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Wendell Berry will appear as part of the Tom and Marla Corts Distinguished Author Series. A book signing will follow. Berry is a philosopher, farmer, environmentalist, social activist, and author of more than 40 books of poetry, fiction, and essays. As Will Mangham of Julia Street Farm writes, “For those who don’t know of Berry, he is a lifelong farmer/writer who is now widely acknowledged as a major forebear of folks involved in sustainability issues, local food, local economies, community, etc. His message has been consistent, prophetic, and unique for decades.”

To add your name to the petition, visit SignOn.org.

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The Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network is jointly sponsoring this year’s Georgia Organics conference. From the ASAN web site:

If you’ve ever attended a Georgia Organics conference, you’ll know to expect really useful workshop sessions and farm tours, and at least a thousand people like you (this time from both Alabama and Georgia) to learn from and network with. Plus great local/organic food. Keynote speakers will be Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc., a farm and community food center in Milwaukee, and Chef Michel Nischan, food policy advocate and founder of the non-profit Wholesome Wave. Plus – you’ll get a deep discount on registration if you are a paid-up ASAN member! All current paid ASAN memberships at $25 or more will count as 2012 memberships.

The conference will include Alabama farm tours, Alabama presenters (including ASAN board members Sherry Johnson and Edwin Marty), and two specifically Alabama-centric workshop sessions, one on food policy work in Alabama and the other an all-Alabama call to energize a naturally-grown/organic and local food movement where we live. For more info go to georgiaorganics.org.

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This year the Food Bank of North Alabama engaged national food system expert Ken Meter to perform the North Alabama Local Farm and Food Economy study to gauge the potential of local foods as a catalyst for economic development. Meter will discuss the findings of the North Alabama Farm & Food Economy study.

This is an opportunity to explore local foods as a catalyst for health and wealth creation in Alabama with colleagues from farming, health, education, economic development, planning and more…

Ken Meter has performed studies of local food economies in 78 regions across 30 states and is considered one of the foremost food system analysts in the United States.

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This workshop is hands-on! You will experience drilling the oak logs, injecting the shiitake mycelium, sealing with wax….AND take a log home! Plus, there will be a small amount of classroom time to discuss shiitake mushroom culture and the health benefits of shiitake mushrooms.

BRING A SACK LUNCH

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Alabama Master Gardener Program in 2011 and the 20th anniversary of the Mobile County Master Gardener program this year, a tree planting will be held at Clark-Shaw Magnet School for Math and Science on Saturday, February 11.

The original John Shaw High School was constructed during the mid-1960s and then closed after 40 years for renovation. It re-opened in 2010 as the relocated Clark-Shaw Magnet School for Math and Science, a nationally recognized Blue Ribbon School. The landscaping from the original campus was damaged by hurricanes and the renovated school needed a major facelift as well as the addition of attractive gathering places for students and the community.

On Saturday, February 11, from 8:30 am to Noon, Mobile County Master Gardeners will join representatives of Keep Mobile Beautiful, Clark-Shaw teachers, students and staff, and parents from the school’s Beautification Committee and PTA to plant over 50 trees on the campus. Trees were selected for characteristics suitable for enriching the school curriculum in addition to suitability to the site and appearance. Dr. Glen Mutchnick, Clark-Shaw’s Science Department Chairman said, “We will integrate the tree planting, growth and maintenance with our 6th grade Life Science classes and our 8th grade Biology classes, which include botany. It will work nicely with the new STEM initiative in environmental engineering and sustainable resource replacement on school properties, plus it will be fun and very ‘hands-on’ for the children.”

Partners of Mobile County Master Gardeners and Clark-Shaw School that are making the project possible are: Keep Mobile Beautiful with a grant of $490 to purchase trees; Tom and Thayer Dodd of Dodd & Dodd Nursery in Semmes, who along with the Mobile Botanical Gardens donated trees to the project; Clark-Shaw faculty, staff, students and parents; and Mobile County Public Schools’ Facilities and Maintenance staff. Contributing to the landscape design for the project were Mobile landscape designer Terry Plauché and Mary Jo Broussard, Master Gardener and Director of Grounds at the Mobile Botanical Gardens.

