Urban Farm Tour Coming April 10

Save the Date for the 2010 Urban Farm Tour!!!

On Saturday, April 10th urban farmers across Cumberland and Moore Counties will open their homes and gardens in order to show us how they weave elements of rural life into their town and suburban lifestyles.

Visitors will see urban homeowners, much like themselves, demonstrating a passion for a wide variety of farm-life practices adapted to their back, side, and front yards! You’ll see demonstrations of bee‐keeping, native plantings and edible landscapes, rainwater harvesting, raising chickens as laying hens, vermi‐composting (worms), shade gardens, certified wildlife habitat, growing fresh‐cut flowers, and more. And you’ll also learn firsthand how practices such as tilling‐in cover crops, composting and building raised beds can improve soil quality and increase garden yields.

The Urban Farm Tour is self‐guided and participants will be able to pick up a Tour program at one of two Headquarters locations; the Cape Fear Botanical Gardens in Cumberland County and Aberdeen Elementary School in Moore County. Sites on the Tour will be open from 10am to 3pm and you can purchase a Tour button for only $5 per person. Buttons will be on sale soon at a number of convenient locations. Young Urban Farmers (children 12 and under) are admitted free!

So mark your calendars now for the 2010 Urban Farm Tour on Saturday, April 10!

For more information about sponsorship and volunteer opportunities, or to include your urban (or suburban) farm as a site on the 2010 Urban Farm Tour, contact Heather Brown at brownh@ctc.com or 910-639-7024.

Much To Consider Here

http://dirt.asla.org/2010/01/15/interview-with-david-owen-author-of-green-metropolis-how-living-smaller-living-closer-and-driving-less-are-the-keys-to-sustainability/

But No Conservation?

http://allalongtheedge.blogspot.com/2010/02/vermont-senate-votes-to-close-nuclear.html

Food Safety Legislation Pending, Discussion Mar. 11

Fresh Produce Safety Farmer Listening Session
Thursday, March 11, 2010 7:30 pm
Agriculture Building Auditorium in Pittsboro, NC
Please RSVP for this event by calling Jane Tripp at 919-542-8202 just so we can get a headcount for refreshments.
Fruit and vegetable farmers: What do you think about on-farm fruit and vegetable food safety issues? We want to know.
Please join us for a farmer listening session in Pittsboro on Thursday March 11, 2010 at 7:30 pm. The listening session will be hosted by the Chatham County Center of NC Cooperative Extension in the Agriculture Building Auditorium.
For more than a year, food safety legislation has been pending in the U.S. Congress. This past summer, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation (HR 2749) and a bill awaits action in the U.S. Senate (S510).
In addition, the Food & Drug Administration and USDA have announced that they are working together to develop rules and regulations for on-farm production of fruits and vegetables in the area of food safety.
North Carolina Farm Bureau and the NC Fresh Produce Safety Task Force would like to hear what you think. Regulations will be coming. It is our understanding that the intent is to regulate all fruit and vegetable production on the farm. Based on the bills that have passed and been introduced, a number of areas that will be regulated have been identified:
Please join us to talk about potential on-farm food safety regulation and what will and will not work for you. Your comments will be presented to the FDA and USDA now, before regulations are written.
Who should attend? Fruit and vegetable producers. Small producers with production of less than 100 acres are especially welcome. Wholesale growers, retail/farm stand growers, growers with CSAs or who sell at farmers' markets. While we realize this topic may be of interest to non-producers, this meeting is for producers only.

Bring your ideas and we look forward to seeing you March 11 in Pittsboro. * Please RSVP for this event by calling Jane Tripp at 919-542-8202 just so we can get a headcount for refreshments.

