Winter CSA Share

After 18 weeks of my summer CSA share, the farmer who provides for my CSA Project Harmony, Claudio, has offered a Winter Share!  This time, I am participating by myself.  Thomas and Rachel, from the forth floor of my building, were not going to divide with me this time around.  So I had to decide.  Do I pay $100 for a ten week CSA share for just me alone?  Generally speaking, I could easily eat all of the food alone, but I get such an abundance of food Dumpster Diving that I certainly do not need a full share.  But after mulling it over, the only decision was to take a winter CSA share.

I dumpster the rest of my food because I don't like to see good food go to waste, I cannot afford only the quality of food that I want to support at farmer's markets, and I don't want to financially support the rest of the food available in food stores:  shipped from California and worldwide, produced in bulk and all around generally unsustainable.

However, the way that Claudio produces his food is 100% what I want to support.  He dreamed of having his own farm, and now after years of working those of others he has one.  It is his passion to make this farm successful.  His farm is only two hours outside of the city, and he produces organic food on a small-scale.  On top of that, he had a very difficult summer, losing over 80% of his crop to the hurricane, so now more than ever he needs support.  It is great not to financially support that which you don't ethically support (Trader Joe's food), but if you are not going to use your money to financially support that which you do ethically support, then you are not making much of a political statement nor are you helping your cause.

Number One Lesson that I would want to give to the world, especially my compatriots:

Vote with your money!


So now I am voting with my money, supporting Claudio and my CSA.

Hurricane Irene Taking Away my Greens

Hurricane Irene provided a wonderful Home Depot Holiday for New York City residents.  In my tiny square of the city, the storm did none so much as lift a trash can, but not everywhere on the East Coast fared so lucky.  A mere two block stroll from my apartment, giant trees were torn from the ground.  Along the waterway there were uprooted trees, as well, harming no one but providing some fun balance beams for exploration of the damage in the days after.  Many lost power in the outer boroughs.  The worst hit though, by far, were many farmers upstate.  Farmers’ land was immersed, worst in the days after Irene, with the swells that followed in her wake.  Land was covered in water, washing away the crops that grow above the earth, and rotting the ones that grow beneath her protection.  My Community Supported Agriculture farmer lost 95% of his crops, debilitating him.  He has nothing to sell at the farmer’s market but owes for the farmer’s market selling space regardless and can no longer continue his CSA members’ weekly shares in full.  In addition to paying for many repairs, he needed to purchase seeds for quick growing crops to plant now in order to have something to sell in the fall.  After his entire spring and summer of work—preparing, planting, tending—he must back trace and redo every step.   Worse, no matter how hard he works, he cannot change time:  he still must wait months from now for any new crops to be ready to to harvest and sell.  For him, this means he will lose two months at the farmer’s market, and when he returns he will have a very limited variety, mainly greens.  For us CSA members, this means weeks without food, and no squash, no sweet potatoes (!!!! L), no more tomatoes, no more peaches…no end of the summer or fall vegetables. 

Amid a sea of green from the storm winds.

Battling on a felled tree...with a felled tree.

The one New York City casualty of Irene.

But this is what a CSA is, right?  It’s time to put our money where our mouths are!  On paper, I love the idea of a Community Supported Agriculture.  We share risk, we support a local farmer, and we get the freshest of the freshest food.  But when things go wrong, sharing the risk means actually sharing the risk!!  We paid one lump fee for what we assumed would be the entire summer, and it turns out we will only receive half of what we had originally expected.  So how are CSA members taking the lousy news?  Well, after having paid for 28 weeks of produce that we will never receive…we have raised $1,500 of our own additional money for the farmer to help him with expenses.  

Woah—we did what?  I’m impressed myself.  Because we know our farmer directly, we could not let him go under!  We are scrounging together extra money—even as we go to the grocery store and purchase our produce to make up for what we lack—we are finding ways to give extra money to the farm.   I have given $20 each of the past two weeks that I have gone to pick up my small share of leftover produce.

