Photos from Beach Flats Garden

A couple weeks ago my friend asked me to take some photos of the Beach Flats Community Garden in Santa Cruz which they can use for their upcoming blog. Some of them turned out pretty good.

From my Santa Cruz Indymedia post:

The weather is warming and this years summer crops at the Beach Flats Community Garden are coming up. It’s been over a year since the Garden was first threatened with closure by the overburdened and resource-strapped Community Center which oversees it. Since, members of the community have banded together not only that once, but again last December, to make sure the garden stays open, the second time in the face of city budget cuts. Despite the threats, gardeners continue to plant, tend and harvest.

Is Access to Land a Human Right?

Calabasa a la jardin de la comunidad de la playa en Santa Cruz

Fantastic piece by Antonio Roman-Alcalá over at Civil Eats today. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about access to land and it’s implications on our food system. As we watch the trend of home (food) gardening grow, questions arise not only about how to do it, since recent generations have lost the tradition of passing down that art, but WHERE to do it. A record percentage (over half) of the global population lives in cities. So it follows, that for the first time in human history, more than half the human population has extremely limited options when it comes to feeding themselves. The local food movement is surely drawing attention to this issue, but as local food gains importance, supply will surely become an issue. This is where access to land becomes a key component of our food future. Finding suitable ground is one of the biggest barriers to entering the farming profession. Not only is the good stuff too expensive to purchase, leasing is risky. Maybe the ground has had chemicals sprayed on it. Maybe you’ll be able to work it for one or two years, only to lose your lease, thereby losing the precious investment you’ve made building the soil.

But why are we still in a situation where the rich get to decide the best uses for land, while hard working, intelligent, compassionate, humble workers just do what we’re told?

The “Slow Money” principles (obviously drawing it’s name from the Slow Food movement) is attempting to address this issue. It feels like it’s in infancy stage, but there could be some excited ideas here. I’m personally convinced there is something to banding people together to buy back farmland for our collective good. Maybe collective purchase of land is our next step together in taking back our food system.

Shoutout to Freshman Farmers

I recently came across the Freshman Farmer blog (thanks, Bridgett!) and it is awesome! A collection of young farmers blog about what’s happening on their farms. There are some great photo slideshows of life on the farm and the posts are written with great voice and funny! For example, here’s some Farmer Math:

Silence! The units are a little different, but the concept is very familiar. Observe:

P(Rain) = Q(Uncovered Wood)/Q(All Wood) U “Oh, it’s not going to rain this week.”

This formula illustrates the probability of rain as being equal to the percentage of vulnerable wood you left exposed after saying, “Oh, it’s not going to rain this week.”

But we are not done yet. Notwithstanding the above:

P(Rain)=0 if TankRefill () = False

This states that no matter what, it will not rain if you don’t refill the water tank.

Awesome.

Homemade Fermenting Fun

Not only is kimchi so tasty, it’s good for you! Kimchi is a yummy Korean fermented salad usually made with cabbage and various spices, similar to sauerkraut. I love it when it’s really garlic-y! Lately, it seems like everyone is talking about probiotics and fermented foods as essentials to digestive health, so take a clue and get yourself some! Check out this homemade batch by the Urban Homesteaders made with homegrown carrots, daikon radish, green onions and cabbage.

If you’re in the Bay Area, Santa Cruz-based Happy Girl Kitchen is doing Fermenting and canning workshops which you can attend for a small fee. The day is complete with local organic lunch! Fermenting and canning your own food is a great way to use up the excess harvest from the garden and is good for the planet since there are no food miles from your plate to your backyard.

Springtime Beets!

Red and Golden Beets from Route One Farm

It’s officially springtime, I’ve done a spring cleanse for my body and now all I want to eat are fresh fruits and veggies. I had to share the photo of these organic red and golden beets I got at the downtown Santa Cruz Farmer’s Market from Route One Farm. These beets were so good roasted with a little olive oil. So pretty and so delicious!

Also introducing “Foodie” category!

