Artist-in-Residence Brian Purwin Provides 'Bluegrass for Breakfast' at Local Festival

Brian Purwin plays violin. Photo/Erin Fulton

It seems like since arriving at Better Farm a little more than one year ago, Brian Purwin has played violin with everyone.

From the house band on Friday nights at the Dancing Dog to solo practice sessions during a part-time stint at the local wine store; from jam bands in smoky clubs to classical music as brides take the aisle, Brian's become a bit of a celebrity around town. His work has been utilized for full-length album recordings, private violin and piano lessons, and everything in between.

One of Brian's biggest efforts musically in the last year has been to get into the bluegrass circuit. And so, with due diligence and commitment, he has: as a major player in this year's "Bluegrass in the Vineyards" music festival held Aug. 27 and 28 at Coyote Moon Vineyards in Clayton, N.Y.





That festival featured local and national bluegrass artists picking and playing on-site at the winery, a two-day craft fair and market, and all the food and drinks you would ever need.

Brian's Foggy River Band performed Saturday and Sunday:

Foggy River Band is from left: Brian Purwin, Nick Piccininni, Chad Darou, Liza Atkinson, Perry Cleaveland, and Jim Treat. Photo/Erin Fulton

To contact Brian about private violin or piano lessons, to to book a gig, e-mail info@betterarts.org. To learn more about our betterArts residency program, click here.

Fall-ing into Autumnal Gardening at Better Farm

Raspberries growing like crazy in our raspberry patch.

Sure, we've got a couple of weeks before autumn is truly upon us. But at Better Farm, the gardens have sent a clear message that summer's a thing of the past. Instead of being overloaded with summer squash and cucumbers, the crop boom has changed to Brussels sprouts, raspberries, soy and lima beans, and our second round of lettuce. Here's a photographic tour of what's happening out here:

Baby Brussels sprouts

Round two of lettuce

Lima beans

Our second batch of onions going strong

Birdhouse gourds

Soybeans

Cabbage

Leeks

Celery

Stop in at our farm stand to get in on some of this organic freshness! And as always, we've got a ton of tomatoes and string beans. Anything we're out of, there's more in the garden so don't be shy!

For more information about Better Farm's gardens, visit www.betterfarm.org/the-gardens.

Ones to Watch: Bushwick City Farm

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Bushwick City Farm

has launched a new

campaign to expand its programming

of free food, clothing, and educational workshops for the community by spearheading an effort to turn a third vacant lot in the Brooklyn neighborhood into a mini-farm growing organic produce and eggs.

"Bushwick City Farms is a network of open spaces run by neighborhood volunteers that provides free food, clothing and educational programs for the community," Masha, the group's founder, told us. "Centered in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn, the farm creates a unique opportunity to experience active models of responsible food production. In addition to the farming practices at the farm's main location, we build and help maintain vegetable gardens for local public schools, host school field trips and youth service groups, hold free beginner's English classes for speakers of other languages at a nearby location, and coordinate with local businesses to distribute bread and fresh produce donations."

The vacant lot at Stockton Street and Lewis Avenue has for 30 years harbored violence, illegal dumping, and other illicit behavior which climaxed last August with a homicide. Bushwick City Farms volunteers this April cleared the garbage, spread wood chips, and planted flowers. Their idea? To convert a negative space into a positive one that offers tangible benefits for the community. Sounds like the

Better Theory

if I've ever heard it.

"All help we receive is on a volunteer basis," Masha said. "All materials used are recovered from the garbage or paid for by individual donations. We collaborate with property-owners for the free availability fo their space and in turn everything that the farms provide is also free. We operate solely on a 'give what you can, take only what you need' basis.

The group's already managed to meet its $5,000 goal, but additional donations will help with programming, seeds, and the acquisition of future farm spaces. Learn more about the campaign and how you can help

here

.

For more information about Bushwick City Farm, visit their website at

http://bushwickcityfarm.wordpress.com

.

DIY Pizza Oven: Part I of II

We were lucky enough to have staff member-at-large Tyler Howe stay full-time at Better Farm for the month of August. That meant no computer breakdowns for anyone in the house (or the hamlet of Redwood, for that matter), higher morale as we wound down the summer session of internships and artist residencies, and the ground-breaking for Better Farm's homemade, wood-burning pizza oven.

Tyler's a handy guy, but he's never built a pizza oven before; so there was a lot of research involved before he set the first spade into the ground. Any construction projects in the North Country have to take into account

frost heave

, heavy winds, extreme temperature ranges, and six months (on average) of winter. Piece of cake!

