AmpleHarvest.org Connects Gardeners and Food Pantries

Those of you gardening in today's summery sunshine surely have dancing in your heads visions of September, when you'll have more tomatoes and squash than you know what to do with.

Neighbor Rod Goeman tosses into my inbox a good idea for using your surplus garden bounty: feed your neighbors! CNN spotlights New Jersey gardener Gary Oppenheimer, who started the website AmpleHarvest.org, a national directory of food pantries. The idea is to make it easier for gardeners (Ample Harvest says there may be 40 million) to find community organizations that would be happy to supplement their usual offerings of canned and processed foods with real, fresh, honest-to-goodness food.

The Sioux Falls and Rapid City food pantries are registered on AmpleHarvest.org; Madison and Brookings still need to get their outfits online.

Come September, don't let that food rot on your vines. Pick it, click AmpleHarvest.org, and feed some hungry neighbors.

Knee High by the Fourth? You Betcha!

City Risks Gardener Revolt with Parks Alcohol Permits

"Sprouts Garden Club Meets" is the kind of headline that makes the Madison Daily Leader the diverting local paper that it is. It's also the kind of headline that I usually skip.

But my lovely wife just happened to notice a bit of politics tucked into this meeting notice in Tuesday's paper. Amid English tea ("on china dishes from a linen-covered table"), "useful hints," and discussion of the July picnic and August garden tours, the June 3 meeting brought this:

The group also discussed beer in the city parks, and the consensus was that alcohol is not necessary in public parks.

Was this the temperance sentiment cited by Commissioner Nick Abraham at Monday's Madison City Commission meeting? And is the city really willing to ignore such consensus and go forward with a permit process for allowing beer parties in city parks?

I respectfully suggest that the Sprouts Garden Club represents an important political demographic in Madison: wise older ladies with time to attend garden meetings... and to vote. If they say, "No beer in the park!" I would tend to listen, especially if I were an elected official.

Next meeting for the Sprouts is July 1, 6 p.m., in the Westside Park picnic shelter. No beer will be served, in china cups or otherwise.

Heidelberger Destroys Economy with Gardening... Hooray!

Hey, that's my wife on TV! Of course, I suppose she's out to destroy the economy with all this talk about growing our own food to spend less money.



Read more subversive greenness at Erin's blog, Prairie Roots!

KSFY Features Heidelberger Tonight!

It's sweeps month, so where does KSFY turn for big ratings? My wife Erin! No, she won't be on Wheel of Justice. Kent Erdahl brought the ActionNews! van to Lake Herman Saturday to talk to Erin about gardening, placemaking, and other interesting topics. The interview is supposed to be on tonight at 10, so rev up the TiVo to catch the calm, practical half of Lake Herman's best blogging couple!

Backyard Dinner: Beat the Recession with Gardening!

Growing your own food is a great way to fight rising prices at the grocery store and the gas pump. Every meal you can pull from your own ground is one less trip to the grocery store, not to mention that much less demand for the unhealthy long-distance transportation that brings us the harvest from California and other faraway places.

But if everyone tried to be more food self-sufficient, might that not hurt the economy as overall sales dip?

Ah, but where there's a will to make a buck, there's a way to make even self-sufficiency a boost for the broader economy. Last night's Marketplace tells us about "edible landscaping companies" that make their living helping newbie gardeners turn their boring old lawns into do-it-yourself cornucopiae:

It's part of a day-long organic gardening crash-course by Weihmann's company, All Edibles. They design and build your garden and teach you how to take care of it.

First-time gardeners Paul Silverman and Laura Shapiro are doing a new low-budget package developed by All Edibles. The entire garden gets built in one day, and the clients have to help do the work....

This one-day build costs $1,400. Not cheap, but the garden planted today should produce enough vegatables and herbs to feed a small family for the entire year [Andrew Stelzer, "Cheaper Dinner Grown in the Backyard," Marketplace, 2009.03.23].

Even in the self-sufficient local economy, the smart businessperson can find a way to provide a service that helps the neighbors and puts food on everyone's table.

Obamas Start White House Victory Garden

Forget the Rose Garden: First Lady Michelle Obama is starting a vegetable garden at the White House. It sounds like Mrs. Obama plans to use the garden as a demonstration garden (my lovely wife will love this!) to teach local kids about the benefits of growing your own food. Kids from Bancroft Elementary School will help with the garden from planting time to chow time, and Mrs. Obama says the President himself will help pull weeds.

This garden is just what sustainability activists were hoping for. There is no downside to knowing the leader of the free world will get to eat some homegrown food. Plus, there is important symbolism (as the Obama Foodorama notes) in seeing at least a small part of the President's 16-acre yard turned from decoration to practical use. It's even right next to the kids' new South Dakota swingset, where it can remind the kids that if we want to eat, we have to take care of the earth.

Eleanor Roosevelt planted the last Victory Garden on the White House grounds during World War II, over the objections of the USDA, which feared the garden might hurt the food industry. Yeah, sure wouldn't want people growing their own food and better nutrition and more self-reliance. Think of Mrs. Obama's gardening initiative as a new Victory Garden to promote healthy food, sustainable agriculture, and good old American do-it-yourself spirit.

