Grow Organic Food!!

Hello, organic food!

2007-06-16T22:42:00.001-07:00

The main focus for me most Saturdays is getting to the Berkeley Farmers' Market. Since it is a block away from my gym, I try to combine the two into one trip. The Farmers' Market closes at 3, so I'm always challenged by the logistical fact that I have to work out before I go to the Market...

Today, Z walked to the market and I biked up and met him. We got a lot of stuff, including out first ears of bi-color corn of the season. Woo hoo! It feels pretty radical to be buying organic corn from the farmer who grew it-- especially considering the book that I recently read: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I highly recommend that everyone read it.

While we ate our mostly-organic tacos and organic salad this evening (unfortunately, I didn't have time to make salsa, so we used Pace salsa, and he had bought 50 tortillas a few days ago so we'd have them on hand, and they're not organic... nor are most of the oils and vinegars that dressed our salads), we watched The Future of Food (PS- I found one of those annoying corn worms in the sink after Z shucked the corn). It starts out really boring, but it gets better. The end is the best part- she shows someone spraying down a row of strawberry plants, and then cuts to a little boy eating a fresh strawberry-- and she points out that the future of food will be determined by us consumers. (I hope that this is true. The film paints a very dire picture.)

I really want to go visit my friends' farm tomorrow (it's in woodland, and some of the genetically engineered seed packets in the movie said that the seeds had been grown in Woodland! It is very close to UC Davis, which is a "mean ag" school. But do I want to spend $40 to get there and back? Can I afford to? Can I afford not to? I'd also like to go and meet a woman who might be able to utilize my part-time volunteer services on her farm.

I never blogged about the spinach/lettuce crisis, did I

2006-11-02T23:23:00.000-08:00

I'm watching an NBC 11 story about E-coli right now. I did write a story about The Spinach Crisis, and people did another one about lettuce...It took me days to finish it, cuz I was trying to figure out what to say in this paragraph:
"It has been difficult for the FDA to discern the exact source of the E-coli. It seems to have been narrowed down to several farms in the Salinas Valley. The E-coli could have gotten into the soil or water in several ways. Cows from neighboring farms could have wandered into spinach fields and defecated. Farm laborers who do not have enough access to bathrooms could have simply defecated in spinach fields. Many organic growers import composted manure to use as fertilizer. "Processed" sewage sludge could have been used as a fertilizer for spinach farms. Many place the blame on the factory farming system. Large dairy farms can yield fecal runoff in rainy weather, and cattle that eat grain instead of pasture grasses can have more acidic stomachs and more E-coli in their manure. Supporters of organic farming methods point out that none of the E-coli cases have been attributed to organic spinach, and that a spread of disease such as this can only occur in an industrial context."

I really enjoyed getting to point out the problems (failings) of industrial agriculture.

Women in Sustainable Ag. Lecture series

2006-09-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

Future Food Careers.
Wholesome food, vital rural economies, dynamic professions

Women practitioners of sustainable agriculture speak on their
involvement in and understanding of a regenerative movement.

Series of Talks and Conversations, Fall 2006 U.C. Berkeley
College of Environmental Design, Wurster Hall room 106 6.45pm-8.45pm

Visit www.pixiepoppins.org for details and updates

As it fell to our mothers, so it falls to us today, to perpetuate life
by changing the world. Whether glamorously or invisibly, the women you
will encounter during this series pour their life's energy into
transforming our world into a more human and hospitable place. Speakers
in our series have chosen to deploy their intelligence, their passion
and stubborn hopefulness on behalf of Sustainable Agriculture – a vital
part of our social anatomy. Whatever your chosen field, these food and
farming heroes-journalists, scientists, activists, authors, counselors,
farmers can help us plot a courageous trajectory in our own
professional lives.

September 21
Barbara Deutsch
Advocate and practitioner of Gardens for butterflies.
+ Kendra Johnson
California FarmLink,

September 28
Dee Harley
Harley Goat Farms
+ Ali and Brooke Budner (twin sisters)
OAEC, Manic Organic, Full Belly Farm, South Side Community Land Trust

October 4
Dr. Clara Nicholls
AgroEcology, Slow Food
+Raquel Moreno-Penaranda
AgroEcology vs. Biotechnology

October 5
Claire Cummings
Kellogg Institute
Columbia Foundation
Worldwatch Institute
+ Katy Mamen
Ag Innovation

October 19
Anna Lappé
Food Activist author of GRUB, and Hope’s Edge
+ Shrereen D’souza
Sustaining Ourselves Locally (SOL)

October 25
Temra Costa
CAFF, Oakland
+ Dr. Christy Getz
Cooperative Extension Specialist

October 26
Kat Harrison
Ethnobotanist
+ Laura Smailes
Clinical Herbalist

November 9
Dr. Ann Thrupp
Fetzer and Bonterra Vineyards

November 15
Heather Coburn Flores
Founder of Food not Lawns and HOPE Farm
Author of Food not Lawns
+
Nora Maccoby
Film-maker

November 30
Sibella Krauss
SAGE, AgParks on the Urban Edge
+Anya Fernald
Slow Food Presidia

December 8
Dr. Heather Willams
Food Politics in Mexico, Pomona College Student Organic Farm
+ Christine Ahn
Food Justice, Korea

Please join us for one or all or these lively sessions. Each set of
talks will be followed by a convivial reception, discussion and
opportunity for conversation between attendees.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT WWW.PIXIEPOPPINS.ORG
Series presented by the Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology (SAFE)
and Greenhorn Agrarians.

