Growing stuff in May

have you seen The Future of Food?  watch it for free on-lin: http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food

FARMERS’ MARKET now open, every WED, 10:30-4:00!!  Local & Fresh; come support your community farmers! corner of Lionel and Ash, at Health Department parking lot.

WCPL garden and public workshop series developed in 2006 by Shorlette Ammons-Stephens

May 9th, Library Garden Workday! 10am. Come plant!!

May 16th we have a Food Works 101 workshop for youth and others, focusing on gardens and cooking businesses, at the Community Crisis Center in Goldsboro.  10am-5:30 and a COMMUNITY POTLUCK with music after.  Come join us and bring your favorite dish, and chairs or a blanket!

May 26th is the next WFI meeting, Wayne County Public Library, again working on Organizational Development with Good Works.

CASTLES Kids in CA! Next meeting . . .

The CASTLES kiDs, from Dillard Academy,  opened the National Food & Society.

They did you PROUD Wayne County!!!

Next Meeting – Tuesday, April 28th

from 10am-12noon,

Wyane Co. Public Library, Ash Street, Goldsboro.

Org Development assistance from Good Work

Also:  Please complete this WFI partner survey
https://justgrow.wufoo.com/forms/farm-to-fork-contact-form-1/

Growing Local Food in Goldsboro

Welcome to not-quite-yet Spring but more and more Local Food Options

• Food Locator: Local Harvest
• Farmers Market: corner of Lionel and Ashe in Goldsboro, Health Department Parking lot, Wednesdays, 10am-4:30pm, NC produce and farmer-grown produce only, starting again for 2009 on April 15th
• Public Community Garden: Wayne County Public Library, Ash Street in Goldsboro; come plant, come weed, come harvest anytime and organized workdays on Thursday afternoons.
• Neighborhood Gardens: Devereaux Street; let WFI know if you want to start a neighborhood garden!  After May 16th, we’ll have teens for hire that will get you started!
• coming soon: The Veggie Bus, making the rounds to neighborhoods across Wayne County with fresh produce on board!

coming events to help us celebrate, grow, and learn together:

APriL 15th, Wed 2pm-4pm for kids of all ages gardening/art/wormworkshop at the Wayne County Public Library <http://www.wcpl.org/>  for our…
Turning Garden Garbage into Gold Youth Workshop!

Tim Norris, “the Worm Guy” will offer some hands on tips and techniques for working with worms to turn waste into soil.  Participants will take home their own composting bin!  We’ll also use wood scraps to make artistic garden signs for our Community Garden!  We’ll close the day with a brief garden workday.  Don’t miss the fun!

Due to limited space, pre-registration is required.  Please call the Children’s Department at (919) 735-1824 ext. 5105.
This program is weather permitting.

Growing Gardens & next WFI meeting

Next WFI meeting:

Wayne County Public Library, Ash Street, Goldsboro,

TUES, March 31st, 10am-noon

come learn what is growing at WFI

and read this article about the White House Lawn garden–which is sized for average family and cost them $200 to put in!

Why the White House garden matters

The Obamas’ new vegetable patch is a symbol of what is wrong with our lawns and how we can fix them. It doesn’t take much.  BY Fritz Haeg

Has one vegetable garden ever generated so much excitement or debate? A few details about the new White House vegetable garden caught my attention.

It is 1,100 square feet. This is a garden sized for a family. In my experience of removing front lawns and planting Edible Estate prototype gardens
across the country, the Obama garden is about the size of the average
American front lawn. Most Americans should be able to imagine
themselves planting something about this size in front of their house
over a weekend with the help of some friends and neighbours.

Of course I would have preferred that they remove the entire South Lawn of
the White House. I imagine a combination of fruit tree orchards, wild
berry patches and edible flower and grass meadows. But since this new
first family garden should be a model to inspire every American family,
perhaps a modest 1,100 square feet is the best way to start the
revolution.

There will be tomatillos and cilantro, but no beets. The Obamas love Mexican food, and Barack does not like beets.
This is a garden planted for the personal tastes of the family that
will be eating from it. It is not just a pretty garden, or an empty
symbol, but a place for a family to grow the food that they like to
eat, on the land that is around them.

They have selected 55 varieties of vegetables and herbs according to their tastes, and every American family can inspect that list and imagine what they would plant
instead. Where are the tomatoes? Why so much spinach? Can I grow
blueberries where I live? The lawns surrounding our homes are all the
same, in denial of our diverse climates and cultures. Neighbourhood
streets lined with edible gardens like the Obamas’ would all be
different, celebrating our diverse tastes.

