"Going Home Grown"

I was cleaning out my living room and I found an article from the Post and Courier's Household Helper section.  It was printed February 2, 2011 and it focused on Callie Watford and her pledge to eat locally for 2011.  They joined a community supported agriculture program that allows the family to gather locally grown vegetables etc.and they have started a blog on their local food diet (www.urban-farmgirl-callie.blogspot.com)  The real interest I had in this article was the tips on how to eat locally.  I thought that this would be helpful to anyone in the class, who want to start eating locally.  The article suggested joining a community agriculture group if possible, learn to can vegetables for the times when growing food is difficult, and check out "Kitchen table Cuisine" that has access to locally grown food.  The local meat farms or processors suggested by the article were Legare farms, River Run Farms, and Keegan-Fillian Farms. The grocery stores that stock local food are Queen Street grocery, Ted's butcher Block, Remedy Market and Vegetable Bin.  I have been to the vegetable bin and it has pretty good prices for a lot of food.   It is right next to the teeter if you need something you can not find locally ( understand that we can't go completely local right away  including me).  For seafood they recommend Crosby's seafood, Raul's seafood, and the docks at Shem creek.  The article even listed local drinks from Coast  beer to Firefly vodka and rum.  Then the article suggested that you ask for local food at restaurants telling the reader that by doing this the demand for locally grown food will grow.  I thought that the article was a good example of how local food is becoming more important in the Charleston area.  i had no idea so many grocery stores stocked local produce.  I am going to try each you of these places to see how they stack price and quality wise.  Wish me luck. 

One More Thing

A little side-note, Charleston Wine and Food Festival is March 3-6 and it is by far the most delicious festival in Charleston. Just a few things to enjoy are:

• AWESOME FOOD
• Celebrity chefs (I'm a Top Chef slut)
  
• Local farms and their products
• Cheap meals at nice restaurants
• Supporting local agriculture

There's even a Farm-to-Table Excursion that is exactly what it sounds like. (You know what's awesome?? IT'S ALMOST SOLD OUT.) Even better is this! The whole festival is a supporter of Lowcountry Local First. So by going out, enjoying tasty morsels of food and (organically grown!) wine, you can help support the organization that's working to make local and urban agriculture a reality.

Charleston Wine and Food Festival

What REAL Urban Agriculture Looks Like...I Think.

I'm finally on the blog! Yay! Turns out to get to this thing you have to have the "internet" and a "browser" and that browser has to be "updated." Whatever THAT means. Anyway.

With all this talk of urban agriculture, I decided to go to a source that I rarely rely on for factual information but have found some true entertainment in. Grist is an online magazine focused on environmental issues and news, is hopelessly liberal and is almost always roll-around-on-the-floor hilarious. Recently I received their biweekly email and what do you know! An article on urban agriculture!

"Are You Kidding Me with Your F-ing Farm Skyscraper?"

Woven among her sarcasm, the author presents really relevant points to any urban resident, especially broke college students. (Or soon to be my case: broke out-of-college students) Eating healthy and fresh is difficult and expensive--and forget organic. I'll eat a pesticide-ridden banana for 17 cents because I can afford it and I haven't had a decent source of potassium in about a week. Same goes with spinach (I'll take the e-coli?) or apples or tomatoes. Author Susan Gregory Thomas or "Broke-Ass" tells the story of a chance encounter with a green-thumbed male nurse, James McCrae. McCrae has wise insight into the dilemma of healthy eating, urban farming and charity. On a vacant lot in Brooklyn, New York, McCrae (with the help of the local homeless population) tends an urban farm and raises crops for distribution among the surrounding families. McCrae is the perfect example of where urban agriculture needs to go. In order for this movement to be successful, the "little guys" have to step up and take initiative while the mega-agra businesses keep their greedy paws out of it. I think the immediate solution is not a 50-story skyscraper with a crop on every floor--I think the immediate solution is the enabling and encouragement of the intimidated backyard basil grower. I think it starts with us.

Earth Day Film Contest

Starting in April Marion Square will start hosting free movies on Friday evenings sponsored by Charleston City paper. Although viewing the movie is free they do ask for a $1 donation that will benefit the local non-profit organization of the week. Coastal Conservation League (an organization established in 1989 that works with local Charleston businesses, citizens, groups and schools to protect coastal South Carolina) is sponsoring a “My Day: Charleston” film contest. The details below are from the facebook event page:

“My Day: Charleston”
The Challenge: Show us how you spend a day in Charleston- celebrating the earth.
Do you love the beach? The marsh? The beautiful parks all over the city? The West Ashley Greenway? There is a lot of beauty here in Charleston and we want to see how you spend your time, taking care of, exploring, and loving our piece of earth in this historic city.This contest is open to any individuals, families, businesses or organizations who want to show what Charleston is all about on Earth Day!

