A Ton of Food, Green Globe, Zero Waste, and Terry Cunningham at the Finish Line of the New York City Marathon

So I'm outside raking leaves yesterday, or as us gardeners like to call them, "carbon," and I notice the side of my house and realize I haven't given you the final update. The lawn. Back in August, when I saw my neighbor getting trees cut down and arranged for the chipped wood to be left at my house, I ended up with a mega-pile that I then proceeded to spread everywhere, including making a web of paths on the side of my house, effectively reducing the lawn there by about 40%.

A Ton of Food

You see, I have two goals:

* One, to reduce my lawn and frankly, to get out of that manual push-reel lawn mowing chore--I hated it this year. (There, I said it.)

* And, two, to grow literally a ton of food (I think I'm just excited that I'm finally able to remember that this means two thousand pounds.)

I grew a grand total of just over 100 pounds of food this entire year. For a value of, let's say, $5 per pound (organic greens run more per pound, but that's the going rate for organic heirloom tomatoes here, so I'm going with it and am probably underestimating), that means I grew $500 worth of organic, hyper-local food this year. I spent probably, I don't know, let's say $150, although that seems high to me (but I do seem to always be tinkering at that Farmer D store) (oh, and if you go to that link, I wrote the School Gardens Guide! My friend, Mike, with whom I took that farm course back in the spring, designed it).

Anyway, so I've added a handful of beds to the side of the house (they are pictured above with a winter cover crop on them), and I removed an overgrown, bird-planted privet bush thing that was using up too much space, causing allergic reactions and blocking the sun, so I have even more grow space there.

I also removed a dozen or so overgrown, mite-infested juniper bushes from the back by the hammock and have started putting in a small fruit orchard there. It's also where I will probably put the inoculated shitake log I get next week at the small-scale production mushroom growing class I'm taking at Gaia Gardens, a 5-acre urban farm where I cornered farmer Daniel Parson one day in the broccoli. (I know that 5 Seasons Brewing Company brings their spent grain there, too, so I'm curious to see how they handle it to see if there's anything we can do differently at our community garden with it.)

I'm also eyeing another batch of juniper bushes with the same thought in mind, and the other side of my house is just about next in line. Oh, I also expanded the mailbox garden and ran a border of wood chips up the driveway. I have visions of lavender and other herbs, interspersed with heirloom annual crops, for a sort of English garden effect (but adjusted for our climate, of course). All good, and pretty already, faster than I expected.

What is possible, I wonder? How much food (including culinary and medicinal herbs) could I really grow here? Yes, yes, I know about Path to Freedom. I attended their workshop at the Georgia Organics conference. I think of their moderate slice of property every time I try to imagine what on earth the little piece of land for which I serve as steward might become.

As a result of all this change on the side of my house, I've moved my garbage can to the backyard (since I don't have that privet to hide it behind it anymore). Since I've been on this waste-reduction kick, I only put it out once a week, and now that it's in the back, I'm even forgetting to do that. So I realized it had been nine days recently, and I was still at one not-full garbage can. Considering the average American adds 4.6 pounds of material to the landfill every single day, I was curious what my family of four would be adding in nine days. How much less than the average 165.6 pounds did we produce? The grand total? 47 pounds. About a pound and a quarter per person per day. Now, I know that many of you out there are doing much, much better than this, but this is very exciting news to me, and it makes me ask that question that I love so much--what is possible?

Green Globe and Zero Waste

At about this same time, I got to talking yet again with Holly Elmore, who is the founder and director of the Green Foodservice Alliance. She helped establish the Zero Waste Zone in downtown Atlanta (here is Holly's blog), and now Zero Waste Zones have been formed in a few other parts of Atlanta as well.

