Marin Organic, a network of growers, chefs, and entrepreneurs, hosts a lot of neat events and here’s one you won’t want to miss. This Saturday, July 9, the Clark Summit Farm is welcoming visitors from 10 am to noon. There is a fee ($25, or $20 for Friends of Marin Organic, $5 for kids over 2 years). This is an organic farm that has been in the family for almost a hundred years. Contact
kerry@marinorganic.org for reservations or information

And on Sunday, July 10, in San Francisco you may attend a great tasting event sponsored by Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA). This is a fundraiser whose proceeds will support CUESA’s projects such as cooking demonstrations, kitchen skill-building classes, the new Schoolyard to Market program, and scholarships that help sustainable farmers build their markets.

At the event, you’ll be able to sample offerings from San Francisco’s top chefs, such as Eric Tucker of Millennium, Annie Sommerville of Greens, Nate Keller of Gastronaut, and dozens more.  Admission is $95 ($50 of this is tax deductible) and the event runs from 6 to 9 pm. at the Ferry Building.

Roots of Change, a San Francisco think tank that funds projects for a sustainable food system, points out some ways to celebrate independence in a sustainable manner.

First, be a supporter of local farmers – and of the restaurants and markets where you can find their products. Eat Well Guide and Buy Fresh Buy Local are websites that will help you locate these enterprises.Second, add veggie kebabs to your event. So many people enjoy outdoor grilling, but the good news it doesn’t have to involve meat. This July 4 falls on a Monday, so having a mushroom-onion-greenpepper-eggplant kebab also honors Meatless Monday. Third, reduce waste. Did you know you can buy biodegradable plates, napkins, and even cutlery? They can all go in your compost bin after the festivities, or your city compost bin if your city collects compostables. Same for table scraps.

I’m sure there are other ways to honor earth on Independence Day, but these three are a start. Actually, you could omit the barbecue altogether. According to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Each July 4, 60 million people light their barbecue grills, burning the equivalent of 2,300 acres of forest, emitting nearly 225,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

If you’re going to cook something outside, why not use a solar oven instead? These gizmos are portable boxes that concentrate sunlight to heat the cooking space to about 300 degrees. Foggy areas like San Francisco’s Great Highway area or Pacifica or western Marin may not be the likeliest places to try solar cooking, but most places in the Bay Area get enough sun to make one of these solar ovens pay for itself over time.

Last month, Prince Charles visited a city farm in Washington DC. This was no superficial royal good-will gesture; he has championed sustainable and organic agriculture for decades. On this trip he spoke at a conference called “The Future of Food,” where experts and citizens tackled the life-or-death issue: how will we feed ourselves as we increase our population and degrade our planet?

At one point, Prince Charles said, “We have to maintain a supply of healthy food at affordable prices when there is mounting pressure on nearly every element affecting the process. In some cases we are pushing Nature’s life-support systems so far, they are struggling to cope with what we ask of them. Soils are being depleted, demand for water is growing ever more voracious and the entire system is at the mercy of an increasingly fluctuating price of oil.”

Fortunately, here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have many activists, farmers, entrepreneurs, chefs, and nonprofits working on the issue. We also have conferences where you can learn how to join the new food world. For instance, Bioneers, held every October in San Rafael, has for many years showcased inventive farmers and food experts who are creating and promoting a food system that is healthy for people and planet. EcoFarm’s conference is held every January in Santa Cruz and is a hands-on learning experience. California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom hosts numerous classes and events.

“Prince Charles is right: our current food system is broken. But we have better options available to us. By farming in ways that balance our needs with resource availability, we can produce ample food for the world without degrading the environment,” says Margaret Mellon, Food and Environment Program Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

You can join UCS even if you’re not a scientist (its tagline is “Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions”), and get expertly reasoned and documented newsletters on many environmental issues.

Of course, you don’t have to become a professional to help. Just visit a farmers’ market, buy organic food, waste less, and you’ll be part of the solution.

More and more people are literally fed up with industrial food, and taking matters into their own hands by growing their own food. They may do it on their own or as part of an urban farming collective.

But be aware — growing vegetables and fruit oneself is not a dainty exercise in plucking perfect beans and strawberries after an effortless season. If you are starting from scratch, you have to dig up a foot or more of soil that may be hard and clayey, then amend it (with organic compost, of course, and possibly other materials). Unless you order a truckload of the stuff and pay others to install it, you’ll be hauling forty-pound bags from driveway to garden plot. If your area is blessed with a multitude of gophers, you’ll also need to lay down hardware cloth (which is actually wire fencing with a very tight weave) and put the soil back down on top of it. Then there’s the small matter of creating a barrier to encourage deer in your neighborhood to dine elsewhere. Planting and weeding are less onerous, but you still might work up a sweat on warm days.

Not to mention a backache.

But that’s optional. At a class a few years ago, I learned from a young student of John Jeavons (author of How to Grow More Vegetables and a pioneer in biointensive farming to make small plots produce copious amounts of food) how to make smooth, stress-free movements WHILE gardening. Digging with a spade, for instance, can be done using balance and a rocking motion to minimize back strain.

But regular yoga can help if you do end up sore after a hard afternoon’s gardening. There are free yoga classes that can be found all over the Bay Area. For example, Lululemon Athletica in Walnut Creek offers a free yoga class in Civic Park every Sunday.

Article found on the Examiner.com.

On any given day, over 140 million Americans are at work, so at least 140 million meals are eaten in the company cafeteria, at the desk, or a the construction site.

What you can do:

• Avoid fast-food breakfasts.  They’re not very healthy options, and fast food corporations rely on monoculture, long-distance transport, and over-packaging.
• Brown bag your meals and snacks more often.  Bring leftovers from home in reusable containers, or recycle the paper bag.
• If you have a microwave oven in your workplace, reheat some leftovers you brought from home.
• Recycle.  This means carrying a bag or can until you find a proper bin.
• Encourage the company cafeteria to serve green and vegetarian options, and then select them.
• Order healthy foods for long meetings and stock the office fridge with fruit and other fresh snacks.

From The Earth-Friendly Food Chain (pg. 73)