| A Little of Everything |
The Ethics of EthanolA few years ago, ethanol was lauded as a wonderful new fuel for the future. Having now been experimented with all over the nation, it seems that (pardon my grammar) it "juss ain't so". Ethanol uses corn to produce fuel, in lieu of using fossil fuel. The stated advantage is that it does not introduce new CO2 into the air, and does not create refinery wastes, and can be produced right here in North America rather than being imported from some "radical raghead republic". However, there were several disadvantages apparent from the beginning. First of all, vehicles cannot run on pure ethanol. A great deal of petrol fuel (gasoline) must be mixed in, in order for the engine to work properly. Most cars require 90% petro-gasoline and 10% ethanol fuel. Therefore, ethanol can never provide energy sustainability and self-sufficiency in transportation, no matter how much is produced. Even if we made a billion barrels of ethanol, we would need nine billion barrels of unleaded regular to make it useful. Thus ethanol cannot reduce petroleum dependency by any more than 10%. Furthermore, ethanol fuel requires corn to manufacture. This has caused an artificial corn shortage and has led to the increased planting of corn. If this were to continue, it would not only limit the food supply, but cause the clearing of wild areas as space demands increase. Many CRP lands would be plowed under for corn as soon as the term is up, rather than being renewed in the conservation programs. Thus, the ethanol economy would actually cause more harm to the environment than benefit. It would also create a need for food crop imports from other nations, thus negating any possible benefits to national economic self-sufficiency, or "chuche" as the Koreans call it. Fortunately, however, ethanol is not the only bio-fuel available. Biodiesel holds great promise, and especially the kind which can be produced by growing algae in lakes, canals, and shallow ponds. It produces more energy than corn, ten to twenty times over, and at least five times more than biodiesel derived from waste vegetable oil (soybean-derived) or sunseed oil. So it appears, after looking at petroleum, corn, sunflowers, and soy as fuel sources, it may well turn out to be pond scum that saves the day. Oh, for Heaven's sakes, whodathunkit? 10:28 AM - Tuesday 8 July 2008 - comments {0} - post commentMy Punctuated ApologiesOn multiple occasions, readers have pointed out to me that I was incorrectly enclosing quotation marks within punctuation, rather than the other way around. I consulted the Grammar Desk Reference and found that this is acceptable in the case of an example, but not in a quotation. So I will do my best to punctuate correctly. Please bear with me. Jeffery 09:49 AM - Friday 29 February 2008 - comments {1} - post commentHappy New Year!Well, here we are at the end of another year, according to the reckoning of the Gregorian calendar. An evangelist on the radio has called 2006 and 2007 the years of the "open door", in reference primarily to the missionary churches around the world. The "door" has been opened wider to evangelism in a number of countries in these two years. Likewise, I can say that in many ways these two years have been "years of the open door" in my own life as well; in terms of opportunities and new experiences. I hope yours have been similarly blessed. And for those of you who make New Year's resolutions, keep in mind the saying, "New Year's resolutions are like crying babies in a meeting hall. They have to be carried out." Funny, but true. Resolutions are of no benefit if they are forgotten before the State of the Union, the Super Bowl, Groundhog Day, and Valentine's Day.have even happened. Keep at it. You can "do all things through Christ who strengtheneth you." SDG. Happy New Year, everyone! 09:31 AM - Monday 31 December 2007 - comments {0} - post commentA Factory-Farming RevelationOn Friday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, working on an article about the USDA while listening to Paul Harvey on the radio. As it happened, I was writing a paragraph about "Factory farms" in a decidedly negative tone, when Uncle Paul signed off and a country song came on the radio.
