Call of the Wild

WG Leader Gina Olszowski's thesis honored at Chatham University

cdouglas — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:09:02 +0000

Gina Olszowski just received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Chatham University, where she was a Rachel Carson Fellow. Her thesis was selected as the best in her genre.

She writes: "I just started a new full-time job as an artist at a little company out here that makes home and garden gifts… designing products and working with paintings by licensed artists. It's nice to get back to having a paycheck and a little structure that requires me to get dressed in real clothes in the morning… haha, though I never thought I'd hear myself say so. I'm also planning on buffing up my thesis and trying to get some pieces of it published. Fingers crossed!"

Gina's Wild Gift project —" Now Coming to a Town Near You" — took a critical look at urban sprawl and the many problems it brings to a community. Mer mission was to inspire a change of heart and inspire readers to defend and preserve the unique character, quality of community, and purity of wildness in the places they called home. She sold over 600 copies of her book, which is now on its second printing. Since publication, she has been invited to speak at dozens of events ranging from green expos to college classrooms. A portion of the book’s proceeds benefitted The Conservation Foundation, a local nonprofit devoted to protecting farmland and open space that would otherwise be lost to development.

Ready, set, go!!! Watch Dave and Amy shove off on their North American Odyssey

cdouglas — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:01:49 +0000

Healthy Rainforest Honey - Check out the Kickstarter project

msamec — Wed, 23 May 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Linus Ita, a partner in the Wild Gift-supported improved cook stove program, has a new initative to conserve rainforest by building his bee farming business. He needs your help to launch it with Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/707615021/an-enduring-gift-healthy-r…

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Over 90% of the rainforest in West Africa has already disappeared. Here is a practical solution for protecting some of the remaining rainforest… championed by someone who has lived in it his entire life.

We hope to bring together at least 100 supporters for this initiative by the end of the month. The more raised, the more hives be can built and maintained, the more honey and other good stuff come into this world, and the more people get a bird's eye view of how rainforest honey gets made - from hive construction to finished product. So here's your chance to become a part of something really special!

What is it?

This idea comes from Linus Ita, an African farmer and conservation leader who lives right on the edge of some of the most endangered rainforest in the world. Five years ago, he started on a simple but BIG idea: help people build good livelihoods AND preserve their rainforest through bee farming.

It turns out the lush diversity of plants in the rainforest results in some incredible honey. You can imagine: bees foraging in some of the densest, most diverse forests in the world - filled with organic pineapple, banana, papaya, cocoa, and plants not even yet discovered - can create honey unique in both its taste and nutritional value. This honey is twice as amazing because it keeps poachers and loggers out of the rainforest, improves its biodiversity, and encourages natural watershed management… all while helping local people to make a good living by providing you with this delicious honey.

In the above video, Linus breaks down how he plans to go about scaling up his beekeeping, from the land he will protect to the establishment of a honey house for purification.

Linus's Goals

These last five years, Linus has been tending to dozens of hives and training others to do the same… with lots of learning and pretty good results. But "pretty good" does not do this idea justice. In 2012, he wants to improve the processing of the honey and scale up this initiative to at least 1000 hives. Linus is a social entrepreneur, not a charity. He is putting his own money into the operation, at least equal to this kickstarter goal.

See more details, including videos, at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/707615021/an-enduring-gift-healthy-r…

Related Links:

Healthy Rainforest Website

Wild Gift featured on KarmaTube.org

cdouglas — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:57:14 +0000

Tamarack Media's video about Wild Gift was recently featured on KarmaTube, a website that uses the power of the internet to bring positive stories and news to the world. Click here to see it.

Related Links:

A Wild Gift from KarmaTube

Wild Gift Leader Sarah Bellos featured in The Tennessean

sbellos — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:33:28 +0000

Young farmer lives off the land:Whites Creek resident Sarah Bellos gardens, raises chickens and creates naturally dyed fabrics

Read the full article here

Reporter Jennifer Justus gets together with one Nashville resident each month to talk about food and cooking.

May 2, 2012, The Tennessean.

Sarah Bellos says she’s not the type of person who can recall a long list of childhood memories, but she does remember the first time she pulled a carrot from the ground and tasted it.

“My mom cooked from scratch all the time, but because we weren’t getting stuff right out of the garden, (that carrot) was just so amazing,” she said.

