Food Posts
Affordable Local Food…But How?
“How to eat better on a budget” is the title of the brochure Brwyn Griffin, the Port Townsend Food Co-op’s outreach/education manager, is holding here. She developed the brochure for the Making Local Food Affordable forum she presented at (and I attended) back in November. Ever since, I’ve been meaning to write up the tips I collected there. Prioritizing this post was one of the commitments I made to myself last weekend at the end of the first annual Thriving Communities conference at the Whidbey Institute (Feb. 2-4)....
read moreWhen We Have Grown it, a Gift of Food is a Gift of Ourself
“First we fed the chickens, now the chickens are feeding us.” My toddler’s chant became a mantra, a blessing, as we scrambled the dark yellow yolks in the pan, cooking up a dinner of the freshest eggs possible. That afternoon we’d made our first visit to Valley Rock Farm, one of our county’s many small-scale egg producers. It was also a long-overdue visit because it is owned by part-time farmer friends of ours, and every time they see us in town, they invite us out. Soren’s recent obsession with farm animals (maybe the veterinarian...
read moreForgetting the Pie We Paid For
& Other “Money Fast” Anecdotes
Money… Ah, it’s more intertwined in my day-to-day life than I imagined. And awfully hard to disentangle from. That realization was driven home during my 5-day “money fast” Oct. 1-5 and a subsequent “money scrutiny” phase Oct. 6-15—both intended to foster sustainability through frugality, and to explore non-monetary transactions within my community. For the two weeks of the Northwest Earth Institute’s annual EcoChallenge, I originally planned to split the 14 days down the middle and undertake a...
read moreDay 3: Will Power!
He came, he saw, he loved our farmers market! “Genius” farmer Will Allen of Milwaukee, Wis. (he’s only the second farmer to have been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant), made a very special visit to Port Townsend Saturday to be the keynote speaker on on Day 3 of the Northwest Earth Institute conference. The “good food revolution” founder‘s schedule was booked: first with an interview on KPTZ and then back-to-back Q&A sessions with a group of 20 young people interested in food activism, then with 65 local...
read moreThey’re Coming to Fort Worden
In two short days, scores of people I can’t wait to meet and learn from will be arriving at Fort Worden State Park in my hometown for the biannual North American Gathering of the Northwest Earth Institute—creator of small-group discussion courses on sustainability topics. The theme of the four-day conference, Sept. 15-18, is “Building Healthy Communities and Local Food Systems One Conversation at a Time.” Conference organizer Deb McNamara tells me the Institute’s “Menu for the Future” discussion course has...
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