Food in Boston

Sorry for the late notice! Got the following tip a while back:

Earth Week: Detroit agriculture film screenings

Grown in Detroit tells the story of the heroic efforts underway at the Catherine Ferguson School to redeem the city’s young and its land. Students at the Catherine Ferguson School are working to change those statistics as proud urban gardeners learning to cultivate the land and feed their families.

Thursday, April 22nd. 6:30 pm. Andover Newton Theological School’s Wilson Chapel in Newton. Join Principal Asenath Andrews for a screening, fundraiser and reception of Grown in Detroit, featuring her Detroit school and farm for teen moms.

Tickets available at www.lizwalkerjourneyproductions.org

Friday, April 23rd. 6-8 pm. MIT. EG&G Education Center, Room 101, Cambridge.
The Tufts Food System Planning Coalition and Planners Network Boston Chapter presents a special screening of Grown in Detroit and Detroit:green + a panel discussion about the role of agriculture and justice in community development and urban revitalization.

Panelists include:
Julian Agyeman, moderator (Tufts Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department Chair)
Matt Kochka (reVision House Urban Farm)
Alice Leung (Top Sprouts)
Betsy Johnson (Boston Collaborative for Food and Fitness, South End/Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust)

Perhaps, like me, you’ve been wondering what’s happening in the Boston area for next weekend’s big worldwide pro-climate-change-mitigation actions, coordinated by 350.org. Well, I’m happy to pass on my recent discovery, thanks to the Bikes not Bombs newsletter, of the Mass Climate Action Network summary. Biking with folks to the Boston Under Water Climate Festival is sounding pretty good to me — see some of you there?

It’s two weeks away, on Sunday, October 18th. A one-day conference I’d expect to be of interest to many readers. Really interesting to me that Bill McKibben is on the speaker list, only 6 days before the big 350.org event!

See http://www.relocalizemassachusetts.org/ for the deets.

Thanks to brooklinemama for the tip.

Dick Pierce is hosting another Permaculture certificate course on Martha’s Vineyard, next month. I had a blast at last year’s session — see my wrapup if you want an idea of how it went.

About this year’s, Dick says:

What: Permaculture Design Course - 12 days – Martha’s Vineyard, MA

When: Sept 14 - 25, 8:30 – 5:30 daily; 1st day start at 12:00; last day ‘til early PM

Cost: Course: $600 (Is.-Residents, $500); Hostel Room, $220/11 nights; Meals, $280 est.

Presented by: DickPierceDesigns and hosted at Hostel Int’l – Martha’s Vineyard

Desc: Permaculture Design Certificate Course - Join Dick Pierce and a great crew of local experts/practitioners - gardeners, farmers, organics, Green/natural builders, land owners, small/coop businesses, renewable energy folks - in scenic, small-farm, self-reliant MV for this 12-day residential Permaculture Design course. For old pro’s to beginners, tenured land owners to those just starting out (even thinking about it), professionals, students, teachers, parents, retirees. Learn Permaculture design principles, see them in operation, talk with folks who live on/care for the land, create a professional design for your own property. Join a great, like-minded group for a wonderful experience – in the Fall beauty and charm of Martha’s Vineyard.

For more info please visit www.DickPierceDesigns.com, Or Email DickPierceDesigns@gmail.com; or, call Dick on his cell at 512-992-8858.

Thanks to permaculture twitterer Leonard Barrett I recently learned about a nifty public gardening project just across the JP/Brookline border: the 200 foot garden. Leonard is from Portland, OR which makes it funny that he was my info source for this project that I bike within a few hundred feet of multiple times per week. I guess the internet is good for something.

I went for a peek at the garden the other day, and I liked what I saw. It’s a great location — in the five or so minutes I spent looking around, plenty of folks walked by. Patrick and Tracy have great signs explaining what the project’s about. Things were nice and tidy for this time of year, too, with just a bit of grass peeking through the mulch.

I’ll be interested to track the progress of this project, and hope there’ll be more work days coming up in which to meet Patrick, Tracy, and the others involved.

So much for weekly updates! Oh well.

In skimming Sharon’s latest update, I’m reminded that there’s a specific format to this genre; here goes using it.

Planted something: not exactly, though we did transplant some squashes from the hill where they all germinated to the one where none did.

Harvested something: lettuce, radishes, mustard greens, basil & varied herbs. One snap pea went directly into my mouth — the plants are finally growing more vigorously, but haven’t managed to produce so much.

Preserved something: I don’t think putting stuff in the fridge counts here.

