Sunday, June 2, 2013

A Tale of Three Diets, by Robyn Cornwell

First, let's clarify the often misused term: diet. An individual's diet is a long term pattern of eating or general, daily approach to food. Diet refers to a lifestyle of food choices. It could be healthy, convenient, strict or relaxed, but however it is described, it is well known that one's diet has a definitive impact on overall health.

In 1983, upon noticing a marked tendency to retain fluid (swollen ankles) I was introduced to the vegetarian diet as proposed in the book "Fit for Life." Immediately, it made a difference, and I was convinced this was my future. To change my hard and fast habit of meat-eating, I bought all the vegetarian cookbooks that were available at the time, and subscribed to Bon Appetit magazine just to have the one vegetarian recipe in the back.

Then, while working in St. Louis in 2001, I discovered the raw food lifestyle. It made so much sense! For example, raw foods lower your pH and conserves those all-important enzymes. I went "whole carrot" and became 100% raw for a whole year. I felt fabulous - all my aches and pains vanished as the cleansing effects took hold.

Fast forward to a few months ago. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I had heard about Dr. Westin A. Price. He was a dentist, who in 1920 decided to travel the world to examine the teeth and jaws of indigenous people's to compare them with those in the US. What he found was astonishing: People who ate only the foods found in nature had 1. No cavities and 2. Jaws wide enough to hold all their teeth, hence no crowding of teeth and cavities that we take for granted in the US.

In spite of raw food being very healthy for you, I had heard it results in dental problems. I was ready to hear more about the Weston A. Price eating lifestyle. So, I attended one of their conferences last February. This was yet another complete turn-around for me as they advocate eating meat! That is, meat with a caveat: It must be ORGANIC! Of course, that is only part of the story...

At our next CHARG! meeting, we welcome Ruth Ann Foster, a Westin A. Price Foundation Chapter leader from Greensboro to share more with us for What to eat? Rediscovering Truth in a World of Choice. Join us at 6pm on Thursday, June 6th at the Planetarium building of the Catawba Science Center in downtown Hickory's SALT block.

Here's a snippet from the talk:

"Before the advent of the food manufacturing industry, there were no nutritionists or dietitians, instinctively, we all knew what to eat! Today, we are bombarded with all sorts of confusing information and advice, from an endless number of "experts." How do we know what is right? More importantly, now what do we eat?

Learn how the food manufacturing industry has hijacked our health and threatens our futures, travel back in time to discover the foods that sustained our ancestors and kept them in vibrant health. Learn simplest eps to apply their dietary wisdom today."

Hope to see you there!

Friday, April 5, 2013

Pockerchicory Farms pork


Here's a great source for local pork! 

This farm is recommended by the permaculture group, We Are All Farmers 

Just letting folks know Pockerchicory Farms pork prices are finally set. Part of proceeds from this goes to support We Are All Farmers projects and lower cost or no cost workshops:

We offer a range of bulk and individually packaged options!!
Save $1.25 - $2.25 per pound if you order whole, half, or quarters!
Whole Hog: approximately 130 lbs meat, $6.75/lb = $877.50
Half Hog: approximately 65 lbs meat, $6.75/lb = $438.75
Quarter Hog: approximately 32 lbs meat, $7.25/lb = $232.00
 
 
A whole hog would come to:
(2) Boston Butt shoulder, approximately 4 - 3lb. roasts 
(2) Inner Tenderloins 
Loin Chops (about 23) OR (6 - 3lb.) tenderloin roasts 
(2 - 4 racks) Whole Rib Racks
Ham roasts or steaks - about 30 lbs
Pork belly/bacon, 15 lbs
(4) Shanks, about 8 lbs
Sausages/ground pork would come from shoulders and or hams plus jowls and trimmings
(4) packs, Liver, 3 lbs
(3) Leaf Lard, 3-4 lbs
 
If you order a whole or half hog it will be cut completely to order. If you order a quarter, we will give you cuts from all parts of the pig to make 32 lbs. Inner tenderloins will not be included since there are only two per hog and they go with the half or whole hogs.
 
