Welcome to the June Renewing the Countryside newsletter, designed to provide a monthly toolbox of resources, ideas and inspiration for your own efforts and interests in rural revitalization.

Thank you for your continued support of Renewing the Countryside.

Jan Joannides, Executive Director
Renewing the Countryside

In winter, farmers sink into worn couches, sip tea, and tell stories about summers past. After a decade of farming the high desert outside of Cortez, Colorado, Chuck Barry and Rosie Carter have stories. This winter the story begins with water: for the first time in many years, their three-acre farm has been draped in a deep coat of snow. Last summer the stories were of hail - violent downpours that ruined the pepper and tomato crops. The summer before that it was severe drought - the driest year on Colorado record. While many other farmers put their tools away for good, the drought brought lasting wisdom to Stone Free Farm, shaping the way the farm has evolved.

Their story is featured in the RTC book: A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon County. For more information on the book...

Read the rest of the story...

Southwest Power
Flagstaff, AZ

Andy Kruse's story is a classic one: he and a friend started messing around with wind turbines in a garage "out in the cinder hills" near Flagstaff, Arizona. The year was 1987, and he and David Calley had visions of harnessing this source of renewable energy for the betterment of humankind. David was making wind generators even when he was in high school in the early 1980s. With his technical expertise, and Andy's marketing background, the pair founded Southwest Windpower and made a small wind turbine that they called the Windseeker. Seventeen years later, David remains company president and Andy is vice-president. They bought an old bowling alley in Flagstaff and converted it into a manufacturing plant where some fifty people are employed making four basic wind systems. Each new version has involved close evaluation and improvements through constant research and development.

Southwest Power's story is also featured in the RTC book: A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon County. For more information on the book...

Read the rest of the story...

RTC warmly welcomes new board member, Kara Slaughter. Kara is a native of Shawnee Mission, Kansas, but has lived in Minnesota since 2001 when she began her graduate studies in law and public policy at the University of Minnesota. Over the past several years she has worked for Farmers' Legal Action Group in St. Paul, the University of Minnesota Sustainable Regional Development Partnerships, and Lathrop & Gage law firm in Kansas City. She has also served as a volunteer mediator at the St. Paul Dispute Resolution Center. She is currently employed as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable John J. Sommerville in Hennepin County District Court. In her spare time she enjoys gardening, cooking, theatergoing, and amateur bicycle repair.

RTC Promotes Local Foods

RTC joined food forces with local wineries and cheesemakers at the Mill City Market in downtown Minneapolis on May 26 to offer samples and promote Green Routes. The Mill City Market focuses on locally grown, seasonal foods and products from the area's sustainable and organic family farmers and small businesses. RTC distributed copies of the Minnesota Cooks Food & Wine Pairing Wheel and Green Routes information while local wineries and cheesemakers shared samples.

On Saturday, June 30, RTC is one of the partners in the Northern Heartland Food & Wine Center Local Foods Festival at the Historic LeDuc Estate in Hastings, Minnesota. Todd Churchill and Mike Lorentz, whose local businesses are featured in the best-selling Omnivore's Dilemma will speak and local chefs, led by the legendary Ken Goff of Dakota fame, will shop the marketplace and cook a dish for tasting. As fitting for the season, the marketplace will overflow with food grown, produced, foraged, caught or created in the Northern Heartland.

Click here for more information on the Mill City Market.

Click here for more information on the LeDuc Historic Estate.

Green Routes Summer Pledge on a Roll

Over 350 people have pledged to visit five Green Routes destinations this year as part of the "What I did this summer" green travel pledge campaign. Help us reach our goal of 500 pledges by sending us an e-mail with "I pledge" in the subject line and your preferred e-mail and name in the body of the e-mail. We'll e-mail you back a Travelogue - a handy card to record your visits. Those who keep their pledge will receive a thank you gift as well as be entered in a drawing for a $50 gift certificate valid at any Green Routes location.

Click here for a destination listing.

Click here for more information on Green Routes.

Volunteer Opportunities

RTC is always looking for volunteers to help with either short-term or long-term projects. Volunteer for a day or two at this year's EcoExperience or help us out on some of our ongoing projects like data entry, web updating, etc. If you are interested, please send us an email telling us a little bit about you and your interests or call us to discuss opportunities.

Per their website, "the blog is dedicated to thinking about food. Not just thinking about how to prepare it, or how it tastes - although those things are very important to us - but to pondering where and how it was grown and by whom, the distance that it traveled to our plate, and the less obvious effects of our consuming it." Updated daily, this is a great source of information, from recipes to political commentaries.

Click here to visit the Ethicurian blog.

The Heartland Food Network and Renewing the Countryside are partnering on a new website that will help make connections between local farmers, chefs and other institutional food buyers.

Learn more about the Heartland Food Network. . .

Click here for ordering information through the RTC bookstore.

For more on Edible Earth and Inn Serendipity. . .

MREA Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair

The Midwest Renewable Energy Association hosts its 18th annual Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair June 15 through 17 in Custer, Wisconsin (just outside Stevens Point). The affordable, family-friendly Fair features hundreds of workshops, speakers and exhibits all emphasizing renewable and local energy and sustainable living.

Click here for more information on the Fair. Join RTC staffers Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko for their workshops on running a "sustainable business" and "organic eating on a dime."

Wisconsin Community Leadership Summit

Whether you are an elected official, civic leader, educator or community volunteer, the Wisconsin Community Leadership Summit June 17 through 20 in Appleton, Wisconsin, provides great learning and networking opportunities. Sponsored by Wisconsin Rural Partners, this conference features innovative mobile learning workshops to study community initiatives throughout the Fox Valley and internationally-recognized keynote speakers David Dodson, Irma Tyler-Wood, Michael Perry and Kelly Hawke Baxter.

For more information on the Wisconsin Community Leadership Summit. . .

For more information on the Cochabamba Exchange. . .

As always, you can support our work by making an online donation or purchasing books from the Renewing the Countryside store. We're grateful to the Beim Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Emma B. Howe Fund of The Minneapolis Foundation, the Bush Foundation, The Brico Fund and North Central SARE, for contributing to our work.

Find out more about Renewing the Countryside .

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