Life Transplanet

Another of the blogs I wrote for the Greeley Tribune was printed today. I am an official blogger for the Healthy Habits blog on their website, and occassionally, they will publish a blog into hard copy. It is fun to see your work in print. This particular one is based on our experience with our chickens, that I have written about here as well. The only downside to getting printed is when the editing is done by someone else. They took out probably the most important paragraph:

“<p>Overall, chickens are a fun addition to any sustainable-living adventure, and I would recommend them whole-heartedly. These eggs have health-benefits that go above regular eggs as well. Not only are you lowering the number of confined animals (sometimes over 30,000 chickens in one hangar never see the light of day or step on the ground), but eggs from chickens that are allowed to roam freely in the yard have a higher omega 3 ratio than those who are fed only grains. They also usually have larger and more brightly-colored yolks which indicate high-vitamin levels. And contrary to popular belief they do not increase blood cholesterol levels in a healthy diet.”

I wish they would have put this picture in to illustrate it as well. Store-bought egg left, Home-grown egg, right

I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that we have so many confined-animal feeding operations (CAFOs) all over our county…hmmm

Greeley was featured in the latest Rolling Stone magazine. It is not very flattering, but unfortunately very true. We are mainly known (outside of Greeley) for the awful smell of the cow feedlots and slaughterhouses and the immigrant raid on those who work there. While this is home to us (we were both born here), it will be nice to move to Puerto Rico and see a different way of life.
The overall article however is about change and the likely possibility of Colorado going from a red state to a blue state and what that would mean in terms of our congressional representatives. It also lays it out in terms of changing from brewing racism to tolerance.

Here is the link and an excerpt:

“Driving down a rainy Colorado highway in October, I can see the misty white outline of the Rockies out one window and the arid brown flatlands of the Great Plains out the other. Overlaying it all is the faint but unmistakable stench of cattle.

It is my turn to see the property! We have a trip planned to visit in January which will be nice. Two and a half weeks.

Looking Out from the Main House

I spoke to Alwilda the other day and she said they started picking coffee. That day alone they had picked 1,000 lbs and she said there was a lot more to go. When she started talking about the papaya, pineapples, breadfruit, starfruit , etc…I knew we needed to visit.

In late January it will be super cold here so it will make for a good vacation time. I need to find a deal on a rental car so if anyone knows of anything please comment. I’d kind of like to rent a Jeep so I can explore a bit more than we did when we had just a normal car. Plus the river at the property would be fun to cross. I doubt a neon would make it..lol.

One of my friends from work threw a Halloween Party/Belly Dancing Performance at a dance studio in Eaton. Britton and I went for a little while. It was fun to watch the dancing and the costume contest. I went as Joni Mitchell/70′s Bohemian in one of my mom’s old shirts and an old hat and Britton went as a Beach Bum in Puerto Rico in the required crazy fro, that you can also see on the About Us Page.

Beach Bum and Bohemian

Getting into Character

Joni (Cassie), Geisha (Lorena) and Palin (Kelly) (Palin =both Funniest and Scariest Costume)

Pam, Cassie and Marjorie

This is a sort of convoluted story that without the background is difficult to explain, but I’ll try my best.

As you probably know, Colorado has been in the limelight as far as national politics go. We had the Democratic National Convention here and Barack Obama made his acceptance speech. In the past couple of years we have had “W” himself visit Greeley, twice. And just this week we had Palin in Loveland (Monday) and Biden in Greeley (Tuesday). We are a hotbed for politics because we are a fairly “purple” state, especially Northern Colorado. (All this talk about red, white, black and blue makes me certain that politics is just one big brawl with a huge bruise in the end!)

This picture has not been edited in any way- It’s hilarious!

Anyway, while Greeley is generally pretty conservative, it has (surprisingly?) been one of the more progressive cities when it comes to tobacco policies (which is part of my job). Greeley passed the strongest smokefree policy of the state, led the way for Tobacco Free Schools and prohibited cigarette vending machines. Last year, around this same time of year, we took on US Smokeless Tobacco and along with huge community support and Tobacco Free Weld County Coalition, the City Council passed the ‘No Free Tobacco Giveaway Ordinance’ which prohibits giving away free tobacco to anyone in Greeley. One city councilwoman, Debbie Pilch, led the charge to help move this ordinance to the point where it would be voted on. In the end, this was a huge victory for the health of the public, and while this explanation gives it no justice, suffice it to say that it was not without controversy (and very stressful).

http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=79148
This is a link to the article when I was on the news, I’ll put the video up once I can find it

Fast forward to this year. We decided to support Debbie Pilch in her run for County Commissioner and placed one of her signs saying as much in our yard. This weekend we went to get our mail and noticed a ticket from our Home Owner’s Association’s management company that basically said, “Please remove your political sign from public view”. This is incredible! Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Well, it turns out that this ticket is completely illegal and the Colorado state congress even passed Senate Bill 100 (SB 100) for just this reason; that is, to protect homeowner’s rights that HOA’s were systematically ignoring. Now we have to contact our Management Company and explain this to them. And THIS is after we had to kick out the last management company (a neighborhood coup d’etat) for essentially stealing from our neighborhood (collecting unauthorized fees, fines, and much more).

The Sign in Question, Can you Even See it?

The Ticket

The moral of the story: I don’t think you can ever get away from Politics -especially without a fight!

Update: Still swinging away, Britton’s conversation with the management company went a little something like this:

So I called.

Me: “I live in clover creek and got a notice to take down my political sign”
her: “yep”

Me: “well….I don’t think you can do that. Its part of SB 100 that protects me”
her: “well its in your covenants”

Me: “well that’s not how it works (aka SB 100 trumps our covenants and bylaws) ”
her: “its in there”

Me: “that isn’t what I meant….tell ya what. Why don’t you send me the part in the covenants, we’ll start there