permaculture

[Olive Tree <olivetrii@yahoo.com>]

Dear all school garden leaders and supporters,

Congratulations on a fantastic victory, and thanks for all your votes!

In
case you missed the news, early this week our friends at Change.org 
officially announced that we are WINNERS of the 2010 "Ideas for Change
in America" competition! Our idea, "Good Food For All Kids: A Garden at
Every School," gained over 4,000 votes and finished the contest in 7th
place. Along with the other Top 10 ideas, this means our idea will now
receive support from Change.org to become an actual grassroots national
campaign.

On Tuesday this week, I participated in my first
conference phone call with directors of Change.org to begin mapping out
how the vision of Universal School Gardens can now be best transformed
into action. 

Here's what I learned. Basically, there are 3 specific ways that Change.org 
is offering to help:

1)
First, Change.org will reach out directly to relevant decision-makers
in the United States government. Next week in Washington, DC I will
have my first meeting in person with the Political Director of
Change.org to begin defining our strategy for direct engagement with
officials in the White House, U.S. Congress, and Departments of
Agriculture and Education.

2) Second, Change.org will enable
their website to be used for targeted political activism in support of
our objective. For example, this could mean collecting petition
signatures to request that members of Congress include $100 million in
mandatory funding for school gardens in their next Farm Bill. Or it
could mean sending letters to a local government official encouraging
him to reverse a decision that effectively bans school gardens.
Fortunately, we have the option of doing multiple actions! I would love
to hear your ideas for any other kinds of actions that we could take.

3)
Third, Change.org will feature a series of stories about school gardens
on their blog. These stories can be written either by the regular
Change.org editors or by guest writers -- such as me and you! Do you
have an idea for an interesting story about school gardens that you'd
like to see published? You can pitch your idea to me and the Change.org
team, and then if you're passionate and knowledgeable about the
subject, you can even write it yourself!

So now ... What's next?

Well,
immediately, I would really love to gain more feedback from grassroots
school garden and sustainable food leaders across the United States.

That's
why next week we are going to facilitate a
follow-up conference call between myself, the Change.org team, and a
number of local leaders across the country who want to help build this
national campaign. 

If YOU are interested in joining this call
and adding your voice to the discussion, please RSVP with me by sending
me a message by email to schoolgardensacrossamerica@gmail.com. Please 
understand that this call
next week is open ONLY to individuals who are already active with
school gardens, youth leadership and/or sustainable food in your local
community. At a later time, we will certainly have other opportunities
for new leaders to get involved and share your voices too!

Finally,
I want to acknowledge the ambitiousness of this campaign. If these 3
courses of action that I've outlined above are all that this campaign
succeeds at doing, that alone could be a huge benefit to the school
gardens movement. But I see no reason why we can't do even more! Can we
help extend school gardening networks to every state in the USA? Can we
start a national school garden teachers association? Can we present a
national challenge through which school districts would race each other
to be the first to achieve universal school gardens? 

There's
really no limit to the possibilities of what we might achieve by
dreaming and working together! If you'd like to learn more about some
of the inspiring work on school gardens that many folks are already
doing, you're welcome to check out the "School Gardens Across America" 
Facebook group at 
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=323041926571&ref=mf

As
spring starts this year, I hope you're as excited as me about this
opportunity to sprout even more school gardens, and in the process more
deeply engage the next generations with the joys and challenges of 
sustainable agriculture. By being involved in your
local community to help increase the impact of school gardens, you can
ensure that this movement keeps growing (beyond
your computer screen!). Please let me know if you have any questions,
and I would love to hear any other ideas about building this campaign
for universal school gardens.

Thanks and sincerely,
Ethan Genauer
email: SchoolGardensAcrossAmerica@gmail.com

ps
-
Special thanks to everyone who actively supported this campaign and
helped turn out the votes to win! I know there's lots of folks who
deserve thanks, but I want to send out super-duper recognition to these
organizations who helped mobilize and publicize the vote: White House Organic 
Farm Project, Food Democracy Now!, Slow Money, Real Food
Challenge, Kitchen Gardeners
International, Organic Consumers Association, Civil Eats, and DC Food For All 
... Last but not least, thanks to the
team at Change.org for their genuine excitement in taking this campaign
on! 


