From the category archives:

growing greens

Could Occupy the Farm and UC Compromise on Gill Tract?

May 7, 2012 berkeley bites

A wake up call In the sleepy enclave of Albany, where Occupy the Farm takes over contested university land known as Gill Tract, to make the case for more urban farming and local agriculture that feeds people in need close to home.

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Berkeley Votes to Fund At-risk Edible School Programs

April 17, 2012 berkeley bites

The Berkeley Unified School District School Board recently voted to authorize funding up to $350,000 for three elementary schools that were in danger of losing their gardening and cooking programs for the next school year. The move came as welcome news for all those involved in the programs and anyone who champions teaching children to eat, grow, and cook their greens.

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Berkeley Seeks Life Support for School Edible Programs

March 31, 2012 berkeley bites

In the face of funding cuts, a community with an international reputation for edible schoolyards looks for ways to make gardening and cooking programs sustainable in Berkeley schools.

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Berkeley School Gardening, Cooking Programs Face Cuts

March 26, 2012 berkeley bites

Berkeley has an international reputation for its edible schoolyards, where public school children of all economic means learn what it takes to grow a radish and sauté some chard. Potential funding cuts to the program would represent a significant setback in the city’s pioneering efforts to date.

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FoodWorks: Canning Company Preserves Marin’s Produce

March 11, 2012 bay area bites

Canning queen Merrilee Olson lends her expertise to a new preservation project designed to help Marin farms — and county children fed by the Head Start program — by producing an artisan product from excess produce.

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Urban Adamah: A Story with Legs

February 28, 2012 berkeley bites

The background behind a popular story of an urban farm with a social justice and spiritual focus.

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Rancho La Puerta: Culinary Vacation at Iconic Spa in Baja

February 24, 2012 bay area bites

Sarah Henry has the arduous task of reporting from the field following a week’s stay at the much-loved Ranch La Puerta fitness resort and spa, which also features an organic garden and culinary school.

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Best Blog Posts from the 2011 Lettuce Eat Kale Archives

December 28, 2011 baking

Wherein we look back at the stories of 2011 on LEK, pick the best of the bunch, and then take a nap.

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Giving Thanks for Farmworkers on Thanksgiving

November 24, 2011 bay area bites

Taking a moment on the biggest food holiday of the year, to thank the people who grow and harvest our food.

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Kickstarting and Crowdsourcing Heirloom Produce Project

November 9, 2011 fruit

For those who like to get lost in the vast world of heirloom fruits and vegetables, the first National Heirloom Exposition, held mid-September in Santa Rosa, Calif., didn’t disappoint. The three-day event — which drew seasoned farmers, seed savers, edible educators, and backyard growers — included an exhibition hall filled with an impressive array of [...]

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Growing Demand: Crop Swaps Gaining Ground

October 28, 2011 berkeley bites

Crop swaps – meet ups where people exchange surplus backyard bounty – are thriving from the San Francisco Bay Area to Boston in city and suburban enclaves and online, too.

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Farm-to-fork Tours Spotlight Local Green Businesses

September 24, 2011 berkeley bites

Bay Area Green Tours introduces people to local, successful, sustainable farm and food enterprises.

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Give and Take: The Growing Food-Sharing Culture

August 15, 2011 canning & preserving

Sharing has made a comeback. People are now bartering, trading, exchanging, swapping, or simply giving away an abundance of homegrown produce or homemade food in a variety of creative ways. In the Harvest 2011 edition of Edible East Bay, I profile a couple who share their backyard with a pair who have created a demonstration [...]

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Heads Up Homesteaders: Crop Swap Begins in Berkeley

July 18, 2011 berkeley bites

Urban homesteaders trade lemons for lettuces in the latest food swapping phenomenon in communities around the country, including Berkeley.

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Faith-based Urban Farm Opens in Berkeley

June 21, 2011 bay citizen

Urban Adamah, the community urban farm in Berkeley founded by Adam Berman, marries his interests in food security, environmental stewardship, and spirituality. Meet the man who founded the Jewish Sustainability Corps.

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Urban Homesteader Challenges City on Sale of Edibles

April 15, 2011 berkeley bites

Berkeley resident Sophie Hahn wants to sell her surplus greens to neighbors. She’s challenging the city to change its zoning codes to allow for such urban agriculture.

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A Planner who Favors Edible, Eco Education, and Risks

March 25, 2011 berkeley bites

Sharon Danks designs green schoolyards for children — including outdoor classrooms with edible gardens — as places of exploration, challenge, and wonder.

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Urban Farmer Willow Rosenthal Plants Seeds in Berkeley

March 4, 2011 berkeley bites

A pioneer of the urban farm movement, Willow Rosenthal founded City Slicker Farms in West Oakland and now tends a thriving backyard edible garden in Berkeley.