Directions to the Agriculture Building in Pittsboro: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/workshopdirections.html

For those of you outside the Triangle, listening sessions are also scheduled in several other counties (details are still being worked out): March 8Stanley County BreakfastUnion County Dinner March 9Watauga County BreakfastLincoln County Lunch March 12Brunswick County Lunch March 16 Gaston/Cleveland/Rutherford Counties timing to be determined March 18Harnett County, Ag Center, Lillington lunch, 12:30 p.m. March 26Duplin County/Wayne County timing to be determined For more information on the specific details of the meetings outside Pittsboro, contact Debbie Hamrick: Debbie HamrickDirector Specialty CropsNC Farm Bureau FederationPO Box 27766Raleigh, NC 27611-7766(919) 334-2977Cell: (919) 302-9538debbie.hamrick@ncfb.org

Chef Needed, Pinehurst Area

PERSONAL CHEF


Full-time or part-time position available immediately as a personal chef / household manager for a small vegan family in Pinehurst. The ideal candidate would have a strong background in healthy vegan cooking, a commitment to organic and locally grown food, an ability to work comfortably in a home setting, strong organizational skills, and independent creativity in the kitchen. Responsibilities would include grocery shopping, designing and preparing meals, food storage, the management of the kitchen and supplies, and assisting with the overall management of the home. An extra plus would be an applicant with experience as an organic gardener and orchardist, and skills with canning, preserving, drying, and freezing fresh food from the garden. To apply, please email cover letter and resume to: chefinpinehurst@yahoo.com.

Thursday, 23rd, with Abe Lincoln

"An Evening with Abraham Lincoln" will be presented by The Ruth Pauley Lecture Series on February 23rd at 7:30 pm at Owen Auditorium, Sandhills Community College.
An Evening with Abraham Lincoln is to be done by Lincoln impersonator Jim Getty.

Q and A on Economics

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/krugman-responds-readers-questions/
That E word--what is it exactly?. . . .

Cukes, Not Nukes

The Amazing Cucumber

[Thanks, Bonnie!]
This information was in The New York Times several weeks ago as part of their "Spotlight on the Home" series that highlighted creative and fanciful ways to solve common problems.
1. Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.
2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B Vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.
3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.
4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area.
5. Looking for a fast and easy way to remove cellulite before going out or to the pool? Try rubbing a slice or two of cucumbers along your problem area for a few minutes, the phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite. Works great on wrinkles too!
6. Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache? Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!
7. Looking to fight off that afternoon or evening snacking binge? Cucumbers have been used for centuries and often used by European trappers, traders and explores for quick meals to thwart off starvation.
8. Have an important meeting or job interview and you realize that you don't have enough time to polish your shoes? Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that not only looks great but also repels water.
9. Out of WD 40 and need to fix a squeaky hinge? Take a cucumber slice and rub it along the problematic hinge, and voila, the squeak is gone!
10. Stressed out and don't have time for massage, facial or visit to the spa? Cut up an entire cucumber and place it in a boiling pot of water, the chemicals and nutrients from the cucumber with react with the boiling water and be released in the steam, creating a soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown the reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams.
11. Just finish a business lunch and realize you don't have gum or mints? Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemicals will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.
12. Looking for a 'green' way to clean your faucets, sinks or stainless steel? Take a slice of cucumber and rub it on the surface you want to clean, not only will it remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine, but is won't leave streaks and won't harm you fingers or fingernails while you clean.
13. Using a pen and made a mistake? Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!

Stimulus and Nukes

Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz on Obama's Stimulus Plan, Debt, Climate Change, and "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy"
As President Obama defends the success of his one-year-old $787 billion stimulus package, we speak to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who says the stimulus was both not big enough and too focused on tax cuts. Stiglitz is the author of the new book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, which analyzes the causes of the Great Recession of 2008 and calls for overcoming what he calls an "ersatz capitalism" that socializes losses but privatizes gains. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/18/nobel_economist_joseph_stiglitz_on_obamas

"A Bad Day for America": Anti-Nuclear Activist Harvey Wasserman Criticizes Obama Plan to Fund Nuclear Reactors * President Obama has pledged $8.3 billion in loan guarantees needed to build the first nuclear reactors in nearly three decades. The move, along with a tripling of nuclear loan guarantees in the President's budget, represents a new federal commitment to the nuclear power sector. We speak to independent journalist and longtime anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, who helped found the grassroots movement against nuclear power in the United States in the 1970s. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/18/nukes

