Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I thought I had an original idea recently only to find that thousands of others were way ahead of me. I got to thinking about cemeteries and their potential for garden farming while making death a little less abhorrent. That’s when I had this “new” idea that actually is very old but is now a new movement.
When I joined Transition the following year, I began to write again, after many years silence, and one of the very first stories I wrote was about the little roadside stall I found with neat bunches of leeks for sale and the man who grew them in his wedge-shaped garden.
Holistic management seeks to restore grassland ecosystems by using livestock as a proxy for the wild herds of grazing ruminants that the prairies and savannas of the world co-evolved with and depend on.
After more than a year of craziness, build up and drama, Election 2012 is now behind us. It was a multi-multi Billion Dollar spectacle. It was a booming time for the media due to all of the spending on ads for the federal and local races. It was an exciting time with lots of interesting rhetoric and promises. Now, we have to sort out what it all means.
•Bee business picking up in Berlin •Yard times: Denver’s super-local veggie box •Double dose of pesticide poses new danger for bumblebees •Did California Voters Defeat the Food Movement Along With Prop. 37?
Bad weather almost always brings a few good results, something to hang on to in the time of adversity.
“Native foods have been in this region for thousands of years,” said Segrest. “That’s what people are craving—more than carbohydrates and protein. They want a connection with food, with the environment, with community. These foods help us remember who we are.”
Weeds not only flaunt human control, their very definition is a tricky thing to pin down. The standard definition goes along the lines of ‘a plant growing where it is not wanted’. The concept of a weed is a subjective one, more of a mental category than a botanical one. The plants we call weeds come from all corners of the plant kingdom. It is remarkable then that so many of these plants which we curse, spray and hoe turn out to be not only edible, but often more nutritious than the cultivated crops they grow next to.
Worms and termites are not likely to win hearts and minds, but they, along with lichens and microbes, are vital to food security, say biodiversity specialists who attended this month’s United Nations conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in this south Indian city.
Here in Manchester, like other cities across the UK, individuals and groups are getting serious about the environmental and social impacts of our food and organising in new and enterprising ways to challenge the economic might of supermarkets and agri-business.
Although there were still cosmos and California poppy flowering in the gardens, winter had put his bony leafless hand on the pot and suddenly we were all thinking Roots.
Seems to me that if we want school kids to eat lettuce, broccoli, carrots, peas, green beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, whole wheat bread, fruit cocktail etc. etc., we have an obligation to make these foods taste as good as fast food hamburgers and French fries.
