yearofplenty

Food On the Table Conference in Moscow, ID | March 26-27, 2010

This conference looks great. It's sponsored by Rural Roots, a Moscow, ID based organization that promotes sustainable food and farming. Here's the scoop.

Join local growers, educators, sustainable food advocates, and community members as we collectively address our regional food system priorities in this unique "working" conference.

Friday Community Dinner at the 1912 Center (5:30 pm - 9 pm) | "Shepherding Change:  How Localizing Food can Transform the Landscape and our Communities"

Saturday Conference Sessions at the UI Idaho Commons (8 am - 5:30 pm)

Farm to Institution:  Integrating local food into restaurants, schools, hospitals and universities

Processing on the Palouse:  Bringing local meat and value-added products to market

Farming as a Business and Lifestyle:  Starting your farm and selling to your community

Backyard Bounty:  Increasing community self-sufficiency

View Conference Flyer

Friday dinner $20 | Saturday conference $20 (lunch not incl.) | Saturday lunch $15

Registration deadline is March 18 (Space is limited so register early!)

Two Great Inland Northwest Finds: backyardharvest.org and fields-of-grace.com

I'll be part of a panel for an upcoming conference put on by Inland Northwest Second Harvest. Two of the fellow panelists represent local grass roots groups that I was unaware of before my involvement with the conference.

Backyard Harvest is an organization started in Moscow, ID that promotes gathering, gleaning and growing foods in our backyards for local food banks. They now have chapters in Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, CA and Minneapolis. It looks like they are geared up to expand and extend their reach. It's a great effort, especially considering that according to one study 40-50% of edible foods are never eaten. Every year US households produce $43 billion worth of food waste.

Fields of Grace is a ministry of a church in Richland, WA where they promote gleaning foods in that rich agricultural region. As it says on their web site;

Begun in 2006 at West Side Church in Richland, WA, Fields of Grace has trained nearly 600 volunteers who have logged nearly 4,000 hours of service to harvest over 185,000 pounds of produce.

In Spokane we have the Plant a Row for the Hungry program where home gardeners are encouraged to plant an extra row in their garden to donate to Second Harvest. In return you get a receipt for $1.50/lb that is tax deductible. Last year they doubled the amount of food received as part of Plant a Row, totaling over 100,000 lbs. How about we shoot for doubling that this year and set a goal of 200,000 lbs? Who's up for it?

Millwood Community Garden Organizational Meeting, Thursday March 11

Plans are quickly coming together for a community garden on the southeast corner of Argonne and Maringo just across the street from Inland Empire Paper Mill. Go here for background information.

We will be holding an organizational meeting on Thursday, March 11 at 7pm at the Crossing Youth Center in Millwood, for anyone interested in learning more and possibly participating in this project. The preliminary plan is to have three uses on this corner lot; individual raised beds that people can sign up to use to grow your own veggies and plants, a large set of row crops to be grown and given to Second Harvest Food Bank, and wildflowers and native plants to serve as a buffer and border between the road and the garden. The circles pictured above would be pumpkin patches in honor of the fact that this piece of land has been known as the pumpkin patch from it's long time use previous to the death of the farmer who tended the land five years ago.

The Paper Mill, which owns the land, will provide a basic amount of water. I'm working with Dew Drop Sprinklers to put together a drip irrigation system. The greatest need is a core group of people in the community who want to help shepherd the project and get it started. We're also looking for partner businesses who want to help. There will be a nice sign for the 30,0000 plus cars to read as they go by every day and we're planning on including sponsors on the signage.

Go to Download Millwood Community Garden Proposal to read the initial proposal.

Email me at goody2230 (at) gmail (dot) com with questions or input.

Great Potential to "Green" Spokane at New Barr-Tech Composting Facility

Someone tipped me off to the new Barr-Tech composting facility southwest of Spokane in Lincoln County. I spoke with Ted Condon yesterday, one of the project leaders, and he filled in some of the details. The facility is just starting to come on line after getting all the infrastructure in place. Initially it will create compost from organic waste, but plans are in the works to also process food wastes via an Andgar high solids anaerobic digester to create energy. There is also the potential in the future for single stream recycling at the location.

I asked him about the potential of residential food waste composting and he described what could be the future of recycling in the Spokane Region. This new facility opens up the possibility of residences having three cans in front of their home; a large single stream recycling container ( a huge improvement over our current system), a large organic and green waste container full of garden waste and compostable bags filled with food waste, and the what would be a much smaller garbage can.

