Seeds For Young Farmers
-
When Jesse Kuhn started Marin Roots Farm at age 28, he already had dirt
under his fingernails. He’d studied ag in college, managed a student farm,
and work...
10/30/09
10/28/09
Photos by Chris Jordan - WOAH
"These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."
~cj, October 2009
10/27/09
This makes me so happy - My Food Inc friends
FROM MY FRIENDS WHO MADE FOOD INC -
They are wearing my shirts!! This makes me so happy.
Hi Orren
Thanks for the t-shirts!! We LOVE them. Attached is a picture of some of us in them (left to right: Me, Yelena-Documentary Dept, Christina-Social Action, Courtney-Documentary Dept, Wendy-Digital Dept).
Thanks!!
Sarah
Sarah Newman
Research Manager, Social Action
Participant Media
Start with Soil
From The Joy Trip Project
"My name is Jerry Glover. I’m a soil scientist/agro ecologist at the Land Institute in Selina, KS.
Glover was one of the many presenters at day-long symposium on food and where it comes for. He taught me a thing or two about why soil is so important to sustaining human life."
photo by Jim Richardson National Geographic
MORE HERE
10/26/09
10/22/09
The Whofarm.org
TheWhoFarm (aka The White House Organic Farm Project) began as a non-partisan, petition-based initiative to respectfully request that our 44th President oversee the planting of an organic farm on the grounds of The White House, our nation’s First Home, at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC.
BASIS.com The Mission: Help farmers sell in the city.
Basis™ is a mission-driven company based in New York City committed to good food for all. We are passionate about good food that is traditional, localized, and 100% traceable. We partner with producers and local communities to sell good food at affordable prices.
"It’s hard for family farms to compete with large-scale agribusiness, and we recognize that getting products to market can often be the weakest link in the good food value chain. So we decided to make it easier. Basis can help take care of product pick-up, transportation, storage, delivery, and marketing. We can take care of all the logistics of getting product from farm gate to market in a cost-effective, reliable, and efficient manner. "
10/19/09
Against Meat
By JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Published: October 7, 2009
“You know that chicken is chicken, right?”
READ WHOLE ARTICLE HERE
10/16/09
The Beekeeper’s Apprentices
PRINCETON University has a BEE TEAM!
This fall, the University has its first-ever beekeeping group, the Princeton BEE Team, which plans to offer free beginner lessons this spring. The team already cares for a large hive located at an old quarry site on University property.
“If you’ve ever been interested in beekeeping, as a hobby or otherwise, BEE excited,” is the cheerful description of the group on the student organization directory.
Michael Smith ’10, president of the BEE Team, said he has been interested in beekeeping for many years, though he did not get involved with it until 2005. “There was never anyone to teach me,” he said.
While in the United Kingdom for boarding school, Smith met a beekeeper who taught him the basics of the craft. He then started a beekeeping project at that school that still exists today.
Though he said he wanted to start a club at Princeton right away, there were no opportunities until this summer. Luckily for Smith, Frank Locke, a local beekeeper and a member of the Central New Jersey Beekeepers Association, donated one of his largest hives to the BEE Team.
“Frank saw that we’d be doing something good with the hives — teaching new people the art of beekeeping — and was willing to donate one of the pivotal pieces to getting us off the ground,” Smith said.
During the fall, there isn’t much to do. “We’re just feeding the hives so that they will have food stores for the winter,” Smith explained. After the bees become more active in February or March, the hives will be opened, and free lessons will be offered.
The process of beekeeping is not a simple thing. “You could just leave the hives and collect the honey, but you also are checking up on them,” Smith explained. Beekeepers must make sure that the colonies have enough room to expand.
Every hive must have a queen, so beekeepers often undertake “queen maintenance” to make sure that one is always present.
Bees may also need medication over the winter to keep them healthy.
Smith said his favorite part of beekeeping is the smells: “honey, wax and the smell of the pheromones when they’re angry with you.”
Beekeeping requires a bit of protection. Most people will wear a “bee suit”: a wide-brimmed hat, boots, gloves and a veil. Smith admitted that he often goes without equipment, but stressed that wearing a veil is important because “bees can tell carbon dioxide output. Your breath can excite them, and they will aim for your eyes.” All beginners should wear full equipment, Smith advised.
“Every colony has a different personality,” he said, adding that almost every beekeeper has been stung at one point.
