STURGEON: AN ANCIENT FISH WITH A NEW LEASE ON LIFE

Lake Sturgeon have been around a long, long time.  They were swimming in ancient seas while dinosaurs walked the earth.  They are tough, crafty and have survived everything that 150 million years can thrown at them — until the 1860s when humans decided their eggs were a prestigious snack.

I recently listened to  Kathleen Schmitt Kline (a former science writer at the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute) at Wednesday Nite @ Lab as she talked about People of the Sturgeon: Wisconsin’s Love Affair with and Ancient Fish, a book she co-authored with Ron Bruch (Natural Resources Region Team Supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources) and Fred Binkowski (a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin Great Lakes WATER Institute .

Check out a sample page here.

Many species of sturgeon once teamed in both salt and fresh water.  They swam up the Mississippi in great numbers and settled this area as melting glaciers formed the Great Lakes.

Pictured here @ Agawa Rock is a Lake Sturgeon, the King of Fish to the Ojibwe people. (photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eskimo_jo/2744518571/

Sturgeons can live more than 100 years, weigh more than 200 pounds and measure 7 feet.

Commercial fishermen considered the sturgeons a nuisance.  They stacked sturgeon like cord wood and left them to rot along the shoreline.

Then fish processors realized sturgeon eggs could feed a voracious appetite for caviar. The poor fish were better off when people thought they were a nuisance.  They became the focus of a booming caviar industry that flourished in the Great Lakes region for all of 10 to 15 years.

When the sturgeons were gone, entrepreneurs went elsewhere.

This book tells about people around Lake Winnebago (Wisconsin’s biggest lake) who formed Sturgeons for Tomorrow to restore the sturgeons.  They worked together to get protective legislation and develop a successful method of propagating little sturgeon babies in fish hatcheries.

Today these little fish are released with metal clip on their fins, and some of them even have passive integrated transponders or PIT tags (the same kind people have injected into their pets).

A PIT tag.

When sturgeons are caught, they can be scanned, creating a huge data base about where they go.  Some have radio transponders that can be tracked by air all year long.

Sturgeon are still fished, but in a very controlled manner that has helped increase rather than decimate their numbers.  People who get one of the few sturgeon permits fish from little, windowless huts on the ice.  They cut a hole through to the water and lay by it, peering in, waiting to spear a sturgeon.  They fish with a big forked implement that looks like Neptune’s trident.  They are reminiscent of the kind that Native Americans used, are locally made and cost around $200.

Sturgeon fishers are dedicated.  Some people try for 15 years and never get a sturgeon.  If you take your eyes away from that hole for one second, the only fish of your lifetime could go by.

If you get “lucky,” you can have powerful fish on the end of your spear that weighs more than you do which you now have to wrestle out of the hole and into a truck.

According to Schmitt Kline, sturgeon tastes buttery, not fishy and smokes into something very pleasing.  You and I will probably never know because the only way to find out is to spear one.  You can’t order it in a restaurant.  It’s illegal to take your catch out of the state.

That’s fine with me.

I don’t eat meat – and yes, that includes fish.  (Why do people keep asking me that?)

I’m just glad that we haven’t yet managed to push this peaceful fish off the planet.

Henry Quinlan with Lake Sturgeon. It's nice to see these "fossil fish" getting a helping hand. (photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwsmidwest/4815182097/

MARK BITTMAN’S RECIPE FOR SUSTAINABILITY

I’ve been following Mark Bittman, food writer for the NYT for a few years, and I’ve enjoyed watching him continue emphasizing pragmatic, healthy, tasty cooking choices while turning up the gas on the ethical questions that underlie food from you next snack to the profit and loss report to McDonald’s stock holders.

photo credit:http://www.good.is/post/mark-bittman-wants-to-see-mcdonald-s-out-of-business/

Here are three of his recent editorials that are well worth reading and five of his recipes well worth cooking.

“Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?”

