Are you interested in gardening and farming? Do you want to know where your food comes from? Would you like to start a community garden in your neighborhood? Are you interested in leasing land for small plot farming? Do you care about local food?
You’re invited to attend Salt Lake County’s Urban Farming Open House!
What: Urban Farming Open House
Where: 2001 South State Street, South Building Atrium
When: November 12 from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Learn more at SLCo.org/urbanfarming.
Blog post by SLCgreen’s Laura Schmidt.
Thinking of starting an urban garden? Dig right in!
Recently, the “Live More with Less” conference highlighted urban gardening as a practical and meaningful way to be more connected to your food and to improve your quality of life.
Kevin and Celia Bell, urban homesteaders for over ten years, have turned their yard entirely into a garden.
Wanting to know more about the Bell’s urban homestead, they took me on a tour. Upon wandering onto their property, I was instantly captivated by the colors and the accessibility of food. The front yard has a diversity of life growing: apples, grapes, roses, currants, hazelnuts, cherry, horseradish, and service berries.
After admiring the front yard, we entered the backyard through a gate. Every inch of the backyard was covered with life! I toured their half acre plot of land in Autumn and not in the full growing season. Among the 40 beds, each 4 x 25 feet, I saw plenty of greens, reds, oranges and yellows.
“I just harvested about 600 lbs of winter squash from 450 sq ft!” said Kevin Bell.
These urban homesteaders also raise chickens and bees.
Surrounded by several urban gardens, Celia and Kevin have a community of farmers right next to them. Their farm is adjacent to B.U.G. Farms, a community garden, Wasatch Commons, a cohousing neighborhood, and two beautiful llamas.
It might be unrealistic to transform your entire yard into a garden, but we all have to start somewhere. Perhaps a good start is to grow plants in your house or apartment. Tomatoes seem to be a easy first plant. If you’re looking for something a bit more substantial, a small plot is easy to manage. Using the Arable Land Map, you can assess how much of your yard is available for gardening. With a little time and care, you can be eating the food you grew with your own hands!
If you need more inspiration before joining the Urban Gardening revolution, join us at Brewvies Cinema Pub, tonight for a viewing of Growing Cities, a film about urban farming in America, examines the role of urban farming in our culture and its power to revitalize our cities and change the way we eat. Learn more. Doors open at 6 p.m. Seating is limited. Movie starts at 7 p.m.
Attend an open house and learn how you can start a community garden in your neighborhood!
Open houses are scheduled at the Salt Lake City & County Building (451 S State Street) on the first floor on:
Salt Lake City recognizes the important role community vegetable gardens play in supporting our local food system, and has made it a goal to support gardens.
In order to help facilitate the development of new gardens, the City has identified City-owned or managed parcels located on properties with access to a waterline and other conditions conducive to creating a successful and sustainable community garden.
Salt Lake City works directly with Wasatch Community Gardens and community members to develop gardens within City limits.
Visit SLCgreen.com for more information, and to download a community garden application.
We’ll see you there!
Salt Lake City Green, in partnership with The Green Urban Lunch Box, will be hosting a film screening of Growing Cities in celebration of Food Day.
Growing Cities, a film about urban farming in America, examines the role of urban farming in our culture and its power to revitalize our cities and change the way we eat. Learn more at GrowingCitiesMovie.com.
The Green Urban Lunch Box will have their mobile greenhouse on site! Come tour this converted 35-foot school bus before the screening. Trust us, it’s not-to-be-missed!
Food Day is a nationwide celebration and a movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. Learn more at FoodDay.org.
Growing Cities Film Screening, a Food Day event
Wednesday, October 22
Brewvies Cinema Pub (677 S 200 W)
Doors open at 6 p.m. Seating is limited.
There is a $5 suggested donation. All additional proceeds will go to The Green Urban Lunch Box to help support the SLC FruitShare program.
Watch the film trailer
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/42288661]
Yesterday The Leonardo, in partnership with The Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative (USTAR), announced the next edition of Leonardo After Hours focusing on making healthy, better informed food choices.
Is Your Food Killing You: Navigating a Full Crop of What Food is Healthy, Toxic and Everything in Between features a dialogue between experts in various fields of nutrition, representatives from the food industry and members of our community. With so many diets, recommendations on how to eat, what we eat, how and where food is grown and nutrition fads, it’s hard to distinguish the food news from food fat. The goal of this discussion is to help us truly understand what is healthy vs. what is not.