Fast forward about 20 years, and Bellos, 29, stood in her kitchen surrounded by farm-fresh lettuces, onions with purple bulbs, scraggly fennel and carrots so muddy there would be no mistaking the origin. She invited us over to her Stoney Creek Farm for the latest installment of the Nashville Cooks series to show us how she prepares a healthful, fresh meal from scratch.

Even though some produce had come from farmer friends, Bellos is growing her own permaculture farm, an efficient, self-sustaining ecosystem, on the four acres behind her Whites Creek home — and she’s also been known to pull to the side of the road in her red pickup when she spies wild mulberries, persimmons or fennel. Who can blame her after having a taste? When she offered a chomp of wild fennel, the soft green fronds were so packed with licorice flavor they’d make a black jellybean taste as dull as a communion wafer.

“I’m into growing food a lot,” she said. “But I’m also into foraging.”

'The next frontier'

Bellos, to be clear, is into a lot of things.

A tour of her yard included a stop to gather eggs at her chicken coop, a look at her blueberry plants, a fig tree, vegetable garden, herb garden and beehives. Then we crossed a creek to a field where she plans to grow more plants for her natural dye business, Southern Hue. Bellos creates naturally dyed fabrics and keeps them on stock for designers or others who need them.

She admits it’s hard work, “but you’re doing something that could really help make a difference.” Crops for dye can be stored and sold when there’s a demand rather than wilting before your eyes at the farmers market. “Hopefully textiles are the next frontier,” she said.

In her exposed brick kitchen, a row of cookbooks rested on the window sill. Orange lilies added color to an heirloom table, and her mother’s paintings (she teaches art on Long Island) hang on the walls. From Bellos’ computer nearby, The Band drifted in softly.

Meanwhile, Bellos’ conversation flowed, and it’s packed with information. Between facts about natural dye, she offered tidbits on cooking.

She heated a dab of bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet. Then beef short ribs from Porter Road Butcher hit the pan.

“I asked them what’s the most undervalued piece of meat that’s awesome,” she said. “So I’ve been really into cooking them.”

Let them come to room temperature before cooking, she reminded. “The other thing I’ve learned about searing is it’s basically trapping a lot of the moisture.” And rather than poking with a fork, use tongs, placing the fattiest side down first.

After moving the seared ribs to a slow cooker, she added the carrots, garlic, onions and fennel to the skillet with a sizzle that soon perfumed the air with aroma so thick you’d swear you could bite it.

She deglazed with wine, and then added it all to the slow cooker with lentils and some stock. For dessert, she planned on making a syrup with foraged mulberries and topping them with soft sheep’s cheese called Brebis from the Bloomy Rind, where she works part-time. Or maybe she’d top it with whipped cream from Hatcher Family Dairy. Or maybe both. “I don’t really have a ton of rules,” she said.

Learning by doing

Though she’s at ease in the kitchen, she said cooking hasn’t traditionally been of primary interest. “I was always sort of a lazy cook,” she said. “Even this is in the Crock-Pot.”

But as she gained an appreciation for growing food, she cared more about how to cook it. “The good thing about eating fresh food is you don’t have to do much to it.”

These days she cooks nearly every day, and though she doesn’t always eat a lot of meat, she’s been learning about the different cuts by just diving right in to figure it out. “The only way you really learn is to just do the project,” she said.

Bellos took an interest in farming in college at Cornell. She switched majors from engineering to natural resources management after an internship on a farm in North Carolina. Then she ran Cornell’s farm before moving to Washington, D.C., to work in farming policy. But in Nashville she has found her way.

“There were actually people growing food,” she said of when she first decided to move here. “And I live 10 minutes from downtown.”

She hopes her farm can model how people can take better control of their food system. She blogs about her adventures at http://interdependencefarm.com, and she’ll soon hold a workshop with her farming partner, David Wells, on building a cob structure to serve as shed, greenhouse and coop.

And though she keeps her hands in lots of projects here, she also likes that she can spot a deer when she goes out for a run. She can snag a wild persimmon from the side of the road. She can have coffee down by the creek.

“What other city could I possibly choose?” she said. “I feel like I’m much more my authentic self being here.”

Contact Jennifer Justus at 259-8072 or jjustus@tennessean.com.

