Green Communities

Cherries. Image via Flickr, by Gordana. William Kerrigan is the Cole Professor of American History at Muskingum University, and the author of Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard, which tells the story of the old world apple in America By William Kerrigan American Orchard June 15, 2013 Excerpt: The problem with Ms. Anzelone’s argument that urban orchards and food forests are “monocultures” is that it doesn’t much resemble reality, and she could learn a great deal by visiting these sites and speaking with their volunteers. Organizations like the Philadelphia Orchard Project aren’t exactly planting acres of “monoculture.” These modest-sized orchards typically incorporate a variety of fruit and nut trees and berry bushes, with each variety blossoming at different times, thereby offering pollinators an extended feeding period. The Boston Tree Party’s “urban, decentralized orchard” is really just pairs of apple trees dispersed throughout the city. Seattle’s new Beacon Food Forest, currently just 1.5 acres with aspirations to grow to a total of 7 acres, explodes with edible plant diversity. In fact, most urban orchards contain gardens of other flowering plants as well. Advocates of urban orchards and gardens and the champions of wildflowers are in fact natural allies, not enemies. Both are deeply interested in the health of pollinator communities. Urban orchard organizations are staffed primarily with committed volunteers, and are not profit-driven affairs, seeking to maximize short-term production without regard to long term environmental health and sustainability. The kinds of people involved in them share the same values and perspectives that most champions of wildflowers do. Read the complete article here.

Illustration by Lilli Carré. Mariellé Anzelone, an urban conservation biologist, is the executive director of NYC Wildflower Week. By Marielle Anzelone New York Times June 14, 2013 Excerpt: Rooftop vegetable gardens were one thing, but the urban agricultural movement has gone a step too far. A new brand of activists want to incorporate fruit trees into the fabric of city life by turning our limited green space into woody groves filled with apples, cherries and plums. One group, the Guerrilla Grafters, has gone so far as to graft the branches of fruit trees onto street-side ornamental trees in San Francisco. At first blush these campaigns appear well intentioned. The groups are planting trees in underserved neighborhoods to provide access to healthy foods. What could be wrong with that? Don’t misunderstand me, I like fruit as much as the next person. It’s not the orchards themselves that irk me — it’s the shortsightedness they represent. By so narrowly defining useful landscapes, the craze to farmify our surroundings has made it all about humans. There’s nothing wrong with a utilitarian view of nature. The problem is that we are ignoring the utility of plants like wildflowers and native ornamentals in favor of imported fruit trees. Read the complete article here.

Growing Chefs! By savouradmin Savour Gourmet May 1, 2013 Excerpt: The Vancouver-based program has been running since 2005 and works with more than 100 volunteers in 34 different schools in the Lower Mainland, Comox Valley, and Kelowna. “We are thrilled to expand the program to Kelowna,” Kelowna chef community and the Kelowna school administration.”says Helen Stortini, Executive Director of Growing Chefs! “It is such a great opportunity for us to grow and we are overjoyed with the enthusiasm and support from the Chef Donnie Ungaro volunteered with the Growing Chefs! program in Vancouver in 2010. After moving back to the Okanagan Valley, Ungaro felt the program would be a great fit with the culinary community of Kelowna. Ungaro now works with the Okanagan Young Professionals (OYP) Collective, an initiative by the Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission (COEDC) “I had such a great experience with Growing Chefs! that I knew I had to bring it here. It’s such a great program for the Okanagan. Young families will love having it in their children’s schools” –Donnie Ungaro, Chef Culinary Ink, Head of Okanagan Young Professionals Collective. Read the complete article here.

The Washington County Band opened its summer season with a free concert at Fort Salem Theater last night. Here’s their take on the gospel classic Just a Closer Walk with Thee, performed in the style of a New Orleans jazz funeral march. It’s amazing to me that a community this small can field so many good musicians on all these different instruments. Take a listen.

Many Paths to Starting to Farm, and Much to Consider Mike Duffy, an agriculture economist with Iowa State University Extension, recently wrote a piece published on www.agriculture.com which suggests that while no path to becoming a farmer is exactly the same, there are some common considerations. Excerpt: “The decision to make a living from farming [...]

Chongqing, one of the fastest-growing and biggest cities on earth, with a population of 29 million. The old buildings under the high-rises are destined for demolition in the near future. Photo by Justin Jin. See slideshow here. Almost every province has large-scale programs to move farmers into housing towers, with the farmers’ plots then given to corporations or municipalities to manage. By Ian Johnson New York Times June 15, 2013 Excerpt: Beijing — China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come. The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities. This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly to find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends increasingly on a consuming class of city dwellers. The shift is occurring so quickly, and the potential costs are so high, that some fear rural China is once again the site of radical social engineering. Over the past decades, the Communist Party has flip-flopped on peasants’ rights to use land: giving small plots to farm during 1950s land reform, collectivizing a few years later, restoring rights at the start of the reform era and now trying to obliterate small landholders. Read the complete article here. See photo slideshow here.

