FoodShed Planet

Move Over. The Kids Have Arrived.

2010-09-05T07:05:00.019-04:00

* Emory University student Evan Crane is measuring the effect that the amount of surrounding green space has on the diversity, richness, and abundance of bees and other pollinators within 30 different community gardens in the metro Atlanta area, including ours. He intends to determine whether this varies by social strata so that as urbanization increases, just policies regarding green space can be included in order to deliver pollinator benefits to both humans and the larger ecosystem.

* Dunwoody High School junior Nicole Anderson organized a protest group of students when students were illegally banned from public street parking while the school is under construction. This group felt like it was being treated unfairly and had no voice. She is now the first youth in the newest city in the United States named to a citizen advisory committee (see Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about it here). She was given an official seat at the table on the City of Dunwoody Transportation Commission by Councilor John Heneghan, pictured here.

* Elementary school students are taking action and filling the bike rack at the school where people said no one would walk or bike to school.

* Children of all ages are harvesting (and eating) fresh, organic vegetables from their own, community, and school gardens, many of which didn't exist a year ago.

* And the youth of our city showed up to advocate for allowing backyard chickens (which was denied by City Hall). (And FYI, for the record, the Open Records Request showed 11 citizens wrote emails against this ordinance. 11. There were 48 in support. This does not appear to be the big, divisive brouhaha that it was made out to be, unless there truly were hundreds of phone calls and conversations against it, which, I suppose, is possible.)

Move over, folks, and make room. The kids have arrived, and frankly, they want a voice in the choices that will make a measurable, sustainable difference in their futures.

Cities nationwide are embracing the positive energy and future potential impact provided by engaging the youth of communities in policy creation through youth commissions. Take a look here at what's happening.

If you are in a leadership position in your community in any way, shape or form, think about how you can include the voices of youth in your efforts.

And then slide over a bit. The next generation has arrived.

The Harvest

2010-08-29T06:11:00.019-04:00

We've taken to just calling it The Harvest every week, when we meet to pick from the community garden for the food pantry delivery. I find myself saying things like, "See you at The Harvest," or "I won't be at my office until later because I'm at The Harvest."

This week's Harvest may have been one of the best yet. My friend, Stacey (the current chairperson of the City of Dunwoody Sustainability Commission) and her daughter came with their weekly delivery from their home garden and to help pick. They are also now in charge of one of the food pantry beds and are getting ready for fall planting. Half their bed is currently filled with peppers and sweet potato vines.

"When are the sweet potatoes ready?" Stacey asked me.

"Oh, not until late September," I said, nonchalantly, snipping hot peppers into my bag.

"How will we know when they are ready?" she asked, looking suspiciously at the vines, the bed, the hidden jewels that we relied on faith to believe were actually under that soil.

I was about to explain when I realized it would be easier and more fun to just show her and her daughter, so I put down my pocket knife and strolled over.

"You dig your hand under the soil a bit and feel around, sort of like a veterinarian checking on about-to-be-born lambs or something . . . ."

And then I shouted. Something like, "Whoaaaaa!" or maybe, "Oh, my gosh!"

Had you been in the park, you may have come running.

I had my hand wrapped around an absolutely huge sweet potato!

What next ensued was nothing short of hilarious as people spanning 75 years in age dug out monster-sized sweet potatoes, oohing and aahing and proclaiming their finds every step of the way. In fact, I have a classic photo of this scene, but I promised Stacey I wouldn't use it (actually, I think it's more like she forbids me from using it!), because, let's face it, a shot of grownups bent over digging ferociously and taken from the back is not exactly flattering! But it was one of the happiest series of moments I've seen in a long time. And the look on that little girl's face every time she got the honor of releasing each newly-found sweet potato from the earth will stay with me forever.

For me, it was a lesson, once again, of not assuming when or when not something (or someone) is ready. Just being eternally grateful for when it (he, she) is.

And so, the next day, after dropping off the crops at the food pantry, I came home to make dinner for my own family and saw that I had the exact same ingredients the food pantry clients were getting that day. Rice. Beans. A beautiful variety of peppers. Tomatoes, which have suddenly become so dear as we know the end is near, and basil, basil, basil. Oh, and I harvested my own sweet potatoes as well, which I never would have checked this early had it not been for the discovery at the community garden.

I cooked it all up and told my daughters that we were truly sharing a meal with those in need that night.

Still curious about the sweet potatoes, I looked it up and apparently sweet potatoes grow like crazy in the heat, and yes, we're just starting to get some relief from one of our hottest, most relentless summers ever.

And, of course, I got to thinking how, perhaps, the heat has made me grow a little faster than usual as well. I took a look back at these last three months. And I could see, clear as day, what I had harvested in my life.

Now, the season is starting to change, and the preparations are well under way for a new set of crops. The buckwheat and cowpeas are cut and turned back into the soil. I nearly asphyxiated myself driving from Farmer D's to the community garden with 200 pounds of chicken manure in my Prius trunk (which, please note, is a hatchback so everything in the back might as well be in the front). I've spread the manure (and yes, I'm sorry I did this the day before the one-year-anniversary meeting and potluck! Stunk to high heaven, or so I hear. I actually wasn't there--but that's a whole other story). Our expanded Food Pantry Team will now plant the seeds in the individual beds (there are about 15 now) over which they have volunteered to serve as stewards. And we will continue to harvest, more than we ever expected, on a piece of land that's now a place where food and community and people of all ages grow, faster than we could have even imagined.

I Once Believed in Causes, Too

2010-08-22T08:21:00.023-04:00

It has been busy these past two years, ever since I had that beer with the slice of orange on the rim at Joe's Tavern in the midtown section of Atlanta, ever since citizens in the place I had lived since 1995 voted to become the newest city in the United States (a title I think the city still holds), ever since I decided to hold up a mirror and bear witness and show the world what sustainability decisions were being made (or not), ever since I got more involved than I intended, ever since my life changed.

But coming home from New York City recently, wondering if my husband and I had really made the right decision leaving there all those years ago, I heard these words from Billy Joel's classic song, Angry Young Man, over and over again (yes, I played the song obsessively):

I once believed in causes too;
I had my pointless point of view,
But life went on no matter who was wrong or right . . .

And so, I got home, many swirling thoughts in my mind, wondering what matters, wondering if I was really getting the "quality of life" for which I moved here, wondering what quality of life really is, and I found a review copy of this book had arrived: Twelve by Twelve, by William Powers.

I picked it up and carried it around reading it for days, savoring it. It is the story of a man who previously traveled the world with an aid organization, imposing western standards on communities that seemed impoverished but may have had more to teach us than appeared at first glance.

He then got a chance to house-sit for 40 days and nights in a 12-foot by 12-foot structure owned by a doctor who pretty much donated her services and lived under the poverty level so that she didn't have to pay taxes, 50% of which would have gone to war efforts she opposed, on rural acres dedicated to permaculture and shared by others living intentionally. Now dog-eared and rain-warped and chocolate-stained, my copy of this wonderful book is also underlined throughout, including these lines:

* I began to question the whole notion of who is impoverished.

* Vernacular culture is the enduring wisdom that sustains a spiritually rich life. Nearly all vernacular cultures embrace abundant idleness, the "beingness" that binds human and nature.

* A humble path seems to open.

* Adapt and reshape what already existed so that people could feel the nurturing cycle of personal authenticity, robust community, and connection with nature.

The overriding lesson of the book is to "listen, be, do," in that order. I've been doing a lot of doing. And now the doing is done for awhile, with the exceptions of my writing business, my family, and some very select volunteer projects already determined (and about which I am excited to tell you in the near future).

I have moved on, my "leading meetings" days now officially over for at least a year, but many seeds already planted have grown:

* The City of Dunwoody Comprehensive Plan includes commitment to sustainability principles of greenspace, connectivity, transportation options, reduced energy use, water conservation, local food production, and the creation of a city-specific sustainability plan in 2012. (Unfortunately, in contradiction to the support of local food production expressed in the plan, the city did not approve the backyard chicken ordinance, and this boy no longer has his beloved chickens, nor do citizens of my city have the ability to provide safe, daily eggs to their families. As I wrote in an email to City Hall this week, especially now that 500 million eggs have been recalled throughout the United States, local food production is not a hobby.)

* The City of Dunwoody Sustainability Commission has new, strong leadership and has submitted its application for Green Communities certification. As my friend Mitch told me when I kicked and screamed about getting involved with policy-creation, "That's the only way that your efforts live on, Pattie. Otherwise you're wasting your time." I learned patience, at least for a short while (is that a contradiction?) Here are the policies that have been created, while I was involved and afterward. Thanks, Mitch.

* The Dunwoody Community Garden celebrates its one-year anniversary tomorrow and will receive this proclamation at City Hall. I'm not big on proclamations, but I like how this one is written and I feel hope for the future when I read it.

* The Ton for Hunger Drive has yielded almost 600 pounds of food given to those in need for a donated value of over $3500, and an ever-expanding team of people are involved. After last week's enormous basil donation (which, by the way, retails for $2.99 for two ounces) one of the women who runs the food pantry emailed me and said if everyone in the world had basil, there would be world peace, and last week, I feel we came a little closer to that.

* The informal Dunwoody School Garden Network met this weekend, with representative parents from all five elementary schools in my city. I strongly suggested folks not overthink things--as my friend, Bob, famously stated when advocating for approval of the community garden from both the county and city last year, "It's just dirt!"

Keep it simple. If it doesn't work out in three years, ya' move the dirt. Not rocket science, folks.

Our children don't have five years to wait for approvals and perfect curriculum tie-ins (you show me one homework lesson that I can't tie in to a garden and you win a nickel).

* Half the 160 third graders involved with the one developed school garden in our city had never planted a thing before in their lives.

* A kindergarten teacher in support of the chicken ordinance told City Hall that her students didn't know what color worms were.

* Kids from other parts of the country and world with whom our children will be competing for college spots and jobs are far ahead of us in all-things-environmental.

Teachers and administrators care about this year's test scores (and I know they are pressured to do so, so I am not faulting them on this). I care about my children's and grandchildren's lives. Let's not raise eco-illiterates, ill-prepared for a changing world. We have the power, parents. Now. Today. Let's find a way.

* And speaking of my friend Bob, I would be remiss if I didn't share with you the best news I've heard in a long time. This man, who has had high blood pressure for years, no longer does. The only thing he has done differently this past year is participate in community gardening. Oh, and eat tomato sandwiches. Lots and lots of tomato sandwiches.

And so, that's it. The doing is done. These efforts will live on, or not. I wasn't an angry young woman, and I don't want to be an angry old woman.

It is time now to listen, to be. To see where the journey wants me to go.

To watch the shadows cast by pickled peppers.

To stand at my kitchen door and celebrate the welcome rain, imagining the next book I'll read in that hammock when it is dry again.

To play checkers at the community garden.

To learn to relax while teaching a teen in chartreuse shoes to drive.

To grow more food where there was lawn just last year.

To show up at a blue house in Clarkston for reasons I don't yet know.

To do what Bill Powers, the author of Twelve by Twelve, told me in a phone conversation last week he is doing--continually exploring alternatives to the Gross Domestic Product, with bigger intangibles and a smaller number of material possessions. (And, for those of you who are curious, what he misses most about the 12 by 12 is the freedom to spend days in tune with nature.)

I often hand my camera to children who visit the community garden and give them one simple direction, "Take pictures of what you find interesting." It fascinates me to look at the photos and see through their eyes, for just a few moments. Here is the latest photo a child took. A "writer spider." I hadn't even seen it there, hanging in the cucumber teepee. But there it was, quietly "writing."

And that's what I shall be doing now. Listening. Being. And quietly writing.

Hallelujeh (or What Biking to School Just Might Have You and Your Children Singing)

2010-08-15T06:50:00.040-04:00

It's sweaty. It's time-consuming. And its safety is questionable. But my younger daughter is back to school and we're biking every day.

