For Those Who Missed It...

The JGB show from 10/27 is up on the llama. If you are overwhelmed by the variety of download options, just go for this link, which will download MP3s of the whole show in one fell swoop.

Two Great Events This Weekend

1) JGB with Melvin Seals at the Brookdale Lodge this Friday. Talk to anyone who saw or heard them play at the Westside Farmer's Market a couple of months ago if you've got any doubts. This should be a smoking show as well as an incredible party (costumes optional).

2) Please join us for a 1/2 day grape harvest this Saturday at my friend's vineyard on the Summit! It is always a joyous occasion followed by a great meal. Lots of people come so it's more fun than work, but at the end of the morning there are always about 15 tons of grapes. Don't worry, no heavy lifting is required. Those interested can follow the grapes to their local processor and watch them get pressed in the afternoon. Contact Daniel for more information and please bring your Felcos.

Brewing behemoth sneaks into organics

Organic Budweiser. What's next, the hybrid Hummer?

Announcing Our New Blog Admin

The Ayes have it!! The blog is proud to announce Michael J. Nolan as our new web admin! Here he is taking the pledge to loyally serve the CASFS community for the year to come and to pass the torch. E-mail him at CASFS2007@gmail.com to request an account.

Thanks for a great run. It was my privilege to serve as your web admin this year. We ended up with 93 posts and 16 contributers. I can't wait to see how the blog evolves in years to come. When surrounded by bears, play dead.
dp

Notable Quotes As Requested

• The mind can only absorb what the rear-end can endure.—Orin
• Some times these trees have not gone to school, read the books and thus do not know how to behave.—Orin
• To learn, you must accept some ambiguity.—Orin
• How do you make a small fortune in agriculture? Start with a large one.—Orin
• Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.—Ghandi
• [Compost is] kind of like democracy, the more diverse the constituent base, the higher the quality of the end product.—Orin
• Caveat emptor: buyer beware of store-bought composts.—Orin
• I feel about the Meyer Lemon the way I do about windsurfing and light beer.—Orin
• The right answer is an expectation not a triumph.—Random Professor
• Learn the difference between maximum and optimum.—Orin
• If wishes were rainbows…blah, blah, blah.—Kara Lee
• All soils are beautiful.—Alan Chadwick
• Working soil is a radical act, you could say it’s a necessary evil, so be careful.—Orin
• Labor $30/hr. If you help $40/hr.—Sign in Old Garages
• Situational ethics.—Orin on pruning someone else’s lilac
• All these factors and others need to be factored in.—Orin
• Working a soil outside its ideal moisture range is bad, let’s make a value judgment…bad.—Orin
• The front end is undoing what the back end is doing.—Jim on tractors
• Get those bunnies, get them out of the system…cute little fellas.—Orin
• No self-respecting rabbit would ever say, ‘Oh, there’s an onion; I’m going to go away.—Orin
• The answer to everything is it depends. The answer in general, life is specific…so i’m not going to answer that question right now.—Orin
• You grow soil, soil grows the crop…Maintain an insane reverence of soil.—Orin
• Take care of the corners and edges and the middle will take care of itself.—Orin
• Would they knew how to share…They don’t.—Orin on gophers
• The best fertilizer is or are the footsteps of the gardener.—Chinese Adage
• What I thought was nobody would buy a dried flower that looks like a paper bag or something.—Orin
• Plant the seed as deep as it is wide.—Dave Shaw
• Potatoes are the most disease-prone thing in the garden. They make roses look disease-free.—Orin
• Aphids have a face too.—Daniel in the vegan strawberry patch
• It never really hurts to stress things a little bit. It’s better to stress than over-water.—Jim
• In the end, it’s not what you know but what you do that matters.—Edd
• Pile it high and watch it fly.—Orin
• [Flowers are] food for the soul as vegetables are food for the body.—Orin
• It’s no longer important to be bright and attractive once you make the connection.—Orin on flowers
• If they can take the sun, they can take my ass.—Amo aprés sitting upon baby broccoli
• If it costs more than $200 it’s a vaaaaaz.—Orin on vases
• In the gold rush, it was the sellers of shovels that were getting rich.—?
• What are we going to have a food riot here? Like in Jail?—Orin
• Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see—Marvin Gaye
• There are certain situations where a quart of Round-Up will save you 200 gallons of diesel.—Jim
• OK. Now I’ve said something about Round-Up so you all think I’m a nozzle-head.—Jim
• Confusion is very easily your visitor.—Hank
• But I am wondering if the compost it isn’t bad for our skin though.—Amo
• Life is always more complicated off of paper.—Julie
• You either have the space or buy the fertilizer.—Julie
• Lawyers make more money than composters.—Marcus
• Certification is not anything that’s going to make people sleep at night.—Marcus
• What’s the C:N ratio of a human body.—Rachel
• I stopped skateboarding when I turned 34 dude.—Amo
• Anybody who thinks migrant labor is taking jobs away from U.S. workers is…misled.—Brendan
• If the whole field looked like this it would be meeting as disc.—Brendan
• Farmers think their job is to grow food. That’s not true, there job is to sell food.—Jim Cochrain
• The universe is a communion of subjects not a collection of objects.—Thomas Barry
• Be good to life, and life will be good to you.—Zach
• A forest eats itself and lives forever.—Poisonwood Bible
• You can’t make money if you’re out of time.—Poppy
• You can grow alliums, or you can grow weeds; you can’t grow both.—Orin
• Agriculture/horticulture is a lot like politics: it’s all local—Orin
• I’m a farmer, and I’m available.—Rachel
• Or…at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it…It’s more or less true.—Orin
• A lot of successful gardening is about doing the right thing at the right time with the right thing…or something like that.—Orin
• The shallot is one of the most over-rated things on the planet, almost more that Mozart.—Orin
• Will work for food and fruit and beer.—Sign at Pinnacle Organics
• Sweet as all get up.—Orin on the Music Romano Bean
• This is kind of…the cat shat on it or something…maybe it’s just cinnamon from breakfast…anyway, this…slowly turning into compost…is a picture of the garden.—Orin
• Fingerling potatoes sometimes go astray. Sometimes they look like the space station or elephant seals.—Orin
• You see—though many people find it amusing—it is the garden that makes the gardener.—Big Al Chadwick
• Just because you don’t like math, don’t let someone else take over your life because of it.—Aziz
• Always have partners that compliment you.—Poppy
• If a man finds it necessary to eat garbage, he should resist the temptation to call it a delicacy.—Wendell Barry on pesticides

