SLOW FOOD ANNOUNCEMENTS

REVERSE TRICK OR TREATING

A Fair Trade Halloween Event with Global Exchange 

Slow Food USA has partnered with Global Exchange, http://globalexchange.org/ to spread the word about Fair Trade chocolate on Halloween night with Reverse Trick-or-Treating.  Last Halloween, thousands of children, high school and college students, parents and others gave Fair Trade chocolate back to the households who gave them candy while Trick-or-Treating in their neighborhoods.  This year, we hope to reach a quarter of a million households across the country, and encourage you to reach out to your members about participating in this fun community event promoting good, clean and fair food!

By participating in Reverse Trick-or-Treating this Halloween, you will help:

•Raise awareness about child labor in the cocoa industry

•Shed light on poverty among cocoa farmers

•Promote Fair Trade chocolate and other products

•Protect the environment 

How it works: The chocolate is attached to a card with information about social and environmental justice issues in the cocoa industry and how buying Fair Trade certified chocolate provides a solution. When someone gives you candy while trick-or-treating, you simply hand them a chocolate and card back.

Reverse Trick-or-Treating chocolate and cards are free. Participants pay only the cost of postage. To request cards and chocolate and participate visit www.reversetrickortreating.org

The deadline to request cards is:

October 1, 2008 – for Groups

October 13, 2008 for Individuals

•••••

DECLARATION FOR HEALTHY FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

29 Aug 08 - Sloweb

Slow Food Skagit River Salish Sea urges you to read this declaration and, if you agree with it, go to www.fooddeclaration.org and electronically provide your endorsement.

Burk

In occasion of Slow Food Nation, the largest celebration of American food in history which began today in central San Francisco, a Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture was signed on 25 August to help accelerate the transformation of the present industrialized agricultural system in the US.

Endorsed by academics, students, agricultural institutes, writers, farmers, filmmakers and chefs, the declaration emerged as the movement to establish better food and farming in the US gains continued strength and support from all sectors of society.

The declaration states:

‘We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.

'These realities call for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, for people, for animals, and for the natural world. The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture. The ways we grow, distribute, and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure’.

There are twelve proposed principles which should frame future food and agricultural policy, ensuring better health and wealth in all countries worldwide. These are:

1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.

2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.

3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.

4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.

5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.

6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.

7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.

8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.

9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.

10. Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.

11. Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.

12. Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.

For more information, or to express your support, visit www.fooddeclaration.org

Victoria Blackshaw

v.blackshaw@slowfood.it

•••••

DELEGATES FROM OUR CONVIVIUM HAVE BEEN

SELECTED FOR TERRA MADRE 2008

I want to share some great news with you. Three members of our local Slow Food Community have been selected by Slow Food USA to be official delegates to Terra Madre, in Turin, Italy this fall. This is an amazing honor for our young convivium. 

Rhonda Gothberg, owner of Gothberg Farms, makes some of the best goat cheeses in the region. She is devoted to her goats, milking, and cheese making.

Sarah Phillips is a cheese maker at Gothberg Farms, as well as a bread maker at the Breadfarm, in Edison.

Rita Ordonez, our Slow Food in Schools coordinator, has been the mainstay of the School Garden at Lincoln Elementary in Mount Vernon. With a few small grants she has some very big plans for next year.

Terra Madre is a grand gathering of food producers, educators, chefs, food professionals, and farmers from all over the world, that takes place every two years in Italy. What an amazing experience for anyone who cares about food! This will be the third edition of Terre Madre. To learn more about this event, and what it will mean to our delegates, please go to www.slowfoodusa.org, and then click on Terra Madre at the bottom of the page.

Our delegates will have their expenses paid while they are at the event, but they will need to raise funds to pay for their travel to and from Turin. Our convivium will work to raise funds to help them with their airfare. Ideas are being discussed.

Please join in the conversation if you can help with this effort. Airfares are very expensive this summer, and we are lucky to have 3 delegates going. Please help us figure out how to raise money for them.

I will announce this to the Slow Food Community in an upcoming newsletter, but I want to let you, our active volunteers, know right away. I wanted you to be among the first to know about this wonderful honor.