Funding for the series comes from the KNIGHT program in Science and
Environmental Journalism and the College of Natural Resources

Further support has been provided by Blue House Farm which grew the
produce served at our receptions. www.bluehousefarm.org for more
information on this young farming enterprise located in Pescadero, CA.

.All sessions recorded and archived for podcast and radio program,
please email for details.

Artwork by Rosy Keyser Winterer.

(i have not vetted this site:)
please visit this new site:
www.pixiepoppins.org
the online hub for organic entrepreneurs

City Slicker Expands into Orinda, Needs Volunteers

2006-03-02T22:19:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
City Slicker Farms is happy to announce that we have a new farming
site--an acre of land on a south-facing slope in Orinda just off the
HWY 24 and Orinda BART station. We will be creating a vegetable
farm and fruit orchard there and plan to market all the produce
through our farm stands in West Oakland.

We will be having monthly volunteer workdays the First Sunday of
each month from 10am-2pm and welcome all volunteers for this
beginning phase of planting cover crops, creating paths, mapping out
beds and irrigation, installing fencing and planting trees (this
phase should take around 6 months).

Robin Galas is coordinating this garden, so if you have any
questions or suggestions or would like to volunteer please contact
her at robingalas@gmail.com.

Our first workday is this Sunday, March 5th from 10am-2pm (unless
it's pouring rain of course) at 69 Oak Road in Orinda (take HWY 24
or BART to Orinda exit; South on Moraga; West on Stein; North on
Oak). If you take BART you will need a bike since it's about 1 mile
down the road.

Here is a link to a map so you can get there:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?address=69%20Oak%20Rd&city=Orinda&state=CA&zipcode=94563%2d3322&country=US&title=%3cb%3e69%20Oak%20Rd%3c%2fb%3e%3cbr%20%2f%3e%20Orinda%2c%20CA%2094563%2d3322%2c%20%20US&cid=lfmaplink2&name=

Thanks!
Willow
Willow Rosenthal,
Founding Director

CITY SLICKER FARMS
Growing affordable fresh produce for West Oakland

510-763-4241
737 Henry Street
Oakland, CA 94607

LOCATIONS
Center Street Farm, The Annex Farm, West Oakland Wilds Farm, The
Secret Garden, Ralph Bunche School Nursery, Jubilee West Garden &
Mandela Farmer's Market

Seeds=one step towards sustainability

2006-02-28T00:19:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so there's going to be a seed swap at the Ecology Center this week. There is a note on the board at our community garden about please saving seeds. I think we are the closest community garden to the ecology center- about a mile away.

Anywhoozlebees, there have been a bunch of broccoli plants that have been going to seed for months in our garden, and most of them got pulled out yesterday (why let them go for this long and then pull them out?). Several radishes that didn't get picked in December were also pulled out in the last week. Radishes are the EASIEST thing to grow in the Bay Area, besides chard and fava beans and maybe some kales and lettuces and some potatoes. You get what I mean. So why not save seeds from one or two of the radish plants? Radishes are a great thing to grow because they give near-instant gratification- 4 to 6 weeks, and they're all out of the ground or too old to eat.

Also, people at our garden tend to leave the smaller or less productive plants for seeds. That goes against Darwin and a lot of other common sense.

There are so many things at that garden that go against common sense, and whenever I try to convince people of things, for some reason I "lose" the argument.

I NEED TO FIND ANOTHER GARDEN TO WORK ON. And/or move out of the city.

Ah, a chance to learn about tree grafting

2006-02-08T00:14:00.000-08:00

I hope I can go to this, because learning this stuff has been on my list for a while! i bet they'd get more people to come if each person got to take one tree home, but that's just the organizer in me talking.

from: "wildseed christopher" wildheartgardens at yahoo.com
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:00:37 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Fruit tree grafting workshop february 25th 10am-3pm

Come to Ploughshares Nursery on February 25th from
10am until 3pm or whenever we finish, to a fruit tree
grafting workshop with Solomon Rosenzweig. We'll
provide the scionwood and rootstock and the trees are
all for the Alameda Point Collaborative (APC) and
Ploughshares Nursery. You'll learn the basics of
grafting, get to know some great heirloom varieties
and get hands-on experience. Plus you'll be helping us
with our community orchards and nursery. We're trying
to graft 200 dwarf apple trees and possibly other
types. Bring your grafting knives! This will be
outdoors unless its raining and then we'll find an
indoor space. directions are at
www.apcollaborative.org and
www.ploughsharesnursery.com
we'll have signs up on the day to have people find us,
as it will be location depending on the weather.
Questions, please call Christopher Shein at 510-755-1102.

