April 2010 Blog Posts (16)

Hey everyone! I have no idea if anyone will actually read this, but here it is.

Here at Western, we just finished up with our hectic, educational, and incredibly fun earth week which was wittingly dubbed "Earth Days" to support the idea that every day is Earth Day. Many months of planning preceeded the week. Speakers were booked, bands were paid, rooms were reserved, publicity was printed, and ideas flew around the Environmental Center like wildfire. VU 424 (our office) was a…

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Jam season is coming sooner than we think. We seem to be having an early spring - when it isn't winter again. In the usual scheme of things, strawberries arrive in June, followed by the early raspberries, cherries, blueberries, plums, apricots, peaches, figs, blackberries, fall raspberries and the rare treasures, local Lynden Blue and Madeline Angevine grapes. Apples ripen from June to October, depending on the variety. Where to start?

The first step is to plan. How many people are you… Continue

I am riding in the backseat of the car with my mom and my aunt to go fruit picking–…

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For those who don't subscribe to the Sustainable Bellingham Newsletter:

Recommended Reading, Listening & Watching

A Decade Swept Away in a Day by Tim Johnson, Cascadia…

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It's all about the cheese. French cheese is a story of cookery and resource depletion. Cheese preserves milk, an otherwise fragile commodity. Cows, goats and sheep can make milk from pasture land that may be too steep, rocky or poor for grains or row crops. Cheese can be compactly transported. A gallon of milk makes 8-16 ounces of cheese, so the volume goes down and the shelf life goes up. Cheese has terroir, the flavors of origin. What the animals eat, the breed, the time of year and the… Continue

You can view a live video feed from the Bolivian People's Climate Summit April 20-22nd.

http://www.oneclimate.net/bolivia

It's time to plant onion sets and potatoes. If you haven't started some peas, lettuce and spinach already, now is the time. Leave some space for the summer garden, even if your summer garden is two patio tomatoes and a butterstick summer squash in pots. Bush beans, compact summer squashes, determinate tomatoes in cages, trellises to train pole beans, squash, cucumbers will help you grow a lot in small spaces.



Back when I had just built the first raised bed on my former front lawn, a… Continue

A friend of mine is needing to find new homes for her flock of 53 chickens, including a few roosters. They are used to having several acres of grass and yard to run about in all day, so a similar free range home is much preferred. There are several breeds of chicken available so if you like blue eggs, or brown, then you can have them.

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* Apologies for the lack of formatting in this interview. The Ning site unfortunately will not preserve spacing and formatting when publishing blog entries.

Larry Korn is a soil scientist, agricultural consultant…

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Dr. Steve Jones, when he was here talking to us about small scale grain growing, suggested looking around for old threshers, balers, tractors and other medium tech equipment. He also suggested that if we find something, try to buy more than one, because the parts are hard to find. The equipment is itself hard to find. The high price of scrap steel has led to collecting up the old machines from the early 20th Century and shipping them to China to be melted down. Once you beat the scrap dealer to… Continue

http://www.pca.state.mn.us/oea/publications/p-ee1-01.pdf

I just found this article and will soon comment on it. For now, other people can start reading it, too.

Cheers,

Brian

The greatest revelation for me while tabling at the Bham Farmers' Market was coming into contact with a group of

sympathizers who haven't gotten very involved with Transition Whatcom

yet: burnt out hippies. Obviously we all know they're around - this is

Bellingham after all, but as a group they are conspicuously absent from

our active membership. Just to be clear, I'm talking about the folks

from the 60s and 70s who poured all their heart and soul into that… Continue

It was market day today, and I got to spend some time with Rhys and Raven promoting The Great Unleashing! This was my first time tabling, and I really enjoyed getting so many

people to smile and greet me. A good time was had by all, despite the weather, and I think we did a pretty good job of connecting with our community.



Most common quotes overheard:

• "What the [heck] is The Great Unleashing?!"
• "Ooh, I've been reading about this!"
• "We'll be there!…

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Perhaps you've read news about the many rescue programs for distressed homeowners. Powering down may need to start with the home itself and go from there. Ultimately, a person in financial distress will always face difficult decisions. Some of which may be as simple as accepting they cannot sustain such a large or expensive home and the attached energy, transportation, tax and insurance burdens. A good chat with your family…

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Look for fresh ginger, tumeric and galangal roots in the markets now. They are in season someplace in world, and we get to share. The fresh juicy roots are the ones you want. Ginger is a familiar element of Asian cooking. Galangal is a hard root that ripens to rock-hard. It is the secret ingredient in Pad Thai. It was widely grown and used in Europe until it was lost during the calamitous 14th century. Tumeric, used in Indian and Asian cooking, is usually found as a dry powder. The fresh root… Continue