Soup bones, kidneys and marrow bones come with the whole or half if you want them, but are not included in the charged weight.
 
Hog heads and other delicacy pieces also available. Inquire on pricing.

Save $.50 - $1.50 per pound when you order a family pack, depends on availability!
Family Pack  (Approx. 20 lbs)
6  Chops (3 pack of 2 each)
1  Roast: Shoulder or Fresh Ham  (approx 3.5 lb each)
4  Country Sausage (ground,1 lb each)
4  Bratwursts 1 lb each (will confirm availability soon)
4  Packs of Spare Ribs 1 lb each
1  Pack fresh bacon 1 lb each
 
Contains a variety of cuts totaling approximately 20 pounds of pork;  Approx. $150
 
Prices, Individual cuts, depending on availability
$ 8.00/lb Ground Pork
$ 6.50/lb Spare Ribs
$ 9.00/lb Shoulder Roast (bone in)
$ 9.00/lb Loin Roast (bone in)
$ 8.50/lb Pork Chops (1 per package)
$ 4.00/lb Leaf Fat
$ 3.75/lb Back Fat
$ 4.50/lb Organs (liver, heart, tongue, kidneys)
 
Pork Sausage
100% organic spices, natural sea salt, $ 8.50/lb (still checking possibility of organic mix)
Breakfast Sausage (bulk), $ 9.00/lb

Happy eating!
 
 

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Local Business Highlight: Matlock's Used Parts


Here's a local contact for used car and truck parts. I hope that none of you need to shop here, unless you are building a robot or sculpture! Car repairs are no fun, but maybe knowing about Matlock's used parts will make it a little easier on the wallet!  

Matlock’s Used Parts
2681 Heart Drive
Claremont NC 28610
(828) 459-9010 
Business hours: Mon through Fri, 8:00 am– 5:00 pm

Features: Over 1 million used car & light truck parts 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Local Business Highlight: Resource Warehouse and Gallery


And now for a little something for our creative minds! Resource Warehouse is a great place to hunt for reclaimed materials at low prices. Their vision and goals are valiant and worth reading about on their website, but for today, we are just covering the basics. Everything they offer has been diverted from the urban waste stream, organized and made available for a creative eye to claim.

They also offer reskilling classes and have a workspace available for parties. They always have a special deal on something, of which I benefited greatly when hunting fabrics for our backyard Shakespeare play last fall. I scored a 50 gallon bag of upholstery scraps for just two dollars!

Resource Warehouse and Gallery
451 Eleventh St. NW
Hickory NC 28601
(828) 256-2695
(Website) www.resourcewarehouse.org
Business hours: Tues – Sat 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

Features: Furniture, fabric, books, glassware
(Also, consigned re-used crafts in gallery)

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Permaculture thoughts by Robyn Cornwell


SECRETS FROM THE LAND DOWN UNDER

The following are excerpts from my notes at Permaculture Training in Portland, Oregon presented by Darren Doherty and Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Institute in New South Wales, Australia. I hope it is helpful and spurs some curiosity.