Permaculture show on Terra Verde

2005-12-30T13:20:00.000-08:00

Ok, at the end of the show they said that it had been recorded in summer of 2004. That explains some of the things I'm talking about below.

I'm listening to part of today's Terra Verde show about Permaculture. There are a lot of WRONG statements in here:

-the garden "on MLK about 3 blocks north of Ashby" that the guy's student(s) helped design is no longer there

-there is not a surplus of classes and ways to learn about permaculture- if there were, they'd be cheaper and more accessible. the only ones they listed are hard to get to. They talked about the ones at Merritt College. there are also workshops and stuff at the Alameda Point Collaborative (how is one supposed to get there? is the land safe for growing food?)

they are talking about a 2-week course that info can be found out about at permaculture.com

also talking about urbanpermacultureguild.org

funny, when i look around the kpfa site for Terre Verde, I keep seeing all these different links to websites like whirledbank.org and moles.org, which is Project Underground. there was a weather service alert in the middle of the show, i wonder if that will be in the archives...?

free workshop on raising chickens this Saturday!

2005-10-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

YOU EAT CHICKEN and/or EGGS RIGHT? (what the hell?! -mahtin)

Then come on down to a free chicken raising workshop

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29th 1pm-5pm
City Slicker Farms' Center Street Farm
at the corner of 16th & Center Streets, West Oakland

1pm-2:30pm learn how to raise chickens for eggs, meat or companionship
2:30pm-5:00pm hands on demonstration on slaughtering chickens with
Jim Montgomery of Green Fairy Farm

INFO / RSVP 510-763-4241

(p.s. Since we're in the field a lot we only check e-mail a few
times a week. Please call 510-763-4241 for a prompt response)

CITY SLICKER FARMS
Growing affordable fresh produce for West Oakland

510-763-4241
737 Henry Street
Oakland, CA 94607

LOCATIONS
Center Street Farm, The Annex Farm, West Oakland Wilds Farm, The
Garden of Eatin', Ralph Bunche School Nursery, Jubilee West Garden &
Mandela Farmer's Market

Organics: Meaningful or Market Niche?

2005-10-14T01:15:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend this article in Lip Magazine's summer issue. It was called Organics: Meaningful or Market Niche?,
by Ariane Conrad Hyde and Erin Wiegand. It had lots of cool facts about how the organic industry is just another industry and stuff.

I'm finally reading John Jeavons's How to Grow More Vegetables. It's weird, cuz I have done so much of this under Herman's tutelage already. Basically what I mean by that is that I have done lots of double digging.

City Slicker Farms back yard garden Volunteer Orientations

2005-09-21T00:16:00.000-07:00

Greetings!
City Slicker Farms is proud to announce the official launch of our
Back Yard Garden Program. This program builds and maintains organic
back yard gardens with low income West Oakland residents in order to
increase nutrition and improve the environment in our community.

Each participant receives two 4x8 planter boxes with trellises, a
fruit tree, soil, plants, seeds, a compost bin and a West Oakland
Gardening Guide to start with. Then, once each quarter we make a
visit to provide more plants, seeds and compost and to work with the
participants to maintain their garden and answer questions. Every
six months they can receive two more beds if they wish.

We invite you to work with us to bring organic produce to lower
income folks in our community. We need volunteers who like to build
and install gardens (usually in a group of 2-5 people) as well as
knowledgeable gardeners to make the quarterly follow-up visits (to
work in pairs). We are looking for volunteers who would like to
make a committment of at least six months and at least 4 hours per
month.

To learn more you are invited to attend a two-hour Volunteer
Orientation. We have two orientations scheduled for this Fall. We
will be touring different sites so bring a vehicle or a bicycle
(there will be some extra seats in cars if you come by BART). See
below for details and call 510-763-4241 to RSVP or for more
information.

City Slicker Farms Back Yard Garden Program Volunteer Orientations:

Date: Saturday, October 8th
Time: 11am - 1pm
Meet: Center Street Farm, corner of 16th & Center Streets, West Oakland

Date: Saturday, October 22nd
Time: 11am - 1pm
Meet: Center Street Farm, corner of 16th & Center Streets, West Oakland

See you there!
Willow

Willow Rosenthal,
Founding Director

(p.s. Since we're in the field a lot we only check e-mail a few
times a week. Please call 510-763-4241 for a prompt response)

CITY SLICKER FARMS
Growing affordable fresh produce for West Oakland

510-763-4241
737 Henry Street
Oakland, CA 94607

LOCATIONS
Center Street Farm, The Annex Farm, West Oakland Woods Farm, Ralph
Bunche School Nursery, Jubilee West Garden, Mandela Farmer's Market,
The Secret Garden

Living on Earth covers Marin County farms

2005-09-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

The September 2, 2005 "Living on Earth" Radio show had a nice piece about farms in West Marin County. The part that I paid the most attention to was the part where they talked about oyster farms and how fecal runoff from farms and stuff is messing things up.

