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Root Riot community gardeners

Green on McLean planting

Sand mine on Route 71 in LaSalle County.
This is similar the one proposed for the location
at the entrance to Starved Rock.

Winter at the Chicago Botanic Garden

Lido Banquets

Andy's Deli & Mikolajczyk Sausage Shop

KAM Isaiah Israel

Eagles at Starved Rock

Barb Melera of D. Landreth Seed Company now has reason to flash that beautiful smile.

Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko, authors of
Farmstead Chef

Is it time for a new laptop? Then it's time to
recycle the old one.

Cyclamen Photo: Deb Brown

amaryllis

Eagles at Starved Rock

Beautiful "green" candles in recycled glass from
Bright Endeavors

Hand-stitched picture frame from
Ten Thousand Villages

Chicago's Gardener of the Year,
Enrique Gonzalez

Keystone XL Pipeline

Olga Garcia, Carrie Vinarsky, Moncerratt Peneda, Mike, and Daeshaun Adams received the award for Green on McLean.

Landreth Seed Company owner Barbara Melera

Click the pic to see more pages of
the wonderful Landreth catalog.

Jamie Gallagher President and CEO of
Faber-Castell USA/Creativity for Kids

From Chicago Magazine
The three largest clusters in Chicago's food desert: (1) from Austin in the west to the Near North Side in the east; (2) from the Near South Side in the north to Ashburn and Greater Grand Crossing in the south; (3) most of the Far South Side, including Roseland and Pullman

The answer to Chicago's food deserts?

Did you really think about this, Ms. Obama?

Phioto by Katherine Millett

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky at the Move the Money Chicago rally

..visi

Michael Webb and Sarah Batka

Mike with Sarah Batka

Inspiration Kitchen

..

Tonda Di Parigi, French heirloom round carrots

Minnesota midget melons

Thomas Jefferson rain gauge

Westpoint Tulips (COURTESY OF THE VAN ENGELEN BULB COMPANY)

Cedar Valley cattle

Beth and Jody Osmund of
Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm

Egrets in a restored wetland at Deer Grove East
forest preserve in Palatine

Native plants at Deer Grove East

Mountain bike trail at Deer Grove East

Beth Botts

Nuts!

With Scott Jamieson of Bartlett Tree Experts at Millennium Park

At the historic Potter Osage-orange tree in Kewanee

Churchill Park

Barbara Melera

 

January 22, 2012

Countdown to Decision Chicago! The Great Herb Debate

Mark your calendars, sharpen your debating skills and get your seed packets lined up. Sunday, February ,5 is the date of the inaugural Great Herb Debate. The ubiquitous Mr. Brown Thumb and I have concocted this scheme in honor of the One Seed Chicago 2012 competition...and because I want to hear somebody wax poetic about chamomile.

As you might already know, One Seed Chicago--a partnership between NeighborSpace and GreenNet--is an urban greening project. Folks vote for their favorite seed from among three chosen each January 1st. Regardless of which seed you vote for, you receive a packet of the winning seed just for participating in the competition.

This year's choice is among basil, chamomile and cilantro. Mr. Brown Thumb and I are lining up surrogates who are willing to defend their candidates on my show. I hope to announce those names next week. However, any and everybody is welcome to voice an opinion before and during the debate via email, Twitter and Facebook. Send in those comments now. I'll post them on the Decision Chicago page (click on the image on the left) as I receive them.

And I'm still waiting to be bribed to throw my support to one of the seeds. Sheesh. What does it take in Chicago (!) to get a decent gift to help throw an election? C'mon, Chicagoans! Our checkered reputation is at stake!

Learning about and growing urban gardens in Chicago

A couple of years ago, I was hoping to set up a community garden in my neighborhood. I can't remember exactly how it happened, but Openlands Community Outreach Coordinator Julie Samuels, who is a friend and colleague of mine, told me about a half-day seminar that Openlands was sponsoring to help neighborhood groups plan and and build community gardens.

My community garden didn't happen for another year, but I was able to use many of the lessons I learned at that seminar to help start Green on McLean at the end of my block. Two years after that first class, the HomeGrown Chicago Network has expanded to a four-week course that focuses on

• Finding and securing land,
• Establishing a sustainable organizational structure,
• Designing a garden and growing food organically, and
• Building garden structures.

I'll be talking with Julie today about the program, which begins on March 24. It also provides customized workshops for garden groups; offers a program manual; donates lumber, soil, seeds, and other materials; and encourages participants to share advice and seeds at the beginning of each growing season. The cost is $150, which will cover four people from your gardening organization for the four-week course.

But wait, there's more! That's not the only gardening program that Openlands sponsors. If you hurry, you can still register for Building Urban Gardens (BUGs), which begins January 28 (next Saturday) at Garfield Park Conservatory. Whether you're working in a community garden or you just want to grow plants in your own backyard, here's what you'll learn in this six-week course, which covers

• Planning and Designing Your Ecological/Organic Garden
• The Basis of an Organic Garden: Healthy Soil and Composting
• Vegetables for Your Beautiful, Edible Garden
• Perennials and Herbs for Diversity and Flavor!
• Insects and Weeds: A Place for Everything & Everything in its Place
• Container and Raised Bed Gardening.

Once you finish the BUGs course, you can join a citywide corps of volunteer gardeners who care for community spaces throughout Chicago. Openlands thanks the Dr. Scholl Foundation for its support of this program.

For more information about the class and to register, please contact Julie Samuels via e-mail or by phone at 312-863-6256.

Coal pollutes Chicago air while batteries go back to the landfills

If you read that headline and wonder what the heck I'm talking about, let me explain.

I received a message this week from my friend Qae-Dah Muhammad, who is with the Ashe Park Advisory Council & Garden Club. She wrote:

Yes it is true. No more recycling your dead batteries. I searched for this information until my eyes watered. Went into the South Shore Library and my tired eyes landed on the flyer sitting on the information rack. The Illinois EPA says that you can throw them in the regular trash.

She included a link that sent me to the City of Chicago website, where this appears:

As of January 1, 2012, Chicago's Battery Recycling Program has been discontinued, including collections at Chicago Public Libraries. Rechargeable batteries can still be recycled at multiple locations throughout Chicago, such as the Household Chemicals and Computer Recycling Facility . Find additional locations at www.call2recycle.org .

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency recommends disposing of alkaline batteries with regular household trash. Alkaline batteries contain no hazardous waste and little recyclable materials. Previous environmental hazards associated with alkaline batteries were due to their mercury content.  The federal Battery Management Act of 1996 phased-out the use of mercury in alkaline batteries and today few, if any, alkaline batteries contain mercury.

My reaction could be categorized as WTF? I hadn't heard about this at all and, as many of you know, I'm President of the Chicago Recycling Coalition. Oops. I called Mike Mitchell, Executive Director of the Illinois Recycling Association and he confirmed that the IEPA had made some kind of determination last year.

So I did some searching on both the Illinois Evironmental Protection Agency site and the EPA site. Nothing. Zip. Nada. If they are changing the rules regarding the disposal of household batteries, they are certainly keeping it quiet.

I am determined to find out what's going on. I hope to contact the IEPA this week to get more information. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Meteorologist Rick DiMaio wrote today to tell me about this front page story in Sunday's Chicago Tribune: Coal plants dominate list of Chicago's biggest polluters. Ya think? Michael Hawthorne writes:

No other polluter comes close to the 4.2 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide churned into the atmosphere by the two coal plants in 2010, according to a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency database that for the first time allows people to compare major industrial sources of greenhouse gases

That's why it is so important for the Chicago City Council to finally pass the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance, reintroduced in late July 2011 by Ald. Joe Moore (49th Ward) and Ald. Danny Solis (25th Ward). Considering that the ordinance has 35 co-sponsors, one wonders why it hasn't been passed yet. It would require that the Fisk and Crawford coal plants reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50% and particulate matter by 90%.

Perhaps it's time for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step up and protect Chicago citizens from the ravages of these two ancient power plants, which continue to do more harm than good.

 

January 15, 2012

A message from LaSalle County: "Piss on Starved Rock."

Those of you who follow my Facebook or Twitter posts already know that last Thursday's meeting of the LaSalle County Board did not go well for supporters of Starved Rock State Park. In a 20 to 6 vote, board members voted to Mississippi Sand LLC to create an open pit sand mine on what is now a slightly more than 300 acre farm adjacent to Starved Rock State Park in Utica, Illinois.

According to a number of accounts, the two hundred or so people crowded into the Ottawa Knights of Columbus Hall were evenly split on the issue. However, my sources, who were also at the meeting, report that the sentiments ran decidedly against approval of the sand mine. This, despite the presence of union workers, who are hoping to see the sand mining jobs brought to the county.

What is undeniable is that it is an emotional issue on both sides. One of the people I interviewed on my show last week was told by a high-ranking LaSalle County Democratic official and union leader, "Piss on Starved Rock." Nice. This is what happenswhen the old "jobs v. the environment" meme is trotted out. It doesn't help when the Chicago Tribune reinforces this tired, discredited concept in the headline "Sand mine proposal near Starved Rock pits company against environmentalists." Oh, and by the way, Trib and Sun-Times, thanks for getting on board with this story the day before the vote. Well played.

Even a last-minute plea from Lt. Governor Sheila Simon to delay the vote until more study could be done failed to budge the board members from their laser-like focus on approving the 90-foot deep pit outside the eastern entrance to the jewel of the Illinois State Park System. LaSalle County Board member Rick Scott, who appears on the show this morning, introduced a motion to postpone the vote, but it was defeated handily. His concern was that people who own property next to the proposed mining site have had very little time to present their side to policy makers in the county.

Also on the program this morning is Cindy Skrukrud, Clean Water Advocate for the Illinois Sierra Club, who has had her hands full lately trying to prevent a coal strip mine from being approved near Canton in Fulton County. John McKee, President of the Starved Rock Audubon Society, who joined me last week, also stops by. The focus now shifts to agencies like the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), which is not only responsible for natural areas like Starved Rock but is charged with regulating the mining industry. Some people, like McKee, are concerned over what has been a deafening silence so far from DNR.

Among other places to look for help might be the Illinois EPA, the Lt. Governor's office (how does Ms. Simon feel about being summarily ignored at the LaSalle County board meeting?), the Governor's office (any comment, Mr. Quinn?) and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (ditto, Mr. Durbin).

This story is a long way from over...but Thursday's action in LaSalle County just made saving Starved Rock State a lot harder.

Winter arrives...a month late. How are plants holding up?

Well, we knew it wouldn't last forever. In fact, I'm one of those people who was actually happy to finally see some snow. But a lot of folks are concerned--and rightly so--with how their outdoor plants will react to getting faked out by warm weather and then whupped upside the head by Mother Nature.

Never fear: Cindy Baker, Manager of Horticultural Services at the Chicago Botanic Garden, is here to tell you what--or what NOT--to do. She should know her stuff. After all, she has been at the Garden for 24 years and she supervises more than100 acres there, including the Berm garden along the Edens Expressway. And if you can keep plants alive along an expressway, you must know what you're doing.

One Seed Chicago update: Nope, no decision yet

For those of you who are wondering which seed I have decided to favor in the One Seed Chicago 2012 competition, I'm still deciding. The choice is among basil, chamomile and cilantro, and I'm still waiting to be bribed to throw my support to one of them. In the event that nobody wants to bribe me, I will make a sudden, petulant decision, then throw my entire media empire behind one of the seeds.

On the other hand, somebody suggested to me on Twitter that I should have a debate on the show among the three contestant and then declare a winner. Hmm. It certainly would be a lot less stupid than the continuing reality show that are the Republican presidential debates.

Perhaps chamomile will have an "oops" moment. Could be fun.

 

January 8, 2012

New studios! And a new call-in number: 773-763-9278

I need a new introduction to my radio show. The one that talks about being midway between Zacatacos and Paco's Tacos is now obsolete. As of January 7, Chicago's Progressive Talk is now on the north side of town...which means that I will get a lot of grief from my south side friends. By the way, we have a whole slew of new phone numbers, so if you're a regular listener, you might want to keep this link handy.

And while we're not exactly in a glass bubble on Michigan Avenue, we are now housed in pretty-much state of the art digs at our new location on Milwaukee Avenue, midway between Lido Banquets and Andy's Deli & Mikolajczyk Sausage Shop, which is a lot harder to pronounce, especially if your Polish is as bad as mine.

And on this first day in the new studio, I have the honor of not only doing my own show, but filling in for Mike Sanders, host of Our Town. It's a little complicated, but in a nutshell, Mike also serves as engineer on Sunday mornings. And since we're in a new studio with new equipment, we thought it would be a good idea to keep Mike as undistracted as possible by things like, oh, a show and guests and phone calls and that sort of thing. So Mike will be playing technical geek while I'm on the air. Works for me.

I'll be joined by Mike's co-host, Julia Shu, who has promised to read one of her famous lists of the interesting, the odd and the ridiculous. And, in a kind of Self-Help Sunday reunion, Ron Cowgill of Mighty House has promised to stop by and chat about green home improvements. And even though we have barely experienced winter in Chicago, I want to talk to him about keeping your walks and driveways free of ice and snow. Our very own Beth Botts wrote about this in Chicagoland Gardening Magazine. And recently, I saw another article by the Chicago Botanic Garden's Tim Johnson in the Chicago Tribune.

But what really intrigued me was a product that Ron mentioned on his Saturday show called Propellant 49. The website looks like it was put together by a high school graphics student on a five minute deadline. Sorry, but look at it yourself. And it doesn't help that NOWHERE on the site can I find the active--or even ANY--listed ingredient. Hmm. We'll chat about that, too. I hope you tune in.

KAM Isaiah Israel puts food--and social justice--on the table

It was two years ago that I first met Robert Nevel, architect and chair of KAM Isaiah Israel's Social Justice Committee. I'm not exactly sure how he discovered my show, but he was eager to tell me about the Hyde Park congregation's food justice and sustainability program, including their gardens, education advocacy programs, interfaith outreach, and young leadership summer program. Mostly, he wanted to promote their first Martin Luther King, Jr. Social Justice Weekend, featuring respected speakers and seminars on food justice, urban farming and the environment.

Fast forward to 2012 and the third annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Social Justice Weekend.Nevel and his colleagues have long since earned my utmost respect. I've watched the garden at their congregation expand and mature, and I've seen them spread the gospel, so to speak, of growing your own. They have, with their harvests and their White Rock Gleaning program, delivered thousands of pounds of fresh produce to local soup kitchens and shelters, even dragging me along to help.

So it's a pleasure to have Robert Nevel back on the show today, along with Doriane C. Miller, M.D., Director of the Center for Community Health and Vitality at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dr. Miller is presenting the keynote address on Friday evening, January 13, "Health and Food Justice: Observations from the South Side." Here's what the entire weekend looks like:

Friday, January 13: 

8:00 PM:  Shabbat Service
9:00 PM:  Lecture: "Health and Food Justice:  Observations from the South Side"

Saturday, January 14: 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Panel Discussion: "From Plant to Plate - Distribution of Locally Grown Food"

Sunday, January 15: 11:00 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.

Workshops:  "From Plant to Plate - Practical Learning" - 18 Workshops and Presentations with Lunch and Cooking Demonstrations at Noon

All events are free and open to the public  Pre-Registration is strongly recommended for the Sunday workshops, as class space is limited.  You can RSVP for workshops here.

Still working to save Starved Rock State Park

When I first reported on this story on December 18, the LaSalle County zoning board of appeals had just approved a sand-mining operation on a 350 acre parcel of what is now farm land just south of the town of Ottawa. The problem is that the land is adjacent to one of the most visited natural areas in Illinois, Starved Rock State Park.

The vote was unanimous, despite the fact that so many people turned out to the meeting that it had to be moved to a larger location and then held over two days. In the wake of that meeting, I interviewed Jack Darin, director of the Illinois Sierra Club, which urged people to write to the LaSalle County Board and tell them to reject the zoning board's decision. A couple of local residents, geologist Mike Phillips and city planner Debbie Burns, echoed that sentiment, citing damage that an open pit sand mine could do to wetlands and to the quality of the experience for visitors to Starved Rock. The good news: Jack Darin tells me that 6,000 people have taken action this week at this site.

One would hope that the average county board member, after receiving 6,000 requests, might get the idea that people feel passionately about an issue. Still, the prognosis might not be that good for a happy environmental ending. My sources have told me that they expect the full board to rubber stamp the zoning board's vote, regardless of the growing controvery surrounding this decision. Even though this part of Illinois, and north into Wisconsin, are prime areas to mine silica that is used in fracking, more and more citizens and environmental groups are challenging the industry's argument that the mining work has minimal impact on surrounding lands.