Just Food is currently organizing to help the dozens of farmers who were affected (http://justfood.org/ ), as well.  That said, our CSA’s ability to organize to help our own farmer has been extremely impressive

I consider that way better than donating to save the polar bears or fight hunger in Kenya.  Rather than through an organization—where frequently less than half of the money given arrives to the ground where it is intended to go and where who knows if the organization has the best intentions or knows what really is best for the local community—100% of this money arrives to our farmer.  And I am helping something local that I know is virtuous; I know because I live here, I understand local circumstances, and thus I know how it affects my community.  

On a recent breezy and fresh Saturday morning, I met with some of my other CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)  members outside of our CSA pickup in the Project Harmony community garden in Harlem. When everyone arrived, we walked to the Metro North for our trip to Yonker, not the typical Saturday get-away.  

But we were going to see the Science Barge, a prototype sustainable urban farm and environmental education center.  First a project of New York Sun Works, the Science Barge began in 2007 as it toured New York City's waterfront parks, hosting children from NYC public schools.  Today ownership has shifted to Groundwork Hudson Valley and the Science Barge has found a permanent home docked in the Hudson off of Yonkers, New York, a twenty minute ride north of Harlem.  Its goal is to educate and to show that urban agriculture is possible, healthy and necessary.  In New York City, they say, there is enough rooftop space to supply all of our fresh fruits and veggies, especially using more efficient methods such as hydroponics and vertigrow systems (that both make use of vertical space and avoid soil, two necessary urban adjustments.)

Naturally, this Science Barge interested a bunch of urbanites who are concerned enough about their food to join a CSA.  Our visit could not have fallen upon a more lovely day, and we could not have had a more passionate volunteer show us around.  We learned that the Science Barge is 100% carbon neutral and of its many projects that allow it to be so.  

- Reusable energy.  The Science Barge has solar, wind turbines, and uses biodeisel.  

- Recycled materials.  The office on the barge is constructed from an old shipping container, the deck, counters, sinks, and the picnic tables from recycled plastics.  He addressed that for the average person, the cost of a picnic table from plastic may be higher than that of a wooden one.  However, just like when installing solar panels, when you assess the long-term, a wooden picnic table will be rotting in five years while in twenty-five the recycled plastic one will look as good as new.  

- A green house.  A green house extends the growing season or even allows the possibility of cultivating year round.

- Hydroponic growing system.  A hydroponic system allows plants to grow in cycling water, any substrate* (such as volcanic rock, rock bed or clay) and added nutrients without the need for soil .  Either you add the necessary nutrients to the water regularly or, more sustainably, you integrate fish** and their waste water becomes the nutrient rich water that plants grow crazy over.  

     *The Science Barge uses a substrate made from volcanic rock called Rodan for their hydroponic system, only produced in Canada.  It has an endless life (sustainable) if you continuously send it back to the company in Canada to be reformed (unsustainable).  However, there is no reason that someone could not open a Rodan facility in New York, Detroit, New Delhi or Bhutan...

    - Another challenge is how you feed the fish.  What do you feed them?  Where does it come from?  How do you make sure it is sustainable?

- Vertical Growth System.  Instead of letting cucumber and zucchini vines snake around on the ground, they allow them to grow up with strings and clips, making much more efficient use of space. You can also stack plant boxes above each other (such as in a Hydro-stacker or a Vertigro system) like building blocks that progressively become smaller, let the water drip irrigate and filter down to be collected at the bottom for reuse.  

- Ladybugs.  Every year, the Science Barge releases 10,000 lady bugs inside the greenhouse to help keep away unwanted bug pests.  They also release a certain type of wasp which is a great natural aid to pest removal!  

- Verticle growth.  

- Compost.  They have a composting bin and use the final compost in the garden.

- Compot Toilet.  They are currently installing a compost toilet.  This is illegal in New York, but ancored fifteen feet off the shore, they answer to the US Coast Guard rather than New York State!  

