Author Archive

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | February 25th, 2010

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.

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | February 22nd, 2010

BIG thanks go out to Nathan Bynum for capturing the energy of Rooting DC 2010 on video. You can check out more of his work here.

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | February 17th, 2010

I met Ibti at Rooting DC 2009. Last February, this plucky foodie had quit her job as an English teacher and was learning to ride a bike for the first time. A year later, she’s biked her way from DC to Vermont to Milwaukee to Seattle visiting sustainable farms and urban agriculture projects along the way. I’ve been following her on her blog, A Bikeable Feast, and as she heads towards Phoenix, I asked her to reflect on her experiences one year later and what she might bring back home with her. Here’s what she said:

I’ve been on the road for nearly 10 months now and seen quite a bit of the country’s diverse food systems. I do plan to make my way back to DC this summer and share what I’ve learned with those who might be interested in models for community-based food systems. As a sneak preview, Liz has asked me to offer a few thoughts on exceptional models that I have encountered thus far and how we might learn from them as we move forward with plans to make DC a thriving, community-based, food secure city.

The first example I would offer is The Intervale — the wildly successful farm community and farmer incubation project in Burlington, VT. During the growing season, community members gather at the farms each weekend to pick up their boxes of fresh, organic produce; Friday evenings offer live music, local brews, and flatbread pizzas; young farmers apprentice with experienced ones to learn the trade, share the cost of equipment, and develop plans for their own operation.

The site of the Intervale was actually a former floodplain and later a trash dump. It was cleaned out and cleaned up and now is in many ways the heart of Burlington’s burgeoning food system. Might we not develop a similar grouping of urban farms along the waterfront in, say, Southeast DC? I wonder. It could potentially turn this quadrant of the city from a food desert to a food haven. Just a thought.

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | February 2nd, 2010

DC’s Field to Fork Network includes dozens of organizations working in Washington, DC to foster regional change in how we approach our food.  Members of the Network represent urban gardeners, farmers’ markets, distribution co-operatives, food banks, local government agencies, academic institutions, nutrition educators, community organizers, and cooks – our work encompasses everything between a gardener’s or farmer’s field and your fork!

Sounds a little bit like the DC Food for All, eh? The difference is that the Field to Fork Network is focused specifically on urban agriculture. Further, the Field to Fork website will be less focused on the local food news and city policy analysis you’ve come to expect from the DC Food for All, and more a space for you to learn how to get your hands dirty – literally. That said, we’re in this food movement together and we’ll be building a strong partnership between the two resources.

Organization as a Network will strengthen the linkages between community gardening, food preparation, and nutritional outreach, resulting in a “field to fork” network that will:

• encourage the use of underutilized green space within the District for agriculture,
• support diversity, abundance, affordability thus, consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables,
• expand health and economic benefits by increasing access to fresh produce, and
• engage participants and volunteers in outreach and educational opportunities throughout the year.

2010 marks the third year that many of these organizations have collaborated to put on Rooting DC, an annual day-long forum for urban gardeners. (To find out more and to support the conference, come out to the Rooting DC Happy Hour fundraiser tonight at Commonwealth Gastropub. 3rd annual Rooting DC tonight.)

Throughout the year, Rooting DC coordinators have written monthly email newsletters outlining upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, and workshops put on by the partners.  Now in creation of the Field to Fork Network website, this information will be easily organized and accessible on-demand at www.fieldtoforknetwork.org!

Use this website to

• gather resources for gardeners,
• find upcoming volunteer opportunities in urban ag projects,
• learn about upcoming workshops,
• find info on bringing a wider of diversity of crops to your gardening community,
• get recipes for local seasonal produce, or
• just stay up to date on DC’s field to fork news.

We hope you will find this website a valuable resource as we grow over the course of the next few months.  Please feel free to make suggestions for what additional information or resources ought to be included, by emailing us at DCFieldtoFork@gmail.com

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | January 27th, 2010

I’m sitting across from Robert at the Polo India Club and although we’ve never met, we’re talking about Washington, DC Area Foodshed Map, spirituality, and my (pipe) dream of starting my own farm/cafe/community space.

Each Sunday, the Karma Kitchen, DC’s own gift economy cafe, takes over the Polo India Club and Robert and I are at the community table. Unlike a regular restaurant, you can choose to sit with friends or with strangers who have also come to join this experiment in dining and generosity.

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | January 14th, 2010

[Cross posted from Our Columbia Heights] A few months after I moved to Columbia Heights, I planted a garden in front of my rowhouse. As people walked by, they taught me about my neighborhood. Two white men in their mid-30s who lived down the street shook their heads in disbelief. “A coupla years ago,” they [...]

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | December 3rd, 2009

A squadron of bicyclists armed with satellite mapping instruments swept through the District this summer on a unique mission: locate all of the city’s community gardens and interview garden managers for the first ever census of community gardens here.

There are nearly 40 community gardens in DC, but until now, there has been no readily available estimate of the square footage of public land being cultivated for food in the District of Columbia, nor is there a coordinated land management strategy citywide. These are among the issues this census, undertaken by the Neighborhood Farm Initiative, was intended to address.

