Monday, March 31, 2014

Sonoma County brewers say beer is good for cows, too

Beer brewers nationwide are scrambling to head off proposed new federal regulations that would make it more difficult to use leftover grains from the brewing process as animal feed. That could force them to dump million of tons of waste into landfills instead.

The waste product, known as “spent grains,” is left over when a brewery steeps barley, wheat and other grains in hot water, extracting a sugary liquid that eventually becomes beer.
Nearly every brewery has an arrangement with nearby farmers to use the tons of spent grain produced every year as feed for cows, pigs and other livestock. The breweries usually give it away or sell it at an extreme discount compared with commercially available feed.
The Food and Drug Administration, however, is proposing rules that would make breweries meet the same standards as livestock and pet-food manufacturers, requiring sanitary handling procedures and extensive planning, record keeping and reporting to health officials.
While it's not clear exactly what such a system would cost, area brewers say it is likely to be impractical both financially and administratively.
If such rules are adopted, “the whole process would have to go away,” said Rich Norgrove, brewmaster at Bear Republic in Healdsburg and Cloverdale. “It would become cost prohibitive.”
For 18 years, Bear Republic has sold its spent grains to Knight's Valley rancher Cheryl LaFranchi, who has come to rely on it as a main food source for her 300 or so head of cattle. She takes up to 12.5 tons at a time, five times a week.
“Now the government wants to get involved,” she said. “What are they going to do with it? Put it in a landfill?”
That's exactly what will happen at Anderson Valley Brewing in Booneville if the regulations are approved, said brewmaster Fal Allen. The brewery generates nearly 1,500 tons of spent grain every year, all of which goes to nearby rancher Peter Bradford. But the likely cost of the extra food processing equipment and paperwork would make it cheaper just to dump it, Allen said.
That would spell disaster for the ranch, Bradford said, because he pays Anderson Valley a pittance for the grain, about a tenth of the cost of any other feed.
“It would be a tremendous hit on our production,” he said. “We rely on the grain ... It is certainly one of the best feeds for the price.”
The FDA is collecting comment on the proposal through Monday. The Brewers Association and the Beer Institute, the two primary industry associations, have mobilized brewers and farmers to weigh in against the idea. Lawmakers from major brewing states, such as Colorado and Oregon, also have spoken out against it, Brewers Association Director Paul Gatza said.
“Grains have been given to livestock for thousands of years, and there's not been a problem with this,” Gatza said. “This is just a regulation solving a problem that doesn't exist.”
Beer Institute spokesman Chris Thorne said he is optimistic the industry will convince the FDA that the proposal “exceeds the intent of Congress” when it passed recent legislation calling for an overhaul of food safety rules.
Using spent grain as feed “is a terrific lifecycle story that should be encouraged,” he said, “because it's basically recycling.”
The FDA did not make a spokesman available last week but in a written statement said that the proposal stems from a broad modernization of the nation's food safety system, the largest overhaul in at least 70 years.
“This proposed regulation would help prevent foodborne illness in both animals and people,” the agency said in the statement. “The proposal is part of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act's larger effort to modernize the food safety system for the 21st century and focus public and private efforts on preventing food safety problems, rather than relying primarily on responding to problems after the fact.”
The agency couldn't immediately say whether there had ever been reports of foodborne illness related to spent grains, though North Coast farmers and brewers say they have never experienced any such thing.
At the region's largest brewery, Lagunitas in Petaluma, the effect of the regulations could be considerable, said Leon Sharyon, the brewery's chief financial officer. The brewery generates at least 450 tons of spent grains every week, more than 23,000 tons per year. That number could double now that a second Lagunitas brewery has opened in Chicago.
“We would be forced to just dump it, put it in the landfill,” he said. “Nothing good comes of that.”
Santa Rosa rancher Jim Cunningham has been feeding his cattle about 10 tons of Lagunitas grain per day for about two years. Commercial feed costs about $350 per ton these days, an expense that has risen sharply during the recent droughts in the Midwest and California. Lagunitas sells the grain for $100 per ton.
Losing that source “would cut us,” he said. “It might put us out of business if we couldn't get cheaper feed.”