This is interesting...

2005-08-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

what's next, using the methane for power? Or is that another 20 years down the road?

Thousands of Farms Sign Up for Animal Feeding Operations Air Compliance Agreement

8/15/2005 11:45:00 AM

To: National Desk, Environment Reporter

Contact: Stacie Keller of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 202-564-4355 or keller.stacie@epa.gov

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 /U.S. Newswire/ -- More than 2,000 animal feeding operations (AFOs) have signed agreements for EPA's air compliance initiative. Sign-up ended Friday, but the agency will continue to process agreements postmarked with Friday's date. Many of the companies that signed up have several farms that will come under the agreement.

Applicants originate from more than 37 states across the United States and include representation from the pork, egg layers, meat birds, and dairy industries. After EPA makes an official determination as to whether all types of animals are adequately represented, the agency will request approval from EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB). Once the EAB approves the agreements, the monitoring study can begin.

"Thousands of farms across the country have committed to participating in the air monitoring process, and, if necessary, take whatever steps are required to come into compliance with clean air standards," said Jon Scholl, agricultural adviser to the EPA administrator. "This broad participation is a major achievement. We now will move as quickly as possible to the monitoring and implementation stages."

The two-year monitoring study, expected to begin in early 2006, will provide EPA with the essential data needed to develop emissions estimating methods and tools, which will assist the industry and EPA in determining the air compliance status of AFOs. Participating AFOs will then be required to determine their emissions and comply with all applicable regulatory requirements. Under the agreement, EPA will not sue participating AFOs for certain violations of the Clean Air Act and the hazardous release reporting requirements of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) that may have occurred during the two-year study.

For more information about the agreement, go to: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/agreements/caa/cafo-agr-0501.html

http://www.usnewswire.com/

-0-

/© 2005 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

8/20 in El Cerrito: Grow Food in Your Own Backyard! An Introduction to Bio-intensive Gardening

2005-08-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

Backyard Gardening Workshop: An Introduction to Bio-intensive gardening

at Grandma Mary’s Organic Farm in El Cerrito
with the farm’s co-manager Kevin Rowell
and Ecology Action apprentice David Basile

Saturday August 20th 10am-4pm

We will discuss and give hands on demonstrations of:
*Garden design and planning
*Hand cultivation of vegetable, flower and fruit garden beds
*Home composting and soil management
*Seedling propagation and transplanting
*Plant disease mitigation
*Food production for self-sufficiency
*Inspiration and encouragement to get you started!

$60 class fee-work trade available
Bring a bag lunch and cup for refreshments

Grandma Mary’s Organic Farm is located near the El Cerrito Plaza Bart
station. We have off street bike parking!!

For information and registration call 707-367-2567 or email:
plant_veggies at yahoo.com

Instructor Biographies:

Kevin Rowell runs Grandma Mary’s Organic Farm, a half-acre urban
farmstead in the East Bay with his partner, Marisha, and her
grandmother. He has worked in the field of urban agriculture installing
gardens for the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) and
middle school gardens in the Bay Area. In South East Asia he studied
indigenous agricultural traditions and the social/environmental effects
of the transition to mechanized agriculture. As filed manager at Green
Gulch Farm in Marin he received trainings in French Intensive
Agriculture and tractor cultivation.

David Basile lives in Mendocino County, manages the Golden Rule
Community’s Bio-intensive mini-farm, and trains interns from all over
the world in French Intensive/Biodynamic gardening. Through the support
of Ecology Action and his mentor, John Jeavons, he conducts research in
sustainable small-scale food production. For the past two years he has
grown most of his family’s food from 1/8th of an acre. He has offered
classes to the public on topics such as seed saving, grains, compost,
bed preparation, growing your own bread, and more. Currenly, he is very
interested in turning his harvests into cultures and ferments for
better, tastier health.

The O Word

2005-08-04T00:25:00.000-07:00

The O Word
Kristie and Rick Knoll were early pioneers of organic farming. So why are they now rebelling against organic?
By Will Harper

Published: Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Chris Duffey
Kristie and Rick Knoll are widely regarded in the organic-farming world as pioneers.
Chris Duffey
Every item is harvested by hand.
Chris Duffey
Kristie Knoll at a farmers' market.
Chris Duffey
Rick Knoll with one of his homeopathic "potions," which he uses to enrich the soil on his farm and fortify the plants against disease.
Chris Duffey
The Knolls grow year-round, fulfilling orders as they come in from Bay Area restaurants and grocery stores.
Chris Duffey
Knoll Farms could easily have qualified as organic under the new rules, but the Knolls opted out because they think the O word has been totally corrupted.
Chris Duffey
When you start using another term that no one recognizes, how do you hang on to all those customers you've trained to look for the organic label?

