I participated in a well attended discussion this week organized by People’s Grocery. The focus was on food systems and local economy- the development of jobs in food and career readiness. I truly appreciate that People’s is focusing on career readiness. The question I have is are we ready for the change so many of us are precipitating?
 
We want land access, ok- we are getting it.
We want the rules to change so we can grow and sell food in the city, ok- happening.
We want to be able to have mobile food vending throughout our city- k.
We want to be able to cook food at home and sell it without pricy rent at a commercial kitchen…even this is possible (read more).
We want a legal environment that fosters local and sustainable economies and business ventures- cities around the nation are stepping up and supporting their people in this. Because this is what it will take, not just the laws to enable the businesses minded to start up.
 
The next stage is preparing ourselves to transition from these excellent startup entrepreneurial steps to permanent and healthy businesses. Can brave entrepreneurs taking the risk to start new local businesses be supported by the local dollar? Your dollar? Can they be supported to take the risk of setting up business in dilapidated commercial corridors that need the influx of stable business to attract investment into the community? Are we as a community ready to make this committement to them and to our city?
 
This is where the real transformation rests for our cites, environment and health. Its up to us to catch these opportunities and run with them. We do this and these creative businesses that have the ability to transform our communities will be more than a flash in the pan.

 
I love my new urban ag family at the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance. While we gather to organize resources to promote urban farming and to educate, most importantly, we gather to share wisdom of how to cultivate and manage livestock. The group attracts expertise in a number of areas- hunting, cultivating, composting, cooking, and much more. This month’s golden nugget was learning that one can make a rooting solution from the bark of a curly willow branch.
 
Apparently the bark lets off a rooting hormone that can be used to propagate. How cool is that. I have been soaking my branches in water to prompt roots of their own as I’d like to grow a willow (thought they get up to 30′ so I’ll have to be careful about where it goes). However, I’ve also been using the water the branches are sitting in to water a Curry Pata plant I have (the leaves of a curry pata are used in Indian cooking – super delicious) recently transplanted.
 
After some reading, I have learned that one can brew a stronger tea by chopping the branches into 1′ pieces, covering them with boiling hot water and letting them sit overnight. You can then strain the water into a jar, cover and place in the fridge for up to two weeks.
 
Tis the season to get going with propagation so this lesson was perfectly timed!

Just learned of a great resource out in the inter nets. A website that offers tips on how to reduce food waste. This is a particularly fun topic for me as I like the challenge of making creative dishes out of leftovers. I love making a new dish that has ingredients that can be repurposed in dishes throughout the week. First because I dislike eating the same thing over and over and am not included to make one huge casserole that I eat all week. Secondly, because it does save time and effort to cook what I have without having to shop first. Not a big fan of shopping so this a real boon for me.
 
SF Chronicle used to have recipes in their Wednesday food section that had a master dish and then a preparation with leftovers for following days. Loved it!
 
That all said, the U.K. based website is Love Food Hate Waste. They offer an entire section on recipes with leftovers and a section saving time and money. Hard not to love them.

 
As cities move to support urban agriculture another layer of resource issue comes up, predominantly, land use. That is how to access land in the first place. This is assuming you are either expanding beyond your own backyard or you don’t have a space and having been eyeing the blighted lot down the street for years.
 
Lots of folks are working on this very issue of best way to access. I expect to see guidebooks issued and workshops held on the very topic over the next year. That said, the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance was generously given permission to use an amazing checklist of steps to take to inquire and access private and public land from The Essential Urban Farmer the new book by Novella Carpenter (author of Farm City) and Willow Rosenthal (founder of City Slicker Farms).
 
You can find it in their Land Access toolkit (click).
 
The book has many more fabulous resources. Its well worth the modest $25 they charge for it, you can get it here.

Well, its been about seven years that Dipak and I have kept our chicken coop. The maturity of a flock and years of use of a coop and run really shifts a persons practices from backyard chicken enthusiast to seasoned chicken keeper practicing agricultural techniques on a smaller scale. I guess this can be said about most complex undertakings after years of practice. You develop your callouses, you become more efficient and you discover new things- sometimes exciting, sometimes not. This is how I felt upon a major coop clean up. With the rains coming, I wanted to clear a thick layer of compacted dirty from the run. Its rich soil saturated with droppings and can be of some real use elsewhere in the garden. I also want to ensure odor control.
 
Upon digging, I noticed that the poultry wire running downward and into the ground (to prevent digging predators from getting to the birds) has decomposed and is beginning to open. Oh man. This means fence mending. Seems like this is one of the key chores in long term livestock keeping. My new chore on the horizon is to remove the 18″ of dirt from around the perimeter of the run (which the coop is within) and mend another section of wire to the run.
 
Let this serve as a word to the wise: each new habitat you are contemplating will mean another layer of maintenance. Think carefully when you are considering keeping livestock. There are subtleties that don’t come up in the books out there.

Can it be? Quiet El Cerrito takes a brave stance on raising and processing your own backyard livestock. They say no to a ban on slaughter.
 
Over the last two and half years the City Council and Environmental Quality Committee of quiet El Cerrito worked diligently to craft new laws that would facilitate sustainability and self sufficiency for their residents. As they went to a final vote in November 2011, the Oakland based vegan anti-urban farming group, Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter (N.O.B.S.) showed up to the El Cerrito city council meeting to demand a ban on being able to raise and process animals for food.
 
The local rag, The Patch, covered the evening of frightful tales and dramatic recordings played to the City Council. The City Council agreed to review the policy once again before it goes into affect April 6th, 2012. Since that time, City Attorney Sky Woodruff worked hard on possible legal frameworks for the city to adopt. These are highly informative as was his presentation on the matter at last night’s City Council meeting.
 
