Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Wendell Berry has said that eating is an agricultural act, but what about drinking beer? A thirst for fermented beverages may have inspired the world’s first farmers to plant crops some 13,000 years ago, yet today beer is rarely part of the larger conversation about where our food comes from.
– Dutch ‘Repair Cafes’ keep stuff out of the trash by fixing it for free
– Food Fundamentals – interview with food security writer Lolo Houbein (Australia)
– Don’t Throw Away Your Wealth (John Robb on biogas digesters)
– Methane Biodigester – How To Video (The Urban Farming Guys)
– Don’t call me an environmentalist
– James Gustave Speth: America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part II
– Limits to growth, food security issues and the rapid growth in Australia’s population – Philip Adams interview
I grew up in the 1970s and 80s in Eagan, Minn., near an unusual farmer who worked a remarkable piece of land. The young Martin Diffley grew an array of vegetables on fields tucked amid grassy, protective hills and dense woods, a landscape much different from the deforested, monoculture farms so common in the region. Diffley established his Gardens of Eagan, one of the first organic farms in the Midwest, on land that had been owned by the Diffley family since 1855; pesticides and other common agricultural chemicals had never been used on it. But its edenic traits could not save it. In the late 1980s, as the Twin Cities oozed into the countryside around it, the forests were bulldozed and the hills flattened to make way for unimaginative houses in various shades of beige.
The story behind the loss of that place forms the broken heart of Turn Here Sweet Corn, a new memoir by Atina Diffley, Martin’s wife. The book is billed as a gardening guide, love story, business handbook, and legal thriller, but it is really a wrenching tale of a common yet private tragedy: the way development pressures push farming families off the land, and what happens to those families during and afterward….
I decided to learn how to garden because I became concerned about a future of declining natural resources that will undoubtedly make life different, especially since we depend on oil for almost everything in our lives. Indeed, Sharon Astyk’s call for 100 million farmers and 200 million cooks (I already cook) is sound advice and essential preparation for survival in this new and uncertain world. Today, I would start this venture with a lesson on barn cleaning. (This is a sneak peek into an upcoming book about my experiences on the farm.)
Gleaning for good by harvesting unwanted produce from local farms, community gardens, or neighbors’ backyards and distributing this excess bounty to the food insecure is an increasingly popular — and necessary — humanitarian effort for the hungry during tough financial times, as Shareable recently reported.
Across the country, volunteer pickers join forces to collect literally tons of fruits and vegetables that then find their way to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries, as well as senior centers, low-income homes, and school lunch programs.
I don’t want to call chickweed the worst weed in the garden because I think it is trying to teach us a lesson about sustainable farming. But in its selected field of operation, the rich organic garden, chickweed is almost indestructible. Oh, you can blot it out with a thick layer of mulch for a whole year. But look out when the mulch decays away. The chickweed comes roaring back.
Most of the city’s community gardens have waiting lists of two years or more, according to Public Harvest, a new report by San Francisco Urban Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR). The most comprehensive report of its kind in recent years, it paints a sweeping portrait of the current urban agriculture landscape and presents a bold agenda to help San Francisco meet the demands of a burgeoning movement.
It isn’t always easy finding fresh, high-quality food in this country. Supermarkets with their long, complex supply chains usually offer unripe or subpar produce that leaves a lot to be desired. But the usual alternative methods of provision have distinct limitations. Luckily, technology provides one great answer to this dilemma, opening up an important new avenue for small-scale producers to connect to customers.
Lawns are such a staple of the American landscape today that it may come as a surprise that such devotion to a mere patch of manicured grass isn’t something with deep historical roots.
Food is a source of joy and comfort but how we produce it is crucial to our collective survival. Lolo Houbein is a South Australian food security advocate and writer.
In the first part of “A Sanctuary of Trees,” I conjoined silviculture with my early years in a Catholic seminary studying for the priesthood. What I learned from the forests surrounding the several seminary locations I attended influenced me more than what I was hearing in the classroom. What I learned in both places led me eventually to choose the forest and leave the seminary… In our present traditional society, becoming a priest is a “call from God.” Becoming a forest-loving farmer instead should be a “call from God” too, and that is what I hope traditional religion will in the future readily recognize.
