I took these photos a few weeks ago at the corner of White Street and Willis, the former home of the Fair Share Garden or Lions Share Garden. If I had known that it would be the my last trip to the garden I would have taken more pictures and brought home my Soapwort plant that was still managing to survive. The garden was lush with wild flowers and a healthy feeding ground for many birds and insects. I will never understand why people feel the need to destroy something so beautiful so that they can replace it with a vacant lot. They even took down the tire swing that the neighborhood kids used to use and the little 'sun' ball on the gnomon for the sundial. The land was taken over by Daytona State College in a land swap with the Daytona Beach Lions Club. Unlike many other progressive Colleges and Universities, Daytona State College does not have a garden on it's campus. I was lucky enough to be educated at the University of Washington where daily I enjoyed the large herbal garden on campus.
Beautiful wasn't it?
This is how Daytona State College left it, utterly flattened. There are also birds nesting about the mural. I wonder where they go for their food now?
The flattened the large palm tree that was there even before we planted the garden. The palm washome to mocking birds and was surrounded by bromeliads.
Garden ghosts? Orbs everywhere in this photo looking out towards where the tire swing used to be.
Still signs of life. A few crash test Aloes survived the trauma.
Not surprisingly, a few irrepressible beach sunflowers. No doubt those will be found throughout the neighborhood for years to come.
A timid bloomer. Not quite all the plants were plowed under. I hope it makes lots of new seeds to spread around.
I am so grateful whenever there is a volunteer at Fair Share who has their camera when I don't. Sally took this awesome shot of this butterfly that I spotted on our Neem Tree tonight. I have no idea what kind of butterfly it is. Any ideas? It looked like it was painted with silver. Looking forward to having Sally back soon. She is starting a new group at Daytona State College called Real Food On Campus. You can check out their Facebook page for upcoming events here.
A few more bowls! These are the bowls that I painted last week at the Lions Club for our ongoing Thursday meetup for the Fair ShareEmpty Bowls fundraiser. The bowls are supposed to be a symbolic reminder of people who do not have enough to eat.
This red one is my favorite.
My brush was not the greatest, but these are supposed to be black eyed peas at the bottom of the bowl.
These are my 'poke sallet' bowls. The kids stained them with poke berry juice a few weeks ago.
Hope you like them and feel free to join us if you would like to make some too.
Many of the plants in the herb spiral at Fair Share are loving all this rain we've been having. I spy a Neem tree, Poke weed with ripening berries, Mondara punctata, and Aloes. It's about time to harvest more of that Mondara for liniment. I made a 'Fair Share Liniment' with Mondara, Lemongrass, Mugwort and Rosemary. I must say I like how it turned out. It's in a nice spray bottle, which is quite convenient.
Join us at our regularly scheduled Fair Share Garden meetup this Saturday in Daytona Beach for free workshops. Location: 345 White St. behind the Lions club (corner of White & Willis)
At 10 am Bernadette Albright will be speaking on the importance of weeding in the vegetable garden. Don't settle for a low yield vegetable garden by letting water-drinking and nutrient-consuming weeds get in the way. Learn to identify various edible weeds.
At 11 am Scott Johnson of the SolarNetOne project will demonstrate a small off-grid photovoltaic power system designed to provide remote communications, such as for off-grid homesteading. The talk will include info on how to size and scale solar power systems to meet load size, as well as strategies to optimize load equipment for operation from solar power.
Workshops are free, however Fair Share is a 501 c non-profit and donations are welcome.
This year my daughter's birthday coincides with lots of Earth Day happenings. We are having her birthday party at the Fair Share Garden in Daytona. Everyone is welcome for the "Earth Day's Birthday Celebration" which starts at the garden at 11.
Moira and her friends will be getting at head start at her party making pine cone bird feeders. We practiced making on earlier last week to see how it would go. We used the basic recipe from enviro-explorers.com This is a fun activity for kids and is a nice take home party favor; more healthy than candy favors and more eco-friendly than small plastic toy favors.
What you need: 1 large pine cone 2-3 feet of hemp cord 1/2 cup suet, lard, or peanut butter (avoid peanut butter for people with allergies). Some recipes suggest vegetable shortening, but I prefer to use less processed oils. 1/2 cup corn meal Handful or 2 of bird seed
Method: Tie the hemp cord to the top of the pine cone. This is what you will hang your feeder from. Mix 1/2 cup corn meal with 1/2 cup fat; I would leave that job to adults or kids maybe over the age of 7. Moira had a hard time mixing the cornmeal and fat together. Spread the cornmeal/fat mixture evenly over the pine cone. Next roll the cone in bird seed
Your bird feeder is ready to hang! Try to hang it in front of a window or at least somewhere out of easy reach from cats.