Once we get out of our neighborhood (the most difficult part of the trip), it's pretty much downhill for the next mile and a half and I can tell she gets lost in her own world, quickly forgetting I'm behind her.

I often hear her singing, and it's always the refrain from this song (you may enjoy clicking it to play while you finish reading this post):

The number of bike riders is holding pretty steady at this school of 900 students at six. Not six percent. Six. Less than one percent. Five boys and my daughter. Two other moms and three dads. Two of the kids are in the same class, the one taught by the Environmental Committee teacher. I'm tracking the numbers over the school year to see how and why they change.

One mom rides with her son, and his dad has been driving the overstuffed backpack and meeting up with them at the school's bike rack. They asked me about my panniers Friday. We talked about all the reasons kids don't ride and the various solutions my daughters and I have discovered over the years, such as:

* Advocating for lighter backpacks (the number one reason folks tell me they don't walk or bike to school is because of the weight of their children's backpacks.)

* Advocating for Public Works vehicles to NOT park on sidewalks. ("Well, drivers in this city do not like when we inconvenience them by parking on the street," does not make a more Walkable/Bike-Friendly City!)

* Advocating for enforced crosswalk laws and leash laws. (The overwhelming majority of drivers in my city literally "speed up to beat" a child in a crosswalk rather than stop to let the child safely cross, and you don't know stress until a large unleashed dog charges your child on a bike.)

* Frankly, there's a whole lot of advocating! I'd like to give a big shout-out to City of Dunwoody Councilor John Heneghan who not only always listens to all citizens but always takes concerns seriously and tries to solve problems proactively.

* Getting the panniers, and the front basket, and the bungee cord.

* Riding one way and then me picking up the bike during the day with the car and then my child and me walking home with this bag for holding the backpack, lunch, violin . . . (We call it the Mary Poppins bag.)

* Riding one way and then me parking at the mile point so my daughter can at least ride halfway home (before the uphill really kicks in--remember that lovely downhill on the way to school?) and I ride the Razor scooter or walk with the Mary Poppins bag since we can't fit both bikes in the Prius.

* Riding one way and then my daughter takes the bus home (which we'll do one day a week).

* Being a "quick change" artist. (Yes, I often have to be at a work meeting or conduct an interview in person at 8:30 or 9 AM. I have become a master of "switching gears" quickly--washed, changed, out the door. And guess what? My workout for the day is then behind me.)

* Accepting that it's not "all or nothing," and that it's not always going to work. It rains. Kids get crabby or overtired. Large cardboard box projects sometimes need to get to school. Sometimes the challenges of the day are just too great. That's okay.

I saw one bike-rider's father hop a curb, a big smile on his face, and I thought of how one of the greatest joys of life is feeling like a kid again when you ride your bike. But you can't feel like a kid again when you ride your bike if you didn't ride your bike when you were a kid!

I think one of the biggest gifts for life we can give our children is that memory. I just want you to know that if you live somewhere where biking to school is at least a mile-long trip and it involves hills and heat, there is a very small aperture of opportunity during which you can do this--when the kids are strong enough to go the distance and young enough to not care about their hair when they get there.

That window closes faster than you think it will. And then those days of saying "maybe we'll ride someday soon, honey" are gone. (We hear kids at the bus stops we pass asking their parents if they can ride and that's often the answer.)

Additionally, here in my city with an elementary school start time of 7:45 AM or so, once the time changes in October, it is pitch black in the morning and riding to school presents a whole different set of challenges.

Also, for those of you hitting your late 40s right about now, have you noticed the new sounds coming out of your joints? The slowing of your metabolism? The way pain lingers a little longer? I certainly have. And it has become abundantly clear to me that if I hope to ride bikes with my grandchildren (which I do), then I simply must not stop riding bikes now. This isn't just about the kids and their health.

When we got to the school the first day, the carpool line stretched as far as we could see. And I couldn't help but think of our nation's children (61% of whom used to walk or bike to school just a generation ago), their wings clipped, when I found this dead butterfly as I was riding home that day.

In fact, I found a dead butterfly every single day this week, and I wished I had not been the one to find them. I wished children walking to school had found them. Had stood and marveled over them. Had brought them to school and shown their teachers and their friends. Had discovered their names and researched facts about them. Had written a story or painted a picture inspired by them. Had wondered all day, while gazing out the window, what else was out there, what else could they find, what else would they learn, what else would tomorrow bring . . .

My city's schools held a number of Walk and Bike to School Days last year that were very popular. One woman told an organizing parent, "We should do this more often," and he said to her, "You know, the sidewalks are actually open every day! You can do this more often!"

I stopped at Your DeKalb Farmers Market (a year-round indoor facility) in Decatur the other day and saw this bike. I took some pictures of it because it would make a perfect Food Bike for delivering to the food pantry from the community garden (I'm still on a quest for solutions--my panniers are inadequate for the amount of food we've been harvesting!) When I left the building, I saw its owner and we got to talking.

Meet Thor. He is from San Francisco and lives in Atlanta now. He rides his three children to school each day in the bucket of this bike. He said to me, "Today is, what, our 14th Code Orange smog alert day this year? It's not going to change unless people stop driving."

And that's another thing. I used to tell people it was easy to ride to school and to grow your own food and to recycle and to use less water and to go drug-free on your lawn and to vote with your dollar when you shop and to . . .

You know what? It's not. It's hard and continual work, especially at first until it's a series of new habits, but even after that, even always. It's often uphill. It's often sweaty. And it requires change.

But there comes a moment when you lie on the cool, mossy earth and you gaze up at the heavens and you feel the strength of your body and the joy in your heart and you exclaim one thing and one thing only.

Hallelujeh.

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When Fred Asks, I Say Yes.

2010-08-08T06:40:00.015-04:00

Trains whizzed by.

Cars sped.

Butterflies flapped their wings.

And a group of gardeners came from Sacramento, San Francisco, Michigan, North Carolina and Atlanta to leap out of a bus and dodge traffic, traipse through parks, sweat on street corners in Atlanta's brutal August heat waiting for a light to change, and laugh until it hurt getting to know each other. (Who knew paw paws could be so funny from the point of view of an expert Southern storyteller?)

We spent three whirlwind hours yesterday morning as we toured six urban community gardens as part of the American Community Gardening Association's national conference, and I have Fred to thank for it.

Fred Conrad had asked me to lead the tour bus. Fred is the Atlanta Community Food Bank liaison to over 150 community gardens, and I have never heard the man say no to any request made of him, so when Fred asks, I say yes. (The picture to the left is of Fred leading a double-dig demonstration at the opening of our community garden almost one year ago.)

What made it even easier for me to say yes was that Fred kept referring to it as the NEAT tour, which of course made me swell with pride because the community garden I helped start was on it. Every email I got from him referenced "the NEAT tour." It wasn't until I got to downtown Atlanta that I realized that calling it the NEAT tour was not an editorial comment by Fred--it was an acronym for the North East Atlanta Tour. (Would you trust me with driving directions?!)

My job was pretty much to direct the bus where we needed to go and then to wrangle up folks and keep us on schedule, a schedule that allowed for only about 15 minutes maximum per garden. This sort of broke my heart as the day went on because every garden we visited not only had so much to offer but I could almost feel the ground pulsate with passion from each garden's members.

The challenge, I found, was to honor each garden by being 100% fully-present for the brief amount of time we had. And then to see how else I could honor these people who give so selflessly to each other, to their communities, and to complete and total strangers when they turn unloved, unused scraps of land into absolute treasures and then so generously share their stories.

(A shout-out here to Congressman Inslee of Washington State for introducing the Community Gardening Act of 2009, and to the 35 representatives who are currently co-sponsoring it. If passed, it would make grants available to community groups such as the ones I met yesterday, and to those in your community who are digging in to make a difference. The Act was referred to the Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry on June 22, 2010.)

And so, I honor you here, now, those of you who spent weeks or even months prepping your gardens with special care because you had it in the back of your mind at all times that the tour groups were coming (not just to these six gardens, but all over Atlanta).

* In Atlanta, this meant planting a second crop of tomatoes and beans and squash in mid-June or so, so that the gardens would be bountiful at this time of year (when first summer plantings are already spent, and we are actually getting ready for fall plantings now).

* It meant putting down fresh mulch and tidying up those beds because "company was coming." It meant gardeners with wheelbarrows tending their plots and Eagle Scouts hard at work, and a brand new checkerboard suggested by a 10-year-old and created by him and his brothers, as at the Dunwoody Community Garden.

* It meant arranging to have your members present to greet us in the heat of the day, when Atlanta gardeners are simply not gardening.

* It meant sharing your very first honey harvest, as the Blue Heron Community Garden did.

* It meant arranging by cell phone so that one of the clearly very busy moms at a wonderful small garden on a piece of land saved from development could juggle her hectic morning and be there to meet us, as those at the Little Nancy Creek Community Garden did.

* It meant marking a parking spot on a busy street with orange cones and literally sitting by it for ages until we arrived, and also taking the time to create this beautiful presentation for us, as those at the Peachtree Hills Community Garden did.

* It meant connecting from an airport far away the night before, as the head of landscaping services for a national property management company (Post Properties) did, and then meeting us one garden early so we wouldn't have trouble getting past your gate to hear how you provide organic community gardening to residents at 16 apartment complexes (11 in Atlanta, 5 around the country) for free, as an amenity equal to the pool or tennis courts.

* And it meant simple, candid moments like these, that were truly gifts to me.

(Here is Fred leading a group of children in singing "Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley" a year and a half ago.) Thanks, Fred.

"Feel Free to Make Your Pictures"

2010-08-01T06:45:00.033-04:00

The Empire State Building dominates the skyline of New York City in a way she didn't when I lived there. I hadn't been back in a few years, hadn't approached the city via car since before the Twin Towers fell, and I remembered leaving after Christmas ten years ago, with two kids and my husband in a minivan, and watching the towers fade in the back window, knowing we wouldn't be coming up so often, wondering when I would see the World Trade Center again, not realizing I never would.

This time, we arrived in the Prius, which cost us only about $50 in gas from Atlanta to NYC. The vast expanse of sky where the towers used to stand loomed like negative space. Yet I intended to be positive. I decided to focus not just on my family but on how "green" NYC had supposedly become since I left.

And yes, signs of this were everywhere, most notably in the "pedestrian only" spaces that have been created in what were traditionally the busiest traffic areas of the city.

I was surprised to not see as many bikes as I expected, although I didn't spend time by the water and I know that's where the greenway is.

And I was surprised to see so much of this.

The energy is palpable and contagious in New York City, and I realized how much I have missed that. I managed to steal a quiet moment, however, one morning in Times Square where a bleacher of bright red steps ascends into the sky and people come by and sit all day and night, except for this one quiet hour, to watch the world go by.

During this morning hour, this man and a colleague from a Special Projects team at the NYC Department of Sanitation wash the steps. They wash away the debris of yesterday. They wash away the hands that touched and the feet that walked. They wash away the Tower of Babel, the connections that transcend language, the loneliness that isolates even in a crowd.

I also managed to find greenspace amidst the concrete jungle. Just to the left of Times Square exists a low-rise neighborhood once known solely as Hell's Kitchen (for all the reasons you would think of because of that name) and now referred to just as often as Clinton or Midtown West.

Hidden down 48th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues is the crown jewel--the Clinton Community Garden, started in 1977 and the first NYC community garden to be classified as a part of the NYC Parks and Recreation Department (although what this means could be changing, and not for the betterment of NYC community gardens--see here for details-- it always seems to be a fight to save our dirt, doesn't it?)

I met with Mark Dieffenbacher, the chairperson of the garden's Steering Committee and he shared not only what's special about the garden with me, but what he's learned about garden leadership. The community garden I helped start will celebrate its first anniversary in a few weeks (if you're attending the American Community Garden Association's national conference this upcoming week, our garden is on the Northeast Tour, and guess what? I'm the tour leader on the bus! Email me if you'll be on that tour and say hello!) so handy hints from seasoned garden leaders are exactly what we need for our next stage of growth. (I'll do a whole separate post on this soon.)