Bittman clearly demonstrates with simple math that hyperprocessed food is, in fact, more expensive than options you can cook yourself.

The stumbling block that makes so many people choose chicken nuggets over chicken prepared at home is that cooking is associated with work and is seen as a burden.

More than that, these engineered foods trigger “addition-like neuroaddictive responses.

He has some pretty radical ideas about how to turn this self-destructive trend around.

If you haven’t yet read this article, you can check it out here.

photo credit: http://www.progressivereader.com/2011/08/02/mark-bittman-for-congress/

“The True Cost of Tomatoes”

The tomato you pick up in the grocery store comes at a price in the lives of the workers who grow and pick them.  If this article doesn’t get you to your local famer’s market, then I don’t know what will.  Read it here.

“Time to Boycott Tuna Again?”

Americans eat a billion dollars’ worth of tuna a year, and choosing the cans that claim “dolphin-safe” is not slowing the carnage at sea as tuna are caught using “fish aggregating devices that scoop up entire ecosystems.  Bittman is not against canned tuna, just proposes some ways to change fishing practices. Read it all here .

Now that all that mental exercise has worked up your appetite, try these:

photo credit : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunrise/35819369/

1. Tomato Cobbler
2.  Vegetable Pancakes 
3. Roasted Carrots with Cumin 
4.  Muffins, Infinite Ways
5.  Pasta Frittata 

Mark Bittman has got it all.  He knows food and food policy.

Who is your favorite food guru? 

WISCONSINITES HAVE MIXED VIEWS ON ETHANOL

I have ambivalent feelings about biofuels in general.  It doesn’t seem like a magic bullet to me, and I read that putting cropland into biofuel production will likely increase hunger in an increasingly hungry world so that a minority can continue tooling about in their fuel-powered lives.

So, I read this new study from UW-Madison with interest, and pass it along.

A majority of Wisconsinites support the use of ethanol blends if it keeps dollars and jobs in the United States and reduces air pollution, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

I wonder what this car runs on. (photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/226550746/

But that support dropped substantially if those surveyed were told that ethanol could harm their engine or reduce gas mileage. About two-thirds said they would not support ethanol under these conditions. It is generally believed that ethanol will not hurt newer engines, but studies have shown that it will cause minimal reductions in mileage compared to gasoline.

“Understandably, this poll indicates mixed attitudes toward the pros and cons of ethanol,” says Bret Shaw, assistant professor of life sciences communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and environmental communication specialist for UW-Extension.

Respondents’ actual knowledge about ethanol was also mixed. While ethanol does, in fact, burn cleaner than gasoline, only 53 percent believed this to be the case, while 41 percent thought the two were about the same and 6 percent believed ethanol burns dirtier that gasoline.

Asked about ethanol’s impact on the environment, 41 percent believed that it causes less damage than gasoline, 15 percent thought ethanol was more damaging and 44 percent believe the two were about the same. There is debate among scientists and industry groups on this question. Although ethanol burns cleaner, detractors argue that its environmental benefits are overstated because demand for crops needed to produce it may accelerate the conversion of forests and other natural, carbon-absorbing ecosystems to farmland.

Ethanol can be produced from renewable agricultural products, such as wood chips. Read more: www.transportation.anl.gov. (photo credit: Argonne National Laboratory.)

The survey found considerable doubt about ethanol’s economic benefits. Only 43 percent believed domestically produced ethanol increases U.S. jobs, while 46 percent thought it would have no effect and 10 percent believed ethanol use would decrease jobs. Similarly, relatively few respondents thought ethanol would decrease their own fuel costs. Thirty-one percent thought it would boost the price at the pump, 41 percent said that it has no impact and 28 percent believed it lowers pump prices. Ethanol blends are generally thought to decrease fuel prices at the pump for Wisconsin consumers.

Overall, support for ethanol was highest among people who were younger, more educated, Democrats and those living in a county where an active biofuels plant was located.