·   Permaculture is about food; agriculture is about commodities.
·   Put ducks in a pond on high ground; when it overflows it fertigates your garden below. Fertigation: Mixture of fertilizer with water. See book: The Power of Duck.
·   The east coast of the US is the most difficult place to design for because it has arctic winters and tropical summers with humidity. You would need two structures to be sustainable. The most sustainable building material is what is locally available – clay!
·   The key line is the valley between the convex and concave part of the hill. Build a dam below the key line and build swales on contour. Terracing is the same as contour without the key line.
·   Look at the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map and compare it with other countries with the same climate to see plants you can grow here.
·   Interrow Planting: Alternate fast-growing and slow-growing species. The fast one creates light competition and forces the slow one to grow more.
·   NFT: Nitrogen-fixing trees: Alder and Douglas (nfta.com).
·   Interplanting: In drier conditions, plant closer together, which protects from frost.
·   Grasslands (prairie) grow carbon faster than trees on the planet. The US has the greatest potential.
·   Don’t pull weeds – cut them at the base and leave the roots in, which create humus.
·   Weeds are fast carbon pathways that repair damaged land.
·   Organics is passé. Soil creation is the most important (Ecosystemic).
·   The US averages 200 tons of soil loss per year going into the ocean. This is how we nearly lost the Earth and life. All global warming is linked to it.
·   It takes nature 5,000 years to build 1” of topsoil, Yeoman can build 3” of topsoil in one year (see P. A. Yeomans at the www.permaculture.org.au site).
·   A sustainable system produces more energy than it consumes (with surplus to maintain its system) over its lifetime.
·   Earth will not be sustainable in our lifetimes. We are cheating time using gas that equals 1,000 years of sun in the forest without using real time. If we can’t learn to live in real time we are gone. We don’t need 300 horses per person; we need one horse for 100 people.
·   Moderate climate with:
Rocks: They offer thermal mass
Water: It offers thermal mass and reflection
Color:  White walls to cool, black tank to warm inside water.
·   Plant according to orientation:
Windy side: Bamboo
West: Hot plants; Black locust, bay laurel, chestnut, fig, kiwi (male and female), reflective leaves
East: Chestnut (grow very big)
North: Olive (only fruits when under stress), tall poplars. Make a mirror image of the sun’s arc on the north side with plants and tree heights.
For more fantastic information on permaculture see: www.permaculture.org.au
-Robyn Cornwell




Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Local Business Highlight: City Shoe Repair


Morning everyone!  This week's local business highlight is one of my favorite little repair shops! City Shoe Repair and Cobbler shop in Hickory. It's on a one way street, so you have to drive around the block depending on your approach, but it's so worth it to be able to get a little more life out of a pair of boots or shoes!

Also, they were very helpful when my six year old needed custom straps for her little red accordion. It's a rare instrument these days, particularly for such a little person, and the shortest straps I could find still required a few more notches and some excess cut off.

It's always nice to know someone with heavy duty leather and fabric tools!

City Shoe Repair / Cobbler Shop
291 1st. Ave. SE
Hickory NC 28602
(828) 324-0871
Business hours: Mon – Fri 8:30 am – 6:00 pm, Sat 9:00 am – 3:00 pm

Features: Repairing footwear, luggage, zipper, handbag

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

CHARG! group logo

It is with great pleasure that I share with you the new logo for our Community Health and Wellness group: CHARG! 

CHARG! stands for Community Health And Resource Group. This group is meeting on the second Thursday of each month at the Catawba Science Center Special Events meeting room in the Planetarium/Aquarium building at 6pm.


Attendees include local farmers, holistic practitioners, nutritionists, nurses, massage therapists, local health food store owners, curious residents and more. The group is enjoying getting to know others in the area with like minded interest in supporting health and wellness by advocating healthy lifestyles, quality foods and natural approaches to dealing with illness and ailments.

As their first outreach to the community, the CHARG! group has rallied around the idea of the Bucket Garden with John Elian from The Fisherman's Garden in Lenoir. Together they will be teaching a Bucket Garden Workshop at the Catawba Science Center this Saturday and giving away 25 to 30 completed buckets of greens! 

Here's to the health of the Foothills!



Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Local Business Highlight: The Tailored Touch


Broken zippers, ripped seams, or worn out elastic might be the end of a favorite article of clothing, or maybe not! Here's a listing for one of Hickory's Garment Repair shops. You might not have to say goodbye just yet!

The Tailored Touch
Kathy Crandall (Proprietor) 
10 21st Ave. NW #204 
Hickory NC 28601
(828) 322-3181

Business hours: 
Tues– Fri 12:00pm– 5:30pm, 
Sat 12:00pm–4:00pm 

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Local Business Highlight: The Seat Doktor


Cane seat chairs are a real beauty. My great grandfather rescued and caned several chairs that have been passed down in my family. I have thought now and then, what will I do when these chairs need repair? I certainly won't be throwing them out!