What passes for "organic" these days bugs the hell out of Rick and Kristie Knoll. For instance, there's the chlorine, the same chemical found in your swimming pool. Federal rules allow organic farmers to use it to wash their greens. To a farmer such as Kristie, who is intimately familiar with the aroma of newly harvested greens, a freshly opened plastic bag of organic salad reeks of chlorine.

Not only does the chemical kill off any bad microscopic organisms that might be on the greens, it also kills off the good ones. Rick Knoll spends months brewing homeopathic "potions" loaded with beneficial microorganisms that he uses to enrich the soil on his farm and fortify his plants against disease. He denounces the prevalent mentality that people are keeping themselves healthy by killing off all the microbes in their food. "In reality," he argues, "every day you want to eat food that has beneficial microorganisms on it -- that gets in your system, mutates, and causes you to be healthy."

To some they might sound like kooks, but the Knolls are widely regarded in the organic-farming world as pioneers. Their ten-acre farm in Brentwood supplies produce to some of the best restaurants in the East Bay, including Chez Panisse, Oliveto, and Dopo. More than two decades ago, they became among the first certified organic farmers in the Bay Area. That was when certification was a private affair, handled by an independent nonprofit agency. These days, the federal government has the final say on organic certification and who gets to legally use the phrase "organic." And as the feds were about to take over "organic" in October 2002, the Knolls were among the first and most prominent organic farmers to opt out and put the O word behind them.

Many environmentally oriented farmers viewed federal regulation as a great victory, the culmination of more than a decade of lobbying to get the Department of Agriculture to officially recognize organic farming as a legitimate enterprise. But a few purists like the Knolls viewed it as the end of the line. Federal recognition would also mean federal regulation -- regulation subject to manipulation by big agribusiness. Organic, after all, is now a $10.8-billion-a-year business, and even before the feds assumed oversight of the industry, the Knolls had been dismayed by the new corporate face of organic farming. General Mills, the maker of junk cereals including Trix and Lucky Charms, has owned the Cascadian Farm label, one of the oldest organic brands, since 1999.

Shortly after the federal program went into effect, people who didn't trust the government to protect the integrity of organic had their worst suspicions confirmed. In 2003, a Georgia congressman inserted language into a spending bill that would allow chicken farmers to give their "organic" chickens nonorganic feed to save money, although Senator Pat Leahy later managed to get the exemption repealed. Then, last spring, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, USDA administrators quietly tweaked organic rules to "expand the use of antibiotics and hormones in organic dairy cows, allow more pesticides in the organic arsenal, and for the first time let organic livestock eat potentially contaminated fishmeal." After a public outcry led by Consumers Union, the USDA withdrew the changes. Finally, this past October, organic watchdog Mark Kastel complained to the National Organic Standards Board that the mass-milking operations permitted by the USDA were incompatible with the true goals of organic farming. "You cannot milk ... five thousand cows -- milking them in many cases three times a day -- and provide them access to real pasture," said Kastel, cofounder of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.

Knoll Farms could easily qualify as organic under the new rules, and the Knolls still don't use any pesticides or herbicides. But they opted out of organic farming because they think the O word has been totally corrupted. "What are people eating, exactly?" Rick asks. "Is it the organic food that they thought it was when they went to the farmers' market and first discovered it twenty years ago? No. ... It's become so perverse that it's not fixable. We need to start over again."

But if you don't call it organic, then what do you call it? And when you start using another term that no one recognizes, how do you hang on to all those customers you've trained to look for the organic label?
more of this article: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2005-01-05/news/feature.html

CoCo County wins cockfight with Rodeo sentinel-chicken guy; A litigious landlord loses; and how eating organic can kill you.

2005-08-04T00:20:00.000-07:00

Chickening Out
CoCo County wins cockfight with Rodeo sentinel-chicken guy; A litigious landlord loses; and how eating organic can kill you.
By Will Harper

Published: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 (East Bay Express)
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2005-02-16/news/bottomfeeder.html

Tibbot fought the county for a year to keep his chickens, but lost in the end.

Tastes like chicory: Click here to read about FDA regulations on filth and infestation in food.
Printer friendly version of this story
Email Will Harper
More stories by Will Harper
Send a letter to the editor
Send this story to a friend

Feature
Phillip Johnson's Assault Upon Faith-Based Darwinism
A modern monkey trial isn't what Phillip Johnson expected when he wrote a critique of evolution that launched intelligent design -- or was it?

Cityside
Pirates Without a Ship
Hounded by the FCC, trumped by technology, stung by public apathy, the illegal micropower radio movement struggles for relevance.

