The Return of the Weeds and The Lawn!

So, for weeks now, I've been out there on my front lawn about once a week pulling weeds. I went pesticide-free up front just last year, if you can believe it took me that long to catch on to all this (the back yard has been pesticide-free for a number of years now, and the majority of my veggie garden is up on a hill and has always been pesticide-free).

The lawns in my neighborhood are Bermuda grass and they go dormant (which makes them hay-colored) in the brief winter here in Atlanta. When the weeds grow in early spring, it is easy to see them--and pick them. In my neighborhood of over 100 homes, however, there are only about a dozen that have weeds you can see. That's because all those other lawns are dowsed with chemicals. We stay off these perfect lawns so that we don't drag the chemicals back into our home. As a result, we have fallen into a habit of referring to lawns when we are out walking as "poison lawns" and "play lawns." Gosh, didn't they all used to be play lawns?

Anyway, so the pesticide/herbicide thing upsets me the more I find out about it, and the current issue of Pesticides and You doesn't help (here are archived issues, by the way), hitting hard with all the neurotoxin and bioaccumulative effects of these poisons and the "secret inert ingredients," on people (especially children) and animals. Speaking of animals, I'm hearing lots of buzz about dogs that are getting sick from lawn chemicals. In fact, the American Veterinary Medical Association has just added a feature to make it easy for veterinarians to report incidences of suspected pesticide posioning. Also, here is the Beyond Pesticides PDF titled What you show know to keep your pets safe. Do you think our country will take more notice of the effects on dogs than children? Perhaps.

So I go out and pick the weeds, filling a leftover box from last year's CSA deliveries in about a half hour. "For this, I should risk poisoning my children?" I ask myself, looking at the box, looking at the lawn, and again completely perplexed how we have come this far as a society.

Yesterday when I came home I noticed something different, greener. The lawn. The lawn is growing. THE LAWN IS GROWING! OH NO! Not again! Remember last year? The PUSH MOWER?!

Reel Mowers. Pushing On for the Planet.

Sixteen Households Make a Community.

Feeling Edgy. (Or a Completely Honest Lawn Update.)

What Gets Measured Gets Done.

Click, Clack, Mow (and Its Damaging Alternative!)

Do I actually have to get out there and do that again?

I hear the deafening roar of the mega-mowers and blowers as they roll into my neighborhood and think about how one of those riding mowers emits as much pollution as 34 cars. The good news: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tightened emissions standards last September for new gasoline-powered lawn mowers, weed trimmers and boat engines by adopting rules that will require small gas engines to have catalytic converters. The bad news: The rules don't go into effect until 2010 and 2011, and then only affect new motors. According to the EPA, the new regulations, once fully implemented, will eliminate emissions totaling 600,000 tons of hydrocarbons, 130,000 tons of nitrogen oxide and 1.5 million tons of carbon monoxide annually. Both hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, which is linked to respiratory illnesses as well as premature deaths.

And so, yes, I will push on. Another year of exercise. Meeting neighbors. Noticing things around my property I hadn't noticed before, like that sink hole in the front and the way those magnolia trees self-seeded and the Carolina jasmine growing in the blackberry bushes on the side where I never used to walk before. Meditating as I push up, down, up, down, Zamboni-like, zombie-like. Doing my little tiny bit to make a litte tiny difference. Because children are watching. And playing, once again, on the lawn.

Wanna' join me? (There's this adorable new cord-free battery-powered model if you don't want to go the whole manual push route.)

The Return of the Weeds and The Lawn!

Flip Flops and Cover Crops

To appreciate what happened to me yesterday, you have to know the pumpkin story. It's one of those classics in my house because I bring it up just about every time I see a pumpkin, which I didn't do yesterday, but stay with me here.

You see, when I was five, my best friend Mary McLafferty had to have her tonsils out on the exact day that our kindergarten class was going on a much-anticipated field trip to a pumpkin farm, so she was home recuperating while I was trotting around that farm (as happy as can be, as I recall).

