The Urban Food Revolution by Peter Ladner

Here I am again!

"the struggle for individual agency ... I find to be at the very center of urban life ... Both as workers and as consumers, we fieel we move in channels that have been projected from afar by vast impersonal forces. We worry tha we are becoming stupider, and begin to wonder if getting an adequate grasp on the world, intellectually, depends on getting a handle on it in some literal and active sense. Some people respond by learning to grow their own vegetables. " from Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

With a quotation like the above, right in the introduction, are you surprised that I really want to get hold of Peter Ladner's book? Ladner is Canadian, has been involved with urban agriculture in British Columbia.

The Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Cities. Peter Ladner. New Society Publishers, 2011. paperback
You can look over the Table of Contents and read the Preface from the website of New Society Publishers: http://www.newsociety.com/Books/U/The-Urban-Food-Revolution

Book blurb from the New Society Publishers website:

Our reliance on industrial agriculture has resulted in a food supply riddled with hidden environmental, economic and health care costs and beset by rising food prices. With only a handful of corporations responsible for the lion’s share of the food on our supermarket shelves, we are incredibly vulnerable to supply chain disruption.

The Urban Food Revolution provides a recipe for community food security based on leading innovations across North America. The author draws on his political and business experience to show that we have all the necessary ingredients to ensure that local, fresh sustainable food is affordable and widely available. He describes how cities are bringing food production home by:

ü Growing community through neighborhood gardening, cooking and composting programs

ü Rebuilding local food processing, storage and distribution systems

ü Investing in farmers markets and community supported agriculture

ü Reducing obesity through local fresh food initiatives in schools, colleges and universities.

ü Ending inner-city food deserts

Producing food locally makes people healthier, alleviates poverty, creates jobs, and makes cities safer and more beautiful. The Urban Food Revolution is an essential resource for anyone who has lost confidence in the global industrial food system and wants practical advice on how to join the local food revolution.

shopping trip .... glitter and plastic

Hello everyone,

I made a rare trip to Masonville Mall area today. There were a whole bunch of items I wanted to locate ... things not sold where I work, but for which I get asked. I did find most of them, so will know where to suggest people shop.

The main thing I found though was piles and mounds and shelves and shelves and shelves full of STUFF. One store had pillars 10 or 12 feet high with things hung up that high - surely an inconvenient storage system for the staff! How many lint-brush-roller thingies would have been on the one section of pillar - 8 across the row, with a couple on each peg, and 14 or 16 rows high? Pillows and furniture on shelves too high for people to reach.

I went into a popular home furnishing store - and I admit I love looking at Christmas decorations and furnishings - but there's so much of it that I find myself wondering what value any of it will have for anyone. Glitter and plastic, glitter and tin, glitter and paper, glitter and more plastic. So much merchandise stacked - in multiples - that I cannot focus on the attributes of any one object before it melds into the identical one atop it ... or competes visually with items on either side.

I went into a major bookstore, admittedly indulging my fondness for journals, and just because I could I looked up one book. The store didn't have it. It's an urban agriculture book that I'll order where I work, tomorrow and will tell about in a separate post. The major bookstore did, however, have a cube of some dragon book or other, discounted. And the major bookstore's smaller bookstore (in Masonville Mall itself) was its own surprise. There was a whole section of children's books that were stacked spine out so customers have to shelf read to find a book; how does that sell anything?

And the big craft store didn't sell Christmas letterhead paper ... anywhere in the aisles and aisles and aisles of duplicated plastic and glitter, glitter and paper, metal and glitter ....

It was a useful venture and traumatic all at the same time. Finding out that all that STUFF doesn't have any value to me ... priceless.

