Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Celebrate local food!


New Food Economy Week began today, and the new-ish Main Street Farmers' Market has planned a week full of activities to celebrate!

Here's the schedule of events:
  • Thursday June 24: Local foods potluck at Crabtree Farms - Bring a dish and your favorite recipe featuring local ingredients, 5 p.m.
  • Saturday June 26: Area restaurants feature local specials - Support your Local Food Economy by dining out at 212 Market, St John's Restaurant, St John's Meeting Place or Niko's on the Southside
  • Sunday June 27: Support local farms and artisans at the Chattanooga Market, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Tuesday June 29: Bread, Brats & Beer on Bikes! Enjoy freshly baked bread from Niedlov's Breadworks and sausages from Link 41 with a bike tour that begins at Link 41 (217 East Main Street) and stops along the way at local breweries, 6 p.m.
  • Wednesday June 30: Local blueberries are ripe and ready! Celebrate this summer favorite at Main Street Farmers Market's Blueberry Fest 2010, 4 to 6 p.m.
The Main Street Farmer's Market is located on Main Street between Market and Broad streets, at the corner of Main and Williams. For a map and aerial photograph, plus a list of participating farms, click here.

Friday, June 18, 2010

New Brainerd farmers' market!

There's good news for folks living in Brainerd - or really anywhere in Chattanooga! Grace Episcopal Church  has begun hosting a farmers' market on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; this Saturday marks the the market's third week. Grace is eager to support the people who grow food in and near Chattanooga as well as offering its neighbors a chance to buy food grown in good soil, harvested recently and raised without the many chemicals that can cause health problems. Along with the farmers, some of Grace's food-enthusiasts will have a table at the market offering recipes, food preparation ideas, and other useful information. You can support local farmers and take home healthy food for your family with one visit to Grace's Brainerd Road parking lot. Please visit! (For directions, please click on the link above.)

Participating farmers include:

Tant Hill Farm
Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and cauliflower.

Owl Hollow Farm
Fresh herbs (spearmint, chocolate mint, and rosemary), snow peas, red and yellow onions, garlic, assorted flowers and plants, and preserves (peach, strawberry, and blackberry). English peas and potatoes will be coming in by the end of June.

Ridgeside Farm
Lettuce, collards, kale, cabbage, and spring onions, blackberries and peaches. We will also have free range eggs.

Walden Farm
Lettuce and salad greens all summer and a few summer vegetables.

Cloud Crest Farm
Grass fed beef and pork.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

World Oceans Day


Did you know that World Oceans Day was this week (June 8)? The day began as a day celebrating the many ways humans are connected to the sea, and with the looming oil disaster in the Gulf, this year it's more important than ever to appreciate and preserve the earth's waters.

You don’t need to live near the beach to be connected to the ocean. Oceans and coasts affect people’s lives every day, around the world.  According to The Nature Conservancy, here are five reasons we should care about oceans - not just on World Oceans Day but every day!
  1. The air we breathe. Oceans are a critical player in the basic elements we need to survive. Ocean plants produce half of the world’s oxygen, then these amazing waters absorb nearly one-third of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. Oceans also regulate our weather and form the clouds that bring us fresh water.
  2. The food on your plate. Besides seafood, oceans are connected to what you eat in many more ways. Ocean ingredients, like algae and kelp, are used in making peanut butter beer, soymilk and frozen foods. Plus, 36 percent of the world’s total fisheries catch each year is ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs.
  3. The items in your medicine cabinet. You’ll find ocean ingredients flowing out of your medicine cabinet in everything from shampoos and cosmetics to medicines that help fight cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, viruses and other diseases.
  4. Jobs and the economy. One in six jobs in the United States is marine-related and more than $128 billion in GDP annually results from ocean tourism, recreation and living resources. Healthy marine habitats like reefs, barrier islands, mangroves and wetlands help protect coastal communities from the results of hurricanes and storm surges.
  5. A shared resource. While many of us enjoy the spectacular recreational activities that oceans offer, for some people oceans are a lifeline for survival. Keeping oceans healthy keeps people healthy, and we each have a personal responsibility to protect our oceans
Show off your photos of the ocean - or any other natural wonder - by entering The Nature Conservancy's fifth-annual photo contest. Details are here, and the winning photograph will be featured in the group's 2012 calendar.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Summer green


With summer here and kids out of school, the focus of many families turns to entertainment. But having fun can also mean - literally - tons of trash. Here are some ideas for greening up your entertainment, courtsey of The Green Book.

Books
Use the library or buy secondhand books. Consider sharing the ones you have with friends or donating them, rather than throwing them away. About three billion new books are sold each year, requiring 400,000 trees to be chopped down.

DVD's
Rent DVD's instead of buying them. Depending on how much you watch one, you could save money too! The average movie rents for about $4 (and many online movie rental services are even cheaper!), while the average new DVD sells for more than $16. You also won't have to worry about contributing to their trash pile: 100,000 DVD's and CD's are thrown away each month. If you own DVD's that you want to get rid of, donate them to a local library or thrift store, or look for a DVD recycling center.

Tunes
Download tunes to an mp3 player instead of purchasing them at the store. The average price of a CD is $15, whereas an album download is about $10. Each month, more than 45 tons of CD's become obsolete, outdated, or unwanted - and end up in landfills. And when you upgrade your iPod or mp3 player, recycle your old one or return it to the manufacturer. Some companies give customers up to 10 percent off their next purchase when they return their old players. And about 40 percent of the lead in U.S. landfills comes from improperly discarded electronic waste, and the lead in turn pollutes the air and groundwater.

Candy
Buy loose, unwrapped candy from the bin, if you can. Many candy wrappers contain chemicals that make them stain- and water-resistant but also make them difficult to recycle.

Parties
Use electronic invitations (Evite is a great one!) or choose chlorine-free postconsumer recycled paper for your party invitations. (Better use of paper could allow the world's wood consumption to be reduced by 50 percent and possibily as much as 80 percent or more.) For your table, use "real" dishes, silverware, and glasses rather than plastic and paper. Each year, 40 billion plastic utensils are thrown into landfills across the country. You can also save money - using your own stuff is free, whereas the cost of plastic plates, forks, knives and cups for 50 meals could add up to $100.

Drinks on the go
If you have the choice, buy soda from the fountain in a paper cup instead of a can or plastic bottle. You'll reduce the amount of aluminum cans and plastic bottles that are wasted. More paper (48 percent more) is recycled and recovered to make new products than aluminum soda cans (43.9 percent) or plastic bottles (25 percent).

Tickets
Buy your movie and event tickets online or via telephone and print them at home. You'll save time and paper waste. Print-at-home tickets use plain copy paper, which is easier to make into recycled paper than the paperboard used for printed tickets. Some 1.4 billion movie tickets alone are sold in the U.S. annually - and almost every one of them goes in the trash can.