Vigil against Churches Chicken

• Join us for a vigil on Thursday, September 11th around 6 pm
• at the site of the proposed Church’s Chicken at 17th and North.

Invite your neighbors and concerned citizens from across Milwaukee to come together peacefully to make a stand for the health of a community. And we mean health in the broadest, deepest sense of the word: individual and community health.

If Church’s Chicken should come to the corner, it is business as usual. Since 1982, this location as a fast food restaurant has attracted criminal activity during and after business hours. Based on our previous experience with *every* one of the earlier fast-food operations, this site attracts a clientèl that establishes turf and settles arguments with guns. We have the bullet holes in adjacent homes to demonstrate that reality.

No security system of cameras, regardless of its sophistication and quality, will stop that action. Those systems simply record it; and that is not protection enough for us.

We are striving to improve the quality of property uses in our neighborhood. Please see the Journal Article http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=778274

We are FOR change.
We are working to change this place from a destination for troubled behaviors and unhealthy options to a community for commerce and traditional neighborhood services. Neighbors have invested over $20m to rehab vintage homes and built new ones. We planned with the City for change to revitalize our community. We plant gardens and work for fruitful harvest. We have risked our personal safety for the common good. Given a vacant property at 1635 West North Avenue, *this* is the time to reach for a higher and better and healthier use.

We are for business and we’re certainly for jobs. We are also FOR choices. Healthy Choices. 80% of the choices to purchase food in our neighborhood are located in fast food restaurants and convenience stores. If this were a neighborhood with many fresh, quality, affordable groceries available to the community, this would be a different conversation. We imagine there wasn’t a lot of pushback when Church’s came to Capitol Drive and Popeye’s is already across the street. It is primarily a commercial area with food choices. Outpost Natural Foods is a block away. And there are other grocery stores right within reach.

It’s time to change:

Not another fast food restaurant at 17th and North Avenue.

We deserve so much better. Come out. Bring friends. Let us stand together!

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Wall Street Journal Discovers Urban Agriculture in Oakland!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121926371492857735.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

A Garden Grows in Oakland
West Oakland, a historically industrial and impoverished neighborhood, has become an unlikely host to the eco-foods movement

By BOBBY WHITE
August 26, 2008; Page A15

OAKLAND, Calif. — Since the end of World War II, the west side of this city has struggled to break away from its industrial roots. Sandwiched between the city’s downtown corridor and the busy Port of Oakland, West Oakland is overwrought with old railways and abandoned warehouses. Not one supermarket can be found in the eight-square-mile area, and 60% of the neighborhood’s 20,000 residents live below the poverty line.

Since 2001, more than 80 urban farms have been quietly cultivated in Oakland, Calif., amid dilapidated buildings, railways and trucking depots. WSJ’s Bobby White reports.

Yet, amidst the snaking freeways and dilapidated buildings, a bit of green is growing. Since 2001, more than 80 urban farms have been cultivated in the backyards and vacant lots of West Oakland. Produce from zucchini to watermelon is grown for consumption by local residents; goats and chickens are raised on some farms. Last year, more than 10,000 pounds of produce was harvested, according to Oakland’s City Slicker Farms, which is at the epicenter of the neighborhood’s urban-farm push.

“We’re about feeding the community and teaching it to feed and sustain itself,” says Barbara Finnin, executive director of City Slicker Farms.

The neighborhood’s efforts mirror a larger eco-gastronomy initiative, the Slow Food movement, started in Italy in 1986 by food writer Carlo Petrini, and championed in the U.S. by the likes of Berkeley-based chef Alice Waters. Typically popular among those wealthy enough to afford price premiums, it promotes the consumption of organic, unprocessed and local foods, rather than factory-made fast foods. Slow Food has mainly been seen in the rise of farmers markets and eco-friendly restaurants.

Over Labor Day weekend, and just across the Bay from Oakland, San Francisco will play host to the first Slow Food U.S.A. festival, which will bring together chefs, food critics, non-profit organizations and healthy-living enthusiasts to promote sustainable eating. Festival officials (Ms. Waters is the founder) expect about 50,000 attendees to partake in wine tastings, food samples and lectures on the social and political change that Slow Food advocates call for.

But the Slow-Food movement has been criticized for being elitist and unrealistic for those who can’t afford pricey farmers markets and artisanal foods. The majority of Slow Food’s 80,000-strong membership comes from a wealthier demographic than that of West Oakland’s. Though community gardens have popped up in gentrified districts in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Berkeley, Calif., inner-city locales have largely remained on the fringe of Slow Food, even though they may be more in need of it.

Courtesy City Slicker Farms

City Slicker participant Lutricia Whitehead works in her backyard garden as her son, Jacobi Chambers, looks on.

