sustainableflatbush.org

This evening was the Flatbush Food Coop’s Members Only Sneak Preview event, and the new store looks amazing! (No, I did not get a blogger’s press pass… I’m a member.) It is spacious and well-stocked, with an expanded bulk foods section - including flours, grains, fair trade coffee, and herbs and spices - and deli/takeout counter. The public “soft” opening will be later this week, with an official Grand Opening on May 18th. (Expect Marty Markowitz to show up for a photo op.)

Many people do not realize that this neighborhood institution has been around for decades, as their motto “Organic Since 1976″ states. It was originally 11 volunteer members operating out of a residence, then moved into a spot on Avenue H and East 16th, and for many years had been in its very cramped quarters on Cortelyou Road between Argyle and Rugby. The Coop’s new location, right across from the Q line Cortelyou subway stop, represents many months of effort on the part of staff, members, and the board. Congratulations to them and I look forward to shopping there!

Here’s some great news for fans of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and fresh locally produced food in general:

Amantai Farm CSA is coming to Flatbush!

Shayna Lewis, last year’s market manager at the Cortelyou Rd. farmers’ market, is working with one of the farmers from that market, Jorge Carmona from Amantai Farm, to start a CSA in the neighborhood. They’ve already got 20 members signed up and their goal is 40. Here are some of the details from Shayna:

The share includes enough vegetables for a family of 4 for the week. Amantai Farm is not certified organic, but does not spray anything on their vegetables, which in my opinion makes them better than the certified organic farms who spray organic pesticides and fertilizers. It’s definitely a good deal for anyone interested in local and organic. Jorge will be doing just vegetables (and melons). In the spring he’ll have salad greens, spinach, peas, herbs, etc. moving into summer squash, cucumbers, a wide variety of heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, cilantro, sweet and hot peppers, summer greens, onions, potatoes etc into winter squashes, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, etc. He does produce honey and will provide it for CSA members at a discount.

DROP-OFFS: Saturdays will not work as a drop-off day, so we are going to pick either a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon/evening to deliver the shares to your house, or to have you pick them up at a to-be-determined location if you live too far away or you’d rather pick up. If anyone has a preference for or against any one of these days, let me know and I’ll try to make it work for everyone the best way we can. Get back to me as soon as possible.

CHECKS: Please mail your checks/money orders made out to Jorge Carmona to:
Jorge Carmona
10039 Ziegels Church Rd.
Breinigsville, PA 18031
All checks should have arrived by mid-April, so you have some time, just don’t forget :). The cost is $400 for basic participation, add $60 to include a dozen eggs weekly, $30 for a half dozen. Eggs can also be ordered weekly. For a half-share, cost is $200.

SPREAD THE WORD: We now have about 20 members, but are going for 40. Please, tell any one you think might be interested. Feel free to give them my email address.

REQUEST VEGETABLES: Now is the time to request anything that Jorge is not already planning on planting. Most seed orders have to be in in the next three weeks, so speak now or forever hold your peas (sorry for the bad pun).

For further info, contact Shayna at shayna.lewis [at] gmail.com.

Shayna will also be speaking about Amantai Farm CSA and Community Supported Agriculture at this weekend’s Greening Flatbush event.

“How I Spent My Summer Vacation” continues, with more photos and anecdotes from the sustainability bicycle tour I went on in August…

Maitreya Eco-village, Eugene, OR

The trip began in Eugene, where we camped for the first few nights at a place called Dharmalaya. This is a privately owned home with land that hosts a yoga and meditation studio and acts as a community center for concerts and educational events. It is also an experiment in sustainable living, with an organic garden, composting toilets, and greywater reuse system. (More on Dharmalaya, including their ups and downs with the Eugene zoning board, here.) We visited a community called Maitreya Eco-Village, where we received some lessons in green building techniques (specifically straw bale and cob construction) from founder and architect Rob Bolman. We dropped by the factory and showroom of Bike Friday, manufacturer of world-famous sublime folding bikes, and got to take a few for a spin around the parking lot. We also checked out Eugene’s Center for Appropriate Transport, which hosts a community bike workshop and educational programs that teach kids how to build and design bikes and bike accessories.

Center for Appropriate Transport, Eugene, OR

Once this show actually got on the road, the distances each day were pretty significant for my wimpy self. (One point of pride was that I did actually RIDE up the hilliest portion of the trip, albeit at approximately 1.5 miles per hour.) I discovered that I like traveling by bike very much, and am looking forward to doing more in the future. It’s a great way to see the countryside, silently self-propelled, while still actually covering some distance in the course of a day. The weather was fantastic and Oregon’s Willamette Valley is a beautiful place.

Willamette River Valley, Oregon

We camped at organic farms and spent some time with the farmers who shared the reality of their work and lives with our group, including some delicious produce! We got our hands a little dirty on these farms too (though I personally can’t claim to have been very useful). Seeing both the beauty and the difficulty of this life made me more determined than ever to support the people whose labor and dedication brings beautiful healthy food to the rest of us.

