Natural and Organic Food

Natural and Organic Food has been given some Google love in the form of a PR2, which came as a bit of a surprise as I haven’t been promoting this site as much as some of my others, but a nice surprise nevertheless.

I’m sure it has a lot to do with the amount of good quality content in here and less to do with the eternal scrabble to obtain back-links from other sites that most marketing bloggers seem to be hell-bent on. Ah well, sometimes it’s good to take things at an easy pace and let things like this happen when they happen!

As for this site in general, I’ve not gone overboard in trying to turn it into a money making machine as it’s not really that sort of site. True, there are a few affiliate books and other bits and bobs here and there that I’ve put up to earn a few dollars from it so it can pay its way and justify my time in looking after it. But in the end, there are my other higher profile sites that can do that much more effectively. That leaves this place to run at a nice, sedate pace - which fits in nicely with an organic lifestyle!

So don’t despair if you notice the odd advertising banner appear here and there - it’s not a sign that tons more will follow, just me trying to make an honest buck from my writing and blogging.

Lastly, hows this for a neat organic tip:

If you’re worried about burning wood in a stove because of the CO2 emissions, don’t. If left to rot naturally in the wild, that lump of wood will give off exactly the same amount of CO2 as it decomposes naturally as it would if your burned it, so in actual fact you are not doing the environment any more damage by burning it and actually saving on other non-renewable sources of fuel like oil.

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food

There are lots of people who have various concerns about compost heaps.

Most of these concerns and fears can be allayed by having the composting process explained and some urban myths dispelled. Here is a mini FAQ about compost heaps to help you to understand them better:

1. What is compost?

Compost is the end result of naturally biodegraded or broken down organic matter. This happens when organic matter such as plant cuttings, grass mowings vegetable peelings and discarded leaves, in fact anything that is vegetative matter is mixed together and piled up in a heap. As long as the air can freely circulate throughout the pile, sufficient moisture is present and natural bacterium are present, the heap will start to rot, or degrade. As this happens the heap will heat up as the bacteria in the heap increase in numbers and break down the organic material speeding up the rotting process. After several weeks, the material changes from it’s original appearance into a brown, odourless, crumbly material that is packed full of nutrients and minerals which will enrich any soil that it is added to.

2. Do compost heaps smell bad?

A correctly built and managed compost heap will not smell of anything except a sweetish smell not dissimilar to freshly cut grass. Badly built heaps that do not allow air to circulate or are built exclusively of one material, for instance grass mowings, will not break down correctly and will smell bad. It is important when building your compost heap that you include many different types of plant material mixed well together and aerated. A compost activator should be added and mixed into the heap. Propriety activator pellets can be bought from garden centres and DIY stores, but a natural activator can be made by adding fresh stinging nettles throughout the pile or adding fresh horse manure. This will not make the heap smell bad, but actually make it smell good!

3. Do compost heaps attract rats and other vermin?

Firstly, it is possible that vermin will be attracted to a compost heap only if fresh vegetable kitchen waste is dumped on top and not covered. The best way to stop vermin being interested in your heap is to use a tight wire mesh cage inside the outer walls of the compost bun and to cover the heap with a heavy well fitting square of old Hessian backed carpet or, completely cover the whole bin with a square of ply or chipboard. as long as there are air holes in the sides of the compost bin’s walls to allow the air to freely circulate, the inner wire mesh will keep rats out.

Secondly, many people don’t realize that wherever they live, no matter how sterile you believe your habitat to be, you are never further than six feet away from a rat. Fact! So a compost heap should be least of your concerns.

4. Can I put paper on a compost heap?

Of course you can! Remember, paper is made from pulped wood which is an organic material. So paper and cardboard roughly torn up into smallish strips can and should be added to a compost heap to aid with the variety of the mixture of organic material.

5. Can I put rotten meat or leftover bones on a compost heap?

technically, anything that once lived can be composted, but meat and bones can contain certain bacteria that might not be beneficial to the heap, so these are best disposed of. Better still, if you have a dog, you can give any leftover food to him! Don’t give a dog chicken bones though, as they have a tendency to splinter.

6. What about my cat or dog’s poop?

That’s a definite no-no, as cat and dog faeces contains harmful bacteria.

