February 9th, 2010 05:44am
Jennie Pollock
The 33rd annual Gardening for Food and Fun event is just a month away: Saturday, March 6, at the University of Illinois Extension–Winnebago County.
According to a news release, the day offers a diverse selection of 20 classes and workshops. The keynote speaker is Steven Apfelbaum, founder of Applied Ecological Services, who will talk about restoring the ecology of Stone Prairie Farm and the importance of connecting to the land.
Cost is $40 and includes your choice of three sessions and lunch.
Topics include organic vegetable gardening, herbs, container gardeing, native plants/landscaping, industry secrets for choosing the best plants and heirloom flowers.
Registration deadline is March 1; if not using the link, call 815-986-4357.
February 8th, 2010 08:44am
Jennie Pollock
Compost infractions! Batteries in the garbage! The water setting is at 105! Foam cups! Get your laugh from the Audi/Cheap Trick ad from the Super Bowl here:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/user/greenpolice[/youtube]
February 5th, 2010 05:18am
Jennie Pollock
A friendly Go Green reader, Nancy Faherty of Rockton, passed along this tip she saw in a 2008 issue of Woman’s Day: “Recycle your CDs and DVDs through Back Thru the Future, a woman-owned electronics recycing and data destruction company.”
Go to www.cdrecyclingforfree.com. I found these instructions:
Place your CDs and/or DVDs in suitable shipping package. It is important that you do not include any packing materials and that you separate CDs or DVDs from cases. Large quantities of nonseparated materials will be refused.
Ship to: Back Thru The Future, 150 Main St., Ogdensburg, NJ 07439. Write “FREE CD/DVD RECYCLING ” on the outside of your shipping package.
Side note: Last time I “cleaned house” with CDs, I sold them to CD Source in Rockford.
February 4th, 2010 12:22pm
Jennie Pollock
Geo wrote about this last month, but since the Super Bowl is coming up, a reminder: Cheap Trick is going to rewrite a classic song for an Audi ad during the big game Sunday.
The ad will feature the A3 TDI, which was named 2010 “Green Car of the Year” by Green Car Journal (see the publication’s image above).
Listen to the end of this tease on YouTube. Sounds like it will be a redux of “Dream Police.”
Oh, yeah. It is! Listen to Cheap Trick’s site. Cool.
February 3rd, 2010 09:48pm
Lenae Weichel
I just returned from a trip to Europe. Ok, it wasn’t Italy, I was actually in Germany but regardless of where my travels take me, be they stateside or otherwise, I try my best to eat like a local. I want the food I eat to inform my experience of a place.
It is quite easy to eat local delicacies in other countries where restaurants seem to pride themselves on serving food in season and in keeping with the region. Perhaps this is because locally-owned restaurants are the rule and chains (even those with golden arches and red hats) exist but have a small share of the dining dollars.
On this trip, I was in both small towns and large cities and everywhere I went I was served terrific, regional food, much of which was purchased from local growers. And although my travels were all within a 200-mile radius in northwest Germany, each new town had its own flavor.
In Solingen and Essen I enjoyed savory Pfankuchen (pancakes), some baked with bacon right in them, some cradling mushroom cream sauce and others sweeter, with local apples and a hint of cinnamon. I learned about Currywurst, a sausage concoction served sliced and warm in a thick, ketchup-like sauce and sprinkled with copious amounts of curry. This, I came to understand, is the fast-food of the masses in this region. Of course we were served the expected potatoes, sauerkraut, and sausages (all locally-grown/produced) but even these were served by our friends with pride and a variety of mustards unique to different regions of Germany.
In Bielefeld I savored pumpkin cream soup and Flammkuchen, a thin crackery crust topped with onions, cheese, and other toppings. This dish differs regionally as well; in some parts farther south it’s thicker and more like a quiche; and the toppings will change with the seasons. Stopping into a bakery or grocery I could find juice and produce from small organic farms within the city limits. In Aachen we sampled the local sweet delicacy, Printen. A long, chewy, gingerbread-like cookie sometimes served dipped in chocolate and hazelnuts that is unique to the area.
Towns in Germany also specialize in bread and beer (and wine varies by region). Every downtown area has multiple bakeries because fresh breads are purchased daily. The specialty rolls (typically served for breakfast with yogurt) vary widely from town to town but all have a good crust and crumb. What you put on those rolls differs regionally as well. Flavorful butter, local jams and honeys, and even thick syrups made from sugar beets, as well as local cheeses and cold cuts are found on most every table. And you can’t go wrong tasting the flavors of a city by sampling its beer; each one has its own style and recipe. They not only differ from town to town but also from street to street.
