DOWN on the FARM
with Tom Willey
First Friday of the month at 5p.m.
KFCF, 88.1 FM Fresno
Listen to our podcast.
“DeCesari Olive Oil Syndicate” is harvesting the neighborhood’s trees this day after Thanksgiving to press our coming year’s domestic supply. Four men scramble up and down ladders, stripping every black, oil-engorged fruit in hopes we can meet the 350 lb. minimum that Mill Valley’s Frantoio requires to press a separate lot. Last year, these same trees yielded over 900 lbs. Olive shares an “alternate bearing” habit with a number of other fruits and nuts. Voluminous crops demand extra energy and nutrients that otherwise would be appropriated to form a following year’s fruit buds. [Read more…]
I nearly lost a hand and could have lost my life, as 11,000 fellow Americans do each year, when that chance 2007 encounter with MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) landed me on hospital operating room tables, three times. Last week’s Centers for Disease Control report, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States 2013, warns MRSA deaths represent only half the total lives lost annually to 18 bacterial pathogens that have become exceedingly difficult to treat with available drugs. CDC cites abuses in human and animal medicine for this long-developing crisis. Popularly viewed as miracle cures, antibiotics have been [Read more…]