It will be visible from E Street.
Will tourists linger at the South Lawn fence hoping to catch a glimpse
of Sasha and Malia weeding? We will all be able to watch it grow
through the seasons and evolve over the years. This is a vegetable and
herb garden in front of the house, and meant to be seen.

Since the late 1940s the sterile industrial landscape of the lawn has come to
dominate our streets. This divisive and repressive aesthetic has been
sold to us as the only acceptable surface to present to our neighbours.
But our ideas of beauty are always shifting, and soon the front lawn
will be considered an ugly vestige of an ignorant time. Why did they
water, weed, mow, fertilise and pollute for a ceremonial space they
never even used? With the Obamas giving us an organic vegetable garden
to look at, we are taking steps toward a more thoughtful, beautiful,
healthy and productive landscape.

Fifth-graders from Bancroft Elementary School helped plant it.
Many American children today do not see evidence that food comes out of
the ground or experience the pleasure of eating food fresh from plants.
Instead their diet is causing epidemic childhood illness.
The introduction of a food-producing garden into their early lives is
our best hope for changing the situation in a meaningful way.

In my on-the-street garden-planting experiences from Austin to London, it
is always the children who are the first ones on the scene, and the
most excited to help out. They tend to be the least sceptical, and the
most hopeful about the future prospects for the garden. We should have
a garden like the Obamas’ everywhere there are children.

A beekeeper will tend two hives for honey, and ladybugs and praying mantises will help control harmful bugs. Fully sanctioned and welcome critters at the White House! I think this is perhaps more exciting than the garden itself.

We know that the lawn is essentially ecological genocide. Everything but
those precious blades of grass must die in the name of that luxurious
green carpet. Pesticides indiscriminately decimate the bugs that are
pests, and any other form of life that gets in the way.

An organic garden is not an island, even if it is surrounded by a lawn. It
is encouraging to see this acknowledged with the welcoming of these
partner animals that will make pollination, pest control and the
production of food possible without chemicals.

Planting beds will be fertilised with White House compost and crab meal from the Chesapeake Bay. I love local details. That’s what make gardens special, and lawns boring. So the thought of crab meal from the local bay coming to the South Lawn is a thrilling development.

The rest of us can read about that and ask what local resource we could tap
into to feed our garden. Seaweed from the coast? Manure from the farm?
And what about the first family compost pile? We need to see images of
that, and find out where it will be located.

I would advocate for a very visible and privileged location, perhaps at the ceremonial south entrance to the White House, where Barack can show off the rich pile of decomposing banana peals and coffee grinds to visiting heads of state.

As any gardener knows, the compost pile is the engine of the garden, the
place where yesterdays “waste” becomes tomorrows fertility. What better
message for us today?

The total cost is $200.
They could have planted a very elaborate and expensive garden that
might have been more worthy of what we would expect in front of the
White House, but I am so pleased that they planted something modest and
cheap. Sales of vegetable plants and seeds are soaring along with the
cost of food. Americans are rediscovering the economic benefits and
perhaps even the daily pleasure of being outside and growing food where
they live.

Of course there are probably some buried expenses not
included in the $200 price tag, and some people will argue that you
need to spend a small fortune and most of your time on such a garden.
But an important message has been sent: Here is something anyone should
be able to afford to do at home.

Is this too much hyperbole for one little garden? Am I placing too much significance on such a simple act? In the face of trillion-dollar deficits and billion-dollar
bailouts, perhaps it is exactly the modesty of the gesture that makes
this message so welcome right now.

What’s Growing at WFI

 

NEXT MEETING: 

Tuesday, March 31st from 10-12 

at the Wayne County Public Library on Ash St.

Come hear about all of the Wayne Food Initiative’ GROWING projects and find out what you can do to help!  

Veggie Bus . . . New Community Garden . . . Emerging Leaders Program

* * *

And THIS weekend, SAT 21st, is our first full-day, 10am-3pm, WCPLibrary

YOUTH (12-25) workshop: Food Justice 101

with guest’s from the Durham Inner-city Gardners (DIG kids from SEEDS), and speakers and musicians Tahz Walker and Justin Robinson!  Lunch provided for all teens.  Come learn, share, eat, and act!  If you’re not between 12-25, bring a bag lunch and a blanket and come join us at noon for live music by the Library Garden!