I had never heard the song, but the chorus goes "I'm the son of a 3rd-generation farmer, married 10 years to a farmer's daughter, have two boys in 4-H, and I'm a lifetime sponsor of the FFA..." . He also claimed to be "a God-fearing, hard-working combine-driver" and mentions his use of an International Harvester as well. The verses go on about farm life and telling outsiders not to complain about the farmers' "redneck" driving. There were some clever/cute lines in the song too, like "fallin' on deaf ears of corn" and "hay, hay, that's what I make." It was kind of funny. But a realization occurred to me when I listened to that country song. Having little personal acquaintance with huge-scale farmers, I have tended to think of "factory farming" as an impersonal "force". The song puts a face on it. It occurred to me that the "factory farmers" are not the enemy. They are victims of the system, just as small farmers are. They feel the need to industrialize and push to expand because their crop is cheap and, therefore, they have to grow as much as they can in order to make enough money to cover their expenses. And the price is pushed down even further, and the vicious circle continues. And statistically, it makes sense. 98% of farms in the U.S., including the big industrial ones, are "family-owned". The farmers might be 3rd-generation or 4th-generation, and they act like "this is what we've always been doing", but it is and isn't. The industrial M.O. has crept up on them, in the manner of a frog on which the water is heated. Joel Salatin says that farmers always say things like "This is the way Grandma/Grandpa did it", when it is pointed out that they are doing something in an inefficient or un-ecologically-sound way. In order to counter the continued industrialization and "value-cheapening" of farming, we need to do make the farmers aware of an alternative: to promote knowledge of farm enterprises that can be done with less chemicals and fossil fuels, and still make a good profit. Information is the key to allowing farmers to be independent from the 21st-century feudalism which now grips the agricultural sector. And feudalism really is the best word to describe it. They own the land and the buildings, but the crop is often "owned" by a corporation (it has been signed over before even being ripe), and the corporation therefore has the authority to tell Mr. and Mrs. Farmer how to grow it, what fertilizers/pesticides to use and how to harvest it. If Mr. and Mrs. Farmer have animals, they are only "keeping" the livestock for BigAgFoodCo, and BigAgFoodCo has the authority to tell Mr. and Mrs. Farmer what they may and may not feed the beasts. It is as if the Dark Ages have returned all over again. And how ironic indeed, that it be cloaked in the guise of "progress". 10:31 AM - Sunday 23 December 2007 - comments {0} - post comment35 Undeniable Truths of LifeI sat down one night about a week ago, and started writing a list of 35 basic, undeniable truths about everyday life. I got this idea from "Rush Limbaugh's 35 Undeniable Truths" (although I am not a fan of that show, and don't agree with Rush on much).
The following truths are all equally true, although some may be more important than others. The order is not necessarily significant. Remember, this is NOT the Limbaugh list. This is simply my own list, written in the same format. 35 Undeniable Truths of Life 1. God exists. 2. Ontological truth exists. 3. Christ was not born on December 25. 4. The dangers of genetic engineering far outweigh its supposed benefits. 5. Abortion is murder. 6. Living things and biological resources are the work of the Creator and should not be patented. 7. War is not pro-life. 8. Parenting responsibilities should be shared between both parents. 9. Global warming is real. 10. Human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research are unethical. 11. It is not possible for a politician to support "family values" if he or she does not support family farming. 12. There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. 13. The Bible is God's Word. 14. It's bad luck to be superstitious. 15. The country is a better place to raise a family than the city is. 16. Tobacco is a drug. 17. Alcohol is a drug. 18. The legality of a drug does not necessarily imply its safety. 19. Homosexuality is unnatural. 20. Profanity is a mark of poor communication skills on the part of the person using it. 21. "Wetback" is not a swear word. 22. There is more value in a standing, living tree than there is when the tree is cut into lumber. 23. America is a republic, not a democracy. 24. It is nothing less than stupidity to choose a certain person to be your wife or husband simply on the basis of that person's immediate, superficial attractiveness. 25. A major reason companies develop hybrid seed is that they want to make the growers dependent on buying more seed each year. 26. Two wrong's don't make a right. 27. There is no such thing as a useless plant. 28. God is good. 29. The devil is evil. 30. A dentist who uses mercury amalgam is not a good dentist. 31. Ignoring a problem won't make it go away. 32. The deep-frying process is unhealthy for the consumer of the food. 33. Self-control is the best form of birth control. 34. Rush Limbaugh is not a climatologist. 