I admire your courage in being honest & open not just with yourself but with those around you. Unfortunately, you are a rare breed my friend, and finding others like you can be a challenge.

Poke around my flickr account. It’s the free account. I can only have x number of photos displayed at any one time. I think it’s 250. So, my 250 most recent images are available to the public. My other images are archived and should I go “pro” the hidden images will reappear. Another limitation is that I can only have a few photosets at once.

I suspect that all of your images and photosets will remain if you go free. You should contact flickr and confirm that the photosets stick. Your tags are likely to remain.

So, I would recommend that you build your own photo imaging on your server, set flickr to free, and then see if you miss the flickr pro enough to subscribe to it.

Another option is to do some collaborations with an uber developer who can build you a flickr like photo site on your server.

Cheers.

In reality, people don’t seem to read …

i.e. yesterday at the market we were selling “Dried Stinging Nettles.” There was a sign sitting in the basket with the bags of nettles that described in brief but sufficient detail what one would do with dried stinging nettles. I’d say at least 90% of the people who looked at the nettles, instead of reading the sign, asked me instead. That 90% of people is maybe 15% of people who looked at the nettles.

I think this is the same thing that would happen with the Forellenschluss romaine. Albeit the romaine was different because the people are used to seeing a plain green head of lettuce, where Forellenschluss is speckled. People see the alien-looking lettuce from afar and their automatic romaine lettuce profile says to them “that’s odd” and they don’t come in closer for a better look, or to ask a question and therefore the majority of people wouldn’t get close enough to read a sign.

I don’t think a sign would really help that much. It would need to say in big letters, readable from 5-10 ft away: “THIS IS ROMAINE LETTUCE JUST LIKE YOU SEE IN THRIFTWAY. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT EXCEPT IT IS SPECKLED AND NOT BORING PLAIN GREEN. IT IS A BETTER DEAL THAN THE WEEK-OLD, SMALL HEAD SOLD IN THRIFTWAY! AND ALSO SUPPORTS YOUR LOCAL ECONOMY TO BOOT!”

NOW BUY IT GODDAMMIT!

As far as killing animals - I was a pretty strict vegetarian for several years. I definitely had the thought of not being able to kill an animal for food. It goes without too much mention that there are many moral dilemmas regarding killing animals. But I think we’re mainly just so alienated from our food sources and from doing such “real” things as raising or foraging for our own food, we make killing animals a bigger deal than it really is. This is a huge simplification of the issue, but one of my main conclusions having been on both sides of the fence now.

Think about how many millions of years man has been eating meat. Vegetarianism is a very new thing … as new as eating meat at every meal. If you haven’t, I highly recommend reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s a great book about food and he covers the whole animal for food thing very thoroughly.

I ended up on this farm after searching for an internship on an organic farm. I didn’t buy it! I definitely couldn’t afford land like this so close to Seattle. I am living here full time in a great little cabin that I helped the farmers build. I wanted to do an intership to experience the entire growing season (May - November) and farm full-time. I had some great experiences wwoofing while I was in Europe, but it was small glimpes of a much bigger picture. Being on this farm all year gives me a better perspective of what it’s like to grow food on a small, sustainable scale. It’s been a great experience so far, and I’ll just say that I’m remaining optimistic about farming myself some day. But like the farmers here say: “Farming is hell.” But also, “It doesn’t get any better than this …”

And, as far as consulting/freelancing - I’m not doing very much of it and can’t say that it’s funding a whole lot. The season is still young and we’re finally over a big hurdle where we’ve done all the early-season work that we’ll build on for the rest of the year, which means in a nutshell that I might have a little bit more free time and energy to freelance, but not much.

Good to hear you love your job. Not many people truly do …