We were all allowed to choose one pumpkin to bring back and we all chose the biggest ones our little arms could hold. As we were about to leave to board the bus to return to school, I saw a little tiny pumpkin and I thought of Mary. I asked the teacher if I could take that one for Mary, and she said yes. I felt like the most amazing friend in the world.

Until I got to Mary's house.

I made the horrible mistake of giving her her tiny pumpkin, seeing her eyes light up, and then saying, "Would you like to see MY pumpkin?" I dragged out my monster of a specimen . . . and she burst into tears.

It didn't occur to me to give her that big one, and every year during pumpkin season, I felt bad about it when I thought of it, more so each year as I got older. We stayed friends through elementary school but then went our separate ways in high school. However, when I was about 16, I finally bought the biggest pumpkin I could find and left it at her door with a note apologizing for that little one so many years ago. I think of the pumpkin whenever I am faced with a decision about giving something to someone when I really want to keep it for myself.

I never really thought I'd cross paths with Mary again. But about two weeks ago, Mary found me through Facebook. We wrote, we talked, we shared pix. She's as beautiful and funny and full of life as I remember her. What's more, turns out she works for Deckers Outdoor (they make Teva, Simple, Ugg and other outdoor, sports and recreational shoes) in California. So yesterday, when I got home from first visiting Farmer Sue at The Art Barn at Morning Glory Farm (see Sustainable Dunwoody post!) and then swinging by Farmer D's for a wide range of cover crops, I got a package from Mary. Two pairs of flip flops. One from Teva. One from Simple (which has amazing eco-stats, by the way--check it out here). I adore them both (and I am not an easy shoe buyer, which is why I buy perhaps one pair a year). It's forty years later, and Mary knows me perfectly. And one pair of them is orange. Coincidence? I think not.

So now, today, when I plant my cover crops in my new orange sandals, I will think, once again, of Mary. And it's almost time to plant the pumpkins. Mary, you'll be getting one from my garden this year. The biggest one I grow.

Flip Flops and Cover Crops

High Five to High Mowing Organic Seeds (The Seeds Being Used in the White House Veggie Garden)

So I was just at the Georgia Organics Annual Conference and I met the owner of High Mowing Organic Seeds, a very nice guy in his late 20s named Tom Stearns who started saving seeds at 18 years old and sold his first seeds one year later. Every year since then, his Vermont-based company has experienced 60-80% growth.

I said, "That's something about the White House garden, isn't it? Where do you think they got their seeds?"

And he smiled. Yep. High Mowing Seeds.

Young guy. Small company. Completely independent. An old-time American success story, if you ask me.

High Mowing grows a third of its seeds on the company's 100-acre farm in Hardwick, Vermont, and the others with farmer partners mostly in the arid Southwest (where there are particularly good conditions for seed saving). High Mowing Seeds are available via the internet or at about 400 retailers nationwide (including Farmer D Organics). Or, you could try to wrangle up an invitation to the White House for dinner to taste those crops, I suppose.

Here's a little snippet about High Mowing Seeds' philosophy:

At High Mowing Organic Seeds, we believe in re-imagining what our world can be like. We believe in a deeper understanding of how re-built food systems can support health on all levels – healthy environments, healthy economies, healthy communities and healthy bodies. We believe in a hopeful and inspired view of the future based on better stewardship for our planet. Everyday that we are in business, we are growing; working to provide an essential component in the re-building of our healthy food systems: the seeds.

I bought a few packets of Tom's seeds. Ya' think it's time to rip up another piece of my front lawn? Hey, if Michelle can do it . . .

High five to Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seeds, along with Roger Doiron of Eat the View and everyone else who worked to make this possible, and a big thank you to Michelle for digging in.

High Five to High Mowing Organic Seeds (The Seeds Being Used in the White House Veggie Garden)

A Big, Fat Cheers Across Our FoodShed Planet

I just sat at my kitchen table and sobbed. For sure you've heard by now that it is official that the Obama family is turning part of the White House lawn into a vegetable garden.

