My new home is an ever changing place.

It's fall here in the Mid Hudson Valley, or the MHV as I've shorthanded it, and in the lowlands where I live between the Shawangunk Ridge to the west and the Marlboro Mountains to the east, called the Wallkill Valley, the leaves are approaching their peak of colorfulness. This reminds me that despite how painfully I miss California, autumn in the Northeast is one of the most beautiful things on earth.

In addition to reading about New York mountain ranges on Wikipedia, I am learning about this region's politics. Sean Eldridge, the husband of a Facebook bajillionaire, is attempting to finance his way into being my Representative in Congress.

Hot Cocoa for Cold Moods

Okay friends, I am in a bad mood. I'm not telling you why, so don't ask. But I will tell you that one thing that puts me in a better mood, sometimes, or at least has the thin veneer of putting me in a better mood, is hot cocoa. However, hot cocoa made from

The Benefit of my Stuffing Knowledge - Chestnut, Cornbread, Oyster Mushroom, and Caramelized Onion Stuffing

First of all, happy Buy Nothing Day! I have full confidence that my readers will actually buy nothing because I am pretty sure I have no readers. So I can proudly say that Blog Farmer Tracy is in 100% readership support of this important day. I however, do have to buy something. It's not a Christmas present, it won't be at a mall, but it does support, inadvertently, some big corporations. And I can't tell you what it is because it involves two people in my life highly likely to read this blog (although likelihood is still fairly low, they are on the high end of it.)

Making Yogurt for the Albatross

So I'm not making yogurt to actually serve to an albatross. Although, after seeing the movie Bag It at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, serving an albatross yogurt would be a hell of a lot better than its diet has been as of late, thanks to the enormous amounts of plastic garbage we throw away. This movie is about the amount of plastic garbage we use and throw out, and the impact it has on the rest of the world and our health. One particularly gruesome scene in the movie showed researchers dissecting dead albatross and pulling all manner of revolting plastic garbage out of their insides. Gag. I mean, ew. So disgusting.

Belly of the Beast

Or, My Somewhat Snarky, Extremely Long, and Not Entirely Educated Report-back on Roger Beachy’s (Director of the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture) Talk at UC Davis

Disclaimer: this was written with not just a smidgen of bias against Dr. Beachy, for no other reason than that he worked for a Research Center funded primarily by Monsanto for many years. Also, I know what I'm talking about a little, but I am pretty sure he would destroy me in a game of scrabble, not to mention a debate on the state of world agriculture issues, even though I still think I'm right.

Gathering at the Mondavi Center was my first physical and intuitive realization that I am in the heart of Big Ag research. I mean, I know this fact intellectually, but my entire experience at UC Davis to date has been in a tiny little bubble devoted to sustainable ag and food systems work, and this makes it easy to forget the massive rolling fields of GE research.