Per Holly's suggestion, I met with the Green Team of the Crowne Plaza Ravinia last week (which was started by a woman passionate about sustainability named Elisaveta Dimova, who moved to the United States from Bulgaria about ten years ago). This hotel is right here in the City of Dunwoody. We discussed the sustainability initiatives that they practice that have enabled that hotel to become the first hotel in the state of Georgia to receive Green Globe certification. And yes, they compost their foodservice green waste. They are, as far as I'm concerned, the stake in the ground for a Zero Waste Zone for the City of Dunwoody, although that hasn't been officially designated (yet!). And wouldn't it be nice to package and brand that finished black gold as City of Dunwoody compost and sell it to businesses and individuals, with a percentage of proceeds going to school and community gardens?

Terry Cunningham at the Finish Line of the NYC Marathon!

What is possible? What is possible? What is possible?

This question ran through my head like a mantra this week. And then just as things tend to happen, I got an email from my old boss at Turner Broadcasting (and good friend across miles and years), Terry Cunningham, who moved to Bozeman, Montana about 15 years ago. Terry writes for several publications, and he is one of my favorite writers ever. Really. The man should be much more famous than he is. (Agents, take note.)

Anyway, while "what is possible?" has been running through my mind, Terry had been running through the five boroughs of New York City! Yes, this former smoker whose idea of a workout was riding a golf cart somehow managed to run the New York City marathon! Here is the article he wrote just prior to running it. My favorite lines are the ones about his running style being "loitering," his body shape being "snacker," and his unique ability to come in second-to-last in every race he has run requiring a rare combination of sloth and cunning.

I emailed Terry to find out exactly what happened at the race. Here is what he said:

The Marathon was a blast! It was an overwhelming experience and I still have a goofy ear-to-ear grin on my face. My time (4:31:25) was better than I had anticipated. It’s not “fast” by any stretch, but for me, it was a pleasant surprise. I used a good training program I found online and training at 4,750 feet probably helped, but it’s the NYC crowds that pull you through. When I realized at mile 21 that I was actually going to finish and have a better time than my training runs would indicate, it was quite a relief. I’m a slow guy, but I’m a happy slow guy. For the record, I think I finished in 26,187th place, and there were 43,700 finishers.

And, for the record? Terry came in second-to-last out of the three runners from Bozeman.

So, what is possible? A ton of food is possible. The City of Dunwoody participating in a Zero Waste Zone is possible. And Terry Cunningham at the finish line of the New York City marathon is possible. In my book (which has yet to be published, by the way. Hey, agents, how about a two-author deal? Oh, and add Terry's and my friend, Brad, okay?), that means just about anything is.

DeKalb County, Georgia, USA, Joins Other School Districts Nationwide That Are Restoring Children's Right to Recess

BREAKING NEWS

ATLANTA, GA--
The DeKalb County Board of Education voted last night in favor of mandatory, daily unstructured recess of at least 15 minutes, preferably outdoors, that cannot be taken away for any reason, for all students in grades K-5 in DeKalb County public schools. It also stipulated that recess would be at the principal's discretion for all students in grades 6-8.

The DeKalb County School System [DCSS] is a metropolitan Atlanta public school system located in the second largest county in the state of Georgia. DeKalb County, one of the most culturally diverse counties in the nation, has a student enrollment of approximately 100,000 students in 153 schools and centers, according to the DCSS website.

For those of you not in the United States or who think that 15 minutes is so short it's a joke, please note that year after year, more and more children in the United States get absolutely no recess at all, or they have it taken away as a punishment or for other reasons. The pressures and demands of No Child Left Behind legislation have resulted in an obsessive fixation with "teaching to the test." In the meantime, childhood obesity is skyrocketing, behavior issues are through the roof, and our kids are increasingly disconnected from fresh air and from the developmental value of unstructured play. Parents nationwide have been advocating for the return of recess, and I am proud to have been just one of the many, many voices that supported this effort.

In addition to the many benefits of unstructured outdoor play, I believe it to be a critical building block of environmental stewardship.

Here is a post with questions you can ask and actions you can take, plus some helpful links for those of you who are advocating for recess in your school districts.

Opening Windows

This is Dr. Flagler. She teaches inner-city children with emotional and behavioral development issues. I met her this week because her window was the only one open and I was standing outside it.