Here's a little video I shot for you of just a slice of the Clinton Community Garden (correction to my narration: the front section is not open to the public--you have to have a key, and you can only get a key if you live in the neighborhood):

Clinton Community Garden (NYC) from Pattie Baker on Vimeo.

I saw kids cooling off in fountains and soccer in China Town and even a "what on earth is that?" interactive exhibit (yes, you can climb on it if you take a tour) on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which also affords you one of the best views of NYC greenspace--Central Park).

Turns out this structure, named Big Bambu, is made from more than 5,000 poles from a bamboo farm in Georgia (if you're coming to the national conference from NYC, as I understand a busload of gardeners are, you'll feel right at home at the Dunwoody Community Garden as we use locally-harvested bamboo from our Georgia backyards for all our teepees).

I even had a chance to eat at a renowned vegetarian restaurant, tucked away on the Upper East Side. Who would have thought to put avocado and cucumber together in a soup?!

However, I realized with each passing day that the photo I craved didn't exist. The hole in my soul could not be filled by film. I kept hearing the voice of the Russian guide on the double-decker bus tour we took who said over and over again, "Feel free to make your pictures."

And so I did.

Meet Ed Bruske: My Friend, a Fellow Blogger, and One of the Nation's Most Monumental Activists

2010-07-25T06:35:00.017-04:00

Visit Washington, DC, the capital of the United States, and you'll see monuments at every turn. (If you're like my family and me, you'll also see boy scouts at every turn as well, as we were there just prior to the 100th Anniversary/National Boy Scout Jamboree, for which there will be a parade down Centennial Avenue today.)

And yes, yes, yes, we visited many of the buildings where monumental decisions about the laws and policies of our land are decided daily. I also found it pretty monumental that there were recycling containers everywhere on the street, lots of cyclists (particularly young government aids, who filled bike racks on the sides of those looming stone buildings), and even local promotions for community gardening grants.

But some of the most monumental work in Washington is not happening at the White House, or up on the Hill. It's happening about a mile away from Michelle Obama's vegetable garden. If you ride the city bus, as I just did, through a neighborhood in transition, and then walk down a block of row houses secured by wrought iron gates, you'll find a corner where sunflowers tower and beans cascade from a trellis eight feet tall.

That's Ed's front lawn. Not Ed Begley, from L.A.. Ed Bruske, originally from Chicago. A former Washington Post reporter, Ed is doing the best investigative reporting in the country on the school lunch scandals. The crimes of taxpayer-supported kickbacks to Big Business suppliers to the National School Lunch Program are just starting to get coverage in the mainstream media, but Ed has been on this for awhile now (see his Grist article about this week's Sodexo settlement with New York State) and his articles are truly must-reading, especially for those of us (like me) who had gotten completely jaded on this topic (I simply packed my kids' lunches myself and called it a day after I discovered years ago that the system was so screwed up that any hope of change was years away).

One mile from the White House, Ed has taken advantage of our nation's Freedom of Information Act, our Constitutional protection of free speech, and his personal freedom from political pressure and Big Business dollars to tell the story that needs telling. And he's far from done. In fact, I believe the name Ed Bruske will be a household name before you know it, and this Unexpected Activist, who fell down this rabbit hole after switching his daughter from a private to public school, will debunk the PR load of bull dished out that change is happening in places where it is not--and will make sure that real change actually does happen, starting in what children right in our nation's capital are being fed.

Ed, a food writer who's work you may have seen often in Martha Stewart Living magazine and elsewhere, suddenly found himself:

* In the prime location (a front row seat a mile from the White House),

* In the right circumstance (a daughter in the DC Public School system--never underestimate the fury of a father),

* With pertinent expertise (years of journalism under his belt),

* And with the necessary character traits of dogged determination and perseverance to uncover the truth.

He has not only provided scathing behind-the-scenes coverage in DC but has started traveling the country as well in pursuit of answers. (Prediction: I'm expecting to hear of a book deal for Ed before long.)

I would have visited Ed simply for his front-yard garden and the fact that we have been "blogger buddies" for literally years now. But I needed to meet him in person because when it comes to monumental work in Washington, the work Ed Bruske is doing right now as a passion project can potentially change the course of our future national security, productivity and public health because of the effect it will have on our children. And I'd call that monumental.

Will this be the year that we as citizens will finally say, "We will not look the other way anymore regarding the sorry state of our National School Lunch Program. We will not fund rebate fraud anymore, and we will no longer think so little of our nation's children and their ability to have a healthy, safe and productive future that we feed them garbage"?

Think there's nothing you can do about it? Spend some time with Ed at www.theslowcook.com and I'm betting your mind will change. (See Tales from a DC School Kitchen in the center column, plus the contrasting Berkeley Schools coverage above it.) And, by the way, Ed has also spent several years teaching food appreciation classes to inner-city kids, and blogging extensively about it. That alone constitutes life-changing work, never mind Ed's current efforts!

Want to start planting a seed of change right on your front lawn? Let Ed inspire you. Here's his lawn, from which he feeds his family and from which he no doubt packs his daughter's lunches.

What's Growing One Mile from the White House from Pattie Baker on Vimeo.

A Scent (and Sense) That Smacks You on the Side of the Head (Was There Ever a Different Way I Lived?)

2010-07-18T04:51:00.025-04:00

It's usually Charlotte who comes to deliver the boxes to the CSA pickup, but when I looked up from the "chain of humanity," where we stand shoulder-to-shoulder and pass the boxes hand-to-hand, stacking them until there are 52 or 58 or however many families will be nourished by this farm this week, I saw that it was Wes. He eventually put his truck-full of boxes in over 350 sets of hands across Atlanta this week.

I hadn't seen Charlotte's husband for years, perhaps once or twice at the Morningside Farmers market (the only one where I know the food will all be organic), but most memorably when I visited their farm to write that story about them for Edible Atlanta. I could still see Wes grabbing handfuls of muscadines from vines we passed as his dog ambled along beside him, and pointing out the delicata squash just about ready to be picked.

But it's not Muscadines and Delicata yet. The olfactory sensation hit us immediately and the buzz passed through the line of people quickly. It was Melons. Sweet, pungeant, delicious melons. A big, fat green Spanish one and a smaller striped Asian one. They were heavy, both their weight and their aroma.

I remember Melons last year. How we went to the pool after the drama camp performance and ate one, its green juice dripping down our arms. How my dad and step-mom helped one week, when Charlotte was there. How they are coming again to visit this year and this time we'll go not only to the CSA pickup but to the community garden (which they last saw as just a field) and food pantry as well.

My older daughter went away the last three years for the whole month of July. I didn't think of it that way, in terms of calendar words. I thought of how she would leave right after Blackberries and be home in time for Figs but would miss Lemon Cucumbers completely. She's home this year already, and it's not yet Figs, and that seems odd. It's Sunflowers now, too, and she had missed that in the past as well.

I'm thinking about Lettuces already and have prepped a few of my garden beds for fall. It's hard to imagine, on these 95-degree (35-degrees Celcius) days, that it will one day be cool enough for those tender greens, that the light will be less harsh, that the days will be shorter. But Kale will come and leaves will turn and another year will close.

For now, it is Tomatoes. Sweat and storms and the sweet juice of yellow and red heirlooms cascading over the sides of the cutting board, poured into a little cup and slurped like an elixir of summer.

Thick, red, meaty slices of tomatoes on homemade bread slathered with mayonnaise, topped with fresh-picked basil leaves and a sprinkling of sea salt.

A sauce simmering on the stove with a smell that smacks you on the side of the head when you walk in the house, made from dozens of my home garden's tomatoes ripening in the CSA box lid on my kitchen counter (with a second box lid filled with ones from the community garden, ripening for the food pantry) and oregano, garlic, and pureed zucchini, all from my garden, still warm from the sun on their backs.

Flip-flopped feet.

A leg dangling out the side of the hammock.

And seasons no longer defined by words on a calendar but by harvests passed from hand to hand. And a bounty that makes not just scents, but sense.

Was there ever a different way I lived?

Wanna' Put Heads-in-Beds? Put Local Food in Mouths! (And Other Benefits of Becoming a Model Urban Agriculture City)

2010-07-11T06:27:00.018-04:00

Something happened the other day about which most people don't even know. Something seemingly small. Inconsequential. Forgettable. But it wasn't. It was huge. Because it's yet another sign that the groundswell is growing.

A woman contacted City Hall in my city (the newest city in the United States--Dunwoody, GA, USA) and suggested that the city start a local food cooperative. She raved about this co-op in the Little Five Points section of Atlanta.

I had several meetings with City Hall last week (well, actually, the meetings were at the community garden, where we asked if we could expand our growing space in time for the fall growing season, and embrace other Year 2 enhancements--see details here, if you are interested) and was asked my opinion about this. My first reaction? Hurray! Another voice for local organic food! I sat back and looked at the woman's name. Vaguely familiar, but I don't think I know her.

I raised lots of questions:

* Is Sevananda privately-owned by committed community members or is it part of a public/private partnership?

* How are other local food co-ops organized?

* What are Best Practices nationwide regarding local food co-ops?

* Are there any examples of city or state policies in support of local food co-ops, providing tax incentives or marketing support, for instance?

* Are there any examples of local food co-ops on public land?

In the past, I would have done all that research myself. But now that names I don't know are showing up at City Hall to advocate, I am ready to move on. Especially after I was almost laughed out of town for the following list I developed comprising a Model Urban Agriculture City. One City Council member told me I threw a hand-grenade in every section. Huh? Really? Gosh, every single item here is taken from Best Practices in other cities. Absolutely nothing is an original idea. Even the overriding-the-homeowners-association (HOA) parts reflect the growing awareness that providing food for your family from your own land should be a basic human right. (By the way, gardening is not a hobby for me. If I didn't grow what I do, my children would not eat the way they do. Period.)

Anyway, here goes. It used to say my city name at the front of every sentence, but I changed that up to generalize it so that you could possibly see how your city is doing on a comprehensive urban agriculture scorecard. Of course, your city may have some different assets than mine that would need to be figured in as well. And I didn't even touch on the whole local abattoir thing, or the unlimited eco-tourism assets and attraction for companies committed to sustainability that these initiatives create for a city. Wanna' put heads-in-beds (that's lingo for increasing hotel reservations)? One way is to put local food in mouths. Wanna' attract companies committed to sustainability (um, that would be all of them nowadays)? Provide a compatible residential environment for employees of these companies. Wanna' get your share of business meetings, conventions, conferences, etc? Ya' gotta' go green. (That's why downtown Atlanta established the Zero Waste Zone, FYI. It was losing biz to other cities that were perceived to be more green.)

Your City: A Model Urban Agriculture City

Mission:

Your City encourages local food security, healthy nutrition for all, and growth in the green job sector through policies and ordinances that support local food production, processing, access, and sale.

Goals:

Every citizen in Your City will have at least one urban agricultural component (besides a home garden) within ¼ mile of his or her residence.
Your City will establish itself as a national urban agriculture model by 2015.

Urban Agriculture Components

Home gardens

Your City ordinances allow (and override any HOA restrictions on) home food gardens and backyard chicken-keeping (within specific parameters reflective of best practices nationwide and adapted to local conditions).

School programs

Your City encourages all schools to start and maintain school gardens, to establish relationships with local farms for supply of farm-fresh healthy food to schoolchildren, and to educate children about healthy food sourcing and preparation/preservation within our city.

Community gardens

Your City establishes a level of service of one community garden per 2,500 citizens. City ordinances allow (and override any HOA restrictions) for community gardens in all zoning areas, as long as specific established criteria is met by committed citizen groups. The City supports community gardens with installed water access.