Love and Redemption at GG Fields
A shattered ex-jockey coaxes a spirited underdog filly into the winner's circle. Sound familiar? Just call her "Seabagel."

Letters
Letters for the week of July 27-August 2, 2005
If you don't give young women one kind of choice, a writer notes, they may go ahead and make another kind of choice.

Neighbors of a scientific researcher in Rodeo can finally stop clucking about the noise and stink coming from his flock of "sentinel" chickens. Contra Costa County building inspectors say Brian Tibbot has gotten rid of his fowl-smelling birds, which he told inspectors he kept as an early warning system for West Nile virus. The county had threatened to fine Tibbot $4,300 if he didn't get the birds off his property.

In an e-mail to Feeder, Tibbot said he considered taking his case to court, but figured that would be too costly and time-consuming. He'd already been fighting the county for more than a year, insisting that he should be able to keep the chickens in the name of public safety. "The county wants to give the impression that I was a regular homeowner with backyard chickens, even though they were well aware I had them for my [West Nile virus] program," noted Tibbot, a former researcher for the US Department of Agriculture who says he now works as a substitute teacher.

Public health officials use so-called sentinel chickens to alert them to the presence of pathogens such as West Nile. The chickens' blood is tested periodically for the presence of antibodies that would indicate exposure to the virus. The Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District maintains four sentinel flocks, district spokeswoman Deborah Bass says, but the district has no cooperative arrangement with Tibbot.

County zoning officials, meanwhile, say it didn't matter why Tibbot kept the chickens. Even if the birds were to protect the neighborhood from West Nile (some neighbors had their doubts), county regulations forbid chickens in that residential area.

Homeowners in the unincorporated Viewpointe neighborhood began squawking to county officials about the stench in October 2003. According to one, Tibbot and his wife kept thirty chickens and fourteen turkeys in their backyard and garage. "The neighbors were very upset because of the odor ... from the feces," says Paul Collins, a property manager for the 1,100-home planned community.

Shari Brown and her husband, Bob, were trying to sell their home last year while Tibbot and the county were engaged in their zoning cockfight. Brown didn't express concern that odors from the nearby oil refinery would scare away potential buyers, but she did fear the smelly chickens might. The roosters also woke the recent retiree at five every morning, which she didn't appreciate. The fowl, Brown also recalls, attracted pests such as huge horseflies, rodents and, in turn, buzzards and hawks that would swoop down looking for a snack. For a couple of months, the Tibbots rented two goats to eat the weeds in their yard. "It was disgusting," says Brown, who sold her home in November for less than she wanted because she was eager to get away. "I figured the neighborhood was going to the birds."

Can Landlords from Hell Go to Heaven? In recent years, Bay Area tenant-rights advocates have deemed landlord Richard E. Thomas public enemy number one -- or at least in their top ten most vilified rental owners. Thomas, according to his critics, owns hundreds of rental units throughout the East Bay. He is facing a class-action suit by former tenants who allege he has systematically stiffed them on their rental deposits. Tenant groups have estimated he owes former renters more than $35,000.

More menacing in the eyes of his detractors is Thomas' alleged penchant for suing or countersuing tenants who complain. Two years ago, he filed a restraining order against John Quintero, who had tried to protest his eviction from a Thomas rental property in Hayward by joining a picket organized by the Campaign for Renters' Rights in front of the landlord's home and the First Presbyterian Church of Castro Valley, a church Thomas attends. Picketers handed out leaflets to parishioners at the congregation that said Thomas, a church deacon, was a multimillionaire who harassed and ripped off his tenants. Quintero, a fortysomething Christian, also wrote a letter to Thomas' pastor asking him to intervene. The pastor demurred, but First Amendment lawyer Mark Goldowitz stepped to the plate and argued that the restraining order petition was a so-called Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) designed to stifle free speech.

Earlier this month, the state court of appeals ruled in Quintero's favor, stating once and for all that civil-harassment restraining orders may be challenged with an anti-SLAPP motion. While ostensibly a victory for Quintero, the ruling did little to help him personally. He says his eviction totally screwed up his credit record, and he has been couch-surfing for the past two years. He also doubts that the appellate decision will change how Thomas does business. "He's just a bad guy," Quintero says.

One final ironic note: Thomas is now trying to persuade the state appeals court to throw out the aforementioned class-action suit. His grounds? Court records indicate Thomas is trying to use the anti-SLAPP law -- the same one Quintero successfully employed against him -- to argue that his ex-tenants are trying to interfere with his right to file lawsuits.

Hippies: Terrorist Priority? Reporters are just like children: Tell us we can't have something, and all of a sudden we'll want it desperately. This was the case recently when Feeder asked for the state Department of Health Services' titillatingly titled annual report, "Organic Processed Product Registration Program Report," which included a listing of all 744 California companies registered with the department to sell organic products. The trouble started when Patrick Kennelly, chief of the agency's food safety inspection unit, said the report wouldn't include the companies' addresses. Kennelly's explanation for the omissions: To keep the information out of the hands of the terrorists. No joke.

