Food For Thought

In Transition - The film - (Part 1)

2009-12-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

Click here to see all six parts, free, online.

Santa Fe Urban Edible Garden Map

2009-12-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's post, I offered a rough sketch of an idea, which I called "Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Mapping Project." That roughly outlined sketch illustrates a fairly ambitious idea or proposal. It may be something worth digging up down the road, for sure, but today I'm thinking a little smaller--, a Santa Fe Urban Edible Garden Map. Here's the sketch for that idea.:

An internet based map / website is created in which anyone who so wishes can sign up at the site and then place a "dot" on the map of Santa Fe. The dot represents the site of an edible garden in Santa Fe. (The edible gardens can be of any size.)

When a site user clicks on any of these dots he or she will be taken to a site-user (gardener)'s own unique web page (on the site). On these pages, linked to by these "dots," will be a photo or two of a garden located at the map site ("dot") along with a brief description of the site/garden. Links to other personal garden-related web pages would be allowed.

Color-coded "dots" on the map could indicate variables such as whether the edible garden is one of Santa Fe's community gardens or an invididual/family garden. Etc. Also, fruit and nut trees/orchards ... and even chicken coops could be located on the map!

I like this idea because I think it would generate enthusiasm for urban edible gardening and food production. People would log on frequently to see new gardens (etc.) appear on the map, and to click to see the photos and descriptions.

Participation would, of course, be entirely voluntary.

What do you think?

Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Mapping Project

2009-12-05T16:08:00.009-07:00

This post is meant to offer only a brief sketch of an idea which I think needs to be shared and discussed. (You may contribute to the discussion in the "comments" below.)

First, Santa Fe County--the governing office--may or may not be involved in the project, should the mapping process begin down the road. Using the County boundaries as the boundaries of our possible future mapping process provides us with a convenience, as those boundaries are clear and already mapped (populated with map features and details), thus we will simply be populating an existing map with details and particulars which (it seems to me) are not on any existing maps.

The function and purpose of a Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Map would be to allow residents and governing agencies of Santa Fe city/county to evaluate, plan for, characterize and quantify (etc.) features of our local-regional foodshed.

Farms of any size are obvious features which would be included on the foodshed map, as would water sources in available detail, as well as soil conditions. A website would be made available which would allow for a map database for various particular uses, whether private or governmental. This would consist of various choices concerning map features to be viewed. It would be possible to look at a county map showing only landscape contours, water sources, and soil types. It would also be possible for chicken coops and fruit orchards to populate the map. The limits are few.

Another map could show all of that but also farms, community gardens, orchards.... Yet another map would show all of the little backyard gardens in (e.g.) Santa Fe -- of those participants who so choose to populate the map in this way. A map of the city of Santa Fe would be "zoomable," and "dots" on the map could represent particular backyard gardens, with backyard gardeners locating their garden/dot with a click of the mouse. A map user/reader could then click on any of these dots to see a special page showing the tomatos growing in pots on a porch, or a little backyard garden, or whatever features were present at the time. A description of the site and date would be provided.

This Santa Fe Urban Garden Map would help encourage a spirit of community and learning opportunities among those who love to grow edible gardens in Santa Fe, and would also allow users of the larger Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Map to track progess of an evolving food security ethos in the City.

Clearly it is crucial to our transition away from an irresilient food system that many, many more people learn at least the fundamentals of gardening, and this alone explains the potential value of the urban gardeners' map just mentioned.

This is just an idea to be shared. There is yet no such mapping project, but there could be. And discussion here could at least help us to know how such maps could be useful. I'm sure my idea can be much improved upon. Welcome to the process!

===

You're two steps ahead if you thought, "Hey, the Santa Fe County map could be inserted into a New Mexico State map."

You are three steps ahead if you thought the New Mexico map could be inserted into a national map, ... etc.

Imagine a Global Food Resiliency Map ... created in large part by local individuals who know what's under their feet and growing in their neighborhoods!

====

Santa Fe County Geographic Information Systems

GRASS - http://grass.osgeo.org

Yard Sharing - at Hyperlocavore.com

2009-12-05T09:50:00.001-07:00

An interview with Liz McLellan, a hyperlocavore and yardsharing advocate. (Click on video image for full-width screen.) The website is at www.hyperlocavore.com .