Farmers markets

Your City ordinances allow local farmers markets with strict grown-local standards in commercial zoning areas, on City park property, and on church property.

Greenhouse center

Your City supports the creation of a greenhouse growing center that serves to provide a steady organic plant supply to Your City's gardens and farms, and to mobilize diverse community groups in hands-on education and green job training.

Public Produce

Your City ordinances allow low-maintenance climate-appropriate edible landscaping in Adopt-a-Spot locations, as street trees, and in public parks. The City encourages the planting of recommended edible landscaping at commercial locations and institutions.

Urban Farms

Your City ordinances allow 1-5 acre public urban farms in select locations determined as part of the master greenspace plan.

Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farm from Pattie Baker on Vimeo.

Urban agriculture education center

Your City encourages the creation of an education center for urban agriculture-related workshops to learn growing, processing, and preserving of healthy, local food.

Community kitchen/small-scale processing center

Your City ordinances allow the creation of a shared community food processing center for the creation of value-added agricultural products such as jams, pickles, salsas, baby food, and more.

Green waste composting center

Your City encourages the creation of a food waste composting center designed to repurpose the waste stream and return finished compost back to Your City's gardens for free, or as a branded, affordable product as part of a green entrepreneurial initiative.

Farm-to-fork restaurant and other local food-related businesses (including co-ops)

Your City encourages urban agriculture entrepreneurial and green job growth through tax incentives and targeted marketing efforts to attract more green businesses to your community.

Want to see how other cities are embracing comprehensive urban agriculture planning and policies? Well, here's a start.

If you live in a city near mine and are ready to dig in on some of these ideas, please let me know. I know folks (including me) who love to help. Email me at sustainablepattie@comcast.net.

No matter where in the world you are, if you have more points to add to this list, please leave a comment and share with us all!

No Longer Exceptional?

2010-07-04T06:44:00.019-04:00

Rebecca says I don't show enough photos of meals I make with all the locally-grown food. Perhaps I take them for granted, because, in a way, they are nothing special in my home, not exceptional. They are the norm.

This was last night's pizza. The sauce has everything from beet greens to zucchini in it, and my daughter-who-doesn't-eat-beet-greens-and-zucchini gobbled this up without raising a detecting eyebrow. I had to make this dish because it's that time of year, the time when tomatoes line my windowsill, ripen in the lid of my CSA box, hang heavy from branches by my mailbox, on the side of my house, in the back. This is not exceptional right now. It is the norm.

I'm harvesting twice a week at the community garden from up to fifteen beds now. The food is gorgeous, and the recipients of it oooh and ahhh when we walk in. I've taken to hanging out in the kitchen a bit at the food pantry now, and the Spanish-speaking women and their children are teaching my younger daughter and me the names of things. La papa (potato). El tomate (tomato). La calabaza (squash). La fresa (strawberry). This relaxed, enjoyable exchange, where we each give something to the other, is not exceptional. It is the norm.

My older daughter had been away for weeks and came home yesterday, yet I use that term relatively now. It's more like she alights on the rooftop, grounding herself temporarily, but her gaze remains upward, the call of the sky, the world, the universe, greater with each year. A pair of flip-flops, an MP3 player, a book left laying around still opened to a dog-eared page remind me of the scribble I saw on the little chalkboard at the garden yesterday, written by whom and when I don't know. It said, "I was here."

Yet the first thing my daughter did after getting home and greeting us was to ask for a smoothie, which I made with the last of the blackberries, ground flax seeds, yogurt and local honey. She had missed them, or at least I told myself that. And so I suppose that not only was she here, but I am with her as well, always, the habits I have instilled in her transcending time and space. And this new acceptance, this letting go, this understanding between us that our physical time together is slipping away is no longer the exception. It is the norm.

I haven't told her yet about the Crop Mob event in which my friend Bob and I participated last week, at a restaurant in the Buckhead section of Atlanta named Sheik's Burritos and Kebobs. How strangers came together to help create an urban farm. How a beautiful woman named Kimmy who grew up with no farming experience now leads groups (along with Mike and Darby) in doing this once a month. How Crop Mobs are springing up all over the United States as a result of an article that ran several months ago in the New York Times.

I thought the "flash mob of volunteer agricultural laborers" would all be in their 20s and that Bob and I would feel horribly out of place, but they weren't, and we didn't. We were another two people in a hodge-podge mix of people who want to make a difference and are willing to give their time, sweat, and expanding expertise to do so. We were not the exception. We were the norm.

I haven't told her yet about delivering the watermelons last week, how I handed each from the trunk of my car, and the back seat, and the car floor, to the sometimes strong, sometimes shaky hands of the Fugees boys, how we said very few words beyond the universal language of a smile, how I finally met Luma in person, how a light sort of shines around her, how my friends stepped up and volunteered immediately to deliver the rest of the watermelons for the rest of the summer. How this community we've built, this circle that keeps expanding, is not exceptional. It is the norm.

It's Independence Day today here in the United States, and although there are fireworks and parades and other traditional celebratory things to do, I find I can't stop thinking about the swing I saw yesterday. My younger daughter and I visited the Elaine Clark Center for Exceptional Children in a nearby city, where a fellow community gardener was involved in the creation of a garden, designed and installed by the amazing Lindsey Mann of Sustenance Design, that includes sense-stimulating plants as well as food intended to appeal to children with special needs and their families.

Garden at Elaine Clark Center for Exceptional Children from Pattie Baker on Vimeo.

We were there with an Eagle Scout candidate who is building a sensory-integration woodland path for our community garden, and although we were focusing on the garden, I couldn't stop looking at the swing in the adjoining playground. My younger daughter explored it, tried it out, queried about it. And it turns out that this swing is for use by children in wheelchairs.

And so, last night I heard the distant sound of backyard firecrackers, made the pizza and the smoothie, emailed delivery details about the watermelons for this upcoming week, and considered what to do with the 11 pounds of tomatoes I picked yesterday at the community garden that won't keep until food pantry day--I'm taking them tomorrow to that public fountain in a nearby city, where I saw lots of immigrant families playing, and I will be able to say to them, "Quieres tomates?" (I know that isn't punctuated correctly, but I haven't figured that out yet on my computer keyboard.)

But I kept thinking about what it must feel like to be eight years old and in a wheelchair and never knowing what it feels like to swing. And then feeling it, the way your stomach flips a little, the thrill of leaving the ground, of flying, the cooling breeze in your face. And I thought about how brilliant yet how simple this swing is, how priceless the experience, how freeing. And I thought of independence, of freedom, in a whole new way. And how universal access to everyday experiences of freedom in the Land of the Free and around the world are becoming less the exception for "exceptional children" and more the norm.

I thought of this quote from Leonardo da Vinci: "For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return."

I thought of the people in need of food. And the boys in need of stability and hope. And the children who need easy ways to be fully included in everyday experiences, everyday life. And my daughter perched at the precipice of change.

And, despite the new normalcy of it all in my life, I have to admit. After one bite, one smile, one hand-to-hand touch, one moment of letting go, there is no denying. It is still all truly exceptional.

Rain, Patience, Beer, Soccer and Ten Watermelons a Week--UPDATED!

2010-06-27T06:15:00.042-04:00

The sky darkened, the thunder clapped, and it rained. Finally. Soaking our seemingly-endless 95-degree (35 degrees Celsius) week, our thirsty crops, our lawns, our trees. I flung open the window to smell it, to hear it, and I stood at my open kitchen door overlooking the garden and watched it until it stopped, until its little glistening raindrop remains hung heavy on the edges of welcoming cucumber and zucchini and watermelon leaves.

The watermelons. They have just begun vining. It has been a long journey these past nine years with me and the watermelons, learning patience. Learning to wait until they are just right to pick.

I stood there watching the cascading rain and thought of my daughter running in that fountain last week, in a neighbor city, after we swung by the Latin American Association garden my friend Bob and I had revitalized the day before. I thought of how we don't have anything like that yet, a public place to cool off, although my city, less than two years old and still the newest city in the United States (as far as I can tell) just got ownership of the parks this past week and the county workers left. So change is coming, and there is hope. There is always hope.

I remembered that hot day mid-week when I finished reading My Life in France (one of the best books I've ever read for a plethora of reasons, by the way, and yes, Kate, it'll be on its way to you in Tasmania this week) at a nearby pool, where we ride our bikes, stopping for water at every corner, agreeing that biking is better than walking in this heat because at least you get the downhill breezes. I had been sitting in the shade overlooking the little lake reading my book when I glanced up and saw this, a father and son, fishing. I thought this scene was special, and that the father might appreciate that someone captured it for him and, perhaps, his son might cherish it one day. The heat makes me slow down, and sit, and see these things, and they are gifts to me.

I heard the distant sound of the TV, which I don't usually have on, but there I had been, before the rain, watching soccer and drinking a beer, two things I just don't do. Yet, for one thing, we're trying to find a different local brewery from which to divert spent grains from the waste system so that we can make more beer compost at the community garden. We had severe flooding in the fall (which is hard to believe on these sun-parched days) and spent the whole winter mitigating stormwater and building that path so that we could resume the beer compost deliveries. I was excited to tell Dennis at 5 Seasons Brewery and he said he'd be by right away. But he never came. He won't take my calls. He doesn't call back. Months have passed. The Veil of Weirdness has descended, and I've learned in life that when the Veil of Weirdness descends, with relationships or jobs or anything, really, it's time to move on.

So we were talking with Sweetwater Brewery about it, and I was sampling the product. (Alas, it didn't work out with Sweetwater, although big thanks to Rick for giving it the ole' college try--the quest continues.) I hadn't had a beer since that one at Joe's Tavern almost two years ago, when I decided to bear witness to the sustainability decisions that my brand new city faced. It was nice, the beer, a little tickle of my MemoryShed, of all the beers before it, especially those ones in Europe where my friend Julie from Maine and I backpacked through 10 countries on 20 bucks a day (including everything), 25 years ago right now. We slept on houseboats, in convents, on trains. And we had a different locally-brewed beer in just about every city, and I was shocked at how good, and different, they all were.

The soccer watching is more complicated. Not the game, about which I know practically nothing. Well, I know you kick the ball in the goal and the team with the most goals wins. I know you don't use your hands; well, most of the players don't. I know there is occasional head action, which seems to be the highlight of the game, in my opinion. The complicated part is not even the FIFA World Cup host country of South Africa embracing a major initiative to green the games by reducing carbon emissions and leaving a sustainable legacy in most of the host cities.

No. The complicated part is this:

These are the Fugees. They are refugee children-of-war. They come from up to 54 different countries. They live 13 miles away from me. Their formation as a soccer team has been immortalized in the truly life-changing book, Outcasts United. And because of them, I am trying to learn soccer.

I first heard about them three and a half years ago, but they blasted back into my life about two months ago. And. I. Don't. Know. Why.

That's the complicated part.

My friend Bob took the above photo at one of their practices, before eating food cooked by one of their mothers. How we got involved is here: 13 Miles and a World Away. By why. Why, I do not know. I don't know much about soccer. I can never seem to get to the weekly dinners. I don't have all that much to offer, in money or time or knowledge.

Yet . . . .

There's Tania. And Tracy. And Luma. And the circle keeps expanding. My emails get more interesting. The pull I feel gets stronger.

A fellow community garden member's friend's daughter is in AmeriCorps (did you follow that?) and is, coincidentally, working at the Fugees Family soccer camp this summer. She needs 10 watermelons a week and lots of other snacks to feed 50 boys every day until school starts August 9 (yes, that's when school starts here, if you can believe it). I can't tell you much more about this young woman just yet, but please trust me when I tell you that the last thing she needs to worry about right now is 10 weekly watermelons.

And so, back to the watermelons. It will be a long time before I have grown one, never mind ten. And so, today I buy them. And tomorrow I deliver them. And next Monday, Bob said he'd deliver ten. And the rest of the Mondays? Well, email me at sustainablepattie@comcast.net if you live in Atlanta and you want to take charge of a Watermelon Week. I'll let this young woman know.

