Author: The Urban Homemaker

On Friday, May 22, 2009, I, Marilyn Moll, will be the featured guest on Generations with Vision Radio with Kevin Swanson.  Our topic will be Entrepreneurial Moms.  At that time I will be talking about a how The Urban Homemaker business got started eighteen years ago, my late husband’s vision for a home based business, how I have adjusted to running the business as a widow, and a new direction I will be taking the business later this year.

One of Duane’s passions was education and so we introduced  phone seminars  Continuing Education for Moms four years ago.   Many customers and readers have contacted me regarding when I plan to start up the “phone seminars.”

The good news is that I am working diligently to restart this program in the Fall of 2009.  As I plan the schedule I am looking your help.  If you know of a small family businesses that offers products, services, or information products that encourages and support homemakers and families would you please tell them of a new opportunity to gain recognition and to get their message out to thousands of families?

If you have or know of a family home based business that supports or encourages homemaking, I may be interested in featuring this business/service in future issues of my newsletter From the Heart of the Urban Homemaker, as well as providing very low cost advertising and/or free exposure at one of my websites, www.urbanhomemaker.com, articles.urbanhomemaker.com, www.mentoringhomemakers.com, or my blog www.marilynmoll.com.

I am specifically looking to feature and interview people whose product or service and business objectives are compatible with the following criteria:

1.  You are offering homemaking helps for busy moms in the spirit of Titus Two.
2.  Your business in some way promotes old-fashioned skills for contemporary people.
3.  You have an affiliate program.
4.   You have a free resource or ebook that you are willing to share with my newsletter readers.

You do not necessarily have to have an affiliate program or free resource to be considered.

In order to be considered however, you must provide me with the following required information.  I’m looking for unique family businesses.  (However, national direct selling companies offering great products such as Mary Kay, Pampered Chef, Home Interiors, Juice Plus will not be considered.)

Continuing Education for Moms Program Application:

To be considered, please complete the entire application.

Business Phone Number:

Home Phone if different:

Cell Phone:

Website:

Email contact:

Name of Business:

Time in Business:

Business Objective(s):

Describe the products or service your business offers and how it can be of benefit to homemakers and families:

Describe briefly why you believe your business is uniquely suited to be compatible with and featured in From the Heart of the Urban Homemaker Newsletter:

Describe the  free product or service you would be willing to share with readers (if any):

Describe affiliate program if applicable:

Describe what you would hope to gain from being featured:

Email your application to me at marilyn@urbanhomemaker.com

If your business is selected to be featured, I will contact you.  Please do not call me.

Ed Note:  I sent out an email with concerns regarding HR 875 this week and received more email responses on both side of the issue than I have time to respond to.  Many writers referred me to http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/organic.asp. 

One write cautioned me that they felt  www.truthorfiction.com has a more neutral tone when it comes to evaluating and analysis of facts.  She said they also seem to dig into the issue more and present more of the background behind the statements and/or commentary.  Decide for yourself.

However, the following response was received from Greg Davis and also a friend of mine, Rhoda, who give yet another viewpoint, food for thought, and many other informative links for doing further research if you feel so led.   I am reprinting the following information with permission.

Greg Davis writes based on information posted at Organic Consumers Association:

<<<HR 875 is a food safety bill that, as it is currently drafted, could be applied to all farms, including certified organic and farm-to-consumer operations. The bill would require farms to have a food safety plan, allow their records to be inspected, and comply with food safety regulations.

For the record, Organic Consumers Association does have an alert on HR875. As OCA points out in our Action Alert, we cannot support a “food safety” bill unless it provides protection or exemptions for organic and farm-to-consumer producers and cracks down on the real corporate criminals who are tampering with and polluting our nation’s food supply.

Having said that, OCA supports aspects of HR875 that call for mandatory recalls of tainted food, increased scrutiny of large slaughterhouses and food manufacturers, and hefty fines against companies that send poisonous food to market. The now discredited ultra-libertarian notion that companies or the “market” will regulate themselves is not only ludicrous, but dangerous, whether we are talking about the banking system or the food and farming sector.