Respondents were interviewed in June and July as part of the most recent UW-Madison Badger Poll. Data was collected from 556 persons chosen at random within households with landline telephones. The overall response rate for the survey is 39.6 percent with a 4.2 percent margin of error. The analysis was conducted by Bret Shaw and Michael Cacciatore, doctoral student the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication.

What do you thing about ethanol and biofuel in general?  I’d really like to know.

WHAT GARDENERS ARE GROWING AND WHY

Here is an article I wrote that appeared this week in Isthmus, Madison’s weekly newspaper:

A first-of-its-kind study

analyzes how much Madison-area gardeners produce and why

Surprise, it’s not just about food!
Denise Thornton on Thursday 09/15/2011

When Vincent Smith came to Madison to study urban agriculture, he picked fertile ground. Gardening is a growth industry here. One in three Madison-area households grows some of its own food. There is a waiting list for plots in many of the area’s 50 community gardens, and there are more than 40 organizations involved in local food production, with some of that produce going to food pantries.

(photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesfred/2817155773/ )

Smith is the first person to systematically study how much area gardeners are producing and why. According to his findings, Madison-area gardeners cultivated 48,184 food-producing gardens on 6.5 million square feet of ground to produce $9.4 million of food in 2010, but whittling their grocery bill had little to do with why most seeded, weeded and watered.

The median household income of community gardeners was $70,000, and $87,500 for home gardeners — both higher than the Madison-area’s median income of about $55,000. “There is a lot of food growing out there, and for some, it is unquestionably a net gain financially,” says Smith. “However, the wide range of personal and social values associated with food gardening goes way beyond the actual market value of the food.”

(photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/5908589011/

Smith arrived at the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies to get a Ph.D. after a stint as program director of the Center for Urban Agriculture in Santa Barbara, Calif. He grew up on a farm in Missouri and has a master’s degree in environmental education with an emphasis on outdoor, farm-based education.

“UW-Madison has a phenomenal number of people working on food, including world-renowned environmental sociologists who study food, combined with a high community interest in food production,” says Smith. “I had only been in Madison a couple of months when Community GroundWorks, then Troy Gardens, asked me to be on their board of directors. I started meeting people and networking.”

As he reached out to such groups as the Community Action Coalition, Research, Education, Action and Policy of Food Group (REAP), Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC) and City of Madison Gardens Committee, Smith found that many groups and growers were looking for hard numbers on the actual value of community food production.

“Organizations needed data for writing grants, and growers just wanted to know if it was worth their effort,” says Janet Silbernagel, chair of the Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development Program of the Nelson Institute. Silbernagel served as one of Smith’s advisers. “Vincent decided to undertake this study because people needed it, and he was the right person to do it. That had not been studied before.”

READ THE REST HERE

PINES AND CEDARS MAKE THEIR MOVE

“Hey!” we said.

(Watch out for brilliant ideas – they always turn out to be a lot of work.)

“While Bruce is here excavating for our septic system, let’s ask him to move a few trees planted by the previous owner, and we can make our future garden plot bigger.”

Bruce moved trees when we were first putting in a driveway.  Some lovely young spruce about 6 feet tall were growing where the drive was laid out.  Bruce offered to scoop them up with his back hoe and move then out of harm’s way.”

Back in the ground is just a few minutes.

We were no strangers to  transplanting trees on our land.  During our first few years as we were restoring an area to prairie, we were digging them up with a shovel and moving them by wheelbarrow, and had pretty good success.  (see Putting Pines in their Place or tips on Transferring Evergreens 

So we were thrilled to preserve the lane trees and fill in a bare spot along the road.  Almost all of them survived – thanks to many many gallons of water that we hauled to them with 2 five-gallon plastic buckets and a yoke.

That was four years ago, and those toddler trees have turned into strapping big teens.

But we are optimistic that they may make the move.  They were out of the ground a very short time, and we have been hauling water to them like crazy.  I personally hauled half a ton of water on the day the first eight were moved.  Since then three more changed address.

Nutrient-rich water.

