Grow Local * Eat Local * Feed Your Neighbor - Neighborhood Nutrition Centers aids those who need nutritional assistance by providing locally grown, neighbor-fresh produce, and provides educational resources for community members. Through Community Garden Partnerships and the One Square Foot program, community and back yard growers dedicate a portion of their gardens to produce food that is distributed through local food pantries. Neighborhood Nutrition Centers currently operates under the fiscal agency of Center for Economic Policy Analysis, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
Waters Elementary School Community Gardens potatoes, boiled slightly and topped with Neighborhood Nutrition Center dried thyme. So soft. So delicious (an hour from harvest). Angelic Organics lettuce and tomato (added salt, pepper and balsamic). And a YELLOW watermelon from Angelic Organics for dessert. Sweet and juicy.
SATURDAY, August 20 @ 9:00am – 11:00am
Hermitage Site Volunteer Day
Help claim a section of yard for additional garden area
Weed and trim yard sections surrounding the NNC Garden
Interested? E-mail Les@NNCenters.org for directions
SUNDAY/MONDAY, August 21 & 22
First harvest collection and distribution
Stay tuned for details
THURSDAY, August 25 @ 6:30pm
Building a Local Food System
Session II
Continuing on the great response in July, this will be the second in a monthly series of meetings to discuss next steps in distributing food to people who need nutritional assistance. We will also discuss questions, comments, trials and success with starting fall crop seedlings
Beans & Bagels, 2601 West Leland (at Rockwell)
THURSDAY, September 15 @ 6:30pm
Neighborhood Nutrition Centers
Benefit Night
Red Lion, Lincoln Square
4749 North Rockwell Street
Tickets $25 – $150
Grow Local * Eat Local * Feed Your Neighbor
SAVE THE DATE
To Benefit
Neighborhood Nutrition Centers
Thursday, September 15, 2011
6:30pm
Red Lion,
Lincoln Square
Executive Director Les Kniskern
will be speaking on
“Building a Local Food System”
at the Greater Rockwell Organization
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
7:30pm
Luther Memorial Church, 2500 West Wilson Ave (at Campbell)
BRING your own knowledge to share about gardening
DISCOVER NNC’s One Square Foot program and how to become involved
LEARN about COLE CROPS and planting food for this fall’s harvest
TEST your soil and “know in what you grow”
DETERMINE where local food donations are to be made, and
DONATE a portion of your produce to families in need of better nutrition
Neighborhood Nutrition Centers operates under the fiscal agency of Center for Economic Policy Analysis, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
Participants engage at Building a Local Food System
On a hot, hot July day in Chicago eighteen local residents and interested parties joined Executive Director, Les Kniskern, in discussing Building a Local Food System.
The event was held at Beans & Bagels on Rockwell (at Leland) with generous support by Adam Snow.
Kniskern talks dirty on soil testing
The hour-long event covered topics as:
What is a Local Food System?
What are the components?
“Dirty Talk” about Soil Testing
What are Cole Crops, and when to plant them?
Jake, a 25 year back yard gardener, registers for the event
Several attendees signed up and got their own seeds to start for fall crop planting.
All participants received fresh herbs, organically grown by NNC at the A&B Farm in Chelsea, MI.
Fresh herbs, organically grown by NNC
Following the event, half the crowd wandered to The Red Lion for a pint, and a continuing discussion.
Watch for next month’s meeting.
There will be a community informational meeting on the One Square Foot program and building a local food system on Thursday, July 21 @ 6:30pm.
For more information, view your invitation here: You Are Invited
Lovely notice on facebook for organic herbs supplied by Neighborhood Nutrition Centers to the local Red Lion:
To follow the thread, click here.
We give up meat, he thought, contemplating the future of the world. We give up meat. He’d been reading a book entitled “Veganist” by Kathy Freston, and what caught his eye, what prodded him to sit down and write was the following discussion with Michael, MD, on Factory Farming and Superbugs in her book:
“KF: Where does E. Coli come from and how does it get into food? Why is it often found on vegetables?”
MG: E. Coli is an intestinal pathogen. It only gets in the food if fecal matter gets in the food. Since plants don’t have intestines, all E. Coli infections – in fact all food poisoning – comes from animals. When’s the last time you heard of anyone getting Dutch elm disease or a really bad case of aphids? People don’t get plant diseases; they get animal diseases. The problem is that because of the number of animals raised today, a billion tons of manure is produced every year in the United States – the weight of 10,000 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Dairy cow and pig factories often dump millions of gallons of putrefying waste into massive open-air cesspits, which can leak and contaminate water used to irrigate our crops. That’s how a deadly fecal pathogen like E. Coli 0157:H7 can end up contaminating our spinach. So regardless of what we eat, we all need to fight against the expansion of factory farming in our communities, our nation, and around the world.”
