?!? What a gift.”

Hello, again!

We now live on a ranch. We bought an 1858 ranch house in the Sierra Nevadas on 10 acres of pasture. We still have 3 kids, 2 dogs and alas no more fish (went to the “ocean” via toilet). We have added 7 chickens to our brood, yet to be named.  Goats are forthcoming.

Why would we move from Southern California to the Sierras you might ask? Well, when opportunity knocks….to make a long story short, my husbands uncle poured his heart and soul into refurbishing this 1858 farmhouse and was trying to sell it. He threw out the wild idea we should buy it and move 500 miles away to the country. We pondered. We schemed. We calculated. We planned. Then we said to hell with it, let’s do this. And we did.

While I find great beauty in the beach, treasure the long growing season, appreciate the culture and the arts that dominate the area and miss my dear parents and close friends, I belong in the mountains. I belong in changing, challenging weather. I belong in a town of 200, not 20 million. I was a factory chicken in SoCal, now I’m free-range. (a little ranch metaphor for ya’ll)

Mostly, though, this was a decision for our kids. The day my 6-year old daughter came home from school and asked me if the back of her thighs were fat, I knew we had to get the hell out. I’m not naive- I know living in the country will carry it’s own issues and drawbacks for my kids. While there are more cows than people here and more barns than museums, I can still give culture, art and experience to my kids.  And I know that SoCal is not only populated by vain, appearance obsessed, materialistic people- I’m privileged to know some amazing, kind and genuine people down south. But, it’s hard to protect my kids from the pronounced cultural obsession with stuff and appearances.  It’s hard to take the rat of of the rat race.

Seeing my kids exploring the pasture, scrambling on rocks, fishing with their dad, making ninja swords out of found sticks, searching for arrowheads, getting eggs from the chicken coop, making flower necklaces from the front lawn, experiencing the rapid changes in weather, seeing new apples grow on our apple trees, counting cows and sheep as we pass them on the way to school makes me undoubtedly know we made the right decision.

I’ve never been so happy to see my kids absolutely filthy from being outside all day long.

So, here we are. Where we belong.

Photography: Carrie Patterson
Event Planning & Design: Leah Chase, Jackson Hole Event Co
Floral Design: Cecelia Heffernan, Flower Hardware
Venue: Moose Head Ranch
Catering: Bistro Catering

Photography: Carrie Patterson
Event Planning: Elizabeth Kelleher, In Any Event
Location: Moose Head Ranch, Moran, WY
Flowers: Lily & Co 
Catering: Bistro Catering

And, to a certain degree, there is truth in these examples. Looking back, I’m quite certain my formative experiences with food are what shaped my career. But the reality is that, while I grew up on a small ranch, the daughter of a large animal veterinarian and a former barrel-racing-champion-turned-homemaker, my own culinary education had a few…inconsistencies.

I did watch my mom cook sometimes; she still has a way with instant mashed potatoes and cracks open a mean jar of Prego. Our neighbors had a garden, and at the age of ten, I established a roadside produce stand, yet Birds-Eye was still a staple at my own dinner table. The eggs I gathered each morning (when I wasn’t being held hostage in the henhouse by our sadistic asshole of a rooster) my mother whisked in a microwave-proof bowl, before being nuking them into rubbery oblivion. I was in college before I learned that scrambled eggs aren’t traditionally made in a microwave.

My paternal grandmother was the daughter of a Russian émigré. Grandma Miller possessed a heavy New York accent, and she was—my dad will agree—the worst cook this side of Minsk. The (real, not instant) potatoes in her latkes were an oxidized grey, the resulting pancakes flabby and greasy from improperly heated oil. Small wonder I was the pickiest eater on the planet, utterly exasperating my Depression-era parents who, let’s face it, were only trying to embrace the advent of convenience foods.

“What breed of dog am I, you ask?”

The one time my mom tried making yogurt and cheese from our goat’s milk (she was having an early 1970’s back-to-the-land moment), the results were not exactly edible. In retrospect, I don’t think she realized the milk required starter cultures. So we instead drank goat milk by the gallon, and in the process my family became huge caprine aficionados. We bred our Nubian doe, Go-Go, every year, and ended up keeping several of her doelings; the bucks we donated to Heifer Project International. For my part, I adored our goats. Even when I fed Go-Go an uninflated balloon, it was with the best of intentions (it was Easter, and I thought she’d appreciate its pretty pink color).

In sixth grade, I decided to follow in my older brother’s footsteps and raise goats for a 4-H project. I bounced out of bed each morning to milk Rose, a distant relative of the late Go-Go (who died of natural causes, not from ingesting peony-hued rubber). Despite my rural upbringing, our property was located in a peaceful canyon only a couple of miles from what is today a populous, yuppified bedroom community of Los Angeles. There were a few other families with children up the road, but I was the only one living on a ranch.

The rooms at Westlake Elementary School were packed with upper-middle-class, mostly white kids, and it turned out they didn’t share my  goaty enthusiasm. It was Jason Racinelli, a criminal in the making if ever there was one, who dubbed me “Goat Girl.” It was the first week of school, and as part of our “What I Did for Summer Vacation” oral reports, I’d waxed poetic about Rose and the wonders of lactation. If memory serves, I even passed around Dixie cups of her milk for my classmates to taste.

I was waiting for my mom to pick me up from school in our elderly, wood-paneled station wagon, when Jason appeared by my side. He looked me up and down, a sneer on his handsome face. “Hey Goat Girl,” he drawled, leaning in close and taking a long, exaggerated sniff. “You smell like a goat. Why would anyone want a goat, anyway? Why do you even go to this school? Why don’t you go back to your stupid farm?”

Mercifully, my mom arrived at that moment, but before I could escape to the safety of the car and the slobbery kisses of our three dogs, Jason yelled, “’Bye, Goat Girl! Don’t forget to wear your overalls tomorrow!”

I think it’s pretty safe to say that someone, somewhere, eventually kicked Jason Racinelli’s ass to Kingdom Come or incarcerated him. Unfortunately, before that could happen, I essentially became known as Goat Girl for the remainder of the year, and developed several nervous tics that abated only after we sold Rose and I instead concentrated on raising rabbits (fuzzy, rodent-like creatures were apparently on the list of “cool” pets to own). I don’t recall exactly when I allowed my goat obsession to resurface, but suffice it to say, I’m now a contributing editor at culture: the word on cheese and live in Seattle, one of the few cities in the U.S. that allows residents to keep backyard dairy goats.

So, while my somewhat dichotomous culinary upbringing played a large role in my career of choice, I usually opt for a shorter, easier, wholly truthful answer. “I became a food writer because when I was eight years old and walking my brother’s goat at the county fair, a middle-aged man asked me, “What type of dog is that?” It was at that moment I realized: most people don’t have a fucking clue where their food comes from.”

Thanks, Mom and Dad. And yeah, you too, Jason Racinelli.