35. The best way to predict the future is to create it. 08:48 AM - Tuesday 27 November 2007 - comments {0} - post commentSomebody Left the Door Open! ----------Part 1If someone said "We are a nation of...", you would probably know what word was coming out of that person's mouth next. Immigrants! We are a nation of immigrants: you hear that so often. The English got here from England, the Irish got here from Ireland, the African-Americans got here from Africa. If you go back far enough in time, even the first Americans, the American Indians, got here--by way of Greenland, and from Asia, and a few from other places.A nation of immigrants does not, however, mean a nation of ILLEGAL immigrants. Illegal immigrants simply walk in and use all the services of our nation, take jobs and get paid, but they do not pay a penny of taxes, or contribute anything to our country. They tear down the fabric of the nation and, ironically, if they keep doing it, many of the good things they are coming here for will all be gone. The illegal immigrants will often claim that they are the victims of racism, as was one theme of the protests and demonstrati0ns this weekend throughout the U.S. major cities. While it is true that certain instances of anti-Hispanic racism occur, they often misinterpret the disapproval of illegal entry with racism. Many Americans who use words like "spics", "beaners", "mesguns", "ticos", etc. in reference to undocumented immigrants would never use them simply because of someone's Latino ethnicity. The word "wetback" is even more definitely a reference to illegal immigration, and cannot even be considered a racial slur in the truest sense. In fact, it is often established Mexicans and Mexican-Americans that use that particular word, to disparage newly arrived Mexican immigrants (regardless of whether the new arrivals are in fact legal or illegal). Mexicans illegally flooding our country come mostly from specific places. Most of the undocumented workers in American cities come from the estados, or states, of Nayarit (nah-zharrd-EET) and Sinaloa (see-nah-LOW-ah) on the west coast, while most of the ones found in rural America come from the inland estados of Zacatecas (sock-a-TAY-coss) and Durango (doo-RRAHN-go). Those who work in farming in America have usually come to leave the burning heat more importantly than to make more money, according to a survey. Mexican peones, or low-class farm labourers, must work in the desert sun for 9 months out of the year, sometimes fainting in the heat. As there is no minimum wage in Mexico, the duen~os (landlords) often pay them several pesos--less than a dollar a day, in U.S. funds. In Zacatecas and Durango, it is becoming common practice that families "send up" their eldest son (or daughter, if there is no son in the family) to the U.S. to send back money to the family in Mexico. Just as many families here save up money over the years for their children's college education, many families there save up over the years for their children's immigration, covering the expenses of coyotes-de-la-frontera to smuggle them over the border. These smugglers are often American college and university students who know Spanish, and smuggle immigrants to help pay their way through school. Estimates show that a 19-year-old immigrant smuggler hauling in 5-10 immigrants every Saturday can rake in approximately $50, 000 U.S. per year. In some American universities close to the border, it is likely that about a fifth of the school's Spanish class is engaging in immigrant smuggling (although, of course, they would not raise their hands if asked). Mexican illegals often have planned their entry for years. In the case of the Zacatecana or Durangana family sending their eldest son to the States upon coming of age, there is usually a Mexican family in the U.S. who has been agreed upon as a host family for the new immigrant when he arrives to find work in America. If they are outside a large metropolitan area where they can blend in, these Mexican men must find a "hook" to stay in this country. The hook is often marriage. In rural areas, the immigrant often finds a young American woman to marry, protecting him from deportation and reclassifying him as a "Nonresident spouse of resident citizen". (Essentially this means that the wife's citizenship gives certain rights to the husband despite illegal status.) This foot-in-the-door allows the immigrant to bring in family members from Mexico, and set up shop. In rural America, the most difficult part of the scheme explained above is finding American women who will marry them. Especially is this so in the South and lower Midwest, due to that region's characteristic of not accepting other groups and ethnicities. (However, all it takes is for one family member to marry a citizen, and the entire family can "squeeze in". ) Immigrants who work as farmhands may get to know a farm girl or "farmerette" while working there, and eventually marry the girl (from whence point they can begin to bring in othe family members from south of the border). This is a well-known phenomenon frequently encountered by the INS. Daughters who are sent up into the U.S. the same way also use marriage as a foot-in-the-door, and do likewise. This type of immigration activity happens on a family and individual level, but it is part of a continental movement called La Reconquista. Similar to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny in America a century ago, the doctrine of La Reconquista claims that the Hispanic/Mesoamerican race , "La Raza" (law ROSS-uh, with rolled R), must reclaim all of the land it ever lost. This "lost land", known as Aztlan, includes the southwestern U.S. (CA, NV, UT, AZ, NM, CO, TX), Belize, the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Florida, Guantanamo, St. Helena, and the Corn Islands. (Latin American nations have already negotiated back the Corn