FooD JusticE . . . SustainabilitY . . . the FooD SysteM . . . GooD FooD AccesS

Tahz Walker speaking at Durham's Everybody Eats

Happy New Year wfi-ers

this post is from my friend Rashid Nuri in Atlanta at Truly Living Well–enjoy and eat greens!  my deepest new years blessings to you all.

tes

Collard Greens for the New Year!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Collard greens are vegetables that are members of the cabbage family, but are also close relatives to kale. Kale and collards are similar in many respects, differing in little more than the forms of their leaves. They are, in effect, primitive cabbages that have been retained through thousands of years. The original “cabbage” was undoubtedly a nonheading kind with a prominent stalk or stem.  The kales and collards are not far removed from it.  ”Collards” is a corruption of coleworts or colewyrts, Anglo-Saxon terms literally meaning “cabbage plants.”

Collard greens date back to prehistoric times, and are one of the oldest members of the cabbage family. The cabbage-like plant is native to the eastern Mediterranean or to Asia Minor. They have been in cultivation for so long, and have been so shifted about by prehistoric traders and migrating tribes, that it is not certain which of those two regions are the origin of the species. More highly developed forms, such as cauliflower, broccoli, and head cabbage have been produced in the last two thousand years or so. The kales and collards have persisted, although primitive, because of their merits as garden vegetables. Kale and collards are among the easiest of all vegetables to grow. They are biennials, putting up their flower or seed stalks in the spring of their second season of growth. The first mention of collard greens in the United States dates back to the late 17th century. Collards are an integral food in traditional southern American cuisine.

The Southern style of cooking of greens came with the arrival of African slaves to the southern colonies and the need to satisfy their hunger and provide food for their families. Though greens did not originate in Africa, the habit of eating greens that have been cooked down into a low gravy, and drinking the juices from the greens (known as “pot likker”) is of African origin. The slaves of the plantations were given the leftover food from the plantation kitchen. Some of this food consisted of the tops of turnips and other greens. Forced to create meals from these leftovers, they created the famous southern greens. The slave diet began to evolve and spread when slaves entered the plantation houses as cooks. Their African dishes, using the foods available in the region they lived in, began to evolve into present-day Southern cooking.

My recipe for collard greens is quite simple. Sauté onion and garlic in some olive oil. Add seasoning, like Spike or other seasoning salt, some cayenne pepper and let .them caramelize (Most southern collard green recipes call for ham or smoked turkey. I don’t use either and still make a tasty pot of greens.) Often, I mix them with other greens that we grow, but collards by themselves are quite delicious.

Take the collard greens and separate the fresh leaves. Rinse each leaf individually under cold running water. After you rinse the collard greens thoroughly, stack several leaves on top of each other. Roll these leaves together. Then slice the leaves into thin strips using a cutting board and large knife. Rolling the greens together speeds up the process as you are slicing through several leaves at once. Stir the cut greens into the pot of onions and garlic, add a small amount of water to keep the greens from sticking, and cook until tender. Our greens take about 30 -40 minutes. Voile!! A fabulous meal.

Collard greens are an excellent source of vitamin A, vitamin C, manganese, folate, dietary fiber, and calcium. In addition, collard greens are a very good source of potassium, vitamin B2 and vitamin B6, and a good source of vitamin E, magnesium, protein, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B1, vitamin B5, niacin, zinc, phosphorous, and iron, Vitamin E, magnesium and pantothenic acid, and a good source of protein, naicin, thiamin, phosphorus, zinc, iron omega 3 fatty acids, and selenium.  A great food.

Although collard greens can be grown year around, they are most popularly eaten during the cooler weather. Many southerners won’t eat any collard greens until they have been through the first frost of the season thinking they will be more tender.  Interestingly, there is some fact to support this folk lore. When collard greens freeze, water crystals enter the plant cells and break the cellulose walls, thus tenderizing the plant. The greens grown by Truly Living Well are already tender, so they can be eaten at anytime with great gusto.

Peas n carrots

Maya Wiley speaks on food system

A short Columbia University lecture by Maya Wiley discussing structural racism in the food system. She talks about system/structures, rural and urban connections, and economic possibilities that could be game changers. Most importantly perhaps, she talks about networks and how we do these things together.

click here to watch video

Touring Wayne Foods Initiative–Nov 3rd

We don’t have a lot of physical sites to “tour”: the library garden is a beautiful design, the kids’ farm at Dillard Academy is mindblowing, the farmers market on Wednesdays makes me smile inside out, and we may have a new growing site soon, but that is about it on the physical space side.

