paulinct, I think you summed it up pretty well. Just doing the animals is not a trivial exercise. Adding a full scale crop rotation has never been done. I am not sure what the yields would be for modern corn planted in the 1840s Missouri, but the idea is to restore the soil to the condition found by the farmers of the original tall grass prairie. Bison, sheep, antelope, and dung beetles prepared that soil. The farmers plowed and depleted it. Tall grass prairie plants have roots that extend to 10 feet. The reason the multi billion dollar world wide food industry has not already fed the world is due to politics, not dung beetles or fertilizer. Famine is controlled by dictators. This argument does not explain why the US producers are not raising their animals this way. For that I would say it is because daddy didn't do it that way. I don't think land is a problem. In north Texas you can easily can drive a hundred miles and not see any agriculture production. For the sake of discussion it does take several years to restore fertility. That is the time the crops will be in production depleting the fertility in the rotated fields. But don't get the impression the livestock land is out of production. It is producing cattle, sheep, hogs, goats, and/or chickens at a rate of at least 280 pounds per acre per year. A 640-acre section of land could produce 180,000 pounds of meat, and that is using Texas rainfall amounts. At a dollar per pound of meat, the farmer with a section can make enough to live. A lot of crop farmers cannot make anywhere near that much cash and the headaches are more frequent (IMHO). But you are not cutting production, you are in full production all the time. If you want to read more, there is a book called Holistic Resource Management that is very tedious to read. Remember that part about daddy didn't do it that way? Well, the average livestock producer is N-E-V-E-R going to follow a plan called holistic resource management. Furthermore there is no help from the universities. When they look at the HRM concept, they cannot reproduce the results. My sense is that it is hard to find a sponsor for HRM research because there are no chemicals or medicines used. Inputs are so minimal that there are no corporate sponsors. To the universities, it looks like nothing more than intensive rotation grazing. But even among the livestock producers who might see the book, most won't understand it. There is a second book called the Holistic Resource Management Workbook. That book cuts to the chase, but the title is still a huge impediment. The idea is to manage the entire ecosystem at once - the "whole" ecosystem including plants, animals, and insects. Herbicides kill plants so that's not good. Insecticide and parasitide kills insects, so that's not good. Fertilizer is simply not needed. To summarize the way this works, the sun sends energy to every inch on Earth. You can capture that energy with photosynthesis. To maximize photosynthesis you must have plants covering the property from fence to fence. Those are the tall grass prairie plants. To most people those are weeds. They don't need fertilizer other than what nature provides. The plants convert sunlight to carbohydrates and protein. The animals eat the plants and convert the carbohydrates and protein into meat. If the animals are not poisoned with deworming medicine, the insects will continue to work the soil after the livestock leave the pasture. Here are some of the 'offbeat' websites that subscribe to at least part of this. Holistic Resource Management Managing Wholes Acres USA Check the links for still more info.

I bought a five gallon pail of olive oil from California, and while outstanding (I know that oil is used by some top notch restaurants in San Francisco), it was also 50 dollars a gallon plus shipping. I have a buddy with a pizzeria, and he gives me his oil, $32 a gallon including shipping and almost as good (the oil is from Crete). Helping him get his garden and orchard off the ground surely paid. The Costco oil, at about $31/gallon, is not bad either and I would be happy with it. Still, US olive oil is here to stay and high quality. Not sure why US oil has a bad reputation. Spain (and France) have industrialized their oil production even more than here. It is only Italy which has one oil mill per village. And large italian producers (Bertolli) have had cases of adulteration. If one worries about adulteration, my guess is that US oil is the best bet.

Annie, here's the recipe for the rice with beets. It's a good side dish for venison. BEET MIXTURE FOR PERSIAN PILAF 1 Tbs. olive oil 1 Tbs. minced garlic 1 1/2 cups finely minced cooked beets (about 3 small ones) 1/2 tsp. salt 2 Tbs. minced fresh dill (or 2 tsp. dried) 2 Tbs. raspberry vinegar 1 Tbs. honey Freshly ground black pepper 3 cups cooked basmati rice Heat olive oil in a small skillet. Add the garlic and cook over low heat for about 10 seconds. (DonÂt let it turn color, or it will become bitter.) Add the beets and salt, and saute for about 5 minutes longer. Remove from heat and stir in the dill, vinegar, honey, and a little black pepper to taste. Stir beet mixture into the rice.

shaun, I hope I didn't make you feel that I was criticizing your choice in instant rice. I'll admit, I'm picky. I don't like pizza, or red tomato based sauces, or blue cheese, or olives or white pasta or a zillion things that other people just love. I don't like beer or wine either and people look at me like I've grown an extra head when I say the best wine I ever tasted only got rated a "that doesn't completely suck". However, I will eat peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandwiches, so I'm sure not going to criticize anyone else for anything they like! Like others, though, I don't think instant rice saves much time, by the time I boil the water, stir in the rice, let it set for 5 minutes or whatever. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes to make instant rice and about 20 to make regular rice, so I can't say I'll make instant rice if I'm in a hurry, it only takes about 5 minutes more to make regular rice. Whatever I make, I usually make extra so I can have some for breakfast or use leftovers for rice pudding or fried rice. And I did find that I shouldn't just use arborio rice in chicken rice soup when I'm out of regular long grain. (grin) I did that last week and ended up with a big ole' pot of chicken flavored rice, no soup to it at all. The rice sucked up every bit of broth I had in the pot! Annie