Along with a team of three other volunteers, I stood in the packed central hall of the Historical Society of Washington wearing a fluorescent yellow vest. In this eye-catching get-up, I attracted person after person ready to trade me a completed attendee profile for a lunch ticket. The forms, designed to help Rooting DC’s organizers understand the interests and backgrounds of those who attended, gave participants a brief chance to reflect on their own motivations for showing up. As a collector of these profile sheets, I felt like a pollen-rich flower in a field full of bees!

Volunteering at the third annual Rooting DC conference (which was totally free for anyone to attend!), I came into contact with so much positive energy from participants, vendors, and other volunteer workers, I couldn’t help but anticipate the pulse of a new growing season.

During the hour or so between the doors opening and the start of the first session, I gathered much more than a stack of papers with information about who was attending the event. I had the chance to soak up the excitement of 500 urban gardeners, food justice advocates, nutrition educators, community leaders, and good food eaters from DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

Each person was there for a slightly different reason. Some came to learn about growing specialty crops from Africa and the Caribbean or preparing healthy meals with garden-fresh ingredients. Others came to hear about the history and future of urban agriculture or social enterprise strategies for increasing food equality. Some planned to attend a presentation in Spanish on container gardening or nutrition. The youngest ones had a fun day of garden-related crafts waiting for them in the kids’ room.

But everyone seemed to bring a little bit of the same thing: a sense of hope about the future of DC’s foodscape and a willingness to get their hands dirty to make it happen.

If the buzz at Rooting DC this past Saturday proved anything, it’s that Washington is ready for spring. Not just for the snow to melt and streets and sidewalks to become fully passable again, but for the soil to be turned, seeds to go in the ground, networks to grow, and ideas to flourish. The combined passions of everyone coming through those doors filled that high-ceilinged room with a spirit of community that made me feel like we could certainly accomplish our goals. Fresh local food in schools, chickens in backyards, a new fleet of food carts serving quick and wholesome lunches, vacant ground transformed into lush garden space—we can do it!

That morning, before Rooting DC had even really begun, I knew it was going to be a good day…and a great year to get busy planting, tending, harvesting, and sharing the fruits of our labor. My first job for spring? Planting some lettuce mix, Tatsoi, and Minutina in pots for my very own balcony salad bar.

Part 3 of the WYG’s Garden Science series. (Science. It’s Back [part 1]; Life Cycle of a Child [part 2])

Center City third grade. First class of the week. Team Basil and I are playing in the dirt. Discussing soil. Isaiah says that he doesn’t like the smell of dirt. He likes the smell of fried chicken. We disagree on this topic. Eventually we resolve our differences, agreeing that the smell of chicken in the forest would be pleasurable.

It is our third week of programming, and we are discussing what plants need to survive. The answers we seek are the fundamentals – air, water, light, food, soil. Before disclosing this precious information, we appeal to the class for ideas. To them, the question is posed, “what do plants eat.?” Immediately, as if we had asked on what planet we are sitting, the entire class, in unison, with enthusiasm equal to that if we had asked for volunteers to demonstrate how to eat an entire chocolate cake in 15 seconds, shouts: “TREES!!”

Curious.

At Imagine Hope, our Wednesday school, we had to cram in two lessons this week on account of the Snowlycowtheresalotofsnow days. The students are dissecting soaked bean seeds. They are looking for the sprouted root and leaves inside of the cotyledons. There is the usual snickering because the beans smell like farts and are slimy. After a moment, though, a lovely occurrence occurs.

“Hey! Look! I found it! Me too! I found them!”

The gleeful outbursts begin to waft up from the general classroom area. Like, like snowflakes or raindrops, falling steadily, scattering around the room. That doesn’t quite work… like a sprinkling of water droplets, landing gently on a smooth surface of water, “yes!’s” ring out, the resultant rippling enthusiasm encouraging their classmates to send their own droplets, their own ripples back out into the class. A contained cacophony of bean-themed exclamations – this is the sound of children getting excited about learning.

