Garden Up - Urban Gardening & Living

HMI and our collaborators are now accepting applications for our Beginning Women Farmer programs in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Maine, and Texas.

HMI’s Holistic Management® whole farm/ranch planning curriculum focuses on business planning skills, time management, soil fertility management, and profitable sustainable livestock and crop farming practices.

Join the Program

If you are a beginning (less than ten years experience) women farmer or rancher in Texas or the Northeast and you are interested in joining the program, please contact the individuals below. While there is a small fee to join the program in the Northeast, scholarships are available for those in need of financial assistance. The program is free in Texas. Program applications are currently being accepted, so contact these state coordinators now!

New York—Lauren Lines, Central NY RC&D, llrlines@aol.com (deadline October 15, 2012)
Connecticut—Deb Legge, CT NOFA, deb@ctnofa.org (deadline September 15, 2012)
New Hampshire—Kate Kerman, Small & Beginning Farmers of NH,kkerman@phoenixfarm.org (deadline October 31, 2012)
Vermont—Jessie Schmidt, New Farmer Project UVM, Jessica.a.schmidt@uvm.edu(deadline November 1, 2012)
Massachusetts—Devon Whitney-Deal, Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), devon@buylocalfood.org (deadline October 1, 2012)
Maine—Gail Chase, Women’s Agriculture Network (WAgN) ME, gchase@kvcog.org(deadline October 1, 2012)

Texas—Peggy Cole, Holistic Management International, pcole@holisticmanagement.org (deadline is July 31, 2012)

Sweden recycles so effectively that it has to import garbage to incinerate

As reported by Public Radio International, Sweden has a remarkably effective recycling program. Only 4 percent of the country’s waste ends up in landfills, with the other 96 percent being reused in some way. There is one problem with that, however: The country has incinerators that burn waste to create heat (a must-have in the region) and electricity. And too little waste means not enough fuel for those fires.

Sep 15

How to Squat and Own A Home

One night a little more than a decade ago, Steve DeCaprio pulled his bike up to an abandoned house in Ghost Town, a poor neighborhood in West Oakland dotted with vacant lots. He cut through the rusty lock on the chain-link fence with bolt cutters, then pried open a plywood sheet that stood where the front door once had. Then he replaced the locks with his own. This is how DeCaprio, a longtime East Bay squatter and veteran of the punk and metal scenes, acquired his home.

He already knew that the previous owner of the house had died in the early 1980s and that no one had come forward to claim it. The turn-of-the-century bungalow had sat empty for many years. The kitchen floor was burned out, and the back of the house hung off the foundation. An acacia tree in the backyard had grown into the roof, leaving the interior open to the elements. The top floor was piled with the carcasses of dead raccoons and other small animals.

DeCaprio and a crew of friends got to work making the place habitable. “At first, it was basically just urban camping,” he remembers. It took eight months of on-and-off work to fix the roof. He got the water flowing, bought storm doors and painted the exterior, planted cacti in the front yard, and yanked out another backyard tree that had begun to menace the house next door. He named it Noodle House, and he currently shares it with three people plus the occasional touring underground band.

DeCaprio, who turns 40 in August, has tousled, graying hair and favors Carharts and black T-shirts bearing band logos. In a more mainstream context, he would be described as a “go-getter.” He plays guitar in a black-metal band named Embers, works as a member representative for the California League of Conservation Voters, and is pursuing a law degree through an independent study program (he expects to take the bar exam next year). And, of course, there’s the house. Right now, DeCaprio is working on a solar array to provide electricity. “There’s gonna be this moment when I turn on a light switch and it’ll be epic,” he says.

Perhaps most impressively, DeCaprio is no longer simply a squatter. He didn’t buy his house, but, after more than a decade of struggle, he owns it. Indeed, he has lived in his house so long that he has gained ownership of it under an obscure law called “adverse possession,” which allows ownership not through purchase or inheritance (the common paths to home ownership), but through occupation—provided no one else can prove he or she is the real owner. Adverse possession, DeCaprio says, is the “holy grail of squatting.”

“To change one’s life:
1. Start immediately.
2. Do it flamboyantly.
3. No exceptions.” — William James (via lupeyused)

Sep 14

THE ENLIGHTENED HAPPY HOUR: AN INTERACTIVE DRINK GUIDE

As more restaurants make their nutrition information available, patrons are becoming all too aware of the shocking calorie counts behind some of their favorite menu items. Gut-busting appetizers like Chili’s Hot Spinach & Artichoke Dip with Chips (1,520 calories), Cheesecake Factory’s Factory Nachos with Spicy Chicken (1,930 calories), or Outback Steakhouse’s Bloomin’ Onion (1,959 calories) are dangerously delicious.