But that's not why I sobbed.

I've been working at all this local organic food stuff for years now. So much work. So much hope. So many barriers.

But that's not why I sobbed.

Without saying a word to me, my teenage daughter, you know the one, sent Roger's This Lawn Is Your Lawn video to her entire Facebook list, because she knew that what happened today is important. Historic. Life-altering.

And yes. That's why I sobbed.

We have turned a corner. We. Have. Turned. A. Corner. This is one of those moments in my life when I know, without a doubt, that everything has changed.

Cheers. A big, fat, cheers across our FoodShed Planet.

A Big, Fat Cheers Across Our FoodShed Planet

Imagine the Possibilities

Yesterday's rainy, cold afternoon found my organic farming teacher, classmates and me at the home of Harold and Mariann in beautiful horse-country in Cherokee County, Georgia. At this seemingly unassuming house on a pretty winding road, something interesting was going on, even though early spring can hide intention a bit. But sure enough, right there on the quarter-acre of the front yard and the similar size on the side, this couple had rows and rows ready for planting, with some already speckled with pea seedlings and garlic leaves and green onions and lots and lots of henbit for the chickens out back. Turns out this garden (you couldn't call it a farm) feeds 23 families in a CSA from a half-acre front lawn, and the garden is only four years old. A lot is possible on a little bit of space, folks.

Speaking of which, if you haven't seen this video yet about the Dervaes family, who have a fifth-of-an-acre urban homestead right off the freeway in Pasadena, California, kick back for ten minutes and imagine the possibilities.

And, guess what? I will meet the Dervaes family next Friday at a worskhop I am attending at the Georgia Organics Annual Conference right here in Atlanta.

Between Farmer D, my farming course, the Dervaes and all the other wonderful learning opportunities I've been fortunate to discover lately, am I wrong to have such high hopes about my kitchen garden this year?

Imagine the Possibilities

Ten Different Hands That Knew Just How

So I swung by Farmer D's store the other morning at the exact moment that a "barn raising" was happening, or should I say, a "hoop-house raising." Farmer D asked me to snap away and I stood there and captured the scene in something like 40 photos as five or six people silently took their positions and worked the plastic sheeting over the wire. In all of five short minutes, it was done. The hoop house was raised. And hundreds of beautiful little organic heirloom seedlings would be making their way in there to become bigger six-packs of salable additions to the raised bed boxes that Farmer D's dad was turning out in measured precision in the workshop.

I purchased about 60 of those little seed babies, five each of twelve varieties, to scatter around my garden and to populate the new mailbox garden with plants of beauty and flavor and interest. It felt good to be out there again, gardening, my red bucket filled with kitchen water, my fingernails dirty.

And so, the weather has turned here. The daffodils are blooming. The Bradford pear tree flowers are about to burst. The forsythia bushes are bright yellow and the cherry blossoms are about to fill our city with "pink snow." Cardinals and robins and rabbits are everywhere again. And the dark, cold despair of winter is falling away one sunrise at a time. The light has changed. The world has changed. I have changed.

I wonder about the silent communication of those ten different hands that knew just how and when to pull that plastic over the wire frame to form that hoop house. I wonder about the wordless messages we send each other and the world sends us that tell us just what it is we need to do next, and how, and with whom. As I stand outside, the first rays of morning and the first bird calls of the day welcoming me, I wonder what it is I am supposed to do now, this season, to connect, hand-to-hand, to build something good, worthwhile, necessary.

I take my shovel. And I plant food. And, once again, I simply trust.

Ten Different Hands That Knew Just How

Six Degrees of Preparation

So we were there in the greenhouse yesterday at my farming class, the dozen or so of us around the center tables, each with two trays of plant cells filled with farmer and educator Lynn Pugh's hand-mixed planting soil. Some of us simply want better home gardens, some have already started new farms, and some are heading in the community garden direction. We all had little tiny broccoli seedlings to transplant into individual cells, a total of about 2000 of them in four different varieties. Lynn told us the objective and left us to our own devices to figure out a process. And sure enough, in true group dynamic style, a few leaders emerged, a small disagreement erupted, and eventually we all settled in to the meditative action that shaking roots free and tucking them gently into new homes inspires.