The Science Barge, again, is a prototype.  It in and of itself will not change the world, but the example it sets can.  Why is any building constructed in Manhattan today without making use of vertical growth space?  Why is any building letting a good roof go to waste?  Or not composting?  By setting the example, and perhaps more importantly by focusing on educating children, The Science Barge can start the change.  

I just joined NYC's Urban Beekeepers!

This summer I am learning about NYC's thriving beekeeping community, which has grown rapidly in recent years as the modern threats to honey bees and understanding of the risks they face become more mainstream.  It has also grown now that it is legal to have honey bees!  While it had been illegal to keep bees in NYC--thanks to legislation put in place by Giuliani calling bees pests (apparently he never took a science class)--in March of 2010, the law was changed, legalizing the guerrilla beekeeping of roughly 500 New Yorkers.  Now apis mellifera, the common, non aggressive honeybee, is legal to keep within city limits.  



I wanted to learn more, although my current living situation (with a landlord who won't tolerate tomatoes on his roof and roommates who won't tolerate my watering can in the hallway) certainly does not open itself up to beekeeping yet.  That doesn't stifle my interest!  I joined the Meetup Group, NYC Beekeeping, and attended the first event I could, a book signing by a beekeeper turned author for the book Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper.

It was lovely!  but not as expected.  I expected way more beards and sandals than I saw; instead there were many middle aged and middle class beekeepers who had come straight from work, in appearance fitting in with any other business-minding New Yorker.  I suppose it makes sense:  a certain age and income are necessary to have a permanent enough home and lifestyle to allow for something like beekeeping:  you wouldn't build a chicken hen in your backyard if you knew you may move in nine months, for example, so nor would you insert a beehive.

So much here to learn!  The next event will be a hive inspection on Randall's Island to see where the Beekeeping group is keeping their collective hives.  My Italian beekeeping mentors would be so proud to see me now! 

Urban WWOOFer: Harlem Green, a Tour of Community Gardens

Harlem Green

This Saturday, July 30th, the 6th Annual Harlem Community Gardens Tour will take place, made possible by several NYC donors (including Greenthumb, The Green Guerillas, NYCCGC, The Willim H. Harris Gardeners and Project Harmony, Inc, my CSA!)  


Included in this free tour:  


- a 10am breakfast in the Joseph Daniel Wilson Community Garden at 219 West 122^nd Street
- A walking tour of fourteen Harlem gardens
- A Home-style Harlem Barbecue at the last garden on 153rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue


This free tour is run to showcase the extraordinary gardens of Harlem and their many projects that are benefiting the community socially, educationally, nutritionally, and culturally.  The gardens are of all types:  some are shade gardens with flowers, gazebos and BBQs; others are full of vegetables, herbs, rain-water harvesting and solar energized systems; some use vertical garden space and innovative composting methods; some focus on running programs for children, young mothers, youth and seniors; others provide free environmental studies workshops, art and music events, and lessons such as canning and preserving or do-it-yourself compost.  Most are some combination of many of the above.  

Urban WWOOFer: Summer Plans Need to Be Revised

16 Jul 2011

My good friend Nick laughed and said, “Alex! It sounds like all the things that you care about are slowly going down in ruin!” I had just told him of how I twisted my ankle while running and then really sprained it the day after while hiking. He said this, remembering that a week before my garden had been excommunicated from our apartment building roof and my summer goal of successfully keeping a rooftop garden was ruined. So I can’t run, hike, or dance for some weeks, and I also will not get the chance to enjoy fresh vegetables from my rooftop garden in the fall.