Officials hope the West Oakland gardens will serve as an example of how the movement can be embraced by a range of income levels. They also hope the effort will help solve pressing health problems.

The farms, spearheaded by a collective of volunteers and non-profits, are meant to help combat the dearth of healthy-food outlets in the neighborhood. Until their creation, residents had to mostly rely on the more than 50 liquor and corner stores for groceries in the immediate area. The sale of fresh foods was a scarcity, and West Oakland has struggled with high rates of obesity. A 2007 report by the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative found that West Oakland residents can expect to live on average 10 years less than their counterparts living in neighboring Berkeley, and attributed the lack of sufficient food resources as a significant factor in this disparity.

“The demographic in West Oakland is different than our membership base, but the values they are pushing is well in line with our effort,” says Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation, a local subsidiary of Slow Food U.S.A. “If the movement should focus anywhere, it should be West Oakland. With no access to food, residents there are in need of healthy alternatives.”

Ms. Fernald says widening the movement has been difficult, partly because the message appeals to an affluent crowd that has the luxury of being more discretionary in their food choices.

West Oakland’s City Slicker Farms, a non-profit organization, was founded in 2001 by a local community activist to help combat blight in the neighborhood. Operated by about 200 volunteers and five full-time employees, the group bought a half-acre lot at a tax sale with the intention of planting produce and selling it to local residents at a discount. The outfit has now grown to five community farms throughout West Oakland, collectively churning out some 6,000 pounds of produce a year, it says.

Courtesy City Slicker Farms

A West Oakland resident buys produce at the community market.

City Slicker organizes community markets four times a week, where produce grown is sold on a three-tier scale according to income. Low-income residents pay what they can for their produce, while those who make more, pay near full price. A pound of beets costs $.50 for middle-tier residents, for instance, while it costs $1 for the wealthier. The market only caters to West Oakland residents. Nearly 300 people buy from the markets each week.

In 2005, the organization also started a backyard-garden program to teach residents how to set up their own farms and maintain them. Volunteers go to residencies that apply for the program, test soil and build two planter boxes, accompanied with trellises, soil, seedlings and mulch. Thus far, the organization says it has helped create 83 residential gardens, and last year, participants grew over 10,000 pounds of produce. When residents have an overabundance of a certain crop, they can barter for other produce at the weekly markets.

Ms. Finnin says the organization’s goal is to cultivate about 77 acres of land in Oakland. As of last year, the group has accomplished about 2% or 1.28 acres of its objective. Most of the organization’s funding comes from donations and individual contributions; the non-profit’s 2008 budget is about $150,000.

“They’ve not only saved me money,” says one participant, Lyzz Parker, “they’ve really improved my health.”

“What [City Slicker is] doing is a huge deal,” says Malo Hutson, an assistant professor of urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you don’t have access to fresh food and produce — just processed food — there are big health implications. Obesity, diabetes all stem from lack of the right foods.”

West Oakland resident Althea Reynolds now relies on the produce she grows in her backyard as the staples in her meals — and so do her eight elderly neighbors. Ms. Reynolds joined City Slicker’s backyard program in May, citing her diabetes as part of the impetus. She now harvests such produce as string beans, celery, okra, tomatoes, beets, spinach and squash. Many of her older neighbors have a hard time getting to the grocery store, she says, so she often cooks meals from the garden for them, too.

“Rarely do some of my neighbors get something as fresh as what comes out of my backyard,” says Ms. Reynolds. “It’s a welcome change. Whenever they see me they want to know when I’m cooking another batch of collard greens or spinach.”

• Go to WSJ.com/Food Aug. 29 – Sept. 1 to read dispatches from San Francisco’s Slow Food festival.

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Announcing Eating Liberally!

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Eating Liberally will begin meeting this September!

This newest liberal-minded social group offers something not found at Drinking Liberally — food! And as often as we can get it, food that was locally grown. Imagine the good conversations you’ve had at DL, suffused with the sights and smells of some of our favorite local eateries. Sound good? Here’s the low-down:

• Eating Liberally meets on the FIRST Wednesday of each month. (D.L. meets an hour later on the third Wednesday.)

• Our initial get-together will be at 6PM on Wednesday, September 3 at Transfer, 101 W. Mitchell Street. See below for details.

• We plan to eat at a different restaurant each time, some west, some south. We will come back to Transfer every few months.

• Bring your kids and friends; It’s all-ages!

• We plan to eat at local farmers markets in the summer of 2009!

