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Three Exciting Workshops in
Mid-Atlantic Area
March 1, 2005
1. RAW MILK, LOCAL PRODUCE, PASTURED LIVESTOCK...Reconnecting Farmers
and Consumers, March 19, Slippery Rock, PA
2. FERTILITY AWARENESS: Charting a Woman's Waking Temp and Cervical
Fluid to Gauge Gynecological Health and for Natural Birth Control or
Pregnancy Achievement, March 14, Philadelphia, PA.
3. EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS (EM) in AGRICULTURE, April 2, Shepardstown,
WV.
WORKSHOPS
1. THE WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA WAPF CHAPTERS Present:
RAW MILK, LOCAL PRODUCE, PASTURED LIVESTOCK... Reconnecting Farmers
and Consumers
McKay Education Building - Slippery Rock University
Slipper Rock, PA
Saturday, March 19
10:00am - 5:00pm
Cost: $5.00
Repairing the Links of a Broken Food Chain
By Mark McAfee
Founder and Managing Member of Organic Pastures Dairy Corporation and
McAfee Farms, Fresno, California
Whatever Happened to Our Food Supply?
By Bill Sanda
Executive Director of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Washington, D.C.
The Green Chef Deli ...Organic To Go of Sewickley
Is offering a local foods brown bag lunch for $8 when
Ordered in advance. Or you may bring your own.
Don't miss this educational and eye-opening seminar!
Space is limited - call today to reserve your seat and get directions
Elise Stephinson, Western Pa. Chapter Leader
814-227-2219 or
Carrie Hahn, Greater Pittsburgh Area Chapter Leader
412-531-4485 or
Co-Sponsored by The Robert A. Macoskey Center
Sustainable Systems Education and Research at Slippery Rock University
Mark McAfee, Founder and Managing Member of OPDC and McAfee Farms Mark
McAfee has managed the 600 acre diversified family farm for 24 years.
In 1998 Mark was selected as the "Best of the West" fruit
grower out of 20,000 US fruit growers for innovations in food safety.
He was featured on 20/20 with Lynn Sherr for food safety and organic
innovations in 1998. He invented the nation's first Grade A Certified,
20-station mobile milk barn. Mark served as Operations, Marketing and
Human
Resources Director for $30 million dollar emergency medical company
for five years while maintaining certification as a Paramedic over a
16-year period. He also completed premed education course work at FSU,
Chapman and Merced JC. Earned certificate from California Poly Tech
University in cheese production technology.
He personally invented all organic raw dairy products at OPDC. Mark
McAfee has been interviewed by countless magazines, radio stations,
and TV stations, and is considered an organic and raw dairy expert.
He has spoken in California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Nebraska as
an expert on organic raw milk issues. He is an accomplished high performance
private pilot with extensive medical mission work in remote central
Mexico serving as a mission pilot for Flying Doctors. Recently, he has
been
selected to sit on the National Organic Dairy Advisory Board. (This
is a University of California research based organization that provides
funding for the advancement of important organic milk research projects.)
Is commonly referred to as "director of excitement" by OPDC
team members.
Mark will explore various opportunities available to fix the broken
food chain, and rebuild that bridge between farmers and consumers and
return the family farm to profitability. Because of the overwhelming
interest and demand for raw milk that is sweeping across America, Mark
will focus part of this presentation on how to reliably produce safe,
organic raw milk and will explain the raw milk nutritional values and
why it can be a safe alternative to pasteurized milk.
Bill Sanda - Executive Director of the Weston A Price Foundation "I
love tenderly prepared, nutrient-dense, not manufactured, highly processed,
foods. As such, I serve as the Executive Director of the Weston A. Price
Foundation, a food and nutrition education, a research and advocacy,
non-profit organization, dedicated to reinstituting nutrient-dense foods
into our food supply and to developing sustainable agricultural practices."
Bill will explore the pioneering nutrition research of
Dr. Weston A. Price, whose studies of traditional peoples established
the parameters of human health and determined the optimum characteristics
of human diets. He will focus on what nutrient dense foods are and their
significance, and answer the question of how to obtain and prepare them.
2. FERTILITY AWARENESS
Charting a Woman's Waking Temp and Cervical Fluid to Gauge Gynecological
Health and for Natural Birth Control or Pregnancy Achievement
A talk by Katie Singer, CFE
Monday, March 14, 5:00 - 6:30pm
Huntsman Hall G60, 3730 Walnut Street
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Women who chart their waking temperature and cervical fluid can know
when they are fertile or infertile, and whether they are ovulating,
prone to thyroid problems, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and/or
progesterone deficiency. Charting (also known as Fertility Awareness
and Natural Family Planning) can be used for birth control, pregnancy
achievement, and as an introductory indicator of a woman's health.
This talk will explain how to determine a woman's fertile and infertile
phases by charting and how to identify common GYN problems before serious
problems arise.
Katie Singer is a Certified Fertility Educator and the author of The
Garden of Fertility (Penguin, 2004). She also co-authored "Gauging
a woman's health by her fertility signals: an introductory synthesis
of
western and Chinese medical principles" in the peer-reviewed journal
Alternative Therapies. Katie was also one of our speakers at the 2004
Weston A. Price Foundation Annual Conference in October 2004.
For more info, contact
, or go to GardenofFertility.com.
Sponsored by Nursing GSO and GAPSA
3. EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS (EM) in AGRICULTURE
Link: http://www.gardeningforthefuture.com/
A Full Day Workshop featuring Steve Diver and Vinny Pinto on how to
use inexpensive farm-made ferments to boost soil fertility and control
disease (with a postscript on EM applications for human nutrition).