      
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Subject: [permaculture] Washington Post:  ,
        Local slaughterhouses come back to life
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/16/AR2010031600921.html?sub=AR

Local slaughterhouses come back to life

By Samuel Fromartz
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 17, 2010; E01

HARRISONBURG, VA. -- Huddled in a small pen in the slaughterhouse, the 
four sheep and two goats were quiet and still. A few men nearby in thick 
rubber aprons cut away at still-warm carcasses hanging on hooks.

"They don't seem to know what's going on," a visitor remarked.

"Oh, they know," one of the butchers replied. "They know."

Maybe it was that awareness that led the men to work quietly and 
efficiently, dispatching each animal with a bolt shot to the head, until 
the last sheep, perhaps realizing that the flock was gone, began to 
bleat. Then she too fell silent.

So began the hard work of turning the animals into meat. The process is 
usually hidden from view, so that all consumers see is a steak or chop 
in a shrink-wrapped package. But at True & Essential Meats 
<http://www.temeats.com/> , one of about a dozen small slaughterhouses 
in the state that work with local farms, even school classes have 
visited the kill floor.

Co-owner and manager Joe Cloud, a 52-year-old former landscape architect 
from Seattle who bought the plant in mid-2008, welcomes visitors so they 
can see what's at stake, for the eater and the eaten. "It is a 
slaughterhouse, but I'm not going to shrink from showing who we are and 
what we do," Cloud said. "The industry has walled it off and is in a 
defensive crouch. I want to be different."

Cloud is riding a wave of consumer demand for meat from local farms, 
which has burgeoned along with the rash of deadly E. coli food poisoning 
incidents 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122902772.html>
 
, hamburger recalls 
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thecheckout/2008/08/holy_cow_whole_foods_linked_to.html>
 
  and undercover videos 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/30/ST2008013001224.html>
 
  about grossly inhumane practices at a few large plants. Prominent 
chefs, who work with farmers and processors like T&E to get high-quality 
meat, have also championed the products.

For farmers, the sales are alluring; they make more money per animal 
when they sell direct, even if these channels represent less than 2 
percent of all meat sales. It's also a way to escape the conventional 
system of meat production, since Virginia cattle typically are raised 
in-state for a year before being shipped to feedlots in Nebraska, Kansas 
and Texas to be fattened up and slaughtered -- and then shipped back as 
meat.

"Every step of the journey, someone has their hand in your pocket," said 
Jeff Lawson, who raises cattle and sheep at Green Hill Farm 
<http://www.sheepgoatmarketing.info/PageLoad.cfm?page=directory/SG_Farmview.cfm&Current=207>
 
  in Churchville, Va., a few miles outside Staunton. "If I could sell 
every animal I raised through Joe Cloud to get to your dinner table, I 
would. Any farmer would."

Small-scale slaughterhouses like Cloud's faded as processing 
concentrated in a handful of huge operations in the Midwest and as 
grocery chains sought out bigger suppliers. But the four-decade decline 
in niche processing plants has begun to turn around in the past five 
years, said Arion Thiboumery, a researcher at Iowa State University who 
helps run a national assistance network for small processors.

Richard Hackenbracht, head of the Office of Meat and Poultry at the 
Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, said farmers 
had pleaded for years for more small-scale processors, with inspectors 
on hand. Without a federal or state inspection seal, meat can only be 
eaten by the farmer or given away.

Larger plants often won't take on a farmer with a few animals, and if 
they do, some farmers question what happens inside. "I looked into it 
and was not all comfortable with the process," said Nick Auclair of 
Green Fence Farm <http://www.greenfencefarm.com/>  in Greenville, Va., 
between Staunton and Lexington. Auclair, a former Defense Department 
intelligence analyst, processes his sheep, goats and hogs with T&E and 
sells the meat out of his truck on Capitol Hill and in Northwest 
Washington.

That lack of confidence in the conventional food chain also affects 
consumers, who have been seeking out more "ethical" meat. As a result, 
programs such as American Humane Certified 
<http://www.americanhumane.org/protecting-animals/programs/farm-animals/> 
  have been growing nationally.