My garden is now divided among four different places: the tomatoes, eggplant and basil went the fire escape of 4E—inhabited by Rachel and Thomas, my two CSA co-shares—my Thai peppers and mint are on my windowsill waiting in anticipation for a strong breeze to tear them away and down to the inaccessible backyard of the apartment, and my broccoli and onions are on the fire escape of Kianna and Megan, my two roommates with access to the fire escape who begrudgingly allowed me to take up some of their fire escape sitting space (apparently paying the same amount for rent but having a smaller room with no fire escape access is tough luck, not something they generously want to help right). I harvested the carrots and the first wave of onions, all mere shadows of what they could have been with another month of sun and water, but beautiful nonetheless. So my garden certainly took a blow, but it’s not over or hopeless. We are simply onto a new stage of development. That is, until the super realizes that we are using the fire escape for potted plants, gets a fine, and tells us we need to remove them again. For now, anyway…

Urban Gardening: No!!!!

My garden has been banned!!

Some jerks in my building threw two giant parties on our roof in a week, broke the door, made a mess, and now we've all been banned. Including me and my garden! I am distraught! It needs to be gone within a week, and I have nothing I can do with it. Find a friend with a roof? Start rogue gardening in Central Park? Take it out to Long Island?

Amidst the tears, I still want to find it a happy and healthy home.

Urban WWOOFer: Sierra Club's Inner City Outings

Even living as an Urban WWOOFer as I am, the city is still the city, and a longing for swimable rivers, real mountains, and a place where my Teva-wearing feet are in the majority is ever-present.

Another longing that I have in city-life--or life anywhere--is volunteer opportunity. In cities, it becomes so easy to focus on fending for yourself and to take on the hyper-individualistic mindset...not healthy for the long-term.

About a year ago I found the perfect solution! I began volunteering with Sierra Club Inner City Outings (ICO), going on adventures with an international high school of students in the Bronx. ICO is a volunteer and donation-based community outreach program in over fifty cities country-wide. It provides inner city youth and adults the opportunity to explore, enjoy and protect the natural world through organized outings to local nature reserves, mountains, rivers and places for outdoor adventure. Through fun team-building adventures, it builds interpersonal skills and teaches how to protect the natural environment.

Last week, for example, I went white water rafting! I show up outside of my particular group's high school, and from there, the other volunteers and I hop on a bus with twenty or so youth to leave for a day of adventure. The students love the opportunity most of them would not usually have, and the volunteers, like myself, love both the adventures and the interaction with the quirky inner city kids!

I wrote the trip report for our last adventure...take a look if you are interested to read about this and other adventures of the NYC ICO group!

Urban WWOOFer: Escaping Worms!

The box of worms from my composting workshop has been under my kitchen counter for almost two weeks now (I have told two out of my four roommates of its presence). For the first week, I was afraid to open it, hoping that the worms would be happy to do their thing unbothered. When I finally opened it, half of the worms were searching an escape route! They were sitting up on the ridge between the bottom and its lid.

Bah!

What if they escape?!



What if my roomie wakes up, goes to get some coffee, and steps on a blanket of crawling, slimy worms?? This could be really bad. I reclosed the lid, taped it down tightly, and stepped back. Sometimes the best (read: easiest) action is no action. So that was what I did: I waited another week before I opened the box again.

Before opening this time, I inspected carefully; no worms were crawling down the sides, so the seal must be tight. I opened the box, and a waterfall of water fell off of the lid of it. That must mean they have been working, as breaking down food wastes should produce a lot of moisture. All of the newspaper, including what had been dry at the top, was now moist. The same worms, and perhaps a few of their invited friends, were chilling at the top of the box. I had to use a butter knife to [gently] pull them out and place them back down into the box next to the compost, where all the action is meant to happen, and I reclosed.

Then I went online to look for some consolation (not shoe shopping consolation; education consolation) and after sifting through a ton of information, found this concise and well presented vermicomposting guide.

Under “troubleshooting”, I found the answer to my concern.
---
Problem 4 - The worms are escaping
If you are providing your worms with a happy home they will have no reason to leave and risk certain death.
Please note that worms will sometime explore their bin (lid and sides). Only if you find dead, dried up worms outside the bin is there need for concern.

Ah-ha! My worms are only interested in exploring their new home! How could I—the perpetual world wanderer—blame them? Worms will be worms, I always say, so I will let them continue their adventures…that is until the adventures take them beyond the confines of the box.