I find it a real challenge to find skilled crafts people these days, but they are out there! Here's one such resource:

The Seat Doktor
Dick Knotts (Proprietor)
215 Lucky Hollow Rd.
Hickory NC 28601
(828) 495-3029
(Website) www.seatdoktor.blogspot.com (E-mail) canuist215@yahoo.com

By appointment
Seat weaving (hand and machine woven cane), color matching, pickup and delivery available, free estimates 

Thoughts on Meditation by John Wepner


 The Empty One
The empty one is the only one who has enough room to hold all the riches of the land.
But the empty one does not hold on to them, but keeps letting go.
And in letting go, the empty one creates room for more riches to enter.
Yet, the empty one does not care if riches or rags come in,
For they are the same to such a one.

The empty one wants to share the riches of the land with you,
but you are already too full of dull jewels and worn tapestries,
from all the roles that you play.
Only one who is empty enough has room to hold all the majesty of this world.
The empty one says, “Let go, and you too will be filled with all the riches of the land."
“Release your grasp, keep Letting go.”
By John Wepner

This empty one in this poem is in each and every one of us. The empty one is our awareness, the empty space that all we see and notice fills. Our awareness can hold everything, riches and rags. Often times we are so full of the dull jewels and worn tapestries of our ideas, stories, directions, emotions, that we miss the fullness that is present in each and every moment. This fullness is all the riches of the land, and only when we can become empty in our awareness of things, can we feel and notice it.

In the weekly meditation group I lead at The Wepner Wellness Center, our aim is just this. To become empty so that we can experience the riches of the land. Obviously it is easier said than done. Often times our minds are so woven into the fabric of our lives, that it takes time and dedication to allow the mind to unwind. It takes time for the mind to release its grasp on us.

I know when I started doing a daily meditation practice for myself, that it took a whole month and a half before I could sit in relative peace for ten minutes. Because I was committed to simply sitting for ten minutes each day, I could sit through my mind going nuts, it was a very unpleasant ten minutes day after day. Then almost as if it were magic, my mind stopped, and I could sit in peace. Like I said, it took a while for the magic to happen, but it did happen, and it was very pleasant. Now I am sure you would love to hear that I continued this practice and was able to sit in peace forever and live happily ever after, right? Wrong.

After maybe three weeks of being able to sit in peace for ten minutes a day, I lost my commitment and motivation, and stopped my daily meditation practice. Have any of you every experienced this? Where things were going too well and it got boring or you lost interest? On one hand I accomplished my goal of being able to find peace in meditation, and on the other I had given up that space I allowed myself each day to rest in. Life continued, and after a few months I sat to meditate again, expecting the peace I had found would still be there waiting for me. Guess what I found? I found my mind going nuts again. And again it took time to allow the mind to die down and rest. It took time to find peace again.

The moral of this story is finding the peace you want in your life comes at a cost. The cost is giving up the ways you keep it from yourself. For me, it was finding the time to simply sit for ten minutes in meditation, and then seeing it through. I had to give up my desire to keep letting my mind be the most important asset I had. In sitting in meditation I allowed something greater than my mind to take hold. 

In returning to meditation, I had to sit with the consequences of allowing my thoughts to rule me, sitting with my mind going nuts again. I still pay this price when I allow my mind to take over. In this world of ours, allowing our minds to run our lives is actually encouraged. That is why a regular meditation practice of sitting in stillness is important; it creates space for letting go of this false sense of control. I invite you to consider such a practice for yourself as well, especially as we enter a new year. The curative agent for all the business in our lives is not to find a better activity; it is to rest, to sit in stillness. And if you give yourself enough time, and are willing to see it through, I can guarantee you will find peace. Even if that peace only comes in fleeting moments, it is worth the endeavor. The peace and aliveness you will find in life contains all the riches of the land.

Blessings on this new year we co-create together,
John

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Growing Power at the Interfaith Food Shuttle









This week's blog post was originally published in our February 2013 newsletter, contributed by Edward Marshall.


From the moment I'd heard of Growing Power, I wanted to visit. As it turns out, this fall I had the good fortune to attend a Growing Power workshop at Raleigh's Interfaith Food Shuttle, an urban farm site minutes from I-40 and the capital's downtown. Situated in a former industrial warehouse with approximately an acre or more of land, the location's proximity to consumers and markets was beset with the pollution issues of its past history and location.