The first get-together will be on September 3 at Transfer Pizzeria Cafe, located at at 101 W. Mitchell Street at the intersection of First & Mitchell. On Transfer’s “Walker Rebate Wednesdays” — which happens to be when Eating Liberally meets — anyone who rides the bus or bikes to Transfer gets a 10% discount on their order. Finally, something you can thank Scott Walker for!

The next two Eating Liberally get-togethers will be on Wednesday, October 1 at Beans & Barley, 1901 E. North Avenue on Milwaukee’s upper east side, and a post-Election Day gathering on November 5 at Bella’s Fat Cat, 2737 S. Kinnickinnic Avenue in Bay View. (Hopefully we’ll have a lot to celebrate!) Then on December 3, we’ll round off the year back at Transfer.

In 2009, Eating Liberally plans to meet at Stone Fly Brewing Company, Maxie’s Southern Comfort, and Rice Palace Asian Cuisine. We’ll make one last stop at Transfer in April ‘09 before going to farmers markets over the summer.

Finally, Jeff Bedel will be the primary host of Eating Liberally. Big thanks to Jeff, and I hope we all have a great time there.

“Eat, drink, and be liberal!”

Best,Jason.
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Back-to-School Clothing Swap at Riverwest Yogashala, 731 E Locust, Sunday, August 17, 1–3pm

Come to the gate at the side of the building into our lovely yard and garden. Bring your gently worn clothing and trade it in for a whole new wardrobe. Your $5 donation will support our scholarship fund. This summer we gave out 6 scholarships for the teen and prenatal yoga classes. We hope to give out more this fall with your help. Riverwest Yogashala is a nonprofit yoga center, promoting strength, clarity, and overall wellness through the practice of Iyengar yoga. Questions? Peggy Hong, 963–9587, peggy@riverwestyogashala.com

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”Isthmus” of Madison on Mayors Innovation Project

Farm talk with the Mayors Innovation Project
The urban agenda now includes local agriculture
Marc Eisen on Friday 08/15/2008

When Mayor Dave Cieslewicz convened a meeting of the Mayors Innovation Project recently in Madison, the topic of local food was high on the agenda for the gathering of progressive-minded city officials from across the country.
Even Cieslewicz, who served on the steering committee that put together the program for the two-day meeting at the Pyle Center on campus, was surprised at how often his fellow mayors told him they wanted to discuss local food systems.

“Urban local agriculture and the food movement have gone from a boutique Whole Foods experience to something that’s become integrated into the mainstream,” Cieslewicz observes. “It’s really become something almost everyone is into.”

Still, it seems funny to talk about America’s cities having farm policies. Almost a joke. But the mayors have good reasons for seeing farming as an urban issue.

Visiting officials got Saturday tours of two of Madison’s “best practices” efforts — the always impressive Dane County Farmers’ Market and Troy Gardens, the jewel of Madison’s extensive neighborhood garden offerings.

At the Pyle Center, they heard Stella Chao, from Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods, talk about her city’s greening efforts and Joan Reilly of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society discuss Philadelphia’s well-developed efforts to bring gardening programs to the central city.

But most impressive was Will Allen, the former professional basketball player who runs a mix of urban agriculture programs in the Milwaukee area and, increasingly, in other American cities.

Allen, whose parents were African American farmers outside of Washington, D.C., has done eye-opening work in bringing fresh food to inner-city neighborhoods and involving kids in urban agriculture. In 2005, Allen won a Leadership for a Changing World award from the Ford Foundation.

His nonprofit, called Growing Power, operates urban farms in Milwaukee and Chicago, including beekeeping, chicken raising and fish farming. It also sponsors the Rainbow Farmers Cooperative for 300 small family farmers, many of whom are Hmong, Latino, Amish or African American.

Hearing Allen speak of Growing Power, I thought of how similar it was to Madison’s Operation Fresh Start, which also builds community as it helps at-risk kids. Fresh Start teaches teenagers construction skills as they refurbish older homes in challenged neighborhoods. Allen works the same double-play. He brings good, locally grown food into impoverished neighborhoods where fast food and poor nutrition dominate the landscape. His kids, meanwhile, learn about gardening, nutrition, sustainable agriculture and commerce.

I think Allen understands one of the essential pleasures of gardening: It subtly changes your relationship to the world. Suddenly you have a tiny degree of food self-sufficiency.

Satya Rhodes-Conway, a senior associate with the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, which does policy work for the mayors group, had her own doubts about local food as an urban issue when she began research for the conference.

“The biggest thing for me was learning about the multiple benefits of urban agriculture,” she says. “I had just thought about it from the food production angle, but urban agriculture also is about greening neighborhoods, building community, providing job training and working with vulnerable populations.”