You deliver them on Mondays between 10-4 to 1019 Rowland Road, at the blue building across from the Clarkston International Bible Church in Clarkston, GA, (30021), the most diverse city in the United States, 13 miles away from the newest city in the U.S. And if you're like me, you don't ask why. You just do it. And you have patience that one day, the answer will come.

UPDATE: June 28 29, 2010

~~Just~~ ~~two one~~ No Mondays are is left for volunteers (thanks to Bob, Sally ~~and,~~ Rebecca, ~~and~~ Ashley, and Rick for taking the ~~other~~ weeks!)~~: July 26 and August 2~~. Email me at sustainablepattie@comcast.net if you want to volunteer. Watermelons are $3.99 at Costco, so this is a $40 donation (tax-deductible from the Fugees Family) and a time commitment of maybe two hours (to purchase and deliver the melons).

That Happy Place Between Whimsy and Tacky Where Every Soul Can Soar

2010-06-20T06:08:00.019-04:00

I live with a soul that soars around color. Lots and lots of color. Bold color. Aubergine and Tuscan yellow and indigo. My favorite color is, and always has been, red. And so it happened naturally that when I went to make signs for the community garden the other night, I chose bright colors I love. I crouched on the ground with brushes in hand and found myself in a state of flow, the hour or so flying by on crimson wings. And this is what resulted:

The top two signs go together on a shopping cart that the manager of a nearby Kroger supermarket donated to be used at the community garden for a demonstration "Meals on Wheels" food pantry bed. It looks something like this now:

The bottom sign will go on the bike trailer I'm trying to get donated so I can transport more freshly harvested food to the food pantry via bike (which seems to break down cultural barriers and build a bridge between the food pantry clients and me). Until that bike trailer magically appears, I've put the sign on my current system, which involves my two panniers:

I brought the signs with me one of the three 6:30 AM mornings this week that several of us met at the garden to work on our rain garden stormwater mitigation project after a recent downpour set us back a bit. I was excited about the signs and the shopping cart and the bike. But when I showed them to a fellow board member, he said, "Ya' know, there's a fine line between whimsy and tacky."

Huh? Well, yes, I know that. But my soul soars with color. And fun. And living out loud. And inviting more people into the conversation in a way that just might make a measurable difference.

Seeing my perhaps-crestfallen face, he went on, "I mean, you're also talking about adding a bottle tree, and a tire planted with flowers."

Well, yes, I have that bottle tree in my home garden, that nod to African folklore immortalized so beautifully in the movie based on the Newbery Award-winning book, Because of Winn Dixie, and repurposed in my yard to "catch the demons" of plastic bottles that we find discarded in our travels. I thought something like that might make a positive educational addition to the community garden, since we're a Zero Waste Zone.

And, yes, my younger daughter did find that tire in the woods there and asked if we could incorporate it into the community garden somehow, and I remembered how my mom had turned a tire into a planter that looked like a bright yellow flower when I was a little girl, which I thought was nothing short of brilliant. I thought perhaps my mother and daughter could make it together and we could add it by the children's woodland trail that an Eagle Scout candidate is spearheading (complete with consideration of children with special needs).

I walked away and pitched wood chips into the bright red wheelbarrow to dump into our big puddle. And I felt the soft and subtle squashing of my soul, a feeling I know intimately as I've felt it a million times before in my life.

I live in a city with leaders who wanted to require bike racks on private commercial property to all be painted a standard muted color, even though the cycling expert who was championing the effort warned that that requirement would be an unnecessary impediment to businesses participating. The bike racks never happened. I live in a city that wants to extend "overlay district" architectural requirements throughout the entire city, limiting color palettes. I live in a city that almost passed an ordinance that would outlaw colored Christmas lights (I kid you not). I live in a city where at least once a year my younger daughter says to me, "Tell me again what's wrong with a yellow house or a purple shop, Mom." I live where fear of what people will think trumps fun more often than anyone cares to admit.

Another board member just repaired our community garden front fence. This girl was at the garden when he and another garden member were doing it. She helped. Other children in the garden at the time were thrilled with the outcome. I'm not sure how my colleague concerned about the Fine Line Between Whimsy and Tacky is going to feel about it. But I do know that, for me, one of the hardest parts of being in a community garden is finding those happy places between here and there on the idea spectrum, between acceptable and not, between whimsy and tacky, where every soul can soar.

(photo used with permission of child's mother)

Year Three, Drug Free

2010-06-13T06:00:00.034-04:00

Bernie and I stand there, our hands on our hips, and just look at it, amazed at what we have somehow accomplished. Bernie is the new man in my life, or should I say, my lawn's life, and granted, I had a two-year head start on what we are now deeming a joint success, but if not for him, I'd still be ankle deep in what was looking like donkey fur.

My back lawn, where the majority of my organic garden is, has been drug-free for years, but it was only a couple years ago that I went drug-free (and oil free) on the front. This year marks the third, and if I were seeking organic certification, three years is what it takes. I push-reel-mowed until about September of last year, when I just plain old gave up. I was spending weekends at the community garden and my blades were no longer sharp and there was a patch of that lawn that had gotten so thick you could lose a small dog in it. I had done it so far alone, but I knew I needed help, and the first step in recovery is to admit you have a problem and need help, right?

I gave myself the winter to ponder, considered the philosophical joys of push-reel-mowing, of which there are many, and continued to try to find a place to sharpen my blades (of which there are none any more, as far as I can surmise). I was hesitant to bring oil back into the process (in addition to the human-powered lawn mower, I had been edging manually, snipping with grass shears, and sweeping with a broom, as opposed to power tools for all of that) but I also wanted a lawn that looked good (I live in a city that worships at the altar of aesthetics). That way, others (for whom not poisoning their children, their dogs or our shared water supply are not enough reasons) might be inspired to go drug-free, too.

So, winter over, I knew I didn't want some big company that requires a 12-month contract for a seasonal business and then comes in the dead of winter and blows four leaves around, polluting our air with toxins and noise just to look busy and get paid. I also didn't want a company with revolving crews that cut, edge, blow and go. I wanted a relationship, and not just a relationship, but an honest one, one that admits the job is seasonal. One that is willing to say that at certain times of the spring and fall, once every two weeks is more than enough. One where the goals are shared and the vision motivates us to work as a team. And, really, by the grace of God, I somehow found Bernie.

I hear his truck pull up on Fridays while I'm writing and my heart does a little flutter knowing my lawn will look amazing in mere moments.

I hear that lawn mower start and the feeling of hatred I had been developing for those endlessly noisy machines in my neighborhood has somehow transformed into a warmth.

I race out to catch him before he leaves and he smiles, commenting on the 40 wheelbarrel-fulls of wood chips I'd spread the previous week or how the mailbox garden's tomato plants are hanging heavy with fruit, or about the small meadow we're creating together in the back so when I cut the junipers there is still ground cover for wildlife (so I can keep my Certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat designation). I give him herbs. He gives me advice. We are a team.

He knows about Greg, and isn't jealous. In fact, he welcomes Greg into our newly shared lives. Greg comes now once every couple months and adds organic amendments like chicken manure and kelp to the lawn (and to my vegetable plots as well). He puts this sign out, and I leave it in for at least two weeks so that passersby can see it and perhaps it gives them pause. Perhaps they see that the lawn looks good now, as green and lush as any other, yet it is completely drug-free.

Perhaps they see how I've eradicated a few bits of my lawn and now zucchini and tomatoes and lavender grow where once drugged blades of Bermuda hung on for dear life. I sit at the newly-brightly-painted bistro table and pick blackberries in my new "outdoor living room" and marvel at how much has changed in such a short time. And I wonder if perhaps there will be a paradigm shift and another person will go drug-free, too. And another. And another. And one day, children will once again do cartwheels on lawns all over our drug-free nation.

Or perhaps I will simply wave hello, and share fistfuls of herbs, and invite folks to pick from the mailbox garden, as they have the last two years as well. Perhaps it's as simple as that.

My journey to a drug-free lawn may be the most documented individual lawn story in America. There's sweat (lots of it!), there are statistics, and there are a whole lot of simple truths. If you're interested, you may enjoy push-reel-mowing your way through these (the first post is the one at the bottom):

It's Not About the Lawn

The Return of the Weeds and Lawn

Click, Clack, Mow (and It's Damaging Alternative)

What Gets Measured Gets Done

Feeling Edgy (or a Completely Honest Lawn Update)

Sixteen Households Make a Community

Reel Mowers. Pushing On for the Planet.

Surprised by the Weight of It

2010-06-06T06:44:00.032-04:00

I was surprised by the weight of it. I stood at the front right hand corner and I had to twist my wrists awkwardly to grip the edge, my back turned one way, my neck another, so that I could move ahead while holding on to it sideways. Breathing in, breathing out, as I had done a million other times those past nine frenetic months, I took my first step forward. The black and white skirt I had chosen so carefully to wear, respectful but not somber, the same skirt I had worn three years earlier out to dinner at that wonderful French country restaurant for my 40th birthday celebration, swished a bit as I walked, breaking the ominous silence of the stagnantly humid day.

"I didn't know I could do this," I heard myself whisper as I helped carry the coffin. "I didn't know I could do this."

I didn't know I could open my home to children who weren't mine, feeding them, helping them with homework, tucking them in, trying to ensure that one day, when they were no longer 8 and 10 but rather 20 or 40 or 80, they would have memories of a flowering garden, fluffy white towels, a roaring fireplace and at least a little laughter when they thought back to the nine months during which their mother died.

I didn't know I could sit for hours at a time with a woman whom I didn't really know all that well, even though we had run in the same circle for years, and keep her company as the medicine that was meant to save her dripped into her body. I didn't know I could carve out time from the middle of my workday to watch romantic comedies with a woman who needed desperately to laugh, and leave baskets of fresh muffins specked with flax seeds and raisins for a man whose life was falling apart so fast that eating a meal was a luxury he had all but forsaken. I didn't know I could do such simple, simple things, the kinds of things that others had been doing all their lives but I hadn't, and make a difference.

Granted, I wasn't the only one who did this. An entire community of people rallied to help this family, the way communities do. But I was never one of those people before, part of the casserole brigade. Yet, here I was, boiling eggs each day for the sandwiches which were the only things my friend could tolerate eating and tossing them to her husband through open windows in carpool lines.

I'm a writer. I sit barefoot in a corner of my house, overlooking my garden, and I write in the dark of early morning to the sounds of crickets. I don't stand at funerals and deliver eulogies. Yet I did that day. I didn't know I could do that.

I'm a gardener. I shovel dirt on new life. I don't join a line of mourners taking turns to shovel dirt into a grave. Yet I did that day. I didn't know I could do that.

I'm a sharer. I troll the little moments of my day for the bigger lessons, and they turn up immediately as dinner stories at my kitchen table that very night. I don't keep secrets. Yet I did that day. In fact, I kept a secret for over four years now. I didn't know I could do that.

But now, I have decided I am going to tell you.

A few days before my friend died, I was sitting with her at the hospital, just the two of us. She had taken a dramatic downturn, but it hadn't hit anyone yet that this was going to be it. My friend and her family had decided somewhere early on the Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis train that they were going to ride in the optimism car (for, my goodness, she wasn't even a smoker), and there had been no talk about preparing for what was increasingly looking like the inevitable. My friend was having extreme difficulty breathing, and I could see a change in her eyes, an awareness, perhaps, that hadn't been there before. Our conversation was short that day, and I knew it was possibly our last one alone. After what happened next, I called her husband and told him he needed to come to the hospital, that things were not well. And that phone call marked the turning point between life and death, between denial and acceptance, between hope and preparation.

But first, here is what happened. I told my friend she needed to write letters. To her daughters and husband. And she said, simply, that she would. The next day, she did. The girls framed their letters and they now hang in their new bedrooms, in a different house, with a different mother. She never got to finish her husband's letter, although when he finally read it, he didn't need or want an ending.