With the full board's vote scheduled for Thursday, January 12, LaSalle county residents have started to organize opposition to the proposed Mississippi Sand LLC operation. A number of those people are joining me on the show today: John McKee, President of the the Starved Rock Audubon Society; Daphne Mitchell of the Illinois River Coordinating Council; Joseph Standing Bear from Midwest Soarring Foundation; Merlin Calhoun, whose LaSalle county property is in the firing line of the proposed sand mine; Tracy Fox, activist and technical writer, who reportedly spoke eloquently but futilely at the zoning board meeting; Katie Dumke Troccoli, who is helping to organize a rally against the decision tomorrow in Ottawa; and perhaps more.

As I dig deeper and deeper into this issue, I have a number of questions, some of which I hope can be answered on this morning's program:

• I have been told that, in Illinois, once the zoning board votes, it is a done deal. Really? Then why bother with a vote of the full board?
• I have also been told that the County Board fears being sued by Mississippi Sand, should it rule against the company. Again, I ask: Really? On what grounds? Exercising its municipal rights and duties?
• There is a deal currently being considered for a sand mine in Utica, too. That operation would be north of the Illinois River, whereas Starved Rock is south of the river. How many other operations are being considered and how many ecologically sensitive areas would they affect?
• How will archeologically important and sacred indigenous areas be affected? Perhaps Joseph Standing Bear will have some answers.
• Apparently, there have been no permits yet requested for the operation, perhaps because it hasn't been officially approved. Is this significant?
• Lt. Governor Sheila Simon's chief of staff Deirdre “DK” Hirner will reportedly be at Thursday's board meeting. Does this mean that the Governor's office plans to get involved in this controvesy?
• How many jobs will be created by this operation? The numbers I keep hearing are 38 or 39. Is that right? Ransoming the future of the "jewel" of the Illinois State Park system for 39 jobs? What about the jobs in the park that will be lost if key parts of that land are degraded and people start staying away?
• Finally, where is the money trail? My sources tell me that the county stands to make very little money on this deal. I'm told that the taxes raised on this parcel will be insignificant. So how is the county benefitting? Who's making the money?

As I mentioned earlier, there is a rally Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at Jordan Block (Main and LaSalle St) in downtown Ottawa. Concerned citizens are being asked to ring signs, candles, and solidarity to the event. More information, including a map, is available on the event Facebook page.

One Seed Chicago update: Mike is still deciding

For those of you who are wondering which seed I have decided to favor in the One Seed Chicago 2012 competition, I'm still deciding. The choice is among basil, chamomile and cilantro, and I'm still waiting to be bribed to throw my support to one of them. In the event that nobody wants to bribe me, I will make a sudden, petulant decision, then throw my entire media empire behind one of the seeds.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

And don't forget to recycle your holiday trees and lights

I have no idea what Chi-Town Cheapskate is, but I give them kudos for putting together a one-stop shopping guide to recycling not just Christmas trees, but the lights, too. So in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, I'm posting the link to their recycling article, mainly because, unlike most of the stories I've seen, they also include suburban locations. Good on you, Chi-Town Cheapskate, whatever you are.

 

January 1, 2012

A new year...and D. Landreth Seed Company can see the light

One of the most inspirational stories of 2011--and now of the new year--has been the continuing struggle of the D. Landreth Seed Company, as the 227 year-old business claws its way out of near financial ruin. If you're a regular listener to this show, you know that I started following this story after I was made aware of it in a post by Mr. Brown Thumb (more on him later).

Basically, a note was called on the outstanding debt of the company and they had about a month to show that they could paid the bill. Their goal was to sell one million catalogs in...who knows how long. The original deadline was September 30th but that was extended as orders came in. Owner Barbara Melera appeared on my show a number of times to talk about how things were going. While she was always upbeat, she wrote that behind the scenes, things were tougher than they needed to be because of their credit card processor, First Data Merchant Corporation:

On October 14th we received a letter from First Data telling us that they refused to be our credit card processor and that they were terminating the relationship on October 27, 2011, BUT they were keeping at least $50,000 plus any transaction funds posted after 10-27-2011 for six months, supposedly to cover all of the refunds they were going to have to make because of the scam we were running.

Scam?? If that's the case, then Melera is one of the great scam artists of all history. I mean, not only did she con me (easy enough to do), but she dragged along people like Oprah, Martha Stewart, Ellen Degeneres and Rose O'Donnell, not to mention companies like John Deere and Organic Valley, as well as organizations like the Sierra Club and Mother Nature Network. So I was gratified to see this posted on the Landreth Seed Company Facebook page this week:

GREAT NEWS!! Your facebook posts, letters and emails and voicemails WORKED. We have just received a call from FDMC, literally moments ago, and they are releasing our funds which should be in our account by Friday. YOU DID THIS. They would never have listened to us, but they did listen to all of you. It is now being said that social media will mean the democratization of process and you have just proven this. You have proven that true justice can be accomplished, quickly and efficiently, even in America. Thank you, Landreth friends.

Well, after seeing that, I knew that I was going to have Barb back on the show on this New Year's Day. Meanwhile, keep the orders coming! Listeners to my show have really stepped up, which makes me feel like a proud pappa. You can get a sense of the quality of this catalog by linking to sample pages here. Log onto these various social media sites to continue to get the word out: Landreth Seed Co, Save Landreth Seed Company, Order their 2012 Catalog!, and more. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #savelandreth. If you just want to make a contribution, go to ChipIn.com and click the icon on the upper right hand side of the page.

One Seed Chicago contest goes online LIVE on my show!

Mr. Brown Thumb, who I mentioned above in reference to the D. Landreth Seed Company, is back on the show today to announce the contestants in the One Seed Chicago 2012 competition. He is joined by Ben Helphand, Executive Director of NeighborSpace, Chicago's land trust for community gardens, which is the chief organization behind the competition.

Each year One Seed Chicago selects one plant to be the focus of a season-long celebration. Actually, One Seed Chicago chooses three plants, and voters decide which is most worthy of being celebrated. In the past, the votes have alternated between flowers and vegetables. If you watched the competition last year, you know that the contestants were radish, eggplant and Swiss chard.

Of course, it was hardly a fair fight, once I threw my support behind Swiss chard. At that point, my loyal followers (all 3 or 4), stuffed the ballot box, if only to keep me from sulking. At the end of the voting, when Swiss chard was announced as the winner, I was declared Chard Overlord and accorded all of the rights and privileges therewith (and post haste, if I'm not mistaken). As a result of my stomping all over the democratic process last year (which I thoroughly enjoyed), I've decided TO NOT STEAL THE ELECTION THIS YEAR!

I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to reveal about this year's vote, so I'm going to let Mr. Brown Thumb handle that duty. In fact, not only will MBT be revealing the three seeds, but he promises to hit the switch that puts the contest online LIVE DURING THE SHOW! It will be an unprecedented marriage of the broadcast and Internet media. Well, perhaps not unprecedented, but pretty cool, anyway.

As I mentioned , One Seed Chicago is a project of NeighborSpace, in partnership with GreenNet Chicago. Other sponsors are Openlands, Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and Illinois Extension-Cook County. Residents from the Chicagoland area vote on their favorite as a reward for your vote (it's kind of a bribe, I guess), you receive a packet of seeds of the winning plant. Teachers can request a classroom size packet along with an educator guide.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
"Farmstead Chef": fixin' good food fixins that're good for the planet

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not big on cookbooks, chiefly because I don't cook. I don't draw, either, whether with ink, pencil or crayons. Other than that, I'm pretty open to things.

That being said, however, I'm not an idiot and I know when a book--even a cookbook--has a lot going for it. Which is why John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist, authors of Farmstead Chef  are on the show today. Okay, that and we happen to have mutual acquaintances. More on that in a moment.

If you have any sensitivity at all towards the local/sustainable/healthy/whateveryouwantotcallit food movement that is taking our country and its kitchen tables by storm, this is the cookbook for you. Regardless of how appealing it sounds, not everybody is going to do what Ivanko and Kivirist did--start Inn Serendipity, an organic and largely fossil fuel-free farm complete with Bed and Breakfast in Wisconsin.

Which is why it's such a good thing that they are passing along their knowledge of what it's like to live--and eat--close to the land. But they do it by suggesting rather than preaching. As they say in the book:

Farmstead Chef showcases the creative and budget-friendly side to eating lower on the food chain more often, while taking responsibility for the food we put into our bodies--by growing it, sharing it, savoring it. By lower on the food chain we mean more fruits and vegetables and less meat. Not "no meat"...This "farmsteadtarian" cookbook--preparing healthy meals with ingredients sourced as close as possible from a farm, ranch or artisan food purveyor--is anything but prescriptive, proclaiming you will die an early death if you touch an ounce of sugar, eat meat or unwind with a strawberry daiquiri at the end of the day.

Whew! They had me worried for a second. Pass the merlot.

The chapters feature the various types of meals that we eat: breakfast entrees, breads, soups, "sides, sauces and salads," nibbles (appetizers), main dishes, "cakes, pies and sweets," and drinks. There is a final chapter devoted to their son Liam's favorites and tips on pantry stocking. The recipes are simply and efficiently explained so that even a novice like me can follow them (no small feat). Ivanko and Kivirist stress eating "seasonally," but they are not dogmatic about it, mercifully.

Along the way there are tips about cooking and sustainability and healthy eating. There are also short articles, which they call "Kitchen Table Talks," that feature farming friends, urban gardeners, chefs and the like. That's where our mutual acquaintances come in--Beth and Jody Osmund of Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm, who have been on my show several times. Farmstead Chef devotes a Kitchen Table Talk segment to the Osmunds under the title "Meet Your Meat Maker." See? I told you that they weren't dogmatic about food. Meat is certainly welcome on the table, as long as it is raised and killed humanely and sustainably.

There's a lot I'm missing here, including the dishes, like

• zucchini feta pancakes
• fresh tomato breakfast pie
• winter squash spice muffins
• homemade vegan pitas and pita chips
• cheese roasted asparagus
• creamy spinach salad
• vegan hearty root vegetable dip
• creamy leek pastries
• herb-infused spare ribs
• fried green tomato & basil sandwich
• beet burgers
• Italian sausage risotto (courtesy of Beth and Jody Osmund)
• strawberry dessert pizza
• pear crumb pie
• homemade graham crackers

Hey, you'll just have to get the book. You'll think that the 20 bucks you paid is the best bargain you've made in all of 2012. That's a joke, of course, but the cookbook is terrific.

Saving Starved Rock State Park

The controversy surrounding Starved Rock State Park and the attempt to put an open pit sand mine next to its entrance is still on my radar...and should be on yours. I will be discussing this issue on next week's show. In the meantime, find out more about the issue from the Illinois Sierra Club. You can submit a comment to the LaSalle County Board here.

New electronics recycling law for 2012

As of this morning, if you throw out those old electronics, you could be fined for it. That's the result of a new law that went into effect as of January 1, 2012. Mike Mitchell, Executive Director of the Illinois Recycling Association, talked about this a few weeks ago on the show. The new law expands the number of covered electronic products in Illinois from four to seventeen. Here's the full list:

• Televisions
• Monitors
• Printers
• Computers ( laptop, notebook, netbook, tablet )
• Electronic Keyboards
• Facsimile Machines
• Videocassette Recorders
• Portable Digital Music Players
• Digital Video Disc Players
• Video Game Consoles
• Small Scale Servers
• Scanners
• Electronic Mice
• Digital Converter Boxes
• Cable Receivers
• Satellite Receivers
• Digital Video Disc Recorders

While you could be fined for throwing out any of these devices, the real purpose of the law is to hold the manufacturers accountable for the growing amount of electronics in landfills. According to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, "For calendar year 2012 all manufacturers of the new list of covered electronic products must now register with the Illinois EPA and meet an annual recycling goal." Any manufacturer not complying with the Illinois Electronic Products Recycling and Reuse Act is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed $10,000 for the violation and an additional civil penalty not to exceed $10,000 for each day the violation continues.

Click here for more on the Electronic Products Recycling & Reuse Act and the responsibilities to manufacturers.

And don't forget to recycle your holiday trees and lights

I have no idea what Chi-Town Cheapskate is, but I give them kudos for putting together a one-stop shopping guide to recycling not just Christmas trees, but the lights, too. So in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, I'm posting the link to their recycling article, mainly because, unlike most of the stories I've seen, they also include suburban locations. Good on you, Chi-Town Cheapskate, whatever you are.

 

December 25, 2011

Merrrrrrrry Christmas, Bedford Falls!!!

You know what? Most of the time, when Christmas is over, all I can say is, "Wow. I don't have to deal with that for another year." And it's doubly difficult when the holiday (two of them, in fact--Christmas and New Year's Day) land on Sunday. See, unlike most--but not all--of you, I work on Sundays, too.

But I'm not complaining. This is just my way of saying that today's program is pre-recorded. Welcome to the wonderful world of radio.

But just because the show isn't live doesn't mean that there isn't new stuff. No sirree. Today's program features the 2011 version of "It's a Wonderful Slice of 'It's a Wonderful Life,'" my romp through the entire movie in about 10 minutes...sometimes 12...it depends on the ad libs. And this year, I'm happy to say that I am joined not only by my faithful and indespensible producer Heather Frey (who plays the roles of the saint-like Mary and the, um, street-walker-like Violet), but also by Mike Sanders, host of WCPT's Our Town (who plays the irrepressibly irresponsible Uncle Billy). Not only that, but there's a BONUS appearance by Ron Cowgill, host of Mighty House on Saturday mornings on Chicago's Progressive Talk. He has just one line, but it's an important one, spoken by George Bailey's war-hero brother Harry.

If you tune in on Christmas morning, Wonderful Slice will be performed just after the 10:00 a.m. news. Now, I'm not crazy enough to think that most of you will be listening on Christmas morning. That's why you can listen to It's a Wonderful Slice 2011 by clicking on to this link. Trust me, you'll never think of the movie in the same way again. Sorry about that.

How Christmas became an anti-slavery holiday

I have to thank my dear friend Hilary Mac Austin for this one. Last week, she sent me an article by historian William Lorenz Katz, which he penned in 2003. Basically, it chronicles how the modern day American Christmas sensibility began in the 19th Century with the abolitionist movement.

It's amazing how much history has been lost to us, simply because we don't care. Heck, I find that most people have little understand of what occurred in the world before about 1990. At any rate, on Sunday's show I read the Katz story in full. If you're not listening then, here's the link. I think you'll find it illuminating.

Sunday's show: highlights from the past year

Since even I'm not willing to sit in a radio studio on Christmas morning, I'm featuring several interviews from 2011 that I think deserve to be re-broadcast.

The first is my chat with Suzanne Malec-McKenna, first aired on November 6. Here's what I wrote at the time:

For those of us who had been paying attention, the announcement that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 2012 budget did not include funds for Chicago's Department of the Environment was not exactly a surprise. In fact, even though the department officially ceases to exist as of January 1, 2012, its presence has already been scrubbed from the City of Chicago website and replaced by a page that simply talks about "Environment."

According to the Emanuel Administration, they wanted sustainability issues to be addressed in a more centralized way. To that end, the city promoted Chief Sustainability Officer Karen Weigert to the Mayor's Office. The Mayor also created a Sustainability Council--which he will chair--with a mandate to create and deliver a sustainability plan incorporating goals outlined by his transition team and the Chicago Climate Action Plan. It includes the Chief Sustainability Officer and commissioners of Housing and Economic Development, Transportation, Streets and Sanitation, General Services, Water Management, Aviation, Buildings, and Procurement.

Call me skeptical but this also looks like a way to bury environmental concerns deep in the city bueaucracy. By the way, Weigert was on the hot seat a couple of weeks ago at a gathering of environmentalists and concerned citizens who wanted to know when Chicago will get its act together about recycling. Hey, that's something I ask all the time!

Anyway, the rebroadcast of that interview takes up the first hour.

In the 10am hour, as I've noted above, we start with It's a Wonderful Slice 2011 and how Christmas became an anti-slavery holiday.

We round off the hour with an interview that I did just last week. If you didn't catch it then, I hope you do now. Here's what I wrote last week:

The bad news came from listen Bob in Rogers Park last week, who called into the show to ask whether I knew about a sand mining operation that was being planned for LaSalle County, near Starved Rock State Park. I said I did not but that I would look into it.

I didn't have to do much looking, as I received an email from Jack Darin and the Illinois Sierra Club just a couple of days later. Here's part of what was in the message:

The LaSalle County Board of Zoning Appeals has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday in Ottawa to consider a special use permit for an open pit sand mine proposed by Mississippi River Sand, LLC. The project conflicts with the goals of LaSalle County's land use plan, including to protect natural areas, waterways, and prime farmland.

The mine site includes a state-recognized natural area, and would be adjacent to Starved Rock State Park. The mine would pump millions of gallons of water per day for its operations, and those withdrawals threaten springs and marshlands within the Park. In addition, water pollution from mine operations could drain through the Park, its ravines, and canyons, which are an important outdoor recreation asset for Illinois. Over two million people each year visit the state park, which recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of its protection.

