Safe, healthy and happy Thanksgiving
Monterey County teenagers produce new fotonovela
A group of Latino high school students, working with Kathleen Nolan of UC Cooperative Extension in Monterey County, have created a new fotonovela to teach their peers about the hazards of lead poisoning. "Fotonovela" is comic-book-like literature popular in Mexico. In this instance, it is an educational pamphlet that features photos of the students with thought and speech bubbles telling a story.
According to a news article in the Salinas Californian yesterday, the students' fotonovela tells the story of six students who call themselves "lead detectives" to investigate what's wrong with the young neice of one of the characters.
"I'm so worried about my sobrina ~ she's almost 4 and should be talking by now," one fotonovela character says.
The project came about when Nolan asked Alisal High School Health Academy co-coordinator Nathan Voigtschild about assembling a group of students interested in making an educational booklet on lead.
"I asked a few of them and they were really into it," Voigtschild was quoted in the newspaper article. He added that he didn't offer any extra credit for participating in the project. "We wanted them to do it because they wanted to."
The Californian article, written by Kimber Solana, said 3,000 copies of the booklet will be printed - half of those in Spanish, half in English. "Get the Lead Out" and other educational fotonovelas produced by Monterey County high school students are published online in pdf format on the Monterey County UCCE Web site.
At their final meeting Tuesday, the students were honored for their achievement and surprised with $50 gift certificates, made possible by support from the Public Health Trust, Nolan said.
"One of the girls blushed and said, 'Now I can buy a graduation dress.'" Nolan said.
Get the Lead Out fotonovela.
Chickens coming home to roost
Kind-hearted Californians resoundingly supported Proposition 2 last November, which, among other things, requires farmers to provide the state's egg-laying hens with room to spread their wings. One of the concerns discussed before its passage - that unaffected producers from other states and Mexico will flood the California market with their cheaper eggs - would be mitigated by passage of Assembly Bill 1437, according to a Sacramento Bee story, which also appeared in the Merced Sun-Star.
The proposed law, which passed in the Assembly by a 65-12 vote, was written by Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. It is likely to be heard next in the Senate Food and Agriculture Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, one of Huffman's co-authors on the bill, the story said.
The new law would require that all eggs sold in California be from cage-free hens. Reporter Jim Downing contacted the director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center, Dan Sumner, for perspective on the prospective regulation.
Cage-free systems add a penny or two to the cost of producing an egg, according to a UC study last year titled Economic Effects of Proposed Restrictions on Egg-Laying Hen Housing in California. However, the retail cost of a dozen cage-free eggs is currently about $1 more than conventionally produced eggs. "If cage-free eggs were the only type available in California, that spread would likely narrow to roughly the difference in production costs," Downing paraphrased Sumner.
Purple rain
Stories about blueberries are still trickling in. Today, the Visalia Time-Delta reported on the fact that 35 percent of California blueberries are produced in the newspaper's Tulare County circulation area.
For the story, reporter Hillary Meeks spoke to Steve "Doc" Blizzard, a local blueberry farm manager. He said the company started growing blueberries with encouragement from Manuel Jimenez, the UC Small Farm Program farm advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in Tulare County.
Jimenez recently arranged for several Central Valley growers interested in the crop to take a tour of the Lagomarsino blueberry farm, the article said.
"In terms of growing, if you have the right conditions, boy do blueberries grow in Tulare County," Jimenez was quoted.
A chicken on every lot
Raising backyard chickens for food and fun was the highlight of a Contra Costa Times story published over the weekend that was based on a Point Reyes Station 4-H workshop held last week.
UC Cooperative Extension Marin County director Ellen Rilla told reporter Rob Rogers that the growing interest in chickens seems to be tied to enthusiasm for the "slow food" movement, which embraces traditional methods of producing food.
"I think a lot of people have become interested in local food production," Rilla was quoted. "People like to know where their food is coming from."
The chickens were said to be productive - each generating about an egg a day - plus easy to care for and entertaining. Workshop participants learned that feeding chickens oyster shells provides calcium for their own egg shells and that chicken's egg color can be judged by their earlobes. (Earlobes? I'm skeptical.)
Another bit of practical information came from workshop speaker John Pellham of Western Farm Center in Santa Rosa.
"My advice is don't name your chickens," the story quoted Pellham. "Things happen to them. It's hard, but that's part of nature."
I wish I had heard that word of warning before bringing home a chicken as a family pet (and for organic snail control.) "Amber" drowned in a neighbor's pool just a few weeks later.
4-H chicken project.
The making of a blueberry story
Los Angeles Times freelance writer David Karp sent a response today to last week's ANR News Blog post about his May 27 blueberry production story. The nicely written article covered the introduction of a crop usually associated with the Northwest, Michigan and Maine into California; it didn't go into UC's role.
Karp wrote in his e-mail that he agonized over what to include in the article, given the amount of space he would have in the newspaper. He interviewed more than 40 sources, but only had room to cite two.
"If I had room to cite the contribution of three or four persons, and explain what they did, I would certainly have cited (UC Small Farm Program farm advisors) Manuel (Jimenez) and Mark (Gaskell)," Karp wrote. "I'm quite aware of their very substantial contributions to California's blueberry industry."
Karp mentioned that he spent two months of his life and thousands of dollars of his own money to research the article because, "I'm passionate about writing about fruit only when I really know what I'm talking about."
In conclusion, he said, "I apologize to Manuel (Jimenez) and Mark (Gaskell), Ben (Faber) and Gary (Bender) and others, but I'd like to think that they understand that in telling a shortened version of the full story for a newspaper, writers face difficult choices."