How to Prune, Plant Blueberry Bushes

Subject: Blueberry Pruning and Planting Demonstration, February 27




Contact: Taylor Williams, Agricultural Extension Agent



Phone 910-947-3188 Fax 947-1494



Email: taylor_williams@ncsu.edu


The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service will hold a blueberry pruning and planting demonstration on Saturday morning, February 27, at 1460 Red Hill Road in Cameron. The workshop will begin at 9:00 a.m. and conclude at 10:30 a.m.
Ag. Ext. Agent Taylor Williams will cover varieties, site selection, soil preparation, pruning mature blueberry bushes, and planting “stool” plants (shoots from base of existing blueberries).
The meeting is free and open to the public. Bring pruning tools and a shovel. Please call 947-3188 for more information, for directions, and to register for this class.
Directions: From Carthage, take 15/501 North 2.7 miles and turn right on NC 24/27 East toward Cameron. Go 2.5 miles, and turn left on Bryant Road. Go 0.6 miles and turn right on Red Hill Road. After 0.9 miles, 1460 Red Hill Road will be on your left.

Great Film About Food

http://www.foodfightthedoc.com/foodfight.html

More on Urban Farm Tour, April 10

http://www.sustainablesandhills.org/docs/2010UrbanFarmTourApril10.pdf

Global Weirding, US Addiction to Oil

clip:   "China, of course, understands that, which is why it is investing heavily in clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail. It sees the future trends and is betting on them. Indeed, I suspect China is quietly laughing at us right now. And Iran, Russia, Venezuela and the whole OPEC gang are high-fiving each other. Nothing better serves their interests than to see Americans becoming confused about climate change, and, therefore, less inclined to move toward clean-tech and, therefore, more certain to remain addicted to oil. Yes, sir, it is morning in Saudi Arabia."

article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/opinion/17friedman.html

Energy Crisis vs US Involvement

February 13, 2010  Op-Ed Columnist
Watching China Run By BOB HERBERT

It was primarily a symbolic gesture. Way back in 1979, in the midst of an energy crisis, Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House. They were used to heat water for some White House staffers.
“A generation from now,” said Mr. Carter, “this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people, harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”
Ronald Reagan had the panels taken down.
We missed the boat then, and lord knows we’re missing it now. Two weeks ago, as I was getting ready to take off for Palo Alto, Calif., to cover a conference on the importance of energy and infrastructure for the next American economy, The Times’s Keith Bradsher was writing from Tianjin, China, about how the Chinese were sprinting past everybody else in the world, including the United States, in the race to develop clean energy.
That we are allowing this to happen is beyond stupid. China is a poor country with nothing comparable to the tremendous research, industrial and economic resources that the U.S. has been blessed with. Yet they’re blowing us away — at least for the moment — in the race to the future.
Our esteemed leaders in Washington can’t figure out how to do anything more difficult than line up for a group photo. Put Americans back to work? You must be kidding. Health care? We’ve been working on it for three-quarters of a century. Infrastructure? Don’t ask.
But, as Mr. Bradsher tells us, “China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines and is poised to expand even further this year.”
China also has become the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels and is pushing hard on other clean energy advances. As Mr. Bradsher wrote: “These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.”
We’re in the throes of an awful and seemingly endless employment crisis, and China is the country moving full speed ahead on the development of the world’s most important new industries. I’d like one of the Washington suits to step away from the photo-op and explain the logic of that to me.
The truth, of course, is that there is no reason at all for this to be happening. The United States, in many ways, is very well prepared to move ahead on clean energy. It could and should be the world’s leader. Many, if not most, of the innovations in this area were developed right here. But much of that know-how, as we are seeing in China (and have been seeing in Germany and other places), is being implemented overseas.
The conference that I attended in Palo Alto spotlighted the need to move to a low-carbon economy in the U.S. and exemplified some of the resources available to make it happen. It was sponsored by the Brookings Institution and Lazard, the investment banking advisory firm. The participants included the leaders of — and major investors in — companies that are making great strides in the alternative energy industry. But much of their business is done overseas because right now in America’s wacky, dysfunctional public sector there is no clear vision of a viable clean-energy economy, and, thus, no clue about how to get there.
The network of world-class universities and advanced research institutions in the U.S. is by far the most impressive in the world: think Harvard and Stanford and Berkeley and M.I.T. and on and on. If you add to that the venture capital community in the U.S. with its vast experience and the willingness of investors to take risks, and the sheer entrepreneurial talent of the American business community, you end up with an array of resources fully capable of moving the U.S. into a low-carbon, high-growth and extraordinarily productive economy that would be the envy of the world.
But for that to happen — as Bruce Katz, a Brookings executive who was one of the organizers of the conference, pointed out — America’s corporate, civic and political leaders will have to “articulate what’s really at stake here.”
And what’s at stake is the future of the American economy. The low-carbon era is coming. We can be dragged into that newer, greener world by leading countries like China; or we can take up the challenge and become the world’s leader ourselves.

Check It for Events and Workshops

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/calendar.html

Well, For Pity's Sake. . .

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2244516/?wpisrc=newsletter

Celeb Chef to Fight Obesity Gets TED Prize

TED Prize to fight obesity and to educate about food!
http://www.tonic.com/article/jamie-oliver-ted-prize-wish-movement-fight-obesity/

More on Severe Weather

http://www.repoweramerica.org/climate-change-causes-severe-weather/

Soda and Diabetes Connection, with Maps

http://allalongtheedge.blogspot.com/2010/02/soda-and-diabetes.html

Facebook | Gloria Steinem Event for Local Filmmakers

Facebook Gloria Steinem Event for Local Filmmakers: "Welcome Gloria Steinem to Chapel Hill as she hosts a public fundraiser for 'Private Violence,' a documentary film and education project confronting the epidemic of domestic violence in the United States and depicting the history of the movement for women's rights and safety.

There will be a preview of the film-in-progress, presentations from national and local leaders, an auction of Gloria Steinem memorabilia and performances by Durham-based poet/musician shirlette ammons and Greg Humphreys of Hobex.

Minimum donation of $25 (tax-deductible). Reserve tickets at www.privateviolence.org. Tickets also available the day of the event. All proceeds will support the completion of the documentary. For more information: 919-824-0811 or privateviolence@gmail.com."

SCC, Valentine's Day and Palustris

Event Announcement from Sandhills Community College!
SCC Valentines Day Jazz Band Concert Tim Haley, Director
Owens Auditorium Sandhills Community College
Sunday, February 14, 20107:30 p.m.
Free to the public
Sandhills Community College will be hosting our annual Valentines Day Jazz Band Concert in Owens Auditorium. We hope to see you and your Valentine at Sandhills Community College, February 14, 2010 at 7:30 pm in Owens Auditorium!

AND Save the dates! Inaugural Palustris Festival March 25-28
Named after the Latin name for the longleaf pine, the Palustris Festival is designed to celebrate the visual, literary and performing arts of Moore County. The Festival will showcase what makes our area unique and special: artists, musicians, and writers we produce locally and attract from all over the world, a variety of art galleries, the natural beauty of the area, deep-rooted history, world-famous golf, fine hotels & resorts, excellent restaurants, boutique retail shops and much more.
Many events will be held in conjunction with and on the campus of Sandhills Community College.
For more information, please visit thefestival website - http://www.palustrisfestival.com/

February Special at Raven's Wing

For the month of February, get $5 off all massage services
Raven's Wing, 325 North Page St, Sou. Pines  603 3403

SCC, Feb 16, SS Community Action Team to Discuss Urban Farm Tour

MOORE COUNTY COMMUNITY ACTION TEAM MEETING REMINDER!
Sandhills Community College, Clement Dining Room, Dempsey Student Center
Tuesday, February 16th, 6:30-8:00
Please join us for our first 2010 CAT meeting! This month we'll learn about urban farming and prepare for the upcoming Urban Farm Tour, April 10. Attendees will form break-out groups to discuss potential tour sites, fundraising ideas, and volunteer opportunities.
Urban agriculture is the method of cultivating food in or around a town or city. Eating locally-grown food is less energy intensive--supermarket produce can travel over 1,000 miles!--and often safer, not to mention tastier!  Get inspired by the story of an urban farm in California:  The Dervaes Family Garden
We will include updates on community events and projects, including a Cultural Resources Inventory of the area.  Invite your friends and help spread the word!  Together we are making a difference!

Save these dates!
March 11th – Sustainable Film Series screening of “Addicted to Plastic”
March 25-28th – Palustris Festival – Celebrating visual, literary, and performing arts in Moore County
April 10th – Urban Farm Tour in Moore and Cumberland Counties

Contact Brenda Johnson for more info
brendaj@sustainablesandhills.org
910-484-9098

Pollan Helps at the Store

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/8/michael_pollan_on_food_rules_an