After I told her that, she told me something. And this is the secret part. She told me that she always believed in paying things forward. And that's what she wanted me to do. To not look back at what happened these last nine months, the length of time it takes to bring a baby into the world and that it took to take a 46-year-old woman out of the world, but instead to pay it forward.

I was 43 years old that day, an age halfway between my 40th birthday, an occasion I marked by learning to ride a unicycle, and the age of my friend who was days away from leaving this world. Her words knocked me off balance. The lesson I learned from unicycling is that it's much easier to fall forward than back. Trust me on this one.

So pay it forward, she had instructed. How would I pay it forward? What could I possibly do to honor this woman and the community of people who had come together during this tragic time? I told myself I had three years. By my 46th birthday, I would do it. I would pay it forward, in a public way that made a difference.

***

I was surprised by the weight of it. I lifted it out of the back of my car and placed it on the grassy meadow. I lifted the next one, and the next, and the next. Sixteen in all. I carried them, one at a time up the hill and over the paths which had been covered with wood chips, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, by people whom I didn't know just six weeks earlier.

I had surprised my family and friends by getting involved when my suburb of Atlanta became the newest city in the United States just nine months prior, the length of time it takes to bring a baby into the world. I had become the chairperson of the new city's Sustainability Commission and was charged with helping it achieve Green Community certification. I hadn't realized where this road was taking me.

I hadn't realized it would lead me to a piece of land our city didn't own, past the dog park, on the left, where the sidewalk ends. I didn't realize it would put me in fields with weeds up to my knees with strangers trying to figure out how we could do it, how we could start a community garden in a place where we were told it could not be done. I hadn't realized all the conversations at broken-down, ivy-covered picnic benches, through emails, and over the phone and across the Internet that would happen in less than the length of a summer. And, mostly, I hadn't realized that the first day of National Community Gardening Week, the day we ended up opening a community garden to 60 families who snapped up plots in less than 48 hours after the garden was announced, was my birthday. My 46th birthday.

I carried a bag of dirt up the hill, across the path and to the plot where I had arranged the cinder blocks to form a raised bed garden, in the midst of what would be a brand new community of people. I stood there alone, the smiling crowd from two days earlier gone, the mourning crowd from three years earlier scattered in the next phases of their lives. I opened the bag and threw a shovelful of dirt onto my 4' x 8' plot.

I planted seeds.

I paid it forward.

I didn't know I could do that.

FoodShed Planet Resumes This Sunday, June 6!

2010-06-03T14:45:00.011-04:00

I've missed you, and I have lots to share! Am looking forward to joining you on Sunday mornings again, and hope you'll make room in your day for me.

Check out Sustainable Pattie to see where I've been hangin' my hat in the meantime.

No Longer Blurry

2009-12-17T12:49:00.005-05:00

This is the very first digital picture we took, back in 2006, with the magic camera that since then broke and has been replaced by one that I have never learned to love nearly as much. My younger daughter took it of me in the garden. Things were blurry then, in lots of ways. But over more than 3 years and almost 600 posts, things have snapped into focus. Our lives have changed dramatically, and there comes a moment when the inevitable is clear. It is time to move on.

That moment is now.

I've built a new "space" for the next stage of my life, and I invite you to join me there. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

If I somehow lose you now, please know that I have enjoyed sharing this journey with you immensely and I look forward to our paths crossing again, in ways we cannot even imagine.

With much gratitude,

Pattie

Up on the Rooftop, Ideas Pause

2009-12-06T06:36:00.050-05:00

So I was standing there on the grass which I never really finished push-reel-mowing back in October (and, by the way, I'm now thinking of not giving up on that). I looked up at the men on my roof ripping asphalt shingles and tossing them onto blue tarps that are over my garden, which now surrounds three sides of my house. I decided it would be best to hunker down in my office and work on writing assignments so that I wouldn't see what was going on, but, curiosity getting the better of me, I slipped out when the crew broke for lunch and snapped this photo of the main part of my vegetable garden:

It had taken me about two months to get to this point. It started with knowledge that a hale storm had damaged many roofs in my neighborhood. I remembered, vaguely, my younger daughter turning some shingles she "found" into an art project. I should have questioned things then, but chose denial (which, by the way, is not always a bad strategy--my assessment of denial is that it does make about 60 percent of things go away. The other 40%, however, do get worse, unfortunately. So the to-do list is shorter, but more extreme. You decide.)

Then, my neighbor wanted a "cool roof" (which is a roof light in color intended to reflect more heat and thereby be more energy-efficient), which caused a whole brouhaha in the 'hood because I am one of the 60 million people in the United States who live in a neighborhood with a long list of covenants. Anyway, at least we did the research and it turns out that light roofs on our type of houses in our climate would streak and become unsightly with algae within two years, so the neighborhood board rejected it.

The materials are just not there yet in performance capability, and frankly, that is a real problem ( or, shall we say, opportunity for innovative businesses to address--Ray Anderson could do it--yes, I finished his excellent new book and marked up almost every page--Ray says, about the eco-turnaround of Interface--"If we can do it, anybody can. And if anybody can, everybody can.").

I am not an advocate of blindly recommending eco-options with no concern to aesthetics, cost, performance, or other qualities that are part of a thorough decision-making process. I vote with my dollar for things that work, and I challenge Big or Small Business to create them. (Here is a brand new article by Jared Diamond about how Big Business can save the earth.)

However, this opened the door to question all our non-environmentally-friendly restrictions--from solar just on the back side of the house to not allowing porous pavement in the driveway to no clothelines to that $2000 we spend every year to plant chemical-laden annuals at the front entrance, and more. The neighborhood association board prepared and sent out a survey, and almost half the neighbors responded (a shockingly high response, if you ask me, especially considering that this was over the long Thanksgiving holiday).

Anyway, so it turns out, no surprise, that the majority of my neighbors want to keep the restrictions we have. I had suggested at least researching these issues, but when my attempts to start a Sustainability Advisory Group in my neighborhood did not result in a groundswell of support, I stepped away since I am not a believer of "planting tomatoes in April" but rather in May, when the ground is ready for them, and so it is with groups going green. The time must be ripe, or else it's all uphill, filled with acrimonious for-and-against arguments often based on emotion and preconceptions rather than research and reason. I believe this eco-stuff is the fun stuff, not the stuff to be fighting over. At least that's the kind of environment in which I'm choosing to participate.

What was a surprise, however, was that a full 35% of my neighbors did support change. This is about 34% more than I would have predicted! Also, 60% want the neighborhood board to take an active role in encouraging more recycling efforts (about 32% of my neighbors participate in the curbside recycling program currently, and my Sustainability Commission efforts in 2010 will involve setting up electronics and other additional recycling events and systems).

So, back to the roof. I tried to get the asphalt shingles recycled. I thought that, at least, would be good. Some ungodly number of tons of shingles are torn off and sent to landfills every year. The ones that are recycled are turned into numerous materials, including an aggregate that can be used to fill potholes. I pitched my city on the idea of using the aggregate made from the very roofs of our citizens to fill the potholes around town. A nice closed loop sustainability story. My sustainability liaison at City Hall loved it, even suggesting the City encourage recycling the shingles when issuing roof replacement permits, and we also agreed it might qualify for innovation points on the Atlanta Regional Commission Green Community Certification checklist (we are ending the year with over 100 points towards the 175 points needed for the bronze level, by the way, and I anticipate us achieving that by mid-2010).

But then I went crazy finding a recycler. After much research that involved the top eco-people in the state, here was the clincher email:

Unfortunately, there are currently no takers for old shingles because there's a glut due to hail storms. Both the C.W. Matthews Co. and Dykes Construction & Paving have used shingles in their asphalt in the past. They're now over-supplied and road paving is down due to the economy. The State Dept. of Transportation mandates that only 100 lbs of shingles may be used in 2,000 lbs of asphalt. To the best of my knowledge there are no commercial boilers in GA permitted to combust old shingles. Regrettably the only option is a landfill.

So, off to the landfill it all went.

I felt sick about this, really sick. I reached out to my friend, Judy, who works at arguably one of the most sustainable places in the United States, if not the world, and she told me that sometimes no matter how hard we try, it just doesn't work out and all we can do is our best for today.

And so, as I stood there watching the crew teeter on the top of my roof and I thought about how risky that was, I realized how risky it was, as well, to ask questions. To involve neighbors when it would be easier and far more private to just abide by the status quo. And to commit to a joy-based journey, no matter how counterintuitive that might sound when the pursuit involves a path of change.

Then, just a couple nights ago, I brought my kids to City Hall to see a presentation by students from the Georgia Tech School of Architecture about their vision for redevelopment of our city center. I wanted my children to see that school projects could have real-world implications. Most of our city leaders were at the meeting, listening intently. Here is the presentation. If you haven't seen the United States obesity data as it has changed over the last twenty years, that alone is worth a look.

My daughters both sat in the front row, even though I was eight rows back, and they took copious notes that we discussed at dinner afterwards. When we realized that parts of our city could very well be completely different in 20 years, and how my kids will be able to show their children the changes in which they were personally involved, my older daughter said, "Mom, we have to take lots of pictures so they can see what it was like."

The reality of impending change had truly hit her. The likelihood that future generations would be affected by our actions today seemed suddenly tangible. For me, visions of roads that connected and a vibrant local business scene (where now there are mostly vacant storefronts) and extensive urban agriculture danced in my head like sugarplums all night.

As we were driving down the main road that leads to my neighborhood (with all its new dark roofs), we passed:

* Solar-powered speed signs now on the side of the road
* Crosswalk signs where there weren't ones before

* LED lights in more than half the traffic lights

* FlexFuel police cars

* A new (albeit, short) bike lane

* And an abundant school garden (which was started in mid-September) where children just harvested and made a delicious kale salad when most of them had never even tasted kale before.

My older daughter was watching the data displayed in my Prius. (And, by the way, complete strangers come up to me and say things like, "How do you like that car?" When I say I do, they reply, "You know it takes more energy to make that car than it does to make a Hummer?" and then they walk away. Listen, I know it's not perfect, but I love the feedback data that helps me teach my kids. I love that I am growing a garden in a box in the hatchback. I love that it doesn't idle. I love that I get 50 gallons to the mile, and it costs me $40 a month in gas. I love that it's bright red, not some bland maroon like that horrid minivan I used to drive.)

She said, "How does the battery in this car recharge?"

I answered, "It regenerates when you break."

Pause.

And then I added, "Sort of like people."

And that got me thinking. It's time to break. To regenerate. It's time to read and ride my bike and bake cookies and internalize everything that has happened this year, here on our FoodShed Planet. It's time to prepare for the risks I know I need to take in 2010 in order to stand on the metaphorical roof and shout out with joy about the boundless potential and power of the creative spirit to change the world, even just a little bit.

I'm not sure if, up on the rooftop, reindeers paws really alight, but I like to believe they do. I do know, for sure, that up on my rooftop, ideas paused and caused me to stop and think and consider my actions. And now I need to assess the coming risks of a brand new year, and see how I can best step firmly forward.

And so I offer my wish to you: May your harvests of happiness, peace and progress toward a more sustainable future, close to home and around the world, be abundant this holiday season. And may you find sure footing on your own rooftop of possibility.

See you on January 3.

A Volley Happening Between Mother and Daughter in the Place We Call Home

2009-11-29T06:42:00.011-05:00

After years now of garden expansion, my backyard lawn slipping away with each new bed and border planted, lacrosse sticks have suddenly entered my home, a brand new (to us), out-of-left-field pursuit in which my older daughter is now participating. And so it was that I found myself out there among the rosemary and broccoli rabe, the lemon balm and lacinato kale, tossing a small, heavy, neon pink ball from my netted stick head to hers as far away as she could stand without falling into the compost pile.