Come prepared with your questions and comments.
Where:
The Leonardo
209 East 500 South
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
Date:
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Time:
6:00-7:30 p.m.
Cost:
FREE!
Appetizers and drinks are available for purchase.
Partners:
The Utah Science Technology and Research initiative (USTAR) is a long-term, state-funded investment to strengthen Utah’s “knowledge economy” and generate high-paying jobs. Funded in March 2006 by the State Legislature, USTAR is based on three program areas. The first area involves funding for strategic investments at the University of Utah and Utah State University to recruit world-class researchers. The second area is to build state-of-the-art interdisciplinary facilities at these institutions for the innovation teams. The third program area involves teams that work with companies and entrepreneurs across the State to promote science, innovation, and commercialization activities. For more information, follow USTAR on Twitter.
Located in the heart of Salt Lake City at the Library Square TRAX stop, The Leonardo is a first-of-a-kind museum connecting science, technology and creativity. Here, visitors of all ages can exercise their curiosity, their creativity and experience unique, interactive exhibits and an ongoing calendar of public programs, workshops and classes. For more information about The Leonardo visit: www.theleonardo.org.
Get ready to eat local! Eat Local Week returns to Utah on September 6 and runs through September 13.
Eat Local Week celebrates the regional harvest, promotes local agriculture and the preservation of Utah’s agricultural heritage, and bringing people together.
The Challenge is simple — eat as local as you can! There are three levels to choose from:
Hardcore: This level will be a challenge-eating only food grown, produced or caught within 250 miles from where you live. This means cutting out some vices that might seem difficult to most. You may have to leave behind your coffee, chocolate, olive oil, booze and fine French cheeses, and you will have to do a little more label reading and research. But finding a deeper connection with your local food resources will make it all worth the effort.
Easy-Does-It: This challenge suggests selecting three vices – maybe coffee, chocolate, and olive oil (or French cheese, Spanish cheese and Vermont cheese), whatever it is you feel you can’t live without, but isn’t produced locally. We also suggest giving yourself a break at this level. We suggest three not-totally-local meal allowances in the week. Maybe you are out with friends or have a business lunch that you can’t skip, allow yourself a little more leniency so you can remain successful.
DIY: For newbies we suggest trying to eat one entirely local meal a day, or consider trying to use one or more local ingredient in every meal you eat for the week. Find something you eat a lot, maybe milk or tomatoes or a grain like wheat and replace your usual brand with a locally made product. Even small changes in your habits can have a huge impact on the producer, environment, economy, flavor, nutrients and you.
Update us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using the #eatlocalutah hashtag.
There are a lot of great events taking place during Eat Local Week. Here are a few highlights:
Explore all events during Eat Local Week.
Eat Local Week is hosted by Slow Food Utah, Downtown Farmers Market, Utah’s Own, and Wasatch Community Gardens. Learn more at EatLocalWeek.org.
Today Mayor Ralph Becker gathered with Jeramy Lund of the Community Foundation of Utah, Ashley Patterson of Wasatch Community Gardens and local gardeners to dedicate the Popperton Plots community garden in the Avenues neighborhood.
“Salt Lake City recognizes the important role community gardens play in supporting our local food system,” said Mayor Becker. “We are delighted to dedicate Popperton Plots, the first community garden to open under our expanded Green City Growers program.”
This spring, Green City Growers was awarded $50,000 in grant funds to support the development of two new community gardens including Popperton Plots. The award included $25,000 from Partners for Places, an initiative launched by the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN).
Partners for Places is a matching grant program that creates opportunities for cities and counties to improve communities by building partnerships between local government sustainability offices and place-based foundations. The Community Foundation of Utah provided the $25,000 grant match and will manage permanent endowments.
“We are committed to sustainable nonprofits and sustainable communities, and this project is a demonstration of both,” said Community Foundation of Utah Board Chairman Jeramy Lund.
Five additional parcels of city-managed land are currently available for community garden access. Residents are encouraged to review the available parcels on SLCgreen.com and, if interested, complete an application for the organization and creation of a community garden.
Applications are due November 1, 2014.
Salt Lake City works directly with Wasatch Community Gardens and community members to develop gardens within City limits. Wasatch Community Gardens is a community-based nonprofit that has served Salt Lake County for over 25 years.
Other media coverage:
Trees across Salt Lake City are heavy with ripe, delicious apricots and we need your help to harvest them!
