View From the Crowd (Urban Intensive Clinic 5/23)

I guess I'm a "part-time" member of the Green City Growers (GCG) team, working on a business plan with a team of fellow BGI students based upon GCG's business. Of course, I know little to nothing about farming or gardening besides gleaning information about our incredibly energy intensive and "unhealthy" industrial food system from reports like this one from the Post Carbon Institute and (of course) Michael Pollan's and Mark Bittman's books on the massive changes required in our industrialized food system.

Anyway, I decided to stop by at the Heartbeat Collective in Jamaica Plain for a little while at the Urban Intensive Workshop and see what it's all about. Most of my work with GCG has been through e-mails and phone calls with Jessie and Gabe, and for all my hemming and hawing about local food, I'd yet to plant a single seedling in anything. In fact, the Cyclamen I bought for work lasted a few months before I managed to kill it (I think with too much water, at least that's what Joe the Gardener thought).

It was great! There were about ten "students" there listening to Gabe passionately talk about the creation of urban food systems. Jessie mixed up a great salad along with a vegan pasta salad for lunch. Then we dove in and built a 4'x4' raised bed complete with soil mixing (1/3 Intervale diverse compost. 1/3 sphagnum peat, 1/3 coarse horticultural vermiculite - the "lite" is for more than one reason!). I loved the fact that Gabe talked about the fact that the materials going into the construction of the bed were NOT local nor sustainable; the wood came from Home Depot (GCG is working on gaining access to New England Fir), the Intervale compost is from The Intervale Center in Burlington, VT, the peat's from somewhere in the UK (GCG would prefer to use a material derived from coconut shells, but its availability is spotty and it comes from the East Indies) and the vermiculite...who knows.

GCG is acting, not waiting for the perfect solution; they'll help develop it.

The hands on construction project of the bed was great, and we all pitched in to the completion. Their commitment to making a micro-farm that has the best possible odds of success for the urban farmer (or one of their customers) was clear to me. They used the best possible soil mixture for this climate, planted their own starts, and installed a timed irrigation system to ensure the proper plant hydration.

Now, to develop a solar powered rain catchment with a timer system to provide the watering system (the WPI geek in me is re-emerging!)

Urban Intensive Workshop: Coming up Fast!

The new date for the Urban Intensive Workshop is coming up fast!

The Event will be held on May 23rd, from 10am-5pm, at the Heartbeat Collective in JP (35 Wyman st)

Here is a description of the event:

If you are interested in learning the skills that we are using to transform Boston into a Green City, join us May 23rd for our hands-on full day Urban Intensive Growing Workshop. We will be exploring the principles of Urban Sustainability, and will be getting our hands dirty transforming an urban yard over the course of the day. Through discussion, games, and good old fashioned hard work, we will cover:

Site Design, Composting/Worm Composting, Organic Remediation Methods, Micro Farming, Market Gardening, Square Foot Gardening, Micro Livestock, Urban Homesteading, Four Season Harvest, Natural Building, Urban farmer’s treasure hunt

Lunch (Vegan friendly) will be provided

This Workshop will be held in the heart of Jamaica Plain at the HeartBeat Collective house.

$90 payable in advance, $110 at the door

EMAIL US if you are interested in attending...

YouTube!

Somerville News Article

Backyard farming business touts healthy food, healthy bodies, happy mind

By Julia Fairclough

Gabriel Erde-Cohen and Jessie Banhazl were onto something when they thought about how today's earth and health conscious people would appreciate growing the vegetables that they put on the table. They really hit it on the nail when they decided to do the actual farming for people and in a space as little as four-by-four feet...

more at TheSomervilleNews.com

Events at The Institute for Human Sciences

The Institute for Human Sciences   is hosting a multitude of amazing events focused on food-justice, food-security, health and cooking.  And a lot of the events are FREE which is just icing on the already yummy cake.  Check out the link here, or read below.  

Friday, May 8, 2009

Fermentation lecture and workshop:
Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

Join Sandor Ellix Katz (aka Sandorkraut), author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, for this workshop. Learn how easy it is to make sauerkraut, pickles and other live-culture ferments in your own kitchen. Highly nutritious and filled with life, fermented foods have a long history and a promising future. Empower yourself to create these delicious and healthful foods!

2:30 PM - 5:00 PM
808 Commonwealth Avenue (Fuller Building)
Demonstration Room

Seating limited | $30 includes signed copy of Wild Fermentation | $20 without book.

Registration information>>

Lecture, book-signing and dinner:
Cooking with a Conscience

Featuring ec0-chef, author, and food-justice activist Bryant Terry

Bryant Terry is a nationally recognized eco chef, author, and food justice activist. He is currently a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation. He is co-author, with Anna Lappé, of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen and author of the recently released Vegan Soul Kitchen. With the help of a Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellowship, he has started the Southern Organic Kitchen Project in order to educate primarily African-Americans living in the Southern United States about the connections between diet and health.

Dinner will feature recipes from Bryant's Vegan Soul Kitchen

5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
808 Commonwealth Avenue (Fuller Building)
Demonstration Room

Seating limited | $45.00 includes signed copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen

Registration information>>

Film Screening and discussion:
King Corn

King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.

In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat - and how we farm.