Best regards to all,

Why's Woman

WASTE LESS this Christmas

Good morning everyone,

I've mentioned before that I subscribe to the World Watch Institute's e-news ... see www.nourishingtheplanet.org

The latest mailing is a great guide to wasting less this coming Christmas season.

http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/reducing-food-waste-during-the-holiday-season/

My guess is, of course, that if you read my maunderings you already re-use, recycle, refashion, and re-generate anything and everything that crosses your path. You probably spend less on Christmas gifts than the $600+ dollars that some survey said Canadians expect to spend this season and less than the other $600+ that will be spent on Christmas preparations that aren't gifts. That detail made me want to cut down on my own total (somewhat under $150.00 last year including gifts) and get knitting.

The World Watch articles notes that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted each year (1.3 billion tons). It's a head-shaker of a percentage.

The article I've linked to above is talking about reducing waste of food in a North American household that has the more-than-enough-plus-extras-in-the-pantry-and-leftovers-in-the-back-of-the-fridge, which, I'm guessing is your own situation. It's mine ... and I'm so grateful for it. And I know I can do better on using up those leftovers before they become compost!

It talks about supporting an organization that second harvests restaurant food [food recovery] for community agency distribution, buying free trade food items as gifts.

I'm going to suggest supporting an organization that advocates for organic, low-input agriculture or permaculture, or has one of the gifts of animals or garden packages (World Vision or USC). Support or start such in your own community. I'll get the urls. I still can't figure out how to leave an in-progress post and search out something to put in here.

So, all for this morning.

Best regards,

Why's Woman

Not an ode to my new toothbrush

Good morning everyone,

I hope you are all well and happy.

Today I'm going to talk about a very small matter: my new toothbrush.

My new toothbrush has a curvy blue and white handle. Some parts of it are much thicker than others. One place has little bumps. The bristles are higher around the edges than in the middle; the outer central bristles are a different colour from the rest.

The curves are supposed to be ergonometrically correct, ie. they are supposed to fit my hand so I'm comfortable brushing my teeth and will do so longer than I used to. The place with the little bumps - I'm guessing - is to keep my fingers from slipping as I hold the toothbrush; this will prevent me from jamming the toothbrush into a tooth and breaking it, or stuffing it down my throat and choaking. By not doing these damaging things, I will not sue the maker of the toothbrush.

As it turns out ... the way I hold the toothbrush has the handle curve pressing into my palm, instead of my palm curving into it. So, that part doesn't work.

I've not had my hand slip yet, so maybe the bumpy part works. However, since I've never had a previous toothbrush escape my grasp, I cannot make a fair judgement.

As for the bristles, both lengths feel the same ... I'm guessing the coloured ones are a signal to me to use them to do the little gum-line wiggle that one is supposed to do while brushing ... they are sort of a target zone. I don't know if this makes a difference.

The thing that got me started on this is realizing that the handle of the toothbrush, with its two types of plastic, must surely use twice as much plastic as an old-fashioned, basically straight-handled toothbrush.

So, it's a good thing that before I toss out an old toothbrush, it goes through use as a cleaning tool.

And you know what? I just realized that the handle fits my hand better when it's turned over for use as a grout scrubber. So, next year I'll have a good cleaning tool.

Here I sit, shaking my head in wonder at it all. I make the wage I make. You make the wage you make. A designer making $40,000 - $60,000 a year designed this toothbrush and a major drug store chain paid for it to be made. If I had cable TV, I might even know if the company pays to advertise this minor hygiene tool.

Let's guess that my new toothbrush wasn't even made on the North American continent and certainly not by unionized workers. Were the resources used to make it taken from the country where it was made? Were the resources transported by fossil-fuel using ship to that country, then transported back to North America? I know the handle wasn't from a recycled plastic, because that information was not noted and promoted on the package ... and such recycling may not always use less resources overall anyway.

Did I mention that I hate shopping? Even for the little things like a toothbrush?

How does this relate to saving the world in my spare time? Good question. Maybe only insofar as if I keep my teeth in good shape and spare myself huge dental bills, I'll be able to make a few Christmas donations to environment groups.