Yikes. Well, the Board of Zoning Appeals did meet and did approve the special use permit...in a unanimous vote. That's pretty discouraging. In a related note, I talked to several people from the area and one of the them told me that the farm land that is being purchased for the sand mine will not be re-zoned as industrial land. It will remain zoned as farmland but the sand mine will be able to operate via the special use permit.

The next step is a vote by the LaSalle County Board on January 12. With the holidays, that doesn't leave a lot of time for opposition to get organized. Jack Darin joins me this morning to talk about the impact of that operation on the lands that surround it and the people who live there. He is joined by a couple of people who spoke at the zoning appeals board meeting. They are State of Illinois geologist Mike Phillips and planner Debbie Burns, both of whom are LaSalle County residents.

Once again, if you're not listening on Christmas morning (and who can blame you?), a podcast of that very important conversation is available here.

Last, but not least, I've squeezed in a portion of an interview I did with Barb Melera, owner of D. Landreth Seed Company, on November 20. My notes from that day:

If you're a regular listener to the program or if you're a serious gardener, you are aware of the plight of the historic D. Landreth Seed Company. The oldest seed house in America, dating back to 1784, had its accounts frozen by a garnishment order on August 31 of this year. Owner Barbara Melera and her husband Peter had thirty days to sell one million 2012 catalogs to satisfy their creditors and keep the doors open.

And then a kind of miracle began to unfold. Word got out in the social media, including Twitter and Facebook. which spread to the mainstream media and even further. I first got wind of the story in a post by Mr. Brown Thumb and quickly invited Barbara to be on my show on September 11. At that point, though things looked bleak, various people, organizations and companies began lending their support and the orders were starting to roll in.

You can see the full list of Landreth supporters on the company's home page, but it includes names like Huffington Post, American Express, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Planet Green, Martha Stewart, National Public Radio, Oprah Winfrey, The View, Elen Degeneres, Organic Gardening Magazine, Rosie O'Donnell, Sunset Magazine, John Deere Company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, The Sierra Club, Mother Nature Network, Slow Food USA, Farm Aid, Organic Valley and dozens more. I'm proud and honored that The Mike Nowak Show is #4 on the list.

My advice? If you somehow missed getting a holiday gift to somebody important in your life, log onto the D. Landreth Seed Company website and get it done now. Better late than never, right?

December 18, 2011

Keeping your Holiday Plants Alive 101

'Tis the season to receive poinsettias and Christmas cactuses and amaryllis...and, of course, watch them go into immediate decline. That's why I'm here, folks--to guide you through the trauma of trying to care for living things that are as alien to you as video games are to me.

A good place to start is a website from Illinois Extension called Christmas Trees & More. On that site you'll find Christmas Tree facts, Christmas Tree links, as well as information about how to care for the plants mentioned above and more. If you prefer watching "how-to" videos, I just came across several of them posted by my buddy Ron Wolford of Cook County Extension .When it comes to trees, you can also refer to the article I posted last week from the Natural Resources Defense Council called The Tree Choice: Care and Decorating Tips for the Holidays.

Of course, if you do have a real tree, I urge you to recycle it when the holidays are over. The NRDC has some tips about recycling your Christmas Tree, as does Illinois Extension. I often extol the virtures of shredded conifers as mulch in garden beds. However, if you want to see a more exotic use of discarded Christmas Trees, you need only go to Barrington and , Baker's Lake Nature Preserve, where the trees are taken to an island in the center of the lake that serves as a rookery for varies species of herons.

If you're planning to recycle your tree in Chicago, here's the list of locations in the city where that can be done. Many suburban municipalities also accept trees. If you have holiday lights that you want to discard, why not recycle them at one of these locations?

Meanwhile, back to holiday plants. I'm welcoming my old friend Joe Heidgen from Shady Hill Gardens back to the show. He has appeared on my program many times to talk abou the latest and greatest in holiday plants (usually poinsettias), and since they grow their own, he certainly knows his stuff. Joe and I will answer any questions you throw at us this morning.

The local environmental news is good...

I received a message this week from Tom Shepherd at the Southeast Environmental Task Force. It was the good news that Governor Pat Quinn had announced a major conservation initiative called The Millennium Reserve, which will affect the Calumet region. Just how big is it? Well, it's being called the largest open space project in the country, eventually involving 140,000 acres of land. It starts with what is being called the Calument Core phase, which will restore 15,000 acres of open space.

The state is also partnering with the city of Chicago, the Chicago Park District, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and other groups on a number of projects to restore and conserve the Calumet area's natural resources. Congressman Mike Quigley of Illinois' 5th District has apparently been a huge player in bringing together local, state and federal partners.

The mission is pretty ambitious. This is from the Governor's Office:

1. Improving the Environment by:
   • Managing and restoring the 6,000 acres of natural areas that contain important high-quality biological communities and support over 20 rare plants and 40 rare animal species.
   • Completing and connecting 53 miles of trails and wildlife corridors throughout the area, and promoting public access and recreational opportunities.
   • Expanding and connecting natural areas and habitats in a system of Green Infrastructure.
2. Improving the Economy by:
   • Modernizing the Illinois International Port District and creating thousands of new jobs.
   • Creating a destination region for tourists and visitors, which will create jobs in a newly developed tourism industry.
   • Increasing property values for home owners near the Reserve and the over $2 billion per year spent as a result of outdoor recreation in Illinois.
3. Improving the Community by:
   • Working with Michelle Obama's Let's Move Initiative to increase opportunities for kids to be physically active, and to create new opportunities for families to move together.
   • Reclaiming over 3,500 acres of underutilized lands and brownfields by using the innovative mud to parks/garden initiatives, renewable native biomass production, garden nurseries, organic farming, etc.
   • Connecting communities and people to their cultural, industrial and natural history through trails, interpretation and other creative opportunities.

Peggy Salazar, executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, joins me in the studio this morning to talk about how this initiative will affect an often forgotten area of the Chicago region.

...and not so good

The bad news came from listen Bob in Rogers Park last week, who called into the show to ask whether I knew about a sand mining operation that was being planned for LaSalle County, near Starved Rock State Park. I said I did not but that I would look into it.

I didn't have to do much looking, as I received an email from Jack Darin and the Illinois Sierra Club just a couple of days later. Here's part of what was in the message:

The LaSalle County Board of Zoning Appeals has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday in Ottawa to consider a special use permit for an open pit sand mine proposed by Mississippi River Sand, LLC. The project conflicts with the goals of LaSalle County's land use plan, including to protect natural areas, waterways, and prime farmland.

The mine site includes a state-recognized natural area, and would be adjacent to Starved Rock State Park. The mine would pump millions of gallons of water per day for its operations, and those withdrawals threaten springs and marshlands within the Park. In addition, water pollution from mine operations could drain through the Park, its ravines, and canyons, which are an important outdoor recreation asset for Illinois. Over two million people each year visit the state park, which recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of its protection.

Yikes. Well, the Board of Zoning Appeals did meet and did approve the special use permit...in a unanimous vote. That's pretty discouraging. In a related note, I talked to several people from the area and one of the them told me that the farm land that is being purchased for the sand mine will not be re-zoned as industrial land. It will remain zoned as farmland but the sand mine will be able to operate via the special use permit.

The next step is a vote by the LaSalle County Board on January 12. With the holidays, that doesn't leave a lot of time for opposition to get organized. Jack Darin joins me this morning to talk about the impact of that operation on the lands that surround it and the people who live there. He is joined by a couple of people who spoke at the zoning appeals board meeting. They are State of Illinois geologist Mike Phillips and planner Debbie Burns, both of whom are LaSalle County residents.

 

December 11, 2011

Today is the last day of the WCPT Holiday Harvest!

If you haven't yet participated in the WCPT Holiday Harvest Food Drive, I urge you to take a few minutes today to purchase some healthy, local and sustainable goods and drop them off at one of the locations throughout the Chicago area. You can find the list of places here...and it's quite possible that some of them will accept contributions for the next couple of days. It can't hurt to call the location nearest you. We wish to thank the great people at Faith in Place who helped us put this together.

If you didn't get a chance to hear the broadcast, featuring Mike Sanders and the crew from Our Town, as well the regulars from The Mike Nowak Show, you can link to the big three-hour broadcast from December 4 here.

And while the WCPT Holiday Harvest Food Drive officially ends today, that doesn't mean that you can't do something for those in need in other ways. There are plenty of food drives in and around Chicago in which you can participate. Or donate your time to a good cause, whatever that means to you.

By all means, continue to shop locally, which puts money back into your neighborhood economies. For more information on how to do that, go to Local First Chicago and read about their city-wide Buy Local campaign for the 2011 Holiday Season called "Unwrap Chicago: Eat, Drink & Buy Local."

Want to give "green" this year?

Each year, I am more than a little disturbed by the obscene display of materialism that is "Black Friday" in America. Not to mention the following and equally obnoxious "Cyber Monday." Yeah, I know I'm swimming against the tide but, geez, is this our defining characteristic as a society? Buying more stuff than we know what to do with? Really?

However, I do understand that you want to be a generous friend or relative during the holidays. In which case, I suggest that you buy "green." Thanks to my beautiful and talented webmaster Kathleen, we've posted a web page that will help you find some items that fill the bill as far as sustainable and/or socially aware items go.

Of course, you can give the gift of food--and by this I mean seeds--to the ones you love...especially those who like to garden. Many of you have been following the campaign of the historic D. Landreth Seed Company , which is attempting to sell one million catalogs to keep the 227 year-old company alive. Owner Barbara Melera stops by again this morning for another update on how the mission is doing. By the way, as I mentioned last week, she donated about one hundred packets, featuring cilantro, chervil, basil and chives seeds, to the WCPT Holiday Harvest Food Drive. She's the best.

The 2011 Chicago Gardener of the Year: Enrique Gonzalez

Last week I mentioned that the community garden on my block in the Logan Square neighborhood, Green on McLean, had won a third place prize in the Mayor's 2011 Landscape Awards competition. I'm proud of all of the people--adults, teens and kids--who helped to transform the double lot on a drug-dealing corner from a litter-strewn eyesore to a place for families to grow vegetables and have potluck dinners.

And I'm happy to continue a tradition I've had on my radio show for what must be a decade or more now, of interviewing the Chicago Gardener of the Year. For 2011 it's Enrique Gonzalez of Hoxie Prairie Garden at E. 106th Street and S. Hoxie Avenue in the Pullman neighborhood. When I read this story, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune two years ago, I realized that Enrique and his neighbors have experienced a lot of the same things that I've seen in my own neighborhood. My hat is off to him and to all people who take control of their lives, garden by garden, throughout Chicago and every city in America.

Our national environment under attack (mainly by Republicans); NRDC's Josh Mogerman reports on Keystone XL Pipeline and more

For years I have worried about painting with a broad brush when it comes to politics and the environment. That is to say, it seemed unfair to say that Democrats are generally for environmental issues and all Republicans are generally against them. After further review, however, there's no way to get around it. That statement is absolutely true. Yes, there are some Democrats (far too many, actually), who are toadies and stooges for corporate polluters. Shame on them.

But there's really no way to say that Republicans, to any significant degree, give a rat's you-know-what about our environment. It disgusting and terrifying, really. And if you care about our planet at all, you should run screaming from the Republican party and how, if they were given the chance, they would drain the Great Lakes and set up a big industrial park if they could. For instance, take a look at this article on the website of the Natural Resources Defense Council called Anti-Environmental Budget Riders: A significant assault on health and environmental protection is underway in Congress.

In this story, the NRDC looks at the12 spending bills for fiscal 2012 that Congress must pass to fund the government and the anti-environmental policies that some House Republicans want to push through at the same time. It's not that those policies have anything to do with funding the government. It's just opportunism rearing its ugly and environment-destroying head.

It is disturbing that House Speaker John Boehner has announced that he plans to hold payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits hostage to a bill that would rubber stamp approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. If you're not familiar with Canadian tar sands oil, you probably need to tune into my show today (or the podcast, once the show is over), to hear NRDC's Josh Mogerman wax poetic on how environmentally destructive extracting oil from tar sands really is. Or how we have been sold a bill of goods about how many jobs would be created by running a 1700 mile pipeline through the middle of the United States.

In fact, just a short month ago, when Keystone XL protestors marched around the White House and many were arrested, and then the Obama Administration decided that it would delay a decision until 2013, it seemed as if it was a clear cut victory for environmentalists. Perhaps not so much now, even though we're pumping more CO2 into the air than ever.

I wish I could say that's the only issue that should be on everybody's radar. Alas, our Great Lakes continue to be in peril, thanks to zebra mussels, quagga mussels and other invasive species, including Asian carp. Unfortunately, if big business continues to get its way, there will be little in the lakes except invasive species. We'll get to as many of these issues as possible...but we probably need more than two hours.

Don't burn your Christmas trees in your house...for more reasons

Last week, I talked briefly about why you shouldn't burn Christmas trees in your fireplace. The answer is the creosote build up and the danger of starting a fire. After the show, I received an email from a Dave Zaber, a listener and environmental consultant who wrote:

Just a quick caution: unless the purchaser has explicit information regarding the use of pesticides on Christmas tree farms, any number of very toxic insecticides could be used directly on the trees.  Some are even allowed to be applied up to the end of October. 

In most cases, very little is known about the chemicals that result when these pesticides (and/or other ingredients) are burnt.  In many cases, particularly when they are sprayed earlier in the year, natural processes will break down some of these chemicals before harvest.  In other cases (e.g. dinotefuran), the systemic absorption of the chemical by the tree means that  it will be spread throughout the living tissues and therefore unsusceptible to wind, rain, and sunlight. 

So, other than organic or no-spray trees, don't burn them indoors. 

A list of neurotoxic insecticides that the State of Pennsylvania extension recommends for application on Christmas trees includes the following:

Organophosphate/carbamate anti-cholinesterase insecticides: highly toxic to mammals, birds, fish, bees.  Exposures can result in long-term central nervous system effects.
Acephate
Carbaryl
Chlorpyrifos
Oxydemeton-methyl

Neonicotinoids: Super toxic to bees, systemic, persistent in water. Thiamethoxam
Imidicloprid -systemic
Dinotefuran
Spirotetramat

Synthetic pyrethroids: highly toxic to fish, carcinogenicity. Bifenthrin
Deltamethrin
Esfenvalerate

Here's even more information about pesticides and Christmas trees that you might find useful. Dave joins me today to talk more about this issue. And the NRDC has information about real v. fake trees and Christmas tree care in this article: The Tree Choice: Care and Decorating Tips for the Holidays.

GreenPrints, "The Weeder's Digest," for the holidays

Pat Stone, editor of GreenPrints, is back on the program to talk about winning the Garden Writers Association award in 2011 for over Best Product for Magazines with under 200,000 circulation. Pat has been putting together funny, inspirational, moving and weird stories about gardening for more than twenty years into this easy to handle, easy to read publication.

This just might be a perfect holiday gift for one of those hard to please people on your shopping list. Check out the link above, where you can get a sample of what they have to offer.

 

December 4, 2011

Welcome to the WCPT Holiday Harvest Broadcast!
Stop by the studio and help Feed the Need!

The WCPT Holiday Harvest Food Drive is up and running, and I hope that means you're planning to stop by one of our drop off locations throughout the Chicago area and contribute healthy, local and sustainable goods (that's our suggestion, though we'll take anything that a food pantry normally accepts) for distribution to people in need. The drive runs through December 11 and we've teamed with the great people at Faith in Place to make it happen.

In fact, why don't you bring your goods down to the opulent WCPT Showcase Studios at 6012 S. Pulaski Road in Chicago this morning, as Mike Sanders, host of Our Town, joins me for a three hour WCPT Holiday Harvest extravaganza? From 8:00 to 11:00 a.m., we'll be broadcasting indoors and out (depending on the weather), and we encourage our listeners to stop by the studio, drop off your goodies and say hi.

Among the guests this morning:

• The Our Town crew--Julia Shu, Fred Newsome, Ernest James and Lady B.
• The Mike Nowak Show crew--Heather Frey and meteorologist Rick DiMaio
• Rob Gardener from The Local Beet
• Megan Sikes of the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana
• The Frozen Robins caroling group

...and who knows who else might show up?

If you can't make it today, there are plenty of places where you can leave your contributions. Here's the full list:

• WCPT AM & FM, 6012 S. Pulaski Road, Chicago, IL 60629
  Donations are accepted:
  Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:00pm, Saturday-Sunday 8:00am-2:00pm
  Ring the bell during the week to drop off food
  Of course, Mike Sanders and I will be standing outside to receive your donations during our special Holiday Harvest Broadcast on December 4 from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m.
  Donations will go to one of the participating Holiday Harvest food programs.
  