As a result, the city decided to keep the increased nuisance laws as they are and not take away the choice, or the rights, of their residents. In fact, outgoing Mayor Ann Cheng said she believes in the common sense of El Cerritans. She trusts them to be responsible. Now Councilmember, Cheng spoke with respect and trust for the residents of her city. Imagine that.
 
I certainly hope the City of Oakland can take note from this example.

Urban farmers vs. NIMBYist vegans, round one

 
BY CHRISTOPHER MIMS
Featured on gristlist: 6 FEB 2012 9:02 AM
 
Urban farmers are raising and slaughtering their own livestock, and a shadowy organization called Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter is up in arms about it. Writing at Mother Jones, Keira Butler gets the scoop on what’s sure to be the biggest civil war in the Bobo universe since the great “tomatoes in winter: is it OK as long as they’re local?” debate of ’09.

This bunch of NOBS has taken the time to put together a flyer and a website in opposition to urban farming — a tiny subset of farming that looks even more harmless when you consider the awful state of animal welfare in industrial agriculture. Sure, we may be talking about a minuscule number of animals that are being hand-raised in humane living situations, while the vast majority of our meat comes from deplorable conditions … but on the other hand, the NOBS members’ kids might have to think about a chicken getting killed! MAN THE TREBUCHETS.

At Grist we love us some vegetarianism, but it’s clear that the noslaughter.org site was put together by folks who aren’t objecting to where these animals were raised so much as to the fact that they were raised at all. Articles on the site from VegNews go on about “unnecesary suffering” and the like — dog whistles for folks who are morally opposed to eating meat in the first place.

Which is fine! I get it, there’s a moral case to be made for vegetarianism. But if the goal is reducing the quantity of suffering in the universe, this is clearly a case in which, even by the movement’s own goals, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
 
Read the original article here.

Ok. Finally harvested half the honey. It was a multi-staged process that took a week. I am at 25lbs right now. Thats about $125, great! Well, minus the jar I gifted to Mr. Danny Glover, cuz you know, its Danny Glover. Mr. Glover is an excellent conversationalist preferring topics of social change and human rights. In fact, turns out he did an event a while back with Food First. Doesn’t surprise me.
 
What did surprise me was this morning’s news. San Diego, CA has approved an urban agriculture plan for its residents which includes fowl, goats and bees. “Last March, the city received a $50,000 grant to promote healthier living and urban agriculture. On Tuesday, the City Council voted 8-0 to make it easier for residents to grow and sell food, as well as simplify rules for residents to keep chickens, goats and bees.”
 
There is a great summary table of their regulations which makes it much easier to decipher what you can and cannot do.
 
If conservative San Diego is willing to support their community to grow and raise their own food (especially during an economic downturn), I am sure Oakland will as well once the ordinance is proposed.

Many moons ago I read some journals that reported on the work of Robert Lustig. In 2008, his was one of the singular voices out there claiming that the behaviors that lead to obesity are not necessary the onus of the individual. Rather it may be the result of an unhealthy environment. This is especially true in the case of children.

Upon recently reading Weighing In by Julie Guthman, I am reminded again that indeed there are many factors beyond just a persons individual action that have affected the obesity rates in the United States. In fact, she goes so far as to say that the unequal presence of these factors is food injustice. She includes in her thesis a bullet list of what she believes are factors leading to the rise in obesity. A few of which are:

The built environment reflects existing social relationships and political-economic dynamics, including racial and class patterns in size, more than it creates them.

Food is cheap because of deeply rooted geopolitical and political economic interests that have encouraged overproduction and failed to regulate food production for health, safety, and welfare concerns.

Eating behaviors are mediated by a more complex set of social factors than education and access; in any case, it is unlikely that the association of alternative food [organic, local etc] and thinness comes to be through individual diets of alternative foods.

Which brings me to my next point. Celebrity chef, Paula Deen, who is known for her over the top decadent food preparations, including a hamburger in a bun of Krispy Kreme Donuts, has announced that she had Type II Diabetes. I have a sibling who LOVES Paula Deen. We argue about her because I say her recipes are disgusting, look bad, unhealthy and irresponsible. My sibling argues that they taste good and Paula Deen is so fun. I’ve argued that Deen’s husband has heart disease and he doesn’t eat her food (I learned this listening to a radio interview with Deen). Now this. Its not bad enough that she has Type II but she’s kept it secret from the public for two years in order to line up a pharmaceutical sponsor before going public.

I don’t blame Ms. Deen for our national health. However, I do think she has acted irresponsibly. I also think she represents values that have lead to the ill health of a nation, and at the end of the day, 2 + 2 does in fact equal 4.

I have to admit this is the first year where the cold weather is a serious deterrent to my outside activity. I still haven’t pulled my dead tomato plants out. In fact, my planting beds are a jumbled mess right now.

January is the last month I can leave anything sitting. February is soon enough to start onions, garlic, potatoes. Though I do wonder what is to come weather wise as December and January have been so dry. I suspect February and March will be a deluge of all the pent up rain.  So may not be the best time to plant roots. I did notice my raspberries are enjoying a spurt of growth. Unbelievable to me still that I have raspberries growing at my house. They seem to exotic to me.

Though I have been indoors staying warm more, I have been busy there. Some home restoration projects and I finally got around to making candles with the wax I have been saving. It was insanely easy and only mildly messy. I looking to these gorgeous and delightful smelling candles as inspiration to kindle the fire I need to tackle my overgrown beds. That and I recently listened to a story on The Moth (my all time favorite podcast) told by Aimee Mullins (view/listen here) which led me to this TED Talk by her. A definite watch if you are seeking inspiration: