Young people are amazing.

I am constantly impressed with the young people I meet. At GreenBuild we heard young adults from the group "Youth Speaks" give pieces on climate change, and they were powerful communicators. I know a young lady from Cleveland who when in high school arranged a program to send shoes to thousands of children in Afghanistan, when her uncle who was serving there told her that they could not play soccer in the winter because they had no shoes. My niece who is 12 is taking (and doing well in) college level Japanese classes with adults, she has been studying it for a couple years and if you ask her "Isn't it hard" she'll look at you like your crazy and tell you "It wouldn't be fun if it wasn't hard."

Yesterday we had a group of young ladies to our office from the Our Lady of Elms middle and high schools. We are doing a new gymnasium addition for them, and were having them to our office to talk about green design. With young ladies from 11-18, I was worried that my normal talk on green design would bore them to pieces, but not only did they stay interested, they asked insightful questions that show that THEY get it. We went through a series of problems and talked about solutions to them. The questions also showed critical thinking skills, one girl asking if we really were saving resources by rehabbing existing auditorium seating instead of new. Which, I thought, showed that she was thinking about what we were talking about. Another girl asked if the wheat straw board we used for wall partition surfaces in our offices was really a good thing, because we were using food sources for building material.

I choose to believe that the "normal" kids are like the exceptional young people I have talked about above. If that is the case, I think we will leave the world in very good hands.

Long term goals - Einstein and Ray Anderson

Albert Einstein said “It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.” What a concept, and what a challenge. From consumption, environmental, and social justice standpoints this is an amazing challenge. How can we possibly do this? And how can our farm?

Have you ever heard of Ray Anderson? If you get a chance you should hear him speak, he is an amazing speaker! You may ask yourself “Why would I want to hear a CEO of a carpet company (Interface) speak?” Why? Because he has been the driving force behind transforming the US carpet industry from a poor environmental performer to one of the leaders in industrial environmental performance.

I was amazed at GreenBuild, so many carpet companies each with a HUGE beautiful booth highlighting their environmental programs. One of the smallest carpet booths was Interface, which was funny because they have perhaps the most massive environmental program, which among other initiatives includes Mission Zero: leaving zero environmental footprint, by the year 2020. No landfill waste (even from the removal of their old products,) no carbon emissions from manufacture/ transportation/ installation of their product, 100% renewable energy (including landfill methane), no toxic substances in their products, and use 100% recovered/recycled or natural materials.

WOW! Is all I can say! So this winter we are working on our own farm’s environmental mission, goals, and how we hope to get there. How, for instance, do we deal with offsetting or reducing the carbon emissions for people who drive to the farm weekly? Or plastic mulches, which reduce our irrigation requirements, reduces weeding, but are made from petro-chemicals and are a disposal issue? We can use bio-diesel or even vegetable oil to power our tractor, but what about our smaller (chainsaw, walk behind tiller…) gasoline powered equipment?

And even if we can figure all of that out we still will NOT be doing what Einstein asks. But step by step we will get closer and we hope you will join us for the journey. When we launch our new website in the next couple months or so we will include a couple pages to track environmental goals.

2 Confrences - 1 year apart...

In late October 2006 my husband and I were lucky enough to be sponsored by our local Slow Food to go to Terra Madre in Turin, Italy. (Thank you Northeast Ohio Slow Food!) A worldwide gathering of 6000 people representing food communities from all over the world. And as I said below, I spent the past 3 days in GreenBuild in Chicago. Two conferences, one year apart. One about food, one about buildings. No crossover... you would think.

But you'd be wrong. Both were about sustainability and social justice and beyond that a greater movement that is currently sweeping the world, largely ignored. Totally non-partisan and without a central unifying ideology we are (all of us) changing the world. The social justice and environmental movements are part of one greater whole.

I guess this post is a not so discrete plug for Paul Hawken's newest book "Blessed Unrest" which is about just that. And although Mr. Hawken might disagree I think that be we greenie liberals or crunchy conservatives (the part P.H. would probably argue) there is a convergence of movements occurring.

I feel myself caught up in the whirlpool of ideas that is trying now to reshape the world and how we function in it. And when gas settles in price at 4 or 5 or 6 dollars a gallon, then how we live in this country and around the world may have to change. Local food will be the economical choice and not an elitist indulgence. A hybrid will be the car of single moms and not of enlightened executives. We will pay more attention to what we do and we will realize that our actions effect everyone.

Although, I KNOW that our built environment more responsible for our environmental issues then all the SUVs on the road and every meal we eat, and that building will be an enormous part of any future solution I still love this quote from Terra Madre. Because as the saying goes you are what you eat and it is one thing that we can control on a day to day basis.

"Loving food is the most personal and least abstract way of being an environmentalist." - Alice Waters

Let us know if you want to see more Terra Madre photos we have a TON!

Greenbuild

I'm back home. When I was gone my husband did a ton of brush hogging and plowing. We also got next years Johnny's Seed Catalogue, so I know what I am doing for some of this weekend!

Greenbuild was amazing. Over three days I heard people like Bill Clinton, Paul Hawken, the mayors of Chicago, Grand Rapids, Albuquerque, and Austin, leaders in industries from fuel cells (United Technology) to cleaning product (Seventh Generation) and practitioners of green design from around the world speak to both the wider philosophical issues and the practical how to do it issues! 22,000+ people were there and everything was standing room only!

I learned so much that it will take me a while to process it all. I will have to go through all my notes, and honestly, this is a blog about farming so I'm not sure if you are really interested in this at all! But let me talk briefly about one principle - the Precautionary Principle. Which asks us to reframe decisions from "Is it safe?" to "Is it necessary?"

This gives us a tool to defend decisions to people who claim that science has yet to prove that something is harmful. Remember, this many years after Newton and Darwin both gravity and evolution are still theories (not to mention Climate Change). PROVING something in science is (and should be) very difficult.

To bring it back to food, look at High Fructose Corn Syrup. We made the decision a couple years ago to cut it out of our diet. And in that time I have had a number of discussions with people about it NOT being bad for me. And it is hard to prove something like that. So using the Precautionary Principle, I can reframe the discussion to "Yes, but is it necessary?" And the answer to that is no. Anything from ketchup to candy, from soda to bread can be and is made without it.

On farms the same discussion can be made respect with pesticides and other chemical applications. With the knowledge that sometimes the answer is "Yes, something is necessary or else all of those will die." When that is the answer we look for the safest option that will solve the problem, maybe a baking soda spray, or hot pepper oil in dish soap, or maybe a certified organic pesticide.

I'll post more later, my head is overflowing with ideas! I'll try not to bore you all to much!