One last “however” is that as long as you’re healthy, human urine is actually a good compost activator! Just don’t let your neighbours catch you “activating” your compost bin the way nature intended!

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food

It doesn’t take much, but there are several small things that everyone can do that will go a little way to helping the environment.

First, I notice a lot of people don’t think when throwing stuff away. I don’t mean they become stupid the moment they throw something into the garbage, I mean they don’t think about what impact their action has when you multiply it a few thousandfold as everyone else does the same thing.

Landfill sites are bursting at the seams because people throw away so much stuff. A lot of it needn’t even go into landfill, it’s just that people don’t realize they can dispose of things in a different way that will have a huge impact on the rate at which landfills get filled up.

Here are a few things that just a tiny bit of extra thought will make a difference.

Plastic bottles. If there is no recycling bank near you, then the next best thing you can do is at least reduce the volume of the waster that you dump. That means squeezing up the bottles when they’re empty to make them as small as possible. That will in itself save a huge volume in landfill if everyone did this.

Milk and juice cartons. These shouldn’t be chucked in the bin whole either. It doesn’t take much to fold them into a small block and reduce their volume by 90%.

Paper and cardboard - don’t even throw it out. Why would you? If you have a garden then you should have a compost heap. If you have a compost heap, rip up paper and cardboard into manageable pieces and mix them into your heap. It all biodegrades with the rest of the composting material.

Kitchen waste. Again, if you have a compost heap, you should be throwing all peelings and unused leafy and vegetable material onto the compost heap. Some gardeners don’t like throwing potato peelings on the heap because they have a tendency to grow in the heap. What are they worried about? As the things grow, just turn them in and let the composting process break the additional plant matter down!

Incidentally, if you don’t have a garden or a compost heap, surely you know a friend, relative or neighbour who has and could be convinced to take your compost-able material for their own heaps.

These are just a few things you can do to help make a difference.

For one person to do these things the effect will be barely noticeable, but for a thousand people to do these things an impact will be felt!

I’ll post more ideas like this in future posts.

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food

A slight change of tack for this blog, but still on topic is the subject of additives that are in what you eat and what you drink.

This post will concern itself about what’s in the water that comes out of your tap.

Don’t despair - in most western countries, the water that comes out of your tap is relatively safe to drink and cook with because it is treated at huge water treatment plants before it enters the water main and finds its way to your home.

But not in all countries.

In southern Spain, where I live the water that comes out of the tap is not so safe to drink. The authorities will tell you a different story, of course, but the fact remains that there is no true water main in the area that I live in despite it being one of the most urbanized areas outside of the cities of Madrid and Barcelona.

So what do we have to contend with here?

Tap water is heavily treated with chlorine to combat the high levels of dangerous bacteria that would run riot through the area if it were not so treated. This in itself is a huge problem for the unwary, as chlorine binds with other particulates in the water to form tri-methane based carcinogens.

Oh.

There are also high levels of pollution from farms as the farmers here are lunatics when it comes to spraying their fields. They use just about every kind of chemical available to them to kill their soil stone dead with herbicides and pesticides before dumping huge quantities of chemical fertilizers on it so stuff will actually grow. All these chemicals have leeched through the soil into the subterranean aquifiers and reservoirs that supply the whole of Andalucia.

Oh.

Because of the additional lunacy of successive local authorities the landfill situation here is out of control. Further chemical pollutants from these overused landfill sites has also leeched into the water supply. This includes heavy metals such as aluminium and lead, which are known causes of Alzheimer’s disease in adults and intelligence retardation in children.

Oh.

Because of all this pollution, particulate levels in our water are in excess of 200 ppm and often as high as 300 ppm. The World Health Organisation limit for drinking water is set at 150 ppm.

Oh.

But that’s here in Andalucia, southern Spain. Most of the United States and Canada, Australia and most other European countries are much better at treating their water. And there is always bottled water to drink when things get tough.

I for one am reluctant to believe anything that a local authority or for that matter any government official tells me, simply because most of them tell lies.
Get this:

Here in southern Spain, although no one will officially admit to it, the decision was made to add so much chlorine to the drinking water because it was cheaper for the local health authorities to deal with a few cases of cancer than an epidemic of cholera.

Tell that to the people who won the cancer in that lottery!

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food