(Veganist, Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World, Kathy Freston, Weinstein Books, 2011, pgs, 116-117)
He thought, too, of the consequences of weaning off meat. What would the poor ranchers do? There must be incentive farming to aid farmers and ranchers to restore a portion of their land to free range farming, and free range cattle. Stop. He couldn’t help thinking about how the good doctor said that animal poop is the cause. But what about free range cows, doesn’t that endanger the crop? Certainly not. It’s not being held in a cement cesspool with no way to decompose back into nutrients for the soil. It just plops out of the cow’s butt, and the bugs and the dirt, and the worms and the cycle of farming, turns it back into nutrient-rich soil.
He thought again about not eating meat. Certainly not the CAFO kind. No kind, for right now.
Click on our link to receive your invitation to the GARDEN TEA OPEN HOUSE
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Lincoln Square Community Garden
4811 N Western
drop by between 11:00am-2:00pm
click here:
One Square Foot flyer- GARDEN TEA
Had the wonderful opportunity to man a table for Advocates for Urban Agriculture http://auachicago.org/ at the Garfield Park Conservatory http://www.garfield-conservatory.org/ for two hours today.
Conversations ranged from what is AUA, to how do I start a garden, to my church group wants to grow food, to what happens if…? Everybody had a map, and at each table you could get your map stamped, validating your visit. All the kids were filling them up. Parents, too. I finally had to ask what you get if you filled all the spots? – turns out, you get a tattoo stamp of a ladybug or something. But the kids were into it. It was kind of like a treasure hunt.
In between the mayhem of stamping parents’ and kids’ maps, there were fascinating conversations.
My favorite came from the man who wanted to grow a tomato plant on his back porch. He’d decided there was too much shade from the tree in the yard and had a pot to plant in. But he felt he was too late to start from seed – yea, probably, but he was very eager to try something. I suggested getting an already started tomato plant. He liked that idea but wasn’t sure… “how much is a tomato plant? $20, $30, $40…. $50, I don’t know.”
How relieved he was when I said, “maybe five bucks.” I don’t know the cost of a tomato plant, but today I was an Ambassador to experiencing gardening. That’s what counted.
I admire this man. He was upfront and he truly didn’t know. But look how far we’ve come away from growing food. The distance expands between understanding what it means to grow and get food and what appears on the plate. We’re searching again for our connection to the earth, precarious as she may seem, by putting a tomato in a pot.
“Victory Gardens!,” one lady cried. Another had a bag stuffed full with literature, she was determined on learning how to garden.
Other conversations were uplifting in meeting a young man whose mentor seemed to be encouraging him to become an organizer. We had a long discussion about what is policy, what is an ordinance, what is urban agriculture?
What is it? I’m just learning.
The following was posted on the AUA list serve – which is open to anyone who would like to join the AUA google group.
“I post on open AUA with slight hesitation, but I’d like to focus on water for a moment.
“With good fortune I was able to attend an event at Goodman Theatre
presented by Arts Power Chicago – centering around funding agendas for arts in Chicago.
“What made news was Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel’s appearance and comments about property taxes for not-for-profits. That turns out not to be on the table, but water is.
“‘So if – I just want you to understand this – I’m going to change the
way we – non-profits and charitables don’t pay for water today,’
Emanuel said. ‘That’s going to change. I was clear about that in the
campaign. And there’s a lot of good non-profits and charitables, but
they get a tax benefit, they get a benefit on the tax side. And given
the changes we’ve got to make, and given the sacrifices I’m going to
ask from everybody, nobody is in a sacrifice-free zone.’
– Rahm Emanuel as reported at
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/04/emanuel-talks-taxes-to-the-arts-crowd.html
and viewed on 4/30/11.
“Will this affect community gardens getting water from the city? Does
it affect NeighborSpace and its procurement of land and water rights?
Do we have potential instances where not-for-profit gardens will be
affected?
“I don’t know.”
To join the conversation go to http://auachicago.org/ and click on “Click here to join the discussion,” under the Google Groups logo. If you would like to follow the comments, or make any comments yourself – stop by the AUA site.
It was, overall, a fantastic day.