No almonds. Big problem.

Demand for organic food is outstripping supply in the United States. For example, the makers of the high-energy, eat-and-run Clif Bar needed 85,000 pounds of almonds, and they had to be organic. But the nation's organic almond crop was spoken for.
Read more here.

Not So Foxy Now!!

The Nunes Company of Salinas said Sunday tests had revealed the presence of E. Coli in irrigation water and recalled recent shipments of lettuce because of concern the produce might have been contaminated.
More here.

Same Story...

Kansas this time and some video to boot.

Garden Teacher Job at Urban Sprouts (SF)

Hello Friends,

Urban Sprouts is hiring for two positions: a Garden Educator for our middle school programs and a Parent Leadership Coordinator to strengthen parent involvement in our school gardens. See below for details.
Please distribute widely and encourage folks to apply!
Thank you,
Abby

----

Job Opening:

GARDEN EDUCATOR (part-time)

What is Urban Sprouts?
Urban Sprouts is a school garden program that serves low-income youth from San Francisco’s under-served neighborhoods. We teach youth to grow, harvest, prepare and eat vegetables from the school garden in order to help youth become more engaged in school, eat better, exercise more, and connect with the environment and each other.

Urban Sprouts uses garden-based education to:
• Improve students' learning in science and their ecoliteracy (environmental awareness and responsibility)
• Improve students' nutrition and physical fitness
• Promote youth development
• Support under-served youth and teachers in urban middle and high schools
• Build community involvement within urban schools.

Each year we work with over 350 youth at four San Francisco public schools: Small Middle School for Equity (formerly Luther Burbank), Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, June Jordan School for Equity and Ida B. Wells Continuation High School.

Job Description
Urban Sprouts’ Garden Educators facilitate our core garden-based education curriculum. The Educator will facilitate middle school science classes, combining environmental science education, nutrition education, hands-on experiences in the school garden (planting, tending, harvesting and cooking), and youth development principles. The Garden Educator co-teaches with the classroom teacher and mentors the teacher in outdoor classroom management techniques. The Garden Educator uses an organizing approach to build involvement in and commitment to the school garden within the school community, including teachers, administrators, students and parents (collaborating with the Parent Leadership Coordinator). The Garden Educator will also support a group of student leaders to create a school-wide action project around an issue of their choice, such as recycling, school nutrition, or food systems/access.

Job Responsibilities
· Facilitate 2-3 garden-based education classes per day two days each week;
· Prepare for each lesson by gathering supplies, worksheets, and reviewing each lesson plan;
· Manage the school garden, plan and prepare for garden work activities, manage cropping schedule, prepare for availability of tools and other necessary materials.
· Participate in biweekly staff meetings, which include professional support, collaborative curriculum planning, and completing reporting paperwork.
· Coordinate Garden Party Work Days in collaboration with the Parent Leadership Coordinator. Garden Party Work Days bring students, families, teachers and community members together to work and celebrate in the garden on a Saturday.
· Coordinate school-wide events such as Salad Days, in which students prepare and serve garden-grown salad for the entire school at lunch.
· Supervise classroom volunteers who assist with garden work activities.
· Meet with each teacher on a monthly basis for assessment and coaching.
· Monitor, document and report on all activities and extent of student and teacher participation to Executive Director.

Desired Skills and Experience
· At least 2-3 years of facilitation or teaching experience with youth aged 11-15, outdoor group management a plus.
· Knowledge and skills in small-scale organic food production or home gardening.
· Knowledge of or interest in topics including urban gardening, botany, environmental science, health and nutrition, food systems, food access, urban schools and social justice.
· A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent preferred.
· Bilingual and/or bi-cultural preferred (languages include Spanish, Tagalog, Cantonese).
· Demonstrated ability to work with diverse populations including youth and adults.
· Strong oral and written communication skills, including public speaking skills.
· Ability to work collaboratively and independently, flexible, enthusiastic, creative thinker.

This is a seasonal part-time position working 15-20 hours per week, $18-20 per hour DOE, during the school year (October 2006 through June 2007).

To Apply
Please send a resume and cover letter via email to Abby Jaramillo, Executive Director, at abby@urbansprouts.org or by mail to 326 Prospect Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110. For more information, visit our blog urbansprouts.blogspot.com and website www.urbansprouts.org .