Thank you for your support of Slow Food Skagit.

Carol Havens

•••••

SLOW FOOD SUPPORTS THE LINCOLN SCHOOL GARDEN

Our convivium is proud of the efforts of our Action Committee Member Rita Ordonez to spearhead a vegetable garden installation at Lincoln School in Mount Vernon, bringing the reality of food growing to the young kids. Slow Food USA gave a small grant, as did OXO Garden Tools. The ongoing project exposes the students to the full cycle of vegetable growth and harvest. The vegetables will be incorporated into their school lunches. In addition, another grant will be used to teach cooking classes, utilizing their own produce. Assisting her are convivium members Suzanne Butler and Kay Ogren, in cooperation with various parents. Further plans include and a small paved courtyard for student gatherings, with fruit trees on the corners, and two more raised beds. View some pictures on our Lincoln School Garden page.

•••••

OUR FRIENDS AT UPRISING ORGANICS

RECEIVE A SLOW FOOD AWARD

We received a rather wonderful birthday present this

morning with the announcement that Slow Food USA had chosen our farm and seed company to receive the Betsy Lydon award. You can read about it at slow food usa, but it is a reward recognizing the efforts of a business that is furthering the recognition of ARK foods, or those foods that are regarded to have significant cultural meaning and are close to becoming extinct. Because our farm and seed business both grow many of these foods for market as well as growing them out for seed and offering them in our seed catalogue, it was decided we should receive the grant! No arguments here And we are so honored as well as freshly motivated. As part of our reward we are being flown to the first Slow Food Nation gathering in San Francisco this august as well as being flown to Italy this October for Terre Madre. Along with this we receive a monetary grant to further our business and some sort of link or recognition through Slow Foods which will be incredible for our business. We are so excited to connect with others from around the world, sharing stories and motivation.

So, YAHOO! Our season which is progressing wonderfully already,

although rather soggy and extremely busy, has just become even more

inspiring and filled with renewed energy and purpose.

Thank you to all of you who have been such great support and friends even from long distances.

Brian and Crystine

Our new blog is available at 1smallseed.blogspot.com

•••••

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

SKAGIT VALLEY COLLEGE

LIVE GREEN AND SAVE GREEN WORKSHOPS

The College in conjunction with WSU Master Gardeners is hosting a series of workshops this fall. Find the details in this Live Green flyer.pdf

•••••

SKAGIT GLEANERS

Do you anticipate having extra produce in your field/on your tree or in your greenhouse?  If you have extra produce –fruit, berries or vegetables that you would be interested in having harvested by volunteers, and taken to Skagit Gleaners. –Skagit Gleaners is seeking sites where volunteers can harvest produce from Skagit County, for distribution among members.  Skagit Gleaners is a volunteer-driven non-profit organization, formed in 1984,  with a mission of recovering and recycling products that would normally be discarded or left in fields at grocery stories, farms, orchards businesses and homes.

Skagit Gleaners is a wonderful little-known community resource, located in Mount Vernon on Alder Road (off of Riverside), and is dedicated to involving members in food preparation, waste reduction and working together for a common good.

 

For more information on Skagit Gleaners, go to www.skagitgleaners.org or contact Britta Eschete at 360-848-8909 or beschete@pugetsound.org

Thank you!

britta

•••••

PRESERVE OUR ABILITY TO FEED OURSELVES

If you feel that farmland is precious, and should not be sacrificed to development, please write to the Mount Vernon City Council and the Skagit County Commissioners to share your thoughts.

To the Editor, Skagit Valley Herald

Mount Vernon Mayor, Bud Norris, should reconsider what is in the best interests of his constituents. (4/19 'MV eyes farmland for growth')

All people, including residents of Mount Vernon, need to eat every day. Food comes from farmland. We have high quality, fertile farmland here in the Skagit. Few communities have such a valuable resource. What makes Mayor Norris think that anything is more valuable to his constituents than food growing nearby?