Madison has been early adopter in this effort. The city has an extensive network of 33 community gardens, serving more than 1,700 families, according to Chris Brockel of the Community Action Coalition.

The commission, which is largely federally funded, has its roots in the long-ago (and much derided) War on Poverty. It runs 18 of the gardens, leasing 20-by-20-foot plots and providing the infrastructure — plowing and water primarily — for the neighborhood-run gardens.

“Community development is the number-one reason we offer the gardens,” says Brockel. “The fact that people can grow their own food is wonderful, but it’s secondary for us.”

The same big-picture thinking is at work at the 31-acre Troy Gardens on the city’s north side. It mixes 184 community gardeners with a small farm and 30 units of co-housing sponsored by the Madison Area Land Trust. Sustainable living and environmental preservation are at the heart of the enterprise.

Part and parcel are the leadership programs offered in gardening and environmental work for teenagers and an award-winning garden for younger children. Will Allen would approve.

Programs like these have been quietly operating for years in Madison. What’s interesting now is how increasingly they are seen as part of a larger movement embracing organic farming, family farmers, local food systems, neighborhood enhancement and food security. The mayors conference helped strengthen those links.

_______________________________________________
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Green Sangha Flyer

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Advocating an Unusual Role for Trees

By JIM ROBBINS
Published: August 11, 2008
The New York Times

MERRICKVILLE, Ontario — Diana Beresford-Kroeger pointed to a towering wafer ash tree near her home.

The tree is a chemical factory, she explained, and its products are part of a sophisticated survival strategy. The flowers contain terpene oils, which repel mammals that might feed on them. But the ash needs to attract pollinators, and so it has a powerful lactone fragrance that appeals to large butterflies and honeybees. The chemicals in the wafer ash, in turn, she said, provide chemical protection for the butterflies from birds, making them taste bitter.

Many similar unseen chemical relationships are going on in the world around us. “These are at the heart of connectivity in nature,” she said.

Ms. Beresford-Kroeger, 63, is a native of Ireland who has bachelor’s degrees in medical biochemistry and botany, and has worked as a Ph.D.-level researcher at the University of Ottawa school of medicine, where she published several papers on the chemistry of artificial blood. She calls herself a renegade scientist, however, because she tries to bring together aboriginal healing, Western medicine and botany to advocate an unusual role for trees.

She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.

Wafer ash, for example, could be used in organic farming, she said, planted in hedgerows to attract butterflies away from crops. Black walnut and honey locusts could be planted along roads to absorb pollutants, she said.

“Her ideas are a rare, if not entirely new approach to natural history,” said Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard biologist who wrote the foreword for her 2003 book, “Arboretum America” (University of Michigan Press). “The science of selecting trees for different uses around the world has not been well studied.”

Miriam Rothschild, the British naturalist who died in 2005, wrote glowingly of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s idea of bioplanning and called it “one answer to ‘Silent Spring’ ” because it uses natural chemicals rather than synthetic ones.

But some of Ms. Beresford-Kroeger’s claims for the health effects of trees reach far outside the mainstream. Although some compounds found in trees do have medicinal properties and are the subject of research and treatment, she jumps beyond the evidence to say they also affect human health in their natural forms. The black walnut, for example, contains limonene, which is found in citrus fruit and elsewhere and has been shown to have anticancer effects in some studies of laboratory animals. Ms. Beresford-Kroeger has suggested, without evidence, that limonene inhaled in aerosol form by humans will help prevent cancer.

David Lemkay, the general manager of the Canadian Forestry Association, a nonprofit group that promotes the sustainable use of Canada’s forests, is familiar with her work. “She holds fast to the notion that if you are in the aura of a black walnut tree there’s a healing effect,” Mr. Lemkay said. “It needs more science to be able to say that.”

Memory Elvin-Lewis, a professor of botany at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author, with her husband, Walter H. Lewis, of “Medical Botany: Plants Affecting Human Health” (2003, John Wiley & Sons), said such a role for trees could be true. In India, she said, compounds from neem trees are said to have anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties and are planted around hospitals and sanitariums. “It’s not implausible,” Dr. Elvin-Lewis said; it simply hasn’t been studied.

On a more solid scientific footing, Ms. Beresford-Kroeger is also concerned about the fate of the Northern forests because of overharvest and the destruction of ecosystems. Federal scientists estimate more than 93 percent of old growth has been cut. As forests are fragmented, they dry out, losing wildlife and insect species. As a result, subtle relationships, the nerve system of biodiversity, are breaking down before they have been studied.

“In a walk through old growth forest, there are thousands if not millions of chemicals and their synergistic effects with one another,” she said. “What trees do chemically in the environment is something we’re only beginning to understand.”