• First Evangelical Free Church , 5255 N Ashland Ave Chicago, IL 60640
  Donations accepted:
  Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:00am to 4:30 pm
  Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, Sundays 9:30 am to 4:00 pm
  Site of Faith in Place Winter Farmers Market on December 11. You can purchase local, sustainable goods, turn around and drop them right in the WCPT bin!
  Donations will go to Breakthrough Urban Ministries
  
• Healthy Horizons Inc, 7034 Indianapolis Blvd # 1, Hammond, IN 46324-2244
  Donations accepted:
  Monday-Friday 9:00am-8:00pm
  Saturday 9:00am-6:00pm
  Sunday 12:00pm-5:00pm
  (Purchase some of their healthy grocery items, turn around and put them in the WCPT bin!)
  
• Little Mountain-Hope Ministries, 5716 South Ashland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60636-1723
  Donations currently accepted Tuesday evenings and all day Sunday. More times to come. Donations will go to the Little Mountain food program.
  
• Travelers Rest Spiritual Church, 7030 S Racine Ave, Chicago , IL 60636
  Donations currently accepted Tuesday evenings and all day Sunday. More times to come.
  
• Amor De Dios United Methodist Church, 2356 South Sawyer Avenue, Chicago, IL 60623
  Donations currently accepted Thursday afternoons and all day Sunday. More times to come.
  Donations will go to the Amor de Dios food program.
  
• Euclid Avenue United Methodist, 405 South Euclid Avenue, Oak Park, IL 60302
  Site of Faith in Place Winter Farmers Market on March 24, 2012
  Donations go to the Oak Park/River Forest Food Pantry
  
• North Shore Unitarian Church, 2100 Half Day Rd Deerfield, IL 60015
  Donations accepted:
  Monday-Friday 10:00am - 2:00pm
  Sundays 9:00am-1:00pm
  December 4th Special Hours: 8:30am-3:00pm
  Site of Faith in Place Winter Farmers Market on December 4! You can purchase local, sustainable goods, turn around and drop them right in the WCPT bin!
  Donations go to their local food pantries.

If you're wondering what a "healthy, local and sustainable" food drive is, check out the Holiday Harvest page on this website, where we have tried to show how very possible it is to donate healthy protein-rich foods, preserved and canned goods, healthy grains and dried fruits and more. We're also promoting local purchases. For more information about that, go to Local First Chicago and read about their city-wide Buy Local campaign for the 2011 Holiday Season called "Unwrap Chicago: Eat, Drink & Buy Local."

My thanks also to Barbara Melera at the historic D. Landreth Seed Company for donating about one hundred packets, featuring cilantro, chervil, basil and chives seeds, which we are forwarding to the various churches and food networks.

"Green on McLean" community garden takes home an award

I have repeatedly told the story on my show of the "miracle" of the community garden at the end of my block in the Logan Square Neighborhood. A group of us got together in the spring to create the garden on land owned by a local realtor. We knew that because the land is privately owned, we could be kicked off at any time.

Actually, that's a challenge that many urban community gardens face. But we took it on because we knew that the neighborhood needed change. The litter-strewn lot needed a face lift. The gangbangers on the corner needed to go. And the people of the neighborhood needed to meet each other in a way that they hadn't in decades.

Thus, Green on McLean was created and, if you've heard the story before, you know that we accomplished most of the goals stated above. We grew some pretty decent vegetables, taught the neighborhood kids how to plant seeds, seedlings and potted plants, taught them how to water and care for those plants, and even battled aphids and cucumber beetles. We put up a blog, had pot luck dinners in the garden and watched as the garden grew and became a sacred place in the neighborhood (no gangbangers allowed--and they respected that rule...most of the time).

We even entered the Mayor's 2011 Landscape Awards competition. We know that ours is far from the most impressive community garden in the city, but we were proud of what we had accomplished. And, on Saturday, December 3, five of the garden stalwarts--Olga, Carrie, Daeshawn, Moncerratt and I--picked up our 3rd Place Award for Community Landscapes in Region 1. Some of the photos are on this site. It's pretty neat.

By the way,continuing a tradition I have followed for about a decade, I will have the 2011 Chicago Gardener of the Year, Enrique Gonzalez of Hoxie Prairie Garden, on the show next Sunday.

 

November 27, 2011

WCPT Holiday Harvest Food Drive begins December 1;
Feed the Need!

Gosh, I'm so excited that you would think Christmas was coming or something. Or maybe it is. Or maybe next Thursday, December 1 is the first day of the WCPT Holiday Harvest Food Drive, which runs through December 11. Our thanks to our partner, Faith in Place, which has lined up a number of the drop off locations listed below.

When you bring your locally bought, healthy and sustainable foods (though we'll take anything, really), you should look for the barrel marked with the WCPT Holiday Harvest logo (pictured left). Of course, you can't just show up at 3:00 a.m. and expect to drop in your goodies, so here are the times that we know about so far. If a location in your area doesn't have all of the information you need, never fear--I will be updating this page as I receive it:

• WCPT AM & FM, 6012 S. Pulaski Road, Chicago, IL 60629
  Donations are accepted:
  Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:00pm, Saturday-Sunday 8:00am-2:00pm
  Ring the bell during the week to drop off food
  Of course, Mike Sanders and I will be standing outside to receive your donations during our special Holiday Harvest Broadcast on December 4 from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m.
  Donations will go to one of the participating Holiday Harvest food programs.
  
• First Evangelical Free Church , 5255 N Ashland Ave Chicago, IL 60640
  Donations accepted:
  Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:00am to 4:30 pm
  Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, Sundays 9:30 am to 4:00 pm
  Site of Faith in Place Winter Farmers Market on December 11. You can purchase local, sustainable goods, turn around and drop them right in the WCPT bin!
  Donations will go to Breakthrough Urban Ministries
  
• Healthy Horizons Inc, 7034 Indianapolis Blvd # 1, Hammond, IN 46324-2244
  Donations accepted:
  Monday-Friday 9:00am-8:00pm
  Saturday 9:00am-6:00pm
  Sunday 12:00pm-5:00pm
  
• Little Mountain-Hope Ministries, 5716 South Ashland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60636-1723
  Donations currently accepted Tuesday evenings and all day Sunday. More times to come. Donations will go to the Little Mountain food program.
  
• Travelers Rest Spiritual Church, 7030 S Racine Ave, Chicago , IL 60636
  Donations currently accepted Tuesday evenings and all day Sunday. More times to come.
  
• Amor De Dios United Methodist Church, 2356 South Sawyer Avenue, Chicago, IL 60623
  Donations currently accepted Thursday afternoons and all day Sunday. More times to come.
  Donations will go to the Amor de Dios food program.
  
• Euclid Avenue United Methodist, 405 South Euclid Avenue, Oak Park, IL 60302
  Site of Faith in Place Winter Farmers Market on March 24, 2012
  Donations go to the Oak Park/River Forest Food Pantry
  
• North Shore Unitarian Church, 2100 Half Day Rd Deerfield, IL 60015
  Donations accepted:
  Monday-Friday 10:00am - 2:00pm
  Sundays 9:00am-1:00pm
  December 4th Special Hours: 8:30am-3:00pm
  Site of Faith in Place Winter Farmers Market on December 4! You can purchase local, sustainable goods, turn around and drop them right in the WCPT bin!
  Donations go to their local food pantries.

As noted above, Mike Sanders of Our Town and I will join forces for a three hour Holiday Harvest Broadcast on December 4 from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. (I can't mention that enough.)

As I have mentioned repeatedly, our goal is to do a drive that is "healthy, local and sustainable," at least to the extent possible and practical. Over the past several weeks on the Holiday Harvest page on this website, we have tried to show how very possible it is to donate healthy protein-rich foods, preserved and canned goods, healthy grains and dried fruits and more.

Last week I talked to Suzanne Keers, co-founder & executive director of Local First Chicago, about their city-wide Buy Local campaign for the 2011 Holiday Season called "Unwrap Chicago: Eat, Drink & Buy Local." The idea is to educate citizens on the importance of buying locally. Of course, WCPT and The Mike Nowak Show hope that you shop and buy local food, which you will then donate to the WCPT Holiday Harvest. Simple, no?

This week, I'm pleased to be able to talk to Rev. Dr. Bill Shereos, Senior Pastor of First Free Church in Andersonville, which is one of our drop off locations. They will be sending their collection to Breakthrough Urban Ministries in the Garfield Park neighborhood.

We are continuing to update the Holiday Harvest page, and I hope I hope you'll check it out from time to time and begin gathering food to donate during our drive. Our motto: Feed the Need. Thanks for whatever you can do.

Will the prairie--and bison(!)--make a comback in Illinois?

Okay, kids. Time for a quick quiz. (Bet you didn't see this coming.) Of the 21 million acres of prairie that were originally in the Prairie State (um, that's Illinois, in case you're stumped), what percentage is left?

A. 10%
B. 1%
C. 0.1%
D 0.01%

If you answered D.--ding, ding, ding!--you've been paying attention to just how cavalierly Americans over the centuries have treated their natural resources. I'm getting ahead of myself here, but take a look at the Timeline of the American Bison, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Believe me folks, it ain't pretty.

But back to praires. In 1996, a remarkable thing happened for the remaining prairies in Illinois. The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie was established on the former Joliet Arsenal. What made Midewin (prounounced mi-Day-win, and pronouncing it correctly is kind of the secret handshake of Illinois environmentalists) so remarkable is that, among other things, it was the first national tallgrass prairie in the country. The long-range goal was to take 20,000 acres of military and farm land and bring back as much prairie ecosystem as is humanly possible.

Interestingly, Midewin, just a stone's throw from Chicago in Wilmington, Illinois, is part of the National Forest System, which might seem odd because it is far from being a forest. Perhaps that's not so bad because the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit group that works with the U.S. Forest Service to provide financial and technical support, announced in October that it was putting it's muscle behind the restoration.

About 2,000 acres of prairie fields have already been restored at Midewin, but the land is still dotted with military bunkers and checkered with abandoned farm fields. Much needs to be done, which is why the NFF announced a 10-year plan to restore another 18,000 acres and even reintroduce bison on to the property--hence the bison reference earlier. C'mon, how cool is that? I'll bet you didn't even know that there were bison roaming Illinois at the beginning of the 19th Century...unless you clicked on the link above.

Midewin is the eighth site to be part of NFF'sTreasured Landscapes campaign. What does that mean? Well, money, for one--to the tune of helping to raise $174 million for the 10-year restoration project. To get a sense of what they hope to accomplish, take a look at this video. One of their partners in this unique venture is The Wetlands Initiative.

I'm pleased to welcome Mary Mitsos, Vice President of Conservation Programs for the National Forest Foundation and Paul Botts (in the interest of full disclosure, he is Beth Botts' brother), who is Executive Director of The Wetlands Initiative, to talk about how the future of prairies of Illinois is about bringing back some of its past.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
The D. Landreth Seed Company 2012 Catalog is on its way!

This is just a quick note to let you know that if you're one of the people who are trying to keep the historic D. Landreth Seed Company in business by ordering a catalog, there will soon be one in your mailbox. A friend of mine who ordered five catalogs received hers on Black Friday (seems fitting, somehow, that she didn't have to be among the crazed shoppers).

Barbara Melera, owner of D. Landreth, the oldest seed house in America, wrote to me on Facebook that people who ordered multiple copies are already receiving theirs. If you requested only one (stupid me!), they will arrive soon.

You can get a sense of the quality of this catalog by linking to sample pages here. It makes a great gift for your gardening friends, and they're only five bucks a pop. Meanwhile, you can log onto these various social media sites to continue to get the word out: Landreth Seed Co, Save Landreth Seed Company, Order their 2012 Catalog!, and more. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #savelandreth. If you just want to make a contribution, go to ChipIn.com and click the icon on the upper right hand side of the page.

A couple of articles about climate change

Meteorologist Rick DiMaio is a wealth of information, not only about the weather, but about climate change, and he's always alerting me to stories about the latest in climate science and news. This one echoes Rick's own thoughts about how a little bit of warming can lead to weather extremes.

However, it can be difficult to have a civil conversation over the holiday dinner table with climate skeptics. If you find yourself in that situation, Mother Nature Network has some tips about the subject in an article called How to discuss climate change with your uncle during the holidays. It might just save your self-esteem...if not your sanity.

 

November 20, 2011

Help keep the historic D. Landreth Seed Company alive:
Give the gift of one of their fabulous 2012 catalogs!

If you're a regular listener to the program or if you're a serious gardener, you are aware of the plight of the historic D. Landreth Seed Company. The oldest seed house in America, dating back to 1784, had its accounts frozen by a garnishment order on August 31 of this year. Owner Barbara Melera and her husband Peter had thirty days to sell one million 2012 catalogs to satisfy their creditors and keep the doors open.

And then a kind of miracle began to unfold. Word got out in the social media, including Twitter and Facebook. which spread to the mainstream media and even further. I first got wind of the story in a post by Mr. Brown Thumb and quickly invited Barbara to be on my show on September 11. At that point, though things looked bleak, various people, organizations and companies began lending their support and the orders were starting to roll in.

You can see the full list of Landreth supporters on the company's home page, but it includes names like Huffington Post, American Express, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Planet Green, Martha Stewart, National Public Radio, Oprah Winfrey, The View, Elen Degeneres, Organic Gardening Magazine, Rosie O'Donnell, Sunset Magazine, John Deere Company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, The Sierra Club, Mother Nature Network, Slow Food USA, Farm Aid, Organic Valley and dozens more. I'm proud and honored that The Mike Nowak Show is #4 on the list.

By the time Barbara visited with me again on October 2, the company had received enough orders to buy more time. At that time here are what the numbers looked like, thanks, in part to the legendary "Mike Nowak Bump":

Online orders: $122,096
Phone orders: $635
Contributions via www.chipIn.com: $7,643

Tota Raisedl: $130,374

Here are the numbers as of today, November 20, 2011:

Online orders: $148,150.61
Phone and mail orders: $7,329.00
Contributions via chipin: $12,162.50

Total Raised: $167,642.11
Equivalent Catalogs Ordered: 33,528

As you can see, it ain't easy to sell a million catalogs. But once they start landing in mailboxes all over America, the sheer quality of this publication will encourage a new spurt of orders. How do I know? I happen to have in my hot little hands a printer's proof of the actual catalog, courtesy of Barb Melera. It's so valuable, in fact, that after this morning's show she is making me mail it back to her.

The 2012 D. Landreth Seed Company catalog is indeed a treasure. It features reproductions of past catalog art, etchings, drawings, photographs and quotes from past catalogs, like this from the 1848 catalog:

"The Lettuce is a hardy annual, introduced or cultivated in England since 1562, but from what country is unknown. The use of Lettuce, as a cooling and agreeable salad, is well know; it is also a useful ingredient in soups. It contains, like the other species of this genus, a quantity of opium juice, of a milky nature, from which of late years, medicine has been prepared under the title of Lactucarium, and which can be administered with effect in cases where opium is inadmissable..."

Hmm. No wonder lettuce shows up in so many salads. Then there's this from the May 3, 1934 address by Burnet Landreth, Jr. before the Poor Richard Club of Philadelphia on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the D. Landreth Seed Company:

"In 1849 David Landreth, Jr. was the first to graft in the greenhouse a tomato on a potato root. In this instance, the tomato plant nourished by the potato roots produced tomatoes in the usual form, but in the second place the potato stem grafted on a tomato root could not produce its tubers under the ground, but produced fruit the size of a small pea at the access of all the stems, a most curious result, show how Nature strives always to reproduce itself."

There are plenty more goodies like that in the catalog. And, of course, the seed lists for the incredible variety of heirloom vegetables, herbs and flowers. If you haven't purchased a catalog yet, do it today. Or even better, order several as holiday gifts for your friends and family.

Once again, here are various links that you can use to get the word out: Facebook sites Landreth Seed Co, Save Landreth Seed Company, Order their 2012 Catalog!, and probably more. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #savelandreth. If you just want to make a contribution, go to ChipIn.com and click the icon on the upper right hand side of the page.

Where would we be without Faber-Castell and the #2 pencil?

It's hard to believe that in one show I could be spotlighting two companies that are more than 200 years old. The pencil and premium writing company, Faber-Castell, is even older than D. Landreth Seed Company and, as they celebrate their 250th Anniversary this year, they do it in sustainable fashion. Not only is Faber-Castell CO2-neutral but its operations absorb more carbon dioxide than they produce. In fact, they are 3 times carbon neutral.

If you're wondering how that is possible, all you need to know is that, two decades ago, Faber-Castell initiated a pioneering plantation project in Brazil on former grassland with a poor sandy soil. It is, located in the middle of the Brazilian savannah near Prata (Minas Gerais state), more than 2,500 kilometres away from the Amazon rainforest. The pine used for the woodlands is a tropical species called Pinus caribea, which grows quickly, can flourish even in poor conditions, and is easy to replant.