Urban WWOOFer: Pedal Power NYC

Coolest night ever!
27 June 2011

I spent yesterday at NYC’s Annual Gay Pride Parade, a particularly enchanting year of events two days after gay marriage was passed in New York State! Because of this, I happened to be in Lower Manhattan and I happened to mosey into Union Square Park right as a concert was being torn down. Alas, I had missed the concert, but I certainly happened something interesting, if not a little late. Pedal Power NYC (http://www.pedalpowernyc.org/ ) is a new organization in New York that grew out of connections with thriving similar such groups in other cities such as San Francisco. It started with the goal of capturing and repurposing human power with bicycles.

----
Their “About” website description includes:

Off the Grid Grooves, Electric Humans Unite

We provide the bicycles and the crew – you provide the Natural Ass! Let’s be honest, we’d rather power our stage with natural ass than natural gas—
and we’ve developed a live human-powered system that does just that without sacrificing sick sound quality.

Founded by Ariel Agai in 2011, Pedal Power NYC helps us imagine new possibilities for our energy use and celebrates Sustainability Creativity and Human Energy.

We want your Natural Ass to power our amps.
----


Thus, an entire concert can be put on without a single outlet. Next to this daytime concert stage were ten bicycles. Guests were encouraged to play their part in pedaling; they were helping the show go on. There were many performances, all powered by bicycle.

Afterward, the group had planned a ride back to their warehouse in Williamsburg, all to be filmed for a documentary on the day’s events. I joined on—why not?—and we took to the streets slowly so that all of Manhattan could enjoy our incredible pedal powered sound system and music as we passed by. We were at least 15-20, some with just bikes, some with giant sound systems strapped to the backs; and other trailing other stuff back from the concert. Ariel was the DJ, with an ipod and DJ soundboard strapped to his handlebars, and there were four other bikes
with giant speakers strapped on the back. We carried the dance party
through New York City, stopping and dancing at all of the red lights along the way. The entire route was marked by smiling faces shaking to fabulous dance music, and some very intrigued New Yorkers. (One guy had a maraca in one hand that was quintessential to the group as a whole...you really will have to see
the video when they finish it.)

We went over the Williamsburg bridge and into Brooklyn (now in less traffic so getting off our bikes and dancing at all of the lights), and then had a wild
three minute dance party outside of a group of bars, getting people to
come outside to dance until a police vehicle pulled up and we took
off. When we finally stopped near the warehouse I got to actually introduce myself
to all of these strangers with whom I had just rode for two hours, and
it turns out another straggler had joined the group, too, when he
heard us pass by his window while he was reading in bed!

We went back to their warehouse and carried on the dance party, until I left to ride the twelve miles back up to Harlem at 3:00 am.

Urban Gardening: A Closer Look at Hydroponic Gardening

Since my recent encounter with hydroponic gardening I have been very interested and thus searching everywhere for more information, especially because it seems like there is money here in New York ready to support such projects. However, the more I look at it, the more it seems like the new twisted--but organic--version of GMOs, pesticides and fertilizers.

What??

Hydroponic garden will produce healthy food. It’s great. However, it is a plan meant to fit into our everyday more so consumptive lifestyles, utilizing a current mentality to address a problem, overlooking how our problems are a product of that mentality to begin with.