Ate the food: all the stuff we picked! Pretty easy at this point.

Waste not/Managing Food Reserves: finally remembered to pull one of the 5 gallon water containers out that I’d filled 6 months ago. Still tasted fine.

Want Not/Prep and Storage: installed cucumber trellis from leftover fencing & bamboo stakes.

Build Community Food Systems: drafted a schedule for Board and committee staffing at the rest of the year’s in-store tabling and member dinners at Harvest (felt a little like solving the Travelling Salesman problem). Started looking into what the Transition Network is doing, and pondering how that might look in Boston — there are some interested folks in various parts of the state, but not so much here yet.

Boston’s most outspoken grocer is back with an up-to-the-minute take on our food system, which can be found both in the regular Lionette’s email newsletter and on the front page of the Lionette’s Market site. Preceded by a general market update that includes an excellent guide to the various cuts of meat they stock, with an eye towards grilling.

One of my favorite passages:

We feel that somehow and someway nature will have to compromise with us. Such absurd and futile notions that carbon offsets will appease the climate gods are similar to ‘uncivilized’ people of the past who made sacrifices to the rain gods. The ever burning climate will not ignore the carbon emitted from fresh figs flown into Boston because you recycle. Mutated e-coli and Salmonella do not understand your argument that recovering the economy takes precedent to a safe food supply, nor do they care about unemployment rates. Obesity and Diabetes do not comprehend the injustices of a class based economic system.

Amen!

• Helped friends install a raised bed in their front yard. We used stones that had been piled in the back yard to define the space — no lumber needed! I’m also encouraging them to try planting in sheet mulch, rather than buying a bunch of soil. To that end, recommended Gaia’s Garden for more on sheet mulch, and generally being an awesome resource.
• Picked up a used copy of Taylor’s Master Guide to Landscaping (recommended in GG). Far from permaculture in its outlook — one passage talks about grass as being way easier to keep up than plantings — but there looks to be plenty of use.
• Asked some pros about my knotweed mulch project. Loose consensus: as long as the knotweed bits are root free, it’s not totally crazy.
• Weeded the garden, mounded some soil around those corn plants that are growing the best, added some more knotweed leaf mulch.
• Tabled on behalf of the Board at the JP Harvest Co-op for Member Appreciation Day. Signed up at least one new member, and had some good conversations with long-time members.
• Last and definitely not least: picked some strawberries at The Food Project’s Lincoln farm, turned them into some fabulous dessert.

starts in a few minutes! http://www.radioboston.org/

With your permission, I will get a little introspective for a minute. In case you’ve wondered what the hell happened to the once-regular posts here on FiB, well, a few things have changed for me since I first posted here, almost three years ago:

1. I was elected to a two-year term on the Harvest Co-op Board of Directors in November ‘07. This has been an honor, a tremendous education in the retail side of our food system, and a more than a few hours of work, which are thus no longer available to spend writing for this blog. Also, since the Board has a policy of only speaking with one voice on Harvest-related matters, blogging about Harvest or retail generally is tricky.
2. In February of ‘08, I was hired as the IT Manager at The Food Project. Longtime readers know that TFP had been one of my favorite subjects due to the many roles the organization plays in the Boston-area local food scene. It’s a fantastic job, and it’s a job — I find myself wanting to wrestle with non-TFP stuff in my off hours.
3. Permaculture. I took a Permaculture Design Course last fall, and have since been engaged in design and early stages of implementation for some friends in their new yard.

That should explain a bit about where my FiB energy has gone. It’s taken me a while to come to terms with that, but I think it’s inescapable by now. Going forwards, then, what to reasonably expect from FiB?

• Independence Days: I really like this notion from Sharon Astyk about the value of publicly testifying to what you’re doing in the name of local food. To start: this week, in addition to my day job (which conveniently has to do with our food system), I watered & weeded my community garden plot, harvested some lettuce and mustard greens, started a little experiment using knotweed stems & leaves as mulch, and prepared for & participated in a co-op board meeting.
• Reposts & links to events have been a staple here, and I’m happy to continue those. If you’ve got something you’d like to see here on FiB, please pass it my way. I’ll also aim to keep a short list of my favorite Boston-area food system bloggers active in the blogroll over on the right.
• Who knows, maybe occasionally some more substantial stuff…

Finally, those of you who actually visit the website rather than read in a feed reader may notice that I changed the theme to something a little cleaner & easier to read. It’s the old-school default WordPress theme, which I hope is so old that it might be back in fashion again.