Growing Power was started by Will Allen, a recent McArthur Genius Award winner who has created a revolutionary way of producing a bounty of farm fresh produce, fish, eggs, and compost in the shadows of Milwaukee, Wisconsin's housing projects. There's a plethora of press on this farmer, his techniques, and his Growing Power non-profit, and I highly recommend a virtual tour of his urban 2-acre operation for inspiration.

This weekend conference by Interfaith Food Shuttle was organized around the need to get their production up and running, with intensive on-site composting facilities, a 40' x 100' greenhouse, vermiculture bins, an aquaponics system, and specialty mushroom production.

Will Allen himself was on hand to jumpstart these systems. Aware of the pitfalls and solutions of raising food in the cities, especially the hazards of what lies in the soil, Allen knows that one solution is to literally build the soil from the ground up--rather than till down. Here are some highlights mixed in with some how-to's of the Growing Power systems from that weekend.

One other great feature of this conference was that Will Allen's Growing Power was able to bring together 130 people from across North Carolina and assemble them into productive teams. Teams of people worked on the following projects, making their assemblage so much easier for the needs of the Interfaith Food Shuttle. Community is key to successful regenerative farming, and Will Allen's group serves as a great model of farming, of serving the community, and of working together as a community. We achieve so much more through conscious interdependence than by holding onto the myth of ‘going it alone’.




Vermiculture

Will Allen likes to refer to Growing Power's earthworms as the best employees of the operation. One feature activity at this conference was to get vermiculture bins going.
Using these biological plows (worms) to eat spoiled produce, digest it, and excrete it as pH neutral fertility is both easy and sheer genius. In fact, when my wife (fellow We Are All Farmers Permaculture  Institute co-founder) and I lived in New York, we had two worm bins in our apartment that silently and without smell turned junk mail (non-glossy and non-color), receipts, and food scraps into beautiful compost.

If you want to know how to get started with vermiculture, it's easy to do, and here's how:

First rescue some 40 gallon+ plastic totes from the waste stream, or, buy some wherever fine plastic totes can be found.

Next, drill 1/4" holes across the bottoms for drainage, and some 1/8" holes 1" down from the tops.

Then, figure out a way to harvest the worm tea that will eventually leach from the bottom of the bins where you drilled the holes. This liquid gold is a fantastic fertilizer that will not burn your plants.
I have my bins perched on top of bricks, with the lid from the first tote placed on the floor below the bricks. Beneath this, I have a small tray that can collect the worm tea. Inside the bins, I layer scrap paper and kitchen scraps, and this is covered with a scrap piece of cardboard. Everything is kept moist like a damp sponge so that the worms can perform their work. New compostables are added as they appear into new areas of the bin, and this mixture is amended with scrap paper, leaves, and a sprinkling of soil to create a hospitable environment. In a few months time you'll notice that the worms will have turned your scraps into a friable black soil that is their castings. You can separate the worms and their egg sacs (tiny little light yellow-brown balls) from these castings and fertilize your seedlings and enrich your gardens.

Will Allen does exactly this, using custom wooden bins, to produce several million pounds of vermicompost annually to grow his custom salad mixes and sell as fertilizer.

Compost

At the workshop, Will Allen discussed the merits of building your garden soil on site, as all urban areas must assume that the ground they are working with is heavily contaminated. However, this is not a problem when you intervene in the urban waste stream, intercepting compostables such as spoiled produce and lawn clippings free of pesticides, mulch materials such as leaves and wood chips, and cardboard. These are used in various ways to build rich garden soils.

Here is how to make easy compost bins:


Gather recycled pallets.

Line with 1/4" hardware cloth to keep out rodents.
Screw the pallets together with carpentry screws to build a box from the ground up.
Mix spoiled produce with dry carbonaceous materials such as leaves, straw, or finely ground wood chips at a ratio of 1 part produce to 4 parts carbon, with a layer of compost of soil to top it off.
Repeat this layering process until the pallet box is filled.