Francesco Papa, a prisoner on penal colony, is pictured on winemaker Marquise Lamberto Frescobaldi’s vineyard in Gorgona island. Gorgona, the smallest of the Tuscan archipelago that also includes Elba, where Napoleon was incarcerated, is home to a project to rehabilitate hardened criminals through agriculture. Photo by REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi. See complete slideshow here. (19 photos) Italy’s prison vineyards: “Work in the fields is an escape valve … If you are locked up in a cell you just watch TV and become an idiot,” By Barry Moody Reuters June 14, 2013 Excerpt: Gorgona Island, Italy – High on a hillside overlooking the azure sea on a small Mediterranean island, two brawny men toil under the sun in a vineyard that has just released a 50-euro ($66) wine destined for the tables of top restaurants. This is not an exclusive wine estate or secluded retreat for the rich, despite the tranquil beauty. It is, rather, the residence of men serving long sentences for some of Italy’s most notorious and brutal crimes, on an island named after monstrous sisters in Greek mythology with snakes for hair. Gorgona, the smallest of the Tuscan archipelago that also includes Elba, where Napoleon was incarcerated, is home to a project to rehabilitate hardened criminals through agriculture. The island, an isolated refuge for monks for 1,500 years and a penal colony since 1869, has just produced 2,700 bottles of a crisp white wine called Gorgona with the help of a 700-year-old Italian wine dynasty. Among the buyers is a Michelin three-star restaurant in Florence. Gorgona’s 40 inmates, many of them convicted of murder, including a notorious contract killing, also produce high quality pork, vegetables, chickens, olive oil and cheese. Read the complete article here. Link to slideshow here.

Remember how cute they used to be? By popular demand, here’s an update on our chicks. As you can see from the photo above, our 30 Rhode Island Reds are no longer cute little balls of fluff, but after four weeks of furious eating have grown into near-adulthood and the reptilian version of a chicken they were meant to be. And they have a surprise in store. If you’ve been reading this blog on a daily basis, you might have thought my days consisted of occasionally moving the sheep around, taking photos and eating bons-bons. Au contraire, mes amis. In my spare hours I have also been working on a chicken coop. And not just any chicken coop. This one has wheels. I’ll tell more about that anon. Today, finishing the mobile coop has moved to the top of the agenda and here to help is my brother-in-law Steve, who flew in last night from Chicago to be my farm slave for a week. Steve booked a late flight and the plane was delayed an hour because of a storm. So we didn’t get back from the airport in Albany until nearly three in the morning. For some reason, I’m awake at 5 a.m. no matter what time I go to bed. So I’ve already finished my morning chores–including leading the sheep to a new, electrified paddock–and now I have to take our pickup truck into the shop to find out why it has all of a sudden developed a sputter. Check back tomorrow for exciting developments in our chicken coop construction and find out whether we’ve freed the chicks from their basement enclosure and finally put them out on pasture.

Keep up-to-date with the biggest news stories in agriculture from around the web! What are the journalists at the major media outlets penning… or typing… these days? In the past few weeks, we saw: Continued coverage of the Farm Bill (the Senate passed its version) and we reported on this in greater detail yesterday here; [...]

Viet Village Urban Farm, New Orleans, Louisiana, by Mossop + Michaels. There are 8,000 Vietnamese concentrated in a one-mile radius in New Orleans East. J. Green The Dirt 06/10/2013 Excerpt: The development corporation found a trainer who could teach aquaculture, the practice of raising fish on land. A two-day session brought up new ways to create more sustainable systems. In a pilot phase, workshop attendees tested out growing koi, bluefish, and catfish. Some then experimented with “aquaponics,” which uses the waste from fish as fertilizer to grow produce. “This is more sustainable growth,” as the fish byproduct isn’t simply dumped into waterways. Now, the VEGGI Farmer’s Cooperative, a massively scaled-up aquaponics operation for the community, sells fresh produce to local restaurants and stores. Amazingly, the fisherman who lost their livelihoods with the oil spill have “supplemented 100 percent of their earlier incomes,” said Bui. Taking out marketing and transportation costs, some “80 cents of each dollar goes back to the cooperative members.” While there are a few aquaponics plots at around an acre, the group has finally been able to purchase a 8-acre urban farm site. Bui said “4 acres are under development now.” Read the complete article here.