Since 1999 the Faber-Castell plantations have also been certified by the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council): a demanding international standard for “environmentally compatible, socially equitable, and sustainable forestry”. The Chain of Custody (COC) certification guarantees furthermore that the origin of the wood can be traced all the way from harvesting the timber to packaging the pencils. Faber-Castell maintains its own tree nurseries. Seedlings are continually planted out to replace each row of trees felled: a sustainable ecological cycle. In addition, their forest project offers 30% of the land as a refuge for endangered species in Brazil - over 280 species live on this land

Of course, many people know Faber-Castell as the company that invented the #2 pencil. They currently produce 2 billion pencils every year and they were the first manufacturer in the industry to make water-based varnish, which is safer for factory workers and consumers (think about all the kids and adults who like to chew on pencils).

While I was angling to have CEO Count Anton von Faber-Castell on the show (mainly because I've never spoken to a real count), I'm pleased to talk to Jamie Gallagher, President and CEO of Faber-Castell USA/Creativity for Kids, based in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
Unwrap Chicago: Eat, Drink & Buy Local for WCPT's Holiday Harvest

Things are really coming into focus for the WCPT Holiday Harvest from December 1 through December 11. We've identified most of the drop off locations, which will include

• North Shore Unitarian Church
  2100 Half Day Rd Deerfield, IL 60015
  (Their farmers market is on December 4th)
• First Free Angelical Church
  5255 N Ashland Ave Chicago, IL 60640
  (Their farmers market is on December 11th)
• Amor De Dios United Methodist Church
  2356 South Sawyer Avenue
  Chicago, IL 60623-3331
• Euclid Avenue United Methodist
  405 South Euclid Avenue
  Oak Park, IL 60302-3901
• Healthy Horizons Inc
  7034 Indianapolis Blvd # 1
  Hammond, IN 46324-2244
• Englewood Food Network
  (Site to be determined)

And, of course, the WCPT studios of Chicago's Progressive Talk, where Mike Sanders of Our Town and I will join forces for a three hour Holiday Harvest special on December 4 from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. Our thanks to our partner, Faith in Place, which has lined up several of the drop off locations.

Our goal is to do a drive that is "healthy, local and sustainable," at least to the extent possible and practical. Last week, on the Holiday Harvest page on this website, we discussed the preserved and canned goods. This week, the focus is on local, and I couldn't have found a better fit than Suzanne Keers, who is co-founder & executive director of Local First Chicago.

Local First Chicago is teaming up with City of Chicago's Department of Housing and Economic Development, the Chicago Office of Tourism & Culture and more than 50 neighborhood chambers of commerce, community organizations and businesses in a city-wide Buy Local campaign for the 2011 Holiday Season. They're calling it "Unwrap Chicago: Eat, Drink & Buy Local" and the purpose is to educate citizens on the importance of buying locally.

They are asking each household in Chicago to pledge to redirect at least $100 of planned holiday spending from chain stores to locally owned merchants. Why? For one, pledge signers will be
entered in a raffle for local gift certificates More importantly, though, it would result in $25 million being pumped into the local economy. In addition, buying locally

• Puts more dollars back into your community,
• Creates and preserves local jobs, and
• Reduces your carbon footprint.

I couldn't agree more, especially when it comes to WCPT's Holiday Harvest. One of the reasons we are working with Faith in Place and using their Winter Farmers Markets locations as drop off places is because we hope you will purchase something there, turn around and put it in one of our bins. Voila! Shopping locally!

We are continuing to update the Holiday Harvest page, and I hope I hope you'll check it out from time to time and begin gathering food to donate during our drive. Our motto: Feed the Need. Thanks for whatever you can do.

 

November 13, 2011

Dr. Wally helps you put your garden to bed for the winter

A gardener's work is never done, it seems. Even as we roll, kicking and screaming, into the holiday season (at least some of us), it's important to remember that a little attention paid to your garden's soil at this time of year will reap huge benefits in the spring.

That's why I welcome "Dr." Wally Schmidtke, manager at Pesche's Garden Center in Des Plaines, back to the show for some advice on how to get a head start on spring...as odd as that sounds in the days just before Thanksgiving. Wally has put together a very helpful page of tips that I think you will find useful, especially if you like to grow vegetables.

Speaking of Pesche's, I want to personally thank Chris Pesche for helping Green on McLean, the community garden on my block in the Logan Square neighborhood. Thanks to a generous donation of Back to Nature Cotton Burr Compost, we have been renewing our planting beds--just as Wally suggests--in anticipation of an even more productive 2012 growing season.

America Recycles...can Chicago?

This Tuesday marks the 14th annual America Recycles Day, the only national day dedicated to recycling in America. And once again, Mike Mitchell, Executive Director of the Illinois Recycling Association, joins me to talk about the state of recycling in the state of Illinois.

Of course, that means Chicago, too. So, I gird my loins once again as I prepare to talk about recycling in the Windy City. (Full disclosure, I am the volunteer president of the all-volunteer Chicago Recycling Coalition) However, as many of you know, things have begun to change under the Rahm Emanuel Administration.

On October 3, Emanuel's "managed competition" program began. Now and for the next half year or so, public and private employees are engaged in a three-way fight for the right to run all or part of Chicago's recycling program. Those workers are represented by the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation, and private companies Waste Management and Sims Metal Management Municipal Recycling.

At the outset, it seemed a foregone conclusion that city workers would never be competitive enough to hold onto their recycling jobs. However, a couple of weeks into the competition, the Sun-Times reported that city union workers were "holding their own" by working more efficiently and, remarkably, reducing the absenteeism rate to zero. It does make one wonder why that couldn't have been done when those workers weren't under the gun. But I digress.

Under Mayor Emanuel's plan, the city has been divided into six areas, two served by city workers, three by Waste Management and one by Sims Metal Management. I'm pleased to be able to talk today to Tom Outerbridge, General Manager of the Municipal Recycling Division. We'll see what the state of curbside recycling is a little more than a month since the start of managed competition.

Tomorrow, Monday, November 14th, the day beforef America Recycles Day, Sims will be doing an e-waste pick up and a full day of recycling education at Wadsworth School, at 6420 S University Avenue in Chicago. Given that education is such a vital part of any recycling program, it's good to see Sims reaching out to this south side community.

Last but certainly not least, plastic bags have gotten back into the news, thanks to Alderman Proco Joe Moreno of the 1st Ward. He has proposed an ordinance that would outright ban them in the City of Chicago. In 2008, the City Council passed an ordinance that called for plastic bag recycling containers in retail or wholesale businesses other than food service establishments where 25% or more of gross sales include medicines (I never understood that part) and/or food.

Since its inception, the ordinance has been marked by confusion as to which businesses must recycle, and a general reluctance on the part of smaller companies to comply. In The 2010 Annual Plastic Bag Recycling Report Update, two items caught my eye:

The biggest difference from 2009 to 2010 is the increase in number of businesses reporting that they did not recycle any plastic bags, which went from 95 to 486. Based on phone calls and report entries, the primary reason for this was that although businesses placed a container in their store, customers did not return plastic bags.

and

The maximum amount reported in 2010 (Jewel Foods) is a business with multiple store locations across Chicago and accounts for 47% of the total weight reported. In addition, almost 90% of the plastic reported as recycled was from only five companies (Dominick’s, Jewel Foods, Trader Joe’s, Walgreens, and GM Warehouse), all of which were either large-footprint stores and/or have multiple
locations in Chicago.

We'll see just how much traction Alderman Moreno's proposed ordinance has. Already, the dark side is making its voice heard.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
The latest on WCPT's Holiday Harvest

Last week, Mike Sanders of Our Town joined me in studio to announce the WCPT Holiday Harvest, which we are doing in partnership with Faith in Place. Our goal is to do a drive that is "healthy, local and sustainable," at least to the extent possible and practical. The drive will be from December 1 to December 11 of this year. On December 4, Mike Sanders and I will have a joint broadcast of Our Town and The Mike Nowak Show from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m., when we will talk to food experts, our listeners, and perhaps even welcome people to the WCPT Studios parking lot to drop off their goodies.

Last week, on the Holiday Harvest page on this website, we discussed the importance of non-perishable protein. This week, the subject is preserved foods--dried and canned.

As I said last week, I've taken on this challenge as a chance to teach folks about the kinds of foods--and other goods--that can and should be donated to food pantries. It's not simple, and I hope my listeners and followers on this site and on Facebook and Twitter will help me figure things out.

We are continuing to update the Holiday Harvest page, and I hope I hope you'll check it out from time to time and begin gathering food to donate during our drive. We will have a number of drop off locations in the Chicago area, which we hope will make it easy for you to contribute to the cause. Our motto: Feed the Need. Thanks for whatever you can do.

 

November 6 , 2011

A conversation with Suzanne Malec-McKenna, former Commissioner of the former Chicago Department of the Environment

For those of us who had been paying attention, the announcement that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 2012 budget did not include funds for Chicago's Department of the Environment was not exactly a surprise. In fact, even though the department officially ceases to exist as of January 1, 2012, its presence has already been scrubbed from the City of Chicago website and replaced by a page that simply talks about "Environment."

According to the Emanuel Administration, they wanted sustainability issues to be addressed in a more centralized way. To that end, the city promoted Chief Sustainability Officer Karen Weigert to the Mayor's Office. The Mayor also created a Sustainability Council--which he will chair--with a mandate to create and deliver a sustainability plan incorporating goals outlined by his transition team and the Chicago Climate Action Plan. It includes the Chief Sustainability Officer and commissioners of Housing and Economic Development, Transportation, Streets and Sanitation, General Services, Water Management, Aviation, Buildings, and Procurement.

Call me skeptical but this also looks like a way to bury environmental concerns deep in the city bueaucracy. By the way, Weigert was on the hot seat a couple of weeks ago at a gathering of environmentalists and concerned citizens who wanted to know when Chicago will get its act together about recycling. Hey, that's something I ask all the time!

Like I said, all you needed to know about the direction in which the city was headed was when the new mayor took office and immediately fired Suzanne Malec-McKenna as Commissioner of the DOE. Malec-McKenna was appointed commissioner in 2007 and had been a member of the department for seventeen years. Her list of accomplishments is pretty impressive. These are some of the projects that she either helped create or fostered during her tenue:

Greencorps Chicago
Chicago Center for Green Technology
TreeKeepers
Chicago Conservation Corps (C3)
Calument Stewardship Initiative
Water Quality Unit
Chicago Climate Action Plan
Waste to Profit Network
Energy Action Network
Recycling Block Club Captains
Restoration and Expansion of North Park Village Center

And more. No wonder Chicago's environmental community already misses her. In fact, I received this email just yesterday from a listener and community activist who heard that Malec-McKenna was going to be on the show:

Suzanne Malec-McKenna has been the champion for the Lake Calumet Area for her years at DOE. We cannot thank her enough for all she has done. We are crushed that she was not asked to be a part of Rahm's administration. Now that DOEnv. is in danger, we see why.

What are Suzanne's thought about the Millennium Natural Reserve that the Gov. will announce next week? How can we smooze this into "protection" for our (ever-assaulted) area? Her expertise is more important than ever!

Thank you -

Sharon Rolek
C3 Leader
Lake Cal Area

One thing Malec-McKenna is still proud to be involved with is the The Prairie Research Institute, If you don't recognize that name, it might be because it was originally called The Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability. From their website:

Created in July of 2008 to house four state scientific surveys — Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS), the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS), the Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS), and the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) — as a group under the auspices of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . Then in 2010, the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program (ITARP) became the fifth division under the new name of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey , further expanding the Institute's research and service capabilities. The Institute's mission and vision statement reflect the importance of sustaining our state's natural resources.

Malec-McKenna is currently working on her Ph.D. in communication. Even with unemployment high in America, this is one talented, smart person who should have a bunch of companies lining up to hire her. I'm honored to call her my friend and I'm very pleased that she is taking time to speak to me on the show.

Mike and Mike work on WCPT's Holiday Harvest

Last week, when the Faith in Place folks were on the show, I hinted about the possibility of teaming with them to do a healthy, local and sustainable food drive. Well, it's pretty much on track and this morning, Mike Sanders of "Our Town" and I will be talking about it on my show.

When I say "healthy, local and sustainable," it turns out that those are terms that can be difficult to define for a food drive. For instance, if you donate canned tuna, which contains lots of protein and is fairly healthy, it's probably not local. It might not even be sustainable, depending on how the tuna is being caught. Or maybe you want to donate organic potatoes to the drive. Well, some food banks won't accept produce because it can spoil. See the problem?

I've taken on this challenge as a chance to teach folks about the kinds of foods--and other goods--that can and should be donated to food pantries. As I said, it's not simple, and I hope my listeners and followers on this site and on Facebook and Twitter will help me figure out things.

The Mike Nowak Show staff (uh, that's pretty much Kathleen Thompson), has set up a page about our drive that has some basics right now, and will be updated in the next few weeks. I hope you'll check it out from time to time and begin gathering food to donate during our drive. We think we will have a number of drop off locations in the Chicago area, and those should be announced by next week.

The drive will be from December 1 to December 11 of this year. On December 4, Mike Sanders and I will have a joint broadcast of Our Town and The Mike Nowak Show from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m., when we will talk to food experts, our listeners, and perhaps even welcome people to the WCPT Studios parking lot to drop off their goodies. Perhaps we'll see you there.

 

October 30, 2011

Michelle Obama fights food deserts...why is that controversial?

Here are some depressing statistics about Chicago's food desert, as presented in a report released by Mari Gallahger Research & Consulting Group on October 24:

• The Food Desert population could fill U.S. Cellular Field to capacity ten times over with its nearly 384,000 residents. 70 percent are African American.
  
• Of that number, more than 124,000 are children, the population of Naperville, Illinois.
  
• Chicago's Food Desert children could fill to capacity 2,484 school buses. If all of these busses lined up bumper-to-bumper, they would stretch from President Obama's Chicago house in Hyde Park, to City Hall on LaSalle Street, and then to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house.
  
• Nearly 70,000 Food Desert households are headed by single women with children.
  
• 40,000 Food Desert households do not own cars.

That being said, the study also revealed that the food desert has declined nearly 40 percent over the past five years. The report was released on Food Day, and a day before Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel held what he called a "Food Summit" with First Lady Michelle Obama, a group of U.S. mayors, CEOs of various food retailers (including Walmart and Deerfield-based Walgreens) and even some local food organizations, including Growing Power.

That same day, the City of Chicago website announced:

Today Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined First Lady Michelle Obama and executives from major grocery chains across the country to announce plans to open 36 new grocery stores in communities across Chicago: 17 traditional grocery stores and 19 expanded Walgreens Co. stores that include fresh food. The majority of the stores will be located in communities with food deserts, as part of the Administration's ongoing commitment to expand access to fresh and healthy foods across in the city. The Mayor also announced that one of Chicago's major urban farm networks, Growing Power, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Walgreens Co. and Aldi to increase access not only to locally grown produce, but to job opportunities and economic development across its farm locations in Chicago.

Wow. Cool beans. Let's all sing Kumbaya and have some Quinoa and...um, cool beans.

So why did some of the subsequent coverage look like this?

• Why is Michelle Obama’s food initiative promoting Walmart?
• Did Walmart Buy Growing Power’s Silence for a Million Dollars?
• Growing Power Takes Massive Contribution from Wal-Mart: A Perspective on Money and the Movement
• Walmart Quietly Gaining In Chicago, But Faces Neighborhood Resistance
• Walmart's Fresh Food Makeover
• Will Allen’s Growing Power gets a million from slaver Wal-Mart
• Access to grocers doesn't improve diets, study finds

Yikes. Okay, in the interest of being "fair and blanaced," here's one from the "other" side:

• Why Walmart’s money helps more than it hurts

So what's the problem? Personally, I think it's pretty much the same old same old: too much money concentrated in the hands of too few, politicians working with the rich and powerful instead of listening to the communities, the fear that local institutions can be co-opted by what are large contributions for them but a pittance for the contributer, etc., etc. (See Occupy Wall Street.) It doesn't help when Mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to an article by Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke in the Chicago Reader, seems to be a guy who's more likely to pal around with multi-millionaires than community activists. Okay, that's nothing new in Chicago politics, but it's not encouraging.