Rules to Enter:
1. Video submissions due March 25 to Adrienne Levy and Suzie Webster. adriennel@scccl.org and scgreenfair@gmail.com
2. Maximum Length is 3 minutes
3. Video must incorporate theme and be appropriate for audiences of all ages
4.Top winners will have their video shown during the Music in Marion Square, presented by the City Paper every Friday in April. Grand Prize winner will be announced and shown on Earth Day, April 22. Special prizes will also be announced along the way."

Earth Day was first established on April 22, 1970 in the Unites States by Gaylord Nelson, a United States Senator. It offered activists an opportunity to express their concern for environmental and sustainability issues and incentives. In 1990 the day became a worldwide happening and now over 192 countries partake in Earth Day events.

Would this be a project that our class would like to become involved in? Any ideas of how we, as a class, would spend our day in Charleston celebrating the Earth?

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=185831401457411 http://coastalconservationleague.org/green-fair-music-with-a-message-contest-information/ http://www.earthday.org/about-us

Thinking Like A Mountain

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.”

~Aldo Leopold

If sustainability can be viewed as success (whether financial or ecological) over a given period of time, then it would seem the term is plagued by a certain amount of ambiguity. While success is extremely difficult to define in both commercial and scientific endeavors in and of its self, the matter is complicated by an incomplete view of the time function with which it is incorporated. While Albert Einstein said that time is irrelevant and Benjamin Franklin said that time is money, then it would seem that our generation has incorporated both paradigms. We have defined success as a matter of fiscal prosperity, while becoming increasingly shortsighted with regard to our progeny and the decades that lie ahead. Without an appreciation for the future, the concept of sustainability is essentially futile. In an effort to combat the anthropocentricity that plagues the human condition; Aldo Leopold argued that we must to learn to “think like a mountain,” and realize we are merely a moment in the spectrum of natural time. It is with this paradigm that the sustainable movement moves forward in an effort to ensure our footprint is commensurate with our weight.

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/thinking.html

Environmental Awareness in the Middle East

With all that's been going on in Egypt over the last few weeks, I've been thinking about how they might view or treat environmental issues (i.e. do they have ENVT classes over there?). While the industrialized nations like the US and China certainly contribute the most to pollution, the Middle East is a major source of our oil, so it would stand to reason that they must have some sort of environmental awareness or movement going on. So I googled "environmental awareness in the middle east" and came across a children's book being launched all around the Middle East entitled Omar's Goats. Author Kathy Hoopmann actually made the children's book from an environmental teacher's manual and it's meant to send a strong message to children in a very simple way (kind of like the children's propaganda books from the Holocaust, but in a good way this time). The book is endorsed by the Madares Al Ghad [MAG] program, which seeks to establish a coherent and respectable k-12 school system in the United Arab Emirates and a few other participating Middle Eastern countries. This link tells you more about MAG:

http://cliftonchadwick.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/the-schools-of-tomorrow-show-results-today/

And here's one for Omar's Goats:

http://www.7days.ae/storydetails.php?id=185&page=localnews&title=Omar’s%20Goats

I must say it is very reassuring to know that the grass roots environmental movement is taking place on the "opposite end of the world." I am a huge believer in education being the best way to prevent disaster and promote progress because things as simple as children's books make lifelong impressions on the kids who read them.

I also delved into "sustainable agriculture in Egypt." Didn't find much except for that Egypt is developing better methods of dry land farming to account for its arid climate, lack of arable land, water scarcity, water quality, and population growth. Experts say that MENA (Middle East + Northern Africa) countries' dilemmas (famine, disease, war, etc.) are almost all traceable to resource issues, so sustainable agriculture applied to dry land farming would be a godsend to the area. Perhaps the "fertile crescent" will be fertile again one day.

The Carbon Connection

I came across this documentry last night and found it quite concerning. I reccomend you give it a watch. Here is a short summary:

The Carbon Connection follows the story of two groups of people from each community who learned to use video cameras and made their own films about living with the impacts of the carbon market. From mental health issues in Scotland to the loss of medicinal plants in Brazil, the communities discover the connections they have with each other and the film follows them on this journey

Looking for seeds

Hello Everyone!

Please begin searching for heirloom seed as you think about prep for class. We are especially looking for those that are significant to the county/state/region in the past or present. I appreciate your help and welcome any questions.

To get you started, check:

Seed Savers Exchange

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Heavenly Seed

Clemson and the USDA webpages

forums on gardening in SC or gardening in general--> possibly Organic Gardening magazine or Mother Earth News

local resources: family members, friends, your farmer's market vendor, etc.