The stillness of the late afternoon and the golden hue of the sky, the light starting to dim, was punctuated by the gentle thwump of the ball passing, a swishing cradle action holding it in place, a volley happening between mother and daughter at an age when we can't always talk, although we try. With each ball drop, I scooped up more of the fragrance of what we are all about, of the land which we have nurtured, of the very essence of our souls, in the place we call home. Oregano. French tarragon. Lemon thyme. Chives. Every smell a shared memory.

As the light faded too much for my aging eyes, and the sticks and ball got put away, although there is not yet any official "away" for these new houseguests in our lives, my daughter and I smiled and said that was fun and let's do it again another day. And as she went back to her life, her friends, her thoughts, and I went back to mine, I noticed that my hands smelled of cilantro.

2020 Vision (or What Happened When I Read About Ray Anderson's Big, Hairy Audacious Goals)

2009-11-22T05:21:00.016-05:00

So I'm walking around with a book tucked under my arm. Staying up late reading it. And eschewing wheelbarrow-pushing for reading on a bench at the community garden.

"What are you reading that's so riveting?" someone asked me, prying my nose out of the book. No, it isn't some pot boiler mystery, and if this stranger knew me at all, he'd know that. I haven't picked up fiction in something like four years.

It's Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, by Ray Anderson, founder and CEO of the Atlanta-based company Interface, which is arguably the most sustainable corporation on the planet. Just as Anderson says he felt like he had gotten a spear in the chest after he finished reading Paul Hawken's book The Ecology of Commerce, and then went on to change his business, his life and the world, I feel like I, too, am being pointed in a more clear direction.

Big, hairy, audacious goals. That's what Anderson calls them. Big, hairy, audacious goals. That's how he eventually came up with seven goals of what he calls Mount Sustainability. But more on that another time. This post isn't about Interface. It's about how reading just the first 100 pages of this book snapped my 2020 Vision for The Little City That Could into focus. As chairperson of the Sustainability Commission for the newest city in the United States (which celebrates its one-year anniversary on December 1!), I propose this work-in-progress:

The 2020 Vision for the City of Dunwoody, GA (and, perhaps, you can adapt this for your city, too)

By the Year 2020:

* The City of Dunwoody will be carbon neutral, and will have the largest Zero Waste Zone in the United States.

* The City of Dunwoody will have a LEED Platinum (or comparable)-certified City Hall, and the highest number of LEED (or comparable)-certified buildings in the Southeastern United States.

* Every major artery in the City of Dunwoody will be a Complete Street.

* Every neighborhood in the City of Dunwoody will have a WalkScore of at least 75.

* The City of Dunwoody will have food-producing, usable green space within a half mile of every residence and business.

* The City of Dunwoody will have the largest number of locally-owned-and-operated businesses in the Southeastern United States.

* Every neighborhood lake in the City of Dunwoody will be a toxin-free, food-producing wildlife habitat.

* Every school in the City of Dunwoody, from preschool to college, will have a school garden, a Safe Routes to School program, and a No Idling program.

* No citizen in the City of Dunwoody will be food-insecure.

* The City of Dunwoody will be a designated Tree City USA, Bicycle-Friendly Community, and Atlanta Regional Commission Gold-Level Green Community.

Okay, fine. But how do we get there? Well, Anderson quotes the Scottish mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray (who borrowed from Goethe, including the quote that has hung in my office for the last 14 years):

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

And so, I do not have a spear in my heart. I have a trowel in my hand. And I point it forward. To 2020. I commit to providing the plan that makes this possible.

Maybe We Could Do This (or How the World Changed When We Learned How to Inoculate a Shiitake Log)

2009-11-15T06:44:00.028-05:00

So I was at an all-day mushroom growing class at Gaia Gardens, an Atlanta urban farm, yesterday, when I had the feeling I have at most of these classes at one point or another.

Not for me.

When I attended a beekeeping class at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, it happened right around the time when the instructor talked about what it felt like to get bee stings on your eyelids. Yesterday, at the mushroom growing class, I started glossing over when Daniel Parson mentioned the word "chainsaw." Much detail followed, regarding the recommended diameter of the white oak and sweet gum trees for the optimal inoculated shiitake logs. Phrases such as "spores are liberated," "spawn run" and "colonization of the substrate" started to fly over my head, and the whole idea of running out to Home Depot to get a 2500 rpm drill that would work well with a specialized high speed shitake drill bit had become nothing more than theory at this point.

I turned to Rebecca, the chair of the Dunwoody Community Garden (and yes, we have a space behind the cistern in mind for the "mushroom operation"), and whispered, "The oyster mushrooms will be easier, I think."

And then, of course, they weren't. I had been hoping I could repurpose the waste stream from local coffee shops to use coffee grounds for the oyster mushrooms in my garage or that little shed in my yard, the way these Berkeley grad students do on a much bigger scale.

But the oyster mushroom part of the lecture involved phrases such as this big red-light one, "make sure you keep them away from wood because they will eat your house." Gosh, is it really necessary to tell you any of the others?

So we had pretty much ruled the mushroom growing thing out, until we went out past the community garden, the stand of blueberry bushes, the bees, the bags of leaves being saved for compost, and the rows of cover crops and lettuces at the urban farm part of the land to where we were going to inoculate shiitake logs and oyster mushroom substrate (a bale of wheat straw was practically boiling in a huge wire strainer in a garbage can, if you can picture this) to bring home.

Daniel said that the process for inoculating the shiitake logs--drilling the holes, inserting the spawn, and applying hot wax to seal--was best done as an assembly line but that he found at these classes that everyone likes to do their very own log, so he had set it up that way.

This is when things took an interesting turn.

Our motley group of 10 (the other ten were currently tossing hot hay to cool it and then crumbling oyster spawn to add to it) somehow, without words, proceeded to completely reject this notion. Not one person grabbed a log to claim it. No one hugged a drilled log close to his or her heart, following it through to solitary completion of the process. People drilled when (and if) they wanted to. People took turns stabbing the spawn tool in a coffee can of spawn (which looks like crumbly compost, sort of) and then inserting it in the holes (this is shockingly fun, by the way), and dipping the round puff in the melted wax and rubbing it over the holes in completion.

The logs stacked up, no one seemed to care if they got the fat one or the long one or the one they had drilled.

I stood back, looked, and listened for a minute. At all the heads leaned in together. At the conversations among strangers. The laughter. The smiles. The sharing of tools and tender patience. And I looked at Rebecca, who couldn't believe she had changed so much in the last few months that she was actually attending a mushroom growing class, as she donned goggles and grabbed that drill.

And we both knew.

This is something good.

And we both went from "no way" to "how can we do it?" And the world changed, right then, right there.

Maybe we could work with the City Arborist or the arborist who provides our free wood chips to get the logs.

Maybe Tom and Rick and Bob, who love to build, could help with the equipment and the drilling.

Maybe we could get a crock pot at Good Will for the wax, or maybe someone has a hot plate and an old pot they wouldn't mind us using.

Electricity? Maybe we could figure that out . . .

Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

I asked Daniel how much it would cost. 50 logs. Yes, that's a good, solid number that we could do. How much would it cost to do 50 logs? He estimated that, even with the one-time purchase of two of those spawn inoculators and the high speed shiitake drill bit, plus the cost of the spawn and wax, it would cost about a buck or two per log. And, guess what, each 40" log is estimated to produce approximately 5 pounds of shitakes, which have a retail value of up to about 20 bucks a pound.

Hmmm.

Maybe we could do this.

A Ton of Food, Green Globe, Zero Waste, and Terry Cunningham at the Finish Line of the New York City Marathon

2009-11-08T06:18:00.017-05:00

So I'm outside raking leaves yesterday, or as us gardeners like to call them, "carbon," and I notice the side of my house and realize I haven't given you the final update. The lawn. Back in August, when I saw my neighbor getting trees cut down and arranged for the chipped wood to be left at my house, I ended up with a mega-pile that I then proceeded to spread everywhere, including making a web of paths on the side of my house, effectively reducing the lawn there by about 40%.

A Ton of Food

You see, I have two goals:

* One, to reduce my lawn and frankly, to get out of that manual push-reel lawn mowing chore--I hated it this year. (There, I said it.)

* And, two, to grow literally a ton of food (I think I'm just excited that I'm finally able to remember that this means two thousand pounds.)

I grew a grand total of just over 100 pounds of food this entire year. For a value of, let's say, $5 per pound (organic greens run more per pound, but that's the going rate for organic heirloom tomatoes here, so I'm going with it and am probably underestimating), that means I grew $500 worth of organic, hyper-local food this year. I spent probably, I don't know, let's say $150, although that seems high to me (but I do seem to always be tinkering at that Farmer D store) (oh, and if you go to that link, I wrote the School Gardens Guide! My friend, Mike, with whom I took that farm course back in the spring, designed it).

Anyway, so I've added a handful of beds to the side of the house (they are pictured above with a winter cover crop on them), and I removed an overgrown, bird-planted privet bush thing that was using up too much space, causing allergic reactions and blocking the sun, so I have even more grow space there.

I also removed a dozen or so overgrown, mite-infested juniper bushes from the back by the hammock and have started putting in a small fruit orchard there. It's also where I will probably put the inoculated shitake log I get next week at the small-scale production mushroom growing class I'm taking at Gaia Gardens, a 5-acre urban farm where I cornered farmer Daniel Parson one day in the broccoli. (I know that 5 Seasons Brewing Company brings their spent grain there, too, so I'm curious to see how they handle it to see if there's anything we can do differently at our community garden with it.)

I'm also eyeing another batch of juniper bushes with the same thought in mind, and the other side of my house is just about next in line. Oh, I also expanded the mailbox garden and ran a border of wood chips up the driveway. I have visions of lavender and other herbs, interspersed with heirloom annual crops, for a sort of English garden effect (but adjusted for our climate, of course). All good, and pretty already, faster than I expected.

What is possible, I wonder? How much food (including culinary and medicinal herbs) could I really grow here? Yes, yes, I know about Path to Freedom. I attended their workshop at the Georgia Organics conference. I think of their moderate slice of property every time I try to imagine what on earth the little piece of land for which I serve as steward might become.

As a result of all this change on the side of my house, I've moved my garbage can to the backyard (since I don't have that privet to hide it behind it anymore). Since I've been on this waste-reduction kick, I only put it out once a week, and now that it's in the back, I'm even forgetting to do that. So I realized it had been nine days recently, and I was still at one not-full garbage can. Considering the average American adds 4.6 pounds of material to the landfill every single day, I was curious what my family of four would be adding in nine days. How much less than the average 165.6 pounds did we produce? The grand total? 47 pounds. About a pound and a quarter per person per day. Now, I know that many of you out there are doing much, much better than this, but this is very exciting news to me, and it makes me ask that question that I love so much--what is possible?

Green Globe and Zero Waste

At about this same time, I got to talking yet again with Holly Elmore, who is the founder and director of the Green Foodservice Alliance. She helped establish the Zero Waste Zone in downtown Atlanta (here is Holly's blog), and now Zero Waste Zones have been formed in a few other parts of Atlanta as well.

Per Holly's suggestion, I met with the Green Team of the Crowne Plaza Ravinia last week (which was started by a woman passionate about sustainability named Elisaveta Dimova, who moved to the United States from Bulgaria about ten years ago). This hotel is right here in the City of Dunwoody. We discussed the sustainability initiatives that they practice that have enabled that hotel to become the first hotel in the state of Georgia to receive Green Globe certification. And yes, they compost their foodservice green waste. They are, as far as I'm concerned, the stake in the ground for a Zero Waste Zone for the City of Dunwoody, although that hasn't been officially designated (yet!). And wouldn't it be nice to package and brand that finished black gold as City of Dunwoody compost and sell it to businesses and individuals, with a percentage of proceeds going to school and community gardens?

Terry Cunningham at the Finish Line of the NYC Marathon!

What is possible? What is possible? What is possible?