After Kacie announced to our first class at Imagine Hope that we would be planting seeds on that glorious day, Jahmes (jah-mez) volunteers the tidbit that okra is his favorite vegetable. Jane (a made up name, because I can’t remember her real name) sneers from across the room. Jahmes clicks his tongue, throws his head back and responds: “aww you crazy, you don’t know what okra is? It’s a pointy vegetable with little black dots….um, seeds, inside (seeds were part of our lesson last week. Big points for Jahmes for working this into his put-down), and its real slippery and gooey and it can be fried or you can eat it regular.

At this, I smiled. Way to go Jahmes. Way to stand up for okra. Way to stand up for yourself. Most of all, way to stand up for foods with unconventional textures.

At Center City, we played in the dirt hard (after completing all of our educational duties, of course). We made a dirt castle with four popsicle stick drawbridges (every member of the royal family needs their own popsicle stick drawbridge), and a moat. The moat wasn’t very successful. Unless our measure of success was creating a giant tray of mud. In that sense, we were hugely successful. Needless to say, once the funding dried up on the moat project, a good hand washing was necessary.

I accompanied my team downstairs to the bathrooms, with the intention of washing my hands as well. The girls went to the girls’ bathroom. I asked Isaiah about the location of the bathroom.

“Isaiah, where is the bathroom?”

He looks up at me, and stares an odd, apprehensive stare, and says nothing. Odd…

After a moment of locked eyes, he moves in the direction of what turns out to be the boys’ room. There is a teacher waiting for her students at the door. As I pass this teacher, entering the boys’ bathroom with a young boy, it hits me.

Good god! I’m a perv! Does it count if I didn’t know? That must be what the stare was about he didn’t want me to come into the bathroom with him cuz its pervy and adults don’t use the boys room adults use the mens room because little boys use the boys room and only pervs would want to use the boys room with little boys. Good LORD what have I done?!

I hesitate just as I pass her, looking for any discernable traces of disapproval. Any eye twitches or mouth-corners heading south. I linger just long enough for my smile to fade and the atmosphere become awkward. No sign of objection…and I’m in the boys’ room.

Everything turned out fine. I washed my hands. Isaiah washed his hands. One of the kindergarteners the teacher was waiting for walked out with his pants undone. Everybody wins. Turns out I’m not a perv, but adults usually use the adult bathroom.

Franklin and I are holding hands. Well, I am holding Franklin’s hands, which wriggle wildly in mine, trying to free themselves. Franklin’s teeth shine behind his broad smile. There is a small speck of dirt on his right cheek. He’s talking about gettin’ bad guys or mud popsicles or how you plant seeds in space. I’m talking about putting basil seeds in little plastic cups with dirt. At least I’m trying.

Osagie (oh-sah-jee), sits between us saying ‘can I hold your hand? Can you hold my hand? Will you hold my hand? So I hold Osagie’s hand and he squeals, pulling them away, smile bursting onto his face, soil flecks flying into the air like an ocean mist.

Franklin’s the bad boy kind. Generally indifferent, always talkative. Very capable, very smart. Franklin liked playing in the dirt. Franklin couldn’t stop demonstrating the life cycle of plants in the dirt with his fingers. To get Franklin to pay attention, I threatened to hold Franklin’s hand. To get Franklin to calm down, I held Franklin’s hand. He shrieked and made a scene, like cool kids do, because he liked it. But not as much as he liked planting seeds.

If you have any questions, comments, general concerns, or would like to help assuage my fears of being a perv, you can contact me at aplotsky@washingtonyouthgarden.org

Robert Egger at Rooting DC 2010 from Barrett Jones on Vimeo.

By Robert Thomason

With the blizzard snow beginning to melt outside, Robert Egger leaned against a stage before a full house-audience and popped off statistics and benchmarks about food security in America like the curator of a museum on food and hunger.