When Doug said, “Bruce is ready to move the trees now!” I ran for the buckets and the power wagon.  A back hoe is a pretty blunt instrument for delicate surgery, but it went very fast.  Bruce could dig a hole, scoop out a tree and settle it in as fast as I could haul it 15 gallons of water.

Now we have 11 thirsty cedars and pines.  I don’t think we would have undertaken the process without our power wagon and a lot more plastic buckets.

We still use the yoke to get the buckets over the dike.

We are giving each tree 7-10 gallons of water every few days.

Of course you can’t tell how an evergreen is going for quite some time.  A holiday tree will sit in your living room looking vibrant for weeks without a root to its name.  So we won’t really know till next year.

We think we have a chance because

Fall is an excellent time to transplant evergreens as long as we make sure they are well mulched before winter to avoid freezing and thawing of the root ball.

Here's how we make tracks with the power wagon.

We are able to give them plenty of water, and not just any water – nutrient-rich water from our murky little pond.

Yesterday I got down on my knees to feel how wet the ground was under the branches of a cedar and realized that the dirt was settling irregularly and leaving some air pockets.

Air pockets underground are very bad for transplanted trees.  Their roots can’t move through the air.  It’s like a deadly force field to them.  So we have tucked them in more snugly.  It was a wild race the day they were transferred, and we dropped the ball on filling them in carefully enough.  All better now.

Soon we will mulch them well for winter.

Anybody transplanting or planting any trees this fall?  What have you learned to do to keep them happy when their roots are in short supply?

These are some big trees!

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YELLOW JACKETS NOW

This past week when Doug was mowing around a mound of topsoil to make it more accessible for the excavator, he was stung painfully.  We warned the men working on our septic system, but though they dug up and moved that mound, they encountered no bees.

Just a few days after the dirt pile had been moved, we were startled to find a fresh hole about six inches in diameter in  our little barnyard flower bed .  When we investigated, we found it was full of bees, and we suspected the ground bees might be relocating.

It's moments like these when I appreciate the 7x zoom on my Coolpix!

I called the state entomologist Phil Pelliteri , and he set me straight.

Ground bees did not move their home or dig this hole.

They aren’t even ground bees.

They are yellow jackets.

This particular species make paper nests, but they make them in existing cavities – often an abandoned animal burrow.  Their entrance is about the size of a quarter.

The hole we came upon was probably made by a skunk looking for a high protein snack of yellow jacket larvae.

Thanks to that skunk, I now a lot more about yellow jackets.

1.  This is the time of year you are most likely to be stung

2.  Even so, Yellow Jackets are NOT out to get you.

3.  They will all be gone by mid October.

We live with many different bees and wasps around our barn.  Another species of wasp builds paper nests in my greenhouse, and I’ve been able to live with them.  I move about deliberately, and they leave me alone.

I admire them.   I imagine that wasps could well be the species that becomes dominant when humans and other large mammals have all gone extinct if we mismanage global warming as badly as I fear we will.  The wasps may be poised for world domination just like those runty, timid mammals were after the dinosaurs were wiped out.  Wasps and bees are organized and aerial.  They are social.  They care for their young,  and they are armed and dangerous.

Nobody likes to get too close to the business end of a wasp, and this is the time of year when wasps are most likely to sting humans.  Phil bases this on sting reports.  In some cases in late summer a third of the people who walk into the emergency room have yellow jacket stings.  Most of those stings will come from the German yellow jacket, which are often misnamed garbage bees.  These cavity nesters have been in Wisconsin for about 35 years.  (Sting reports have been declining the past five years, according to Phil.)

Each spring, queens who have overwintered in some protected spot find a home and start to produce a colony.  At first there is just the queen and a few workers.  By fall, there may be as many as 3,000 individuals in that colony.  All summer they have been going out there and using their stingers and legs to attack and subdue tiny prey.  They eat many caterpillars and other insect pests that damage crops and garden plants.  Thank you, Ms. Yellow Jacket!