FYI, here's what that little pink note on the window says:


I was standing outside it because I was touring the new native wildlife habitat that sustainable landscape designer Lindsey Mann created at an impressive middle school (where the morning announcements end with the song "Ain't No Stoppin' Up Now"), surrounded by homes that are boarded up or in desperate need of repair. Here are two houses directly across the street from where I was standing:





Dr. Flagler leaned out the school window to thank Lindsey for what she had done. I asked her if she has always been opening her window, and she said no, that it's just since the wildlife habitat went in. She mentioned that she takes her students out there for lunch. She suggested that she and her students add some fish to the little pond. She offered to be the caretaker of the pond motor, which Lindsey had been hesitant to add unless someone was going to care for it. She said what Lindsey had done had made a difference.

Here's what Lindsey had done (two views):







Lindsey and I sat and talked for a long time. She showed me the river oats and the lavender and the other native and edible ecosystem-appropriate plants she had chosen for this space, plants that will fill in and flourish in the next few years to create a haven for butterflies and birds, and for children. Here is the plan:


That night, at dinner at home, I showed the photos of the houses to my daughters. My younger one commented, "Okay, well, they don't look so great now, but they certainly have potential."

Potential.

I thought of Dr. Flagler and the four middle-school boys whom she introduced to us, who poked their heads out the window, too, and waved. Who asked Lindsey if she was the one who wore the hat whom they had seen before. Who smiled big and broad when talking about the serene, green space in front of them. Who may have lived in one of those houses, or in the apartments across the litter-strewn field.

I thought of windows that should not be open, yet are. I thought of what would happen if everyone, everywhere had a space like this to call his or her own.

I asked Lindsey if I could see more of her work. I want to see what sustainably designed landscapes can do to change the world. One child. One teacher. One open window at a time.

We're going to visit proposed urban farm locations for the United Methodist Children's Home and the City of Decatur this week. Stay tuned!

And keep opening windows.

"I Don't Supervise, Pattie. I Free People."

So, I have to be honest with you, there's some strife in the community garden. Power. Personalities. Pace. Even the possibility that grown-ups who have agreed to the mission and methods of this organic garden are sneaking in petroleum-based fertilizers, which, of course, would mean, if true, we could no longer assure those particular plots as organic to future gardeners. I go out to the fifteen beds of my kitchen garden--a full quarter the size of the community garden--and revel in the peace and privacy of it. It's like a community garden without people. Sort of heavenly, isn't it?

Or is it?

I thought maybe my work was done at the community garden, that I'm a start-up person, that it was time to move on and start the next thing, to leave the bickering to others. But considering the garden has only been open two months (if you can believe it), that seems awfully premature, don't you think? How can I help my community take positive steps forward if I don't even stay engaged? How can I help myself grow and change if I don't allow the lessons of this journey to reveal themselves to me? How can I deny myself the opportunity of wrestling through the challenges? How can I distance myself from something I have grown to love?

And so, it has been a whirlwind week of trying to focus on positive intention, compassion, and generosity. It has involved reading, talking, inspirational movie-watching (thanks, Angela), yoga, walking, and lots and lots of letting go. It has involved digging in my garden and digging deep in my soul. It has involved moments of just showing up when that was the most I could offer. And it has involved stepping back, especially when my teenage daughter said to me, "Wow, Mom, when did your life become such a soap opera?" She knows I don't live this way, with out-of-control interpersonal drama. I left that long ago when I left my corporate jobs. After 14 years of running my own business, I have gotten used to my solitary, entrepreneurial ways of working. This whole group-decision-making process is contradictory to my basic operating style, and frankly, is hard for me.

The moment of truth came the other day, unexpectedly, as truth tends to do. I had asked several garden members to join Team Beer Compost, to help toss those spent grains from the brewery with wood chips and leaves so that others on the garden board of directors didn't need to worry about it. Several said immediate yeses, and I planned on meeting one of them today. Yet a few days ago, we ran into each other in the garden and got to talking. He embraced the challenge so fully that I asked him, "So will you supervise this project?"

