moving to apple country
April 26, 2024Hi Everyone!
Some may know that we have relocated to a place in north East Hendersonville NC. We love it here up the mountain, but when we head down into town we pass through an agricultural wasteland of “apple farming”. It’s odd that this area is esteemed as an area suitable to grow apples, when in reality the conventional recommendations of fungicide, pesticide, herbicide, and more are so numerous that it prompted me to write this blog post.
As you can see here at the 2023 Integrated Orchard Management Guide for Commercial Apples in the Southeast the list of recommended applications of chemicals is no shorter than 100 + different chemicals. I stopped trying to make sense of this disgusting guide at chemical 100. What the heck is this! It’s no wonder that half of the population has cancer.
Here at Wild Goods you can always rest assured that we have sprayed a total of zero chemicals on anything we grow. We are growing native useful plants like Pawpaw, Aronia, juneberry, hardy kiwi, American persimmon, duck potatoes, ramps and more! We are extremely lucky to be living up a mountain where we are well tucked away from the chemical inputs that the nearby farms utilize on their crops. It is worrisome that this backwards way of farming is still being recommended and sold to the masses by big agriculture and big business. According to Utah State University, “Chemical fertilizers hit the market after World War II, when the government realized that leftover ammonium nitrate, originally manufactured for explosives during the war, could be applied to crops as a nitrogen fertilizer. Pesticides had been initially developed for poisonous gases ”
It is no wonder that the toxic chemicals that divide us are a byproduct of war. Let us create a more peaceful, healthful future without these unnecessary chemical inputs and build our soil naturally with compost, green and natural manures, and mulches.
Peace and love
Natalie