The cost of a new quality kitchen is $300 per square foot, a big stretch for many local communities who need sizable spaces, said Egger, president of the D.C. Central Kitchen. The Federal government spends $16 million promoting its healthy Food Pyramid concept compared to the hundreds of millions spent on commercial advertising for all types of food. And despite persistent hunger in some sectors, about 25 percent of the food purchased in America winds up being discarded.  

But the numbers that have affected this city over the last few weeks were ones of his own making. Egger told the Rooting DC conference that during the blizzard, which shut down most of the city, DC Central Kitchen not only maintained its daily offerings of 4,000 meals, but added an extra 2,300 daily meals to address the additional needs of the emergency. In all, 45,000 plates were put before the needy during the worst snowstorm D.C. has seen in over 100 years.

The specific effort during the blizzard week were effective, but Egger said that as a whole food security and anti-hunger efforts are facing issues that could challenge their sustainability. For instance, culinary and hospitality schools are training their graduates in sophisticated inventory control systems. This means kitchens have smaller food surpluses at the end of the day and, thus, less to contribute to food pantries or kitchens for the needy.

Forty million Americans run out of food at least once a month, said Egger. Much of the reasons stem from “dumb” practices that extend from the way that nutritional value is often ignored to the fact that food that is not cosmetically or picture perfect (a bent carrot for instance) is generally rejected. “I love my work but hate my business,” he told the audience.

But then he started working the numbers again to suggest a solution. Each day 12,000 Americans turn 60 and Meals on Wheels, an elderly food program, has large waiting lists as a result. Most college students have spent about a year in public service before they started their freshman year. And there are 60,000 school cafeterias in the country that shut down
around 1 p.m. each school day and stay dormant until the next morning.

To Egger, these factoids blend together well and form the recipe for a program that would help the elderly. Why not, he suggested to the audience, form after-school cooking clubs in which students, who are already at school, help prepare meals for the elderly. The older students could drive the meals to seniors or, better yet to Egger’s mind, the seniors could come to the school cafeteria and break bread with the teen-age students in an inter-generational meal.

The elders in America have the deepest well of life experience in history, he said, and simultaneously the youth are becoming accustomed to community service. Egger submitted that these two phenomena create a perfect storm. “This is a once in a millennium opportunity,” he said.

Thomason publishes GlobalResourcesNews.com, a site on ecology and economics.

Photo credit and lots of gratitude go to Beverlie Lord of Satsun Photography for the images above.

By Toni (DC resident, beekeeper, and author of City Bees Blogspot)

Last year, when the Obamas accepted the offer of a beehive for the White House kitchen garden, Mayor Fenty also opened one of DC’s own youth gardens to beekeeping. In June 2009, a happy family of honeybees began zooming around the blooms at and around the Lederer Youth Garden on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE.  The bees have flourished there, and their presence yielded yet another golden harvest; The Whole Planet Foundation (of Whole Foods Markets) gave DC Parks & Rec a grant of $25,000 for additional gardens at recreation centers around the city, with $5,000 designated for beehives and beekeeping education. Soon, honeybees will be pollinating and supporting the green spaces at 5 additional locations around the city.

Many believe that keeping bees may be the most powerful single contribution an urban dweller can make to the quality and viability of the surrounding environment. Most of us associate bees with crops and farming in rural settings, but every plant that sets a bloom needs pollination, and those plants are the basis for life for the entire spectrum of living things around us. In addition to providing food and habitat, plants which require pollination clean our air and water, and if they do not receive that pollination, they grow with less vigor, shut down for the season sooner, and remove less carbon. DC’s tree cover, green roofs, community gardens, park lands, river basins, window boxes, and herb plots provide more than enough forage for bees, which in turn will provide even more shade, fruits, clean air, and critter companionship for us.