Click here for the Hyperlocavore New Mexico page.

... oh, oh, oh... on the radio (well, sort of)

2009-12-04T15:50:00.001-07:00

Click Here: The United States of Transition

- Carl Munson in conversation with Carolyne Stayton (interim Executive Director), Jennifer Gray (President) of Transition US and Michael Brownlee (co-founder of Transition Boulder County).

======================

And for more on the "radio"...

Click Here: Transition Radio

Interviews & Conversations ... & Media, Oh-My!

2009-12-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

As you can see, at this moment, this is my blog. More or less. But one is a lonely number, and my hope is that either this blog will become a group blog or that we can link a number of blogs, etc., together as one big (mid-sized?) happy family of blogs, etc. Or whatever -- I'm open. This blog catalyzes--I hope--a process. Ideally, it will serve as some sort of springboard for creating community. (More on community in a moment.)

So, here's the deal. I need folks to raise their hands and say, "Yeah, I'd like to be interviewed, or to hold a conversation..." which can be posted in here.

Word of this blog's lonely existence may be trickling out. If we're lucky, some of the folks who are actively facilitating the emergence of a more resilient and sustainable local economy (including food localizers) are reading. I'm especially hoping the Santa Fe Community Gardens folks show up and submit to a little email interview or conversation (Hint, hint). And we can show photos here too -- and even videos! I suppose even a "radio" show is possible. (Maybe, one day, we'll have to trade in our high-tech for some more Earth-friendly low-tech, but in the mean time let's use what we've got to jump-start the new world. The "alphabet soup" media aren't doing it! - e.g., ABC, CBS, NBC...)

So, yeah, this is my blog -- but it's also your blog. I'm more like the editor. (Though I could use some editorial assistants with better grammar, spelling, etc., than I.)

Get in line for your interview or publishable conversation by emailing me at jrivermartin [at] gmail.com -- or send photos, videos, or whatever you got. (Yeah, yeah... "you got" is not grammatical. Whatever.)

....

Oh, Yeah... I promised more on community. So here it is. I envision a little cafe here in Santa Fe which serves two purposes (at least) simultaniously. One of its purposes is to serve as THE spot for informal togetherness and belonging for all of us greenies and transitioners and supporters of the peace, etc. (We can talk.) The other main purpose I have in mind is to serve as a multi-media library -- books, magazines, DVDs, pretty much any media. The library would allow borrowing distribution of crucial digital and non-digital info, including films (in DVD format). It's just an idea -- and we can talk.

I am -- officially -- Santa Fe's only "muller"!

2009-12-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

That's right. Yesterday I received an email reply from a gentleman at Transition US, informing me of his surprise that I'm the only muller in or around Santa Fe! As the song goes, "one is the loneliest number."

I knew this post needed a soundtrack! A can see your eyes tearing up with sympathy. But all you have to do to soothe my broken heart is click here, read The Primer, and then read this. Then you can post a comment to me here on this lonely little blog. Or email me at jrivermartin [at] gmail.com . Or both (I'm lonely!).

I'm thinking that before we have any Official Mullers we'll have some folks mulling over whether we want to become official Mullers--PreMullers, let's call us. Great! Let's get together for tea, or coffee ... or maybe some locally grown herbal something. (No, not THAT!)

All of that said, please remember that this blog is a community resource geared toward lower-case t transitioning. I call the work of the Transition Network upper case T Transitioning. We here in this lonely little blog can have our t/T with or without milk and sugar -- any way we like it! This is, afer all, a free country! (Stop giggling!)

And whether you're into the capital-T Transition Thang makes no nevermind to me when it comes to getting together for tea / coffee / soup / hot chocolate -- or a nice hike or whatever.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2009-12-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes

Just a brief note as I prepare to head out for some lunch.

I've added some nifty new sidebar features -- check them out. They're better than my rough-hewn prose. (I'm thinking now's the time to blow the dust off those grammar and writing/editing books.)