But overall, “Bees are really quite peaceful,” Smith said. “They’re usually not going to hurt you unless you provoke them.” To those who have had bad experiences with bees in the past, he explained, “a lot of times it’s not even a bee; it’s a wasp. [Bees have] gotten a bad rap for their annoying cousins.”
This fall, the University has its first-ever beekeeping group, the Princeton BEE Team, which plans to offer free beginner lessons this spring. The team already cares for a large hive located at an old quarry site on University property.
“If you’ve ever been interested in beekeeping, as a hobby or otherwise, BEE excited,” is the cheerful description of the group on the student organization directory.
Michael Smith ’10, president of the BEE Team, said he has been interested in beekeeping for many years, though he did not get involved with it until 2005. “There was never anyone to teach me,” he said.
While in the United Kingdom for boarding school, Smith met a beekeeper who taught him the basics of the craft. He then started a beekeeping project at that school that still exists today.
Though he said he wanted to start a club at Princeton right away, there were no opportunities until this summer. Luckily for Smith, Frank Locke, a local beekeeper and a member of the Central New Jersey Beekeepers Association, donated one of his largest hives to the BEE Team.
“Frank saw that we’d be doing something good with the hives — teaching new people the art of beekeeping — and was willing to donate one of the pivotal pieces to getting us off the ground,” Smith said.
During the fall, there isn’t much to do. “We’re just feeding the hives so that they will have food stores for the winter,” Smith explained. After the bees become more active in February or March, the hives will be opened, and free lessons will be offered.
The process of beekeeping is not a simple thing. “You could just leave the hives and collect the honey, but you also are checking up on them,” Smith explained. Beekeepers must make sure that the colonies have enough room to expand.
Every hive must have a queen, so beekeepers often undertake “queen maintenance” to make sure that one is always present.
Bees may also need medication over the winter to keep them healthy.
Smith said his favorite part of beekeeping is the smells: “honey, wax and the smell of the pheromones when they’re angry with you.”
Beekeeping requires a bit of protection. Most people will wear a “bee suit”: a wide-brimmed hat, boots, gloves and a veil. Smith admitted that he often goes without equipment, but stressed that wearing a veil is important because “bees can tell carbon dioxide output. Your breath can excite them, and they will aim for your eyes.” All beginners should wear full equipment, Smith advised.
“Every colony has a different personality,” he said, adding that almost every beekeeper has been stung at one point.
But overall, “Bees are really quite peaceful,” Smith said. “They’re usually not going to hurt you unless you provoke them.” To those who have had bad experiences with bees in the past, he explained, “a lot of times it’s not even a bee; it’s a wasp. [Bees have] gotten a bad rap for their annoying cousins.”
10/15/09
Big River
Big River Trailer from Wicked Delicate Films on Vimeo.
"Big River, the new documentary from filmmakers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, explores the ecological consequences of industrial agriculture, and serves as a companion to their eye-opening film King Corn. I’ve really enjoyed Ian and Curt’s films so far, as they offer both entertaining and thoughtful explorations of critical issues that often hide in plain view, and I’m excited to join them on their new journey." - from Takepart.com
My Awsome friend Lis and her boss. VOTE
My Awsome friend Lis and her boss have been helping me think of names for my honey, which I hope I will have next spring. Which do you vote for? See poll on the right.
BEEhappy
Sweet!
happy bees = good honey
habeeness
Good bees
bee good
goodness
i ♥ honey
i ♥ bees
beelicious
glee honey
bee glee
sunny bees
honest bees
sweet bees
bee sweet
BEEhappy
Sweet!
happy bees = good honey
habeeness
Good bees
bee good
goodness
i ♥ honey
i ♥ bees
beelicious
glee honey
bee glee
sunny bees
honest bees
sweet bees
bee sweet
The return of backyard poultry. YAH.
Backyard poultry. New Yorker writer Susan Orlean and why the humble hen is making a big comeback.
CLICK HERE TO SEE SHOW
10/14/09
grass-fed-eggs.com"
What are Grass-Fed Eggs?
"Okay, I admit it: eggs don't eat grass! In fact, they don't eat anything. "Grass-fed eggs" are eggs from grass-fed chickens: that is, happy outdoor chickens that have free range over an area rich in green growing plants.
This is the kind of flock that people like to think about, and it's the kind of egg they want to eat.
Hens can't survive on grass alone, but they like grass, and eating it makes their eggs noticeably tastier and more nutritious. Besides, if you've seen a pasture-raised flock, you know that this is the way it's supposed to be. Nutrition, flavor, aesthetics, sustainability, nostalgia -- grass-fed eggs have it all. You want to live in a world where your eggs come from these chickens."