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Garden Teacher Kim Allen Offers Youth Space to Grow

January 21, 2011 bay citizen

Garden teacher Kim Allen offers youth space to grow.

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Farm Together Now

December 20, 2010 bay area bites

Amy Franceschini, Daniel Tucker, and Anne Hamersky provide a portrait of the people, places, and ideas in the American New Food Movement in their recently-released book Farm Together Now.

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Urban Farmer Jim Montgomery of Green Faerie Farm

October 29, 2010 berkeley bites

Getting to know urban farmer Jim Montgomery of Green Faerie Farm.

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Cookbook Giveaway: The Homesteader’s Kitchen

July 15, 2010 farmers' markets

Win a copy of The Homesteader’s Kitchen: Recipes From Farm to Table by Robin Burnside

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Berkeley Farmers’ Market Man, Ben Feldman

June 18, 2010 berkeley bites

Find out what Berkeley Farmers’ Market program manager Ben Feldman loves about his job in this Berkeley Bites post.

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Farmer Jane: Females in the Fields

May 4, 2010 civil eats

A queen of green focuses her first book on female farmers, a subject author Temra Costa comes to organically. Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, grew out of Costa’s career in sustainable food, and her passion for eating locally and seasonally.

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Mickey Murch and Gospel Flat Farm

December 14, 2009 growing greens

Photo: courtesy of Sarah Warnock It’s a great time to be a farmer. So says Mickey Murch, who tends his family’s farm in beautiful Bolinas, an eclectic coastal enclave in West Marin, California. He hasn’t always felt this way. Mickey grew up running bare foot through fields but he didn’t want to dig dirt to [...]

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Grow Your Own Row

December 2, 2009 fruit

Meet my friends Leigh Raiford and Michael Cohen, typical nomadic academics who put down roots in Berkeley six years ago with their children Maya and Maceo. (Maya is in the same class as my son.) These two transplants passed on their recipe for roasted kale and inspired me to start my own little backyard raised [...]

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The Lemon Lady: Feeding the Hungry, One Bag of Produce at a Time

October 22, 2009 baking

The Lemon Lady needs a new nickname, methinks. Anna Chan, 37, has outgrown the title, which doesn’t begin to describe the difference this anti-hunger activist has made in less than a year in her one-woman campaign to get fresh produce into the mouths of people in need in her community. This stay-at-home mom from Clayton, [...]

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Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food

September 18, 2009 food politics

Photo of farmer Ramon Mojica taken by Brian Lee, courtesy of Riverdog Farm Finally, a government policy I can dig. And based on such a simple premise: Know where your food comes from and who produces it. This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, a new federal initiative [...]

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Book Giveaway: Farm City by Novella Carpenter

August 31, 2009 food book giveaways

In conjunction with the Eat Real Festival in Oakland last weekend, urban farm gal Novella Carpenter hosted an all day soiree at Ghost Town/Goat Town Farm, the one depicted in her very funny food memoir released earlier this summer. I swung by the event, which drew a steady crowd, to see what’s growing in the [...]

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Adventures of an Urban Farm Gal

August 20, 2009 food books

Uber-funny urban farmer Novella Carpenter has gone from indie garage band status to full-fledged rock star of the urban homestead movement in a matter of months. In part, perhaps, because of zingers likes this one, about the lengths she and her partner go to — including nightly dumpster diving sporting head lamps — to keep [...]

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Go Green: White House Vegetable Garden

July 27, 2009 food politics

Image: Syracuse Cultural Workers Inspired by everyone I know growing their own (including the President’s family, my neighbors, friends, & urban homesteaders) — and this postcard, picked up at a pre-Point Reyes hike at a special little store Spirit Matters — I finally planted some seeds & seedlings in my new planter box this weekend. [...]

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The Urban Homestead: An Old Idea is New Again

July 20, 2009 growing greens

You know how right after you first learn the meaning of a word or hear an unfamiliar expression you find yourself running across that word over and over again? Maybe it pops up in a book, on the news, or in conversation. It’s like the term was floating out there in the universe all the [...]

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Food Foraging 101

July 8, 2009 food foraging

The votes are in and the Bay Area’s favorite food forager is Asiya Wadud, the Chez Panisse bartender and urban fruit gatherer. For the last 18 months or so Wadud could be found pedaling around South Berkeley and North Oakland scooping up fallen or really ripe fruit, such as hachiya persimmons, Santa Rosa plums, Meyer [...]

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Dig It: Growing Greens, Creating Community, and Feeding Families

July 3, 2009 community gardens

Chris Geiger comes from a long line of gardeners. He grew up eating out of the family garden in Ohio and was eager to replicate the experience for his own daughter. But his backyard in Oakland, California is small and shaded. What to do? The resourceful dad simply sent out a request for land in [...]

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