That said, we did a tour for the national Politics of Food conference in Sept, and we’re going to host a few visiting and city official folks on a similar tour again on Nov 3rd to talk about what we do, and what WE CAN do. If you’d like to join us, contact Shorlette Ammons-Stephens by calling the Wayne Public Library and asking for her at the Children’s Desk. Monday, noon-2.

As Shorlette at the Library is organizing that and busy busy doing so, made me recall that I’d only posted half the blurb that Andrea Gram kindly sent us of her perspective of the tour. Here is her whole blurb on the WFI tour and a link to her whole conference review is on the PoF post.

“Later that afternoon we were handed our lunches and loaded up on buses for selected field trips; I chose the Wayne County Community Foods System Initiative. Our first stop was a gorgeous community garden that was designed, planted, and is maintained by the public library including local citizens and youth from their various programs there. Here we met some pretty incredible women including Shorlette Stephens, the warm and inviting Head of Children’s Services there at the library who casually described a very gracious philosophy of trusting folks to take what they need, in which she revealed a precious and rare faith in humanity. We also met Danielle Baptiste, coordinator at Dillard Academy, who spoke to us about the CASTLES down to earth gardening curriculum and the improvements made by the youth involved in the program. Ms. Baptiste then introduced Ms. Cheryl Alston, a school teacher who decided she was up to the SOL challenge and its restrictive guidelines and so created a remedial educational program using sustainable gardening studies at the elementary school in Wayne County. Ms. Baptiste proudly reported that over 90% of the students who participated in the program, students who had below average grades, had exceeded their grade level by the following year as a result of her down to earth teaching strategies – wow, what an accomplishment! Finally Tes Thraves, a consultant from the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, touched on some of her true and tested organizing methods stressing the importance of taking stock of existing community assets in an effort to start building from the ground up, an approach that appears to be a wildly successful and one that I won’t soon forget.

“After hearing about these interconnected environmental disciplines, we departed for the elementary school in Wayne County where we were greeted by a host of teachers, aids, and community members who had gathered together to commemorate the achievements of the children involved in the gardening project. What came next nearly brought everyone in the room to tears: the children gathered around their music teacher and keyboardist to present two very creative and powerful music ensembles that they had created – not to tote the values of a MTV music culture but to celebrate the joys of fresh vegetables and healthy eating habits! It was the most heart-warming experience I’d had in a long time, all the while munching on the delicious pear preserves and biscuits they had prepared especially for us. The moments of vulnerability, hope, and pride that flickered across their faces as these children strutted their stuff before our teary-eyed audience was a powerfully moving experience. In fact, it left my cheeks sore from permagrin and the incalculable joy of it all. Now that was some real Southern hospitality!”

by Andrea Gram

 

Check out what Andrea is up to at GreenRight http://quasicreator.com/greenright/greenright.html ! Yo CASTLES kids–did you see you are someone else’s site, not just ours!! Amazing stuff Andrea is doing and I have to say that being on the bus going and coming from Wayne that day was such a pleasure and an honor–I love the endless faith that people working in food have for each other and the world. As Ms Cheryl is busy trying to get water at a site that’s been donated, and we make collective decisions about plans we have made and realities that tweak those, and as we develop working groups to start our emerging leaders project with Heifer funding, as Shorlette begins the plans for the community reads project, as Carol is finalizing the SARE funding for our farmers to go to Southern SAWG conference in Jan and Carolyn makes plans to go to CFSA with Travis this weekend, I’m awed and inspired that daily life brings new possibilities. It is good to step back and take a tour now and then of the big picture. And then get back to diggin in the little piece of dirt right in front of you.

 

Someone else is going to blog soon, right Shorlette?

so thanks . . . tes

We have funding! from Heifer

Next Meeting with Heifer International–and we’ve been funded!!!  Come help up lead next steps!

plus we’re going to get a tour of the calves in the dairy!!
Wayne County – Community Food Systems Initiative meeting
www.waynefoods.org
Wed, OCT 29th
3-5 at CEFS main farm complex
Located on Steven’s Mill Road behind the Neuse Correctional Facility
Goldsboro, NC 27534

