Food

Soil: From Dirt to Lifeline

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Fred Kirschenmann has been involved in sustainable agriculture and food issues for most of his life. He currently serves as both a Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and as President of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York. He is the author of a book of essays which track the development of his thought over the past 30 years; Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays by a Farmer Philosopher, published by the University of Kentucky Press. In this TedX talk given at the Glynwood Institute for Sustainable Food and Farming, he tells us what good soil has to do with producing good food.

Secret crying places

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I knew I needed a secret crying place when my mother died. We were living the suburban life then, but had managed to turn our big backyard into a kind of secluded garden with a chicken coop at the center of it. I would sit on an overturned bucket in the coop, hidden from everything except the chickens, and weep with abandoned, remembering my mother, who was always singing. The chickens would cock their heads sideways, staring as only chickens can do, and maybe sing a little too, as if to comfort me.

Tilling the soil in 2012, parts 1 and 2

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Where once American plowmen had merely to contend with unpredictable weather, infertile soil, inaccessible water supplies, poverty, accidents and disease, today’s food producers face a further cornucopia of sophisticated and bewildering attacks from all sides. That fewer than one percent of Americans want to wrestle a crop from abused soil, while attempting to anticipate how global warming or ailing honeybees may thwart them, should surprise no one.

Stories from Windrush

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Windrush Farm in Chileno Valley, California stands as one of our communities most endearing fiber and farming hubs. Founded in 1995 by Mimi Luebbermann, the farm grew from an intention of living simply, farming fiber, and functioning as a quiet space for Luebbermann’s longstanding writing career. The farm has since become a destination for Bay Area spinning and knitting groups, seasonal craft fairs, and during the summer the place is transformed by Luebbermann and her son Arann Harris, into the “best home-grown, grass-fed, tree-climbing, organically-run, farm camp around”… for a host of children from the surrounding area.

The Ooooby Local Economic Model

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Ooooby began in December 2008 on Waiheke Island, Auckland, as an online social network of food gardeners. An evolving project, it now also facilitates the distribution of locally grown food. Ooooby has (in May 2011) 3,600 members, 10,000 monthly visitors, 50 local suppliers and 150 weekly customers. Each month an Oooobyversity evening is hosted in Grey Lynn, Auckland, to share knowledge about food-growing and ways to enhance local production.

When the hop fields come to town

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Sometimes the simplest ideas carry with them, when thought through, such a powerful taste of how the future could be that they are quite irresistible…The idea is a simple one: rather than breweries in London buying their hops from wherever they can source them (sometimes as far afield as New Zealand), people across London grow hops in their back gardens, on their patios and balconies, allotments and community gardens, which are then used by local brewers.

Book Review: Urban Homesteading

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Want to grow food and live the sustainable lifestyle but lack the space? Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living, by Rachel Kaplan with K. Ruby Blume, a glossy bible for self-sufficiency in the city, will have you tearing out your driveway to sow a garden, and diverting gray water to irrigate it. The book’s beautifully presented and amply illustrated projects are all geared toward typical city-sized lots, and interspersed with case studies of actual homesteads and working urban farms, like the two-acre rooftop farm in Brooklyn, where greens grow amid rooftop vents.

A country for old men

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Unless you suffer from an overactive bladder as many of us do, you may find this essay a bit on the crude side. But nevermind, you will get there too eventually unless you are lucky. In terms of overactive bladders, there is an advantage to living on a farm that rarely gets mentioned, even though the “fall out” from it is quite significant for society at large. Farms provide owners with a private place far from any bathroom where they can relieve themselves.