Cyndi gives her chickens lots of love!

Next: “How What I Did On My Summer Vacation Changed My Life”... for real!

Okay, I can actually say it: by popular demand, the “How-I-Spent-My-Summer-Vacation” thread must go on! A lovely woman named Lisa sent me an email asking about the Oregon bike trip I went on in August, referenced in an earlier post. Thus, I will attempt to describe that experience, from the perspectives of sustainability, bicycling, and travel, in somewhat haphazard order.

I had seen ads for a sustainability-themed bike tour last year, but was unable to go at the time. The idea of travelling by bicycle was intriguing to me in and of itself, and the trip seemed pretty affordable by comparison with other supported bike tours (meaning, you camp but your luggage is transported in a van). The itinerary — visits to organic farms, green buildings and permaculture sites — was very attractive. To top it off, the support vehicle runs on biodiesel! What’s not to like? The tour company promotes their trips as

“Holistic - Vegan - Alcohol-free - Intrinsically Political - Community-Building Experience(s)”

… Um, okay… but I must confess I had a few fears about what I was getting into. Prominent among them was that I would be not only the oldest person there, but also the only person who was (a) not a vegan in “real” life, (b) not super-buff in that quasi-anorexic hipster way, (c) not covered with tattoos and/or piercings, (d) politically slightly to the right of anarchist, (e) blessed/cursed with the sarcastic sense of humor that can be a rarity on the West Coast. It’s not that I feel incapable of hanging with a crowd that fits this description (though perhaps not for an entire week), it’s just that growing up in Berkeley has made me somewhat weary of uber-political-correctness. Ironically, this breeding has also made me completely unfit for any other environment. I took a deep breath and sent in my deposit.

Fortunately all of the fears cited above were unfounded. The age range of our tour group was 12 years old to 70! In fact the folks older than me were among the strongest cyclists, usually found sipping cappuccinos at the 30-mile rest stop by the time I straggled in (great role models!). All the participants were really friendly and nice, with interesting lives and stories, some hailing from as far away as Canada and New Zealand. There were even a few fellow New Yorkers, one of whom provided a daily opportunity to make fun of the vegan fare by referring fondly to pastrami sandwiches at Katz’s Deli.

Lunch stop (biodiesel support van in the background)

Check out tomorrow’s
indie designer/fashion/recycling event
from the crafty folks at etsy!

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What is Trashion? Well, as you might guess, it’s fashion, accessories, art, and crafts made from trash and upcycled and recycled materials. You can check out the philosophy and some of the work of these artists here.

What will be going on? Well, well, at the Trashion show, you can:

*shop more than a dozen etsy shop’s designs, art, clothes, paper goods, accessories and housewares

*pick up some free samples (if you arrive early enough)

*learn more about trashion

*learn how to make some paper beads - and create some
to take home for free

*take away some more trashion supplies for inspiration

*participate in our online chat

*eat some tasty treats, talk with the sellers and schmooze

*support indie designers with an eco-focus to their handmade goods

What are Last Fridays Trunk Shows? Glad you asked! They’re parties with music, drinks, fun people to meet and talk to, and awesome goods to browse and buy- basically a great way to start your Friday night.

Please rsvp if you wanna come. See ya soon!

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When: Friday, July 27 from 6-8PM
Where: Etsy Labs: 325 Gold St., 6th Floor
How: Directions

This article in Fast Company magazine, “Message In A Bottle” by Charles Fishman, brings the bottled water discussion to another level. While I highly recommend reading the entire article, here are a few selected bits:

• Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We–a generation raised on tap water and water fountains–drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we’re raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We’ve come to pay good money–two or three or four times the cost of gasoline–for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.

• We buy bottled water because we think it’s healthy. Which it is, of course: Every 12-year-old who buys a bottle of water from a vending machine instead of a 16-ounce Coke is inarguably making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn’t healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world’s $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four–the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico–that has universally reliable tap water.

• …if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000. Taste, of course, is highly personal. New Yorkers excepted, Americans love to belittle the quality of their tap water. But in blind taste tests, with waters at equal temperatures, presented in identical glasses, ordinary people can rarely distinguish between tap water, springwater, and luxury waters.

• Pepsi has the nation’s number-one-selling bottled water, Aquafina, with 13% of the market. Coke’s Dasani is number two, with 11% of the market. Both are simply purified municipal water–so 24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi for our convenience.

• The Fiji Water plant is a state-of-the-art facility that runs 24 hours a day. That means it requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity–something the local utility structure cannot support. So the factory supplies its own electricity, with three big generators running on diesel fuel. The water may come from “one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth,” as some of the labels say, but out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze.

While this is all quite outrageous, one potential response is very simple: carry a reusable bottle and fill it with the local product, for free. Put a label on it that reads “Kensington Spring” or “Eau de Inwood” or Acqua Santa Astoria”… and drink up!