As I bicycled around town with the Farm Initiative’s staff and volunteers, I discovered that the city’s community gardenscape is well hidden. Community gardens are secreted between alleyways, under a highway overpass, behind a tall fence covered in vines. Others hide in plain sight: there were fruit trees and raised beds in a triangle of land across from the Air and Space Museum. Just blocks from Nationals Stadium, a neat plot of land in full sun teemed with life.

The Kingman Park-Rosedale Community Garden had the tallest basil plants I had ever seen. As he pulled radishes from the ground, a young gardener at Independence Community Garden near the Air and Space Museum told us that he lives alone and he grows more than he can eat. At King’s Court Community Garden on Capitol Hill, garden manager Pat Taylor gave us basil and squash along with her insight into community organizing strategy.

These gardeners had food to share: possibilities for partnership between community gardens and food access programs such as Ample Harvest or the Grow a Row at the Capital Area Food Bank abound.

The census underscores stark realities about food access in the District. Wards 1 through 6 have a greater concentration of community gardens as well as a greater concentration of supermarkets and food retail centers.

But there are signs of change. Ward 8, for instance, recently added a new community garden, Shipley Community Garden at 23rd and Savannah streets SE. Health advocates east of the Anacostia River are looking at food gardening as a way to address childhood obesity.

Another new urban garden, Justice Park, is slated to be built on a vacant lot at 14th and Euclid streets NW in Columbia Heights. The city’s recreation department recently announced $25,000 in funding from Whole Foods to help install garden planters at 56 recreation centers throughout the District.

As more community gardeners sprout up, NFI’s educational programs can teach them how to grow food sustainably. At their half-acre space near Fort Totten, they also host weekend workshops and volunteer workdays.

If you would like to support community garden programming east of the river, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the Neighborhood Farm Initiative. (Please make a note of “NFI – wards 7 & 8″ in the comments section.) A portion of any funds raised with this tag will be donated to the Shipley Community Garden tool fund (they especially need a tiller), and the remainder will be used to cover educational program material for Spring 2010 gardening programming held in Wards 7 and 8.

Meanwhile, data for the community garden census is currently being compiled and analyzed. If you know of a community garden in operation as of September 2009 whose manager was not contacted by NFI for inclusion in this garden census effort, please contact NeighborhoodFarm@gmail.com.

Liz Whitehurst also writes for the Bread for the City blog, Beyond Bread.

Posted by Liz Whitehurst | November 20th, 2009

What is more important: feeding hungry people or growing food sustainably?

Permaculture is a design system for food production that emphasizes both earthcare and peoplecare. Even in an urban environment, permaculture has lessons to teach about growing food more sustainably.

I was among a group of gardeners and environmentalists who came together recently at Common Good City Farm to discuss the ethics of permaculture as well as learn some practical skills. Farm founder Liz Falk and Steve Gabriel, Educator and Program Coordinator for the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute led the three-day course, which is part of the farm’s ongoing series of educational programs.

Permaculture teaches us to design agricultural systems and living arrangements that more closely resemble nature. Its principles can be applied to designing a garden, a neighborhood, even a city. In fact, we spent part of one of the course making plans for a re-design of the farm and an entire DC neighborhood.

But first, we spent Saturday caring for the earth by planting an edible forest garden. In a natural forest, tall trees protect shade-loving plants from the sun and mushrooms spring to life in the wet areas at their bases. A permaculturist looks at these relationships and decides to mimic them by planting in “guilds”—or close-knit groups–instead of rows.

We planted strawberries and blueberries near fruit trees and mushroom spores around their trunks, creating a guild of plants that will feed and protect each other. As we dug, it started to pour rain. Our outdoor classroom space became a small pond. As we scurried around picking up shovels and taking down tents, the rain turned us into a guild.

We turned the storm into a lesson. After observing how the rainwater dispersed in natural patterns, we discussed how we might design the space to work with the water’s flow instead of against it. When the flood ebbed, we dug a rain garden based on our observations.

In addition to the guild and the rain garden, we:

• Discussed projects in cities across the U.S. that represent different permaculture principles, including City Repair in Portland and the Neuestra Raices in Holyoke, MA.
• Talked compost, from how to make compost tea in hours to building a vermicomposting bin for an apartment kitchen.
• Built cold frames–small, mobile greenhouses from wood, PVC pipe and sheet plastic that help extend the growing season.
• Innoculated shitake mushroom spores—sometime next year, mushrooms should be growing out of the hickory log we placed them in.
• Remediated the soil using a technique called sheet mulching, which uses recycled cardboard boxes, compost, and wood chips to improve the quality of soil during winter months.
• Had World Café-style conversations about how to engage neighbors meaningfully and how we can identify and distribute the surpluses we produce.

[Photo by Rafamerchan on Flickr, of a different workshop at Common Good.]

By combining concrete skills and big ideas, conversation and labor, we learned to embrace lessons that the earth teaches to feed and protect each other.

Liz Whitehurst writes for the Bread for the City blog, Beyond Bread, and is currently cover cropping at Sligo Creek Farm.