Trees also absorb pollutants from the ground, comb particulates from the air and house beneficial insects.

Some studies support a role for trees in human health. A recent study by researchers at Columbia found that children in neighborhoods that are tree-lined have asthma rates a quarter less than in neighborhoods without trees. The Center for Urban Forest Research estimates that each tree removes 1.5 pounds of pollutants from the air. Trees are also used to remove mercury and other pollutants from the ground, something called phytoremediation. And, of course, trees store carbon dioxide, which mitigates global warming.

Dr. Wilson, at Harvard, said that more research into the role of trees in the ecosystem was imperative and that it was alarming how little was known. “We need more research of this kind to use the things we have, such as trees, to their fullest,” he said.

Both Dr. Wilson and Ms. Beresford-Kroeger proposed using stock from old-growth forests for planting new forest in the hopes of taking advantage of good genetics. “There’s an enormous difference between old-growth forests and tree plantations,” Dr. Wilson said.

Ms. Beresford-Kroeger is famous in Canadian horticulture circles for her sprawling gardens, which she maintains with her husband, Christian Kroeger, and are often open to the public. She has 60,000 daffodils, more than 100 rare hellebores from Turkey and Iran and extremely rare peonies from China that are dark brown with red leaves and smell like chocolate.

And she grows more than 100 types of trees, including rare fir trees and Siberian cherry trees, and disease-resistant chestnuts, elms and butternut.

Ms. Beresford-Kroeger recently completed the book “Arboretum Borealis” about the boreal forest in Canada, which cuts across the northern half of the country. Canadian officials have recently announced plans to preserve 55 million acres — roughly half. “Trees are a living miracle,” Ms. Beresford-Kroeger said. “Leaves can take in carbon dioxide and create oxygen. And all creatures must have oxygen.”

Click here for original article with pictures and links.
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Farm bus creates stir inside Union Square

by amy zimmer / metro new york
AUG 12, 2008

Union Square. Scores of people walking through the Greenmarket here yesterday snapped photos of the curious-looking vehicle: two school buses welded together.

Daniel Bowman Simon used credit cards to buy the bus and now must pay the debt. Tonight, the group is hosting a fundraiser at Central Park’s Arsenal. The Who Farm plans to drive cross country to Slow Food Nation, a local food celebration in San Francisco on Labor Day weekend. (Photo: aharon rothschild)

Bernard Eliott, 30, initially thought it “was about accidents with kids.” Then he noticed the apples and plants. “It looks eco-friendly, hippie-ish.”

It’s the latest project of the Who Farm, the group that camped outside the Apple flagship store to buy new iPhones for John McCain and Barack Obama. They want the next president to turn the White House lawn into a working farm.

To spread their message of local, organic food they went to Vermont last week to buy the bus from Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s, who used the “topsy-turvy” bus during the primaries to show America’s “upside down” budget priorities.

Cohen listed the bus for $52,000, but knocked off $10,000 after meeting the Who Farm’s Daniel Bowman Simon, 28.

Simon’s group ripped off the roof to build a sunken one upon which they’re creating a small veggie farm, protected from the wind.

Original article here
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Community Gardens at Homeless Shelters

Dear Everyone,

This is my first time posting on Comfood, however I’ve been an “enthusiastic observer” for several months now and have been so impressed with the wealth of information that I have learned here. I have become a big fan of many of you. My current day job does not involve food or food policy in any way, but like so many people that contribute to this site, I love good, fresh, healthy food and believe that everyone should have access to it. Because of this, I recently began a project with The Growing Connection (TGC, www.thegrowingconnection.org) to introduce gardens to homeless shelters in the New Haven, CT area. TGC is part of the FAO/UN and has primarily worked to introduce gardening to school children worldwide. Their project gets children involved in cultivating food and introduces the concept into the school curriculum so that kids understand what they are growing and how it is beneficial to them. They also establish “connections” with other school children across the globe with blogs. Kids here in New Haven, for example, are blogging with students in Ghana and Chicago to discuss their gardening experiences, and life. I believed the TGC concept would be ideal for shelters because it often involves growing food in Earth Boxes (www.earthbox.com), which are highly efficient, use only ~20% of the water normally used in traditional gardens, and involve little if any weeding. They also eliminate the need for a large plot of land or healthy soil, although I’ve had the soil tested at both sites for pH and nutrients and am now testing it for heavy metals in the event that they do want to plant directly in the ground someday.

With the shelter gardens, the idea is to introduce more fresh, local produce to the residents as well as to hopefully inspire some of them to learn about growing food and potentially use that as a means to breaking the cycle of poverty and homelessness. The shelters receive many generous donations in many forms, but with the current food and energy crises, and the pinch felt by food shelters and pantries, I hoped this would help to alleviate some of that need.