Friday, March 28, 2014

Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe


 

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco present Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, organized by The Hyde Collection in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. The exhibition, which begins its exclusive West Coast presentation at the de Young on February 15, 2014, is the first major exhibition to examine the body of work that Georgia O’Keeffe (1887‒1986) created based on her experiences at Lake George. From 1918 until 1934, O’Keeffe lived for part of each year at the family estate of Alfred Stieglitz (1864‒1946) on Lake George in New York’s Adirondack Park. The 36-acre property, situated near Lake George Village along the western shoreline, served as a rural retreat for the artist, providing the subject matter for much of her art, and inspiring the spirit of place that she continually evoked in her works from this era, an essential aspect to her evolving modern approach to depicting the natural world. During this highly productive period she created more than 200 paintings on canvas and paper in addition to sketches and pastels, making her Lake George years among the most prolific and transformative of her seven-decade career. This period coincided with O’Keeffe’s first critical and popular acclaim as a professional artist, helped define her personal style, and affirmed her passion for natural subject matter prior to her well-known move to the Southwest.
Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco noted, “It is especially gratifying to host this pioneering and scholarly exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George‒period works, as the artist’s Petunias [1925], featured in the exhibition, is a highlight of our renowned collection of modernist works by artists associated with the Stieglitz circle.”
This landmark survey will explore O’Keeffe’s full range of work inspired by Lake George through a selection of 53 works from private collections and major museums across the country, including the Seattle Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, High Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Walker Art Center, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The selection includes magnified botanical compositions of the flowers and vegetables that O’Keeffe grew in her garden at Lake George, a group of still lifes of the apples that she picked on the Steiglitz property, and paintings showing the variety of trees and leaves that grew in abundance there, with which she became fascinated. Architectural subjects also emerge as a theme within the exhibition, as do panoramic landscape paintings and bold, color-filled abstractions that often relate visually to the subjects that O’Keeffe was exploring during this period. Regardless of theme, O’Keeffe’s varied works investigate spatial ambiguity and dichotomies of interior and exterior, nature and the built environment, and absence and presence. They often are interpreted as deeply personal and autobiographical expressions.
Like many artists of her generation and earlier ones as well, O’Keeffe painted throughout the summer and fall and transported canvases back to her New York studio for completion and exhibition in the spring. At Lake George, O’Keeffe reveled in the discovery of new subject matter and found respite in the verdant setting, enjoying long walks through the wooded hillsides and hikes up Prospect Mountain to take in the spectacular view of the lake’s mountain-rimmed waters.
“In addition to her pioneering abstractions, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George‒period paintings resurrected and revitalized subjects such as landscape, still life and architecture that had been considered retardataire—if not reactionary—by avant-garde critics, curators, and collectors,” noted Timothy Anglin Burgard, the Ednah Root Curator in Charge of American Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “O’Keeffe’s platonic ideal of nature, perfected at Lake George, helped to promote a respect and reverence for the natural world that resonates with contemporary viewers—especially in California, home to Yosemite Valley, the Sierra Nevada, and Lake Tahoe.”
In 1923 O’Keeffe enthusiastically wrote to her friend Sherwood Anderson in a letter, “I wish you could see the place here—there is something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees—Sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces—it seems so perfect.” What remains consistent throughout O’Keeffe’s career is her allegiance to organic nature, the driving force that infuses living things, the essence of which is celebrated in Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George.



Article and Photos Borrowed From:  http://www.thebolditalic.com/events/6859-modern-nature-georgia-okeeffe-and-lake-george

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Real Estate Roundup: Bay Area Markets Best in U.S. For Sellers



Here’s a look at recent news of interest to homebuyers, home sellers, and the home-curious:

SAN JOSE, SAN FRANCISCO NUMERO UNO FOR HOME SELLERS THIS SPRING
This spring is shaping up to be best for sellers in the West, particularly in parts of the Bay Area, according to a recent report from Zillow.

Zillow’s report ranks the San Jose metropolitan area as the No. 1 market for home sellers in the country, followed by San Francisco. The company bases its rankings on shortest time on market, highest sales-price-to-list-price ratio, and lowest frequency of price reductions.

The Bay Area’s healthy job growth, which leads the state, is a key factor driving the trajectory of our region’s housing market.

“Relatively strong job markets in the West are helping spur robust demand, which is being met with limited supply, causing rapid home value appreciation and giving sellers an edge,” Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries said in a statement.

The report also ranked San Jose and San Francisco home values as the highest in the nation, at $748,800 and $648,700, respectively.


OAKLAND AREA INVENTORY CRUNCH EASING
Hopeful buyers in our inventory-constrained East Bay region may get a springtime lift from the latest National Association of Realtors National Housing Trend Report.

