Thinking Out Loud

https://www.crd.bc.ca/about/what-is-crd This week I watched a video titled The Life Cycle of Salmon  and it proved to be an insightful topic. It provided me with a quick summary of the different stages a salmon encounters during their lifetime. The six stages discussed are as follows:  1. Fertilized egg stage – Every salmon starts out as an egg in a gravel bed in a freshwater river or creek. These eggs will “incubate” for a certain amount of time depending on the type of salmon and the temperature of the water. 2. Sac Fry stage – Once the egg hatches, the salmon enters the yolk stage. These fish are small and remain in the gravel beds safe from predators. Salmon at this point have a yolk sac attached to their bodies and that sac feeds them until they enter the next stage. 3. Fingerling stage – This stage begins once the salmon leaves the gravel beds where they were born. How long a salmon stays in the fry stage depends on the species – some are only there fo...

Go ahead…admit it…I had too. If you looked in your car, your fridge or your “recycling” bin would you find a water bottle? As I type this blog I sit across from a fancy aluminum double walled 24 ounce Takeya water bottle that has become my reliable side kick as of late. With that said, I could probably still dig up one of those embarrassing plastic bottles in one of the sources noted above. The good news I can report is I am starting to feel the same level of shame when I buy bottled water that I feel when I have to purchase a paper bag at Trader Joe’s because I left my reusable bags in the car. I was a bottled water user, but I have made the personal transition. As an individual and as a society we are easily influenced. We are influenced by fear, by the hope of what might be or maybe just by erroneous information. We fall victim to that influence in many places in our lives and buying water is just one of those places. Why on earth would we pay for something that we can get fo...

     We all undoubtedly have that green bin sitting on the side of our house. Maybe yours is a green dumpster. You might even have your own composting process at home. For those that live in the urban setting, their yard waste does go to a composting facility. Materials such as leaves, grass, branches, food and food soaked paper can be turned to something useful for vineyard owners, commercial growers or even the household gardener.      These waste categories collected in Marin, Sonoma and Alameda Counties eventually end up at the processing/composting center in Novato. The Novato center receives 450 tons of green material each day that is eventually turned into 3000 tons of processed composting material each month.      To get it processed the green material is dumped by the arriving trucks onto an asphalt pad. This material is loaded into large grinders to be ground to smaller bits.   This ground material is pi...

Discovery Magazine      I admit it…I was not a mushroom fan but that was before I watched the Ted Talk on “6 Ways Mushrooms Can Safe the World” .  While I wasn’t the biggest fan of mushrooms, I guess most of my experiences were gastronomically focused.      T hinking about a mushroom as more that something that is either included or excluded on your dining menu is an important step to start with. Mushrooms are not going to save the world by simply including them in your menu, so lets get that out of the way now. They are however far more than just something to eat. Did you know that we are more closely related to fungi than any other organism? We actually share the same pathogens. Giant fungi inhabited the earth at one point, they survived even after  the dinausauer extinction. Mushrooms are virtual superheroes in our ecosystem and they can be called upon to take on many tasks that could actually help get us out of the bind we a...

I watched a short video titled Soil Solutions to Climate Change  today and found it to be an informative topic. It’s only 4 minutes out of your day, but 4 minutes that could ultimately, collectively play a pivotal part in global change. The topic of the video was soil, the health of it and the role it has in acting as the foundation for much of what we rely on. At face value one might assume it was uneventful but did you know? ·         We rely on soil for 95% of what we eat. ·         One handful of soil contains more organisms than there are humans on earth      Growing up in a farming community showed me how amazing soil is and I was reminded that it was far more than just “dirt”. I remember my grandfather telling me that “dirt” is what gathers under your nails but soil makes miracles happen.  I didn’t understand just how much of a living miracle it is. I think most of us ...

     While I have heard of the term “Shop Locally” I had never truly connected the term “economic multiplier concept” with the shop locally process. At face value, shopping locally keeps our hard earned dollars close to home. It’s not hard to imagine why shopping locally is beneficial as compared to shopping online or even driving out of the area for that better deal. What might not be known by all is just how this process can be expanded by something called “the economic multiplier concept”. This concept is best described as being similar to the impact of dropping a rock into a pond. It is known that dropping that rock causes an impact to the water surface. What might be missed is the fact that that impact doesn’t stop after the rock slips below the surface. Dropping the rock causes ripples that have an ongoing impact on the water and the pond itself. The economic multiplier concept is just that. The ripples are in fact effects shopping locally has on the local ec...

As I watched the the Soul River - Consciousness Runs Deep video I was initially a bit skeptical as the intro went on for a few minutes. I must admit I was drawn in by the mix of hip-hop music as it was combined with the organic images of the river and fly fishing. The lyrics of the song were powerful as they offered words such as “growing in health” or “what we have is not a lie”. The song also reminded us that “we must learn from our past transgressions” and “we have a choice”. I do see this method of communication as a valuable tool given the fact our younger generations are connected to visual and auditory communication streams more directly than older generations. While I do see this as a marketing opportunity for the artist I also discovered some interesting background on Brian Chou, the fly fisherman in the clip. Mr. Chou is a legend in the fly fishing industry and he in fact maintains quite an industry in the Northwest. I visited his Soul River webpage and d...