And as we stood there, comfortably warm in the enclosed space as a gentle rain, a chorus of frogs, the bleeting of goats and the discordant calls of chickens and guinea hens beyond provided a soundtrack, we did the inevitable. We started to talk. Sharing observations. Finding commonalities. Provoking thought. And revealing ourselves, little by little, broccoli by broccoli.

As I drove home, my mud-caked boots on old newspaper beside me, I thought of that scene in the greenhouse and how we were helping Lynn prepare for her spring CSA. How we were preparing to take what we were learning there and bring it home to our own gardens and on our own farms. And how we were, ultimately, preparing for the future.

And that brought me back to the book I've been reading, The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, which is actually sort of a fun read, if you can imagine it, and one of the most practical-knowledge-packed books on the topic I've read yet. I think the review excerpted on the back cover is spot on:

"This book is like a Swiss army knife. Sharp. Simple. Very practical. Extremely useful. Full of survival tools, which you may need in five minutes or five years from now."

--Dr. Valentin Yemelin, climate scientist at the United Nations Environment Programme/GRID-Arendal, Norway

The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide is written in a lively style by Albert Bates, the Director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology and the EcoVillage Training Center at The Farm in Tennessee where he teaches sustainable design, natural building, permaculture and restoration technology to students from more than 50 nations. I'm learning some new things about growing, preparing, and storing food, and creating energy, and preparing a short-term survival kit. In fact, this is one of the best books for giving truly useful information on a wide range of survival topics in a concise format.

Listen, I'm not so sure how much any of us can do, and if climate change ever approaches the worst-case-scenario of a six-degree Celcius change (10 degrees Fahrenheit) as predicted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 report, we're pretty doomed and bringing our own bags to the market just ain't gonna' cut it. But just because we can't move the dial down individually (and may not even be able to do so collectively--who knows?) doesn't mean we can't find some ray of hope to rally around, some "six degrees of preparation" on which to focus.

For me, my efforts are starting to center around the power of human connectivity, specifically shared knowledge. In fact, I've started discussions with some older residents in my city to brainstorm ways to formulate a "transfer of knowledge" initiave, where "each one can teach one," an older generation member matched up with an eager-to-learn younger generation member (and I'm not talking adult and child here--I'm talking 75-year-old and 35-year-old!) How to can, how to sew, how to garden, how to cook, how to repair things, how to build, how to heal--this information has skipped not one but two and three generations and it's time to save it from being lost forever.

And so, as I think about that broccoli yesterday, and our collective hands pressing soft soil around food that will one day feed others, and our bodies shoulder to shoulder, and our breath warming the enclosed space we shared, I think about how very easy it is for strangers like us to come together and create something new, something bigger than ourselves, something valuable. And I wonder, yet again, how else and where else I can be part of this in my ever-evolving daily life.

Is it any coincidence that I woke up to the New York Times' Travel section's article about the amazing community of Serenbe, just south of Atlanta? It always seems to call to me, doesn't it?

Oh, and did I mention that I've already signed up for this workshop at the upcoming Georgia Organics Conference?

Workshop 4 - Urban Homesteading:
Eating and Living Off the Grid

Jules Dervaes, Path to Freedom

Since 2001, Jules Dervaes and his family have been living a protest- Path to Freedom-against corporate control of the food supply. They now grow over 6,000 pounds of produce annually on a onefifth acre residential lot in Pasadena, Ca.Their project incorporates alternative energy, transportation, and back-to-basics practices. Mr. Dervaes will present steps individuals can take where they are and with what they have, to become independent and live as responsible stewards of the earth.

Six Degrees of Preparation