10/13/09
10/9/09
SAVE THE BEES in Central MA
Save the Bees!
Take Action to Block a Proposal to Spread More Than 1 Million Gallons of Imidacloprid on 15 Square Miles of Soil in Central Massachusetts
Take Action Now!
A new documentary (trailer below) seeks to unravel the mystery of why billions of honey bees have been disappearing from hives across the United States.
"Vanishing of the Bees" follows a group of U.S. beekeepers hit by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which first struck in 2004 and made U.S. headlines three years later.
Countless bees would suddenly vanish, leaving an empty hive but few bodies. While all of the causes of this disaster are yet to be established, strong evidence suggests a link to Bayer's insecticide imidacloprid.
The film is out in the UK, but hasn't hit the US yet. You can make that happen: Support the Filmmakers
Take Action to Block a Proposal to Spread More Than 1 Million Gallons of Imidacloprid on 15 Square Miles of Soil in Central Massachusetts
Take Action Now!
A new documentary (trailer below) seeks to unravel the mystery of why billions of honey bees have been disappearing from hives across the United States.
"Vanishing of the Bees" follows a group of U.S. beekeepers hit by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which first struck in 2004 and made U.S. headlines three years later.
Countless bees would suddenly vanish, leaving an empty hive but few bodies. While all of the causes of this disaster are yet to be established, strong evidence suggests a link to Bayer's insecticide imidacloprid.
The film is out in the UK, but hasn't hit the US yet. You can make that happen: Support the Filmmakers
10/8/09
FARM CLUB @School
I am trying to put together a FARM CLUB @School.
I have some great suggestions from people on twitter for where I should start...soil. Now I am trying to figure out what we should discuss each week.
1. Delicious Soil
2. Four Season growing - Sustainable Farming
3. Greenhouse Food
4. Eggs and Chickens
5. Sustainable Farming
6. Harvest
Any Suggestions?
I have some great suggestions from people on twitter for where I should start...soil. Now I am trying to figure out what we should discuss each week.
1. Delicious Soil
2. Four Season growing - Sustainable Farming
3. Greenhouse Food
4. Eggs and Chickens
5. Sustainable Farming
6. Harvest
Any Suggestions?
Rooftop Rookies
THIS summer, Tony Tomelden hopes to be making bloody marys at the Pug in Washington, D.C., with tomatoes and chilies grown above the bar, thanks to the city’s incentives for green roofs.
Read more here @civileats and at New York Times
A new kind of garden - from @civileats AWESOME
"A window farm, in the words of its creators, is “a vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window garden, built using low-impact or recycled local materials.” If you unpack that description, you come up with a suspended multi-row unit of liter water bottles that are hollowed out to hold a pot in which small plants can grow."
10/7/09
Really sad today.
Had to put down Biscuit. It makes me cry just thinking about it. She was a sweet bird. I miss her already. I buried her with a fresh apple for her journey.
Bees without Boarders
Check them out HERE and HERE
Who are we? Why are we here? And what's that buzzing noise?
Bees Without Borders is the brainchild of Andrew Coté, former high school dropout and vagabond turned Fulbright Scholar and professor. He was born into a beekeeping family in Connecticut and is (at least) the 4th generation to carry on this ancient art. When he's not busy with hives, Andrew teaches English as a Second Language at Housatonic Community College and runs Silvermine Apiary, home of Andrew's Taste-Bud Bursting Local Wildflower Honey.
Through the U.S. State Department’s USAID, Andrew volunteered to go to Iraq for the summer of 2005 to assist Iraqi beekeepers. In 2007 he spent the summer in the Niger Delta teaching beekeeping. He spent January of 2008 in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in southern India, bring beekeeping skills to a small village coo
Colony - The Trailer
Colony Film Explores Bees, Beekeeping and CCD
Posted by Gina Telaroli on October 2, 2009 at 7:37 am
"As someone who helped direct a short film about Colony Collapse Disorder, beekeepers and honeybees, I couldn’t be more excited to see Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell’s feature documentary Colony. The documentary explores the crisis of the bees through a few veteran beekeepers and their struggle to keep going. The paragraph below, from the Variety review, got me especially excited for the film:
The mischievous genius of ‘Colony’ lies in the fact that bees don’t serve as a metaphor for people as much as people serve as a metaphor for bees. Of all the worried beekeepers whom Carter and McDonnell hone in on — they include David Hackenberg, a veteran Florida apiarist who first identified colony collapse syndrome, and David Mendes, a long-haul pollinator who begins examining the role of pesticide companies in bee disappearances — their most gripping subjects are the members of the Seppi family.
