The school calendar and the growing season in New York do not necessarily overlap. School gardens are excellent tools learning but students often miss prime growing conditions and experiences because of how late the outdoor school garden has to be planted in our state - and summer vacation does not allow interaction with growth, blossoms, tending, and even harvesting. Whether you have a strong school gardening program and are looking to increase your garden's impact, or are just beginning your garden connections, this conference will give you insight into best practices, challenges, and curriculum integration. As a culmination of the High Tunnels in Schools grant program, learn from teachers who have been using this tool to extend the gardening season and student learning. All participants will receive 16 hours of professional development credit, curriculum, books, and classroom resources. Date: August 9-10, 2016 Location: Edmeston Central School, Edmeston, NY Fee: $30 registration fee, includes meals Click here to learn more and register by August 1, 2016! |
healthy food - Smith Farm Chicken - a local success story - SIBEJO
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Farmer Friday
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SLU student and summer intern Amanda Korb will be spending part of her time visiting farmers and profiling them here on the GardenShare blog. Here's her first entry:
�Fajita spiced Smith Farm Chicken Breast on a crisp house made blue and yellow corn tortilla with queso fresco, shaved lettuce, toasted cumin sour cream and fresh cilantro.� Sounds delicious right? So describes a dish prepared by the 1844 House, an American bistro in Potsdam, made with chicken raised and processed by Massena locals Ron and Cathy Smith.
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| On Farmers Market days, Ron and Cathy get up at 6am to prepare their trailer with fresh poultry for customers |
Smith raises approximately 800 chickens, a handful of turkeys, beef, and occasionally pigs. Their primary focus is chicken; a USDA inspected and certified processing unit stands within yards of their chicken barns. The chickens have 24/7 access to an outside yard from their clean and spacious coops. Each chicken receives an abundant of food, water, sunlight and socialization.
The Ron and Cathy�s bottom line is the humane treatment of animals. Ron said he knows many farmers who dislike their livestock, or find their daily farm life a chore. He believes if one doesn�t like an animal, then one shouldn�t raise it. Cathy asserted. �It�s not about how long the animals lives, but the quality of life we give them�. Evidence of Ron and Cathy�s words was abundant as I took a tour of their facility. The impeccable cleanliness of the slaughterhouse would impress even my Grandma. What is more, Cathy nurtures any sick animal on the farm personally. They currently have two pet turkeys and four pet laying hens.
This is Ron�s retirement job. Cathy works full time as a dog groomer in a shop right next to the slaughterhouse. When I asked Ron if he could have the same quality of life if poultry farming was his lifetime occupation, his answer was clear a �no.� Sustainability, Ron believes, is the capability to break even on expenditures while still making some sort of income.
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| Ron sits next to his daughter and granddaughter at the Canton Farmers Market |
That income can be found in the freezers clustered around the farm. Ron said he had intentions of installing a walk-in freezer, but the cost did not outweigh the benefits. Instead, a horse trailer filled with freezers of chicken processed the night before is one of the first to make an appearance at the Canton and Potsdam farmers markets. Aside from the markets, the Ron and Cathy also profit from the aforementioned 1844 House as well as Jake�s on the Water. The couple both survives and relies on local business alone. When I asked which subsidized them more- markets or restaurants- Ron replied it is a balance of both. One challenge they face is competing against the cheap chicken prices Wal-Mart and Aldi�s offer, which is a quick 15-minute drive down the road from their farm. For families receiving SNAP, a $1.65/lb chicken breast is the more affordable option than Smith Farm $3.00/lb. Ron even admitted he would shop at WalMart if the roles were reversed.
The question of cheap food v. the added cost local food then comes into play. At GardenShare, we focus on raising the region�s economy by encouraging families to buy local food. For every $10 spent at Wal-Mart or Aldis, a farmer only receives $1.58 in return. Contrasting, a farmer collects $8-9 for every $10 spent at a local farmers market. GardenShare recognizes buying local as a point of paramount significance; therefore, we try to promote programs such as CSA Bonus Bucks and SNAP Double Up, which make choosing local the more promising option. EBT machines are available both the Potsdam and Canton Farmers Market, where Ron and Cathy can be found selling their fresh poultry. Taking the same $10 spent at the farmers market, about $7.80 is re-spent into the region. Paying a few more cents for local food supports the farmers who raise the product, the community surrounding the farmers and in turn the next generation.
healthy food - Agriculture and sustainability - SIBEJO
Austin Miles, a college student, wrote an interesting piece about sustainability and scale, which ran in Ohio University�s student newspaper, The Post. The article states that no measure of distance, no simple definition of local or global is an indicator of either inherent sustainability or environmental degradation. Here's the conclusion:
"To zealously support local food systems themselves may be unsustainable. That defensive localism, often characterized as elitist or bourgeois, stresses the importance of a sort of purist local food system in opposition to the global, capitalist system. In Athens, for instance, the 30 Mile Meal promotes local food as a sustainable response to the influence of corporate interests over the food system. But the local food system in Athens could not be characterized as sustainable because it is not necessarily equitable.
