[Cross-posted from Beyond Bread.]

Aaaand we’re gleaning again!

On Saturday, more than a dozen Bread for the City volunteers drove down to Parker Farms in Colonial Beach, VA. Some of our volunteers were BFC donors; others found out about the project from an NPR story about it last year; and still others learned about it from the DC Food For All. All of them were ready to roll up their sleeves and come to the rescue of the farm’s surplus sweet corn.

There was more out there than we’d expected. We gleaned just one acre out of 100s that were available to us, and left at the end with more than 1,700lbs of corn in tow. Farmer Rod Parker met us in the fields, and at the end of the day he told me, “my only complaint is that you didn’t bring enough bins.”

Why is so much corn left in the farm’s field? Here are some reasons:

1) Human error: laborers inevitably miss a certain amount of corn that is market-ready and perfect. Farmers often opt not to pay for a second pass through the fields, but are happy for volunteers to come do it.

2) Undersized/under ripe: corn that is too small to sell is left behind, even if it is edible. Shoppers are so picky that almost every type of produce has size minimums and shape requirements. Under-ripe corn is also left behind. It’s not as tasty or filling, but still edible — and often ripened by the time we get to it.

3) Damaged: corn that has been eaten or broken. There wasn’t actually that much corn that was actually damaged, and we left it all behind too. There was way more of the good stuff to be had.

This successful trip marks the launch of the second year of Glean for the City, a project that already feels like a cherished tradition around here. Last year, we rescued 50,000 lbs. of fresh, surplus produce from farms and farmers markets, including apples, bell peppers, broccoli, and a plethora of other fruits and veggies — an average of 2,000 lbs. of fresh produce every week! All for free, all food that otherwise would have gone to waste, but instead went to the kitchen table of the DC residents who need it the most.

The farmers love it, our volunteers love it, our clients love it, and our community was so enthusiastic about it that you all helped us win a contest on the internet, ensuring that we had enough funding to cover the cost of a full-time coordinator to manage the program. (Speaking as this year’s new coordinator, I want to say thank you!)

You’ll be really excited by what we have in store this year. First of all, we’ve extended the gleaning season by one month, and connected with new farm partners to bring in more quantity and a healthier variety. We aim to bring in 3,000 lbs per week this time. And we’re even partnering with other local food pantries to run coordinated gleanings and share the bounty!

In fact, I hope to someday honor our Food Pantry Director Ted Pringle’s goal of ultimately replacing all canned vegetables in our pantry with farm-fresh produce.

If you’re interested in volunteering, or if your community group or organization might want to partner with us, please email me. In the meantime, if you’d like to support this work, you can help us cover the cost of transportation and other things like bins, bags, gloves, and so on, by making a donation to Glean for the City today.

By: Bella Herold

At 6:30am on Tuesday June 1^st, I sat in a van with Andrea Northup, Coordinator of the D.C. Farm to School Network, and her colleague Scott Lewis, Director of Food Services for a school food service provider, mesmerized as the D.C. highway slowly transitioned into a beautiful countryside: rolling hills and lots and lots of green.  Within two hours, we saw plots of farmland, barns, cows, horses, and rows of crops fill the landscape.  We passed a horse-drawn carriage and Mennonite women in long dresses and bonnets going about their day.

By the time we arrived at the produce auction, the open-air marketplace was already filled with yards of fresh fruit and vegetables, hanging plants, carts of melons, lines of herbs and various plant varieties.  Farmers unloaded and stood by the fruits of their labor, jubilant, smiling, and eager to engage in conversation about their crops.  Our mission was to purchase about 200 heads of lettuce for the D.C. Farm to School Network’s upcoming Strawberries and Salad Greens event.  The greens would be served as part of school lunches in cafeterias across the District.

The auctioneer spoke into his microphone, quickly describing each item for sale, how many boxes of it you could buy, and starting bids.  Individuals signaled if they were interested in making a purchase, and, just as quickly as each sale began, it ended and the auctioneer moved onto the next item.  A crowd of people gathered around the products and the auctioneer and we followed him from product to product.  Andrea purchased Romaine, curly leaf, and red leaf lettuce, a few boxes of yellow squash, and several green cucumbers for a few schools.  After some fresh pie and ice cream from the small food stand, we left and loaded up with boxes upon boxes of fresh produce in tow.