In the post-9/11 world, health officials have understandably been devising ways to avert contamination of the country's food supply. And it's nice to know the government wants to protect health-food lovers. But this didn't pass the smell test: To get many of the addresses, a person could simply Google them. "A lot of them you could, absolutely," Kennelly acknowledged. "But instead of providing a nice, concise easy list for somebody, we're just saying, get what you can. ... We figure we shouldn't be making it easier for some terrorist group to get the information."

By censoring the list, the DHS also is helping keep addresses of firms specializing in pet food, cosmetics and, yes, organic sex-lube out of the hands of terrorists. Let the horny animal-loving hippie infidel beware.

GREEN Farming the Future (from SF Gate)

2005-08-04T00:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2005/08/03/gree.DTL
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, August 3, 2005 (SF Gate)
GREEN Farming the Future/Your organic food box is a delicious step towards a sustainable tomorrow
Gregory Dicum, Special to SF Gate

Out near Winters, in Yolo County, there's an unripe Sharlyn melon with my
name on it. It's growing within shouting distance of Putah Creek, which
keeps it moist in the murderous Central Valley sun with water from Lake
Berryessa, in the Coast Range. This little melon will be sitting out there
at the edge of the Central Valley for another month or so until it's
perfectly sweet and juicy, then it'll be picked and brought to the City --
for me.

This is the kind of relationship that Terra Firma Farm, which tends 170
acres of organic fruits and vegetables about an hour from the City,
fosters with its community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription
program. The concept isn't new -- subscribers like me pay a local farm in
advance for a regular food supply -- but now that this kind of direct
partnership between farmer and city dweller has been around for a while,
it's starting to reap rewards for everyone involved and show how we really
can live in a sustainable way.

"The first CSAs in the country were in 1984, on the East Coast," says
Guillermo Payet, founder of Local Harvest, an online directory of local
food options for people across the country. (The idea originated in Japan
in the 1960s.) "Pretty soon -- like the next year -- a few more popped up.
And in the last few years there have been about a hundred new CSAs founded
every year. It's hard to keep track, but there could be 1,500 nationwide."

The largest CSA in the United States, Angelic Organics outside Chicago,
has 1,200 members. Payet estimates that 130,000 families around the
country get their food from CSAs. Thirteen different farms integrate CSA
programs for Bay Area dwellers into their other operations, providing city
residents with access to everything from my eagerly anticipated Sharlyn
and other fruits, nuts and veggies, to duck eggs, pheasants and natural
beef -- all at farmers' market prices. Thousands of families in the Bay
Area participate; Terra Firma alone has 700 subscribers.

Michael Marriner is one of them. "It took a while to get used to it," he
told me, "because you really do find yourself eating differently, cooking
differently. I was used to buying grocery store produce where you can get
grapes year round or lettuce year round; it's coming from all over the
world. And now what I'm eating is very seasonal, but the rewards are
incredible. The quality of the produce is just amazing."

Indeed, Marriner fell so in love with his CSA that he volunteered to
become a drop host. Now each week about 20 wax boxes of produce are
dropped off at his home in the Mission for other members in his
neighborhood to pick up. He has to be around for a few hours one day each
week, but he says it's not a hassle: "There's something nice about the
community aspect of having these people come by. It's social in a very
light sense -- sort of like seeing people at church. I am connected to
what we're eating, and to my community, in a much different way."

Farms that operate CSAs find themselves operating in a different realm
too. Paul Underhill, one of Terra Firma's co-owners, says that in the
decade that Terra Firma has been offering a CSA it has become an important
part of the farm's overall business. "We've figured it out over time," he
says. "Besides the CSA, we sell at farmers' markets, we sell to
restaurants, we sell to stores like Rainbow Grocery and Market Hall in the
East Bay, and we grow some stuff for wholesalers who sell to produce
markets. We've figured out what stuff we need to grow just for the CSA and
what stuff we can grow efficiently for other people too."

In the hit-or-miss world of the farmer, CSAs can be critical. "The CSA has
made the difference for us between staying in business and going out of
business," says Underhill. "We have years when we make a profit on the
wholesale crops and years where we lose money on them, and the CSA
stabilizes the whole thing. It's extremely predictable and it really
smoothes out our cash flow."

"A lot of small farms are struggling," adds Local Harvest's Payet. "They
don't have the economy of scale to grow a couple of big crops and sell
them to a local packer, where they're really competing with the big
industrial farms."

"Some of the most common vegetables that people eat are actually not
profitable for small growers to grow at wholesale," agrees Underhill.
"Something like carrots -- it's a labor-intensive crop and the wholesale
price is very low, but we can grow carrots that are better than the ones
in the store, and we get a good price for them by selling them retail to
our subscribers."