In addition, one of the shelters has already sold some of its local, organic basil and Italian chard to a local vegetarian restaurant, so this could potentially be a way to generate revenue for the shelters.

We’ve been fortunate in that we’ve received generous donations to help us launch these projects. Total Fence (www.totalfencellc.com) from New Haven, CT donated and installed 7 foot tall chain link fences at both shelters. Urban Oaks (http://www.blog.urbanoaks.org), an organic nursery in New Britain, CT and Claire Criscuolo from Claire’s Cornercopia (http://www.clairescornercopia.com) in New Haven, CT both generously donated organic seedlings. We also grew some of the seedlings ourselves. And the local Agway in North Haven, CT donated bamboo stakes for the tomato plants. The shelters purchased the Earth Boxes either through grant money, or through a donation, however these projects could obviously be carried out without the use of Earth Boxes specifically. I have to say, though, the plants are doing wonderfully in these boxes with very little maintenance.

There are certainly challenges to these do-it-yourself projects and I see this year as a learning experience for sure. One is to get the residents involved in the gardening, particularly if their stay is transient which is often the case. One of the sites, Stepping Stone, however, is a transitional housing site which is part of Christian Community Action (www.ccahelping.org). Families can live there for up to two years, which allows them to be present through one or two growing seasons. The other is Life Haven (www.lifehaven.org) which is a shelter for pregnant women or women with children and the moms often stay for up to 6 months. Having them interested in eating what’s in the garden is also a consideration. Claire (above) has offered to conduct a cooking class with some of the residents to introduce some quick ideas for using what’s in the garden. I’ll also be talking to the families at a shelter meeting next week to get feedback from them and to find out exactly what they’d like to grow in their garden. We got started a little late this year, however the plan would be for the shelters to raise all their own seedlings next year. Still, I’m taking this one day at a time and realize that each shelter is a unique project. I’ve also contacted some soup kitchens in the area to see if they’d be interested in starting gardens.

If anyone is interested in TGC, you can contact either Bob Patterson (robert.patterson@fao.org), or Amy McMillen (amy.mcmillen@fao.org). Also, if anyone has ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear from you.

Thanks to everyone and best wishes,

Linda DiBella
203 641 5628
more photos can be seen here
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Major Media Contact Information for Green Activist

ABC News
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Phone: 212–456–7777
D.C. Bureau phone: 202–222–7777
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ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings:
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Nightline:
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ABC’s Good Morning America:
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CBS

CBS News
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60 Minutes II:
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CNBC
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CNN
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Crossfire
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Fox News Channel
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NBC
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NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw:
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NBC News’ Today:
Phone: 212–664–4602 or 202–885–4231
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Dateline NBC
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Public Broadcasting

PBS
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The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
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All Things Considered:
Phone: 202–513–2110
E-mail: atc@npr.org

Morning Edition:
Phone: 202–513–2150
Fax: 202–513–3329
E-mail: morning@npr.org

National Newspapers

Los Angeles Times
202 West First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: 800–528–4637 or 213–237–5000
Fax: 213–237–4712
E-mail: letters@latimes.com

New York Times
229 W. 43rd St., New York, NY 10036
Phone: 212–556–1234
Fax: 212–556–3690
D.C. Bureau phone: 202–862–0300
E-mail: letters@nytimes.com

USA Today
1000 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22229
Phone: 800–872–0001 or 703–276–3651
Fax: 703–247–3108
E-mail: editor@usatoday.com

Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty St., New York, NY 10281
Phone: 212–416–2000
Fax: 212–416–2658
E-mail: editors@interactive.wsj.com

Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW, Washington, DC 20071
Phone: 202–334–6000
Fax: 202–334–5269
E-mail: ombudsman@washpost.com

Associated Press
50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020
Phone: 212–621–1500
Fax: 212–621–7523
D.C. Bureau phone: 202–776–9400

Magazines

Newsweek
251 W 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212–445–4000
Fax: 212–445–5068
E-mail: letters@newsweek.com

Time
Time & Life Bldg., Rockefeller Center, New York, NY 10020
Phone: 212–522–1212
Fax: 212–522–0323
E-mail: letters@time.com

U.S. News & World Report
1050 Thomas Jefferson St., Washington, DC 20007
Phone: 202–955–2000
Fax: 202–955–2049
E-mail: letters@usnews.com