He answered me immediately, without even thinking.

"I don't supervise, Pattie," he stated. "I free people."

I free people.

I free people.

The words punctured the air. Honestly, I couldn't speak.

And so, of course, I've been rolling those words around in my head ever since, and wondering:

How do I find a way to work within the ever-growing list of rules and policies and procedures that are developing around this garden to help free people, and in doing so, to free myself?

Yesterday, I stopped by a community garden in a nearby city and was surprised to find a lock on the gate where there hadn't been one before. My research has shown that community gardens with locks on them actually experience increased vandalism than those without. Mike, if you're reading this, can you shed some light on why that garden now has a lock? Is it a problem that has yet to rear its head at ours, but for which I need to mentally prepare?



Or is your just-a-few-months-older-than-ours garden experiencing a similar lock-down on letting go and trusting the journey, too?

How can we free people to achieve the seemingly impossible? How can we let go and soar? Does the lack of a strong, oppressive thumb inevitably lead to anarchy? Or could it, perhaps, lead to something far more beautiful than we can currently imagine?

(P.S. The photo at the top is not from our community garden. It is from the location we had been previously considering for the garden, a place still under lock and key.)

You Trust That One Day You Will Harvest Fruit

Too many, too many, too many commitments this week. Three evening meetings that left this morning person wanting to stick pins in my eyes and beg for mercy. Too busy to attend the strawberry growing class at Farmer D's. And too darn sick of our endless rain to connect long enough and well enough with either of the gardens (my home one and the community garden).

On my way to pick up my Riverview Farms CSA box mid-week, I stopped by Farmer D's and got into a long talk with his new store manager, Darby, a young farmer from Vermont who just moved here and must be shocked at our rain and cold, especially so early in October. Darby gave me the crash course in organic strawberry growing in the South (how she knows this already, I don't know, and here I am, having left New York City twenty years ago TODAY). I ended up buying a flat of strawberries, pre-holed landscape cloth and the hardware to attach the cloth to a raised bed. I knew Bob was building the raised bed this week and now I would have the rest of what we needed to get Farmer Bob's Stawberry Patch in place ("I used to hang out with zoning lawyers," Bob told me, "and now I hang out with gardeners and farmers. When did this happen?")

After a city comprehensive plan steering committee meeting, in the dark, rainy night, I showed Bob the strawberry flat in the glass-paned hatchback of my Prius and I got to thinking how well they were doing there, warm and dry, and the next logical thought, of course, was, "Hey, why can't I just drive around all winter with a small raised bed of lettuces in my trunk as a greenhouse?" These are the kinds of things I convince myself are good ideas.

And then, Saturday morning, after a full Friday of endless emails trying to solve what seemed to be one problem after another and a final email I sent that said, simply, "My brain hurts," I came to dig in the garden, even though it was an "official garden workday," even though I "should" have been mulching or scraping paint from the pavilion.

Bob put the bed together (and I have to tell you, one of the funniest emails I got all week was from him, when he responded to mine with "There's a joke in there but I will definitely let it slide." Mine had said, "We need your power tool to attach the landscape cloth to the bed—I have the hardware"). We added the landscape cloth (no drip line as recommended in the directions handout Darby gave us) and then Rebecca (remember Rebecca?) and I tried to figure out how to plant the strawberry plugs. It was nearly impossible to dig a little hole.

"I don't know if I ever got the roots in," Rebecca told me. How could that be? But then I tried and I saw what she meant. We were doing all this work above the landscape cloth, not knowing if we were being effective underneath. I looked back at the directions and it said to poke a hole with the round handle of the trowel and then just drop the plug in the hole. Just drop the plug in the hole. As simple as that.