Moira and I planted a few more patches of mint in the new US mint bed at the garden today. We now have 3 species of mint in the bed. I'm itching to find a pretty variegated mint like apple or pineapple to add to the mix also. This picture is the best I could do for a panorama. Not quite seemless, but you get the idea from these 3 photos that I merged together; click on the image for a larger view. It's going to look so great when it all fills in.
Luckily there are still some not so strenuous jobs for me to do at the garden (34 weeks pregnant and counting). This morning I also thinned the carrots in the tall raised beds and fed some of the herbs and fruit trees with Alpaca manure. There was plenty of fertilizer for the sage, thyme, chrysanthemum, bananas, loquats, comfrey, lemon verbena, lemon balm, calendula, patchouli, Elderberry, cherry bushes, citrus. What I learned today is that Alpaca manure is like sheep manure, it is mild and doesn't have to be composted before side dressing around the plants. It is so nice to have Embry Riddle volunteers from time to time at the garden. We had some wonderful help with weeding around the spiral and help for Moira with planting my new perilla starts.
One week from today, November 18, 2009 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM, the Fair Share Garden in partnership with the Museum of Arts and Sciences and the Downtown Farmers Market will host the film Fresh! at the Museum of Arts and Sciences.
Unique from other previous documentaries on agriculture and farming which have focused on the horror of the industry, "Fresh" is a look at sustainable solutions to problems with our industrialized food system and offers ideas on the direction the movement should be headed.
Come enjoy a wholesome meal, silent auction, the movie, and an informative discussion to follow.
schedule
6:30 pm--wholesome meal which will include samples of Organic beer and Fair Trade Organic coffee, music, and silent auction.
7:00 pm--Fresh, the movie begins, and an interactive discussion panel with follow the movie. The panel includes Commercial Horticulture Agent, Dana Venrick of the Volusia County Cooperative Extension Service; Joel Tippens of the Fair Share Urban Garden Project; and organic farmer Pauline Copello of Pauline’s Lucky Market Garden.
Event ends at 8:30 pm.
This event is a fundraiser for the Fair Share Urban Garden Project and the proceeds support establishing new community gardens and urban agriculture projects in Daytona Beach. Tickets are $15 at the door.
Thank you to our sponsors: Orlando Brewing, Sweetwater Organic Coffee, Cafe Campesino, Access to Organics, Chique LLC, Downtown Farmers Market and the Museum of Arts & Sciences.
For further details on this event contact the Museum of Arts & Sciences at (386) 255-0285
story
FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision of our food and our planet’s future. FRESH addresses an ethos that has been sweeping the nation and is a call to action America has been waiting for.
characters
Among several main characters, FRESH features:
Will Allen - 6ft 7" former professional basketball player Will Allen is now one of the most influential leaders of the food security & urban farming movement. His farm and not-for-profit, Growing Power, have trained and inspired people in every corner of the US to start growing food sustainably. This man and his organization go beyond growing food. They provide a platform for people to share knowledge and form relationships in order to develop alternatives to the industrial food system.
Joel Salatin- world-famous sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, made famous by Michael Pollan (also in the movie) - author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Joel Salatin writes in his website that he is "in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture." By closely observing nature, Joel created a rotational grazing system that not only allows the land to heal but also allows the animals to behave the way the were meant to – as in expressing their "chicken-ness" or "pig-ness", as Joel would say.
David Ball -supermarket owner, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy. With the rise of Wal-Mart and other big chains, David Ball saw his family-run supermarket dying, along with a once-thriving local farm community. So he reinvented his business, partnering with area farmers to sell locally-grown food and specialty food products at an affordable price. His plan has brought the local economy back to life.
reason
FRESH recaptures our sense of agency and makes us believe that our individual actions in fact do matter. Throughout the film we encounter the most inspiring people, ideas, and initiatives around the US. And thus, FRESH showcases real people first and foremost, connecting audiences not with facts and figures or apocalyptic policy analysis, but with personal stories of change.
producer
Ana Joanes is a Swiss-born documentary filmmaker whose work addresses pressing social issues through character-driven narratives. After traveling internationally to study the environmental and cultural impacts of globalization, she graduated from Columbia Law School in May 2000, awarded as a Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow. Thereafter, Ana created Reel Youth, a video production program for youth coming out of detention. In 2003, Ana and her friend Andrew Unger produced Generation Meds, a documentary exploring our fears and misgivings about mental illness and medication. FRESH is Ana’s second feature documentary.
