Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The underground gourmet is an old tradition. From lemonade stands to supper clubs and modern blind pigs, people love to play restaurant. Now a new tradition, started in 2011 in Helsinki, is bringing together hundreds of make-believe restaurateurs into a worldwide celebration of this alternative economy: Restaurant Day, “a worldwide food carnival when anyone can open a restaurant.”
Aquaponics has been around for centuries. It was traditionally a technique in tropical climates, using floating bamboo rafts with vegetation in fresh water pools. This was simply the adaptation of agriculture to the tropics. The technique has become cutting edge over the last 20 years. We can adapt aquaponics to today’s geographies and culture.
In the last few years a popular meme growing throughout the ether of the inter-webs is the idea of guerrilla gardening. The idea of guerrilla gardening is really quite simple, but with some rather radical implications. Guerrilla gardening is the cultivation and care of plants (usually edibles) on land that you do not own. It is done on land that may be overlooked and forgotten about by private companies or municipalities. It may be D.O.T. land such as boulevards or parcels cut off by highways, and surrounded by entrance and exit ramps. It may be tucked away off of the beaten path in a county park, or behind the public library.
Today, a press release from the egg industry commented on the traditional egg hunt of this year’s Easter, denying that "peak eggs" took place last year. "Eggs are still abundant," maintains the industry’s press release, "and the new technology of egg fracking is creating a "new age of eggs" that will last decades". The press release adds that the concept of "peak eggs" is only the result of fear mongering on the part of a small group of pseudo-experts who have been shown to be in error many times in the past.
Rotisserie chicken, chicken nuggets, Kung pao chicken, chicken livers, Buffalo wings, chicken Kiev, lemon chicken, chicken soup, barbecue chicken, chicken salad, fried chicken—there is no denying that the U.S. loves chicken. According to the USDA, poultry production exceeds $20 billion annually, with over 43 billion pounds of meat produced. The National Chicken Council estimates per capita consumption of chicken in the U.S. at over 80 pounds a year. What’s surprising is that it hasn’t always been this way. This is the story of how an Italian immigrant farmer and his son helped launch the industrial production of chicken.
Sometimes I wonder how things would be different if I had decided to start a farm in another part of Maine, away from the coast. But then I wake up after another night of waiting for goat babes to arrive and am graced with the remnants of wintertime. I take my coffee to sip outside on a cold granite bench engraved with a memory, and there I’m calmed by the seas and the sun, which definitely has risen by now. The surf is pounding, crashing over the rocks, and I can feel the sea spray floating through the air. It’s all so soothing and beautiful.
In Extraenvironmentalist #57 we hear from the many speakers at the 2012 Northwest Permaculture Convergence as recorded by our editor Kevin. We hear segments from the dozens of conference session sessions themed around permaculture approaches to global challenges, the social aspects of permaculture and ideas on the built environment.
Three years ago, my wife and I decided to redirect our farming efforts to create a CSA. Our farm is located in some of the most spectacularly beautiful scenery in the whole of this country. When folks think about Iowa, the first picture that comes to mind is one of immense fields of corn broken only by the occasional little town and its grain elevators that stand like towering parapets over their own private prairie landscapes. Here in the extreme northeastern corner of Iowa, it is so antithetical to that perception, you feel as if you are in a different state altogether. A different state altogether – Allamakee County is all that and more.
Recently my friend John who is a fellow fruit enthusiast like myself and helps run the NASE with me, sent me an email with a link to a program entitled The Fruit Hunters. Documenting the history of fruit and the industrialization of the food chain, The Fruit Hunters takes us on a journey through history and around the globe. From the jungles of Borneo and Bali, to a banana breeder in Honduras, and the flat northern plains of Saskatchewan, people around the globe have made it their mission to preserve, propagate, and share exotic, rare, and often times threatened species of fruit.
Weeds have been given a bad reputation, but they are a spectacular movable feast. By weeds, I am not referring to pot, but the regular herbaceous plants that grow everywhere, where no one planted them… your aunt’s backyard, by the sidewalk, parking lots, park, etc. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, weeds are plants that are not valued for their use, or beauty. Plants that grow wild and strong. So wild and strong that they can take over the growth of what some call ‘superior vegetation’ — meaning those you buy at garden stores and supermarkets.
Snow is falling as the plane touches down at Munich airport. By the time we arrive in Hermannsdorf, an hour’s drive, the forests and rolling hills of the Upper Bavarian countryside are pillowed in a few inches of white powder. My wife, Quincey, and I are on a mid-winter European junket. We’ve tagged along with her father, Doug Tompkins, to visit the farm of Karl-Ludwig Schweisfurth, one of Germany’s (and the world’s) leaders in the sustainable food movement.
I recently went to visit Edible Landscapes London, a project started a couple of years ago by Transition Finsbury Park. The project describes itself as: “a volunteer-led project which aims to help Londoners grow more of their own food. We propagate edible plants which are then used on local growing projects. We teach people how to recognise plants, which parts are edible, how to propagate them, how they are grown in a forest garden and even how to cook with them”.