Islands, the Panama Canal, and parts of the sub-Antarctic.) The government of Mexico encourages the llegal immigration because it fits in line with Reconquista ideals. Not every immigrant crossing the border has an agenda of regaining the land back, but the governments that encourage them to immigrate do. The government officials allow them to remain poor in their own country so they will be motivated to do what they are "supposed" to do: help their country reconquer that land in the north, rather than "sit around drinking cervezas." No matter how many immigrants come in, that alone would not be a reconquista. The Mexican government (Felipe "Cabron" included) have to weaken American government so the Mexicans can regain control of the Aztlan states, rather than simply presence there. A Mexican politician has published a book, El Migrante Mexicano (The Mexican Emigrant), which is essentially a cookbook on how to illegally enter certain countries, especially the U.S. Since a Mexican official wrote it, the government will not ban the book. One out of three Mexicans polled in Mexico City said that they would consider coming to the U.S. if they could. Moreover, according to the John Birch Society, the globalists are using the reconquista to weaken America for their own purposes. Terrorists also come in through the borders, and this is the OTM issue. (OTMs are much more of a threat to this nation than Mexicans alone, because Mexicans are only a threat in large numbers, while only a few OTMs can be a national danger. OTMs will be covered soon in "Somebody Left the Door Open!-----------Part 2".) If the amnesty program law is passed, these 15 million Mexican illegal immigrants will be allowed to bring in 5 family members each. This translates to 75 MILLION new immigrants. Due to the poll, however, we know that no more than 35 million would come--2 per immigrant already here. Still, however, this would roughly double the numbers of Latin American immigrants present in the U.S. It is societally considered perfectly normal among most Mexicans for someone to migrate illegally. I have known some who casually told their stories of entering through the Sonoran Desert. One was smuggled by an immigrant smuggler, after nearly a year of planning. These immigrants barely spoke a word of English, and one of them did not know what a "green card " was. I had heard about rumors of a new Mexican-American visa coming out, so in that conversation I asked her if she was using a visa. She replied, "No, no tengo papeles, no tengo nada" ("No, I don't have any papers or anything"). The amnesty program will not solve the problem; it simply rewards them for their action of entering the U.S. undocumented. The INS needs to show the seriousness of this crime to the community of them already here, and deport those that they find. One commentator, using the Cinco de Mayo holiday as an occasion to discuss the undocumented-worker problem, said "to the 20 million squatters" that are unlawfully residing here, taking jobs, and using taxpayer resources, "Happy Stinko de Mayo...now get the h*** out!" http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~iberia/fotos/despedida_alex.2003-07-19/despedida_alex.2003-07-19.07.jpeg
08:12 AM - Saturday 5 May 2007 - comments {0} - post commentOne Little Greek Word"It was Greek to me", goes the famous line from Shakespeare, a line which most of us have probably repeated at some time, when something seemed totally incomprehensible. Since most of us cannot read Greek as it is written, we must rely on the work of translators in order to read the New Testament, which was originally written in the Greek language. Most of the time, the translators' diligent work has brought us accurate, near-verbatim English transcripts of the inspired writings. Occasionally, however, the translators made errors. Some of these errors are well-known, some less so. A rather subtle kind of mistranslation is the kind in which a certain part of speech is mistaken for a different part of speech, and the English word used to translate it ends up being a poor choice as a result. One example of such a mistranslated word is the Greek word oikourgos, found in Titus 2:5. The word is found in no other verse of Scripture, yet its misrendering in this one place has had a significant impact on the lives of thousands of Christians. In the KJV, Titus 2:4-5 reads: "That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home...that the word of God be not blasphemed." So, where's the mistranslation? It is in the phrase "keepers at home", a misrendering of the Greek word oikourgos. Oikourgos is a compound based on the word oikos, "house" and ergos "to work" (associated, by folk etymology, with ouros "to guard"). It is translated as if it was a noun (many Greek nouns end in -os). However, the -os noun ending is masculine. Since in this context it is referring to women, the masculine ending would not be correct. Therefore we know that the word is not a noun. Instead, the ending is actually a different suffix: -os in its usage as an adjective-forming verbal suffix. This may seem like much ado about nothing, but it significantly alters the meaning, as you will see. The KJV translators saw the word oikourgos as a noun, and since it was describing a person, they took it to mean a certain type of person. Since oikos means "house" and urgos (a form of ouros) comes from a root meaning "to keep", they translated it in the KJV as "keepers at home". Later translators confused the meaning even further, believing that the lexical meaning of "keep" in that sense was that