Directions to Main Farm Complex
From the west:
Travel east on US-70 to Goldsboro (from I-40, take exit 306; from I-95, take exit 97). In Goldsboro, turn right onto US 117 SOUTH. Go ~0.5 mi. and turn right onto NC-581 NORTH ( West Ash Street). Go ~1.5 mi to the stoplight at Cherry Hospital and continue straight on Steven’s Mill Road through the Cherry Hospital Complex. Immediately after crossing the railroad tracks, turn left onto the farm driveway (unpaved). The farm office is located at the end of the driveway.
From the east/north:
Traveling south/west on the Martin Luther King Junior Expressway (US-70/US-13), continue on US 13 South/US 117 South Bypass (do not exit onto US-70 West). Bear right onto the NC-581 North exit ramp. At the end of the exit ramp, turn onto NC-581 NORTH (West Ash Street). Go ~1.5 mi to the stoplight at Cherry Hospital and continue straight on Steven’s Mill Road through the Cherry Hospital Complex. Immediately after crossing the railroad tracks, turn left onto the farm driveway (unpaved). The farm office is located at the end of the driveway.
From the south:
Traveling north on the Martin Luther King Junior Expressway (US-13/US-117 Bypass/NC-581) or US-117 North, turn onto NC-581 NORTH (West Ash Street). Go ~1.5 mi to the stoplight at Cherry Hospital and continue straight on Steven’s Mill Road through the Cherry Hospital Complex. Immediately after crossing the railroad tracks, turn left onto the farm driveway (unpaved). The farm office is located at the end of the driveway.

Politics of Food: a conference hosted by ELP in Raleigh

September 21st-24th I spent in Raleigh at the ELP’s national conference on the Politics of Food. There were numerous good workshops, but mostly the people I met, from literally near and far, will impact my life–that’s “it” right?

Close to home: Eva Clayton opened as keynote, and hearing her was an inspiration as always. Chris Rumley and Rob Jones–with Good Work and Bountiful Backyards–will be partners on some future project I’m certain, and Chris has already introduced me to Margie Ellison, who is phenomenal and already we are working together to find a grad student fto help her develop a community garden and documentary project at the Pittsboro Fair Grounds here in my own town–the Fair Grounds is one of two African American owned fair grounds in NC, plus she’s helping me with outreach for the Center for Environmental Farming Systems’ Statewide Initiative on building a local, sustainable food system in NC. I love that gut knowing when you meet people and just know your paths are going to intertwine.

Since this was in our backyard, two of the conference fieldtrips came to Goldsboro, one to CEFS and one to the Wayne County – Community Food Systems Initiative, more affectionately known as WFI. We had a blast, but I’ll let you read about the conference and our tour in Andrea Gram and Justin Van Kleeck’s elp summary

–but here’s an excerpt cause I’m still teary-eyed over how amazing they were. Will get a video and post it soon!

What came next nearly brought everyone in the room to tears: the children gathered around their music teacher and keyboardist to present two very creative and powerful music ensembles that they had created – not to tote the values of a MTV music culture but to celebrate the joys of fresh vegetables and healthy eating habits! It was the most heart-warming experience I’d had in a long time, all the while munching on the delicious pear preserves and biscuits they had prepared especially for us. The moments of vulnerability, hope, and pride that flickered across their faces as these children strutted their stuff before our teary-eyed audience was a powerfully moving experience. In fact, it left my cheeks sore from permagrin and the incalculable joy of it all. Now that was some real Southern hospitality!

And then there are those friends from afar, particularly two from MI–Guy Williams, who I met a year or two ago at Iantha Gantt-Wright’s Diverse Partner’s for Environmental Progress Conference and we’ve been keeping touch ever since. He’s working for Fair Food Foundation now and loves his new food world! I am completely convinced that Guy, working at FFF, is going to change the world.  And I met the magic Malik Yakini, founder of Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), who has a packet of stuff he’s going to send me to help us in Wayne with our kids curriculum development . . . and who I just liked talking with . . . but he’s beyond busy, has just moved his school, plus I suspect does something daily to improve the planet. He did send me a link to a great video on detroit today! Check it out! DBCFSN is doing soil remediation work that is going to be vital to cities all over the country, but the positive energy growing in Detroit is truly an inspiration to us all. watch video on Detroit’s food efforts!

Honestly, couldn’t begin to count the number of folks I’ve crossed paths with in powerful ways in last month or twenty four hours, and really that’s just cause I’m back at work. I sat with Lyle Estill on the sidewalk of my local food co-op, Chatham Marketplace, here in Pittsboro with a big bucket of chalk and talked about the town farm/community garden to be. It is still an idea, but the idea is in the middle of a neighborhood that is right out the back of the mill property on the back side of the food coop, and just a few blocks away from the fairgrounds where Ms. Margie is going to have kids gardening and gathering for music.

Connect a few people together, and ideas come to fruition.