So I urge you to take a look at this statement prepared by a group of those activists, Chicago's Advocates for Urban Agriculture. I had a little to do with this document (I'm a signatory), but not very much, really. It outlines in a very clear way what many people who have been working in local, sustainable and urban agriculture have been preaching for years. Among the recommendations suggested by AUA:

This is a moment for redefinition of the city’s economic vision and policy, a window of opportunity for the establishment of neighborhood-based models and institutions. We urge that the City of Chicago:
• Direct the majority of federal, state, and local funds and investment mobilized for healthy food access to medium-scale and neighborhood-based owners and operators of food enterprises.
• Incentivize and expedite infrastructure for sites and systems, business ownership and ongoing support for neighborhood enterprises; and
• Hire a Food System and Enterprise Coordinator at the level of the Mayor’s office to oversee an inter-departmental accountability team and navigate among city, county, and extended region staff and functions: to solve problems, interpret between and among departments, Statement in Support of Local Food Economy in Chicago and seek coherent, comprehensive application of services and resources within all dimensions that impact the local food system.
• Complete a multi-stakeholder analysis of demand and supply chains to propose ways to provide as much food locally as needed and possible, produced at scale from hyper-local to regional and beyond.
• Work with a Chicago Food Council that is more fully representative and comprises practitioners, governmental officials, and neighborhood residents, and that operates within a responsive, transparent, and accountable communication and democratic decision-making structure.

If you feel strongly about the direction in which the food movement is headed and you agree with the proposals put forth by AUA, you are welcome to sign the document on behalf of yourself or your organization. Contact Martha Boyd: martha@learngrowconnect.org.

The Statement has been sent to the Mayor and First Lady, groups and lists, and interested members of the media. I ask you to send the statement to your friends and allies, aldermen and policymakers, and to talk with them about it and this growing coalition.

Eden Place Nature Center:
Making a difference on Chicago's south side

Last week I had the priviledge of being invited to the Openlands 2011 Annual Luncheon, where more than 700 of this area's foremost environmentalists renew their commitment to what is sometimes known as the Chicago Wilderness. And schmooze. And have some lunch. And perhaps one tiny little glass of wine. Good times.

This year's event honored TreeKeepers, which has grown into an internationally renowned model for urban forestry. TreeKeepers classes have been attended more than 1,300 people including me (I'm TreeKeeper #417, thank you very much), representing a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and neighborhoods. Collectively, these volunteers have combated issues such as the emerald ash borer (EAB) , developed a community arboretum in North Lawndale, and undertaken a comprehensive tree inventory in Chicago parks. In 2010 TreeKeeper volunteers dedicated more than 15,000 volunteer hours to protecting our urban forests.

Also honored at the luncheon was Michael Howard, who received the Conservation Leadership Award for his work at Eden Place Nature Center in Chicago's Fuller Park neighborhood. Howard has been described an an environmental hero for his work in changing a lead-choked brownfield into a place where the community can see and appreciate wetlands, monarch butterfly habitats, vegetable gardens--and even a solar bus theater.

Howard is one of those people who literally change the world around them, seemingly by force of will. I have interviewed him before, but not in too long a time. It's a pleasure to welcome Michael and his wife and partner Amelia to the show.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
Faith in Place winter farmers markets are here

November can be the cruelest month, if only because so many farmers markets go away for the season. But not all of them. It's that time of year for the Winter Farmers Markets, sponsored by Faith in Place.

Free and open to the public, these markets offer consumers an opportunity to purchase cheese, meat and poultry, soap, syrup, honey, wool, raw fibers, vinegars, dried fruits, milled flours, sauces and salsas, preserves, cider, and fresh produce as available.

For the farmers, there is no fee to participate, but they donate 10% of what they take in at the market (after a threshold amount) to the Illinois Farmer Crisis Fund. Modeled after Wisconsin's Harvest of Hope Fund, the Farmer Crisis Fund will give monetary gifts of up to $1,000 to farmers in crisis due to illness or unexpected expenses. Through these markets, consumers continue to purchase farm-fresh items and cultivate relationships with local farmers beyond the summer farmers' market season.

I'm delighted to have Robin Schirmer from Tomato Mountain Farm in Wisconsin and Leila Shooshani with Faith in Place's Congregational Outreach & Support in the studio to talk about the upcoming markets. Here's the schedule for November and December:

• Sunday, Nov 6 | 12-3 pm
  Faith Lutheran Church, Brookfield

• Sunday, Nov 13 | 12-3 pm
  UU Church of Elgin, Elgin

• Sunday, Dec 4 | 10 am-2 pm
  North Shore Unitarian Church, Deerfield

• Sunday, Dec 11 | 11:30 am-3pm
  First Evangelical Free Church, Chicago

• Saturday, Dec 17 | 10 am-2 pm
  Church of St. Benedict, Bolingbrook

I also have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT about The Mike Nowak Show and Faith in Place...maybe I'll announce it on Sunday morning, and maybe I won't. So there.

 

October 23, 2011

Mike welcomes U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky

Last week I reported on Food Day , which will be celebrated tomorrow, Monday, October 24 . The organizers, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest , have a goal of educating Americans about healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. If you're interested in being a part of this celebration, it's pretty easy to get involved. This link takes you directly to events being staged in and around Chicago.

One of the people on the advisory board of Food Day is the Hon. Jan Schakowsky , U.S. Representative from Illinois' 9th district. I am pleased to have her on the show this morning to talk about Food Day issues. I saw her a few days ago when I attended a Move the Money Chicago rally at Chicago Temple last Thursday. She spoke eloquently about the need for a more equitable American society, making reference to her plan to tax millionaires at a 45 percent rate and billionaires at 49 percent . This would raise $4 trillion over the coming decade...and it still doesn't approach the tax rates of the Reagan years. She has also, along with 44 colleagues, introduced “The Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act” (H.R. 2914) to create over 2.2 million jobs for two years . But I digress.

After the gathering, which also featured words from Representative Danny Davis, Jesse Jackson and others, there was a march to Grant Park, to meet up with the Occupy Chicago group . I was impressed Rep. Schakowsky not only marched all of the way, but stayed to listen to Occupy Chicago conduct their business for the evening.

We will talk food issues this morning but you never know what else will come up.

BTW, here's something that came to my attention this week. It seems, perhaps in honor of Food Day (that's irony, folks), the powers that be will begin spraying a very toxic chemical, methyl iodide , on strawberry crops in California on...wait for it...here it comes...October 24. Also known as Food Day. Gotta love it.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
Inspiration Cafe now inspires people in Garfield Park

I had the pleasure of enjoying a lunch at a fabulous dining establishment several weeks ago, made even more enjoyable by the knowledge that it was helping the homeless and lower income people.

Several years ago, when I was working at Gargantua Radio down the dial, I was invited to visit what was then called Cafe Too in Uptown. Since then, they have renamed themselves Inspiration Kitchens , and they assist more than 3,000 individuals and famiies through employment, housing and supportive service programs.

In this case, I need to thank Sarah Batka , who is not only a friend of the show, but who is an Illinois Master Gardener who I have been privileged to meet on several occasions, and who is also a volunteer at Ellis View Cooperative Garden in Chicago. She is now an advocate for Inspiration Kitchens and it couldn't be a better fit.

Frankly, I didn't know that Inspiration Kitchens was now operating just down the block from the Gafield Park Conservatory . If you're visiting the conservatory, which, as Beth Botts reported on this show a couple of weeks ago, is in need of funds to help repair storm damage from last spring, there's no reason why you shouldn't walk less than a block to the Inspiration Kitchen and be treated to a gourmet meal.

At the same time, you will be supporting a 13-week job training program that enables homeless individuals, ex-offenders and other low-income individuals to obtain career-track employment in the food industry. Students receive pre-employment instruction, restaurant training, sanitation certification, internship experience, and job-placement and follow-up support services.

In class, students learn knife skills, soups and sauces, baking and how to work with meats, poultry, fish, and vegetables. All students test for a City of Chicago and State of Illinois food service sanitation management certificates. Training also includes employment preparation, such as writing resumes and interviewing. During the thirteen week program, students should be prepared to train during brunch, lunch, dinner, and weekend shifts. They work along side chef instructors and graduates of the program to learn on the job.

Oh, and did I say that the food is wonderful ? Call 773.275.0626 for IK-Uptown or 773.801.1110 for IK-Garfield Park . They accept all major credit cards, encourage guests to BYOB, and offer free wireless Internet. In addition to Sarah, I'm joined today by Mike Webb and Master Gardener volunteer Anna-Marie Leon (who are both cultivating the small but productive garden outside of the restaurant), and Director Margaret Haywood .

Finishing the harvest at Sweet Home Organics

Even though I've never met Kim Marsin of Sweet Home Organics, she is my favorite organic farmer. That's possibly because she's willing to be on a radio program and talk about what it's like to be an organic-farmer-in-training. Regardless, we're getting to the tail end of the growing year at the fields she works with partner Rachel Reklau at Primrose Farm, which is part of the St. Charles Park District.

Today we heard stories of trying to grow tomatoes in fields that retain too much water. Can I see some hands out there from people who have been down that road? She also talked about the productivity of the broccoli plants, which, wonderously, continue to send up side stalks after the main florets are harvested.

The Sweet Home Organics farm stand will be up for one more week, so if you want to take advantage of local, healthy food, stop by. The address is 5N726 Crane Road (near the intersection of Crane and Bolcum) in St. Charles, Illinois.

Some stories I've been following that you might have missed

• Do urban "heat islands" skew climate change data? Apparently not.
• In June of 2009, the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill that legalized commercial food-scrap composting in Illinois. How are we doing so far? Um, not great.
• The planet's population just hit 7 billion. How do we feed it when there are 10 Billion, which is being predicted for the end of the century?. Grist says it can be done...but it won't be easy.
• With Farmers Market Season Winding Down, The Local Beet has some ideas on where to score fresh food.
• Chicago City Employees are handling the managed competition to retain their recycling jobs better than many people expected, according to the Sun-Times.
• Free Green Can, which I've talked about on this show, continues to show up in and around Chicago.

 

October 16, 2011

Food Day is October 24, and Elgin celebrates...a little early

It's quite possible that you haven't heard about something called Food Day, which will be celebrated on Monday, October 24. The organizers, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, have a goal of educating Americans about healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. Seems pretty reasonable to me, though, if it were that easy, nobody would be eating Cheetos.

At this point, there are thousands of events scheduled in homes, schools, churches, farmers markets, city halls and state capitals all across this great, wide land. In Illinois alone, you can find something near you pretty much anywhere in the state and nearby environs.

Elgin Green Drinks & Food is jumping the gun--in a good way--by presenting a two-day Food Day kick off and community awareness celebration called Mindful Mouthfuls: Back to Nature FOOD DAY Fair & Tasting in Elgin on Saturday and Sunday, October 22nd and 23rd. The admission is free, although the group is requesting a donation at the door of a jar or can of food for the hungry, which will be donated to Feeding Greater Elgin.

I'm delighted to have Elgin Green Drinks & Food founder and director Kathleen Haerr stop by today to talk about the event. She also runs Hear the Earth, a green essentials shop inside Simple Balance Holistic Center in Elgin, and is the force behind Local Green Connect, offering green living home and garden design, consultation, sustainability workshops and event coordination. Whew.

Anyway, you'll be hearing a lot about Food Day in the next week. I hope you hear it here first.

The Magnificent Mile® honors the best landscapes for 2011

It's hard to imagine Chicago without The Magnificent Mile® (and who knew that it was a copyrighted name?). Regardless of where you live in the city or suburbs, this stretch of businesses along North Michigan Avenue is a magnet for tourists from all over the world. Part of what gives this business district its appeal (aside from high-end retail goods), are the landscapes on parkways, in containers, and wherever else landscapers can squeeze in annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees amid the concrete and asphalt.

This doesn't happen by accident, of course. The Greater North Michigan Avenue Association (GNMAA) has been around since 1912 (!) as a private, non-profit membership organization charged with preserving, promoting, and enhancing a unique Chicago. Within that group is the Public Way Committee, which annually awards the properties with the best landscapes. I'm pleased that co-chair Erik Grossnickle, Arborist Representative at Bartlett Tree Experts, is on the program this morning.

This year, the Public Way Committee handed out 47 Beautification Awards during GNMAA's annual membership luncheon on September 28. The President's Award, the highest level of recognition, was given to the 669 North Michigan Avenue Building managed by U.S. Equities Realty, LLC. You can see some of their efforts on the left.

In the past, the Public Way Committee has only hosted garden walks during the spring, summer and fall seasons. However, if you've ever shopped along the Mile during the winter season, you know that efforts to spruce up the street don't stop when the weather gets cold. So the committee is adding a winter/holiday walk, which will create an opportunity to visit the gardens year round.

If you're like me, you wonder how the trees along the Mile manage to survive at all, with pedestrian traffic, reflected heat, lack of water and automobile and bus exhaust all combining to create a hostile environment.

So I was fascinated to hear that Bartlett Tree Experts conducted a tree inventory for The Magnificent Mile in late 2010. It was the first time a tree inventory had been conducted on The Magnificent Mile, and the team at Bartlett Tree Experts, led by Scott Jamieson (who is a regular listener to my show, thank you very much) and Erik Grossnickle, donated their time, talent and resources to perform the audit.

More than 300 trees were inventoried and data was collected including height, diameter, condition, species and more. This data has been submitted to the U.S. Forest Service, which will be able to provide statistics on the value of the trees, such as the ability to capture storm water and pollutants, cooling benefits and more. This information will be used to managed trees along the avenue now and in the future.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
What's squeezed more: orange juice or the consumer?

I have to thank Producer Heather Frey for this story, as she's the one who stumbled across an online article titled: Orange Juice a Luxury Item? REAL OJ Already Is on a website called Florida Citrus Mutual. If you want to know why she was reading that publication, you'll have to ask her.

Anyway, the point is that we know a lot less about the food--and drink--we consume every day than we should. Which should be no surprise to people who have been following the GMO controversy for the last decade or so.

Enter Alissa Hamilton, who wrote a book in 2009 called Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice, published by Yale University Press. In it, she answers questions like why so many people drink orange juice and how it turned from a luxury into a staple in just a few years (back in the 1960s) and why we don't really understand how it is produced.

The weird thing is that Hamilton's book came out more than two years ago, which is one of the things that the Florida Citrus Mutual article addresses. In fact, they wonder why this book and the ideas it illuminates didn't become viral at the time. I wonder that myself. For instance, the technology of where the flavor in orange juice originates is fascinating. As Hamilton writes in an article called
Freshly Squeezed: The Truth About Orange Juice in Boxes, which was published before the book came out:

The technology of choice at the moment is aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so it doesn't oxidize in the million gallon tanks in which it can be kept for upwards of a year.

When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren't listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor. Mexicans and Brazilians have a different palate. Flavor packs fabricated for juice geared to these markets therefore highlight different chemicals, the decanals say, or terpene compounds such as valencine .

I don't know about you, but the idea that my orange juice flavor is being provided by Calvin Klein makes me just a little bit queasy. Just sayin'.

 

October 9, 2011

The conservatory's future, cool green places to visit, our neighborhood national park, fall and winter veggies

Beth Botts

Once again, I'll be hosting the Mike Nowak gardening-and-greening radio show this Sunday while Mike goofs off. Actually, I think he's going to his high-school reunion. One of the big ones. Multiple decades. I hope his Twitter and Facebook friends won't waste the opportunity this presents for commentary and discussion.   

Meanwhile, a lively group of guests will join me Sunday from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT-AM 820 and FM 92.7 (north), 92.5 9 (west), & 99.9FM (south). And of course, streamed online to the world.  I last hosted the show a couple weeks ago; here's the podcast .

This week, I'll be chatting with Mary Eysenbach, director of conservatories for the Chicago Park District, who will fill us in on the state of the hail-damaged  Garfield Park Conservatory and plans for its future. "One Pane at a Time" is the theme for the fundraising campaign (donate online  here ) and parts of the conservatory are open for visitors. We'll find out from Mary what we can look forward to visiting this fall and winter while the repair work proceeds. And she'll give us the scoop on the Plant Rescue Sale Oct. 22.

The conservatory is one of the stops on Open House Chicago, an all-weekend free event Oct. 15-16 ("100 sites, 48 hours") that allows visitors behind-the-scenes tours of important and historic buildings and other sites in the city. We'll talk with somebody from the Chicago Architecture Foundation about the event's Green Trail , which includes 17 sites of special note for their environmentally-aware architecture or their interest for landscape design and architecture or gardening. The trail is one possible way to winnow down the choices in this great (free!) opportunity to see the city from new angles.  

Did you know there's an important national park an hour from downtown Chicago? A lot of people don't, which is one of the things I'll be talking about with Lynn McClure, Midwest regional director of the  National Parks Conservation Association , who will remind us of the wonders of  Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. I wrote a recent report for the NPCA about the future of the national park and one of the needs identified by the group's policy wonks is for more Chicago folks to discover, enjoy and support their neighborhood national park. Lynn will be able to talk about all there is to enjoy, including the first stretch of the Lake Michigan Water Trail , which leads from Chicago right there. Got a kayak? You also can take the train or even drive.

