We’re up for a Shorty Award! Please take a minute to vote!

Here’s what your tweet should look

I nominate @hyperlocavore for a #ShortyAward in #food because (fill in your reason!)

The rules say you have to have been a member of twitter before the contest began. So please note that.

Thanks guys!

Liz<

Everyone complains about the weather…

but no one does a damn thing about it….

Early this season before any of the veg had really started to flower we had a freak hail storm. Most people in our valley escaped any damage. We didn’t. We live in seems very much in the shadow of Cornucopia mountain. As storms go they seem to swoop down onto our wee acre and then disappear but not before acting out.

Surveying the damage, the plants hit most hard were the large leaved and the green tomatoes that were fist sized by then. Quarter sized holes on most large leaves and bruises on the tomatoes which healed eventually but left scars shocked me into the reality of weather and farming.

We noobs have a very romantic vision of what it is to live off what you can grow. We are playing farmer.
I have a kitchen garden and don’t plan to become dependent on my little patch because I understand Mama may contradict me. She may wipe me out in a fit of pique. Kitchen gardeners have no safety net…and urban farmers don’t either. The bleeding edge is a risky place.

Stacy Murphy @brooklynfarmyards is out on that limb too though on a larger scale. She’s got folks depending on her and what they can grow on her patchwork of experimental urban farms. They were hit hard by the devastating hail storm that blew through my old neighborhood in Brooklyn. If you haven’t read about what she’s doing please do. If you can throw some dollars or attention her way as she tries to bring the urban farms she runs back please do that too!

Here’s the story.

Give Hyperlocavore.com a Kickstart!

We have started a crowd funding project with kickstarter.com! Kickstarter allows folks to give projects they like – a kickstart! It’s a wonderful resource for innovative projects, artists, musicians or anyone with a compelling idea!

We have until the end of March 2010 to reach our goal. If we don’t gather enough pledges to cover or exceed our goal we don’t get anything. You can help by sharing this link with folks with a note about why you think the project is worthwhile. You can also pledge some money. Any amount helps!

On Choosing – A Hyperlocavore Responds to Catastrophe

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it!”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Please note: a discussion with the community at ongoing on The Oil Drum in their Campfire section. Please participate.

One of the most useful things I have ever learned in my life is that the most effective way to deal with worry and anxiety is to act on those things in your life that you can control, and leave the rest up to the Universe. Some call it the “Serenity Prayer.” Whatever you believe in or do not believe in, knowing just what you can control in your life and what you cannot is the key to your joy. This much I know.

Everyday we are presented with immense, rolling, overlapping catastrophes; environmental devastation, [swineflu!?] societal malaise and violence, and running out of the stuff that, we are told, underpins our every creature comfort – oil. All of these things are true. That hand basket you’ve heard so much about, we’re riding in it!

How do we “carry on”, as the Brits used to say? Well, I’m not at all interested in “carrying on” actually. Nose down, joy in check, plodding and miserable. I want to thrive. I was raised with mighty high expectations of what this life can be, and I’m not giving those expectations up. I want to reach the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I want to love and live well. And I want to eat REALLY well. I got used to that in the 1990’s.

Well, first I would like to suggest some humility, for many on the planet, this rolling crisis has been their daily experience for as long as they have lived. It is nothing new. Check in with yourself. What are you grateful for? What have you been given in life by your community, your family, your beloveds, your friends and your neighbors, by this Earth? You can read this. There must be someone who taught you to read. Take a moment. Sit with your gratitude.

That’s where I began when I starting building hyperlocavore.com – a free yard sharing community, sitting with my gratitude. I had just been laid off. It was April. I had been a tech strategy person at a 35 year old sustainability non-profit that had been fighting the good fight as long as I had been on the planet. I took an inventory…

OK. Stop.

Honestly? I can’t lie. First, I felt terror. Then, blind rage with a dollop of total panic. Boiling blood, fist shaking, laying curses on all who had done me wrong – all that. That lasted for a few months, if I tell the truth. Then there was a substantial period of pouting and just feeling so sad for myself, my poor pitiful sorry self. I bore easily. And I got bored with myself behaving that way, pretty quickly.