Humane concerns prompted Doug and Lois Aylestock, who had been raising 
sheep, to open Blue Ridge Meats of Front Royal 
<http://www.blueridgemeats.com/> , Va., in 2006. "We didn't like the way 
the animals were handled and thought there was a better way to do it," 
Lois Aylestock said. So they bought a slaughterhouse, went though a 
lengthy process to get humane certification, and opened a store selling 
local meat.

Bev Eggleston, who went deep into debt to start EcoFriendly Foods 
<http://www.ecofriendly.com/>  southeast of Roanoke in Moneta, Va., is 
blunt about what he's trying to do: "The food system is broken and 
dysfunctional, so we had to start building our own," he said.

His company buys animals from about 45 small farms and processes and 
sells meat to restaurants and to consumers through venues such as the 
FreshFarm Market in Dupont Circle 
<http://www.freshfarmmarket.org/markets/dupont_circle.html> . After nine 
years, he's breaking even.

Even small farms are getting into the act. Last year, cattle farmer 
Charlie Potter reopened Donald's Meat Processing 
<http://www.donaldsmeats.com/> , which had been shut for two decades, in 
Lexington, Va., because he had tired of driving five hours round trip to 
process his animals. Now he sells his beef to Washington and Lee 
University in Lexington and through an on-site store.

Access to an abbatoir was tough even for Joel Salatin 
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/mighty-appetite/2008/07/a_day_at_polyface_farm.html>
 
  of Polyface Inc., a high-profile farmer thanks to his role in Michael 
Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma." He had relied on T&E to process 
the cattle and pigs he raises on his farm near Staunton, but it became 
clear several years ago that the owners would soon retire. "It was 
absolutely our weakest link," Salatin said.

He paraded many potential buyers through the 70-year-old plant, but said 
"it took a lot of hooks in the water before I got a bite."

Cloud was a good prospect because love of food and wine runs in his 
family. His brother Roy Cloud runs Vintage '59 Imports 
<http://www.vintage59.com/home.php> , a French wine importer in the 
District. After his father's plans to start a vineyard on farmland near 
Staunton were thwarted by an accident, Cloud began helping his mother 
manage the farm. Soon, he was wondering whether to trade his office in 
Seattle for a herd of cattle in Virginia. Salatin, who was leasing a few 
of their fields, proposed that Cloud buy the slaughterhouse instead.

"You certainly don't have the allure of the country life in a 
slaughterhouse, the kind of thing sought out by the weekend farmer," 
said Salatin. "But processing plants and distribution are the two 
biggest hurdles in the local food movement."

Cloud eventually agreed, sinking 40 percent of his retirement savings 
into the deal and signing up his mother, Helen, and Salatin as partners. 
They bought the plant in July 2008, and Cloud has been pulling 50- to 
60-hour weeks ever since, managing a workforce of 20 and fielding calls 
from restaurants and farmers.

T&E now processes meat for more than 100 farms, up from just a handful 
before the sale. The number of animals he slaughters has shot up 70 
percent -- during the worst recession since the 1930s.

Cloud sells local beef, pork, lamb and poultry out of T&E Meats' store, 
but unlike Blue Ridge, he can't make the business work without buying 
some beef from the Midwest and pigs from Pennsylvania. He can't get 
enough locally, nor can he sell it at a price his longtime customers are 
used to paying.

"For 40 years it was the cheapest place in town," says Salatin. "Now 
we're trying to make it the best."

T&E, for example, sells conventional ground beef for $2.67 a pound. The 
local ground beef, from animals without antibiotics or hormones, goes 
for $3.50 a pound, and local grass-fed beef runs $3.99 a pound.

Cloud is putting every dollar he makes back into the business, expanding 
into poultry processing this year and hoping to grow again in 2011.

Oren Molovinsky, general manager at Mie N Yu 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/restaurants/mie-n-yu,1082297.html> 
restaurant in Georgetown, who coordinates local meat sourcing for half a 
dozen Washington chefs, says those plans are well placed. "Right now I 
could sign up 20 more restaurants for our local meat program, but I know 
the capacity is just not there yet," he said.

Fromartz, author of "Organic, Inc.," blogs at http://www.chewswise.com 
<http://www.chewswise.com/> .
m