We're pulling together plans for the Millwood Community Garden on Inland Empire Paper land (more on this tomorrow) and I asked him if they might have some compost for us this summer. He explained that they won't have compost available for farmers, gardeners and landscapers until next Spring, but that they'd love to help in the future. He commented that they actually take spent wood chips from the Paper Mill and compost them. He also met with Second Harvest food bank yesterday to sort through the potential of composting their sizable amount of food waste. I don't usually have epiphanies while talking about waste management but I had one at this point in my conversation with Ted.

Imagine this; the Paper Mill and Second Harvest both provide inputs to Barr-Tech for composting, saving them money and keeping organic waste out of the garbage. Barr-Tech provides rich compost to the Millwood Community Garden on land owned by and directly across the river from the Paper Mill, to help grow food for Second Harvest Food Bank. It makes me want to sing Disney's "The Circle of Life," or Jack Johnsons, "Reduce, reuse and party on." 

So party on Spokane. Your composting future looks bright, or should I say dark, as in rich dark soil.

If you'd like to advocate for Spokane moving towards this kind of future in recycling call Spokane Regional Waste at 625-6580.

Attack of the Agricurious Crop Mob

In the latest young adult social networking "mob" trend, there is a group in North Carolina participating in monthly Crop Mobbing incidents.

The Crop Mob, a monthly word-of-mouth (and -Web) event in which landless farmers and the agricurious descend on a farm for an afternoon, has taken its traveling work party to 15 small, sustainable farms. Together, volunteers have contributed more than 2,000 person-hours, doing tasks like mulching, building greenhouses and pulling rocks out of fields.

“The more tedious the work we have, the better,” Jones said, smiling. “Because part of Crop Mob is about community and camaraderie, you find there’s nothing like picking rocks out of fields to bring people together.”

The affable, articulate Jones, 27, is part of the group’s grass-roots core, organizing events and keeping them moving. The Mob was formed during a meeting about issues facing young farmers, during which an intern declared that better relationships are built working side by side than by sitting around a table. So one day, 19 people went to Piedmont Biofarm and harvested, sorted and boxed 1,600 pounds of sweet potatoes in two and a half hours. A year later, the Crop Mob e-mail list has nearly 400 subscribers, and the farm fests now draw 40 to 50 volunteers.

Doma Coffee Roasters a Model of Sustainability

I had the pleasure last week of hanging out with the folks at DOMA Coffee Roasting Company in Coeur d' Alene/Post Falls. Our experiment of eating locally for a year opened up to us the world of Spokane area coffee roasters. Before I go on, let me just say that there is no reason for anyone who lives in Spokane to buy coffee beans that aren't locally roasted. There are plenty of local roasters to choose from and DOMA is right up there with the best of them.

I was most intrigued to hear about their coffee buying co-op. They have taken relationship coffee and fair trade to the next level and joined a co-op that makes long term commitments to growers and villages. You can actually go and track the various lots of coffee they have purchased through the co-op by viewing the original shipping documents. Considering that coffee beans are the world's largest food commodity it is impressive to have that kind of access to the source. Commodity food systems thrive off the lack of source information. I wish I could fair trade proof everything I buy.

One comment they made is that other fair trade purchasers, outside co-ops, rarely hear feedback from growers about problems in the grower/buyer relationship. By contrast, there is plenty of healthy back and forth in the co-op. Because of the long term commitments to growers and villages facilitated by the co-op, the farmers have the freedom to advocate for their interests. Growers without that kind of security and partnership are afraid to speak up lest they lose out.

Again, I wish that I could have this kind of assurance with everything I buy. Committed relationships between consumers and producers is a key to ensuring justice, fairness and sustainability along the supply chain. DOMA is doing their part to strengthen these relationships. When you buy DOMA you're buying the coffee beans and the relationships that come with them. Maybe that's a good way to think about everything we buy. It's not just the price tag and the brand name but all the relationships along the supply chain that brought that item to market.

And by the way, did I mention that their coffee is awesome. 

DOMA coffee beans are available at these retail locations:

Moscow Co-op

Pilgrim's Natural Foods

Boise Co-op

Main Market

Fresh Abundance

Winter Ridge

Atticus Coffee Shop in Downtown Spokane a Pleasant Surprise

I've lived most of my life near world class urban centers - Seattle, Los Angeles, and Houston and the one thing I miss living in Spokane is the grittiness and vitality of a big vibrant downtown. Downtown Spokane has its charms though.