But as the summer wears on, their food sources disappear.  They are looking for protein and sugar sources — and that is when they notice humans eating outdoors.

Another thing that makes them cranky is lawn mowers roaring over their entrance.  And they get steamed when their quarter-sized net opening is stepped on. This is the time of year, when their numbers are highest, they can make their disapproval most keenly felt.

Phil advised me to leave them alone, if I can easily stay out of their way.  There are pesticides which which I could anhiliate them at night while they are quiet, but by late October they will be dead anyway.  So I don’t see the reason to put poison on the ground where they are living now.

Here is a queen yellow jacket. (photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sankax/3467684761/

Soon the colonies will produce their only male members and a new generation of queens, who will fly up into the air and mate madly, then the queens will find a hidey hole for the winter, and in the spring the whole cycle begins again.  New queens do not tend to return to previous holes.

Note:  If the cavity they have set up housekeeping in happens to be within the walls of your house, you will probably start to notice them coming and going now that their numbers are so high.  It is a big mistake to plug that hole.  That will result in a lot of very angry yellow jackets coming into your house through other openings you didn’t even know were there.

It’s beyond the scope of this post to tell you how to get rid of these unwelcome neighbors, but here is a good site with advice on how to deal with stings.

 What have been your close encounters? 

What do you think of these intense, little critters?

THE SUPER DUPER SEPTIC TANK

We are ready to flush our toilet, except that we don’t have one yet.  That has to wait till the house is built next summer.

However, our drainfield has been planned, approved, laid in, and seeded over.  And last week a super-duper septic tank was added to the project. 

I feel very ambivalent about our septic system.  I have become convinced that composting waste is the proper way to deal with it, but state, county and townships all have their requirements, and getting a building permit without a septic system would have proved very challenging in our area.  Especially since we are going outside the box on practically every other aspect of our house construction from straw bale, to unmilled timber frame to sod roof.

That said, I am very pleased with our septic system.  It is about as good as it gets.  Our drainfield is one long, gently curving pipe that follows the contour of the hill.  The soil is very suitable for filtering and reformulating the waste into nontoxic material.

But, when our excavator started to dig the deep hole for the septic tank, he struck rock.  We moved to the second option our steep site offered.  Again Bruce hit blindingly white, very hard sandstone.  This time, he called in a colleague with some kind of power hammer, and they chipped their way down.  (Haven’t seen the bill for that yet – yikes.)

Tuesday the tank arrived. Doug and I were were eager to see this mysterious object that will be such an integral part of our lives, but will be forever buried.  We arrived as a crane was lowering it into its final resting place.  I was told it weighs 20,000 pounds.

PLANTING THE SEPTIC DRAINFIELD

We are jump-starting next year’s house building project by getting the septic system done this fall.

This way we will  have good, thick plant cover by the winter of 2012 when we start using it.  In places like Wisconsin and Minnesota one has to take care to keep good plant cover on the drainfield to avoid freezing.  Good snow cover also helps, but we have no control over that.

All this reshaping the land with heavy equipment is disquieting.  It feels good to know and trust your excavator.  Bruce Lease has brought heavy equipment onto our land to make the drive and dig the foundation for the barn.  He’s intuitive and artistic, although  it would surprise him to hear those words referring to him.  The ground is his canvas, and the backhoe is his brush.

CRAPPING IN THE COUNTRY WITHOUT BREAKING THE LAW

We fell in love with our hilly land, but before we bought it, we were advised to have a soil evaluation report a.k.a. perk test   done to see if we would be able to build an at-grade septic system instead of a mound system for our future (now not so future) house.

The Wisconsin At-Grade system has been approved since 1982 on sites where soils are too deep to require a mound, but too shallow to install a below grade soil absorption system.

At-grade systems are less expensive than a mound system because there is no need for costly C33 sand.  They do less construction damage than in-ground soil absorption systems because because there is less excavation required in the absorption area.

We felt lucky to be one of the few sites in our township that met the qualifications.