American Planners Urban Agriculture Charter

1. Develop plans, development regulations, and economic incentive programs to provide accessible and well-serviced sites for public markets, farmers markets, small scale processing facilities, and distribution centers for food produced in the region.
2. Encourage mixed-use neighborhood design and redevelopment to include small and mid-sized grocery stores, farmers markets, and community gardens to allow residents to grow their own food.
3. Prepare comprehensive plans and neighborhood plans that recognize community gardens, farm/garden stands, and farmers markets as desirable civic uses and provide sufficient space, infrastructure, and inter-modal transportation for such uses.
4. Support development of vegetable gardens, edible landscaping, and related infrastructure on publicly owned lands, such as schoolyards, parks and greenways, and tax-foreclosed properties
5. Provide incentives and special zoning provisions to integrate locally. supported agriculture (e.g., community gardens, urban agriculture, small farms) into existing settlements and new areas of residential development.
6. Explore possibilities for recycling food wastes through composting and bio-fuel development.

RUAF Paper on Key Issues and Courses of Action for City Policy Making re Urban Agriculture

http://www.ruaf.org/files/WP_02.pdf).

Farmworkers Emergency Food Drive 2008

Some of you may want to donate food to the LULAC Council 309 Farmworkers Emergency Food Drive 2008—see details below my signature.

Yo soy,

Enrique E. Figueroa, Ph.D., Director
Roberto Hernandez Center and
Assistant to the Provost for Lartino Affairs
University of Wisconsion, Milwuakee
Bolton Hall 183
P.O. Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201
414–229–3651, 229–6156, fax, 229–2250, 967–1604 [cell], figueroa@uwm.edu

---

Reminder:

Please bring your food item donations by Thursday. Volunteers will be collecting on Thursday afternoon. Thank you for your support.

Council 309

Farmworkers Emergency Food Drive

“helping hands for hands who feed us”

LULAC Council 309, comprised of UMOS employees, is sponsoring a Farmworkers Emergency Food Drive for the many migrant and seasonal farmworkers who have suffered the devastating effects of the recent rains and flooding in rural Wisconsin. Many families have been without work or income for several weeks, and have only recently been able to begin working in Wisconsin fields and canneries.

YOU CAN HELP these families in need by donating non perishable food items. This Farmworkers Emergency Food Drive will run from Monday, July 28th through Friday, August 8, 2008, with all donations to be transported to the annual UMOS Farmworker Appreciation Day event in Wautoma, WI.

Drop-off Locations: Central and Southeastern Job Centers & Corporate Headquarters. 2701 S. Chase Avenue, Milwaukee, WI. There will be food drive barrels and grocery bags placed at these locations. A volunteer team will pick them up at the designated locations.

Suggested Items

Canned Vegetables		Canned Fruit
Instant potatoes		Evaporated or Dry milk
Canned Meats		Pastas
Dry beans		Rice
Tomato sauce	or	paste Cereals

Contact persons:
Luis Garza 389–6097
Lety Keltz 389–6255
Carmen Granados 389–6005
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Seek to Peddle and Partner Green Career and Calling Adventures

Montezon Enterprises

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Alice’s Garden Shares the Harvest This Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m.

…AND Herbs, Corn, Eggplant, Collard Greens…
Join us at Alice’s Garden
as we…

Share The Harvest
Thursday, August 7
6pm to 8pm
20th & Garfield Streets.

As I type this I am savoring a fresh-baked ear of corn picked this morning from the garden. Join us on Thursday for a garden celebration!

6:00pm to 7:00pm Children’s Activities
6:15pm to 7:00pm Yoga
7:00pm to 8:00pm Sharing the Harvest

Cold drinks and snacks will be served.

Bring a towel and water bottle if you plan to participate in the yoga class.

a rose opens because
she is the fragrance she loves
RUMI

Venice R. Williams
cell: 414.687.0122

SeedFolks Youth Ministry
3617 N. 48th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53216

Alice’s Garden
20th & Garfield Street

www.lutheransonline.com/lo/Kuji
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Invite to Harvest Every Other Carrot and Beat at Gods Hill City Farm

Dear All,

You are invited to harvest every other carrot and every other beat from that section of Gods Hill City Farm.

Those who harvest carrots and/or beats are also welcome to a meals worth of fresh, natural lettuce whose names I know not(I’m just an intern), but whose taste many will vouch for.

Here are some pictures:

http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/Godshillcityfarm/HomePage

http://www.nonviolentworm.org/DiaryOfAWorm/20080731-Intense

Send an e-mail to Godsil.james@gmail.com if you are interested.

Rain Day August 2008
Milwaukee Wisconsin
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Report on East Nashville’s Humble Rental Duplex Gardens

Wonderful things are happening in Middle Tennessee, Nashville, and especially in my East Nashville Community. I am writing this as an inspiration, not as much as a brag, but I am also proud and hopeful. How audacious!