Best regards to all, as always,

Why's Woman

where nowhere is heard a discouraging word

"This farm happened because I walked into a house I wasn't sure I could buy, with the belief that no matter what, I would make it mine. It wasn't a case of money, or who I knew, it was a case of stubbornness, faith, and belief in myself and in the outcome I had written down on a piece of paper months ago that I carried with me everywhere I went in my back pocket."

Jenna Woginrich' latest blogpost takes us through a description of a wickedly good pot pie ... and then switches to encouragement to follow our dreams.

www.coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com

I've been stewing in my doubts and fears lately. Thanks Jenna, for the encouragement to remain stubborn, faithful to a dream and to believe in myself. Also, I'd forgotten that magic of writing down the specifics of what I want and carrying it with me.

I'm off to do that right now.

Best regards to all,

Why's Woman

Waste Not Want Not - a Booke of Cookery

In the introduction to Waste Not Want Not: a Booke of Cookery - Some Interesting Recipes of Old Acadia, author E.F. "Ted" Eaton, answers his own question of why he's written yet another recipe book:

"Mostly because we feel that the culinary customs of our ancestors, with their very limited facilities, are now, and will be of increasing interest and concern to us as we deal with rising energy costs and perhaps shortages. Our forbears ate extremely well without the aid of micro-wave ovens or pressurised dairy products. Perhaps we have something to learn from them. Moreover our forefathers believed very firmly (and with reason) in 'waste-not, want-not' so that Dear Old Granny was well acquainted with the virtues of such things as heads, tails and tripe which we have tended to scorn in our affluence but which we'd better learn to use in the future."

The reference to "rising energy costs and perhaps shortages" caught my attention when I began to browse this 1978 recipe book, which I picked up on the weekend from the London Public Library annual book sale. 1978. It was 1978 when this came out. I was 23. Did I know anything about rising energy costs or potential shortages way back then? Several years earlier, I'd handed out flyers in high school about the evils of phosphates in detergents. I'd heard the term "appropriate technology" - a term that is not in fashion in 2011 but is still around through the .....and, for me, is still a sensible, understandable term.

I certainly didn't have much sense of the interconnections of political levels in one country, let along internationally ... heck, a lot of those interconnections were not even formed yet. Fossil fuels usage back then must have been a lot less than it is now - not just because there were fewer people worldwide but because the appalling levels of production and consumption of badly made, cheaply produced junk was nowhere near what it is now. Think your latest cell phone - Ipod - Ipad - computer anything - interactive game. Every one of them obsolete before it even reached the store you bought it from.

Yet here, in 1978, is a cookbook author talking about rising energy costs and potential shortages.

I wonder if this was a bold political statement on the part of an historian (Mr. Eaton seems to have had a connection to New Brunswick's King's Landing Historic Site), or just a dig at his contemporary society which wasn't cooking frugally, as did our great-grandparents.

Mr. Eaton would probably never have contemplated that someone - like myself - reading his book today, would have to investigate whether the Corn meal she uses to make Johnnycake is produced outside of Canada and whether the corn was grown using a genetically tampered seed developed to not die if doused by RoundUp herbicide (several times in a season) and equipped to kill any caterpillar that happens to hatch on its leaves. He might not believe that sometimes she has to be grateful that something is grown within two provinces distance. I hope he would be horrified to know that in New Brunswick and every province the number of family farms has decreased tremendously over the years and the production of food generally has become specialized (monocrop) so that farms - previously the most self-sufficient production units in society - have far fewer abilities than in previous times.

(I'll take a bit of heart in supposing that someone involved in farming could still fix more things that break than the average urbanite. I'd better take heart too in knowing that there is a trend happening for (especially younger) people to buy small acreages and begin small scale farming.)

