Are Backyard Chickens the New Yoga?

When I was a kid I thought that range chickens were the most disgusting thing you could have on your property. It made me think of poverty, right when Ronald Reagan was teaching all of us that poverty was shaming and turned "food stamps" into dirty words.

Photo: GreenerIdeal.com

I was young. And social pressure, especially when it comes from those in power, makes a very strong impact.

Social pressure changes, though, and now we are swinging around the other way. We still have issues surrounding the usage of SNAP, and many hierarchical disparities between non-profits and low-income populations. But now, instead of backyard chickens inviting negative images of people who "can't afford to go to the store", they are a badge that shows that you care for the health of your family. For the health of the environment and the strength of your local food system.

Where did that change come from?

This week, MPR called backyard chickens a "coveted suburban accessory." My own boss has chickens in her backyard, and raves about farm fresh omelettes in the morning. Most municipalities that allow backyard chickens have a registration fee of $30-50. However, that amount can be a barrier for low-income families. With the start up costs of a chicken coup, feed, and the registration fee, buying a dozen eggs at Cub for $1.50 looks much easier in the financial short-term.

Without intervention, whether it be community chicken co-ops, reduction in fees, or financial education, backyard chickens are going to become the new Yoga. Beneficial to your health, but more of a status symbol than a source of community change.

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Eagan Allows Backyard Chickens: Sun This Week

Metro Area Backyard Chickens: Pioneer Press

Backyard Chickens Spreading Salmonella: MPR

The Cost of Healthy Food

I'm a big fan of healthy food. Dinner normally revolves around fresh vegetables, rice, beans, squash, and greens. Not that I don't love a hot cinnamon roll or a hunk of good BBQ. Last week I was in The Smoky Mountains and had some amazing smoked ribs in a tiny Tennessee town. But normally my grocery shopping skips the middle of the store where the prepackaged food is and loads up on veggies.

Today I was sent an interesting infographic about the changes in the cost of food over the last three decades. NPR's Marketplace adjusted food prices per inflation, and then created this interactive "shopping cart." You have a budget of $35.46 and select the items that you want in your cart. You can see the price changes (adjusted for inflation) over the past 30 years, and how the cost of your basket fares in each decade. I know, it sounds like a bad Home Ec assignment, but it's extremely interesting. 

Here's why:

Healthy choices (fruits and vegetables, whole grains) have gone up in price over the last 3 decades, while the cost of processed, less healthier choices have actually decreased.

Economies of scale (some things get cheaper as you do them in greater quantities) can explain why the processed foods have decreased in price, but what about the healthier options? Why does it now cost more than it did previously to eat healthy? We have seen the American farm grow in size; according to the US Census Bureau, 2.3% of all American farms account for 50% of agricultural sales. 

Are consumers now demanding more healthier choices so the cost is going up? Is this all about supply and demand or is there something else happening? In 1997 US obesity rates hung around 20%, now they are over 34%. One third of all Americans are obese, yet healthy food has increased in price! 

I smell something fishy, and I can tell that it's not fresh.
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For more reading on the cost of healthy food, check out this USDA study. It shows that healthy options are proportionately cheaper than less healthy options if you look at what it takes to feel full instead of price per calorie.  

Using Leaves as Winter Mulch

We all remember elementary school when we learned how leaves change colors in the fall. Photosynthesis produces color pigments: chlorophyll (green), carotenoids (yellow, orange, brown), and anthocyanins (reds, blues, purples). The sunny fall days mixed with the crisp evenings create sugars that react with the anthocyanins and carotenoids, causing the leaves to color as they die.

And it is magnificent. 

Fall is my favorite season. The bite in the air that pricks at your nose, bonfires that tint the air with richness, raking all the leaves that fill your yard...

Wait, what? 

Yep, I love raking leaves. I also like shoveling snow, but that's another story. 

Maybe I like leaves because I'm still a kid at heart and will always enjoy jumping in a musty pile of dying tree...but I do. I love leaves. 

Besides being an entertaining Saturday afternoon, they are also great in your garden. In the summertime I use grass clippings as mulch in the garden. It breaks down over the course of the season and provides nice green mulch to your plants. 

Leaves have a similar effect. They will break down over the course of the wintertime and create a layer of nutrients for your plants to draw from. They also act as a pair of mittens and a nice warm hat for your plants. Adding a layer of leaves over your perennials will help regulate soil temperature of the wintertime, as well as give new shoots a protective blanket as they enter the world in the spring. 

Benefits of using leaves as fall mulch:

1. The smaller bits will break down and become compost in the soil. (Mow over your leaves to make smaller pieces that will break down faster). 
2. They help regulate soil temperature. The leaves act like a jacket for your plants, giving them more time to go into hibernation and helping to trap moisture in the ground and prevent soil erosion. 
3. They protect new growth in the spring. The leaves will act as a blanket in the springtime, giving new shoots protection against sneaky frosts. Don't remove the leaf covering until after your last frost date. 

So go on out into this great fall world. Play in the leaves, enjoy the colors, and the dump them on your beds. Your plants will thank you. 

The Best Community Garden Awards, EVER.