When researching this issue, Organic Consumers Association turned to trusted sources within the organic farming community. We suggest the following resource for further reading:

An Integrated Approach to Food Safety
Russell Libby, Executive Director
Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association
http://www.nationalorganiccoalition.org/MOFGAFoodSafety.pdf

Letter from the Farmers Market Coalition on HR 875
http://graysriver.grange.wahkiakum.info/grays_river_grange/2009/03/-hr-875-the-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009.html)” style=”border-width:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold;color:rgb(0, 102, 102)””_blank” target=”_blank”>http://graysriver.grange.wahkiakum.info/grays_river_grang…

Organic food healthier and more intensively inspected-but not magically protected from humans or pathogens
Rodale Institute
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/Bowman/20090306a

To get a sense of the food safety issues that Congress is trying to deal with, read Jill Richardson’s (La Vida Locovore) write-up of a March 19, 2009, hearing in the House Energy & Commerce subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations on the salmonella peanut butter outbreak :
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=1241

Of course, Monsanto and large corporate agribusiness are out to destroy traditional farming. Unfortunately, while many people have been distracted by HR 875, the biotech companies have been hard at work pushing their agenda (see below). We need to keep working together to work towards positive alternatives, such as organic agriculture and the green economy.

A ban on rBGH-free labeling from Monsanto’s successor Eli Lilly
A bill that is working its way through the Kansas legislature would prevent farmers from labeling any dairy products sold in Kansas as being “free” of genetically modified bovine growth hormone (rbST or rBGH). Farmers could say that the product comes from cows that haven’t received injections of the artificial bovine growth hormone, which stimulates milk production (and increases the use of antibiotics and the presence of pus in milk). However, such products would also be forced to include disclaimers saying that the federal government has found no significant difference between milk from cows injected with rbST and milk from those that have not received the hormone. While there is an exemption for certified organic milk, OCA opposes this law. It has Monsanto’s fingerprints all over it. The revolving door that brought Monsanto executives through the FDA is the reason the federal government took the position that there’s no difference between milk produced with or without rbST. Monsanto sold rbST to Eli Lilly in August 2008, but the pro-rbST strategy hasn’t changed much.

http://www.hutchnews.com/Localregional/milklabeling

Monsanto uses closed-door lobbying to block Montana bill that would protect farmers
Montana Senators sidelined a seed bill that sought standards for how biotech companies test crops for patent infringement, burying the bill after getting a private dinner with Monsantorepresentatives.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/03/25/ap6213818.html

Epitopix’s E. coli vaccine
A vaccine for E. coli has been conditionally approved by the USDA. Now the USDA can force this new animal drug on all beef and dairy producers rather than focus on the cause of E. coli and its spread, feeding cows grain instead of grass, confining cows in pens where they wade in manure their whole lives right up to slaughter, and the manure lagoons that leak into the water and onto nearby vegetable farms.

http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?Sect…amp;TM=58133.16

Monsanto’s gene-altered drought-resistant corn
The chemical companies have yoked farmers with increasingly expensive and ineffective fossil-fuel-based inputs that contribute to global warming. Now they propose another techno-fix: gene-altered drought-tolerant crops. Trouble is, the crops don’t do well under non-drought conditions. Monsanto invests $2.6 million daily in its research. Think how many people could be eat healthy food on long-term, sustainable basis if Monsanto and its partner the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested $2.6 each day in organic agriculture!

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5950
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.c…ulture-res.html
http://www.planetark.com/enviro-news/item/51966

Indian farmers protest Monsanto seed experiments that threaten their farms
One farmer said, “Monsanto is a criminal corporation known to have sued or sent to jail scores of farmers elsewhere for doing what farmers around the world have done for millennia — saving their seeds.”

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/farmers-protestmonsantos-gm-seed-experiment/352673/)” style=”border-width:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold;color:rgb(0, 102, 102)””_blank” target=”_blank”>http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/farmers-prote…>>>>

I also received the following note from a personal friend who had tried very small scale farming about 8-10 years ago.  Rhoda writes:

<<<
Hi Marilyn,

I read (mostly skimmed) through this bill following the link you provided.  Though most bills are too vague and have pitfalls and interpretation problems, bills that control our food supply are particularly troubling for me.  I believe this bill can be trouble, however, as I read some of the definitions I see exceptions to the law.  I’ll copy the parts below:

(B) EXCLUSIONS- For the purposes of registration, the term `food establishment’ does not include a food production facility as defined in paragraph (14), restaurant, other retail food establishment, nonprofit food establishment in which food is prepared for or served directly to the consumer, or fishing vessel (other than a fishing vessel engaged in processing, as that term is defined in section 123.3 of title 21, Code of Federal Regulations).

(14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term `food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.

I’m not a lawyer, and this language is always difficult for me, but, in reading the above, it seems that small farms will be excluded.  One part that bothers me, though, is in definition #5:

(5) CATEGORY 1 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term `category 1 food establishment’ means a food establishment (other than a seafood processing establishment) that slaughters, for the purpose of producing food, animals that are not subject to inspection under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or poultry that are not subject to inspection under the Poultry Products Inspection Act.

