Man in Overalls

Before you get to build your school garden like this, before you can help kids get their hands dirty like this,  or teach kids in your school garden like this, there are a few things you've got to take care of first. The #1 most important thing you've got to do is build your team. I say- with no exaggeration-- that human infrastructure is THE most important aspect of developing a successful school garden. But, I already wrote about building your school garden team last time. Assuming you're on track with that, a simultaneous step is to begin developing your school garden design. Here are a few things to should consider as you develop a school garden design: Purpose In your school garden interest meeting, one of the first questions you should ask is: "Why are you interested in a school garden?" Interestingly, this question serves two purposes. First, it helps the team gel because there will likely be a lot of overlap in answers. This will ...

 You want to teach kids where their food comes from because if kids grow it, they'll be more likely to eat it , and since you hope to improve kids diets, offer a little exposure to the natural world and provide outdoor, hands-on, STEM learning experiences , or simply, you want child to have an opportunity to care for something and learn responsibility. So you want to start a school garden. I understand. School gardens can be beautiful opportunities for schools to engage kids, parents, and community partners in a collective effort that spills over into all manner of benefit for kids, the school, and the community as a whole. Regrettably, I've seen lots of school gardens grow into weedy plots that are ultimately reclaimed by turf grass. This is often the case in spite of inspiring community build days where 10, 20, 30 even 50 people come out to get a school garden started. I hear similar stories from Kristi Hatakka , Farm to School Garden Specialist with the Fl...

Composting, they say, is an art form. But, truth be told, I'm just too lazy for all that. My own compost philosophy is, "Crap rots in the woods, doesn't it?" But really. :) Whenever I think of home gardening systems, I always reflect back on my grandmother. She gardened up until the week she died at 93. She planted by the signs and assured me that's why her collards were not eaten up by bugs and were able to grow for 3 years running and up to 8 or 9 feet tall. She had a little rototiller, planted straight rows, mulched by spreading leaves to keep the weeds down. She threw out a little 10-10-10 from time to time and kept the cabbage worms at bay with Sevin dust. She hoed if the weeds called for it. But mostly, she harvested. Her pots were always full and her freezer always stuffed with produce: collards, mustards, turnips, peas, tomato gravy, squash, you name it. Now, I don't use 10-10-10 or sevin dust, and I'm not big on tilling. However, the thi...

Happy election day! Here it is 7pm, Tuesday night on Nov 8th, election day. By the time many of you read this, we'll have elected a new President and a whole slate of candidates. Whether you're aiming to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, proudly claim #ImWithHer, voting Stein or Johnson, or, for that matter, making a vote of no confidence; however the chips fall, now that the polls have closed, and votes have been cast, here's what I what to know: #HaveYouPlantedYet? We're living during a time when our children are forecasted to have a shorter life-expectancy than their parents, largely due to diet-related preventable diseases. An absurd portion of our available foods are tainted with roundup and other harmful chemicals. Food travels an average 1500 miles from "farm" to plate, migrant workers are mistreated and sometimes even enslaved, teenagers often don't know the first thing about how to cook, and our food-growing ancestors are growing older. So, #Ha...

After 16 months traveling, Mary Elizabeth and I are Florida bound. Our home base will be Jacksonville , and I look forward to rooting in a new community. I will, however, continue to support the good food work in Tallahassee. I remain on the board of Tallahassee Food Network (TFN). (This past year I served as TFN ambassador to connect with and learn from community-based good food efforts around the world.) More than remaining connected from afar, I intend to be in town monthly for TFN's Collards and Cornbread Gatherings , which means I'll be in Tallahassee on the 2nd Thursday of the month, 1:30pm, Oct 8th at TFN's iGrow Whatever You Like Youth Farm (514 Dunn Street). Will you join me? On a side note: if you would like a food gardening consult, a garden built, or you are dreaming of a community garden in Tallahassee, or, of course, in Jacksonville, by all means, send me an email  or ring me. To the extent that my ability and location allows, I'll jump right on it a...

Posted by Man in Overalls on  Thursday, June 25, 2015 Mary Elizabeth and I have been back in the country for three weeks -- long enough to...  attend a best friend's wedding in WNC; visit my herb-tea-farming buddy, Rachel in Virginia; catch sunrise on the Brooklyn Bridge; go berry u-picking with friends and put my overalls to work shoveling at a community garden in the Philly area; participate in a fellowship at the Wake Forest Food and Faith Conference in Asheville, NC; blur through Jacksonville for my wife's high school 10-year reunion; and stop in Tallahassee long enough to learn about the iGrow Southcity Grand Opening happening 2:30pm, Friday, June 26th . Folks, we've been on the move. But what about Europe? We were there for two months. Other than good, seemingly untainted bread , what stood out? There was this coop in Spain... A network of coops. THE COOP of coops! I gotta tell you about it. It's called Mondragon . It's a "federatio...

Updated 10/31/2017 as the National Organic Standards Board meets in Jacksonville, FL. This may well be the most important thing you read this year for your health. (Originally written in 2015 while I was traveling-- and eating bread-- with my wife in France.) I've got a food riddle for you from Paris, France: Why can I eat bread over here when it makes me sick at home? I'll share my best guess in a minute, but first, a little personal background. Since my senior year of high school, I've not been able to eat much bread at all. For five years, I was severely hypoglycemic, and everything I ate had to have more protein than carbohydrates. That meant, in effect, that I spent my years of college beer-less and eating lots of salad with meat on top. I ate tons of vegetables, very little fruit, basically no carbohydrates to speak of, meat, nuts, eggs, and cheese. If I accidentally ate, say, meat loaf that was, unbeknownst to me, made with bread in it, I'd spend the n...