When I moved on, it was via gratitude. Sitting with and contemplating all that I was and am grateful for, after all the crying, bargaining and bemoaning had subsided. What did I have, well, besides the sweatpants I had been wearing for a few weeks? I am literate and reasonably intelligent, if broke. I have knowledge that people can band together and build amazing fantastical giant things, cities even, because I’ve been part of a community that does that every year now for much more than a decade. I speak of the Burning Man festival and year round astounding creative beautiful community made of doers. I believe I write well enough.

And I have a good idea that has been bugging me since I was about 5. I used to look at the inside of city blocks in San Francisco and wonder, why the heck were the yards all fenced off, in the middle and mostly unused. Why not, I thought way back then, tear those fences down and build a garden full of fruit trees, nut trees and veggie patches? Why don’t people grow food there?

I am grateful that I grew up in the Silicon Valley, a place that fed my voracious curiosity and kept me tinkering. I am grateful for growing up in the Bay Area, a place absolutely crammed with practical minded revolutionaries and doing daring dreamers. The rest of the country seems to think the only thing we gave them was tie-dye and 4 foot bongs, but they would be mistaken. The Bay Area is a place that teaches everyone “Why Not?” A society of people that does not let you just talk about a good idea without telling you, in chorus, to “DO IT!” It is tough to get away with a lot moaning and jaw flapping in a place like that.

Yard sharing is all about being grateful for what you have, not anxious about what you don’t. It’s about responding practically to chaos, to the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. Never in all my life did I think I would quote Donald Rumsfeld but, there you are. These are strange days, indeed!

You do know these things for sure. You know you need healthy food and you know you need it cheap. So do all your friends and neighbors, the members of your faith communities, so does your slacker posse. So does your family. Doing for yourself, deepening your food security and your community resilience is the most direct thing you can do to bring your rational and general anxiety down to a manageable size. Sit down to a meal that you grew yourself from seeds which you saved, bread you baked, eggs you gathered, and you will know in your bones that you and yours will be alright.

We get new people signing up to the social network every single day, practical people looking to get down to business. I built the site because a lot of us don’t have all resources or skills we need to grow our own. Some of us lack time, some lack space, some have physical limitations, or lack certain tools. Some have so little experience growing things that the task seems overwhelming. Where do we start? All of these issues can be minimized in a well gathered and tended yard sharing group, a healthy community.

Some folks are linking up yards and creating mini suburban farm/CSAs, like Kipp Nash in Boulder, Colorado. Each family gets a weekly box of the freshest produce and the rest he sells at the farmers market. If this looks like the job for you, come on by the site and find some farm clients and yards to tend! Kipp’s got eight yards he is farming. Will you ever look at a lawn again in the same way? When I see a sad lone Honey-Doer on a loud riding mower all I see is wasted space, wasted water and meaningless work.

Look at the world with this skew and green thumbs will appear and share the secrets of plant whispering, food waste will be gathered from multiple households and make a formidable sweet smelling compost pile. Friends will band together to buy 3 year old apple trees, for a lifetime of apples. Abuelitas will pass on magic recipes and kids will coax worms to party in warm living soil. Their curiosity will catch fire! Streets will become neighborhoods, neighbors will become friends. No one will feel alone, frozen or powerless, because no one will be alone, frozen or powerless. Potlucks will abound! All will eat better.

This is the future we see, we hyperlocavores. We know it’s coming, because we’re building it right now. Who has time to fret? Pass the cornbread and fresh salsa. Look someone brought the boom box! Start building, now.

Our great, great grandparents used to have victory gardens but, they also had rent parties. Londoners danced in underground tunnels as fire came down from the sky. They stayed put. They raised rent, barns and kids together. They didn’t just survive, many of them thrived. I hope we will all use this compound crisis as a reminder that the hard times are very often the very best of times. Take note of what you have, be grateful for your loved ones. Take note of those around you who may feel alone. They are not and you are not, alone.

We, each of us every moment of the day, will choose our responses to what’s happening. Some will choose to go numb, watch more TV, play more video games, surf mindlessly. Some will chose hate, rage, to nurse grievances or will choose take their pain out on the people around them, in most cases it will be the people they love most in this world. Look around. Is that what you want for your beloveds?