To start, Tyler staked out the 6' x 6' spot on the lawn where the pizza oven would go and he (with the help of intern Soon Kai Poh) dug a couple of feet down into the ground:

Into the dug hole went drainage gravel to help combat the floodlike waters of early spring, and to secure the pizza oven's base. Then it was time to set nine 2x2 pavers down in a square:

After letting them settle for a day or two, Tyler pushed some sand between the cracks and used a level to make sure the oven's bottom was sitting flat. Then it was time to build the base. This involved finding someone on Craigslist who was getting rid of a bunch of rock. This turned out to not be a problem; which makes me wonder just how different the 1970 Better Farm crew's stories might have been had they not decided to spend the better part of a week driving around in a pickup truck, collecting rocks for the addition on the house:

Putting in the library, 1970.

One trip to pick up the rocks was all it took (thanks to Jaci Collins, Eric Drasin, Soon Kai Poh, and Tyler for making that trip, and David Garlock for lending me the pickup to do the work with), and Tyler set to work piling them up into a horseshoe shape:

Han Solo and I inspect Tyler's work.

The Man.

Note the various levels of rock and sand:

To stabilize his creation, Tyler lined the inside with cinder blocks before laying down another set of pavers on top of the whole thing. The wood will be stored in the space between.

Left to do:

• Lay a hearth stone on top of the pavers

• Construct the dome with fire brick and mortar

Stay tuned for Part II of this project!

For more information about this project, please e-mail

tyler.howe@betterfarm.org

.

A Brief Rant on the Ever-Precarious, Desperate State of the Union

In spite of moves throughout his term toward

clean-energy tax credits

and the implementation of the first

fuel-efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks

, the president on Friday announced his decision to reverse positioning on tougher air-quality rules that some experts say would have reduced instances of premature deaths and heart attacks annually by 6,500.

The Washington Times reported Sunday that a "

slew of White House retreats on environmental issues has 'green' voters seeing red—and threatening political consequences for President Obama in next year's election

." This came at the heels of the aforementioned loosening of air-quality regulations and protests last week in defiance of Obama's proposed

Keystone XL pipeline extension

:

Everyone's favorite mermaid made a Splash and got arrested in D.C. last week at an XL pipeline protest.

And of course, let's not forget the total lack of governance that contributed to one of

BP's pipes bursting under the Gulf

.

Obama's most recent turning-of-tail has to do with changing the "ozone standard", which basically breaks down the amount of parts-per-billion allowed to be released into the atmosphere by U.S. industry. Though Obama's administration previously claimed the ozone standard of 75 parts per billion (set by the

Bush administration

in 2008) was based on outdated science, the new standard of 70 parts per billion (which the EPA and NRDC estimate would result in 4,300 fewer premature deaths and 2,200 fewer heart attacks annually by 2020) has been nixed. Ignored. Forgotten about. In fact, Obama cited the tragic economic climate as proof that protecting the environment at the cost of American jobs was, quite simply, not worth it.

Which brings me to my rant.

In order for us to have the luxury to play games with politics (in fact, to have politics at all) and the division of power; to invent an idea of currency that is totally abstract and without any actual basis in the real world; to make wonderful inventions and to live in them as though they were as literal as the trees that grow and the wind that blows; in order to do any of these silly human things—to make civilizations and destroy them, to obsess over material gains, to build great skyscrapers and jetset and work a 9-5 job and lobby congress and to invest and gamble and win and lose...

We have to, fundamentally, be able to breathe and eat and have shelter. Before we can worry about job loss in America, or our footing in the international economy, we have to remember we're animals who have to be able to breathe and drink water and eat food. And that the more we poison those things, whether by dumping oil in the water or ignoring the toxins we emit into the air or ripping down trees for big agriculture so forests eventually turn into deserts, the closer we bring ourselves to the point of no return, literally speaking.

Yes, in a short-term way you can create big, fancy water treatment plants that will allow the richest among us to drink the best water money can buy. You can make gated communities with poisoned, treated sod and no bugs at all. You can make more and more car factories (even some within

inexplicably "green" structures

), you can farm salmon indoors, you can break apart entire mountains and make pretty bands of gold to show how in love you are. You can keep doing these things, but the One Great Truth about sustainability is that these things, done in these ways, simply can't go on forever. The system itself is unsustainable.