When we lived in Pitkin and started the egg business, I called the U.S. Dept. of Health in Denver to see if I could.  The man told me I could sell eggs to friends and neighbors without being inspected, but I couldn’t sell to stores or restaurants for retail sales.  We also looked into selling butchered chickens, but we would be subject to inspection if we butchered or transferred them for sale.  We could, however, sell the live birds and process them as a service (without charging for that) to get around the law.  The problem I see with the #5 definition is that the department of agriculture already controls food establishments that slaughter animals for food.  So, who are they going after, and what am I not understanding about this legislation?

If you have, or receive, any more insight into this bill, I’m interested in hearing it.  In my reading of this, it seems that there’s something they’re wanting to control outside of the usual, but it also seems they’ve excluded any other place that would process food (outside of wild game, the only category not covered in the definitions).  The biggest concerns are 1) they’re trampling on state’s rights, and 2) I know there’s a woman in congress who’s husband is an executive at Monsanto, and she’s been trying to enact legislation which favors that company for a while.  Remember, too, that the state dept. of ag. is already the federal government’s food police in matters of inspection concerning restaurants, slaughterhouses, and farms, ranches and food processing facilities which ship their products out for public consumption.

This bill would just enhance and widen their reach.  I’ll pass this on, but most of the people on my list probably won’t understand the implications.

I’m sure the recent problems with salmonella in the food supply is helping to carry this and may cause people to want it to help “protect” them from food-borne illnesses.  I could use more info to help persuade, so if you receive any, please pass it on.  Thanks!>>>

With all the talk about frugality, budget-crunches, stimulus packages, bail-outs a person could actually get confused about whether debt loads are a good thing.  I recently came across a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln on this topic.  He said:

 “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.  You cannot help the small men by tearing down the big men.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.  You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.  You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds.

You cannot establish security on borrowed money.  You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

Please think about these timeless principles and keep in touch with your congressmen and senators, that deficit spending is not a long term solution to economic crisis.   Marilyn

BLOG CONTEST:
Regardless of the financial circumstances your family is in, I am asking readers to post their favorite crafty or frugal ideas.  I’m talking about clever ways you recycle something otherwise considered useless or discardable.

For example, maybe you learned to make a baby quilt using old denim jeans or thrift store clothing cut into smaller pieces sewn together to complete the top.  Or perhaps you have figured out a multitude of uses for recycling empty coffee cans.  Maybe you mastered a new set of skills to produce sought-after gifts.

Please share your ideas on how to re-use, re-cyle, or reduce your consumption of something you thought you couldn’t live without.

Share your  ideas, victories to inspire others by posting your thoughts at my blog.  I have a Grand Prize for  for the person who posts the best idea(s) now through April 1.  The Grand Prize is a bottle of Norwex Mattress Cleaner ($27.99 value).  Runner Ups will get a complimentary copy of my ebook Sensational Summer Salads.

Ed Note:  I don’t normally use this platform for political purposes.  But the right to life is something I am passionate about.  I have had many readers forward me this information so I wanted to share it with you.  I hope you will take part and be touched.

The beginning of President Obama’s presidency was marked by lifting the ban on federal spending for abortions, stem cell research, and contraception. This has distressed many people, including one man, Christ Otto, who has been involved in the pro-life movement for 20 years. Otto felt inspired to start the Red Envelope Project, his goal is to send 50 million red envelopes to the White House on March 31st as a silent protest against abortion. Otto asks that we take a red envelope (red because it is symoblic of blood), seal it (empty), and write on the back side “This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty because that life was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility begins with conception.” Then mail to:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington , D.C. 20500

I plan to take part in this project. Please join me and the 487,178 others who have already pledged their support. It is my prayer that President Obama will come on his knees before God during his presidency.

For more information click here

Ed Note:   The following is an excerpt regarding the value of a homemaker was written by Kym Wright, mother of eight children.  Do not underestimate your worth and value as YOU are the one molding and influencing the next generation.  Think about what she is saying.

The Homemaker’s Value

If women choose not to do this very special job,
it will simply not get done,
the mothering, the nurturing, the comforting and caring
that fills the committed homemaker’s day
will simply be lost,
and society will be impoverished.

Children will not get the spiritual guidance they need.
Lonely teenagers will not be listened to.
Many people with problems will not be ministered to,
many sick folk will go unvisited.
A special human quality will disappear from our culture.

Women can give up their jobs
as clerks, engineers, sales people, doctors —
other people will step in
and the world will go on as smoothly as before.
It will be business as usual.

The groceries will still be sold,
trucks loaded with merchandise will still roll across our highway,
and Wall Street will carry on.

Not so with homemaking.

Homemakers are the special people in whose hands
the country and the world have been entrusted.
When women leave this job the world does not go on as before.
It falters and begins to lose its way.

Homemakers are indispensable!