Where was I going with this? Oh yes, that these days environmentalists and groups like those in the Transition Network are trying to help us "re-skill" - learn how to do things for ourselves again - and be more "resilient" - more adaptable and able to recover from negative changes. There is (finally) a realization that we are going to be living in times where there is not abundant fossil fuel, where we will have to be aware of the resources we use, where myriad adjustments will have to be made because of negative (if not disastrous) consequences of climate change.

Yep, to quote the driver of the Night Bus in Harry Potter: "It's going to be a bumpy ride."

After all that, I'd better leave you with the Johnnycake recipe:

1 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup cornmeal 1/2 cup maple syrup
4 tsp Baking Powder 1/4 cup melted butter or oil or shortening
1/2 tsp salt 2 eggs

Sift together the flour, corn-meal, baking powder and salt. Add liquid ingredients and the eggs, stir everything together only long enough to mix. Bake in greased and floured loap pan (11" x 7" x 1 1/2" at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes. Serve hot with butter.

Mr. Eaton notes that you'll get different results with different types of cornmeal and proportions of maple syrup to milk. You can also use honey in place of maple syrup, which will give a different flavour indeed.

If you are using maple syrup, please use the real thing, from a real farmer. If you use honey, thank the bees for millions of trips to make your honey. Make 3 or 4 pans of this at a time - if you've got the oven on, never bake just one little pan.

Enjoy the cooking.

Best regards,

Why's Woman

Permablitzing and conference thank you!

Hello Everyone!

I hope you are all well.

Thanks to Brian H. who handed me the word "permablitz" in an email and relied on my curiosity taking me to Google search. Here's a bit of what I discovered.

Permaculture is a design system that is inspired by deep observation of natural systems. It learns from them how to apply ecological principles to the design of human systems. Often used when discussing bounteous food-producing gardens, it extends to neighbourhood design and beyond.

A "Permablitz" is what happens when people get together to install a permaculture environment in one day, based on the plan/preparation that has been done ahead of time to suit the space.

The first permablitz resource I looked at was on the website of Permablitz Hawaii: Hawaii's Edible Garden Revolution - www.permablitz.net There's a video there at triple speed - always fun! - showing how a parking lot is transformed. I love the faces of the volunteers, the enthusiasm. The post went up in early October, so the site is up to date.

The other links I've browsed so far are:

A short film of an event of Permablitz Bellingen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8oycpIHNn8

The text box under the video opens to a list of resources.

Permablitz Brisbane, is on a page asking how we connect food consumption and people.

http://www.openideo.com/open/localfood/concepting/permablitz-brisbane/

is on the website of OpenIDEO, which lists the principles of an OpenIDEO community as: inclusive, community-centred, collaborative, optimistic and always in Beta. I don't know what "in Beta" means - a computer reference? or brain waves? - but I like their principles.

Over the last months I've met several Londoners who are involved in permaculture. Their upcoming events include:

On November 19 and 20, there will be a two day Transition Training held at the Living Centre. Shantree and Lorenna Kacera are the principals of The Living Centre; all they do is permaculture based. Their place is beyond amazing. The left hand side of the Events page lists this event: http://www.thelivingcentre.com/cms/

On November 26, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., Jessica Roder of Wild Craft Permaculture, and Becky Ellis, environmental educator, are pairing up to offer an introduction to permaculture ($30.00 - details on www.wildcraftpermaculture.ca ). At 1:00 p.m. there is a potluck lunch and from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. there is a food swap for people with baked goods, preserves, fresh food to swap. You don't have to go to all of these events. I'm sure it would help their planning, however, if you pre-register for the permaculture workshop.

The four mentioned above were amongst the nearly 60 people who brought their ideas and enthusiasm to the From Community Gardening to Urban Agriculture in London gathering last Sunday. There were nearly 60 people there, and they all talked with each other. There were so many ideas generated that we are still working our way through conference notes and the where to next. I sure want to thank everyone who came. I stopped by so many conversations and was so taken by people listening to each other, really interested in what others had to say.

Big hug for everyone!

Why's Woman