In January, I walked away from a well paying stressful job and an abusive boss, sick with depression and despair to a series of even worse jobs. Then got fired from sales (was not selling enough) and from appointment setting (was not setting enough appointments).

In my desperation, I prayed for purpose, and boy, did I receive!

I finally landed a job with a greenish (green by accident) company, again in sales, but not as much pressure, and this is something I can actually live with!

Due to not spending my every waking hour thinking about my job, I have been able to do volunteer work for food security movement, for community gardens, for local organic farmers market, for a food co-op movement. And then I got involved in an urban farm project. Finally, my life actually has meaning. TV has lost its hold on me.

There suddenly is an abundance of green things to choose from. I’ve befriended some hippies and other green types. Went tent camping in an organic orchard that has any kind of fruit tree one can imagine and then some. Going to a lake for a weekend of camping and fun later this month. Carpooling with gals, of course.

I have never been this poor, but neither have I ever been this happy!

I also started a little garden of my own, inspired by a neighbor’s flower garden. It then started to expand. Our landlord lets us dig as much as
we wish! I wake up at dawn and inspect the garden with my cats. It is watered with gray and rain water only. Watermelon, okra and sweet potatos are new plants to me. In addition to veggies and flowers, I have about 30 different herbs, and my garden is not that big. Two of my neighbors have since started their own little gardens. And the remaining two renters have potted plants. We all now have recycling containers as well. And there is a neat and tidy composter, Earth Machine, that our city sells at cost. My two cucumber plants produce enough for the six families.

Tomorrow, I am leading a community garden tour to some of our most precious gardens right here in the city. It will be hot, so the mint tea from my herb garden will come handy.

On August 30, we will have a Cool Cucumber Candle Light Martini Party in the Humble Rental Duplex Gardens, at dusk. Folks will bring their favorite martini glass, a plate, a cloth napkin (best napkin wins a prize) a dish or drink to share. I am making some of my weird Finnish food. Every party has to have some kind of curiosity, right?

Who says one person can not change the lives of others for the better? The way I see it: you only need to save one (and I am not talking about religion - but gardening, farming, and kindness to your neighbors). If we all would make the life of ONE person a bit better, maybe more meaningful, a bit less painful, what a life that would be!

Kate, on her soap box (the soap is from local organic farm!)

And…

Our city (mayor’s office) put out an environmental survey. They actually are trying to listen to folks. And folks are speaking. Bells Bend is a lovely farm land area in our county and one of the wealthiest families in town bought some land and is trying to develop it into a second city center. Really not economically feasible, as the downtown is already struggling and there are 2,000 plus condos on the market that are not selling, so we really do not need 5,000 more.

My sister in Finland pays about $10/gallon for gas. We will do the same. Probably sooner than we think. So my Florida and California produce will eventually come with a hefty price tag. Here in TN we can garden year around, we need to learn to eat seasonally, to can, to dry and otherwise preserve. I am just getting started with my fall garden for cool weather crops.

In TN we can grow even figs. I am trying to start plum trees from plums I got from a friend’s garden. There is a mulberry tree in the back, I made jam for the first time ever. The city park not too far has paw paw trees. All kinds of good stuff will grow. Peanuts, even ginger in a jar. My family in the old country is jealous for the long growing seasons, but I do miss my winter at times. And the food, definitely the food. Dad’s home made beer according to a stone age recipe (sahti), sheesh, I am making myself home-food-sick.

Kate

- The more you do, the more you CAN do! -
Lucille Ball
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The Bicycling Horticulturist

Posted by: “Nicole Bickham” at the Sustainable Wisconsin Yahoo group
Sat Aug 2, 2008 10:34 pm (PDT)
Ryan Nassichuk builds food gardens for people. His bicycle and trailer are
the sole transport for himself, tools, and materials - including soil and
plants! This horticulturist also builds container gardens and composters.
Tour a backyard garden in which a 6-week class of students filled raised
beds with soil, compost and fertilizer, did succession planting, and built a
low-cost composter. Recently Ryan has added free seed-sharing to his
wisdom-sharing, while continuing to propagate food gardens throughout
Vancouver.

Watch the video at:
http://www.wordpress.peakmoment.tv/conversations/?p=187#more-187

This reminded me of the program in California that we’ve talked about on
this list in the past (http://www.sfvictorygardens.org/). They delivered
garden start-up kits by bicycle around the city of San Francisco.

It also reminds me that a couple years ago there was a young man doing
organic lawn care and landscaping in the Milwaukee area (mostly east side I
think) using his bike & bike trailer (and only human-powered tools). Not
sure whether he’s still around, but his website is still functioning:
http://www.symbioticlifescaping.com/.
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