"A truly sustainable food system may require consideration of multiple scales because they are all connected. The local scale is nested within the national scale, which is in turn nested within the global scale. The world, globalized as it is, will require an food system that can operate on all of those scales. The local food system surely is important, but the road to sustainability will require that we move beyond localism and regionalism and figure out how we can use the various scales as means to create a sustainable food system."
healthy food - Coalition on Human Needs Responds to Speaker Ryan's proposal - SIBEJO
Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, issued the following statementy in response to the House GOP anti-poverty proposal:
�The plan put forth by House Speaker Paul Ryan and his GOP colleagues actually is a blueprint for exacerbating poverty and inequality in the United States. While lacking in legislative and policy specifics, this blueprint cannot be separated from the budget proposal championed by House Republicans. This year�s GOP budget derives three-fifths of its cuts from programs that help low- and moderate-income Americans, while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations.
�The issue of funding is a gaping hole in this proposal. It costs money to give people the tools to escape poverty. But the budget approved by the House Budget Committee earlier this year would cut low-income programs by $3.7 trillion over 10 years, mostly in health care, but also cutting SNAP by $150 billion (a 30 percent cut between 2021-2026), and cutting Pell Grants and other low-income education programs. Do Ryan and his colleagues now disavow these cuts?
�While the report mostly chooses rhetoric over specific proposals, it does hint at an intention to reduce cash assistance. In one very troubling example, it criticizes Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for children with disabilities, calling for �access to needed services in lieu of cash assistance.� Children who receive SSI have severe and long-term disabilities, requiring time and expense that diminish their parents� ability to work. Denying cash assistance to these families will drastically worsen their ability to provide for their children�s significant needs.
�The report vaguely favors giving states more authority to change federal programs. This appears to be a nod to Speaker Ryan�s past recommendation to create �Opportunity Grants� � fixed funding to states that allow them to change rules in effective safety net programs. It is also similar to the House Agriculture Committee�s Child Nutrition Reauthorization proposal to allow three states to take a reduced funding level and change school meals program standards as they choose. There should be no doubt that freezing or reducing funding while allowing states to change program rules is no way to reduce poverty or increase opportunity. Instead, it will give states more incentives to deny help to people who need it.
�If Speaker Ryan and his colleagues are serious about cutting poverty and expanding opportunities for American families, they should embrace policies that actually benefit working families. This requires investing in good jobs, raising the minimum wage, ensuring an adequate safety net, adopting family-friendly work policies such as paid medical leave and predictable hours, and investing in human capital through a sound education system, all the way from pre-K through college.�
healthy food - New CCE ag teams aiding North Country - SIBEJO
ALBANY � Home to rich soil, a large dairy presence and determined crop producers, New York�s North Country also has more square miles than the entire state of Vermont and faces unique agribusiness challenges. Helping farmers navigate those issues are a pair of new regional agriculture teams fu... | |||||
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healthy food - BABIES COST MORE WHEN YOU�RE POOR - SIBEJO
New parents quickly learn there are very few financial supports for families with young children to help them buy baby supplies. Many low-income families are doubly penalized because they can�t afford to join wholesale stores or shop online and therefore pay more for basic supplies. One blogger (with Amazon Prime and Costco memberships and a car) compared her costs with the retail options available to a mother without these options.
- Diapers--22 cents/diaper online versus 36 cents at the local grocery store
- Formula--$20 per week at big box store versus $29 at local grocery
- Baby food--$5 made at home (thanks to food processor/blender/dishwasher) versus $18 for jars at grocery store
- Baby supplies (swaddles, laundry detergent, diaper cream, and bottles)--free thanks to points on Amazon credit card versus $10 at grocery store.
Total savings=$41 per week or over $2000 a year.
Source: Talk Poverty, 6/1/16, Baby Costs
healthy food - Toxic Charity - how our efforts to help may actually hinder... - SIBEJO
This is a book primarily about churches and the charity projects they undertake, but it has lessons for all of us working to build a better world.
Two themes that really resonated with me (and I'm sure there may be more in the future):
Volunteer projects - When a group or even an individual wants to volunteer, it's important to establish motives. Is it more important that the volunteer activity meet the needs of the volunteers or the needs of the community / the organization you are volunteering with?
This may seem easy to answer, but I can't tell you how many times people have called me with ideas for things they want to do that don't really meet the needs or mission of GardenShare. They often have a hard time accepting "no" for an answer, even though I think that I am, for the most part, pretty diplomatic in providing that answer!
Then there are the volunteer groups who expect nonprofits to spend our limited resources to feed the volunteers lunch or provide t-shirts or other things. We've already spent a lot of resources in staff time setting up and organizing the project, so don't be surprised if we say no to those requests, also!
Ending hunger or poverty - The book has lots of examples of programs that have not succeeded in ending the social ill they set out to fight. And a little guidance about how to do better. Lupton says the key is in relationships.
"To effectively impact a life, a relationship must be built, trust forged, accountability established. And this does not happen in long, impersonal lines of strangers. A name and a story have to be attached to each indivdual face. Highly personal life struggles must be explored and with each person a unique action plan created. A bed for the night...where to get a job...treatment for addiction...escape from an abusive husband...childcare for homeless children...a wheelchair for an amputee."
This is the same conclusion that I have come to in my 30+ years of work in the anti-hunger field. We won't end hunger by building bigger food banks and distributing more and more food. We will end hunger one family at a time, because each family's needs will be different. And we can only do this by mobilizing an army of volunteers who will work one-on-one with people in need and build these kinds of relationships.
At GardenShare, we have two primary ways of building community - the CSA's and the Farmers Markets. Can you help us think about other ways we can build community and engage people in need with people who can help?
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