But the DC Parks & Rec beekeeping program does not actually begin with the bees: it starts with the community. DC Parks & Rec is first offering an Urban Beekeeping Seminar, a series of 4 talks from Monday, February 20th through Monday, March 15, for people interested in volunteering in DC’ s public apiaries. This overview will provide just enough background for the would-be(e) beekeepers to work alongside more experienced volunteer beekeepers from around the region, and perhaps to become next year’s mentors.

We also have equipment to assemble and paint, bees from the Virginia Sustainable Honeybee Program due to arrive in late April or May, and sites to set up for the arrival of these colonies. By July, we should have some honey to harvest from the Lederer Bees (and maybe some of the newbees!) and we may be turning some of the beeswax into soap — all with the health and continued survival of the colonies as the primary goal.

This picture is me visiting with a February bee on my roof. She’s a cold blooded creature who nonetheless has to generate heat from working her muscles if she wants to fly, so they often land on me when I am up there in the cold. I think of it as if they are taking a breather, relaxing while scarfing up some mammalian warmth!

I’d like to invite you to contact me (toni@dcbeekeepers.org) if you have questions about beekeeping in DC.

Editor’s note: DC Parks and Rec Beekeeping Class is now full!!!  However, the Bowie-Upper Marlboro Beekeepers Association is offering a short beekeeping course beginning March 4th in Largo, MD.  Find more info about that course here!

By Robert Thomason

When Yao Afantchao first left his village in Togo for the United States relatives and friends showered him with gifts of local foods so that he would not be without his native diet. Loaded with mangoes, the peanuts of his region and dried delicacies he crossed the Atlantic.

But when the US Customs Service inspected his bags at JFK Airport, his first lesson in U.S. food economics and practices was a shock. The foodstuff of Afantchao’s homeland was confiscated.

“That’s it; my life is gone,” Afantchao said recalling his feelings of the day and that loss. “The trip I made from New York to Philadelphia was the longest of my life.”

Since witnessing that initial clash between authorities and the food he loves, Afantchao’s stories about food have transformed as the nation’s population has become more diverse. He now works as an ethnic and specialty crop specialist with the University of the District of Columbia, helping immigrants find the foods they prefer and the local farmers to produce it.

As people arrive in the United States from other countries, they naturally bring their appetites with them. Although Afantchao in time re-acquired much of his accustomed diet, there was a transition period.

“We like to find our own food,” he said of the immigrant experience at the Feb. 20 Rooting DC conference. “People like to give you pizza and take you to McDonald’s. That is nice for a day. But ethnic food is not just food to the immigrant. It is also a source of culture.”

His eyes and palate have been on the look-out for these foods. “When I go to a home and they serve garden eggs, I am going back to that home,” quipped Afantchao, a large-framed man who sports a mustache and goatee around his ever-present smile.

As a community educator he travels widely in the region, from urban communities to rural Southern Maryland. He acts as a link between those willing to pay for familiar fare and the farmers who do or might produce it. One farm family he met was initially skeptical of planting crops they had never tasted and that had exotic names; 19 years later the farm is making money providing the specialty produce that immigrants and native-born consumers enjoy at their tables or in restaurants.

“Our foods are comfort foods,” Afantachao said. “In the United States, you are always willing to try something new. You are brave people.”

Working through UDC’s cooperative extension service and its agricultural experimentation service, Afantachao was on the team that helped determine a good choice of crops for this segment of the market. He mentioned a few main ones at the Rooting DC conference.

* Sawa-Sawa — A sorrel plant, or edible hibiscus, shic is good in salads. The red bud version makes a good tea.

* Jute leaf — a leafy green

* Avuvo — A plant in the Amara family that is expensive in Africa.

* Njamma-Njamma — A leafy green. Often outside Africa local greens, such as collards, are substituted and a dish by this name is prepared in West African fashion.

* Water leaves — good in stews with meat or fish

* Gboma – in the eggplant family

* Assorted hot peppers — Popular in many cultures

* Garden eggs – another eggplant

Thomason is the publisher of GlobalResourcesNews.com, a site about ecology and economics.

