Rogue Food Conference 2020
This past weekend I attended the first ever Rogue Food Conference in Northern Kentucky. Food sovereignty pioneers Joel Salatin and John Moody respectively emceed and coordinated the gathering, which included farmers, co-op builders, small business owners and other folks who are trying to work around the behemoth food system that is a contributor to the health problems of many Americans. I came away with a practical arsenal of information and methods to manage/mitigate the regulation factor. Or to take it another step: how to entirely disregard the highly invasive and overly persistent governmental interference in an action that’s no one’s business but my own: how I eat, and if I so choose, how I decide to produce food and share it with others. The fact that our food system is so broken and my belief that all people have the right to healthy, nutrient dense food is a large reason…
Small is No Problem
When I’m out on a site evaluating land for its productivity capabilities, often my customer will lament that they just don’t have enough space. If someone is inclined towards traditional row gardening by tilling up a 1/4 acre garden, then the small city lots many of us live on will seem indeed too small to do much with. However, there’s a variety of techniques that work great for these smaller spaces and I would argue that small is downright the best way to go. Since I grew up helping my Mom in a traditional large garden, that was the knowledge I had when we moved to our home 14 years ago. I made several mistakes the first couple of years. I positioned the garden too far from the house in too shady of an area in a location that ended up holding standing water every time we had a heavy…
What Do You Want to Accomplish?
When I meet a new customer, this is the first question I pose: What do you want to accomplish? For 14 years I have been transforming a neglected urban lot into a place that grows food, supports wildlife habitat and is an enjoyable and engaging place to spend time. There has been a tremendous learning curve during this time and I’ve done/redone/undone several aspects and put to work a variety of methods to achieve my goals. If I were to start over here or on another property, the most important change I would make would to collect data as a thorough assessment of all aspects of the property. From the orientation of the home and other buildings to how shade is cast or sunlight falls, how water moves and collects, all of this is just the beginning of the assessment process. Keeping in mind what you want to accomplish, we…