So the longer we choose industry over environment, jobs over air, corporate loopholes over water, well, the less sustainable we are. And the closer we come to that dreaded point of no return. Come on, Mr. President. You who would be our "Yes We Can" agent of change owe it to those who believed in you to put fundamental elements of survival over the monetary gains of private interests and some conceptual bottom line. We can't keep pushing the pesky issue of finite natural resources out of the way to keep big business happy. Doing so secures only one thing: that we're going to run out of the very things we need the most.

Just a little food for thought.

Want to get even more worked up? Recommended reading:

What We Leave Behind

, by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay.

Start a Traveling Compost Pile

A few hours' worth of compost from the Redwood Tavern in Redwood, N.Y.

Now that I've for two years lived in a place where everything (including disposable plates) is composted, it pains me to travel anywhere—even out to eat—and to consider the amount of wasted food. Nowadays, even if the food at a particular restaurant is no good, or all that's left on the plate is a piece of decorative leafy green, I take it to go and put the leftovers in my compost bin (or feed the food to the chickens, who absolutely loooooove takeout).

For many people working in the food-service industry, there is no compost system in place to deal with food scraps; and in many cases, you're going to have a hard time convincing non-believers of the upside of separating plate refuse into compost and regular trash containers (not that you shouldn't try—you should!). But if you can't get people to join you, why not simply take matters into your own hands?

If you're going to be a weekend guest at a friend's place, or if you take on shifts at your local tavern or eatery, or if a bunch of friends of yours get together to rent a beach house to enjoy these last weeks of summer, consider bringing along a container to stash food scraps in (remember, no dairy, meat or bones!). For those of you trying to create a lot of compost, this is a great way to up your bounty and diversify your biodegradable matter. One night in the kitchen at a restaurant can equal up to a month's worth of compost for someone who lives alone! And again, if you've got chickens, they'll be thrilled at the varied diet you'll be supplying them with.

Composting in new places, and in front of people who don't already compost, is a great way to spread the message of how easy and beneficial the process is. Once a person sees how much food is kept out of a landfill—and, down the line, how much unbelievably rich soil is created—it's hard to avoid making believers out of people.

Local Volunteers Lay Out New T-Ball Field in Redwood

Work crew: Thanks from left to right to Eric Drasin, Fran Farren, Erin Fulton, Tyler Howe, Nicole Caldwell, and Soon Kai Poh.

Volunteers yesterday placed bases and laid down foul lines for a new T-Ball field in Redwood, N.Y., to be enjoyed by the public.

With bases purchased by the Redwood Neighborhood Association and lime donated by Brooke Sourwine of Alexandria, residents of Better Farm and volunteers from the Redwood Neighborhood Association yesterday met to chart out the lines, measure for bases, and lay the whole field out so the space can be used by local children. Here are photos from the afternoon:

 

 

This is the latest in a series of community outreach projects undertaken by Better Farm, including participation in the Redwood Field Days parade, helping to paint the post office, sponsoring a group mural in Watertown, and volunteering at the Redwood Historical Society.

To find out about upcoming volunteer opportunities, please contact us at info@betterfarm.org.

New Local Foods Grant Links B&Bs, Area Agriculture

A new grant awarded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture will encourage bed and breakfast operators to feature locally produced food and agricultural products

, according to a recent announcement by New York State Agriculture Commissioner Darrel J. Aubertine.

Steve Miller, senior executive chef of Cornell University's Cornell Dining, recently outlined the new grant for me, which is designed to increase the number of B&Bs offering locally produced food and agricultural products in meals served to their guests, carrying shelf-stable local products such as jams, maple syrup and sauces, and to measure the economic impact of producers of sales made through this specialized marketing channel.

Funds, Miller said, will be used to organize regional opportunities for B&B owners to meet local producers and sample their products. "Part of the project will be to identify these two groups and make it easier for them to access each other's products and services," he said. The grant doesn't send funds directly to individual B&B operators or farmers, but rather works with producer organizations such as beef producers,

NOFA-NY

, maple producers, small-scale food processors, and B&B owners as a group.

On the other end, farmers who offer tours and other opportunities for tourists will be encouraged to work closely with B&B owners. Regional and statewide promotions will encourage consumers to partake in the foods offered by New York-based producers and B&Bs.

Producer organizations and B&B owners are encouraged to participate in the project, which starts this fall and runs two years.

Where do we sign?

For more information about this grant, e-mail Steve Miller at

sgm6@cornell.edu

or Jonathan Thomson at

jonathan.thomson@agmkt.state.ny.us.