I stepped back and watched this brilliant and beautiful woman who dropped out of the sky into the hole in my life that has since been filled by this community garden. This gifted-certified high school teacher, who has taken some time off from work to care for her young children, is always diplomatic with difficulties, always quick with a laugh, and knows exactly who needs a kind word when. She is self-effacing in a generous way that makes everyone immediately comfortable, openly honest and insatiably inquisitive. I watched as she gently poked a hole and planted a plug. Poke and plant. Poke and plant. Not brain surgery, yet it healed my hurting brain.

I felt the stresses of the week wash away. I felt the issues of yesterday shrink in size. I felt like that's all there is to it, to life. You poke a hole and then you plant in it. You poke and plant. And when others poke those holes in your day, you still fill them the same way. You plant something good. Something fruitful. And you trust that one day, you will reap what you have sown.

As simple as that.

"We Have An Idea"

Dennis Lange, partner at 5 Seasons Brewing Company, came by the community garden with the first deliveries of spent grain from the beermaking process the other day, and we dedicated a location for it, way off to the side of our acre or two of space. More is coming each week, and we'll be mixing in wood chips until the leaves fall. They have just begun to turn here in Atlanta, and we find ourselves looking up at our tree-bordered garden location at all the "carbon" we will soon have, and imagining closed loops such as these:






















We find ourselves looking everywhere, actually, and imagining every possibility. That flood damage? I'm bartering writing for design from sustainable landscaping designer, Lindsay Mann, for an integrated ecosystem design that mitigates our stormwater runoff and provides a learning opportunity about native plantings and ecologically-sound design.

When I showed up at the garden to meet Lindsey (a "friend" of mine on Facebook whom I had yet to meet in person!), I found her standing in the grassy wild beyond the tamed area within the garden fence, the earth tones of her outfit camouflaging her, her floppy hat hiding her face. She turned to wave and I asked her to turn back, to let me take this picture, that she looked so breathtakingly beautiful, so very right, there in that space, her sketchpad in hand. Like a young Beatrice Potter, sketching rabbits.






















Lindsey, a geomancy specialist, had goose bumps from this piece of earth. She told Angela and me that it had one of the most powerful energies she has experienced. I told her that's what we all have been saying, since Day 1 out here. That something else is going on here.

I came out the next day to thin seedlings in the food pantry beds, where lettuces and baby kales were stretching to join the other lettuces, tatsoi and mustard greens in producing enough to donate to the nearby food pantry. We had just harvested three days earlier, and already the beds were ready to be picked again, although I'll wait until Wednesday. Our first harvest this week had yielded enough to put family-sized salads in the hands of three families-in-need.



I felt good about this, teary with gratitude, actually, since it was less than a month since we planted these beds. However, when I went to deliver our "bounty," I walked in to the room where the families come to pick up food from the Atlanta Community Food Bank, to choose second-hand-clothes, and to get their other needs met and the room was already filled with about 70 families, all sitting on rows of chairs waiting their turns. Fathers. Mothers. Little, long-haired girls and wide-eyed boys with big, broad smiles. The food pantry is open Wednesdays from 3:30-5:30 and it was only about 3:10. There used to be a total of about 60 families that came each week, I've been told. The number has at least doubled this past year. And I only had three salads.

Yesterday, my friend, Janet, and I spread out the abundant seedlings in the food pantry beds, an attempt to maximize the space, to maximize the yield, to feed more families. Bob showed up, and we got to talking. Bob is the person who spearheaded the creation of this community garden through our county (our county and city are currently negotiating ownership of parks within our new city's borders, so this was no small feat. In fact, we had been told it would be impossible).

"I could only help three families the other day, Bob," I said. "There were 70 there. 70 hungry families. Even if these six beds produce abundantly, and every single gardener in this garden gives a share of his or her harvest every single week, we won't be able to grow enough to feed those people."

"So what do you want to do?" he asked, and then laughed, "Oh no, you have that twinkle in your eye. That's always trouble."

I saw my opening.

"An urban farm, Bob," I answered. "We need an urban farm so we grow enough to feed those families."

"An urban farm?" Bob asked, not incredulously as he would have a month ago. "What are you thinking?"