Friday, the Seattle Times reported that food prices have risen by 83% worldwide in the last 3 years. People are dying and rioting because food is not available. Locally, some farmers and food producers are experiencing difficulties due to dramatic increases in the prices of flour, animal feed, and fuel. Consumers see price increases at the supermarket. Locally, this is a hardship and an inconvenience. Unlike people in Egypt, we still have plenty of food to eat.

As agricultural land and oil resources diminish, our future will be very different from our immediate past. The most important aspects of a community will not be the size of its houses, or the dollar value of its industry. Most valuable will be the quality and proximity of food producing farmland.

Farmland is not "empty" because there is nothing built on it. Farmland is the most productive land of all. It produces the food we need to live. You can't tear down a mall, or a housing development, to make a productive farm. Farmland is our most valuable resource, and we must not waste it on "development." We eat every day. Other than air and water, nothing is more important.

It is the responsibility of our City Officials and County Commissioners to preserve our ability to feed ourselves. Please don't let us down.

Carol Havens

Anacortes

•••••

NOURISH: FOOD + COMMUNITY

Launching in Fall 2008, Nourish explores the abundant possibilities to create a sustainable food system. A multi-year, national initiative from WORLDLINK. Check out this video preview of a future PBS national broadcast: 64.202.98.88/fsrd/fas/Nourish.wmv or visit their website for more information: goworldlink.org/programs/nourish.html

•••••

HIDDEN MEADOW RANCH

This Mount Vernon farm is taking orders for summer chickens.  Laura Faley will have "up to 300 pastured broilers available for sale this summer - July, August, and September.  The first ones will finish the weekend of July 12, then August 9, and September 6.  The dates are important because regulations require that the chilled, but un-frozen birds be picked up from the farm within 48 hours of butcher.

"Poultry feed has gone up 50% from last year.  I was able to purchase a 50# bag of fresh, locally processed chicken feed for $8.30 last fall.  Last week the same bag was $12.10.  My broilers will be $3.85/lb.," says Laura.

"No one can afford to pay what home-grown eggs actually cost.  I do have some dozens of duck eggs available, but they have to be picked up from the farm (south of Mt. Vernon).  I don't know if the travel costs make it worth it to anyone, but I do have them, and would sell them for $4.00/dozen.  Ducks actually lay more consistently than chickens, but they do not lay in the same place every day, and the eggs are harder to find and keep track of."

Contact Laura Faley to reserve chickens, lamb, turkeys, and pork at 360- 416-0109 or laura@hiddenmeadowranch.com

•••••

TILTH FARM WALKS

Here is the 2008 Farm Walk schedule. It is a program jointly

sponsored by Tilth Producers and WSU Small Farms Team. It is

essentially farmers teaching farmers, educators, and future farmers.

www.tilthproducers.org/farmwalks.htm

•••••

AVAILABILITY OF PRODUCE FROM SMALL, LOCAL FARMS - Please let us know where we can find local produce, especially if it is from small, sustainable farms, especially during March and April. If you check our Winter Resources list (Local Food) you will find great opportunities to buy meat, dairy, cheese, wine, beer, and other local food products, all year round. Fresh local veggies are more difficult. Please tell us what you find, or what you have to sell. Farmers, please tell us as soon as you set an opening date for your farm stand. The sun is actually shining on me right now, reminding me that spring will come some day.

•••••

TILTH REGIONAL EVENTS CALENDAR

For a comprehensive listing of relevant regional events, go to the Tilth Producers of Washington website calendar at

www.tilthproducers.org/calendar.htm

•••••

LOCAL HARVEST WEBSITE

For more details about some of our local farms, and to see listings of farms and farmers markets for other regions of the country, go to the Local Harvest website at www.localharvest.org .

•••••

HARVESTING THE LIGHT

Images of Contemporary Skagit Farm Life

The exhibit at the Skagit County Historical Museum is over, and the primary gift giving season has passed, but don't forget that the wonderful photographic book documenting our unique farming region is still available. Only $22.95, it can be purchased at the Historical Museum www.skagitcounty.net/museum, Watermark Book Company, Rexville Grocery, Scott Milo Gallery, The Business, Rosabella's, Stowe's, and Village Books. If you don't have one yet, be sure you don't miss out.

•••••