[Cross-posted at DC Food for All]

Washington, DC – The first-ever community garden census data is now available to the public! Led by Bea Trickett of the Neighborhood Farm Initiative, the city-wide census found that 26.5 public acres are set aside for food cultivation in 35 community gardens.

To date, there has been little coordination between the community gardens, and many gardeners aren’t aware of how they could fit into a larger network of shared resources.  This census creates the baseline data and establishes connections that could have numerous future applications.

The Neighborhood Farm Initiative conducted the project in autumn of 2009. Using borrowed equipment and software, armed with cameras and GPS-devices, Trickett organized a small army of volunteers to travel to each of DC’s 35 community gardens. Volunteers walked the garden perimeters while marking waypoints with a GPS device, interviewed community gardeners, and later interviewed the community garden managers.

“We went on beautiful, sunny weekend days when gardeners were out harvesting and putting their gardens to rest for winter,” says Liz Whitehurst, one of the volunteers.  She wrote a blog post about her experience here.  Katie Cerretani (another volunteer) blogged about her time helping with the garden census here.

For Trickett, this is a process that began over three years ago – “In the fall of 2006, a friend and I were searching for a community garden plot, and experienced a lot of frustration in not finding the information readily available – or where we did find anything, it was totally inaccurate and outdated.”  Judy Tiger’s Gardening Resources of Washington (GROW) had previously kept a list of community garden contacts; however in 2005 when GROW ceased to exist, the lists stopped being updated.”

Trickett explains, “In fall 2007 planning for the 1^st Rooting DC Urban Gardening Forum, I picked up those old lists (by then totally outdated) and made dozens of follow-up calls tracking the garden managers down.  I revised the list again in spring of 2009 for the 2^nd Rooting DC, and tried to share the updated data with websites whose maps were still based on previous versions of the list.  However at the time, I was unable to find any sites willing to recognize that because most of these gardens hold annual elections, publishing the data (whether formatted as a list or a map) requires an annual follow-up commitment in updating the information.”

Thankfully, Kathy Jentz of Washington Gardener Magazine offered to post the DC-garden information chart on her website as part of her regional list of community gardens.  Trickett said, “But after all of this data collection, I still wasn’t finding anywhere in the charts to really give a clear picture of each garden in any detail.”

The Neighborhood Farm Initiative is thrilled to have a permanent home for the community garden chart, map, photos, and synopses of information gathered in the interviews available now at:

www.fieldtoforknetwork.org/community-gardens

If you are a DC-resident living in a ward where community gardens experience overwhelming waiting lists, check out Sharing Backyards DC, a resource where gardeners can connect with homeowners in your area to share privately held yard-space.

The Neighborhood Farm Initiative would like to offer a huge thank you to Kellie Pettyjohn (volunteer cartographer), and to Tommy Pyne, Xi Wang, Katie Cerretani, Eugene Kim, Vrinda Manglik, Liz Whitehurst, Lolly Walsh, and Annabeth Roeschley (volunteer photographers and interviewers), as well as thanks to all the gardeners and garden managers who cooperated in interviews and took time to share stories and information about their garden communities!

Please contact NeighborhoodFarm@gmail.com with any revisions or additions to the list of community gardens.  The Neighborhood Farm Initiative has already heard of several new gardens forming in 2010, and is excited to visit them in the fall!

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With shovels and forks, local food justice advocates will descend on the Historical Society of Washington tomorrow for Rooting DC, the District’s own urban agriculture forum. Workshops are organized around four themes–production, distribution, preparation and preservation–in order to explore how food finds its way from the field to our forks.

For the first time in it’s 3-year history, Rooting DC will feature cooking demonstrations.  Steve Seuser, who planned and coordinated the demonstrations, says that presenters will share how to prepare cooked, raw, and fermented foods, as well as canning basics. In particular, the demonstrations will feature recipes that are fast and affordable for families, as well as processes for gardeners who grow a lot and aren’t sure what to do with the overabundance.