Saturday is a big day for Garden to Table. It's our big finale. The finish line. The pinnacle, apex, summit of a season of growing.

It's Harvest Banquet time!

This is our first year for the official Harvest Banquet, and it's going to be a great one.

We have three categories of awards for the gardens. The Golden Spade of Sunshine (for the brightest, most cheerful face), The Golden Spade of Trellising (for those everyday engineers who create amazing structures that take their plants to new heights), and....

...drumroll please...

The Green Thumb Award! It's the most coveted award of all, for the overall best gardener.

The best part is that I won't decide who receives the prizes. The gardeners have known about the awards all season and they will be voting on them Saturday night.

I think I'm going to be more nervous about the results than they are. Maybe I should make myself a "Best Garden Coordinator Ever" certificate so I don't feel left out. Well, if we're being realistic it should be "Most Weirdly Energized Coordinator Ever", or "Biggest Dork in the Garden". But a girl can dream, right?

Harvesting Community

I started working at The Resource Centers in April. When I interviewed, I fell in love with our garden program: teaching people to grow their own food as a sustainable approach to hunger. Ugh, brilliant.

I had one main goal for Garden to Table. On top of teaching people gardening, helping them feel comfortable in the soil, learning where food comes from...I wanted each and every one of these things to have a similar, underlying concept: Community.

Imagine clients of a food shelf gardening together, helping each other out during sickness, volunteering their time to help other people along, giving back while receiving help yourself.

Beautiful, right?

Guess what, it's happening.

This summer, one gardener's sister died and people pitched in to weed and water while she was gone. One of our gardeners is a former organic farmer and is writing a new curriculum to better train incoming gardeners. A group of gardeners is organizing a recipe wall based on what comes into season when, and one gardener (a former chef) just left a message for me saying she would love to start giving cooking classes for clients of the food shelf so they can learn how to use new vegetables.

I. Am. Bursting.

With pride, with love, with hope for all things, with an absolute delight in the goodness of humanity.

I love this job.

Homemade Fruit Fly Trap

We have a bunch of visitors at The Pantry. They showed up quite uninvited. They buzz around our heads, poofing out of crates of vegetables like magic spells in Disney movies.

You'll need a ball jar, coffee filter, rubberband, and bait. 

Fruit Flies. Blurgh.

The danger of fruit flies is mostly just to your personal sanity. They can transmit diseases, but are not known to do so as much as your average house fly. The fruit fly can live up to 30 days in optimal conditions (between 60 and 85 degrees).  The female fruit fly can lay up to 500 eggs at a time, allowing the population in your kitchen (or our Pantry), to multiple exponentially.

Nasty.

So how do you get rid of the little buggers?

Cut the tip off of the coffee filter to create a funnel.

There are a few different methods for bait. What you need to know is that fruit flies aren’t attracted to regular sugar, they are attracted to fermenting sugar. Wine or beer are both great baits, as is a little yeast in sugar water.  Adding a drop or two of dish soap to your bait will disturb the surface of the water so the flies get trapped and can’t fly away. (MUAHAHAHAHA)

Add bait (I used beer), and a few drops of dish soap.

Here are some simple steps for making your own fruit fly trap.

1. Fill the jar with about 1-2 inches of bait (red wine, beer, apple cider vinegar)
2. Add a few drops of dish soap.
3. Cut a 1” space out of the middle of a coffee filter.
4. Secure filter to the opening of the jar using the outer ring of the jar’s lid or rubberband. (Make sure that there is a well in the coffee filter: like a funnel)
5. Replace bait every few days.

Insert coffee filter and secure with a rubberband. 

Tips:

• Make sure you have good bait! Think of sugars that will break down: slices of banana, beer, watered down yeast with sugar.
• Soda/Pop doesn’t work well. Since it’s not a fermenting sugar, it won’t be the first choice for fruit flies. 
• If you buy a commercial container, be aware that their pre-made bait probably contains harmful chemicals. You can use their container with your own homemade bait instead (or if you just run out). 

ZEST! A local event of global cuisine

When you walk into our food shelf you automatically notice a few things: the photographs of our gardens, a giant framed puzzle of fresh produce that a volunteer made, a shelf of free books for kids, the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen.

Behind the check-in desk is a cabinet. It looks like it would be full of boring things: paper, ink cartridges, pens. Instead it’s filled with toys. Loads and loads of toys. We partner with an organization called Cheerful Givers that sends us birthday bags full of toys for our client’s children. When a parent tells us that their child is having a birthday, they get to take home a birthday bag to give to their son or daughter. It allows the parent to still be the one giving the gift, and it puts a smile on a kids face.

Thursday night we are celebrating our partnership with Cheerful Givers with a big party. We have local chefs coming to do food demonstrations, global inspired restaurants serving up their fare (Indian, Italian, Mediterranean, etc) and craft beers on tap. This fundraiser is going to allow us to fill our shelves with more produce, and more birthday bags from Cheerful Givers.

Want to join us? Check out the ZEST! website for tickets. We’re also giving away a “wall of wine” from Byerly’s Wine Cellar.  Too bad staff can’t enter…