And this quality is increasingly in demand. "It's not just that there are
more CSAs," says Payet, "but the CSAs are doing more business. A lot of
them are selling out. Most sell out, actually."

Underhill agrees. "Our CSA has reached the point where there is a natural
limit: We have basically maxed out our truck driver," he says. "It's nice
to be in a reasonably stable situation -- it actually feels sort of
sustainable. Nobody's making a lot of money right now in agriculture --
including the owners -- but folks who work for us have a year-round job."

Terra Firma has 25 full-time employees and hires some seasonal labor in
the summer. Underhill says that the CSA lets him provide better jobs than
other farms: "Everybody's able to pay the rent and put food on the table
-- it's a much more stable job. The yearly incomes are significantly
higher because we don't have long periods of no work."

That is not the kind of thing we normally hear farmers say about their
operations, and it gets to the core of the CSA rationale -- the idea that
urbanites and nearby farmers need one another to make the entire region
work. If we city dwellers want to enjoy fresh local produce, then people
on nearby farms need to be able to make a decent living growing it. That
basic balance of market forces has to underlie true sustainability.

But farmland in Northern California is threatened by development pressure
-- 82,000 acres are developed statewide each year, squeezing places like
Terra Firma, which is halfway between the sprawling cities of the Bay Area
and Sacramento.

"There's a demographic thing going on," says Paul Underhill. "People want
to move out of the city and get a little ranchette in the country and have
a little garden and all that. I'm sympathetic to that desire, but it's
putting a lot of pressure on farmers. It's much better for people who live
in the city and are committed to living in urban areas to stay there and
support regional small farms through a CSA or farmers' market, or shop at
someplace like Rainbow Grocery. It's really important to preserve a local
food supply, and in order to do that it's important for everyone in San
Francisco to not move to the country."

"There's really no doubt that California is one of the best places in the
world to grow the stuff that we're growing," Underhill continues. "It
would really be a tragedy for Californians to be importing most of their
fresh produce, but that's what's going to happen if we keep paving the
state over."

CSAs don't just help preserve agricultural open space. In a very tangible
way, they help re-establish the kinds of human relationships that once
characterized our society.

"Our economy used to be much more personal," says Payet. "You knew the
cobbler that made your shoes and you knew the farmer that gave you food,
and that was actually really great. It was built on really rich human
interactions. Nowadays we're mostly pretty much isolated; we're like
little islands. You just go to this impersonal big store and you buy your
stuff and that's it. CSAs are bringing back the relationship between the
consumer and the farmer."

The farms encourage members to visit, and they include a newsletter with
each week's box of produce. "I take the responsibility very seriously,"
says Underhill, who writes Terra Firma's newsletter under the pen name
Pablito. "Because of it I think our subscribers understand more about
agriculture in general and organic agriculture in particular than people
who don't live in a farming area of California. News stories about
agriculture tend to be either really negative or silly positive. There's a
lot gaps to be filled in."

I've certainly developed a healthy respect for the people who grow my food
from reading Terra Firma's newsletter. It's humbling to know that the
winter storm passing overhead is going to have Underhill and his employees
up to their armpits in mud just so I can have my salad greens a couple of
weeks later.

This month's yellow, green and ruby-red heirloom tomatoes taste all the
sweeter because I can remember being concerned about them when they were
mere seedlings struggling through this spring's unusually wet weather.

"Just by getting the newsletter from the farmer and getting a box of
veggies that are seasonal," says Guillermo Payet, "you learn about the
environment and you learn about your community."

As a farmer, Underhill is more pragmatic: To him CSAs are part of a
movement to reclaim food quality. "Food is just a really basic thing," he
says. "Most people in the U.S. should be able to enjoy good fresh food. We
spend less of our per capita income on food than anyone else, but so much
of it is bad. In the drive to make everything super-efficient everyone
forgot that this is food -- it's supposed to taste good, and we're
supposed to pay attention to that."

"With the CSA you're avoiding the whole system that screwed up the food,"
he continues. "Because your customer is the person who is eating the food,
you have a direct relationship with them. You're avoiding all the people
in the middle who came up with the idea that, for example, we should breed
tomatoes that can sit around for a week in the store without getting
mushy. The produce manager is one of the villains responsible for screwing
up the average American's enjoyment of produce. With the CSA we pick most
of the stuff the day before you guys get it. That's about as fresh as you
can get."

And ultimately that's what keeps people like me and Michael Marriner
coming back each week. "I get the best produce imaginable," he says. "The
strawberries we get from the farm are not the same strawberries you get in
the store. These are very juicy, very sweet, very ripe strawberries. Same
with the tomatoes. We get the same garlic and tomatoes that Terra Firma
sells to Chez Panisse. I'm eating pretty good."

Gregory Dicum, author of Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air,
writes about the natural world from San Francisco. A forester by training,
Gregory has worked at the front lines of some of the world's most urgent
environmental crises. For more of his work, see www.dicum.com/list

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 SF Gate