Tag: gardens

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005 – Biodigesting Close to Home

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005 – Biodigesting Close to Home

with host Linda Borghi and guest Maria Blon

Farm-A-Yard Podcast logo: orange sun with sunbeams rising over a mound of black dirt with 2 sprouts and a microphone in green coming up out of the soil.
Farm-A-Yard Podcast — It’s a movement… have ya heard?

Maria Blon is a speaker, author and teacher who launched the “HEART in Haiti School” after the hurricane in 2010. Gardens and Moringa trees are grown at the school to teach the children how to grow and feed themselves. This oasis includes a biodigester. There is no garbage pick up in Haiti. Now with the biodigester to process all their garbage, they also generate energy for the school.

This podcast is made possible by funding by our Patreon supporters.

For extra free content or to become a patron please see us at https://www.patreon.com/FarmAYard

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Music credit: “Insomnia” by John Sheehan. Used with permission.

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004 – Evolution of Organic Standards & America’s Urban Farming Movement

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004 – Evolution of Organic Standards & America’s Urban Farming Movement

Farm-A-Yard Podcast logo: orange sun with sunbeams rising over a mound of black dirt with 2 sprouts and a microphone in green coming up out of the soil.
Farm-A-Yard Podcast — It’s a movement… have ya heard?

with host Linda Borghi and guest Liana Hoodes

Liana is an expert in America’s food history and the importance of being an advocate for  organic standards. We all need to take personal responsibility for the sustainability and safety of our food supply. Learn from the Cuban crisis and their shift to urban farming for their survival. America’s urban farming movement is vital for food security.

This podcast is made possible by funding by our Patreon supporters.  

For extra free content or to become a patron please see us at https://www.patreon.com/FarmAYard

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Liana Hoodes’ Bio

Liana Hoodes has worked since 1994 on a wide range of organic and sustainable agriculture policy issues, and is currently  Policy Advisor to the Northeast Organic Farming Association – New York, and the National Organic Coalition where she was the Executive Director from 2003 until 2015.  She has worked extensively on Farm Bills, annual appropriations, as well as on the implementation of the Organic Foods Production Act at the USDA National Organic Program and on organic standards at the National Organic Standards Board. She currently works on a variety of federal, state and local policy issues to support and advance organic and sustainable food and agriculture.

Liana  was the organic policy coordinator for the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture from 1994 through 2006, where she was the facilitator of the successful effort (led by many organizations) to garner hundreds of thousands of comments to repeal and re-write the first organic regulation.  

Prior to that she was the founding Director of Orange Environment,  a local environmental advocacy organization in Orange County, NY, and also worked for a  law firm specializing in civil rights and environmental law.  In 2001 Liana co-founded the Pine Bush Farmers Market  to support agriculture in the Pine Bush region, as well as to promote downtown economic development in the hamlet.

Liana grows organic food and  lives with her family in Ulster County, New York.

 

Music credit: “Insomnia” by John Sheehan.  Used with permission.

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Do you have the courage to walk out your door and rip up your lawn? Make a plan!

Just because you are on this website is evidence enough that you’ve got what it takes to grow you’re own food.

It’s a smart brave move on your part to take control of your food and where it comes from.  To know that it’s safe and truly nutritious.

Join the ranks of the grassroots garden renegades that are popping up everywhere!  When we grow food, we are making an impact on our health, the community, the environment and helping to localize our food system for food security. AND yard farming can be a real income generator.

If you are serious about growing food, this is the place!  It pays to get started learning everything you can so that you can have the success you’re looking for sooner than later.

WARNING….once you get started you’ll be hooked.

Record numbers of people are growing food in pots in the window, on the patio, plots in the backyard, front yard, curb sites, public parks, schools, businesses…food can grow almost anywhere!

Where do you want to grow?

Here’s what you need first:  Make a Plan and Get Organized

  • Evaluate your life and what time you can make available for the project.
  • Plan for the size garden you can realistically manage.
  • Assess your growing space options.  Make sure you consider:
    • Do you have permission to use the space? Short or Long Term?
    • Does the area have at least 6-8 hrs. of sunlight daily? Make a sun map (google “sun mapping”)
    • Does it have a safe, convenient  water source?
    • Will it need fencing to minimized wild life distrubance?
    • Get a calendar to use just for the garden to schedule your plan.
    • Get a folder or large manila envelope so you can attach receipts for all your garden seed, tools, investments. You can record and date each oneon the outside of the envelope.  Data is important and will help you get the most from your garden adventure with less waste and cost.  Attach pages that keep track of garden notes, like: Garden map plan, yields, pest problems, budget…

    Equipped with the right information you can get to your goal much faster than most.  This planning can help you save money too!