My wife and I spent the night at the Davenport last night for a birthday celebration and we had a great time and I was pleasantly surprised on a morning walk to stop by Atticus Coffee Shop and Gifts. It was open early and has a cozy feel to it. They have coffee beans from several local roasters on tap, including Doma and Roast House. They also have a sampling of baked goods from local bakeshops like the Rocket. They also have a nice selection of gifts.

It's owned by the same folks that run Boo Radleys just down the corner from this location. Thanks for making an early morning stroll in downtown Spokane more pleasurable.

Inlander "Best Of 2010" Open for Voting

The Inlander has opened their Best of 2010 contest for voting here. I've never voted in the contest before so I was a little surprised at the format. They give you the whole slate of things to vote on and then out of those you have to vote on 50 of them. It's actually stretching my knowledge of events in the Spokane area. Best Play of 2010? Anyone? Best outdoor music festival? Maybe I just don't get out enough.

Here are some suggestions to help you fill out your slate of 50:

Best Farmers' Market - Millwood

Best Bakery and Locally Owned Coffee Shop - Rocket

Best Bread - Arabesque

Best Coffee Roaster - Roast House (They're new and could use the publicity)

Best Yoga Studio - Mellow Monkey

Best Outdoor Gear - Mountain Gear

Best Mexican Food - Deleon

Best Spa - Mosaic

Best Pizza - South Perry Pizza

Alas, there is not a best local blogger category this year. The deadline is Feb. 23.

Why it's hard for Americans to seek the common good

We've learned on our journey that issues of food and consumption are caught up in webs of meaning and relationships. We've recognized in ourselves and others a desire for more connection in community and more intentional shared commitments, but we've also recognized the powerful forces at work thwarting our ability to connect and share commitments. There's a new study out that explains part of what we are dealing with as North Americans.

The study compares the way Japanese and Americans perceive the emotions of others in a set of pictures, and tracks the eye motions of each.

When asked to interpret the emotion of the person in the center, the Japanese looked at the person for about one second before moving on to the people in the background. They needed to know how the group was feeling before understanding the emotion of the individual. The Americans (and Canadians in subsequent studies) focused 95% of their attention on the person in the center. Only 5% of their attention was focused on the background, and this, Dr. Masuda points out, didn’t influence their interpretation of the central figure’s emotion. For North Americans the foreground is all-important.

Dr. Masuda is quick to point out that Americans and Japanese are physiologically the same. The difference in eye movement is tied to the roots of our respective cultures. When trying to explain the natural world, the Ancient Greeks – the founders of Western civilization – tended to focus on central objects and sought to explain their rules of behavior. Funnily enough, Aristotle thought a rock had the property of “gravity.” It didn’t occur to him that a system was working its powers on the rock. The Chinese on the other hand took a more holistic approach. They believed that everything occurred within a context, or a field of forces, and thus they unraveled the relationship between the moon and the tides.

I think having an awareness of these issues is important for us to sort through as we seek the common good of our communities. We have great strengths to draw on in our western ways of seeing things but with that also come some challenges.

I was talking to a friend last week who spoke with great respect about the Hutterites who live a very different kind of life among us. They live in North America but their commitment to community is the priority. My friend and I agreed that we'd probably never go as far as the Hutterites but it's worth experimenting with shared commitments. It looks like we're going to go in with a bunch of folks to raise some pigs this summer as one of those experiments.

Lettuce Farmer Quote of the Day: "My new year's resolution is to feed people, not cows."

We're doing a food distribution today in Millwood with 2nd Harvest. Stewart, the owner of C&S Hydro Huts, brought over 200 gorgeous heads of lettuce from his hydroponic lettuce growing operation in Spokane Valley to be distributed to people in need. Every week he has 800 heads of lettuce that either need to get into a grocery store or wholesaler's supply lines or they go to waste. He has been giving many of the leftovers to a farmer friend who has cows. As we bagged the lettuce for people instead of dumping it in a cow trough he joked, "My new year's resolution is to feed people, not cows."

It's a great example of the tensions that exist between farmers, consumers and the marketplace. A recent University of Arizona study found that we waste nearly half of the food in our country. From farmers throwing the fruits of their hard work into the compost or cow trough and consumers dumping the leftovers, we're wasting a lot of food.

I'm glad that, at least today, one small farmers' food is feeding people, not cows, or worse yet a dumpster.