The next day was the Strawberry and Salad Greens Event.  I volunteered at the E.W. Stokes Public Charter School, one of the schools that received lettuce from the Auction.  I worked with two other volunteers to set up a table in the cafeteria before the first students arrived for lunch.  We displayed a blossoming strawberry plant, a photograph of a strawberry farm and a lettuce farm, lettuce seeds, a small lettuce plant, a large head of lettuce, gardening tools, and a map of the local farms where the strawberries and lettuce from the kids’ lunch had traveled from with respect to the District.  The students were served lettuce we had just bought from the auction and strawberries from a West Virginia farmer.

After eating their meals, students and teachers approached us and were pleasantly surprised by the small green strawberries growing on the strawberry plant.  Some kids told us that their families had just started vegetable gardens at home and others stared in awe at the baby lettuce plant and tiny lettuce seeds.  Enticed by their friends’ excitement and the promise of Strawberry and Salad Greens event stickers, more students approached us as we inquired how their salads tasted and explained where the food came from. Kindergarteners came to play with the gardening gloves and watering can, but stayed to examine lettuce seeds and the petals on the strawberry plant.  One student ate her strawberries while peering at the strawberry plant in front of her.  The students tasted the freshness and crispness that resulted from the hard work, effort, and motivation the farmers put into their crops.

I will continue to volunteer with the D.C. Farm to School Network regularly in the upcoming months, and look forward to making events like this one successful.  One thing I learned from the whole experience–hard work, effort, and motivation tastes pretty good.

Local lettuce and berries for school lunch being prepared at CentroNIA

If you walked into a D.C. school cafeteria on June 3^rd 2010, you may have been surprised at what you saw on students’ trays!  Over 150 schools in DC featured fresh, locally-grown strawberries and salad greens as a part of their school lunches.  This was part of an event called Strawberries & Salad Greens, organized by the D.C. Farm to School Network and in partnership with participating schools and food service providers.  For a medley of pictures from the event in DCist, click here.

Breakfast on the line at Thurgood Marshall Academy – blueberry muffin and local strawberries!

About 40,000 students in all 8 wards of the District gobbled up juicy, red berries and bright green lettuce in their lunches.  Approximately 7,300 pounds of local strawberries and 2,400 pounds of greens were purchased and served for the event, contributing about $20,000 to our local food economy.  The produce was grown on farms in Virgina, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania (visit dcfarmtoschool.org/strawberries for more information about the local growers).

Westmoreland Berry Farm, which supplied berries for DCPS meals on June 3^rd

In addition to helping schools find sources of fresh, local produce, the D.C. Farm to School Network coordinated “Where Food Comes From” tables in 16 school cafeterias.  At these tables, volunteers and parents displayed plants, posters, pictures, and gardening tools.  As students enjoyed their meals, they were able to see, touch, and smell where their food came from!

Carl Rollins with Common Good City Farm shows a strawberry plant to a group of pre-K students at Simon Elementary School

In twelve schools, local chefs performed interactive cooking demonstrations using local strawberries and salad greens.  Kids were able to help professionals prepare recipes, taste samples, discuss the importance of eating fresh, local, healthy foods, and bring home recipes to try with their families.

Chef Oliver Friendly of Eat and Smile Foods makes home-made granola and local strawberry parfaits at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School

The D.C. Farm to School Network is a program of the Capital Area Food Bank that works to get more healthy, local foods into Washington, DC school meals.  Learn more at www.dcfarmtoschool.org.

Kacie Warner from the Washington Youth Garden prepares a strawberry arugula salad with students at Center City Public Charter School

The Columbia Heights Community Marketplace, Ward 8 Farmers Market, and Mt. Rainier Farmers Market all kick off their seasons this Saturday, June 5. Two of these markets are setting up their tents for the first time. All three offer both local food and a community focus.