Will you choose another day of fear, of distrust, anger or powerlessness, of envy, isolation …complaining or will you choose the plentiful garden, the neighborhood, real community, real food and pleasure?

Yes.
Pleasure.

“There’s only two things that money can’t buy,
That’s true love and homegrown
tomatoes!”

– Guy Clark

I would add ‘real community’ to that list of things money can’t buy.

I choose real community, dancing in the chaos, pleasure, delectable
food and the edible and musical neighborhood.

Happy Digging!
LizM – connector/maker/digger
twitter me @hyperlocavore

On Choosing – A Hyperlocavore Responds to
Catastrophe by Liz McLellan is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.
Based on a work at hyperlocavore.wordpress.com.

Confused about Climate Change?

There are still a few people out there trying to figure out if they should change their lives based on concerns about climate change.

If you are one of these folks, I’d like to encourage you to watch this video. I promise the guy will not try to scare the pants of you! He just gives you a very handy way to sort through the decision about whether or not to take the claims of those that argue that climate change is a serious problem, well seriously.

If you found this helpful please share this one with your friends, family and neighbors.

100 Reasons to Become a Hyperlocavore.

First a definition, a hyperlocavore tries to eat as much food as close to home as possible, in order to reduce the food miles that his food travels. It is an extension of the term locavore. A locavore typically tries to eat seasonally within 100 miles of her home, to reduce food miles and to develop the local economic base. A hyperlocavore therefore wants to bring food even closer. And what’s closer than your neighborhood? We have a time crunch, we have land and property that is loosing value fast, we have kids who don’t know where their food comes from, and we have a climate crisis.

Hyperlocavore.com, a social network, is here to help facilitate yardsharing. Yardsharing and group growing is new. It’s different from a community garden – but the site (hyperlocavore.com) can be used to create and manage one. A yardshare might be an arrangement between an elderly couple and a young one to grow more food cheaply for both. Or friends who live in an apartment and a friend in the burbs to save money and food miles.

This is a list of the reasons I think group gardens and yardsharing is an idea whose time has come. The links hide some people, websites and imagery that have inspired me to build hyperlocavore.com. Have fun exploring. Every reason is not meant to appeal to everyone. See if just one make sense to you! Then join us to explore the possibilities. The site is free, and you do not need to commit to anything to participate. It’s new to most of us. It’s up to you what makes sense for you and yours. We just hope to inspire and facilitate. If you agree with more than two of these, you just may be a hyperlocavore!

(A note: I’m a North American, citizen of the U.S., so this certainly reflects some of my perspectives and biases. Please contact me if I’ve got something really wrong, I’m happy to discuss any concerns!)

Happy Growing!

1. You want to taste those real tomatoes you’ve heard so much about.
   
2. You want to decrease your reliance on fossil fuels.
3. You want to teach your kids where food comes from.
4. You want the smell of soil in your nose.
5. You want to pick your salad from your porch.
6. You want your neighborhood to have positive street life.
7. You want to be less isolated.
8. You want to build food security into your life.
9. You want to get more sun!
10. You want to develop some upper arm strength.
11. You want a hotter bootie!
12. You want to help that nice old man down the block. He works too hard!
13. You want your neighborhoods to have cheap access to healing herbs!
14. You want to be a farmer but you have no farm.
15. You want your high cholesterol to go down!
16. You miss the family farm.
17. You especially miss the rooster on the family farm.
18. You want to lead and not to follow!
19. You want to be more independent.
20. You want to show em how it’s done!
21. You want to walk out the door and eat mangoes!
22. You want your children to be sustainably self sufficient.
23. You want your children to eat their veggies.
24. You want to involve your family in a group activity.
25. You can’t live without fresh organic veg, and it seems to be getting too expensive!
26. You want to do something with your friends besides drink beer.
27. You’ve never been able to find that Hatch chili from where you grew up.
28. You want to shorten the distance from farm to plate.
29. You have a brown thumb and want to know what that’s all about.
30. You have a yard that is full of weeds.
31. You want to reduce the chemical load on your body.
32. You think the lawn is a sign of all that is wrong with America.
33. You hate mowing.
34. You know that cute chic down the block is a big freakin’ hippy but you wanna get to know her betta anyway.
35. You know that dude down the block is a big freakin’ hippy but you wanna get to know him betta anyway.
36. You took Obama’s call to service to heart.
37. No one sees your gardening triumphs.
38. You want to lessen your ecological footprint.
39. You look around and you see your neighborhood dying, and you want to do something.
40. You have been blessed and you want to express gratitude.
41. You remember what the neighborhood was like when people talked.
    