But did you know that the happy hour drinks you guzzle also come with their own significant calorie count?

Use this interactive guide to help you make smarter decisions about what you sip at the bar. If you’re counting calories, the guide offers info on a variety of popular drinks by total calories and approximate calories per ounce.

The interactive also breaks down the alcohol beverage content in each drink, in case you’re looking to get the best buzz for your buck. Either way, click through to study up for your next happy hour.

Marketing to Kids

Dole Food Company and Hy-Vee Food Stores recently celebrated the donation of five salad bars to schools in the central Iowa area at the United Community School in Boone, Iowa. The salad bars were donated as a part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools initiative, which has donated more than 1,440 salad bars serving more than 720,000 children across the country.

NOTE: Dole Food Company had $6.7 billion in reported sales during the last year. Do they really need to have a logo on these salad bars which is bigger than the heads of the children!?

FairMail Helps Global Youth Become Commercial Photographers

Many travelers know that handing your digital camera over to a local kid in a place like Mombasa, Bogota, or Jakarta can yield some seriously cool shots. It’s also a fact of globalization that this common exchange can serve as the first hands-on experience with digital technology for many young people growing up in developing countries.

When Dutch couple Janneke Smeulders and Peter den Hond lived in Peru in 2006, Smeulders noticed the enthusiasm the local kids had for photography. She also knew they’d never be able to afford a camera of their own. Thus began FairMail Peru, Smeulders and den Hond’s project to sell greeting cards with photographs shot by local teens in the vegetarian restaurant they were running.

When dining patrons, who also happened to be ethical venture capitalists, told the Dutch duo that they were “morally obliged” to make the project bigger, they acquiesced. The Fair Trade certified business now operates out of three countries—Peru, India, and just recently, Morocco— and was named a winner in the Ben & Jerry’s Join Our Core sustainable businesses competition in Europe earlier this summer.

“Who would have thought kids [would be] able to take such good pictures that can compete in the global photography market?” den Hond said. “But they all take to it quite quickly just as all teenagers get the hang of electronic gadgets easily.”

In each location—selected to offer “different cultural backgrounds” throughout their image catalogue—the business partners with local NGOs and youth projects which work with at-risk youth to provide well-rounded support. They then loan out a camera to each teenager and have them sign a contract in which they agree to pay off broken or lost cameras with their earnings if necessary.

FairMail sells the images to publishing houses who licence them everywhere from stock photography websites to on-demand print shops. The progress of each individual photographer can be tracked on FairMail’s website, and each product sold also includes a picture of the photographer on the back, as a reminder of their story. Sales are tracked and money is dispersed each quarter to the photographers for their sold work. Some of FairMail’s top earners have reached more than $10,000 in their careers.

“There are big income differences between the teenagers, depending on their talent, motivation and effort,” den Hond said. “We want to show the kids that they can control their destiny by working for it.”

Den Hond is proud of FairMail’s recent recognition as a leading model of social enterprise and he thinks the idea that businesses can find fixes for social problems needs further understanding.

“Our teenagers don’t need pity,” he said. “They need customers who buy their product just because they love their pictures. After that it is great if they come back for more because they also love the story behind each of the cards.”

Land Available: Upstate New York

Property address: Lee Hollow Road, Bovina, NY 13740
(Lee Hollow Road is accessed from Rte. 28 in Bovina. It also becomes Bramley Mountain Road that is accessed from Rte. 18 in Bovina/Kortright.)

Available for: Lease/Share/Partnership/Sale
Sale or lease, including lease with option to buy will be considered. Owner would also consider some participation in an agricultural enterprise with the land value and use considered for equity or partnership interest.

Land use: The property is currently used for hay. About 29 acres were in corn production a few years ago. The land could be used for a variety of agricultural crops and could also be used for livestock grazing.

Land description: The land consists of roughly 50-60 acres of meadow, with the balance being forested. It is subdivided into 3 lots for ease of multiple leasing or combination ag use and home sites. The Little Delaware River is a property border and the land slopes from Lee Hollow Road toward eventual steeper drops to the river. The land is used for hay and is otherwise idle.

Water description: River, stream and water drainage creek. Possibilities for ponds exist in a few locations on the property.

Other details: Property was owned by the Inman family of Bovina and was allied to their dairy farm as a producer of hay and corn.