North American Odyssey featured in Idaho Mountain Express

cdouglas — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:57:00 +0000

Read news story here

Related Links:

Chasing the Wild Things

Wild Gift Alumni Aimee Gaines continues to make impact in Haiti

cdouglas — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:19:38 +0000

Read update on Aimee's work in Haiti here

Related Links:

Community Resilience in Haiti

Aimee Gaines Leader Profile

Wild Gift Social Entrepreneur Viraj Puri Gives Ted Talk

cdouglas — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:51:26 +0000

Watch it here!

Wild Gift Leader Amy Freeman launches into the Wild!!!

cdouglas — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:07:15 +0000

N E W S R E L E A S E

For Immediate Release Contact: Scott McPherson

May 8, 2012 312.882.2473

mcphersonpublicaffairs@gmail.com

WILDERNESS CLASSROOM BEGINS STAGE FIVE OF NORTH AMERICAN ODYSSEY

Grand Portage, MN- Wilderness Classroom Leaders Dave and Amy Freeman will embark on Stage 5 of the North American Odyssey when they push off by kayak on May 9th, 2012 from Grand Portage, Minnesota on Lake Superior. Stage 5 will take them along the North Shore of Lake Superior and then follow the historic fur trading routes to Montreal, where after 1300 miles of paddling they will arrive around July 1^st. They will make periodic visits to settlements along the way and are available for media interviews and presentations. Expedition photos and video are also available.

Dave and Amy will not be alone on their journey … Students, teachers, and learners of all ages will participate daily in the live expedition as photos, videos, and text are posted to www.NorthAmericanOdyssey.com via satellite. Students can communicate with the expedition team through email, online polls, and live chats. These interactive features give students the power to help make day-to-day decisions for the team and learn about the ecosystems of North America.

About The Wilderness Classroom

The Wilderness Classroom started with a simple idea: to improve students' core academic skills and appreciation for the environment by introducing elementary and middle school students to the wonders of exploration and wilderness travel.

Eight years and ten expeditions later, the Wilderness Classroom is a 501(c) 3 that reaches over 1,600 teachers and 60,000 students around the globe.

-more-

Our mission has never changed. We seek to instill a lifelong appreciation of the natural world while improving basic skills like reading, critical thinking, and communication by highlighting the joy of discovery.

Since it is usually unfeasible to load a classroom of 4th grade students onto a plane and fly them to remote locations, we use a combination of interactive internet-based learning tools on our website www.wildernessclassroom.com, teacher training, and live school programs to accomplish our mission.

About The North American Odyssey

On Earth Day (April 22) of 2010 Dave and Amy Freeman began a three year, 11,700-mile journey across North America by kayak, canoe, and dogsled. Their goal is to use their journey as a platform for gaining support and protection for North America’s waterways and wild places, while actively engaging over 100,000 elementary and middle school students in their journey though the website and live school assemblies.

“We want to educate people about the importance of making healthy choices that simplify life, reduce your global footprint, and provide quality time for friends, family, and outdoor pursuits. We hope to inspire people to make lifestyle changes that are environmentally sound and improve quality of life,” explained Dave.

Their odyssey began by kayak on the Pacific Coast studying temperate rainforests and marine life of the Pacific Northwest, but this was just the first in a series of six stages on their quest to highlight North America’s wildest places.

After kayaking 1,400 miles from Seattle, Washington to Skagway, Alaska, the team progressed over the history-studded mountains in the footsteps of the Klondike Gold Rush, to the home of Inuit along the Arctic Ocean where polar bears roam. From the Arctic Ocean they traveled by dog sled and canoe south through central Canada. Stage 5 involves kayaking across the Great Lakes and following the historic fur-trading route. Stage 6 will take them out to the ocean following the annual whale migration past the salt marshes and sea turtles of the Atlantic Coast, finishing in the mangroves and coral reefs of the Florida Keys in April of 2013.

Through lesson plans and daily Web updates, elementary and middle school students learn alongside the explorers through www.wildernessclassroom.com and adults can follow their progress through www.NorthAmericanOdyssey.com.

Follow the expedition on Twitter at @wildernessclass and Face Book at www.facebook.com/WildernessClassroom

Related Links:

North American Odyssey

The Wilderness Classroom

Ernest Hemingway's Grandaughter to donate partial proceeeds of Art Show to Wild Gift

cdouglas — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:17:14 +0000

Read full article here:

http://bit.ly/IpfcRO