Angela Mason, director of community gardening for the  Chicago Botanic Garden, will talk to us about fall and winter vegetable growing. Is there anything you can still plant? How long can you leave root crops in the ground? How do you extend the season for greens? When should you harvest Brussels sprouts? She'll also talk to us about the garden's Windy City Harvest and Green Youth Farm  programs, which train workers for urban agriculture and work with teenagers to raise crops for farmer's markets. She'll let us know what they are harvesting and what are the good sellers this time of year.

And of course we'll have Rick Di Maio to tell us what to expect in the weather department (this balmy weather is getting me  nervous about my houseplants ).

Call in with your questions about fall and winter vegetable gardening or other topics during the show to to  773-838-WCPT (9278). 

You also can tweet your questions and comments to my Twitter feed ( @chicagogardener ) or Mike's ( @mikenow ) and, of course, there's Facebook.

Valiant producer Heather Frey and I will try desperately to keep up with all this social media while she pushes all the buttons and makes the sound effects and music and stuff happen and I try to remember which microphone I'm supposed to talk into.    

After the show, a podcast will be posted on Mike's web page, Mikenowak.net.

See you on the radio ....

 

October 2 , 2011

Marketing Miracle? Landreth Seed Co. fights on

I began tellilng the story of the historic D. Landreth Seed Company a few weeks ago, after reading posts by Mr. Brown Thumb and following activity on Twitter and Facebook.

Basically, the oldest seed house in America is in deep financial trouble and is on a mission to sell one million dollars' worth of catalogs in a very short time. Orginally, it was one month. Now, after weeks of good publicity in the traditional and social media, owner Barbara Melera, who I interviewed on September 11, thinks she may have bought herself another 60 days. She sent me a report of the developments in the past month. You can read the full report here. Here are some of the highlights:

The weekend of September 10-11, the orders started to ease, but our facebook genius, Christin, was contacting organizations like John Deere, ABC News, Oprah, etc. and our Fabulous Beekman Boys were lighting up TreeHugger and Planet Green. Mr.BrownThumb, a very popular Chicago-based blogger, made several posts, and during that weekend, on the Mike Nowak Radio Show in Chicago, I was invited to give an interview. By Monday, the order rate was again at about 1 per minute. Mike’s outreach to the Chicago community was impressive and sustained itself for almost 10 days.

Below is the comparison for facebook activity throughout the past month.

Date	9/6	9/15	9/20	9/26
Monthly Active Users	1301	3024	4538	6509
# of Likes	798	1788	2128	3189
Wall Posts	396	850	940	1138
Visits	3149	4934	2653	4428

Most of the orders (more than 80%) were either for more than 1 catalog or a catalog and other product. I do not have firm numbers right now, but it looks like the average order size was about $20.00.

We have only had 2 organizations place a bulk order for catalogs for their constituents. This has been the only disappointment in this effort and it has proven to be a real impediment to driving the numbers substantially higher. We currently have one order for 100 catalogs and one order for 60 catalogs. The catalog would make a great giveaway for any of the audience driven TV shows like Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, Emeril, etc.

I believe, but I do not know, that we have made enough progress, that we can buy our selves another 60 days. We’ll see. We have been selling catalogs one person at a time throughout America. I told you at the start that I have always felt this was America’s company. This process has been uniquely American and if it succeeds, it is beginning to look like it will be exclusively American.

Here are the numbers as of Saturday, October 1: $7,643 via chipin and $122, 096 in
online orders plus $635 phone orders. Total - $130,374.

They still have a long way to go, which is why I'm happy to have Barb on the program again this morning. Once again, here are various links that you can use to get the word out: Facebook sites Landreth Seed Co, Save Landreth Seed Company, Order their 2012 Catalog!, and probably more. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #savelandreth. If you just want to make a contribution, go to ChipIn.com and click the icon on the upper right hand side of the page.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals
Return to Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm

It's been almost nine months since we visited with Jody and Beth Osmund from Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm in Ottawa, Illinois. In their own words, "We raise and animals in ways that nurture and respect nature's systems." Cedar Valley is an old-fashioned family farm on the banks of Indian Creek, where Jody and Beth returned a few years ago to become sustainable farmers and raise their sons: Richard, Duncan and Jack. 

Here's their report on 2011 to date:

Our year has gone well, especially on the production end. Our meat chickens performed very well this season with better survivability and growth which allowed us to finish our season a few weeks early. Also, some small innovations on the farm paid big dividends in labor savings. CSA sales growth has slowed, however, our numbers are a bit ahead of last year. With more marketing efforts this fall and winter, we plan to spark more growth of the CSA. As part of that effort, Cedar Valley Sustainable Farmstays in touch with its customers and members through a Facebook page.

Jody continues his work on the Illinois Local, Food, Farms, and Jobs Council  to help foster our local food economy with the goal of all state institutions sourcing 20% of their food needs in IL by 2020. Policy wins in 2011 include passage of the Illinois Cottage Foods bill and the establishment of the the Illinois Farmers Market Task Force. The whole family participated in Illinois Stewardship Alliance's lobby day last spring--working for passage of these bills.

Along with Greg Gunthorp, an innovative hog and poultry grazier in Indiana, Jody is serving on a grant advisory panel for the Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT). The grants which will begin next spring, will help livestock farmers move toward more humane management practices that emphasize grazing. There will be a Fund-A-Farmer launch party October 24th at Uncommon Ground in Chicago at 7:00pm. Jody will speak about Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm's practices and its pioneering Meat CSA program.

Next week, Beth will continue to hone her organizational skills and explore future leadership roles by attending the White House Project's Go Run event in Northbrook, IL.

Jody & Beth continue other leadership roles serving on the vendor board for the Logan Square Farmers Market and serving as farmer faculty for CRAFT's Farm Beginnings farmer training program and the Michael Fields Agriculture Institute. They continue to guide the North Central Illinois Farmer Network greenfarmers. In January, Beth and Jody will be presenters at the Illinois Organic and Specialty Crop Conference. We are, also, a soccer family. CVSF sponsors a team. Jody coaches two rec. league teams, and their oldest has joined the Chicago Magic travel soccer club. Needless to say, our schedule is very full.

Yikes! And I thought I was busy. Not only that, but they wrote that whole report. I'm thinking of hiring Jody and Beth to do my website work each Saturday. Of course, I can't afford them. As always, my thanks to the great folks at Angelic Organics Learning Center for connecting me with great farms like Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm.

Eco-system restoration as a fall (and winter) sport

Stephen Packard is a bit of an icon in the Chicago and Midwest environmental community. He has long been involved with the National Audubon Society, Chicago Region, as well as Chicago Wilderness, The Nature Conservancy and more. He has developed programs of restoration and monitoring for tallgrass prairie, savanna, woodland and wetland ecosystems.

So I was surprised and pleased when I received an email from him this week asking me if I would be willing to talk about a first-of-its-kind restoration project at Deer Grove East in Palatine, which has its kickoff celebration this Saturday, October 8 at 10:00 a.m.

Packard joins me this morning and says that, in the past, when a concerned group of citizens wanted to restore a natural ecosystem to a developed area, it was often take decades of work with handsaws, loppers and people ripping out invasive annuals and perennials. But thanks to an infusion of $2.5 million from Openlands, the area was cleared with bulldozers, back hoes and brush clearing machines to re-establish the wetlands and generally get the project off to a running start.

This is a unique opportunity for residents, families and friends of all ages to learn how to be a preserve steward (or to help teach others, if you already know) for prairies, wetlands and woodlands. You can also work with experts like Packard, Doug Stotz (Field Museum ornithologist, author and Amazon explorer), Linda Masters (Openlands restoration ecologist who has been managing the professionals who've started the project), and Bill Koenig (Forest Preserve District volunteer coordinator). They will not be lecturing--instead, they will be giving one-on-one lessons about the ecosystems while you work with them. It sounds like a fabulous and unique opportunity.

For two years, professionals working with Openlands have cut 125 acres of brush, controlled 150 acres of noxious weeds, planted 52 acres of wetland and 66 acres of prairie and are working on 50 acres of oak woodland. Total project area so far: 175 acres. But this work just gets the ball rolling. Many of the most crucial parts over the next few years will depend on trained and empowered volunteers who will learn how to start on the 8th.

Here's how the day will work:

• Refreshments 10:00 AM -
  Gather just beyond the west end of the Deer Grove East parking area. 
  
• 10:15 AM - Short Informational Program
  
• 10:30 AM - Tours Begin (Dress for weather & possible wet or muddy ground)
  
• 11:30 AM - Return for Refreshments, Q&A, Meet the Experts
  
• Noon - Additional Tours available for interested parties

For directions and more information go to the Dear Grove East website, (still under construction). The reason for the headline of this article is that once work begins on a site like this, it never really ends. So be prepared to work through the fall, into the winter and beyond. But in the service of making the earth whole again, how can you really call it work?

Will Chicago finally get real recycling?

The world changes tomorrow. Well, perhaps only if you live in Chicago and you happen to have a blue recycling cart.

That's the day that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "managed competition" program starts. For the next six months, three groups will be engaged in a head to head to head battle for the right to run all or part of Chicago's recycling program: Department of Streets and Sanitation workers, Waste Management and Sims Metal Management Municipal Recycling. Before Richard M. Daley left office, his administration devised a plan to divide the city into six service areas, all of which were to be outsourced to private companies.

Mayor Emanuel modified that plan by assigning two of those areas to city employees to see if they can effectively compete with private companies. Waste Management is responsible for three areas and Sims has one. The City is giving all three groups exactly six months to prove that they can handle Chicago's recycling efficiently and, at the same time, help cut into the city's massive budget deficit. At that time, reportedly, a cost-benefit analysis will determine which group(s) will continue to handle recycling. (The map of how the city is divided into service areas is on the home page of this website.)

As you might know, I am the president of the Chicago Recycling Coalition (full disclosure: I do not receive a penny for my work there. I wish I did make money and I would be happy to disclose that, too.) We at the CRC have a few questions about this "competition" that will play out over the next six months.

Among the questions: What are the exact criteria for the cost-benefit analysis? How fair will the competition be, and how transparent? Is six months is enough time to determine whether a recycling group should be locked in for the next seven years? And on and on. Log onto the CRC website to keep abreast of what we discover over the next few months. Meanwhile, if you live in Chicago and want more information about the blue cart recycling changes, log onto the Chicago Recycling Coaltion or this City of Chicago web page.

 

September 25, 2011

A Word from Beth Botts, Sunday's host!

While you are lolling around in your bathrobe Sunday morning, you might as well turn on the radio. I'll be substitute hosting the Mike Nowak Show this week from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT-AM 820 and FM 92.7 (north), 92.5 9 (west), & 99.9FM (south). Mike seems to think he has something better to do.
This will be a heavy gardening show. My guests will include Glenda Daniel of Openlands, talking about the 20th anniversary of TreeKeepers; Breanne Heath of Growing Home , talking about composting and what to do with all those soon-to-fall leaves; and Ed Lyon from the University of Wisconsin, talking about bulbs, especially bulbs that are resistant to animals. At least somewhat resistant.

Call in with your questions to 773-838-9278, or post on Twitter to @mikenow or @chicagogardener (that's me).

I Think That I Shall Never See . . .

TreeKeepers is the highly successful and much-imitated volunteer urban forestry program. (Conflict of interest alert: I'm TreeKeeper No. 973. I have the T-shirt.) Glenda Daniel will talk about how the program came to be and about the 20th anniversary celebration to be held Sunday afternoon in Columbus Park, and will also hold forth on the proper care of trees (she doesn't like this ) and take questions. For information about the Historic Oaks Propagation Project or about becoming a TreeKeeper, go to Openlands TreeKeepers page .

Don't Toss Those Leaves!

Breanne Heath will help us understand how composting happens, what goes on in the compost pile over the winter, how to make the most of your leaves (and your neighbors' leaves) and what the heck is that thing in the picture. She'll also talk a bit about what Growing Home does, providing transitional job training in urban agriculture.

Squirrels say, "Nuts!' to These Bulbs

Ed Lyon, who is director of the Allen Centennial Gardens up there in Madison, will discuss which animals like bulbs, what possible defense you might have against them and what bulbs are somewhat less likely to become some furry thing's afternoon snack. He'll also field any other questions that might come up about bulbs.

And of course if you have any other garden questions to ask, call in and we'll field them or fake it. Heather Frey, intrepid producer, will be doing all the technical things and bailing me out of whatever rhetorical or legal difficulties I may get into. (Last time I was on the show I got stifled for using about four of George Carlin's seven words and endangering Mike's FCC license. But I'm trying to clean up my act.)

Altogether, we have striven (sorry, lapsed English major) to put together a show that will be sufficiently entertaining and informative to keep you more or less awake on Sunday morning.

The show also streams live (find the link here) to a worldwide audience including one guy who called in from Dusseldorf, Germany, last week. If it was worth his time to listen at whatever ungodly hour it was in Dusseldorf, Germany, it might be worth yours.

September 18, 2011

The 2011 STIHL Tour des Trees October 2!...but not in Chicago

Remember last year when we did the big broadcast from the Great Lawn at Millennium Park as the kickoff of the STIHL Tour des Trees and there were sixty-something riders in orange who road out of the city and across Illinois for about a week and Rolling Stones keyboard player Chuck Leavell was there and Producer Heather Frey got all excited about him playing for her and posted a video of it on Facebook and then I met the riders in Kewannee, Illinois, where we visited the historic Potter Osage-orange tree and then the riders came back to Chicago and wrapped up the whole thing at the Morton Arboretum?

You don't? Where the heck were you?

Regardless, another year has gone by and the TREE Fund .is launching its 2011 version of the bike ride. This year it's called the 2011 STIHL Tour des Trees VA2DC Tour and the action takes place on the East coast. The 2011 Tour kicks off with a 30-mile, 1-day Ride for Research presented by Mid-Atlantic STIHL in Virginia Beach, VA October 2, then heads west to Williamsburg, Richmond, Charlottesville and the Appalachians. Seven days and 500 miles later the Tour concludes with a triumphant entrance into Washington DC on October 8.

While, unless you live near Washington, D.C., you're not likely to be able to get out and cheer for the riders, you can still support Team Illinois by going to this page and making a contribution. You can also find other teams to support or just make a donation to the TREE Fund here. The TREE Fund provides research grants, scholarships and educational programs to advance knowledge in the field of arboriculture and urban forestry.

Mary DiCarlo, Fund Development Specialist and John Kirchner, City of Chicago forester, join me on the show this morning. They report that once again, Chuck Leavell will be tickling the ivories as part of the festivities in Virginia. In case you're not aware of his connection with trees, Leavell and wife Rose Lane White Leavell turned her family's plantation near Macon, Georgia, into what has become a textbook tree farm: Charlane Plantation. He's also behind The Mother Nature Network, a lively website featuring daily environmental news, green commentary and simple steps to save money, stay healthy, and support the planet.

National Public Lands Day at Churchill Park in Glen Ellyn

National Public Lands Day (NPLD) hasn't been around all that long--only since 1994, when it was created by by the National Environmental Education Foundation. However, in a very short time, it has become the nation's largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands in the United States. Last year, 170,000 volunteers worked at over 2,080 sites in every state, the District of Columbia and in many U.S. territories. And what did they accomplish?

* Removed an estimated 450 tons of trash
* Collected an estimated 20,000 pounds of invasive plants
* Built and maintained an estimated 1,320 miles of trails
* Planted an estimated 100,000 trees, shrubs and other native plants
* Contributed an estimated $15 million to improve public lands across the country

NPLD will be held next Saturday, September 24 throughout the country. I went to the NPLD website and searched for events in Illinois within a hundred miles of where I live in Chicago and came up with places like

Deer Grove Forest Preserve, Palatine
Forest Preserve District of DuPage County
Gompers Park, Chicago Park District
Taltree Arboretum & Gardens, Valparaiso, Indiana
Spring Valley Nature Center, Schaumburg Park District
Washington Park, Chicago Park District
Rollins Savanna, Lake County Forest District
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
Gordon Park Beerline Trail, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

There are many, many more that you can find on this page on the NPLD website.

I am pleased to say that I will be at Churchill Park in Glen Ellyn, a hidden gem featuring wetlands, prairie and wooded sections. I will say a few words to kick things off at 9:00 a.m. and after we wake people up following my speech, crew leaders will take volunteers out to help with three project areas (harvesting native seeds, planting trees, and trail work). Caribou Coffee is supplying brew, there will be light refreshments, and even small prairie seed packs and a prairie dropseed plant for the volunteers. At 11:00, it's time for an educational hike of the property.. Please wear appropriate clothing such as long pants and closed-toe shoes.

Renae Frigo, Naturalist with the Glen Ellyn Park District joins me this morning to preview the event to and encourage people everywhere to participate in this very worthy day of volunteering to help the environment.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals:
Nobody here but us chickens...and the people who raise them

Last year it was called the Hen-apalooza Chicagoland Chicken Coop Tour. This year it's the 2nd Annual Windy City Coop Tour (personally, I think they should have stuck with Hen-apalooza but most people think I'm a loose cannon, so there you go.)

