Sustainable Crown Hill

Announcements
1. Parks Opportunity Fund
Online submission – over 150 submissions for the initial letter of intent more information at:
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/levy/opportunity.htm
2. Journey Church – Community Garden
- the area is being converted to garden space
- cost to be covered by donation
3. Westin-Price Foundation  had a presentation on Traditional Cooking and Food
- More information can be found at:
http://www.westonaprice.org/
4. A Series of Permaculture classes will be taught by Jenny Pell & Marcia Arbuck  will be starting Om Culture Studio.
Classes cost $$$
5. Master Composter classes are starting at Seattle Tilth. Applications are due February 28th. More information at:
http://www.seattletilth.org/learn/mcsb/training
6. Create Community through Garden and Food.  Mark M. and Bob W. are putting this together. It is an opportunity to share the bounty from our gardens with neighbors that don’t have gardens or access to fresh garden produce.  More information next meeting.

New Business
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Check out the details of this new film, A Chemical Reaction, to be viewed on Sat. Feb 20…hosted by Seattle Tilth and COOL.  Event details are at the bottom of this post.

COOL (the Coalition of Organic Landscape Professionals http://www.organiclandscapers.org/index.html) and Seattle Tilth (http://www.seattletilth.org/) are presenting the compelling documentary “A Chemical Reaction” as part of an afternoon event at Lake Washington Technical College in Kirkland on Saturday, February 20th, from 2-6pm. The event will also feature keynote speaker Paul Tukey, the nationally-known gardening host who is the executive producer and narrator of the film. Tukey is also the founder of the regional gardening magazine “People, Places & Plants”, author of best-seller The Organic Lawn Care Manual, and founder of SafeLawns.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting natural lawn care and grounds maintenance. The event will feature displays and resources from The Garden Hotline and several other environmental organizations, books for sale, refreshments, and a question-and-answer session and book-signing with Paul Tukey after the movie screening. Proceeds from this event will be contributed to http://safelawns.org/

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With all the bigger-is-better, too-big-to-fail, merger mania that has swept the country in the last, say, 25 to 50 years, we have lost knowledge of where our food comes from. Many of these large companies don’t want you to know, and don’t want to be burdened with the requisite record keeping to let you know. After all they may not know the exact source and composition of the grain fed to those cows, and which feed lot the cow was at before a piece of its flesh arrived on a white styrofoam tray encased in plastic wrap. The concept of traceability is something many of the food mega-conglomerates would rather not encourage.

Stone-Buhr / Shepherd's Grain Flour

I often attempt to buy at least some of my food from trace-able sources, and this is often not easy to accomplish. Mega-stores like Whole Foods are probably no better, and it could be argued are actually complicit in the attempts to reduce traceability and consumer knowledge of food sources and composition. Many so called organic products are actually distributed and packaged by some of the largest agricultural entities in the world. Just look at the organic spinach fiasco from 2 years ago propagated by some of the biggest food companies. All you have to do is look at who owns who and you realize that real spinach grew in the ground and needs to have the dirt and sand washed off in a sink.  It doesn’t come pre-washed, in little plastic bags pumped full of just the right amount of inert nitrogen and product, then shipped from the Salinas Valley in California to Washington state via Texas. Similarly the peanut butter fiasco of a couple of years ago doesn’t lend any feeling of a safe or trace-able food chain … even companies like locally owned Cougar Mountain cookies were misinformed about the provenance of the peanut butter they were purchasing.

A few years ago, I tried to alter at least some of my buying habits to enhance my knowledge of the products I was purchasing, and the companies that made them, and the chain down to the farmer level. As at least some of you know, I make bread, and lots of it. A natural place to start, no?

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