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From the Bellingham Herald, June 6, 2003: RESIDENTS URGED TO PLANT HOME GARDENS After all, she said: "We all eat." So The Solutions Project, the monthly forum Evenson co-founded and directs, hosted a session on food, farming and gardens Sunday afternoon in Cornwall Park. About 30 people braved the gray, chilly day, bringing potluck dishes and ideas to share. Buying locally grown food supports a major local industry that's better for the environment than other industries, said Nancy VanDeHey, who owns Harmony Farms and administers Whatcom Fresh, a program that labels and promotes local produce. "We have some pretty prime (agricultural) land here," VanDeHey said. "Once it's paved over it's gone." The Whatcom Fresh Program, which VanDeHey co-founded in 2001, has 24 participating farms. For the past year and a half, Food Not Lawns has been trying to get food growing even closer to where people live. The group is working to turn lawns, empty lots and other unused space in Bellingham to food production, and wants to create a community garden in every neighborhood, said member Eric Conn, of Bellingham. As a demonstration project, Food Not Lawns turned a strip of lawn near the Community Food Co-op into a garden with low-water, low-maintenance plants. On Sunday, Conn was giving away such low-maintenance plants as giant celery, Russian kale and mashua, a potato-like South American tuber. Rio Thomas, of Everson, said she noticed a lack of quality produce while working in the Everson Food Bank about eight years ago. "That's often the thing people can't spend money on," she said. Thomas then saw less-than-perfect food going to waste while working on an organic vegetable farm. So three years ago, she started the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, which uses volunteers to get surplus produce from farms to food banks. Last year, the project gleaned 43,000 pounds of food. The project also lets low-income people glean for themselves and is trying to teach people what to do with unfamiliar produce such as bok choi, an Asian green, or kohlrabi, a turnip-like vegetable with edible greens and bulb. "They're not inclined to pick it up and take it home because it looks weird," Thomas said. The Solutions Project also has addressed such topics as youth empowerment, energy and transportation, and health and healing so far in its year-long effort. "I think it's important to notice things that aren't working in our world, in our national and local scene, but not to have a negative reaction to it," said Evenson, of Bellingham. "We have to take positive steps to make the world the way we want it to be." People have to make choices about what kind of diet they're going to have, Evenson said. She said tries to eat as close to the source as possible. "There's so much that's packaged and preserved and refined and things that just aren't good for our bodies," she said. Conn, who also is a member of the local chapter of Resistance Against Genetic Engineering, said people should be able to choose not to eat genetically modified foods. "Most people don't know how common it is," he said. "At this point 70 to 80 percent of the food in the supermarket contains genetically engineered ingredients." Genetically modified food has not been through long-term testing and polls show most people want such food labeled, Conn said. He came with a petition asking the Community Food Co-op to label such food. "People should have a choice," he said. Brad Sukolsky of Bellingham Veg, a group of vegans, vegetarians, and animal-rights activists, brought fliers promoting a vegan diet, which shuns all animal products - including eggs and dairy. But he offered a more universal message. "Pretty much the bottom line is the most important thing is to think about your food," he said. |
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