City to Consider Floodplain Lease for Garden

Originally posted at RealMadison.org:

On the City Commission agenda [PDF alert!] for August 18: a lease agreement that would permit Daniel Long of 704 N. Josephine to turn a little patch of the city's floodplain land into a garden. Among Mr. Long's plans: flowers, trees, and some strawberry bushes. The city took a couple weeks to consider Mr. Long's proposal and draw up the proper legal language. The lease agreement in the agenda packet puts the yearly lease price for Mr. Long at ten dollars.

Ten dollars -- I can live with that, though to be honest, I wouldn't mind the city paying Mr. Long for what will likely amount to thousands of dollars of labor and horticultural love. Mr. Long is offering to make a public spot of empty ground a little prettier, and that's a fine public service.

Now Daniel, just make sure you remember to share those strawberries with your neighbors.And while the lease doesn't make public access clear, I hope you won't mind if the occasional neighbor drops by to stroll through your garden and sit and enjoy the shade every now and then.

And readers, if you have some other suggestions on how to make better use of Madison's green spaces or make other Madison improvements, be sure to check out the RealMadison.org forum!

Backyard Notes: CAFOs, Pipelines, Wind, Mowing

Can't call the Madville Times a NIMBY rag: we're all about what's going on in our backyards:

More Big Stinky Dairy Business Coming: An e-mail correspondent informs us that Riverview Farms of Morris, Minnesota, wants to build a 5,000-head concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO)... you know, like the operation that is stinking people out of house and home up by Thief River Falls. 5,000 cows (plus 4,000 heifers, say opponents) crowded onto 160 acres upstream from the wellheads of Milbank's water supply -- what could go wrong there? Opponents say CAFOs lower property values, hire few if any local workers, and increase costs for the county with heavy truck traffic tearing up county roads.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Agriculture* Bill Even brags that South Dakota is great for the dairy business... great, contends my correspondent, as long as you aren't a small independent farmer trying to make it with a reasonable number of cattle spread out on enough land to sustain them. Great also, it appears from Secretary Even's website, as long as you plan to hire foreign workers: "Immigration" is the second link from the top of the sidebar. (No English required to work here, says the website -- how tolerant.)

Oil Pipelines A-Comin': Another landowner, James Bush up by Britton, has settled with TransCanada out of court. Pipeline should be coming soon to backyards in the Jim River Valley. TransCanada is also making the rounds out in West River to get folks ready for an even bigger pipeline. Folks at the informational meetings TransCanada has held in Buffalo, Faith, and Philip sound pretty keen on running 900,000 barrels a day of the dirtiest oil in the world through their backyards. Haakon County Commissioner Neal "Obie" Brunskill says the pipeline sounds like a "good deal... if things work out like they're saying."

Just remember, Obie: when something does go wrong with the pipeline, Big Oil's strategy is to offer little to nothing in compensation, then fight you in court until many of the people affected are broke or dead. It works for Exxon; it'll work for TransCanada.

Pine Ridge Radio Prefers Self-Sufficiency: Meanwhile, our Indian neighbors take the do-it-yourself approach to energy. KILI Radio just got the first large-scale wind turbine on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The 300-foot tower should save the radio station $12,000 a year in electric bills and maybe even bring them a little revenue as they sell excess power back to LaCreek Electric. And if they're getting the wind out in Porcupine that we're getting here at Lake Herman, KILI should sound extra loud today.

Joe Bartmann, Mowing Menace: Montrose blogger and visionary Joe Bartmann committed one of the cardinal sins of town living: he let some of his grass grow for three straight weeks. Funny thing is, no one complained. Joe found that letting the weeds grow taller actually made it easier to pull them out. The longer grass staved off the dandelions.

Joe reports that he usually mows long anyway, leaving it 3.5 to 4 inches long. "A little bit longer grass is better grass," says Joe: it has more leaf to catch the sun and dew, needs less chemicals, keeps the weeds down, and grows more evenly and slowly than crewcut lawns. Go figure!

Joe also reports first garden radishes of the season. Radish and butter sandwiches -- ah, the good life!

Enjoy your sandwich, Joe. And everybody -- get out and enjoy your backyard this weekend.

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Update 19:17: An alert reader catches my goof from this morning: Bill Even is the Secretary of Agriculture. Secretary of State Chris Nelson generally does not take official positions on feedlots and big dairy development.

The same alert reader offers his correction and more:

Bill Even is not Secretary of State, get your facts straight, he is Secretary of Agriculture.

You need to read and understand what is on the website before you start running your mouth. The immigration refers to farmers from other countries bringing their capitol here to make a living. Is that a bad thing? What is the problem with dairy farms, they produce milk that is processed in SD creating more jobs.

People like you need to move to CA or NY!!!!!

The reader apparently prefers foreign investors and immigrant labor to us locals. Sounds a lot like the dairy industry: they could make a lot more money if they just didn't have to put up with the people who actually live here.

If You're Reading This Blog...

...you're not outside enjoying this:


Unless, of course, your boat has Wi-Fi... and that's a really silly thing for a boat to have.

The sun is up, the wind is down, and the sky is clear as a bell. South Dakota can be beautiful. Enjoy this gorgeous day!

Bonus photo: Prairie Roots, literally! Here's Mrs. Madville Times in our local grocery store. The lettuce seeds have already paid for themselves in yummy salads. And those purple chive blossoms... mm, mm, good!