I’ve been avoiding farmed salmon for some time now because of its higher mercury levels and negative environmental impacts; on the infrequent occasions I do buy salmon it’s Alaskan wild caught.

ADDITION 2.2.12: I should mention, it takes about 1/2 hour – 45 minutes to work up a menu, using a two-week plan and then repeating. Some things can’t get repeated, but it’s pretty easy to fill those holes in. We’ve done it sitting around with our cookbooks, and also filling drive time in the car.

Eating Alabama began as a blog and film project to document the efforts of two couples in the Tuscaloosa-Birmingham area to eat food produced entirely within the state. It started as a six month endeavor and stretched into a year, and continued to affect their lives and eating habits afterwards. Now it’s a full-length film that will begin screening in 2012 – a great candidate for the Crescent Theatre! You can view a trailer, read more about the film, and view the archived blog on the Eating Alabama web site. I look forward to seeing it.

I noticed this blog post over at Kitchen Gardeners International about economizing on starting seeds. Anyone who’s been gardening for a while has no doubt considered starting their own transplants from seed, and it is certainly IS a seductive notion when all those seed catalogs show up in the mailbox midwinter.

Years ago when we lived on an old farm and I started my first big kitchen garden, I had a light kit which I had a lot of success with, but sadly it got left behind in one of our many moves. Since then I’ve tried intermittently to start my own seeds, with equally intermittent success. This year, facing the loss of our CSA share and having decided to expand our kitchen garden again, I’m starting tomatoes and tomatillos.

Honestly, most gardeners with small plots really don’t need to start their own plants, since they will only require a few and the cost will be similar to or cheaper than the cost of starting their own. We are also fortunate in being able to get a good selection of varieties suited to our region at the Mobile Botanical Gardens plant sale in late March, grown by their excellent greenhouse volunteers.

So why grow your own? To get a jump on the growing season, to handpick the varieties you grow, and to control growing conditions if you’re strict about organic practices. It can also be fun; as every elementary school science teacher knows, it’s thrilling to see the bright green seed leaves pushing through the earth and leaning toward the light for the first time.

While I’m not about to set up shop lights (at least, not this year), I did find the tips from the article about rolling your own newspaper pots and making your own seed starting mix to be pretty useful. While it may look like I have dirt in the pots pictured above, it’s actually a starting mix I put together from ingredients I had on hand. Before I did anything I sterilized the containers I’d saved by soaking them in a weak bleach solution, and set them out to dry. Then I gathered my materials for the mix – some starting mix I already had that contained peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite; sand; worm castings; and a small amount of container mix. I put all the ingredients in a bucket, wetted them down, mixed thoroughly, divided it into the containers, and then planted the seeds according to the directions. When the plants start growing I’ll be feeding them with a seaweed solution which I ordered online.

I’m trying four varieties of tomato: two hybrids and two heirlooms. In the five and a half years we’ve lived here I’ve had the most success growing hybrid, disease resistant slicing tomatoes, as well as cherry tomatoes, many of which do remarkably well under the most brutal growing conditions, including neglect (as I can verify!). When selecting hybrids be sure to get varieties that are nematode resistant if you are growing in-ground, because they are common in the soil here. Bill Finch recommends fast-maturing varieties (75 days or less) for the Gulf Coast so you can get a crop in before the summer heat descends. The two hybrids I’m growing are Celebrity, which was grown with great success by our CSA, and Golden Girl. And while heirloom tomatoes, with their long maturation periods and less resistance to disease, do not do tremendously well in our climate, I’m a sucker for their large fruits and bold flavors so there will always be room in my garden for a few plants. My heirlooms are Cherokee Purple and Martino’s Roma, a small paste tomato, both varieties which should be more amenable to our area than some of the classic heirlooms. We had pounds and pounds of romas from the CSA last year and I could not get enough of the delectable fresh tomato sauce. Unfortunately for my husband I’m not a fan of cherry tomatoes, so I’ll be picking up a single plant later in the season for him.

If you’re starting seeds this year, what’s your strategy?