My plan is to provide a much better quality of writing in here in due time. And don't be surprised if some early posts get deleted when the good stuff comes online! But I had wanted to just get started -- and, yes, I know my tenses, or whatever they call it, were off in that second post of mine.

I've not yet "publicized" this blog much, and doubt that many are reading. But if you will just say "hello" and where you live in the comments (below), it will make me happy.

So, where is this thing going? Well, I'm thinking of doing some interviews of locals on the subjects and themes of this blog, and posting that. So stay tuned! ... Okay... Lunch!

....

Later the same day, after lunch:

I'm slowly choosing and posting links in the sidebar. Please let me know if you'd like your blog or web site added to the links page. Thanks!

Rob Hopkins at TED

2009-11-30T08:00:00.001-07:00

Small Is Not Always Beautiful

2009-11-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

I have my own copy of Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful around here somewhere, but I'm going to resist the notion that I must quote from it directly, as my books are all out of sort at the moment. Instead, I will rely on faint memories from my youth -- which is when I (strangely enough) first read the book. (Kids aren't supposed to be reading about economics!)

I had picked up a paperback copy, somewhere, and ... well, I can still remember the scent of its pages--faintly musty, earthy. This was in the seventies. I must have wondered how a smart, educated adult would discuss people mattering, for that's what the subtitle promised. Even then, before reading his book, I had the sense that the world was somehow up-side-down. It was "the economy" that mattered most, and business (busyness?), and people came in--perhaps--a solid second. That perception is different in a kid who has it than in an adult who has it. Usually, a kid couldn't explain why or how he knows what he knows about an up-side-down world. The kid feels and senses it, anyway.

I remember Schumacher talking about the absurdity of "buscuits" (British for "cookie" or "cracker") being trucked long distance from city A to city B--, and from city B to city A. The buscuit "lorries" would pass each other mid-route, heading in opposite directions. It didn't seem to matter to Business that it would make more sense for people in London to be eating buscuits baked in London and the people in Glasgow to be eating Glasgow buscuits.

The book made a big splash when it was published in 1973, which was also the year of a major oil crisis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis]. Another major oil crisis occured that same decade [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_energy_crisis].

....

I suppose the point of my riffing and rambling about Schumacher's musty-earthy paperback here is to provide a hint of the personal history of this blog's emergence. A big part of that personal history is my sense that while Schumacher's book was influential in its day, and inspirational for overly curious boys like me, ... well, the truth is that the splash was far too small. Small is not always beautiful.

One of the many themes of Small Is Beautiful was, if I remember right, our need to relocalize the larger parts of our economies. That which can't be localized ought, if I remember right, at least to be regionalized. This was so for various and numerous reasons, but oil figured in importantly. One day the world was going to more or less run out of oil. Or, rather, the upward arcs of supply and demand would some day part ways -- resulting in the price climbing and climbing... and climbing, until POP!, the whole fossily fueled infrastructure sputters and fails.

I think I have always--almost secretly--hoped it would sputter and fail. I was a suburbanite in those years, but mine was one of those rare suburban families which had a significant backyard food garden. We even kept chickens for eggs! But all the while that I was learning hands-on about providing food locally I was also watching the suburban blight overtake the local farms and fields. My friends and I preferred the little patches of near-wild places to play, and they were being swallowed up. Most of those patches had been farmland not too long before. Those farms fed the nearby cities. Their people, that is. The world had made just a little more sense not too long before. You could feel it. But I had missed it. I was too late.

Food, then -- as now -- was cheap. In both senses of the word -- and almost all of it came from far away, because far away meant big industrially scaled farms, whose owners looked upon soil and water and land as industrialists do: as numbers. It was more profitable to sell the small farmlands around the cities for use as suburbs. The numbers prove it.

I have always felt alienated, shoved aside, blighted by that world in which profit (or money, for that matter) matters more than people, land, wildlife, soil, air.... That, of course, is the world of modern industrialism. (I want to say "capitalist-industrialism" but perhaps we are too near the end of the Cold War for such honesty. During the Cold War, to criticize capitalism was to be a "commie," and to be a commie was to be the worst possible enemy of freedom and democracy... and apple pie. And Chevrolet.)

