Beat the Heat on a Farm
This Weekend! County Farm Tour Days - Sat. and Sun., July 24 & 25
There's no way around it,
it's going to be brutally hot this weekend.
But one good way to beat the heat, other than sitting in front of an air
conditions, is to leave our asphalt encased urban heat traps and journey to one
of our county's farms during Montgomery County's 21st Annual Farm Tour and
Harvest Sale this Saturday and Sunday, July 24 and 25. (Honest, it is cooler and breezier on the
farm!)
A total of 14 farms will
be participating on one or both of the days, including MVG partners such as the
Red Wiggler Community Farm, which will feature not only comprehensive tours of
their impressive organic operation, presentations on historical plant-based
medical remedies, wagon rides, farm stand sales, and the eclectic sound of The
Rookery Project playing in the barn all day.
Whichever farm you decide
to visit, take a few hours this weekend to come see where food comes from, pick
some yourself (or buy it freshly picked), take a hayride, or pet farm animals
after lunch by a scenic pond. It's a wonderful educational experience and a
great family outing for all!
Click here for more information on the 2010 Annual Farm Tour & Harvest Sale, including a list
of participating farms with directions.
Superintendent Weast Out... School Gardens In?
As MVG readers all know by
now, longtime Montgomery County Public School Superintendent Jerry Weast
is the
author of the (infamous) February 26 memo banning vegetable gardens from
MCPS schools.
Imagine our surprise,
then, to learn from a Washington Examiner article this past weekend that
a
large majority of the Board of Education is ready to see the controversial Dr. Weast go when his third term ends in June of 2011. (And a tip of the zuke to Parents' Coalition of Montgomery Countyfor spotting this.) It may not be a
direct connection, but speaking ill of school vegetable gardens
is clearly not
a smart career move, in Montgomery County or anywhere else.
In fact, the issue
promises to be a prominent one during the election of Board of Education
members this fall: the League of Women Voters made school vegetable gardens one
of the six questions they asked Board of Ed candidates to be reported in their
2011 Voter Guide!
At the same time, Montgomery Victory Gardens and the Montgomery Master Gardeners had our
first meeting with MCPS officials to find a way through this issue. While we clearly have a ways to go before we
can claim victory - the vegetable garden ban is still in effect, and their
initial proposal may not be satisfactory - we are delighted to say that we are
on the right path, and with the forces gathering behind this issue we think our
prospects are pretty promising.
And where will you get all
the latest developments as they happen - the MVG Weekly Update, of course!
More Media on our Campaign
for School Vegetable Gardens!
One of the ways that we
have been able to bring pressure to bear in our campaign for school vegetable
gardens is through the media, and I'm delighted to announce that The Gazette
printed yet another significant article on the fight in this week's edition; and
in a sign of how important they consider the issue, the article appears on page
four - with a front page headline to direct readers there!
Click here to read The Gazette article, "School system reconsiders vegetable gardens."
And that's not all: two weeks
previous, The Gazette published my letter to the editor on the subject. Click here to read "Let them plant veggies."
MVG - your school garden
media juggernaut!
Dealing with Hot, Dry Weather
in the Garden
While last week saw a lot
of thunderstorms and nighttime rain, we seem to have launched back into an
extended period of extreme heat and lack of rain this week.
Vegetable plants can be up
to 90% water by weight, and a lack of water, combined with high heat, can cause
everything from small or poor tasting harvests, to diseases like blossom end
rot, to shriveled or even dying plants.
In the July 8 update we
gave some garden watering information from WSSC, which had banned outdoor water
use (including garden watering) while repairing a water main over the July 4
weekend. Here is an even better source
to learn about the problems caused to food growers by hot dry weather, and what
you can do about it: the Master Gardeners "Grow It Eat It" website. Check it out to see what you can do to deal
with our very summer like weather in your garden!
Eaters are Not Enough -
It's the Policy Stupid
In the cover piece for the
current issue of American Prospect, "Slowed Food Revolution," Heather
Rogers details what many people, including farmer and Grist contributor Tom
Philpott have been saying for a while: "public policy, not consumer
choice, is the villain propping up the industrial food system and constraining
the growth of organic farming."
While some new and organic
farmers are making it financially, many more are not, and even with customers
willing to pay a premium for organic and sustainably grown food, our food
system infrastructure, funding, and public policy is skewed overwhelmingly to
support industrial agriculture.
And President Obama (seen at right with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and a local farmer), has
done little to change this. Indeed, many
of President Obama's high level appointments come directly from agribusiness
giants such as Monsanto, and he has vowed to double U.S. exports of commodity crops
over the next five years - precisely the wrong priority if you want to support
organic agriculture.
Philpott's fine (and
shorter!) essay, "Why Eaters Alone Can't Transform the Food System,"
is well worth the read, and we at MVG agree wholeheartedly with his analysis -
except for one big omission. While
eaters alone can't change the food system, food growers - including millions of gardeners just like us - CAN make a significant difference.
Call it civil resistance against the food system if you like, but we don't
have to wait for unresponsive policy makers, even as we work to change policy.
We can take control of our own food system and grow a great deal of what
we eat. That's what MVG is about, creating
our healthy, truly local food shed, and it's a critical component to any campaign to
fundamentally alter our food system.
Thanks for being part of it!
See "Dirt! The Movie!"
Several months ago we let
you know about a new documentary, "Dirt! The Movie." We are delighted to let you know that it is
now available for rental through commercial video operations, such as Netflix
of your local store.
"Dirt! The Movie,"
which I viewed this past week, is a fascinating look at one of the most
important yet ignored parts of our planet - the six inch or so layer of soil (which
they militantly call dirt!) covering our planet, a thin layer which makes life
(and our civilization) possible.
Filled with fun animation
and great interviews from folks such as Nobel Prize Laureate Wangari Maathi (founder
of the Green Belt Movement), school garden doyenne Alice Waters, a slew of
sustainable agriculture activists, a logger turned fungus scientist, a wine
connoisseur, and even a lawyer working to establish dirt's legal rights,
"Dirt! The Movie" gives a broad assessment of the consequences of our
war on dirt, from erosion, drought and food riots to international conflict and
climate change.
And while it's quite clear
who the villain is in this narrative - industrial agriculture is the
primary driver of our war against dirt - the film also provides a moving
description of humanity's true relationship to dirt, and lots of examples of how we
can turn the tide and save this critical yet highly vulnerable covering on our
planet.
Click here to watch the trailer for "Dirt! The Movie," and then get a copy to watch as soon as you
can - you'll be glad you did!
"Pesticides are War Chemicals
that Kill"
And now for the quote of
the day, courtesy of MVG's fiscal sponsor, the Organic Consumers Association.
As the battle between
agribusiness and sustainable organic farming advocates continues to heat up, world-renowned environmentalist and sustainable advocate Vandana Shiva, (also one of the stars of "Dirt! The
Movie"), reminds us that the Bhopal disaster which killed 25,000 people in
her native India in 1984 was caused by a Union Carbide plant producing
pesticides. As she states in a recent article:
"Pesticides are war
chemicals that kill - every year 220,000 people are killed by pesticides
worldwide. We are witnessing a massive
corporate genocide - the killing of people for super profits.... To maintain
these super profits, lies are told about how, without pesticides and
genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there will be no food. In fact, the
conclusions of International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology
for Development, undertaken by the United Nations, shows that ecologically
organic agriculture produces more food and better food at lower cost than
either chemical agriculture or GMOs."
To read Vandana Shiva's
full article, "The Killing Fields of Multi-National Corporations," click here.