Find Your Local Farmer’s Market

When people begin consciously eating, i.e. local and organic or growing their own food, the primary reason is usually a self-serving one, to not ingest pesticides. While this is true and undoubtedly a great reason to eat organic food from your local farmers, the real benefits are actually far more selfless, watersheds (and local water supplies) are spared from farm chemical runoff, use of oil to manufacture and ship seeds, pesticides and fertilizers is spared, conditions for farmworkers are healthier and the surrounding environment for animals is preserved. From GardenMandy, Real Reasons Why We Should Buy From Local Farmers:

Some people say the key to freedom is empowerment and self-sufficiency. Not everyone agrees, but most people who are concerned about the environment at all see that there really is a need for people to buy and use food from local growers.

No matter your reason for making this lifestyle choice, the first step is to find your local farmers market so you can talk with the farmers themselves. You can find your local farmer’s market using this handy map Farmer’s Market Search tool at culinate.com. You simply type in your city and a Google map appears highlighting all the regional farmer’s markets. Click on them to get information about when they are open during the week and what seasons.

Find Your Farmer's Market at culinate.com/mix

It’s Not the Beta-Carotene, it’s the Carrot

Some familiar themes about how Americans eat and its links to disease were put together nicely in a 20-minute talk by Mark Bittman of the New York Times, “What’s Wrong with what we eat.” In one mentioning the importance of a whole-plant-based diet (it’s not the beta-carotene, its the carrot), Bittman touches on the meat and agribusiness industry, disease, junkfood marketing, and the “organivore” and “locavore” responses to the industrial food industry all while noting the importance of our food choices on climate change.

Your Backyard Gardner Brings Food Security to Your Neighborhood

Your Backyard Gardener is one of the cooler things I’ve heard of in a while. If you are too busy saving the world in other ways to grow your own food but you’re still concerned about access to local, organic food, you’re in luck if you live in the Portland area. Your Backyard Gardener consults with families about what kinds of veggies they like to eat and then turns their lawns into backyard farms. Drip irrigation is set up so maintenance is minimal and someone from the organization comes to your house once a week to harvest and check on things, maybe do some weeding or plant some new seeds. The City of Portland recently awarded Your Backyard Gardner a “Best of…” award for Sustainable Food Systems. This is a great way to provide our communities with local, organic food, bringing the concepts of Urban Farming and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to a whole new level.

Bush Promises to Veto Subsidies for Healthy Food

The United States Farm Bill historically gives huge subsidies to “commodity” agricultural products. These are things like corn, soy and wheat. “Specialty crops” are everything else, lettuce, tomatoes, apples, basically fruits and vegetables that you picture growing on a farm. The truth is, we don’t eat much of the “specialty” variety and one of the main reasons is that farmers are not financially rewarded for producing them. They are, however greatly subsidized by the federal government for growing those commodity crops greatly out of balance with what a human should be consuming. According to the Washington Post:

[This year's] bill assures growers of basic crops such as wheat, cotton, corn and soybeans $5 billion a year in automatic payments, even if farm and food prices stay at record levels.

The Farm Bill outlines these subsidies every five years and it’s about to go to the desk of President George W for signature to decide our food and nutrition programs for the next five. He has vowed to veto it. It’s important to point out that this farm bill is still grossly unfair to nutrition programs and farmers who are actual stewards of the land. But though it unjustly favors industrial, chemical farming, the subsidies outlined for organics and other sustainable practices are revolutionary in the history of this bill. It’s been a long battle to get these programs added and congress has finally come to agreement. According to California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF),

If the veto holds, several options are possible, including an extension of the 2002 Farm Bill for 2 more years (until a new President is in office) or for 5 years.

This means two more years of no subsidies to organic farmers, less funding for nutritional programs, and continued payouts to giant industrial ag companies.

Check out this great video from Free Range Studios where an Apple and a Twinkie battle over the Farm Bill:

Young People Want to Farm! Meet the Greenhorns

Be sure to check out the greenhorns blog to learn more about young people coming to the farm to get their hands dirty. There are also some DIY ideas that might spark your fancy. A “greenhorn” is a ranching term for an inexperienced person on the ranch who has never before roped cattle. This term is lately being applied to the new generation of young farmers. So much so, that there is a film in production to document the trend.