Moira and I just got home from an Eat in demonstration at the Fair Share Garden. We gathered to promote healthy food for children's school lunches. We enjoyed some lovely blue berry whole wheat pancakes, pumpkin muffins, fresh vegetables, herbal tea, yogurts and more. I learned today that all of the Florida schools are contracted with a distributor who delivers California produce. Fair Share would like for kids to have the opportunity to grow food in school gardens. Slow Food USA is asking congress to increase the budget for school lunches so that schools can afford healthy foods for kids instead of cheap junk food like tater tots. If you agree please add your name to the petition.
Saturday June 20th we will be having a Solstice Celebration at the Fair Share Garden in Daytona beach from 9am -1/2ish. This will be a potluck and we will be sharing food towards lunchtime. At 10 am there will be a children's story time, a gardening workshop and and herbal workshop that I am leading.
We have an amazing amount of foliage in the herb spiral right now and I will be using the fresh Lemongrass and Rose geranium to demonstrate how to make all natural non-toxic deodorants in a Vinegar base. Deodorants are always available online and will also be available to purchase along with my other products on Saturday.
Eighteen days was quite a few to be away from the plants and chickens. There were 30 inches of rain here while I was gone. Luckily everything drained well and there was no flooding or severe leakage.
My Moringa Trees and Lemongrass are looking lush. Strangely the chickens have not rediscovered the Moringa since they grew up after the frost. I guess that just means more fresh greens for me until that happens. The lemongrass is bushing out so nicely. I started all the little bunches from a few stalks each just 3 months ago.
Speaking of chickens, the little peeps turned into awkward teen agers while I was away. I will have to add their pictures later, but the good news is they now spend their days foraging under the oak tree where they are safe from hawks. Buffy started laying eggs of course the day after we left. Her eggs are brown, but not quite as dark as my Rhode Island Red's eggs. Here she is in a picture I took of her today. She is the sweetest of the 5 chickens.
My raised bed is doing well, so I started culivating one more raised bed to plant later this month. In the mean time while I wait for vegetables to come in in my yard we are already harvesting peppers and zucchini at the Fair Share Garden, (tomatoes too if you count the green ones that I fried) for lunch. These are some pictures that I took on Saturday.
The Seminole pumpkin mound is going to be dense and productive:
Speaking of Seminole Pumpkins, I have a fresh batch of pumpkin soap that is back in stock. I've been playing catch up this week taking pictures of new products.
These zucchini rows are going to be awesome in a month or so. We are also growing cukes and Malabar spinach to the left and black eyed peas to toward the back of the zucchini.
The butterfly garden at Fair Share is in full bloom right now. I have been neglecting annuals in my garden for too long. I must add some. They are so great for attracting pollinators.
The herb spiral is really filling in. I need to add some rosemary and a few others that are growing up in flats, Some of the herbs that are doing really well in it at this moment are Lemongrass, Rose Geranium, Mugwort and Holy Basil. I will be giving an herb demonstration with fresh herbs from the spiral at the garden on the morning of Saturday, June 20th. Check back in or email me for details.
I came in two hours later than usual to the garden work party on Saturday morning at the Fair Share Garden. I found these amazing tomato hornworms, Manduca quinquemaculata, when I got there. I spotted two of them when I came in and checked the beds for weeds and pests. They were perfectly camouflaged among what was left of the foliages they had been consuming. Hornworms are large and are best controlled by picking them off the plants. Here is an informative page I found about hornworms.
Inpromtu insect workshop.
Look at how much foliage they took off this stem! It only takes them about an hour to do that.
Here I am with the Rose Geranium plants that are coming in so nicely. No bugs there, just sweet little pink flowers. These plants are so great for Florida gardens. The grow year round and start easily from cuttings. This is the same Rose geranium that I use for making infused oil, or vinegars. Specifically I use it my Rose Geranium Deodorant Spray and Rose Geranium Conditioning hair rinse.
Photos by Fair Share Garden volunteer Patricia Shaw.