of "to stay". Therefore, some more modern translations have rendered it as "stayer at home", a still more inaccurate rendering. Even James Strong, compiler of Strong's Concordance, listed "stayer at home" as a rendering of oikourgos. Strong's Concordance has very few errors, but that was one of them. So what does the phrase translated "keeper at home" really mean? I'll get to that in a moment. First, we must consider the ramifications of the mistranslation. Hundreds of thousands of Christians, reading the KJV and some newer versions, have taken the misrendered phrase "keeper at home" to be equivalent to the modern word "homemaker." Dozens if not hundreds of Christian books, weblogs, articles, radio interviews, etc. have used the phrase "keeper at home" in their titles. They often misunderstand the verse to mean that all Christian women should be "homemakers". The Conservative Mennonite church has actually made a doctrine out of the mistranslation; they teach that married women (even those who do not have children) should not work "outside the home" or "off the farm". They claim to have "found" this doctrine in Titus 2:5, in the phrase "keepers at home". So, first, what oikourgos does not mean: It does not mean "homemaker" or "housewife" in the modern sense, as some mistakenly believe it does. Nor does it mean "stayer at home". It does not mean that women should "stay at home" and must not be involved in external matters or take any work out of the home. Now that you know what oikourgos does NOT mean, we are free to discuss what it does mean. As stated above, the word is a descriptive word, not a noun. Oiko-, as you should remember from the above explanation, means house. The form -urgos, a form of ouros, means "to keep". In the case of compound words, it means "taking care to keep something (in good condition)". The entire word, oikourgos, then means "mindful (or careful) to keep their houses in good condition". Why? "That the word of God be not blasphemed!" The verse is saying that keeping your house clean, orderly, and in repair is a good witness for the Gospel. So you see, this admonition means something totally different than many Christians believe it does. It has absolutely nothing to do with home economic roles, and everything to do with "public relations" for the Gospel. A disorderly, poorly kept home conveys a lowlife feeling, and speaks poorly for the faith. The oikourgos misrendering ("keepers at home") seems primarily confined to the English language. In Spanish, the SBRV version (which is to Spanish what the KJV is to English) renders the Greek word as que tengan cuidado de la casa ("that they care about the state of the house"), a translation far more accurate than the KJV's "keepers at home". There is no Biblical support whatsoever for the doctrine, held by Conservative Mennonites and certain others, that women must stay at home or on the farm, and not work outside the so-called "domestic sphere". The virtuous woman, in Proverbs 31, is described as doing eleven things "outside the home". She is involved in agriculture and business, and is even politically active (in Hebrew idiom, the "gates" are a synecdoche for political affairs). So now you know...the REST of the story.
09:31 AM - Sunday 18 February 2007 - comments {0} - post commentAnswers to Outrageous Pseudoconservative StatementsOn Friday, February 2, 2007 Rush Limbaugh aired a very radical diatribe that he had written concerning ecological issues. It almost sounded like a satire of someone who does not believe in environmentalism. Despite his huge listenership, he is nonetheless on the far fringe of opinion on certain issues, and in the past several years he has become still more radical. (For example, since the past presidential election season he has been using more derogatory nicknames than before, such as "John F-ing Kerry" for Senator John F. Kerry. The following is a set of reasoned responses to four shocking (and most would agree, untrue) statements made during the final half-hour of the Friday, February 2, 2007 edition of the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Outrageous statement #1: "Environmentalism has a 'god', [a deity], Gaia, the earth...[but] they are godless, in the traditional sense." Suppose that a new alarm system alerted everyone to a major tsunami, and as a result there were no fatalities. The same logic would reason, "This shows how unnecessary that alarm system is, and what a waste of money it was to install. They said that if a tsunami came it was going to kill hundreds of people and so we needed to install that alert system, and now a tsunami has happened and not a single fatality resulted." __________________
The best way to PREDICT the future is to help CREATE it. 01:14 PM - Saturday 3 February 2007 - comments {0} - post commentNow this will take some Ponderosa: Should we Ussher out the old dating system?The oldest known trees in the world, even older than the oldest redwoods, are the ponderosa pines of northwestern U.S. and southwestern Canadian high-mountain forests. Because of its specialized habitat, the tree is rather rare. A specialized mensuration (forestry measurement) tool, a core borer, has been developed to determine the age of living trees by boring into the rings to obtain a sample and count them. The hole bored is small, and the effect on the tree is minimal. Many ecologists do not like to bore into trees, but in some cases it can prove the age of the tree, and save the tree from being felled. Sometimes forest projects use core sampling as part of tree survey procedure, to collect data