'Can't Beet This': Better Farm's 2011 Redwood Field Days Float

It all started simply enough back in the 1960s or early 1970s, when the crew from Better Farm crashed the Fourth of July Parade in Ridgewood, N.J., "Better" banners a-blazin' off the back of 10-wheeler. We picked things up from there in 2009, when Staciemae and I marched in the Redwood Field Days parade and tossed wildflowers to the crowd. "You ladies are lovely, but we don't know who you are!" cried the announcers when we passed that evening.   That all changed last year when a bunch of us piled into the back of Butch's pickup truck, cranked a CCR album, and tossed bags of string beans to people, scoring third place in the parade. We knew we had to turn up the heat this year if we wanted to contend with the other parade floats; and in our planning we brainstormed everything from reviving the old bus on Better Farm's property to riding through town on bicycles dragging a sailboat. Plans got moved around a bit when I had to head to New Jersey for the weekend, but luckily Eric Drasin stepped up as leader with a killer crew (thank you Angelina, Soon Kai, and Tyler!). Here's what they came up with:

The precarious "doors as floor" setup on our sailboat trailer.

Vegetable theme

The crew (Soon Kai as photographer)

Floats lining up in town

No word yet on who this year's parade winners are; stay tuned for results!

Ones to Watch: The Food Pantry Farm in Long Island, N.Y.

Nestled deep in East Hampton, Long Island, is a gem of a farm whose sole purpose is to feed the hungry.

The Food Pantry Farm

is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that operates on about two acres of land at EECO Farm.  Run by volunteers John Malafronte, Ira Bezoza,  and Peter Garnham, it donates fresh, organic produce to local food pantries. Between May and November of 2009, the organization donated thousands of pounds of fresh vegetables to the East Hampton Food Pantry. The following year, The Food Pantry Farm more than doubled its output. The group now supplies vegetables every  week to the East Hampton, Springs, and Sag Harbor food pantries.

Because all the food is given away, The Food Pantry Farm relies on donations to buy seeds, growing supplies, tools, and harvesting materials. All donations go 100-percent to support the Food Pantry Farm. For more information or to help out,

click here

.

Get involved locally! Check with your local food pantry to see if you can drop off your extra homegrown produce for distribution.

What They Leave Behind

One of our interns in 2010 started a bit of a tradition here at Better Farm when he took his old pair of sneakers and tossed them way up onto the catwalk in the barn before making his departure. Since Joe Pintaudi made that toss, others have joined the ranks; leaving behind their old pairs of treads as they set off into the world.

So when intern Lizzi Musoke came to me the last month week saying she'd be leaving behind some boots and sneakers in order to avoid the obnoxious airline fee for extra suitcase weight, I told her I had a perfect place for her to stow her kicks.



And so it went.

The Global Village Construction Set

If you took the time to break down our entire modern civilization into the 50 industrial machines required to make this society tick (with plenty of our current creature comforts), which gadgets would make it onto the list? You'd have to go as low on the chain as possible—to things like bulldozers and bakery ovens; that is, the things that you'd need to make the other things that would eventually make things like iPods and bread.

Well, as you might already have guessed, a group of guys got together to make a list just like that. The result, Open Source Ecology, is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters building the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). The GVCS is an open source (read: free to access, and "doable" by any person skilled with his or her hands), low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming, building, and manufacturing and can be seen as a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world.

A modern, comfortable lifestyle relies on a variety of efficient Industrial Machines. If you eat bread, you rely on an Agricultural Combine. If you live in a wood house, you rely on a Sawmill. Each of these machines relies on other machines in order for it to exist. If you distill this complex web of interdependent machines into a reproduceable, simple, closed-loop system, you get a series of basic items, such as a backhoe and windmill turbine (click here to see a full list with images).

Mind blown yet? Find out more here.

Introducing the 'Poop and Paddle'

Back in May we told you about our friend Adam Katzman and his now-famous Jerko the Gowanus Water Vacuum, a houseboat functioning as a living lab that was moved to Marina 59 in Queens, N.Y., as part of a revitalization effort.

Well, turns out Adam's been pretty busy since then, working on the "Poop and Paddle", a floating toilet that functions as an outhouse and sewage-treatment plant-in-one. The structure, which Adams says is meant to be more inspirational than practical, demonstrates how sewage and rainwater can be converted to cattails and clean water. Science Friday last week produced the above video on the whole operation.

Go, Adam, go.

Music: Apocalypse Five and Dime