The brand new Columbia Heights Community Marketplace will light up the new plaza at 14^th Street and Park Road NW. Organizers made local foods a keystone of this weekly event, bringing in fresh produce, eggs, dairy products, meat, or baked goods that the vendors grew, raised, or prepared within 150 miles of Washington.

But that’s not all.

“[T]he Columbia Heights Community Marketplace will act as a place for local community members, organizations, and artists to come together and celebrate the diverse cultures and activities present in this neighborhood,” a press release declares, explaining that the scene is “more than a farmers market.”

The “more” includes live music, dance, yoga and tai chi classes, and cooking demonstrations. The Columbia Heights Community Marketplace’s Youth Market Program combines educational activities to show neighborhood youngsters where their food comes from with opportunities to intern with nearby farms, bakeries, and vendors.

As the crowning touch, the inaugural market will unite Mayor Adrian Fenty, D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray, and Council members Jim Graham and Kwame Brown when they kick off the opening ceremonies. Come at 11 a.m. to see these sometimes contentious figures share a stage.

The Ward 8 market, located in the heart of Congress Heights, has a social justice mission to serve the community east of the Anacostia River. As it has for the past 11 years, this market will bring fruits and vegetables to a part of D.C. where many residents do their food shopping at corner stores, where fresh foods make up just one percent of the inventory. This year, shoppers can also find herbs and plants at the farmers market, all sourced from no further than Pennsylvania and Maryland.

The market will be held every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the parking lot of the old Congress Heights School at 500 Alabama Ave. SE, near the Anacostia and Congress Heights Metro stations on the green line. The market will expand this year to include a weekday afternoon market, starting on June 8. That arm of the market will operate from the parking lot of the United Medical Center at 1310 Southern Ave. SE near the Southern Avenue Metro station on the green line. The market will run each Tuesday from 3 to 7 p.m. For the days in between, the farmers market organizers plan to continue to provide excess produce to corner store owners, who then agree to sell it at a fair price.

Right on the line between D.C. and Maryland, the Mt. Rainier Farmers Market will open for the first time this Saturday on the 3200 block of Rhode Island Avenue (NE on the D.C. side). It will take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. each week. Though long known for establishments like the non-profit grocery store Glut and and the Mt. Rainier Bike Co-op, this neighborhood has yet to host a farmers market. Residents can now look to their own backyard for local produce, baked goods, bread, grass-fed meat, ice cream, tea, and coffee.

Opening day will feature live music, free tote bags, and balloons for the kids. The market’s website features community health news and links, including a weekly health tip and a guide to eating healthfully on a budget.

If you can’t make it to all three markets on the first day, not to worry. Each runs every week through the fall. The Ward 8 Saturday market runs through November 20 and the Tuesday market continues through October 26. The Mt. Rainier market also lasts through November 20. The Columbia Heights Community Marketplace does not list an ending date, but with so much community involvement, it’s sure to endure for a while.

Photos taken by the author at the 2009 Ward 8 Farmers Market at the old Congress Heights School.

Report from the April Crop Mob: Mountain View Farm

Nearly 30 mobbers converged at Mountain View Farm in April to spend the day working outdoors, learning about farming and getting to know other good food lovers.  The day’s tasks included planting onions and leeks, spreading compost, weeding garlic and peas, and transplanting beets – just to name a few! With so many hands, we accomplished days’ worth of work in just a few hours, to the sincere appreciation of farmers Shawna Dewitt and Attila Agoston.


Shawna and Attila grow vegetables and free-range eggs on 3 acres of land leased from the Blue Ridge Center, a private nature preserve in Loudon County, VA.  They have been working that land for four years, farming from the start without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. Their two year old daughter, Ruby, accompanied us in the fields and around the farm, totally at home amongst the peas and the goats!

Our mid-day lunch break was a delicious spread of veggie and venison chilis, rice, quinoa salad, artisan breads and several homemade desserts. There are few things better than sitting down to a homemade meal after putting in a morning’s worth of good hard work!

