Inspired

I heard Will Allen speak at First Unitarian Church...talk about being inspired.
He started Growing Power He is a farmer who started out by hiring teens from Milwaukee to help him farm. Now they are a national organization.

Here are a few things I remember from his talk:
The key is soil. If you don't have good soil you can't grow anything. And we have lost soil ( to erosion) and polluted soil with chemicals..so they make compost...a LOT of compost. He has worked out deals with grocery stores around Milwaukee to get any produce they are going to throw out. They use the compost in gardens..and sell it.

Make use of what you have...for instance...they vermipost ( use worms to compost)...and the compost piles get really hot (150') so they put compost piles in the green houses to heat them in the winter ( they also put compost along the outside walls.) They don't need any additional heat all winter.

Access to healthy food is important. They have been experimently with ways to grow food all year round ( even in WI winters). In their green houses..they grow things on 7 different levels..so no space is wasted.

They have expanded into raising fish, chickens and bees. And even as he expands he has continued to hire and train young people.

This is truly a hero story..one person making an incredible difference in many, many lives. Check them out at Growing Power Sice their headquarters is in Milwaukee..we plan to take the kids and go for a visit.

From Salmanders to Snow

Here we are on Wednesday looking for a salamander pond. We help with the Wisconsin' annual salamander survey(as Audubon volunteers). Each year we place traps in a pond and check them for 5 days. The boys are making sure this pond is deep enough to put traps in. Obviously you have to go WAY in just to make sure.

A mere three days later, we celebrated the first day of spring with our 3rd arboretum volunteer day. You have to love WI weather in March. Before we arrived there was only one volunteer...after we arrived..there weren't any more tools.


Did I mention that our group name is "The Lopinators"?

Lakeside on Pie Day

Here we are on Pie (3.14) Day having coffee at Washington Hotel Coffee shop..attached to Lakeside Fibers. My favorite coffee shop with a view ( Lake Mendota) plus they serve local foods and Kickapoo coffee!!

One of the things we talked about was atrazine. According to the Pesticide Action Network a coalition of 16 Midwestern cities in six states (I wish WI was one of them) filed a lawsuit to require Syngenta to pay for clean-up costs to filter atrazine out of municipal water supplies. "The most recent research on Atrazine was published last week by the National Academy of Sciences and showed that male frogs exposed to "safe" levels of atrazine became females able to mate and lay eggs." Syngenta maintains that there is no reason to remove the chemical from drinking water. I've already signed a petition to Lisa Jackson at the EPA. For more information or to sign the petition go here

Protecting Wisconsins' Water

I was really pleased to find out that both of "my" legislators have signed on as co-sponsors for the Groundwater Protection bill. This is one of the issues that we lobbied for on Conservation Lobby Day. This is the specific one that I spoke about and told my story of our lake up north getting smaller and smaller each year.

I asked both Risser and Berceau...and they were two of the first to sign up!Yea!

The current call to action is to protect Wisconsin's drinking water. Imagine turning on your tap and having the water come out brown and stinky. This really happens...in Wisconsin. In areas where there are cracks in ground ( called karst) the manure that farmers spread on their fields in spring..seeps directly into drinking water.

All Wisconsin residents have the right to clean, safe drinking water. A first step is to make sure manure stays out of drinking water. We are looking for co-sponsors on a bill that would do just that. Want more information or to ask you legislators to sign on...click here.

The photo is from last summer...my boys and their cousins on our beloved Lake Tippicanoe...that is getting smaller each year.

Finishing up on Recylcing

We are moving on from recycling to ethical eating..but before we do...here is our summary of what and where we recycle:
- plastic bags: Copps ( and 37 other places)
-plastic caps: AVEDA
-#5 plastic: Whole Foods Gimme 5 program
-tennis/athletic shoes: drop off recycling on Badger Road
-fluorescent light bulbs: store we bought them from
-batteries: Mark's work

Please note: for plastic and batteries, our number 1 strategy is to use them less.

Also: we used Free Cycle to pass on things we no longer needed...and to get things we wanted ( Mark just set up surround sound for free in our basement..which he is excited about!)

Photo credit:flickr urbanwoodswalker

Finally!

We have been saving plastic caps for a year..plus friends and family have sent caps to us. I finally got them all in one place.


And brought them into AVEDA...which is conveniently located at the ground floor of my office.