Summer of Camping - Yellowstone Lake State Park

Faelyn straddles the line between Wisconsin and Ilinois.

Our family just got into camping in the last year and this year we are visiting four different campgrounds in Wisconsin. Our first trip was to Yellowstone Lake State Park.  Yes, there is a Yellowstone Lake in WISCONSIN. It was lovely and we were with lovely people, one other family of longtime (pre-kid!) friends.

Elaine with the Mug and Me with the glass.

Pros:

• Awesome bat viewing. They came out at sundown and we had hundreds swooping around, eating mosquitoes and enchanting the children and adults. 
• Therefore, very few mosquitoes found their way to my skin. 
• Awesome fireflies. All over the place like Christmas lights in the trees. 
• Canoe/Kayak rental on site was easy, accessible and the kayaking was fun, and pretty easy while still being a decent workout. 
• Swim beach - totally not yucky, warm, sandy well defined area and fairly large swimbeach. Not stinky. 
• It was just really pretty. 
• Nice easy hikes for littles - we had a 3,5,6, and 9 year old with us. 
• No civilization noise. People, yes, traffic? No.  

No rain! This view above my bed! Lovely!

Cons

• Pit toilets. There was a shower room, but even those toilets were non-flushable and there was no running water for tooth-brushing. We were mostly ok with this, but our 9 year old did not like it. Nope. Not at all. 
• No Wi-fi. Now, its totally ok to be disconnected from the world, and, had I known, I would have printed google maps to get us back home at the end of the run. The most worrisome part about remote campsites is getting back to the interstate. We got lucky with our memories on the way home. My phone ran out of juice and I have few pictures. But it was also totally ok to be out of touch. Maybe I should move this to the Pros? 
• No wagons for walk-in site. We aren't backpacking. We are car-camping with a young family and that means STUFF. Most of the other campgrounds I have been to that have walk in sites also offer wagons. So... there was a lot more to set up and breakdown than I would have liked and we forgot to put all of our food away. A racoon ran off with a bag of corn chips. 

Overall, I would totally go to this one again. It was about a three-hour drive from our place in Chicago, and the pros totally outweighed the cons. I might pack a bit differently or reserve a different type of site, but nothing really surpasses the amazing bat experience and the lovely sounds of the woods.  And of course, these gorgeous kids. 

 

Faelyn 9, Julia 2, Ben 5, Lenora 6. Mine are the two on the outside.

GMO the ultimate battle between Nature vs Nurture

Believing in Science does not make me a traitor to my people.  

I am a Nature worshipper. Nature is kind of my religion. I am a tree hugger (literally), and find God in living things. 

Since I made a visit to Monsanto, courtesy of Illinois Farm Families and Illinois Corn back in April, I have found myself in several strange online and offline discussions. With family, friends, and strangers defending the science behind GMO while being accused of succumbing to the “propaganda” of the company. 

What a GMO is, is a Genetically Modified Organism. It could really be any plant which is cross-pollinated. What it has come to mean is seed that is created in a lab and then enters our food supply. It seems to mean that we are eating frankenfood suddenly (even though GMO corn has been in the fields for more than 20 years).  

Yes, there are seeds now in our supply that are modified in a laboratory. We eat them. The DNA of the BT bacteria does not enter our DNA and change it. Round Up is not part of the DNA of the seed but a coating around it.  Farmers are using LESS chemicals than ever before. At Monsanto seed bags also contain non-GMO seed and uncoated seed to preserve the food chain. (NO ONE believes me on this one, but I heard it from the horse’s mouth, as it were).  Nurture. Right? The process of caring for and encouraging the growth or development of someone or something?

Nature has been modifying food for millennia, as have Farmers by selecting pollens and impregnating plants with pollens from plants they like better. This is NOT different than doing the selection in the lab. It is just more efficient. 

GMO Labeling NEEDS to happen. Any entity trying to prevent this, including Monsanto, should just stop it. It would solve so many problems. Federal mandate. Do it. Companies do it on your own. Just freaking label so that the Non-GMO labeling craze will stop fooling people out of their money using fear tactics and age-old advertising techniques. 

I had a very enlightening discussion with a Farmer among my Facebook friends.  She and I became friends via social media, we have never met in person and we probably never will.  We became friends because of social activism – advocating for the rights of breastfeeding women. Sounds pretty crunchy and granola right? Just the type of company I have kept over the years. Liberal, smart women. Women and men who embrace the freespirit and the back to the earth movements. Modern day hippies. (My most frequent nicknames over the years Hippy, Mama, Hippy Mama, and for a brief time Red). 

Turns out she and her husband are canola farmers in Canada. Canada, the mecca of my people. I asked her if they used GMO canola, knowing it was one of the few available to market. 

“We have choices for non-GMO canola, but we don't choose them as the yield will be worse. Farming is complicated. I just get frustrated as it is hard to explain all the factors going into our decisions, in a Facebook comment. We have spent years and years farming, and Darryl spends hours researching before making these decisions each year.”

I replied to her that this is what I learned both during my experience as a Field Mom (now called City Moms) with Illinois Farm Families and my visit to Monsanto. That farmers ARE thinking about it. DO care about it and ultimately DO have choices.

She replied that “It does kind of scare me that you didn't think that, before you went. I'm not attacking you personally, it just gives me insight to what non-farmers are thinking about farmers, and that kinda shocks and hurts me.”

As an Earth Mama, I respect the stewards of our lands – the Farmer. I respect the highly educated people who make decisions every day. Farmers are not Big Ag. This is a label we are using to take the human element out of the equation. They are people like you and me who make educated choices.