AND if anyone likes history, even popular literature on the history of Charleston plantations might mention foodways or important plants

Any ideas are valuable here. This is a big project, requiring a little bit of sleuthing. Thanks again! Looking forward to hearing from our beekeeper tomorrow :)

Catching up...

So this is my first post and I have a lot of progress to show. We have been putting in a very large vegetable garden in our back yard. It consists of 4 main beds augmented by several deep root plant containers.

With regards to tilling, its been rough, there was a lot of old construction and foundations under the ground. We pulled up close to 100 bricks and countless rocks, railroad spikes and bottles. It was interesting to see these older artifacts neglected by time.

I wound up tilling about 12 inches deep. Once I got the top of the soil loose it was pretty easy to get down deep, at least until I hit roots. I spent quite some time chopping out roots with a mattock.

After tilling up the soil we added nitrogen from coffee grounds from the local coffee shop and a healthy dose of compost from this winter's compost pile. Some friends down the street also offered us their unused compost which was used to seed our now empty compost pile.

There were a lot of other little things that had to be done: hand-edging the bed after tilling, leveling the beds, and spreading the compost, all of which were pretty time- and labor-intensive.

Before we started on our beds, we set up a water catchment system from an old food grade barrel that used to contain lemon juice. Its not the best system, but it allows us to water our container plants at less cost to us or the environment. We hope to add a second barrel and elevate it a bit more, to increase water pressure.

We've have chosen to start the seedlings indoors. I went down to Hyam's on Folly Road and picked up 4 seedling beds and a bag of seeding mix. I made a table from some old 2x4s and some old plywood, hung up a fluorescent light with grow bulbs about 24inches from the top of the containers.

Here are some other images from our preparation for the summer garden:

Aquaculture revolution?

With all the talk of agriculture and the issues it has forced to the surface, aquaculture has quietly picked up some steam and needs to be addressed before it becomes a brand new hurdle for us. Right now, the fishing industry is dominated by the capture of wild fish stocks. With huge demand for fish of all kinds fisheries have become a rapidly growing industry. In fact, the US imports 50% of its consumed fish. Now, much like cattle of the old west, the stocks are dwindling and the 300,000 comercial and 17,000,000 recreational fishermen are struggling to meet their own goals while maintaining sustainable fish populations. The cod and the orange roughy were nearly fished to extiction before scientists stepped in and explained the idea of maximum sustainable yeild.
What happenes when maximum sustainable yeild no longer sustains the fisherman? This is where aquaculture steps in.
Currently, 15% of the US fish supply is aquacultured. Obviously, it is hard to maintain an aquaculture farm that can fully allow the fish species to be in a natural environment. This has shown to make this fish less likely to grow and mature as they would in the wild. Many fish species loose much of there omega 3 and 6 fatty acids when aquacultured and this is one of the main draws of fish for human consumption. Also, many fish farmers feed there stocks corn or corn based products, perpetuating the need for large-scale agriculture. The other option for aquaculture is enclosing sections of bodies of water and controlling the fish populations within the area. This option is much worse because it will stop the natural flow of diversity in the waters seasonallya dn daily. Coastal esuaries provide 75% of comercial fish landings but sectioning off theses areas would be devastating to the ecosystem. On top of the obvious pifalls of both types, scientists are also worried about the poosibilty of disease transmision between unhealthy, aquaculture species and wild species. This would completely debunk the original purpose of aquaculture.
As with most issues, the best way to move forward is to try and strike a balance between aquaculture, commercial fishing, and our demand for fish. Local, in-season seafood with a small supplement of aquacultured seafood should be our demand. While agriculture is somewhat more of a popular issue right now, aquaculture is connected and should be addressed. It would be a shame to see humans destroy the natural flow of life in our waters more than we already have.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol3no4/garrett.htm