At some point, a brave soul needs to climb on top and compress this mass further into the compost bin. It is watered to the state of a wrung out sponge, and a final pallet with hardware cloth is fastened to the top of the compost bin. Then, an adjacent compost bin is started. By the end of the conference there were twenty compost bins set up in the Growing Power tradition. These will be emptied in four to six weeks time into an adjacent empty compost bin, and finished compost that can be spread onto your garden beds should be realized in another four to six weeks time.

Bed Building

Will Allen discussed the importance of growing healthy food in the cities where it is needed most, while acknowledging that the cities' soil was terribly polluted from industry and automobiles. His solution was to build the soil up, and he demonstrated the creation of garden beds that were 36" high, 24" to 36" wide at the top, and that sloped down on the sides. These beds had a pathway that was 20" to 24" wide, and they were about 40' in length. Once you have the recipe, you can build them in any configuration that you want. Here's how.

Start with cardboard or scrap newspaper, and cover the site. This is your biodegradable weed barrier, so you'll want to layer this thickly to keep unwanted additions to your garden from joining the summer party.

On top of this, add several inches of compost. Then, add several inches of carbon, like leaves, leaf mulch, wood mulch, or straw. Then, add more compost. If you are envisioning lasagna, that's the appropriate image to keep in mind.

Now, add some more compost and mulch.

Top your new bed off with a healthy layer of leveled compost on the top.

You'll be able to plant into your new bed and mulch around the plants to conserve moisture and prevent weeds from taking over your hard work. In time, the 36" height will melt down quite a bit, so be prepared to continue enriching your garden beds with new compost. In between these beds are deep layers of wood chips to both cover the cardboard and hold water while suppressing weeds. In my design, I would plan these types of beds on the contour so that the pathways in between could harvest and slowly infiltrate water into the soil and moderate the need for irrigation.

Aquaponics



This example of system's thinking has made Growing Power's reputation, through the combination of growing fish in tanks and filtering their waste-laden water through grow beds of high value greens for fertilization of the greens and filtering of the water. It is then returned via gravity to the fish tank. I participated in this workshop, and after going over the biology and economics of this system in the morning, we built it in the afternoon out of treated dimensional lumber and 45 mil pond liner.



Mushrooms


We also learned about integrating mushrooms with garden beds as a way to further break down woody materials into garden soil, as a way to harvest a mushroom crop, and as way to further stack functions into greenhouses. For example, shiitake logs can be suspended above the aquaponic tanks to harvest moisture from the tanks, and produce a valuable crop in an underutilized space. Oyster mushrooms were grown to continue breaking down compostables into valuable garden soils for vegetable production. These mushrooms were also grown in hanging chandeliers that were hung throughout the greenhouse, again harvesting moisture from the fish tanks and producing valuable food in an underutilized vertical space.


Greenhouse building

With the greenhouse building workshops, in two days the Interfaith Food Shuttle had a working 20' x 60' greenhouse where there had previously been vacant industrial soil. All the materials were ubiquitous--parts for chain-link fences, dimensional lumber, electrical conduits, and common construction fasteners. The exceptions would be the UV stabilized greenhouse plastic and the greenhouse cross-bracing hardware for the purloins. Inside, we replicated Will Allen's garden bed construction techniques to create four 36" high garden beds to produce out-of-season produce.

Conclusion

Again, this was a great weekend of community for the cause of increased food responsibility (our preferred term to independence). It was a privilege to witness Allen's work, to work to benefit the Interfaith Food Shuttle, and to hone more of my alternative farming methods.
--Edward Marshall

Edward Marshall is the co-founder and principal instructor of the We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute in Union Grove, NC. In addition to three free workshops a year for non-profits, the We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute runs permaculture design courses to foster food responsibility, community, systems design, and alternative skills. Their spring course begins Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013. Sign up for their courses and learn more at www.weareallfarmers.org, by calling (704) 592 2557, e-mail weareallfarmers@gmail.com or by visiting them on Facebook.