Film-screening will be introduced by Ian Cheney, filmmaker, and followed by discussion with Aaron Woolf, director.

8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Boston University Law School
Auditorium | Barristers' Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue
[Directions]

Free and open to the public | Reception to follow

Note: These events are taking place in conjunction with an international conference on "The Future of Food." Detailed conference description here>>

Saturday, May 9, 2009

International Conference:
The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives

Free and open to the public
(includes all panels, breakfast, coffee breaks, reception)

8:00 AM - 8:45 AM: Breakfast and Registration

8:45 AM - 9:00 AM: Introductions

9:00 AM - 9:30 AM: Opening Keynote Address
Satish Kumar, Editor, Resurgence

9:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Session I: From Farm to Fork: The Global Food Chain
This session traces the increasingly obscure path of food from farm to fork. The focus is on “food production” and the industrialization of agriculture. It will consider the growing influence of “agribusiness” and the “politics of food,” comparing the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union with agricultural policy in the United States. We will explore the alignment (or lack thereof) of business and consumer interests and the impact of the transformation of the food system on culture.
Participants:
Arie van den Brand, President, Biologica and former Member of Parliament, the Netherlands
Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)
Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty
Moderator: James McCann, Professor of History and Associate Director for Development, African Studies Center, Boston University

11:00 AM – 11:30AM: Coffee Break

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Session II: The End of Cheap Food: Food and Geopolitics 
This session will center on “food security.” It will address the rising cost of food and the “fuel vs. food” debate. Is the growing demand for biofuels responsible for food inflation? Other threats to food security will also be explored, namely, fossil fuel dependence, loss of biodiversity, and water shortages.
Participants:
Benedikt Haerlin, Foundation on Future Farming | Save Our Seeds
Jim Harkness, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Tim Wise, Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University 
Moderator: Cutler Cleveland, Professor of Geography and Environmental Science, Boston University

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Vegetarian lunch with guest speakers 
Seating limited | $15.00 | Please indicate when registering whether or not you will attend the lunch.

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Session III: What’s in What You Eat? Food Safety in a New Ecology 
This panel focuses on “food safety” with an emphasis on regulation in the United States and Europe, the GMO debate, recent “food scares,” and the looming threat of bioterrorism.
Participants:
Simone Gabbi, European Food Safety Authority 
Helen Holder, GM Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe
Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director, Center for Food Safety
Moderator: Adil Najam, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University

3:30 PM – 4:00 PM: Coffee Break

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Session IV: Eating Green: Food and Climate Change 
This panel looks at the relationship between food production and climate change, addressing issues of deforestation, soil degradation, and factory farms and considers whether what we eat can make a difference. 
Participants:
Daniel Hillel, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University 
Björn-Ola Linnér, Linköping University, the Tema Institute
Mia MacDonald, Founder and Executive Director, Brighter Green
Cynthia Rosenzweig, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University 
Moderator: Henrik Selin, Professor of International Relations, Boston University

5:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Coffee Break

6:00 PM – 7:30 PM: Session V: What Is “Good” Food? The Ethics 
of Eating 
Is “good” food healthy, sustainable, delectable or cheap? This panel explores why our food choices matter. It addresses the “ethics of eating” and the health and environmental costs of “cheap food.” It looks at some of the grassroots alternatives including the rise of organic farming, locavorism, and the “slow food” movement.
Participants:
Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved
Harriet Lamb, Executive Director, Fair Trade Foundation
Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)
Moderator: Molly Anderson, independent consultant on science and policy for sustainability

7:30 PM - 8:00 PM: Closing Keynote Address
Michael Ableman, farmer, author, and photographer and a recognized practitioner of sustainable agriculture and proponent of regional food systems

8:00 PM - 8:30 PM: Reception

Please join us! Location, registration, and conference description availablehere>>

All Saturday events, with exception of lunch, are free and open to the public. Registration in advance is appreciated and helps us with planning.

Conference is funded by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, DC with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

In cooperation with the Center for International Relations at Boston University, Boston University’s Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy and programs in food studies, and Slow Food BU

 

Green Drinks Wednesday April 15 at Vlora

Can you think of a better way to spend a Wednesday night than with your friends at Green Drinks?  Me neither, check it out!

We'll be gathering at our usual mid-month Wednesday haunt, Vlora, 465

Boylston St., at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the 15th. Vlora is located
just up from Clarendon St., by just below street level, though you can
see its atrium windows from the sidewalk, where its stairs will take
you down.

Our guest this month will be Marshall Chapin, regional director for
New England at EnerNOC, which goes between large-building owners and
utility companies to conserve energy in peak periods.

See you Wednesday.

Michael, Jesse, Elaine, and Eric

The Garden

Coming soon to a local-independently owned-socially responsible-sustainable-organic pop-corn serving-theatre near you... o.k. so AMC might screen it too.  

The 14 acre community garden in South Central Los Angeles was the
largest of it's kind in the United States. It was started as a form of
healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992. Since that time, the
South Central Farmers have created a miracle in one of the country's
most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their
families. Creating a community. But now bulldozers threaten their
oasis. "The Garden" is an unflinching look at the struggle between
these urban farmers and the City of Los Angeles and a powerful
developer who want to evict them and build warehouses.

Release date: April 24, 2009