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=52

corn syrup

Something last class caught my mind, I just didn't get a chance to voice it.  When we were discussing the products of corn, found in the video, they mentioned corn syrup.  Do you all remember every single time you have sat down with a thing of oreos, ice cream, or chips and eaten the whole thing without realizing it? The reason is corn syrup.  Producers will put corn syrup in anything, but not for the taste.  It is because they want you to eat more.  Corn syrup has an interesting chemical form that attaches to the part of your brain that tells you when you are gaining weight and it silences that part.  You can't know that you are full so you just keep eating.  Furthermore, studies of corn syrup's effect on the body show that consuming corn syrup in rats leads to obesity in every rat, unlike just eating a high fat diet where only some rats gain weight.  (Princeton 2010) The journal of Nutrition has studies that show that eating high fructose corn syrup can lead to insulin resistance and obesity.  Other studies from less reliable sources (mommyknowbest.com, live strong.com and Dr. Oz) say that corn syrup leads to increased triglycerides, liver problems, tooth decay, obesity, diabetes, poor immunity , and fatigue.  The problem after reading this is you start to look at how many products that have corn syrup in it.  I'll bet that anything that has been processed at all has corn syrup.  Which means that 90% of the food you eat or drinks you drink has this product in it.   Nasty right. I mean who wants something that could cause all of this in their food, and if you want to cut it out of your diet Good Luck. I've known this for years and had to find my way through the maze of processed foods, it's just nice to have company now.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/6/1242S.abstract
http://www.sharecare.com/question/corn-syrup-satiety
http://www.livestrong.com/article/259248-high-fructose-corn-syrups-effects-on-the-body/
http://www.mommybknowsbest.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup-what-you-need-to-know/

Where's the Beef?

As I sit in my room watching the Colbert Report I see the Taco Bell headline come across the screen. Colbert described how a lab had taken a sample of Taco Bell's seasoned beef and the test turned up that the "seasoned beef" was actually only 35% beef. Colbert in his usual sarcastic manner said "Let me put it this way: On a scale of one to beef, it's got something in there. But of course it all comes down to government intrusion and its minimum requirements for what can be labeled beef. Who cares what the government says? I say if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, glue some hooves on that thing and call it beef." However funny Colbert can make the situation seem, the reality of it is that we as customers and consumers must do something to stop this. After seeing this the first thing to pop into my mind was the book Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. In this book Pollan attacks the global food industry from the ground up and in the process covers something very similar to this very situation. Pollan talks of how he takes his family for a few and far between lunch at McDonald's and asks his son if the new chicken nuggets taste more like chicken than the previous non "white meat" nuggets. To his surprise his son answers him with the simple statement, "No, they taste like what they are, which is nuggets,". This statement shows how we as consumers have allowed the food in front of us to be so far separated from what it is and what we should be eating in actuality. Pollan goes on to list the staggering number of ingredients in a "McNugget" which is approximately thirty-eight! One of these substances, TBHQ or tertiary butylhydroquinone is an antioxidant derived from petroleum to "help preserve freshness" however ingesting just five grams of the substance can cause death. While Taco Bell has not been accused of putting toxins in their foods the message remains the same, we as consumers must demand better food quality and must seek out to know what exactly is going into our foods! This situation also reminds me of an older slogan used by Wendy's asking "Where's the Beef?", well sadly as we look inside our Taco Bell bags (or many other fast food bags...) we must ask that very same question. It is time for us to take a stand on our food safety we owe not just to our bodies but also to Earth and the environment all around us.

Nobody Likes a Dry Garden

As I thought of a blog to post I remembered the class discussion on how we can prevent our class garden from drying out. So I researched ways to produce a drip irrigation system that will be cost efficient and can be made by hand. There are multiple ways of going about making a drip irrigation system. You can use an old watering hose, PVC pipe, or plastic bottles. The PVC pipe and the watering hose are mostly used for larger gardens and will require access to an outdoor spigot (faucet). However, the water bottle will be easy to use for our small plots.

Here are some How to website to help with more ideas or a continuation on the use of this drip irrigation system.

http://www.ehow.com/how_6712098_build-drip-irrigation.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_2101076_build-drip-irrigation-system.html

I think, therefore I Yam.

- Ratbert

Thinking about gardens

Kathleen Hollowell Blog 1

Last week we went to Bogarden.  It was an interesting look at urban gardening, but it made me remember my trips outside of the country.  My first trip out of the country was to Peru in the Amazon forest.  No garden could ever compare to these.  I would wake up and have fresh fruit juice squeezed from the trees outside my living quarters.  I wouldn’t even call them gardens because they were integrated into the forest and the locals just lived off of them.  It was so great.  Unlike Bogarden that had a barrier and was in specific plots, these people barely cared for the trees and let them grow wild.  The second thing I thought of was the gardens in Grenada’s fortress.  The king built them for the queen because she was bored.  These gardens have sections of just for show and others that are meant to grow food.  Grandiose fountains and labyrinths of 4-meter high bushes hide the areas for food growth.  They seem to be hidden from the queen to make her not even think about work.  Unlike the Bogarden that is public to allow access to people that need it.  The idea of a garden can span into different mindsets.  The queen’s garden was useless except for a 10% that grew food and in the Amazon the garden was the forest, a wild untamed bounty of food.  I prefer the Amazonian garden, but I think little Bogarden was prettier than the labyrinth the queen had.