Everyone brought a different level of farming experience. For many mobbers, this was their first or second time just being on a farm – others were former farm workers and returned Peace Corps volunteers. The only requirement to be a mobber is an interest in agriculture and willingness to get your hands dirty. No special skills are needed – we were taught how to do everything as we went along.

After our work was done, Shawna and Attila took us on a tour of the farm, the highlight of which was the small menagerie of livestock they keep mainly for their own use. We walked through the pasture with nanny goats and kids, the dairy cow and her calf, and the flock of laying hens. The farm is also home to a pair of rare heritage breed pigs – Guinea Hogs – who had just recently had a batch of adorable piglets.

One of the more unique items on the farm is a portable poultry processing unit – that is, a trailer that contains all the equipment you need to slaughter and process broiler chickens. They received it through a grant and rent it out at a very low cost to any other farmers that need to use it. Because slaughter facilities and equipment can be a limiting factor for many small livestock producers, this is a great asset to the local farming community.

We were even joined by a reporter from the Lancaster Farming News, who did a story on the day’s events. Check it out! All in all, it was a fabulous day. Be sure to stop and say hello at Mountain View Farm’s two farmers market stands in DC: at Penn Quarter on Thursday afternoons and at 14th & U St. on Saturday mornings.

This month’s Mob: Saturday, May 15th!

This month’s Mob is at Blueberry Gardens, an established pick-your-own organic blueberry farm in Ashton, MD. In addition to working with the berry plants, we’ll be helping with a new vegetable farm that is starting up on the same property. You’ll have the opportunity to see an established perennial fruit farm and a startup vegetable farm, all in one day.

Carpools will leave from various spots around DC at about 8:30am. We’ll be working from 9:30 to 2:30, with a lunch break in between. No experience necessary – just curiousity and willingness to help!

If you’d like to attend, email info@cropmobdc.com with your name, location and phone number, and whether you can drive or need a ride.

If you can’t make it this week, but want to stay in the loop, join the Facebook group!

Sowing Seeds Here and Now!: A Chesapeake Area Urban Farming Summit
Featuring Will Allen of Growing Power
Friday, June 18th, 2010 at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, 10300 Baltimore Ave., Beltsville, MD 20705

Urban Farming is a movement to return the cultivation of our meals to our neighborhoods and cities, revitalizing vacant lots and abandoned properties, productively employing local residents, uniting communities, and ensuring greater social justice. Urban agriculture efforts speak to the well-being and health of our bodies, our society, our environment, the Chesapeake Bay, and our County. It also speaks to our basic right to choose good and have access to good safe nutritious food.

What we put in our bodies is integral our immediate and long term health, and has also greatly impacts the world in which we live. Industrial agriculture has been implicated in many of the world’s ills, from reducing biodiversity due to corporate patenting and genetic engineering, water and ground pollution and contamination due to overuse of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, and depletion of forests, water and soil resources. Many express concern about working conditions of agricultural workers and the abusive conditions of raising and slaughtering poultry and livestock. Others wonder about the additional expenses and environmental costs of the transportation, packaging, and over-processing of many foods we eat daily.

With fewer than 2% of our nation’s people working as farmers, many people wonder how our food system got so far away from US. With the return of the urban agriculture and farmers market movement, we all are beginning to look again at creating a more efficient and ethical food system that can employ more people to sustain our basic needs by (re)turning to small scale safe and local production of food.

As more of us significantly question who decides and produces what we consume, we also see an escalation of food deserts in inner cities– places where food of any kind is hard to come by anywhere, other than a few limited convenience stores and fast food establishments.