After agreeing with all of the science and arguing for the inherent safety of GMO products, I must reiterate, I believe that big business is BAD for our country. Bad for our global economy. Bad for second and third world countries who are being forced into a capitalist economy which benefits business over people. Monsanto is a Big Business. We need to stop likening corporations to people.

We need to get over our materialism. Science may take us there. Nature and Nurture.

I had the weirdest dream last night

Ok. So I started this blog to be about raising my kids in an urban setting. It's not been successful for me so I am going to turn it into a hybrid blog. Things I think, things I want to do, things I like to do, things I get to do, things I care about... and things.  I am not changing the name, but the basic concept is kids and things.

SO back to my weird dream.

I had a dream that I was going to see a show written by my good friend Bilal. https://creativecontrol2.wordpress.com/ (He is an amazing playwright, check him out). It started out fine enough, a stranded island play, and they were super excited because the Neofuturarium had just got running water. So it starts and there are three actors shipwrecked on a desert island, trying to find a place to survive, build fire, ect. Everything is wet. They explore further and find an abandoned mine.  I look to the left of me and I am sitting next to Bilal's wife, my very good friend Dana and my brother, Marty. We are watching the play and my sister Melissa comes in, except she looks like a cross between herself, her daughter and my good friend Erica. Just as she sits, the seats start to move. I am being pulled forward into the play. My brother turns to me, because he is now in front of me, and says, "This is awesome." I wrap my arms around him and the ride continues.

Suddenly I am ripped away from everyone and I am inside this weird camp inside the mine. The actors are shining light down on me and several bunk mates - one of whom is Dana and the other is my best friend Christi. They are smiling and talking. It's like I am not there. I scream "I am here. Why am I here", as if it had been scripted. I look into the audience and they are so excited for what happens next. Christi turns to me and says "Run." I start to run through the audience but ghosts and zombies keep popping up. I am suddenly wearing a back pack and carrying two bags and holding on to my girls who have appeared, lumbering through the seated audience. Ladies in fancy clothes grumbling about being hit in the face with my back pack. But I am totally supposed to be doing this. Bilal is over there nodding like it is all working out. I am not scared, but I really want to get back to my seat and finish watching the play. The play which is like an interactive Haunted Mansion ride but maybe actually an episode of the Black Mirror.

Weird right?

I should mention that I am currently re-reading IT by Stephen King (something Christi reads once a year), went camping for the 4th weekend, my friends have been on my mind and my sister is coming for a visit.

After spending the first weekend of summer out of the city in an indoor water-park, my mind has turned to how to get my concrete bound kids back in the nature!  Trips to the lake and forest preserves are on my mind as I type from my office window. Berry picking scheduled for the weekend and camping the next. With all of the planning we have to do to get out the door - is there any room left for spontaneity? For enjoying what the city lays out for us in the summer months? For hanging out at parks and picnics? 

What do you all do?

Torn up about GMO

The last weekend of April the Illinois Corn Growers Association sent me and about 20 other moms to Monsanto in St. Louis. It was a crazy day packed with a lot of information. 

Here our guide explains one of the many grow rooms - rooms with recreated environments from all over the world.

And the totally not weird or scary inside

 I wrote about it before the trip and had several questions I wanted answers for by the time I left. I was not disappointed.

1. What are we doing about cross-pollination with other crops?

The best answer I got about this one was actually from one of the farm moms I toured with.  Katie Pratt told me that on her farm, when planting happens, the farmers who neighbor each other get together to talk about planting plans and schedules. This ensures that if a field of GMO corn is pollinating, the field next door is a different variety which pollinates at a different time. They also talk about wind direction, weather predictions, and then plan for a buffer of soy between the different varieties of corn.

I said to her, so you aren’t like me and may have lived next to your neighbor for seven years and not even really know their names? She sort of gave me the eyebrow and remarked that farming communities always work together.

On this issue I am no longer torn. I don’t think that Monsanto, or other seed companies, are punishing farmers for cross pollination and I believe the farmers are doing their best to make sure that it does not happen.

2. What are we doing about allergies?

This was a top concern of mine. People I love have allergies and I worry that all of the fidgeting around with DNA will create a problem for them. The scientist at the panel discussion informed me of a database of known allergen DNA. They compare this to the modified DNA and if there is a match – they go back to the drawing board. It seems to me that they are being very responsible about known allergens.

Here is where I am torn. What if they are creating new allergens that we won’t know about until someone or a lot of someone’s have a reaction to it? To be fair, I didn’t ask this question of the panel. It is still concerning to me.

3.  Why aren’t we labeling – and not just that the food is GMO but with information available by the food’s code on what has been modified and why.

I did not get an answer from the panel about this, but at the airport I talked to another farm mom, Deb, and she said that this was something that would have to be addressed on a Federal level and couldn’t really be assigned to a seed company. Ok. I will buy that.

4. Why aren’t we letting farmers keep seed?

Now Katie told me that they don’t want to keep the seed and reuse it – the genetics of any seed may deteriorate over generations. Farmers in her community are not crying out to keep seed.

Here is another place I am torn. If they cannot keep the seed – won’t the seed companies ultimately have control of the distribution of food? Now they say that it is because of the patent on the biotechnology. That because the seed company owns the technology then the only way for them to be profitable is for them to also own the product of that technology. It is the most American of ideas.

5.  How long do patents last? Can they expire like copyrights and the food is returned to the public domain? 

So here is where I really run into trouble.  I don’t believe that anyone should own a patent on a living organism. A seed is the beginning of life. It is a fundamental difference in my personal philosophy. It is at the crux of the GMO-hating among most of my community.

           

In the end, I am for the science. I am for increasing the food supply and making things grow better.

 But in the end I am against owning a patent on life. 

That is where I stand. 

That is where I am torn. 

Travel expenses within St. Louis and lunch provided by Monsanto