42. You need to pay it forward.
    
43. You need something to do besides what you been doing.
    
44. You want your food to taste as good as Gordon Ramsey’s.
45. You don’t have a farmers’ market near you.
    
46. You can’t get into the local CSA – It filled up fast!
47. You work too many hours and need some help in your garden.
48. You have physical limitations, and a garden and could use some help.
49. You are a former hedge fund manager with a lot of time on your hands now.
    
50. Your kids need to get moving.
51. You really need a new set of friends.
    
52. You know it’s the end of the world as we know it, and you want to feel fine.
    
53. You want to quit talking the talk and start walking the walk.
54. You want to simplify your life.
55. You find no joy in fragging any more.
    
56. You are an exceedingly cheap bastard, and want to save even more cash.
    
57. You are sick of living on Top Ramen.
    
58. Yes we can!
59. Si, se puede!
    
60. Chop wood, carry water.
    
61. You’ve been saving seeds, but have no place to plant them.
    
62. You want to surprise your hard working single mom with regular homegrown fruit and vegetables.
    
63. You are unutterably bored, filled with ennui, and about to jump.
    
64. Om, nom, nom, nom.
    
65. You want to live more like the rest of the world.
    
66. You want the suburban wasteland to become juicier.
    
67. You can’t afford the gas to get to the market, and your veggie ride isn’t road ready yet.
    
68. The bodega in your neighborhood doesn’t carry anything but candy, cigarettes, and booze.
    
69. Guerilla gardening just isn’t giving you the thrill it used to…sigh.
70. The force is strong with you, little one.
    
71. You are actually serious about this “reliance on foreign oil” thing you keep going on about.
    
72. Better jam.
    
73. Better pie.
    
74. Better chutney.
75. Fresh eggs! Like still chicken butt warm fresh.
    
76. You really need to step away from the computer.
    
77. You actually do have a vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunshine.
    
78. You’re afraid of the veg your freegan roommate brings home.
79. You’ve never actually tasted a fresh vegetable, ditto fruit.
    
80. You decided you didn’t like vegetables when you were 6, you stuck to your guns but you’re a big girl/boy now.
    
81. You are down with the peak oil hypothesis, and want to stop freaking the f$ck out.
    
82. You want to find like minded people and be useful.
    
83. You’ve got a hankerin’ fer something really dirty.
    
84. Your grandmother, who has been dead for 8 years keeps coming back to you in dreams – She reminds you there is an elephant in the root cellar. You want to sleep more soundly.
    
85. You really, really like potlucks.
    
86. You want to grow enough extra to donate to the homeless shelter.
    
87. You take the very long view.
    
88. Your houseplants are telling you to get out and make new friends.
    
89. You’ll be damned if your gonna spend five dollars for a sack of potatoes !
    
90. You think that you are surrounded by ugliness, and you’re right.
91. You will simply die if you don’t have a St. Germaine cocktail and the godforsaken town you live in has no reputable supplier of elderflower liqueur. You are therefore, desperate enough to make your own.
    
92. You walk softly but carry a giant gourd.
93. You have a lot of stuff, but you feel empty.
94. Your country has been embargoed by the rest of the world and you are hungry.
95. You want to live the good life, not that one! This one!
96. You want to make it easier to cook at home.
97. You really want to slow down but don’t know how.
98. You want to see this, not this when you go outside.
99. The spirit of true community has filled your heart and you want to fill your days differently.
    
100. One word – zucchini.

Join us at hyperlocavore and find or start a yardsharing group in your neighborhood. You don’t have to have a yard to share or a green thumb – This is a learning community.

* OK I admit there are a few repeats. I said the same thing a few different ways… Use the comment to add your own!