WHEN: 9AM to 4PM, Saturday, April 2, 2005
WHERE: Reynolds Hall in Shepherdstown, MD
COST: $35.00 (includes lunch. See below)
CONTACT: For More Information, Contact Allan Balliett 304.876-3382,
or
http://www.gardeningforthefuture.com/
Effective Microorganisms (EM) is a method of inoculating agricultural
soils with beneficial microorganisms that contribute beneficial soil
effects such as improved soil aggregation, nitrogen fixation, mineralization,
humus formation, disease suppression, and decomposition. EM is
also used to enhance the nutrition and digestibility of livestock feeds
and to control odors and insects problems in livestock enterprises.
Elaine Ingham has done much to educate sustainable farmers about the
importance of promoting diversity in the soil food-web. Dr Ingham advocates
almost exclusively for the value of aerobic microbiology. Unfortunately,
when done properly, producing an viable batch of aerobic compost
tea can be both expensive (lab tests, equipment outlay) and time consuming.
Using EM, on the other-hand, requires virtually no extra equipment and
needs no lab tests. Ironically, EM is an anaerobic innoculant which
brews itself in a closed container and yet provides such a significant
boost to soil biology that it not only brings "rare' beneficial
microbes to farm soils, it also creates a soil environment that allows
idigenous bacteria, fungus and beneficial nematodes to flourish.
Furthermore, in the world of microbial agriculture, EM is far from a
new idea. EM has been used in Japan for more than 70 years. As a point
of fact, Steve Diver says that there are more research papers and reports
on EM than any other microbial inoculation system in organic agriculture.
Steve Diver, who has presented on microbial inoculation at both the
ECOFARM and Upper Midwest Organic Conference in the past year, will
give an introductory lecture to orient the prospective learner on the
place of on-farm beneficial microbe cultures: compost teas, effective
microorganisms (EM), and related biological farming. This lecture will
review the practical applications for bioaugmentation of the rhizosphere
and phyllosphere, including the production and use of compost teas,
effective
microorganisms, indigenous microorganisms, fermented plant extracts,
cow patty pit from Biodynamics, and mass-produced mycorrhizal inoculates.
Vinny Pinto, an expert on agricultural applications for EM will speak
on the following topics:
Basics of EM
How to use EM for composting
Using EM for ag soil
How to make high quality AEM
How to use EM for cattle, poultry and swine
Value of EM products in human and livestock nutrition
In addition, a hands-on EM Compost ("Bokachi") demonstration
is planned.
The goal of this conference is to give the potential user a background
on the theory and science of microbial inoculation in general and a
working knowledge of how to economically use EM effectively in their
farming enterprise. Furthermore, once in the field, attendees of this
workshop can rely on support from Mr. Pinto through his "EM-AG"
internet discussion group.
Seating for the workshop is limited, so register early. Register by
sending a check made to "GFTF" to Gardening for the Future,
POB 3047, Shepherstown, WV 25443 or at the door. Registration fee includes
lunch; please register before March 25 and please state your vegetarian/other
preference at that time. For more information, watch http://www.gardeningforthefuture.com/
or contact Allan Balliett at (304) 876-3382 or
.
Bio for Vinny Pinto
Vinny Pinto is a consulting scientist who performs research on use of
beneficial syntropic (anti-entropic) fermentative microbes, including
EM and related microbial consortia, in a variety of fields ranging from
soils for crop agriculture to livestock to odor management and pathogen
reduction in industrial and waste treatment settings. He also operates
a small zero-odor egg-producing operation using EM microbial technology.
Vinny is a degreed scientist with a Master's degree in the health-related
sciences and in research methods in the health sciences. He has a strong
background in devising and guiding scientific research studies. He has
been working with and researching uses of EM for over two years, particularly
in the realms of livestock and human uses, and health-related applications
using EM fermented antioxidant beverages as a nutritional supplement
for humans and animals; he performs consulting for
clients in a number of foreign countries as well as in the USA. One
of his recent large agricultural livestock consulting projects involved
implementation of EM for odor control and animal health in a large "factory"
poultry farm containing about 50,000 chickens in a 6,000 sq. ft. barn,
where the poultry density was roughly 10 lbs per square foot.
He has presented lectures and seminars on the usage of such beneficial
syntropic microbes in many venues, including the international EM Sustainable
Community Festival held in Kansas City, MO in November 2004 which attracted
attendees from around the world. Vinny operates two popular
informational websites on EM and its uses http://www.eminfo.info/
and http://www.antioxbrew.com/
and he operates five e-mail list groups on various applications of EM
and similar beneficial antioxidative microbes. Vinny is the author of
an encyclopedic 200+ page book entitled "Fermentation with Syntropic
Antioxidative Microbes: An Advanced Guide to Brewing EM Fermented Secondary
Products", and is currently working on an introductory book offering
an overview on the use EM across many fields and a second book which
will offering basic guidelines for using EM and related beneficial microbial
cultures in agriculture. Vinny is also the publisher of the fee-based
"Advanced EM Newsletter", a newsletter devoted to advanced
uses for EM across various sectors.
Bio for Steve Diver
Among other things, Steve Diver is an internationally known expert on
on-farm beneficial microbe cultures. He as has been a researcher and
advisor for ATTRA, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information
Service, for the past fifteen years, with a focus on alternative farming
systems, soil biology, humus farming, food quality, and organic agriculture
methodologies. ATTRA's Steve Diver has focused on alternative farming
systems, soil biology, humus farming, food quality, and organic agriculture
methodologies during his fifteen years of outreach to farmers.
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