Sustainable Agriculture Workshops

Yesterday we went on a day-long ag. field trip. Needless to say, I was pumped. First we went to Dave Forrest's farm. He farms a whole host of things, including macadamia nuts (called "maccas" here) and bananas. He talked to us about all the problems with modern agriculture, and let us sample some amazing goldfinger bananas and macca nuts along the way. We went for a little tour, and met his two jersey cows.

Dave with his lettuces

Next we went to Djanbung Permaculture Center near Nimbin. It was fantastic. The 12 principles of permaculture are:

-Use and value renewable resources and services

-Produce no waste

-Design from patterns to details

-Intergrate rather than separate

-Use small and slow solutions

-Use and value diversity

-Use edges and value the margin

-Creatively use and respond to change

-Observe and interact

-Catch and store energy

-Obtain a yield

-Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

All of these things can be applied to life AND to agriculture. Very cool people.

Mandala student garden

Delicious lunch they made for us!

Overall, a great day! Learned lots of fun little tidbits, and saw a wallaby in the gardens. Also met the biggest turkey I had EVER SEEN.

Young Farmers Conference!

Me and my coworker/farmers this summer

I'm signed up for the Stone Barns Young Farmers Conference!!! I am waaaay beyond pumped for this. So many awesome workshops... it makes me so excited to get started on all the work I have to do to make my dreams of agrarian bliss come true! To find out more and register, go HERE!

Stone Barns

My mom and I went to Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture yesterday.

As an aspiring farmer, many things made me smile!

The AMAZING greenhouse

The beginnings of chard

Lil' tractors

Chickens lookin' at me funny (with something dividing us)

Making friends with smiling sheep dogs

Lettuce stripes

greeeeen baby bok choy after a long winter

and honey bees!!!

Things that made me smile today...

1)Sparkly Dinosaur stickers

2)My mom FINALLY learning to text :)

3)A hand-crocheted scarf that arrived in my mailbox from one of my best friends

4)Almost being done with Rios Profundos by Jose Maria Arguedas

(it's just... dificil...)

5)Being closed out of my Women, Culture, and Society class so I have an excuse to take 2 Environmental Studies classes...

6)Warm wooly socks!

7)Knowing I'm going to work on a farm tomorrow

(in a greenhouse, it's too chilly for the outdoors!!!)

8)Robots on my desk! (that hold all my stuff!)

9)Naked juice Green Machine! It's got 2 3/4 apples, 1/2 a banana, 1/3 a kiwi, 1/3 a mango and a whole buncha other good stuff in it, and it tastes good!

10)Looking forward to my birthday in a week!!!

Trying DESPERATELY not to be jealous of the northeast... and of my sister, who is seeing Michael Pollan speak at Earlham tomorrow night.

HR 875

So this morning I came upon a group on Facebook called "Against The Organic Farming Ban". Obviously I was intrigued, considering I didn't think there WAS an organic farming ban. Turns out, there is a group that feels bill HR 875- Food Safety Moderization Act of 2009 contains a ban on organic farming. Rumors are swirling all over the internet. I took a look at the text of the bill, but there didn't seem to be anything explicitly banning or hurting local or organic farming. If anything, this seems to solve/slow many other food safety issues that we've been griping about for years, including e coli and salmonella outbreaks. Here are some other articles that try to clarify the real implications of the bill:

From the Daily Green

From Mother Jones

I will be keeping an eye out on this one. It seems to me that it is not as evil as some are perceiving it, but obviously we should be aware of what is happening with this legislation. There are in fact several food safety bills being worked on now. It's hard to regulate for agri-business and small local ag at the same time- while cleaning up agri-business, sometimes we create regulations impossible for small farms to meet. Perhaps we need different sets of regulations for different types/sizes of farms?