We are in great need for volunteers for harvesting events on the following days:
Volunteer teams will help harvest local apricot trees in the Salt Lake City. Volunteers will be able to bring a portion of the harvest home with them to enjoy.
No experience is necessary – training will be done with volunteers on site.
To sign up please email SLCgreen@slcgov.com.
SLC FruitShare helps to minimize food waste, promote local food production, and enhance the community’s knowledge of fruit trees by engaging local fruit tree owners.
Throughout the year, fruit trees are pruned, thinned and the fruit is then picked and donated to non-profits working on sustainable food and hunger issues (Utahns Against Hunger and Green Urban Lunchbox).
I’m sure we’ve all felt the sting of being under appreciated at work. You stayed late, you finished those extra reports, you responded to those emails, you filed those papers; maybe you even cleaned up the office. And the next day, it feels as if no one noticed; the office is, once again, a mess.
Now imagine this scenario: you are less than an inch tall. Your job is to visit and tend to hundreds of clients every day, and report all gains back to your busy and dominating boss. Your extensive efforts provide the means to feed humans around the globe on a daily basis, and numerous other species as well. You work tirelessly in the heat for no pay.
And what do you find in return? Your clients move without warning, your business fades, and you notice a sudden rash of health crises within your company, putting you dangerously close to falling out of business for good.
Have you guessed yet?
I’m talking about the invaluable honey bee.
Although they may not understand the concept of being overlooked, the honey bee is arguably the most under appreciated worker on the planet. In addition to pollinating endless species of flowers to ensure their survival, studies performed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have revealed that honey bee pollination provides us with 1/3 of all foods we consume.
In a more specific evaluation, the Department showed the extent to which certain foods depend on honey bee pollination for survival: peaches rely 80%, cotton relies 80%, apples depend 90%, and almonds depend 100% on pollination for production. What’s more, these four treasured products only scratch the surface.
Based on this information, it’s safe to say that our grocery stores would look entirely different without the beneficial work that honey bees provide. The image below demonstrates the impact bees have on the foods we eat every day (learn more about this project).
The recent fuss over the honey bee is stemming from a previously unexplained rash of colony disappearances. Detailed studies from Harvard University and more have revealed that the growing rate of deaths is directly linked to the use of insecticides in agricultural and farming practices.
In particular, neonicotinoids (the most common and widely used insecticide) proved in a study by Harvard University to have fatal results in half of the honey bee colonies tested. Combined with our frequent destruction of flowering plants on account of urban expansion, the bees have been presented with nothing short of a recipe for disaster.
Put more simply, we have been unknowingly biting the hand that feeds us.
Fortunately, despite the grim outlook for our small but mighty friends, there are several steps you can take to help protect the honey bee from an endangered future.
If you have a backyard, put a bee box in your garden or a secluded area (so it’s safe for you too) to provide a protected space for a colony to thrive. Switch to planting bee-friendly plants (such as individual flowering plants and vegetables) and avoid using harmful insecticides. You can also purchase local honey to support safe-practicing beekeepers. And, of course, learning and awareness is always a good place to start.
It’s hard to be under appreciated. Especially when you’re barely an inch tall. Maybe it would do us all some good to help pay a well-earned bonus to one of Earth’s best employees.
This blog was written by SLCgreen intern Lauren Mills.
Wasatch Community Gardens is excited to host the 2014 Urban Garden and Farm Week — taking place all this week!
Urban Chicken Keeping Workshop. Join the fun on Wednesday, June 25 at 6:00 p.m. at the Grateful Tomato Garden for a workshop that will help you understand how to be a successful chicken keeper in the city.
Don’t miss out on the famous Urban Garden and Farm Tour. This self-guided tour takes place on Saturday, June 28 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. and features chickens, sustainable lifestyles, small space gardening, rainwater catchment, and more.
Wasatch Community Gardens hosts the Urban Garden and Farm Tour in order to gather energy, raise awareness, and share ideas about urban gardening in the Salt Lake Valley.
The tour will inspire you to create a growing space of your own in order to provide healthy, real food and an educational experience for the entire family.
So whether you are a budding gardener, a seasoned grower, a backyard poultry keeper, or an urban dweller with herbs in a window, Urban Garden and Farm Week will have an event for you.
Learn what is happening in Salt Lake and with our local food movement, and how you can become a part of it!