You don’t have to fly across an ocean, though, to taste great things. Many of our locally-owned restaurants right here in northern Illinois serve seasonal and regional foods every day of the week – all you have to do is seek them out!
February 3rd, 2010 05:51am
Jennie Pollock
I get this question a lot.
Aside from places I’ve mentioned before (cell phone stores, American TV, KNIB’s recycling center), you can try locations at www.call2recycle.org. Just put in your ZIP code.
February 2nd, 2010 05:09am
Jennie Pollock
Rockford Health System alerted me to an eco-friendly approach available to its nearly 3,000 employees at 10 locations.
It operates a “storefront” on the North Rockton Avenue campus where unused or unneeded office supplies like tape dispensers, printer cartridges, binders, staplers and overhead projectors are cataloged and stored for future use.
Employees can drop off or have supplies picked up; if they’re looking for something, they can e-mail to see whether it is in stock.
“Since we started promoting this to employees on January 15, we’ve had 54 requests for items and 38 fulfillments,” Chip Geiger, manager of purchasing, said in a news release. “The estimated cost savings to the organization is $1,200 so far.”
The idea followed an “office supplies swap” in October that saved $6,000.
February 1st, 2010 05:50am
Jennie Pollock
I saw this story and almost forgot about it until I saw it again on WREX-13: A Washington couple is taking a green approach to raise green for their July 31 wedding — by collecting 400,000 cans to recycle.
They’re more than three-quarters of the way to their goal, between cans and cash donations.
How much are they spending on their big day? Only $3,800 to $4,000 (they note: less than 20 percent of the average $25,000 wedding), according to the FAQ on their site.
How much are they saving the planet? They say recycling will eliminate “50 tons of carbon emissions – enough to offset 5 years of our emissions plus extra for the impact of the wedding itself.”
January 29th, 2010 05:31pm
Andrea (Andy) Hazzard
Farming is one of the oldest professions in human history; some may say, the first profession. Surely the hunter-gatherers took time to give the trees and plants they relied on for their food a bit of extra care, whether pulling weeds, or spreading some dried vegetation as mulch, I have no doubt they recognized the competition between edible and non-edible, and strove to care for the plants they utilized.
The EPA states that for census purposes, “a farm is any establishment which produced and sold, or normally would have produced and sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during the year.” (Government subsidies are included in sales.) By that definition, there are just over 2.1 million farms in the United States. It has been estimated that living expenses for the average farm family exceed $47,000 per year. Clearly, many farms that meet the census definition would not produce sufficient income to meet farm family living expenses. In fact, fewer than 1 in 4 of the farms in this country produce gross revenues in excess of $50,000.”
This is clearly not sustainable. An apt retort comes from author and farmer Gene Logsdon: “Why is farming by its very nature unprofitable?” He says that the answer is easy, but no one will accept the implications. The way money grows is not the way plants, animals, and humans grow. Corn or sheep grow at their own pace, whether interest rates are 3% or 15%. “That’s why in pastoral societies all interest on money was considered usurious and sinful. The demands of exponential money growth are lethal to a pastoral economy.” Well put Mr. Logsdon. He also states “What appears to be profit from farming is financial gain from the increase in the value of land or other investments. Owning land or stocks usually pays off at least for your heirs. Farming is not a moneymaking proposition in an industrial economy. Never was, never will be. Logically it should follow that farmland, if not food itself, or any other biological commodity or enterprise, ought to operate in an alternative economy. Certain farmland could be set aside permanently for farming, not bought and sold in the factory market system like automobiles or votes. But that’s been tried in Europe. Human nature won’t let it work.” http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/06/21/3d1a6b900f801
Recognizing and accepting the inherent truth that Logdson points out is the beginning of a conversation. It is time for people to begin to understand what the reality of our food system is. Agriculture lives in a mirage of industrialization the veneer is cracking, and it is time for a rebirth. Change is either welcomed or enforced and Mother Nature is tapping her foot.
Andrea Hazzard is the Local Foods Systems Coordinator at University of Illinois Extension-Winnebago County. Owner/Operator of Hazzard Free Farm and a partner in First Hand Harvest CSA LLC.
January 28th, 2010 05:52am
Jennie Pollock
Newsweek reports that progress toward restoring Haiti’s degraded environment has been halted, for obvious reasons, since this month’s earthquake.
An excerpt summarizes the challenge:
Haiti is not only the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; it’s also the most environmentally degraded. Less than 1 percent of its original forest cover remains, and 6 percent of the land has virtually no soil left. Both are due to a vicious cycle of overpopulation, poverty, and natural disasters. Each increases susceptibility to the other and as time wears on, it’s evident that to be effective, all problems must be attacked at once.
These two numbers jumped out at me: 65 percent of the population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, and 75 percent of energy comes from firewood and charcoal.
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