How could this film not be wonderful? It sounds utterly fascinating, not to mention that it deals with an incredible important subject (which you know if you read TakePart) and one that is near and dear to my heart.
Watch the trailer and keep your eyes and ears peeled about any opportunities you might have to see the film."
10/6/09
MAD COWBOY - Trailer
"This is the 1st released trailer of the award winning DVD "Mad Cowboy: The Documentary."
Howard's journey has led him to organic agriculture, vegetarianism, veganism, politics, mad cow disease, a landmark lawsuit, a best-selling book, and founding the non-profit "Voice for a Viable Future."
Howard currently travels the world speaking on issues that affect us all and sustaining Planet Earth." "
The Sustainable Table - Trailer
Sustainable Table: what's on your plate? TRAILER from Mischa Hedges on Vimeo.
"Sustainable Table is a feature documentary that takes an unadulterated look into the food you eat. What’s on your plate? Where does it come from? What effects does it have on the environment and your body? What can you do to help?
There are many questions about the sustainability of our current agricultural practices. This film tries to find some of the answers to problems that we face today and will face tomorrow. "
"4 Reasons Pesticides Are Bad for Bees" - from The Daily Green
4 Reasons Pesticides Are Bad for Bees
Beekeepers: Poisons May Not Cause Colony Collapse Disorder, but They Contribute
READ WHOLE ARTICLE
The Beekeeper reports from the first ever National Beekeeping Conference:
Now, what everyone has been waiting for ... beekeepers telling beekeepers about their personal experiences with Colony collapse Disorder (CCD). But wait! There’s more here than just a mystery. There’s pesticides aplenty here, and even if they aren’t the CCD curse, they are killing bees faster than beekeepers can make them.
1. Chemical Companies Approve Their Own Pesticides
David Mendes, a Massachusetts/Florida beekeeper with 7,000 colonies, talked about pesticides in the environments his bees must visit when pollinating crops and how these chemicals may be contributing to his problems ... and his problems are significant this year, as they were last year. His first comment was that pesticides aren’t tested by the EPA, nope. Pesticides are tested by the Chemical companies that make them, and then the EPA approves them for use, or not. Any guesses on how those results come out?
He talked about not only the financial but emotional stress loosing 60 – 80% of your bees has on beekeepers ... anything more than 50% in a year and it gets real, real hard to recover. Two years in a row and you could be looking for a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart. What’s different now, he asks ... And why me?
2. "Big Ag," with Chemical Henchmen, Control the USDA
David Hackenburg, the first to report Colony Collapse Disorder (but not the first to watch it run through his hives, certainly), first told about the 2,000 or so colonies he had moved to Florida last week. This week, 80% were gone ... again. Gone with the same symptoms of CCD he saw in his bees last year.
He quoted Jerry Hayes, the State Apiary Inspector from Florida (where CCD is common) who said that “beekeeping was the ugly step-child of American agriculture”. How so? The government has made lots of promises about studying and fixing the CCD problem so far, Hackenburg said ... but so far not much has happened. He said he hasn’t been too happy with Australian bees so far – not saying anything about their implication in CCD (one disputed study suggested an Australian virus is connected to hives affected by CCD). He also mentioned pesticides, specifically Imadacloprid (banned in France, but not here), and how it was used everywhere, by everybody. But he went on, and I quote ... ”Big Ag has control of the USDA from the Secretary right on down to almost the lowest guys on the totem pole.” What to do? Get a hold of your congress folks and get them to take some action ... get the money out, get control of the chemicals.
Beekeepers: Poisons May Not Cause Colony Collapse Disorder, but They Contribute
READ WHOLE ARTICLE
The Beekeeper reports from the first ever National Beekeeping Conference:
Now, what everyone has been waiting for ... beekeepers telling beekeepers about their personal experiences with Colony collapse Disorder (CCD). But wait! There’s more here than just a mystery. There’s pesticides aplenty here, and even if they aren’t the CCD curse, they are killing bees faster than beekeepers can make them.
1. Chemical Companies Approve Their Own Pesticides
David Mendes, a Massachusetts/Florida beekeeper with 7,000 colonies, talked about pesticides in the environments his bees must visit when pollinating crops and how these chemicals may be contributing to his problems ... and his problems are significant this year, as they were last year. His first comment was that pesticides aren’t tested by the EPA, nope. Pesticides are tested by the Chemical companies that make them, and then the EPA approves them for use, or not. Any guesses on how those results come out?