    We’re with you every step of the way, so get on the Farm-A-Yard email list so that you don’t miss the announcement of our next FREE course. (check your spam folder too to make sure out emails are not getting lost!)

    Click Here to Subscribe

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Artificial Fertilizer is “Fast Food” for Plants

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Artificial fertilizers contribute to soil degeneration.  It is no different than highly processed fast food which causes the degeneration of human health.  It’s like drinking caffeine to artificially get the energy you need temporarily but not address the real reason for your low energy.

Healthy soil can sustain itself because it has the real food and healthy environment it needs to regenerate and propagate.  That’s what nature does naturally, all on its own.

Healthy soil makes healthy plants for healthy people.  Period.

Today, many people are interested in learning how to grow some of their own foods without toxic/artificial inputs.

Many people have tried and failed too.

One reason is that the soil is so depleted and it takes quite a while to make your own compost and build your soil health.

I know this because it happened to me when I first got started. All I had was sand to work with.

A lot of people try to garden and when they fail they think that they just have a “black thumb”, when it’s really about the damaged condition of the soil, which is, then, rightfully called “dead dirt” because of toxic chemicals and the absence of living organisms.

One of the biggest challenges with starting a garden or farming project is having the healthy soil you need to make it successful.

Everything depends on that.

FYI…Healthy soil cannot be found in a bag at the garden stores.

BUT DON’T LET THAT STOP YOU!

Linda Borghi has been a Biodynamic farmer for years and knows intimately that the quality of her harvests hinged on the simple commitment to feeding the microbes in the soil with the Biodynamic stir and spray preparations.  She was personally so profoundly affected by the dynamic results that she was determined to spray the country!!

This was really exciting for me to finally learn about this simple solution and it has saved me so much time, work, money and GUESSING.

I was just surrendered to the fact that I had to take the natural “slow road” to fertility by making my own compost and covercropping etc.

Then I got a prescription for my soil from Evan Folds, and he explained, in a comprehensive soil report, exactly what was going on.   He also made some mineral recommendations that I decided to apply to correct those deficiencies.  Now all I do is stir & spray the food for the microbes and continue to add organic matter.  Simple.

I was so grateful to hear Linda’s experience and find out about this.

Check out the education and solutions at:

www.microbemakers.com   (Special 10% discount, use code: farm-a-yard)

Evan Folds, the Soil Doc can also give you a detailed prescription to meet the unique needs of your soil if you’re interested.

Or you can just start stirring and spraying to feed the microbes and just let them do the work for you.

This concept parallels the picture of the human gut and its need for prebiotics to feed the microbiome for gut health.  This is critical for a strong immune system.

Biodynamics/BioEnergetics is food to build/heal the earth’s immune system.

https://www.facebook.com/microbemakers/videos/1166775200108466/

Linda would LOVE IT if you joined Farm-A-Yard in spraying your part of the country too!!   Feed the microbes, heal the earth, heal the people!

We can do this.

This wholistic approach builds soil so effectively that it also cuts water consumption by at least 50%!

FYI….Did you know that in 10  years 57% of our farmers will be retiring? So who is going to grow our food?

Just one more reason to be an urban farmer and farm your yard. (“just sayin”)

Changing the way we eat one yard at a time.

It’s a movement, have ya heard?

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The Mowing of the Lawn

The Mowing of the Lawn- by Linda Borghi

Very interesting that I have now had the experience of mowing the lawn three times in the past month and a half and before then, never.  I am here to report that I made it through the dreadful experience all three times although there were moments during the last go around that I thought I would have to throw in the towel.

Lawns and I have never seen eye to eye to begin with but now having to personally interact was a bit over the top for me. You see, we have forty and a half million acres of lawn in our country, a terrible habit we brought over from England. We have had plenty of time now to have become independent thinkers when it comes to this unworthy entity but alas….we have yet to do so.

Did you know that it takes 40% of the drinking water on the east coast to satisfy the needs of this fossil fuel, chemical and time robbing beast. Now the flip side, the benefit, where and what is it? I am far from an experienced lawn mower but thus far for me I see no b
enefit  other than the color……I don’t get it.

Instead of mowing we shoud be eating, we should ditch the grass and feed our families, I swear it would take about the same time and we’d get to eat. Isn’t that true food security?  Besides food security we are given the opportunity to reconnect with the awe inspiring energy that only working with the Earth can give you. There is only one Earth, stop mowing her and start dining with her.  Bon Appétit!

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