"I don't know," I answered. "A half acre, or a quarter acre, rows of crops, a scalable showcase, a pilot project, an example. Maybe something like Rashid's, but smaller, to start. I'll send you the video."

And then, I kid you not, at that exact moment, Robert pulled up. I have not seen Robert at the garden since opening day, August 23. Robert is on the newest city in the United States' very first City Council and is the one who stood with me in the dark one night in July, fireflies around us, and said, "I don't see why the City of Dunwoody can't issue a proclamation in support of a community garden here." You can see Robert in this short, cute little video, sounding the gong at our opening.

"What's goin' on?" Robert asked, passing through the gated garden, joining us under the trees, by the cistern.

"Robert, we have an idea . . ."

"But Then You're Raising Rabbits, Pattie"

So I had a whirling dervish sort of conversation with Farmer D the other day (I was the whirling dervish--Farmer D is always completely calm). We were chatting away when we got on the topic of pelletized chicken manure, which can be sold under the USDA certified organic label even though it is made from the waste stream of industrial, factory-farmed, caged, debeaked, hormone-laden, GMO corn-fed chickens right here in the lovely state of Georgia (the chicken capital of the world).

Me: The family with the plot at our community garden with your compost and fertilizer is outperforming all the others.

D: So I hear.

Me: But I can't use the fertilizer, D, because of the whole industrial chicken thing.

D: Yeah, I know. That's an issue.

Me: But what else can I use to boost my yields? I'm taking care of six charity beds and the goal is growing the greatest quantity to donate to the food pantry. What do you think of fish emulsion or worm castings in comparison to chicken manure?

D: Good, very good, but not as good as the chicken manure.

Me: I hear rabbit manure is perfectly balanced and doesn't even need to be composted.

D: Yeah, you're right. But I would compost it anyway. Because of pathogens.

Me: But can't you do that in a symbiotic relationship? Don't folks do that with fish underneath or something?

D: Worms. They do worms.

Me: Yeah, that would work. That would be a perfect situation, don't you think?

D: (Silence.)

D: But then you're raising rabbits, Pattie.

But then you're raising rabbits. My goodness, that made me burst out laughing. In fact, I've been thinking of that line all week (and laughing out loud each time), how I start on one path and end up knee-deep in something I never intended. Mostly, this is good. I completely, totally and unequivocably trust the journey. I don't question it, as long as it feels right to me, and I have an increasingly sensitive internal meter for determining this. But sometimes things do start to feel as if they are spinning out of control and that I'm veering into waters where I don't need to be.

Riasing rabbits? No, I don't need to be raising rabbits. Or fighting uphill at school. Or showing up for every single "green event" every single weekend. Or joining this task force and that committee. Or twirling out of control each day like a whirling dervish. I just need to be fully present 100% in order to hear where I am needed.

Last week, as usual, we had a constant flurry of activity at the community garden. A troop of girl scouts spread piles of mulch. High school kids planted their bed. And a steady stream of people came and went, pounding, planting, planning. My friend Jim met me there one morning, with the intention of doing some targeted work together, but I asked him if we could walk the land instead. The floods Atlanta experienced just prior had mostly spared the garden, but the remnants of the natural water flows were particularly clear and I realized I simply didn't know this land yet. I didn't know the way the water moves across it, or the way the light dances in every nook and cranny, or the specific topography under our feet in the area where we hope to create an orchard, or the very essence, its history, its specific energy, that can only be felt in the quiet stillness of early morning. And so we did. For two solid hours.

When we were done, with no sweat or physical manifestation of hard work to show for our labor, I knew that I had turned a corner on this garden. I had made it part of me, in a way that it had not yet been. And when I start to feel as if I should be building rabbit hutches, I have to go back to that feeling. That simple, really basic feeling of just being. And listening. And trusting.

I often tell people to be careful when they start getting involved with all this organic, urban agriculture stuff, that they will fall down the rabbit hole and it just gets deeper and deeper. And even though each day I feel like I am (happily) digging in even more, I am pretty certain that no, I should not be raising rabbits.