He talked about not only the financial but emotional stress loosing 60 – 80% of your bees has on beekeepers ... anything more than 50% in a year and it gets real, real hard to recover. Two years in a row and you could be looking for a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart. What’s different now, he asks ... And why me?
2. "Big Ag," with Chemical Henchmen, Control the USDA
David Hackenburg, the first to report Colony Collapse Disorder (but not the first to watch it run through his hives, certainly), first told about the 2,000 or so colonies he had moved to Florida last week. This week, 80% were gone ... again. Gone with the same symptoms of CCD he saw in his bees last year.
He quoted Jerry Hayes, the State Apiary Inspector from Florida (where CCD is common) who said that “beekeeping was the ugly step-child of American agriculture”. How so? The government has made lots of promises about studying and fixing the CCD problem so far, Hackenburg said ... but so far not much has happened. He said he hasn’t been too happy with Australian bees so far – not saying anything about their implication in CCD (one disputed study suggested an Australian virus is connected to hives affected by CCD). He also mentioned pesticides, specifically Imadacloprid (banned in France, but not here), and how it was used everywhere, by everybody. But he went on, and I quote ... ”Big Ag has control of the USDA from the Secretary right on down to almost the lowest guys on the totem pole.” What to do? Get a hold of your congress folks and get them to take some action ... get the money out, get control of the chemicals.
From my friend @tanabutler 's blog
SHE MET WILL ALLEN!
Where There's a Will: Growing Power
A story I've been eager to tell since I attended the Family Farm conference last month, about a two-acre farm in urban Milwaukee. Pictured above, tilapia at Growing Power. (I'm making the thumbnails smaller than usual so I can get in more photographs.)
• • • • • • • • • • •
It's miraculous, really: fish fertilize the water. The water feeds the plants, The plants filter the water. The fish swim in the water. You can eat the fish (tilapia, yum), you can eat the plants. You can't eat the worms, who are also part of this equation, but they've got work to do. It is the innovative combination of composting, aquaponics/hydroponics, and vermiculture that has brought national attention to a very special spot in urban Milwaukee.
READ WHOLE POST HERE
I had met farmer Will Allen at the Growing Power booth at the Family Farm Expo in Chicago a little less than a month ago. It was impossible to miss him: at six feet and seven inches, he towered over everyone in the room. One solid handshake from him, with a "come and visit us—it will change your life" later, and I found myself making plans to visit the Growing Power center in Milwaukee, where I coincidentally would be spending Saturday night before flying home late on Sunday.
from my friend @helpsavebees blog - helpsavebees.posterous.com
"I recently found, discovered or was sent the above photos. They are just such extravagant examples of 'Bug Houses' at their grandest. They have also inspired me to create my own ‘Bee & Bug Tower’, which I’ll feature later on this week.
One of the easiest things one can do to help Bees, Bugs and other Insects to thrive is to create an environment that they will want to visit, whether you have a garden an allotment patch or bigger: Plants are crucial to their survival. See some fabulous Bee friendly plants here: http://tinyurl.com/n8o286
Once you have managed to attract them to your garden, they will need somewhere to live. You can encourage them to stay be creating ‘mini habitat homes’ using various plant materials, recycled pots, wooden creates, blocks of wood, logs, stem from plants you have pruned, old bamboos, etc…
Of course, they don’t have to be on this scale to still attract all types of bee, bug or insect."
SEE BLOG HERE
10/5/09
Tainted Meat - NYT
SEE VIDEO HERE
"Stephanie Smith's reaction to a strain of E. coli was extreme, but neither the system meant to make meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe."
WOAH
E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection
...“Ground beef is not a completely safe product,” said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, a food safety expert at the University of Minnesota who helped develop systems for tracing E. coli contamination. He said that while outbreaks had been on the decline, “unfortunately it looks like we are going a bit in the opposite direction.”
.."and treats the remaining product with ammonia to kill E. coli."
Treating the meat with ammonia? We then eat the ammonia? Woah.
Read whole article
...“Ground beef is not a completely safe product,” said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, a food safety expert at the University of Minnesota who helped develop systems for tracing E. coli contamination. He said that while outbreaks had been on the decline, “unfortunately it looks like we are going a bit in the opposite direction.”
.."and treats the remaining product with ammonia to kill E. coli."
Treating the meat with ammonia? We then eat the ammonia? Woah.
Read whole article
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