We’re asking for three things of you:

• We are actively looking for the best presenters about food justice, public health, planning, and regulations in an effort to identify and break down the barriers to urban agriculture. Go to SowingSeedsHereandNow.com and on the right side of the front page is a little blurb and a link for presentation proposals. Go there, check it out. Consider being a presenter, and fill out that form yourselves. We have funding for travel costs, and would love for you to present and use your knowledge of the subject to lead a rich dialogue. If you’re not interested in presenting, please think for a second about the best presenters and session leaders that you’ve experienced at farming and food systems summits, conferences, or workshops. Let us know their names and contact information, we’ll gladly reach out to them to ask them if they want to present.
• We need your help getting the word out about this summit. Please consider posting a short blurb on your website, blog, twitter or facebook account. We are happy to write it or help you write it to best fit your audience. And, fill out this form and we’ll send you printed postcards to hand out to your friends or constituents.
• We are looking for sponsors for this event. Please contact us, we’d love to build this coalition!

All this is summarized on this page, which clearly details our needs.

If you have any questions, please email christopher@ecoffshoots.org.

The D.C. WIC Agency scheduled a second training for farmers interested in accepting WIC and FMNP vouchers. That training is set for April 15, 1 to 3 p.m. If you want to register, please email me at kroberts@dchunger.org — I’d be happy to pass your name on to the Agency.

The D.C. Farmers’ Market Collaborative meets monthly at D.C. Hunger Solutions. Anyone is welcome to attend and discuss outreach/publicity about the new WIC cash value checks — and publicity for markets generally. Please contact me if you’d like to attend a meeting, and/or if you’d like to be added to our email list to keep up with farmers’ market news and opportunities to help.

Additionally, the Farmers’ Market Collaborative (in cooperation with the WIC Agency) is creating a handy, at-a-glance guide to the four federally-funded nutrition benefits that residents can use at District markets. This guide will be available for all farmers and market managers as a quick-reference to have on hand at their cash registers. (It also might prove a useful model for other states in the future — as the June 2009 CFSC report notes, only about half the states have elected to include farmers’ markets this year as vendors for the new fruit & vegetable checks included in the WIC food package.) Contact me if you would like a copy.

Thanks, and I hope to hear from many of you soon!

-Kristin Roberts, D.C. Hunger Solutions
kroberts@dchunger.org; 202.986.2200 x3041

Crop Mobbers at work!

There’s a new opportunity in DC for anyone who enjoys working outside, wants to learn more about farming, or just likes to hang out with other farmy types. Originally started by some farmers-at-heart in North Carolina, “crop mobs” have been sweeping the nation since The New York Times published an article about them - and there’s one starting up right here in DC.  Think “flash mob” rather than “angry mob”: crop mobs descend en masse onto a local farm for a few hours, where they get a phenomenal amount of work done while having a ball.

Basically, a crop mob is just a group of people who enjoy getting together to do farm work, whether to get some exercise and fresh air, learn more about farming, contemplate an agricultural career, or get ideas for their gardens. For farmers, it’s an opportunity to get those jobs done that you’re always putting off until next year, or haul in an unexpected bumper crop of beans. Farmers and crop mobbers collaborate to organize one farm visit per month. The farmer, in exchange for the help, generally provides a hearty lunch to the hardworking volunteers. Everyone returns home a little richer from the experience.

If that sounds fun, you might want to check out one of these events this weekend:

Saturday morning (3/27) an unusual “pre-season” crop mob will help build birdhouses at Fresh and Local CSA in Shepherdstown, WV. The birdhouses will be placed around the vegetable rows to lure insect-eating birds into garden patrol. Carpools leave DC at 8:15am, return 2:30pm.

Sunday afternoon (3/28) there’s an informational meeting for anyone that wants to learn more about the crop mob idea – for those who’d like to meet people and have the opportunity to ask questions in person before diving in and committing to a full day on the farm. Hopefully, we’ll also be able to share ideas about what farms we’d like to visit and what experiences we’d like to have over the 2010 season. The meeting will be from 3-5pm at Busboys & Poets 14th & V. If you have thoughts or ideas for farms to visit, but can’t make the meeting, send an email to peopleforthepotomac at gmail, or comment on this post, or post on the Facebook group’s wall.