Whatever you call it, the event is scheduled for three hours next Sunday, September 25. It's a chance for folks to get a look at what it's like to keep chickens for fun and, er, eggs. Chicago chicken keepers will teach you about their personal experiences with backyard chickens. You can visit their coops and hens, ask questions, and take photos. It's self-guided, so you can create your own route and visit any or all of the 26 locations between 11AM and 2PM.

In addition, Urban Chicken Consultant Jen Murtoff will give demonstrations of chicken handling and basic hen health at 3532 W. Belden (site #14) from during the same three hour period.

Last year, my friend and chicken owner Michelle Thoma talked to me about the first tour. This year, she is on the organizing committee and will join me once again. By the way, if this sound like something you have been thinking about, you might consider joining Chicago Chicken Enthusiasts. They're a network of backyard chicken enthusiasts in & around Chicago with some modest goals:

* Learning from each other and enjoying the flock of folks keeping city chickens
* Promoting and preserving city policies that allow backyard chickens
* Reaching out and teaching best practices, and dispelling myths

If you go to their site, you can join their discussion forum on the CCE Google group or even follow them on Facebook.

Landreth Seed Company follow up

For the past couple of weeks I've been following the plight of the oldest seed house in America, Landreth Seed Company. The company finds itself in deep financial trouble and needs to sell one million catalogs in the next month. I've written and talked on the show about how the social media community has stepped up to get the word out. Last week, I interviewed owner Barbara Melera about the dire situation. You can hear that conversation on this special podcast.

Meanwhile, the company has been posting updates of sales on its Facebook page, Landreth Seed Co. At last count, the status was $57,643 in sales and $1,633 on Chipin.com, which equals 11,855 catalogs. Sorry to belabor the obvious...but they have a LONG way to go.

You can help by BUYING A CATALOG RIGHT NOW!. Also, make your voice heard on social media sites. Here are a few: Facebook sites Landreth Seed Co, Save Landreth Seed Company, Order their 2012 Catalog!, and probably more. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #savelandreth. If you just want to make a contribution, go to ChipIn.com and click the icon on the upper right hand side of the page.

Caring for your fall vegetables

As we lurch into the fall season this week, I thought I'd pass along a great article I received from Diane Blazek at the National Garden Bureau. It's called, straightforwardely enough, "Frost Tolerance of Fall Vegetables." Especially if you live here in the Midwest, this will come in handy during the next few weeks.

 

September 11, 2011

The Poo Free Parks® empire expands in Chicagoland

This might be the most important statistic you learn today:

The American Pet association estimates that this country's seventy-one million pet dogs produce over 4.4 billion pounds of waste per year. That's enough to cover 900 football fields with 12 inches of dog waste!

See? I wasn't kidding. Here's another one:

Plastic pollution causes more than 1 million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and uncounted numbers of fish to die in the North Pacific alone, every year.

I tell you about those unhappy statistics as a kind of reintroduction to entrepreneur Bill Airy, who was on the show in April to talk about his business Poo Free Parks®. This company wants to rid our parks of animal waste, while reducing the amount of plastic that is released into our environment. Poo Free Parks is a public-private partnership that installs, supplies and maintains pet waste bag dispensers made from 100 percent recyclable aluminum, filled with 100 percent biodegradable bags designed to naturally deteriorate within 18 months.

Not only that , the dog waste dispensers are maintained weekly by crews driving hybrid vehicles. The service is completely subsidized by the contributions from sponsors, who are recognized for their support on signage attached to each station.

When I talked to Bill in April, he had just contracted with the Elmhurst Park District, where the stations now appear in 22 parks. I see that he has invaded the City of Chicago at Tails On Taylor, and has just signed with the Oakbrook Terrace Park District. In fact, the program is now under contract with over 120 parks in Colorado and the Chicago suburbs and, over the past nine months, more than 50,000 pounds or 25 tons of pet waste has been collected by dog owners using Poo Free Parks facitlies. Woof!

Autumn on the Prairie comes to Nachusa Grasslands

Well, technically, next week's event will take place on the last Saturday of summer, September 17, but I'm not going to bust the Friends of Nachusa Grasslands for jumping the gun a little bit. Especially because this annual event takes place on what some folks call 3,100 acres of nirvana--especially if you're a fan of prairies.

Illinois is called the Prairie State, but you wouldn't know it from the amount of prairie that remains. Nachusa Grasslands is an attempt to preserve some of that land for present and future generations. The 3100 acres consist of prairie remnants, restorations, and reconstructions located between Oregon, Dixon and Franklin Grove, IL. The Nature Conservancy has gradually recreated a vision of 1800 Illinois' mosaic of prairie, savanna and wetlands.

Hundreds of dedicated volunteers have collected seed to replant former corn and bean fields. They also devote their time to removing non-Illinois plants. Thanks to all of these efforts, Nachusa Grasslands is home to over 600 native prairie plant species as well as many important birds, insects, and reptiles.

Bill Kleiman is one of those people on the front lines of preserving our prairies. Not only is he Nachusa Grasslands Director, he is also a volunteer steward of the land. He stops by the show this morning to promote Nachusa Grasslands 22nd Autumn on the Prairie on Saturday, September 17, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

It's free and open to the public. Activities include guided tours, horse drawn wagon rides, live music, kettle corn, live birds of prey, local artist at work, children’s tent, a food vendor, and more! For more information, visit www.nature.org/Illinois or call 815-456-2340. And if you want to support Nachusa Grasslands, click here.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals:
Saving Landreth Seed Company one catalog at a time

Last week I explained how gardeners and horticulturists on Facebook and Twitter had sounded the alarm in an effort to save the oldest seed house in America, Landreth Seed Company. The company finds itself in deep financial trouble and needs to sell one million catalogs in the next month just to keep their doors open. No, I'm not making this up. Here's what I posted last week, directly from Landreth owner Barbara Melera:

My husband, Peter, and I have been working to restore this historic American company for the past 8 years.

On Wednesday, August 31, 2011, the Company’s accounts were frozen by a garnishment order initiated by a Baltimore law firm. If this garnishment order is not satisfied within the next 30 days, Landreth will cease to exist and a part of America’s history will be lost forever. I need to sell 1 million 2012 catalogs to satisfy this garnishment and the cascade of other indebtedness which this order has now initiated.

If you want to help save this piece of America, if you love gardening and heirloom seeds, if you care about righting the injustices of a legal system badly in need of repair, then please help Landreth. Please purchase a Landreth catalog, and if you can afford it, purchase several for your friends. Please send this link to everyone you know, www.landrethseeds.com. One million catalogs is a big number, but with the internet it is achievable. Please help us to save Landreth.

There are two things here that almost take my breath away. The first is the Herculean task of selling that many catalogs in such a short time. The second is how evil our financial system has become.

And yet, there's still hope. Owner Barbara Melera will be on the show this morning. During a phone conversation I had with her a couple of days ago, she told me that in the first few days after the social media folks began putting out the word, the company received an order every 10 minutes. I few days later, it was up to an order every 5 minutes. By Wednesday of this week, they were averaging one order every minute.

In a sense, this is the perfect "Ten Years After 9/11" story, because it's not about how morally small and shriveled we have become as a society. It's about an honorable company that has been doing honorable work since this country was founded. It's about how gardeners cherish the heritage of open-pollinated plants and how they will fight for their literal survival. It's about how smart people kinow that the future of our food should not be determined by how many alien genes we can cram into a seed. It's about looking at the past as present and future, in a positive way.

As I said last week, you can help if you BUY A CATALOG RIGHT NOW!. Also, make your voice heard on social media sites. Here are a few: Facebook sites Landreth Seed Co, Save Landreth Seed Company, Order their 2012 Catalog!, and probably more. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #savelandreth.

 

September 4 , 2011

Logan Square Kitchen update

Last week I talked about the hoops of fire that Zina Murray, who is literally chief cook and bottle washer at the Logan Square Kitchen has been jumping through to keep her facility operating in the City of Chicago. After months of having her shared kitchen space harassed by the Chicago Department of Public Health, Murray decided that she had had enough and started a petition to make the Department of Public Health more responsible to innovative businesses like hers, which gives food entrepreneurs access to a commercial kitchen on an hourly basis.

I've decided to add a link to her petition on my home page. The icon keeps you up to date on the number of people who have signed the online document. (At this writing, more than 550 concerned individuals had signed the petition in little over a week.)

You might think that spending endless hours fighting CDPH and finally resorting to calling out the city in a public petition would be all that a small entrepreneur would have to endure.

But you would be wrong.

The Department of Public Health is not the only agency that has been making Murray's life one massive Excedrin headache. Last week, I wrote about how City Council had recently passed a new Shared Kitchens Ordinance. It went into effect on September 1, and its goal was to streamline the licensing process for kitchens like LSK. Did I mention that there are now only TWO shared kitchens in Chicago? It's not exactly the easiest way to make a living. So, in essence, the new ordinance was passed to regulate exactly TWO businesses in the city.

Enter the Chicago Department of Business Affairs, which is yet another agency that has the power to stop a budding business dead in its tracks. And if you read Murray's latest LSK blog, you might be convinced that that's exactly what they have in mind. She reveals a litany of unreasonable demands from Business Affairs, which include

1. The business license will take the form of a picture ID badge, so owner and license must always be in Kitchen during production. If restaurants had to do this, the owner would have to be in kitchen for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day or be closed. Sick? Funeral? Your business has to shut down, even if you have employees with sanitation certification.

2. Want to grow and have employees? They have to get their own license, $330 per pop. No other food businesses are required to license chefs individually.

3. License must travel with you to remote locations. Let's imagine the chefs at Lollapallooza posting their business licenses out at the concert. How about every caterer that has a gig at the Chicago Cultural Center or Public Library?

And that's just the beginning. She finishes by saying

Today is Logan Square Kitchen's second birthday. A year ago, there were three shared kitchen in Chicago. Today, there are two. You can bet no one else is rushing to open one. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never opened LSK.

What the City is doing to this woman is unconscionable. You might want to drop Mayor Rahm Emanuel a note on the Chicago Mayor's Office Facebook page to let him know that you know B.S. when you see it.

Do you love heirlooms? Save Landreth Seed Company!

There has been an explosion of activity on Facebook and Twitter in the last few days over the news that the oldest seed house in America, Landreth Seed Company, is in deep financial trouble and might go under. I'll let company owner Barbara Melera tell the story:

My husband, Peter, and I have been working to restore this historic American company for the past 8 years.

... We set about to restore this Company because it is the most historically important American small business in existence. It is the only American company, still operating daily, that existed when this country became a nation. Its founders were honorable men who helped establish and guide the agricultural and horticultural industries of this country in the 1700s, the 1800s and the 1900s. Landreth exemplifies American business and the ethics and integrity that built this nation.

On Wednesday, August 31, 2011, the Company’s accounts were frozen by a garnishment order initiated by a Baltimore law firm. If this garnishment order is not satisfied within the next 30 days, Landreth will cease to exist and a part of America’s history will be lost forever. I need to sell 1 million 2012 catalogs to satisfy this garnishment and the cascade of other indebtedness which this order has now initiated.

If you want to help save this piece of America, if you love gardening and heirloom seeds, if you care about righting the injustices of a legal system badly in need of repair, then please help Landreth. Please purchase a Landreth catalog, and if you can afford it, purchase several for your friends. Please send this link to everyone you know, www.landrethseeds.com. One million catalogs is a big number, but with the internet it is achievable. Please help us to save Landreth.

Mr. Brown Thumb also has an informative post which reveals that not only is Landreth one of the few woman-owned seed companies in America, it also has an African-American Hertiage seed line.

This already has echoes of what happened just a few short weeks ago when Sid's Greenhouses were forced to close their doors. In that case, it was the banksters who pulled the trigger. In this case, it seems to be the lawyers. Yup, two of everybody's favorite groups--banks and lawyers.

So what can you do? Obviously, BUY A CATALOG RIGHT NOW!. The social media are all over this, with Facebook sites Landreth Seed Co, Save Landreth Seed Company, Save Landreth Seed Company, Order their 2012 Catalog!, and probably more. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #savelandreth.

It's a measure of how well loved this company is that even their competitors are urging people to buy catalogs to save the company.

Openlands Lakeshore Preserve prepares for its grand opening

It was eight short months ago that I was trudging through snow drifts on the shore of Lake Michigan just 25 miles north of Chicago. It was an opportunity to see how Openlands was reviving, restoring and recreating a preciously rare fresh water lake ravine ecosystem.

Many people in northeast Illinois have always known this area along Lake Michigan as Ft. Sheridan. Geologically speaking, it lies on part of the Highland Park moraine, which formed as the final glacier retreated from northern Illinois about 10,000 years ago. And it's part of the Lake Border Moraines Bluff Coast, a hilly area that extends from the town of North Chicago at the north end to Winnetka at the south. At that point that the land flattens out again and remains relatively even through Wilmette, Evanston, and on into Chicago.

From 1888 to 1993, Ft. Sheridan was a U.S. Army military base. When the base was closed under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Act of 1989, the land was dispersed among the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the newly-created town of Ft. Sheridan and the Lake County Forest Preserve District. Later, in 2004, a federal law authorized the transfer of the bluffs, ravines, and shoreline at Fort Sheridan to a non-profit land conservation organization for the purpose of providing permanent protection. In 2006 Openlands acquired the land and, nn 2007 two major grants—$4 million from the Grand Victoria Foundation and $2 million from the Hamill Family Foundation— jump-started the first phase of site improvements at the Preserve, which focused on extensive ecosystem restoration efforts in Bartlett Ravine.

That winding stretch of land has been renamed the Openlands Lakeshore Preserve, and the tour I took in February was Bartlett Ravine, with guides Robert Megquier, Director of Land Preservation, and Aimee Collins, Openlands Lakeshore Preserve Site Manager.

A few days ago, I returned, and you can see the video slide show of the tour on the home page. Aimee again led the way, but because this was a mere week before the grand opening celebration, we ran into Robert Megquier on site. As you can see in the slide show, workers were feverishly putting the finishing touches on the preserve, in anticipation of officially opening the gates on Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 11:00 a.m.

The Grand Opening of the Openlands Lakeshore Preserve will feature children's art activities and scavenger hunt, birds of prey demonstration, stunt kite demonstration (with intermittent breaks, please bring your own kite(s) for flying), tours of the preserve (plants, art, and general), and even tours in Spanish Spanish). Click on this link to get directions. The event is free and open to the public.

What you'll see are 77 acres of varied terrain, including three lush ravines, towering bluffs (some rising 70 feet above the beach) with overlooks affording sweeping lake vistas, and an innovative interpretive plan that helps visitors understand and connect with this truly unique environment.

As in February Openlands President and CEO Jerry Adelmann will stop by the show today to talk about this magnificent accomplishment. To date, Openlands has raised $10.3 million of the $12 million required to complete the project from corporations, foundations, and individuals. If you would like to contribute to the Campaign for the Openlands Lakeshore Preserve, please contact Openlands Director of Development Jennifer Mullman via e-mail or by phone at 312-863-6261.

If you have a little more cash to contribute to the project, you might want to consider attending La Grande Preserve: A Benefit for the Openlands Lakeshore Preserve, a week from today at the preserve. It starts at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m., but you'll get a special tour of the trails, overlooks and ravines and enjoy a delicious picnic by Froggy’s catering. Proceeds from the event will support ongoing ecological restoration and public education programs at the Preserve.

Sustainable Food Fundamentals:
Another visit from organic trailblazer Kinnikinnick Farm

I haven't talked to David Cleverdon of Kinnikinnick Farm in Caledonia, Illinois, since last March when he told me stories about what it was like to be an organic farmer in Illinois in the "old days"--1994. He said when he would offer his vegetables at the Rockford Farmers market, people would see his sign, say something like " He's that organic guy," and continue walking by.

Well, I won't say that he's in the mainstream now, but he's a lot closer than he was 17 years ago. But farming is farming, whether you're doing it organically or not, and one of the big challenges is weather. In fact, when I caught up with David yesterday to confirm his spot on today's show, he told me that dealing with weather issues over the past few years has caused him to change the way he runs his operation.

I tried to ask him more about that but he said he was dealing with a group of children who were milking a goat. I feel his pain. When we talk today, I guess I'll ask him about that, too.

By the way, Kinnikinnick Farm is an established, cerified, organic farm that sells produce directly to Chicago chefs and farmers market customers. The farm grows a wide variety of greens, heirloom tomatoes, root crops, and seasonal vegetables starting with asparagus and snap peas in the Spring and ending with butternut squash and sun-chokes in the Fall.

They sell their produce every Wednesday in Chicago at the Green City Market in Lincoln Park and every Saturday at the Evanston Farmers Market, corner of University Place & Oak Ave.

JULY/AUGUST SHOWS