Tracye McQuirter, a nutritionist with the UDC Center for Nutrition, Diet, and Health, will present during Workshop Session 2. We talked with Tracye about the importance of eating healthy and also got a sneak peak of her cooking demonstration.  Read on:

Can you give us a sneak peek into your workshop at Rooting DC? What will you be cooking? What messages will you be focusing on?
I’ll be preparing Spicy Kale Salad, which is usually a big hit wherever I go.  My goal is to show people how easy it is to prepare fresh greens in really satisfying ways that keep the nutrients and flavor alive and dazzling.

Why do you think it’s important to eat local, organic food or grow your own?
Growing and eating your own food gives you a sense of satisfaction in your soul that few things can so easily match.  It’s also cheaper, more convenient, and more sustainable to grow your own food or eat the food grown by your neighbor, community, or local farmer.

It seems like empowerment is an important part of your work. In your classes, how do you use food to empower people?
Most folks in this country are masters at eating unhealthy food.  I empower people by showing them how and why to become masters at eating healthy food.  We look at who profits from our unhealthy eating habits and why what we eat is directly tied to whether or not we will have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, overweight, diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other killer diseases.  Then we look at how to take matters into our own hands by learning to read food labels, choose healthier ingredients, and prepare lots of healthy and delicious dishes.

When teaching people about food and nutrition, what strategies or techniques do you find most effective?
In the course of my work, I teach people who are ages 3 to 83, so the tools that I use vary.  For example, when I do food demos for little ones, I make sure to engage each of the five senses, so that might include singing a healthy food song and identifying the colors of each ingredient in our recipe.

You’ve been working on these issues for years. Do you sense a shift in people’s attitudes toward healthy eating and fresh produce?  If so, how?
I’ve noticed that people are more comfortable saying that they want to eat healthier foods and are less likely to feel defensive about it.  That is a paradigm shift.  I’m hopeful that this shift will continue to grow and evolve into a desire to eat more fresh, plant-based foods and fewer animal foods for the health of ourselves and our planet.

Tracye McQuirter’s new book By Any Greens Necessary will be published on May 1, 2010.  Contact her at www.byanygreensnecessary.com.

Rooting DC 2010 will be held tomorrow, February 20th, at the Historical Society in downtown DC.

[Cross posted to DC Food For All]

by Ariela Summit

At the Rooting DC conference this Saturday, activist, scholar, and consultant Joe Nasr will speak about how North American cities have been organizing for urban agriculture, and what the DC region can learn from that. Joe, who is based in Toronto, has worked on urban agriculture and food issues globally since the early 1990s.  He has had longstanding ties to the DC region, discovering the subject by working with Jac Smit, “the father of urban agriculture.”

He is the co-ordinator for MetroAg – Alliance for Urban Agriculture, co-founded The Urban Agriculture Network and maintains several worldwide affiliations, including the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Ryerson University in Toronto . He received a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.

Joe brings hands on experience to his perspective at the conference. He has mentored a number of students interested in urban agriculture worldwide, including architecture students working with food- and agriculture-related design. Joe also co-curated the traveling exhibition: Carrot City – Designing for Urban Agriculture, which showed how the design of buildings and cities can enable the production of food in the city, and is now being turned into a book.  Hopefully we’ll see the Carrot City exhibit in DC in the near future!

In 1996 he co-authored a book, entitled, “Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs, and Sustainable Cities,” which has now become a standard textbook on the subject.  Long out of print, this book might become available online very soon.  Joe is also spearheading the creation of a digital clearinghouse on urban agriculture that MetroAg is setting up currently – keep an eye for an announcement on the launch of that website really soon.

We are excited to have Joe in DC, and look forward to gleaning some green nuggets of wisdom from his knowledge and experience!  Joe will joined in his session by Kim Hodgson, who has been spearheading initiatives related to urban agriculture at the American Planning Association, who will be sharing with us some exciting stories from across North America on how planners have been recently supporting urban agriculture.

Cross posted at the DC Food for All