In any case, my almost life-long, almost secret wish for the sputtering and failure of the industrial system is ... well, irrelevant to the salient facts about the conditions impinging upon that system. How I feel about that system has no more to do with its workings than my feelings about the moon and tides decides the facts about orbits, ebbs and flows.

In any case, I don't wish for its immediate and complete collapse! I'd much, much rather see it deliberately replaced. But quickly, before it commits suicide -- which it will certainly do by practicing business as usual.

What I believe about all of this, in a nutshell, is that the era of cheap oil (and cheap energy, more generally) is swiftly coming to an end, and this means that we'd better quickly prepare for a world without it. I am not alone. Many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people around this country and the world are already doing just that. They call their work by various names, "relocalization," "permaculture," "ecovillages," "sustainable communities," .... There are too many names to count. I call them all "the transition movement" (lower case t & m). There is also The Transition Network [http://transitionnetwork.org], which began in the UK, it's most celebrated founder being the delightful and inspiring Rob Hopkins [http://transitionculture.org/]. Transitioners, whether of a capital T or a lower case t type, are all addressing, in their various ways, the twin crises of the fossil fuel era: peaking oil and other energy sources and global warming. It is my firm belief that the situation is quite urgent and immediate -- and that we should not wait a moment to begin transitioning. I propose that we begin with food. For when the fossil economy buckles under the strain which seems very near ahead, we're going to need basics like our post-fossil food supply in place. We can't wait until after the collapse of the fossil economy for that. And if our little city, Santa Fe, can do that? Surely we'll also be addressing other basics in the meanwhile.

Thanks for enduring my rather rough prose. My writing and editing skills need much work, but I've decided to take my own best advice and begin where I am. ... And if you are a proof reader (proofreader?), editor, copyeditor..., and want to volunteer for the cause, drop me a line. And if you want to contribute to the blog as a partner or co-author, please say hello.

And if you just want to learn more on the subject, try these.:

Rob Hopkins' Links Page:
http://transitionculture.org/links/#top-5-links

Post Carbon Institute:
http://www.postcarbon.org/

Transition Times:
http://transition-times.com/colorado

Transition New Mexico:
http://transitionnewmexico.ning.com/

My plan is to very soon provide a long list Santa Fe links to organizations and groups already working on transitioning in Santa Fe. There are many. Thank you all in advance!

Please Pardon My Cliché

2009-11-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, the phrase Food For Thought is banal. What sort of goofball would start a blog and call it "Food For Thought"!? Well..., that would be me. I also have an unseemly predilection for abusing italics, inserting parenthetical elements within parenthetical elements, and failing the age-old Paper Bag Spelling Test--I can't spell my way out of one. (I'll be using my dictionary.)

But never mind all of that! ... Soon enough I shall have myself a proper proof-reader, spell checker, copyeditor and psychotherapist. (My last psychotherapist--who was also my previous copyeditor--, assured me that I suffered from a severe and also redundant case of terminal ellipsis...).

But never mind all of that! Already you're wondering what sort of goofball blog this is, and it's my job to tell you. It's a blog about food. And oil. And energy. And history. And the future. And the present. And it's a blog about Santa Fe, New Mexico--and environs.

Why Food -- And What About It?

First let me tell you that I am not an expert in the myriad subject areas this blog will touch upon. Merely being obsessed by these subjects--as I am--is no basis for presuming or pretending expertise. Remember this when I go on talking about some darn thing or another in a very confident tone, as if I were assured by bottomless research and study that I have the final word on some point or another. I'll be bluffing. However, it should be known that I have access to actual experts in the field. (Although, in truth, I cannot afford a psychotherapist.) Some of these experts have even been known to answer my e-mail queries!

I decided to write a blog about food because it seems to me that food provides the best conceptual (and actual) "bulls-eye" for exploring transitioning -- which is the broad theme of this blog. By "transitioning," I mean changing from one state of affairs to another--, from a radically non-sustainable way of life to a sustainable one. From a radically non-resilient state of affairs to a much more resilient one. And also--with equal importance--from an ethically questionable status to a much more ethically sound one.

So this blog is about ...

Sustainability

Resiliency

Sound Ethics

... in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Welcome!