your farm. anywhere.

As an ad-hoc/occasional member of the Green City Growers team, I'm clearly interested in the concept of local food production. I've also taken an interest in the concept of peak oil, not so much for the "end of the world" elements that some might believe in but because of the re-localization of our economies that it will hasten. Seems that the former Chief Strategist of CIBC World Markets Jeff Rubin agrees. In his new book "Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller" Mr. Rubin spends some time on the future of food in a world made smaller by expensive shipping fuel. On page 221,

Where is the food of the future going to come from? Your own backyard. That shift in food supply is already starting to take place. An increasingly carbon-conscious and energy-conscious food consumer in North America is already clamoring for more homegrown food. Not only does replacing foreign food with local food save energy, but in the process it reduces carbon emissions - a double win in an economy that not only had to contend with triple-digit oil prices but that will soon put a price on burning oil as well.

Seems like Green City Growers is on the forefront (along with many other organizations like Growing Power, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, BALLE, Slowfood, etc.) of a post cheap energy food infrastructure.

I guess I'm a "part-time" member of the Green City Growers (GCG) team, working on a business plan with a team of fellow BGI students based upon GCG's business. Of course, I know little to nothing about farming or gardening besides gleaning information about our incredibly energy intensive and "unhealthy" industrial food system from reports like this one from the Post Carbon Institute and (of course) Michael Pollan's and Mark Bittman's books on the massive changes required in our industrialized food system.

Anyway, I decided to stop by at the Heartbeat Collective in Jamaica Plain for a little while at the Urban Intensive Workshop and see what it's all about. Most of my work with GCG has been through e-mails and phone calls with Jessie and Gabe, and for all my hemming and hawing about local food, I'd yet to plant a single seedling in anything. In fact, the Cyclamen I bought for work lasted a few months before I managed to kill it (I think with too much water, at least that's what Joe the Gardener thought).

Date: Wednesday April 15 at Vlora

Can you think of a better way to spend a Wednesday night than with your friends at Green Drinks? Me neither, check it out!

Coming soon to a local-independently owned-socially responsible-sustainable-organic pop-corn serving-theatre near you... o.k. so AMC might screen it too.

If planting flowers at 2 AM under the cover of darkness sounds like a great time, check out Richard Reynold's radical approach to beautifying neglected green space: Guerilla Gardening!

Reynolds started his blog out of the U.K. in 2004 as...a record of [his] illicit cultivation around London. It is now also a growing arsenal for anyone interested in the war against neglect and scarcity of public space as a place to grow things, be they beautiful, tasty (or both!)