This question ran through my head like a mantra this week. And then just as things tend to happen, I got an email from my old boss at Turner Broadcasting (and good friend across miles and years), Terry Cunningham, who moved to Bozeman, Montana about 15 years ago. Terry writes for several publications, and he is one of my favorite writers ever. Really. The man should be much more famous than he is. (Agents, take note.)

Anyway, while "what is possible?" has been running through my mind, Terry had been running through the five boroughs of New York City! Yes, this former smoker whose idea of a workout was riding a golf cart somehow managed to run the New York City marathon! Here is the article he wrote just prior to running it. My favorite lines are the ones about his running style being "loitering," his body shape being "snacker," and his unique ability to come in second-to-last in every race he has run requiring a rare combination of sloth and cunning.

I emailed Terry to find out exactly what happened at the race. Here is what he said:

The Marathon was a blast! It was an overwhelming experience and I still have a goofy ear-to-ear grin on my face. My time (4:31:25) was better than I had anticipated. It’s not “fast” by any stretch, but for me, it was a pleasant surprise. I used a good training program I found online and training at 4,750 feet probably helped, but it’s the NYC crowds that pull you through. When I realized at mile 21 that I was actually going to finish and have a better time than my training runs would indicate, it was quite a relief. I’m a slow guy, but I’m a happy slow guy. For the record, I think I finished in 26,187th place, and there were 43,700 finishers.

And, for the record? Terry came in second-to-last out of the three runners from Bozeman.

So, what is possible? A ton of food is possible. The City of Dunwoody participating in a Zero Waste Zone is possible. And Terry Cunningham at the finish line of the New York City marathon is possible. In my book (which has yet to be published, by the way. Hey, agents, how about a two-author deal? Oh, and add Terry's and my friend, Brad, okay?), that means just about anything is.

DeKalb County, Georgia, USA, Joins Other School Districts Nationwide That Are Restoring Children's Right to Recess

2009-11-03T13:22:00.023-05:00

BREAKING NEWS

ATLANTA, GA--
The DeKalb County Board of Education voted last night in favor of mandatory, daily unstructured recess of at least 15 minutes, preferably outdoors, that cannot be taken away for any reason, for all students in grades K-5 in DeKalb County public schools. It also stipulated that recess would be at the principal's discretion for all students in grades 6-8.

The DeKalb County School System [DCSS] is a metropolitan Atlanta public school system located in the second largest county in the state of Georgia. DeKalb County, one of the most culturally diverse counties in the nation, has a student enrollment of approximately 100,000 students in 153 schools and centers, according to the DCSS website.

For those of you not in the United States or who think that 15 minutes is so short it's a joke, please note that year after year, more and more children in the United States get absolutely no recess at all, or they have it taken away as a punishment or for other reasons. The pressures and demands of No Child Left Behind legislation have resulted in an obsessive fixation with "teaching to the test." In the meantime, childhood obesity is skyrocketing, behavior issues are through the roof, and our kids are increasingly disconnected from fresh air and from the developmental value of unstructured play. Parents nationwide have been advocating for the return of recess, and I am proud to have been just one of the many, many voices that supported this effort.

In addition to the many benefits of unstructured outdoor play, I believe it to be a critical building block of environmental stewardship.

Here is a post with questions you can ask and actions you can take, plus some helpful links for those of you who are advocating for recess in your school districts.

Opening Windows

2009-11-01T05:08:00.025-05:00

This is Dr. Flagler. She teaches inner-city children with emotional and behavioral development issues. I met her this week because her window was the only one open and I was standing outside it.

FYI, here's what that little pink note on the window says:

I was standing outside it because I was touring the new native wildlife habitat that sustainable landscape designer Lindsey Mann created at an impressive middle school (where the morning announcements end with the song "Ain't No Stoppin' Up Now"), surrounded by homes that are boarded up or in desperate need of repair. Here are two houses directly across the street from where I was standing:

Dr. Flagler leaned out the school window to thank Lindsey for what she had done. I asked her if she has always been opening her window, and she said no, that it's just since the wildlife habitat went in. She mentioned that she takes her students out there for lunch. She suggested that she and her students add some fish to the little pond. She offered to be the caretaker of the pond motor, which Lindsey had been hesitant to add unless someone was going to care for it. She said what Lindsey had done had made a difference.

Here's what Lindsey had done (two views):

Lindsey and I sat and talked for a long time. She showed me the river oats and the lavender and the other native and edible ecosystem-appropriate plants she had chosen for this space, plants that will fill in and flourish in the next few years to create a haven for butterflies and birds, and for children. Here is the plan:

That night, at dinner at home, I showed the photos of the houses to my daughters. My younger one commented, "Okay, well, they don't look so great now, but they certainly have potential."

Potential.

I thought of Dr. Flagler and the four middle-school boys whom she introduced to us, who poked their heads out the window, too, and waved. Who asked Lindsey if she was the one who wore the hat whom they had seen before. Who smiled big and broad when talking about the serene, green space in front of them. Who may have lived in one of those houses, or in the apartments across the litter-strewn field.

I thought of windows that should not be open, yet are. I thought of what would happen if everyone, everywhere had a space like this to call his or her own.

I asked Lindsey if I could see more of her work. I want to see what sustainably designed landscapes can do to change the world. One child. One teacher. One open window at a time.

We're going to visit proposed urban farm locations for the United Methodist Children's Home and the City of Decatur this week. Stay tuned!

And keep opening windows.

"I Don't Supervise, Pattie. I Free People."

2009-10-25T05:02:00.027-04:00

So, I have to be honest with you, there's some strife in the community garden. Power. Personalities. Pace. Even the possibility that grown-ups who have agreed to the mission and methods of this organic garden are sneaking in petroleum-based fertilizers, which, of course, would mean, if true, we could no longer assure those particular plots as organic to future gardeners. I go out to the fifteen beds of my kitchen garden--a full quarter the size of the community garden--and revel in the peace and privacy of it. It's like a community garden without people. Sort of heavenly, isn't it?

Or is it?

I thought maybe my work was done at the community garden, that I'm a start-up person, that it was time to move on and start the next thing, to leave the bickering to others. But considering the garden has only been open two months (if you can believe it), that seems awfully premature, don't you think? How can I help my community take positive steps forward if I don't even stay engaged? How can I help myself grow and change if I don't allow the lessons of this journey to reveal themselves to me? How can I deny myself the opportunity of wrestling through the challenges? How can I distance myself from something I have grown to love?

And so, it has been a whirlwind week of trying to focus on positive intention, compassion, and generosity. It has involved reading, talking, inspirational movie-watching (thanks, Angela), yoga, walking, and lots and lots of letting go. It has involved digging in my garden and digging deep in my soul. It has involved moments of just showing up when that was the most I could offer. And it has involved stepping back, especially when my teenage daughter said to me, "Wow, Mom, when did your life become such a soap opera?" She knows I don't live this way, with out-of-control interpersonal drama. I left that long ago when I left my corporate jobs. After 14 years of running my own business, I have gotten used to my solitary, entrepreneurial ways of working. This whole group-decision-making process is contradictory to my basic operating style, and frankly, is hard for me.

The moment of truth came the other day, unexpectedly, as truth tends to do. I had asked several garden members to join Team Beer Compost, to help toss those spent grains from the brewery with wood chips and leaves so that others on the garden board of directors didn't need to worry about it. Several said immediate yeses, and I planned on meeting one of them today. Yet a few days ago, we ran into each other in the garden and got to talking. He embraced the challenge so fully that I asked him, "So will you supervise this project?"

He answered me immediately, without even thinking.

"I don't supervise, Pattie," he stated. "I free people."

I free people.

I free people.

The words punctured the air. Honestly, I couldn't speak.

And so, of course, I've been rolling those words around in my head ever since, and wondering:

How do I find a way to work within the ever-growing list of rules and policies and procedures that are developing around this garden to help free people, and in doing so, to free myself?

Yesterday, I stopped by a community garden in a nearby city and was surprised to find a lock on the gate where there hadn't been one before. My research has shown that community gardens with locks on them actually experience increased vandalism than those without. Mike, if you're reading this, can you shed some light on why that garden now has a lock? Is it a problem that has yet to rear its head at ours, but for which I need to mentally prepare?

Or is your just-a-few-months-older-than-ours garden experiencing a similar lock-down on letting go and trusting the journey, too?

How can we free people to achieve the seemingly impossible? How can we let go and soar? Does the lack of a strong, oppressive thumb inevitably lead to anarchy? Or could it, perhaps, lead to something far more beautiful than we can currently imagine?

(P.S. The photo at the top is not from our community garden. It is from the location we had been previously considering for the garden, a place still under lock and key.)

You Trust That One Day You Will Harvest Fruit

2009-10-18T06:08:00.023-04:00

Too many, too many, too many commitments this week. Three evening meetings that left this morning person wanting to stick pins in my eyes and beg for mercy. Too busy to attend the strawberry growing class at Farmer D's. And too darn sick of our endless rain to connect long enough and well enough with either of the gardens (my home one and the community garden).

On my way to pick up my Riverview Farms CSA box mid-week, I stopped by Farmer D's and got into a long talk with his new store manager, Darby, a young farmer from Vermont who just moved here and must be shocked at our rain and cold, especially so early in October. Darby gave me the crash course in organic strawberry growing in the South (how she knows this already, I don't know, and here I am, having left New York City twenty years ago TODAY). I ended up buying a flat of strawberries, pre-holed landscape cloth and the hardware to attach the cloth to a raised bed. I knew Bob was building the raised bed this week and now I would have the rest of what we needed to get Farmer Bob's Stawberry Patch in place ("I used to hang out with zoning lawyers," Bob told me, "and now I hang out with gardeners and farmers. When did this happen?")

After a city comprehensive plan steering committee meeting, in the dark, rainy night, I showed Bob the strawberry flat in the glass-paned hatchback of my Prius and I got to thinking how well they were doing there, warm and dry, and the next logical thought, of course, was, "Hey, why can't I just drive around all winter with a small raised bed of lettuces in my trunk as a greenhouse?" These are the kinds of things I convince myself are good ideas.

And then, Saturday morning, after a full Friday of endless emails trying to solve what seemed to be one problem after another and a final email I sent that said, simply, "My brain hurts," I came to dig in the garden, even though it was an "official garden workday," even though I "should" have been mulching or scraping paint from the pavilion.

Bob put the bed together (and I have to tell you, one of the funniest emails I got all week was from him, when he responded to mine with "There's a joke in there but I will definitely let it slide." Mine had said, "We need your power tool to attach the landscape cloth to the bed—I have the hardware"). We added the landscape cloth (no drip line as recommended in the directions handout Darby gave us) and then Rebecca (remember Rebecca?) and I tried to figure out how to plant the strawberry plugs. It was nearly impossible to dig a little hole.

"I don't know if I ever got the roots in," Rebecca told me. How could that be? But then I tried and I saw what she meant. We were doing all this work above the landscape cloth, not knowing if we were being effective underneath. I looked back at the directions and it said to poke a hole with the round handle of the trowel and then just drop the plug in the hole. Just drop the plug in the hole. As simple as that.

I stepped back and watched this brilliant and beautiful woman who dropped out of the sky into the hole in my life that has since been filled by this community garden. This gifted-certified high school teacher, who has taken some time off from work to care for her young children, is always diplomatic with difficulties, always quick with a laugh, and knows exactly who needs a kind word when. She is self-effacing in a generous way that makes everyone immediately comfortable, openly honest and insatiably inquisitive. I watched as she gently poked a hole and planted a plug. Poke and plant. Poke and plant. Not brain surgery, yet it healed my hurting brain.

I felt the stresses of the week wash away. I felt the issues of yesterday shrink in size. I felt like that's all there is to it, to life. You poke a hole and then you plant in it. You poke and plant. And when others poke those holes in your day, you still fill them the same way. You plant something good. Something fruitful. And you trust that one day, you will reap what you have sown.

As simple as that.