NY Sunworks' website provides a “do it yourself at home” guide, including a list of products you will need to purchase in order to make a hydroponic system successfully. Alice’s Garden Nutrient Formula, Hydroton, CocoTek, and Rapid Rooter among the products, the instructions bring me back to a scene of Wayne and Garth bemoaning people who bow to sponsors, all the while sporting the sponsor’s logos. The point: in order to create your own “at home” version of this great sustainable system, you’ll have to purchase the magical and mysterious products from our sponsors in order to make it work. And in addition to the necessary chemicals you need to purchase, video footage and blueprints of the larger gardens show giant, shiny electronic metal structures “necessary” to do the work if your system will grow. In my last post I presented the concern of whether this is accessible to a school in the Bronx as it is to a school on the Upper West Side. Whether that school in the Bronx can find funding or not, the problem is also that the purveyors want to cash in on the rewards of the system's growth. They see no problem with our current lifestyles, or at least do not connect our food to our current lifestyles beyond a basic environmentalist point of view. “If only we can still live our lives unchanged but pat ourselves on the back for producing food close to home and not transporting it long distances.” This ignores the socio-economic problems that are inherent in our current system and exemplified in the question of which school—the one on the Upper West Side or the school in the Bronx—can afford this garden.

A food system built around the necessity of commercial inputs and not inputs found in nature is built around the desire for profit for whatever company is providing those inputs. The overall goals of both partners are different: the consumer wants fresh food, presumably at the lowest cost, and the producer of the goods wants to find a way to make the most profit and thus make sure that the supply and creation of its products remain solely in its hands.

This means that the people earning profits from a future in successful hydroponic gardening will be high up top; the people in the center will be comfortable, affording to constantly pay for the necessary inputs in their hydronic gardens and also benefiting from fresh food; and the people at the bottom will benefit from neither.

Next problem: Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier, a giant proponent of hydroponic agriculture, celebrates that we can define the nutrients that go into the food, so we no longer need to worry about toxins. In essence, we think we know exactly what a plant needs to survive and thrive and we know exactly what it does not need. Up until a few decades ago, we thought that nitrogen was the only real instrumental factor in agriculture and that if you had enough nitrogen, anything could grow healthily. We also thought ourselves gods when we uncovered that the human body needed fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to live, now assuring the populace that with manipulating the intake of these three macronutrients we could perfectly nourish our bodies. Slowly, science has uncovered other important nutrients and factors. Nonetheless, as we come to each new discovery, we never content ourselves to say, “Wow. This Mother Nature is pretty complex. Imagine how much more there must be to know!” Instead we say, “Wow—this is great! With this new information I now know everything that I need to in order to manipulate nature to my benefit!” We have always had the hubris to think that we can discover in the matter of years or decades of research exactly what is needed to replicate or change the natural world successfully, and in the long run we are pretty much always greatly mistaken.

The Take Away: Anybody needs a constant input of money to grow their own food hydroponically, not just labor or not just a few up-front costs, so it can never be part of a subsistance lifestyle or something that can be used by economically poor people to take care of themselves. In the case of this elementary school on the Upper West Side, the garden is being spearheaded by a few well-meaning mothers. They probably have nothing but the best and most genuine interests in mind, but living rather comfortably on the husbands’ Upper West Side income, they do not realize that the long-term implications of the project that they are supporting.

Urban Gardening: Plants getting stronger!

The tiny space taken up by my garden. IMAGINE the possibility of this entire roof covered!



Now imagine the possibility of ALL of these roofs covered!


Do a week by week comparison...everything is growing so tall!



The broccoli, for which I had so little hope, has proven itself a survivor! All three plants are now flowering beautiful broccoli florets. What a testament to a plants ability to regrow new roots, shed and replace dead leaves, and adapt to new conditions!



Day after day, the leaves of more and more carrots chirp up!



After two weeks, I finally transplanted the last clump of seedling onions. Their roots had turned into a giant mass, and to pull them apart left some of the onions with virtually no root system and others with roots that did not belong to them. A week later, though, all seem to be happy, showing that with a little soil, sun and water it took nothing to grow back those roots!



Seedling onions (left) compared with transplanted onions (right). All are healthy!



When I walked up to the roof, this beautiful flower awaited me! Does this mean this is the start of a giant eggplant? We will soon see!




I fastened the tomatoes and eggplants one more time to the bamboo sticks with a scrap of pantyhose, about ten inches higher than where I had fixed them in place before.


Week by week comparison...the early susan (far right), meant to produce tomatoes sooner than most other tomato plants, is obviously at the top of her game.