on old trees. This age-finding tool has made what from a Creation perspective is a shocking discovery, in Montana: a ponderosa pine, whose annual rings indicate an age 300 years older than the amount of time since Noah's Flood, according to Bishop Ussher's Dates. Now there are several ways around this paradox. The Creation Research Institute scientists have introduced the most common creationist theory explaining the age of the tree: that after the Flood, climates were so chaotic that the seasons may have been irregular and created double or triple rings on the trees in some years. Indeed, forestry and dendrology laboratories have been able to artificially produce double and triple annual rings in trees, causing the trees to appear to be older than, in fact, they are. This rarely--if ever--happens in nature today, but the climatic changes after the Flood may have caused such weather conditions for several hundred years. Another explanation could be the theory, posited by more liberal creationists such as Hugh Ross, that the flood of Noah's day did not cover the entire earth. This is another subject, and entire treatises can be devoted to it. However, based on both biblical evidence (the Hebrew words used to describe the flood) and extrabiblical evidence (such as fossils atop mountain peaks), it is much more tenable to assert that the flood indeed covered all the earth. Since it is unlikely that a 300-year-old tree could survive months of submersion, another question is brought up: could Ussher be as wrong as a two-headed frog? A modern Biblical chronologist has recalculated Ussher's dates independently and believes that, barring some gross mistranslation in the Biblical text, the date of 4004 B.C. for Adam's creation is correct. Other chronologists, though, have given other dates due to different interpretation of certain verses, e.g. the 430 years of Israel's captivity in Egypt, and whether that started when Abraham went down into Egypt, or when Joseph led his family to Egypt. (The former interpretation, unlike the latter which Ussher used, seems to allow a more plausible amount of time for the population of Hebrews to have built up to its size at the Exodus.) Some chronological renderings may indicate that the creation of humankind occurred much earlier, in 5400 B.C. So, with all this complex debate of dates, aren't you glad that the message of the Good Book is timeless? 08:39 AM - Monday 29 January 2007 - comments {0} - post commentPepo and Maxima Pumpkins: Similarities and DifferencesFew of you are thinking about pumpkins at this time of year (except in Australia where they are beginning to form on the vines right now), but if you plan to grow pumpkins in 2007, you need to begin planning early and deciding what types to grow. True pumpkins fall into two squash species, which cannot cross with one another. The Cucurbita maxima, or "maxima pumpkins", comprises varieties such as 'Rouge Vif d'Etampes' ('Cinderella'), and all "prize" or "giant" pumpkins ('Atlantic Giant', 'Big Max', 'Wyatt's Wonder', 'King of Mammoth' aka 'Mammoth Chile', etc.) The Cucurbita pepo, or so-called "field pumpkins", comprises 'Connecticut Field', 'Sugar Pie' ('Small Sugar'), 'Winter Luxury Pie', etc., as well as jack-o-lantern varieties ('Howden' etc.) and so-called mini-pumpkins or acorn squashes ('Baby Bear', 'Jack-be-Little' etc.) The major differences between them are: 1. Maxima pumpkins can withstand much less heat than field pumpkins. Maximas wilt on summer days and will not set fruit when temperatures exceed about 90*F(32*C). If your climate features 45 days of 90*F (32*C) or more each year, you should not grow maxima pumpkins. Field pumpkins, on the other hand, can withstand higher temperatures than almost any other crop. 2. Maxima pumpkins are generally superior to field pumpkins in pies, with the exceptions of a few varieties. 3. Field pumpkins can never grow to the size of maxima pumpkins. 4. Maxima pumpkins cannot cross with Thanksgiving gourds, summer squash, or delicata squash. Field pumpkins can, however. 5. Maxima pumpkins tolerate more shade than field pumpkins.
There are many strains of pumpkins, often named after the farm family that developed them. (Dill, Howden, Wyatt, Young, etc.) Sometimes, especially in the case of maxima pumpkins, the strain is named after the town where it was first grown or sold. This is originally a French tradition. If your climate permits that you grow both, you may grow them side by side or even interplant them. They will not cross with one another, and you will have pure seed for next year's crop of pumpkins. By the way, pumpkin seed is recommended to save for 6 years. Pumpkins have a very extended seed longevity. One Michigan farmer bought a farm in 2001, and while cleaning out its shed in early 2002, he found some pumpkin seeds in a jar from 1957. The farmer started the seeds in starting trays, and about 10% of the 45-year-old seeds sprouted! They went on to grow into a bountiful little pumpkin patch. 03:03 PM - Sunday 21 January 2007 - comments {1} - post comment
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Description Home User Profile Archives Friends Recent Entries - The Ethics of Ethanol - My Punctuated Apologies - Happy New Year! - A Factory-Farming Revelation - 35 Undeniable Truths of Life - Somebody Left the Door Open! ----------Part 1 - One Little Greek Word - Answers to Outrageous Pseudoconservative Statements - Now this will take some Ponderosa: Should we Ussher out the old dating system? - Pepo and Maxima Pumpkins: Similarities and Differences - Well, Well, Well... |