According to the association’s data, the number of homes for sale in the Oakland metropolitan region in February spiked 42 percent year over year, the seventh largest gain in the nation. There were 2,715 homes for sale in Oakland in February, a jump of almost 19 percent from the previous month.

While the San Francisco and San Jose regions showed year-over-year declines in the number of homes for sale, both saw a rebound from January, with inventory increasing by double-digit percentage points.


NEW HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS PLANNED IN WALNUT CREEK, OAKLAND
In addition to the aforementioned NAR report, there’s more good news that could eventually help ease the inventory shortage in the East Bay: a pair of housing developments in Walnut Creek and Oakland.

The Contra Costa Times reports that Hall Equities Group has proposed a four-story, 24-unit luxury condominium development in downtown Walnut Creek on the site of a current strip mall. The units would range from one to three bedrooms up to 2,500 square feet in size, and the developer claims they would be the “very nicest” and “most expensive” on the Interstate 680 corridor.

Over the hills on the banks of the Oakland Estuary, Signature Development Group and Zarsion Holdings Group are breaking ground on what the Oakland Tribune has dubbed a “mega-development.” The $1.5 billion project is slated to yield 3,100 new homes, as well as shops, outdoor space, and a marina.

The development, known as Brooklyn Basin, should also help goose Oakland’s economy by creating nearly 10,000 construction jobs.


NEW HOME CONSTRUCTION STALLS ACROSS THE U.S.
Home construction declined slightly in February but far less than in the previous month, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.

Citing statistics from the U.S. Commerce Department, the publication reports that housing starts fell 0.2 percent in February, compared with 11.2 percent in January. The article blames frigid temperatures in other parts of the country from hindering both builders and prospective buyers.

Building permits were up 7.7 percent from January to February, an optimistic sign that activity could reinvigorate this spring, the Journal said.

(Image: Flickr/Mark Moz)

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

US Bans Commercial Ivory Trade

Ivory tusks the US Fish and Wildlife service, at the direction of President Obama, crushed Nov. 14, 2013, at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge, Commerce City, Colo., in an effort to stymie the illegal taking of wildlife.

The United States banned the domestic trade of elephant ivory on Tuesday as part of a new drive to help African countries stem the rising threat to wildlife from poachers.

The White House administrative action prohibits all commercial imports of African elephant ivory, including antiques, and all commercial exports -- except for bona fide antiques and certain other items.


Article and Photo Borrowed from:  http://news.discovery.com/animals/endangered-species/us-bans-commercial-ivory-trade-140211.htm

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Freddie Mac Issues Bright 2014 Housing Forecast


Strong home sales in 2014 are dependent on job growth, according to a new report from Freddie Mac, and that’s good news for the Bay Area’s housing market.

The local economy has roared back to life over the past year, with unemployment levels below the national average and technology companies bringing thousands of new jobs to the region.

“In order to have solid home sales in 2014 we need to see continued improvement in the labor market,” Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist, said in a statement.

“With more jobs, wage growth should continue to accelerate, giving American households much-needed income to help sustain the emerging purchase market,” Nothaft continued

In its latest Economic and Housing Market Outlook, Freddie Mac said it expects U.S. home sales to grow along with wages this year. The agency is projecting a 3 percent rise in home sales, a 20 percent rise in new home construction, and home price appreciation moderating to an annual growth of 5 percent.

Long-term interest rates will gradually rise in 2014, Freddie Mac said, with 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages expected to average 4.9 percent by the fourth quarter, up one-half of a percentage point from the first quarter.

Rising prices made homes less affordable over the past year, but the agency said solid increases in wages — up 2.5 percent in February alone — helped keep buyers in the market.

Freddie Mac’s report suggests that the Bay Area real estate markets will be particularly busy in 2014. Earlier this month, we reported that the nine-county Bay Area added nearly 117,000 jobs in 2013 – nearly one-third of all positions created in the entire state — while unemployment in January fell as low as 4.7 percent.



(Image: Flickr/Rachel Melton)

Monday, March 24, 2014

How to Take Risks With Paint and Not Regret It


If you've committed to revamping your home, then you have to get rid of those white walls. While safe, white walls have nothing on rooms painted in shades of red, blue, and even black. If you still don't believe us, here are six rooms to prove it! With just a few coats, you can make a huge design statement — no hefty budget needed. After all, you really have nothing to lose . . . it's just paint!