To learn more about the DC Crop Mob and both events, visit the DC Crop Mob Website or the DC Crop Mob Facebook group

And stick around after the Sunday meeting to catch a free screening of:

————————————————————————

DIRT! The Movie

5:00pm Sunday, March 28, Busboys & Poets, 14th/V

Yeah – it’s a movie about dirt. If that sounds uninteresting, consider this bold quote by Franklin Roosevelt: “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” Or this one, author unknown: “Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”

Dirt is not only important; it’s also awesome. That’s why DIRT! The Movie takes you inside the wonders of the soil. This is the story of earth’s most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility – from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation. Bringing to life the environmental, economic, social and political impact of soil, the film shares the stories of experts from all over the world who study and are able to harness the beauty and power of a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with soil. What we’ve destroyed, we can heal.

This movie was shown as part of the DC Environmental Film Festival last weekend – if you missed it, now’s your chance! It’s not part of the Crop Mob events, they just happen to be in the same place. You can attend either or both.

If you want to see the movie, be sure to reserve a spot by emailing dirt@communitycinema-dc.org or call 202-939-0794.

I recently returned from a Witness for Peace-sponsored delegation to Oaxaca, Mexico that focused on sustainability, trade policy, food sovereignty and the roots of migration. I returned with lots of questions: How does the local fit into the global?  What lessons can we learn from others?  What can “DC Food for All”, a local initiative, bring to national and international conversations about hunger?

As it turns out many people in Oaxaca face similar problems to people in DC, including:

• lack of access to healthy local food because of its cost;
• increasing prevalence of imported foods (grown far away) in markets;
• corporate agriculture making it hard for small and local farmers to compete;

The root causes?  Lousy policy.  In both DC and Oaxaca.  And a prevailing worldview that favors corporate profit and efficiency over people and planet.

In Mexico, many of these problems are fairly new.  In 1982, Mexico took out a loan from the International Monetary Fund, and in exchange had to start opening up its markets to foreign imports.  This also started a trend of privatization, and the forced removal of price supports and subsidies to Mexican farmers.

Trade liberalization, privatization, and the stripping away of subsidies all accelerated with the passage of NAFTA – a free trade agreement amongst the US, Canada, and Mexico which promised to reduce poverty and create jobs.  Instead, food prices have skyrocketed – as have unemployment rates.  Some food-related changes in Mexico since NAFTA include:

• an average food price increase in Mexico of 257%;
• heavily-subsidized US grain/corn products undercutting unsubsidized Mexican products – making it impossible for Mexican farmers to compete;
• an influx of genetically-modified, corporate-grown corn;
• the displacement of thousands of Mexican farmers;
• increases in both hunger and obesity;

In Oaxaca, as in DC, dedicated people have demonstrated several approaches to tackling problems of food access, nutrition, and farmer rights. 1) At one level, there is the ability to take things into one’s own hands: growing one’s own food, gardening, learning about nutritious options, and supporting local food.  People in Oaxaca, like people in DC, are organizing themselves to increase their food sovereignty by growing their own.

There are organizations such as RASA (Red Autonoma para la Soberania Alimentaria/Autonomous Network for Food Sovereignty) and CEDICAM (Center for the Integral Development of the Mixteca) that support people who want to grow their own food on rooftops and in backyards, and also work on saving seeds, conserving soil, and harvesting rainwater.  These examples are strong evidence of how much we can learn from people in Oaxaca, and how in general the best sustainable development usually comes from the bottom up – from the people whose daily realities are most directly affected.

While these are good solutions, there is a need to change the fundamentally unjust free trade systems that create these conditions in the first place. Therefore, 2) at another level, in DC and in Oaxaca, let’s organize to push for policy change: policies that support universal access to local and organic foods, policies that protect small and organic farmers, fair trade, and a sharp turn away from corporate food systems that hurt both producers and consumers.  In both cities, there is also a need for immediate assistance with food access for low-income people.

The parallels between the struggles for food sovereignty in Oaxaca and DC are plentiful; and offer us opportunities to share ideas and build alliances.  We need to take a multi-tiered approach to progress – creating our own solutions; and also demanding policies that obliterate the root causes of poverty, hunger, and landlessness – and always seeking justice at the local, national, and international levels.