Jax Green Daily
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Seed-bombing...
Here's a video of how to make seed bombs, just one of the many fun things we'll be doing on May 25th in the Springfield Community Garden. Come join us!
Richard Reynolds making seed bombs.
Richard Reynolds making seed bombs.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Local commerce.
Another key to re-localization is a healthy local economy that can provide goods and services using local talent and resources. That's a large part of why we want to garden, although the Springfield project is still more of a back-breaking construction site with no paid workers than a lush and delicious paradise garden! Trust me, we'll get there.
Some of our Springfield garden helpers have started a small manufactory of bike messenger bags, called Burro Bags. They coexist with a new bike cooperative called Zombie Bikes. These two operations inhabit the space between Chan's and Shantytown (name that compound, folks!), between 5th and 6th on Main Street.
I just heard about another small business start up: a bookstore in the Gateway Shopping Mall. I think it's called GateWay Book Store, from the caption of the photograph. The name of the shop isn't in the article.
The owner, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, has the right idea when she says, "We're trying to find out what the community doesn't have and try to attract it."
There are problems attached to our market economy, and to the profit motive run wild, but this characteristic of optimism and responsiveness is truly positive: find spaces and fill them. Find hungers and feed them. Find neglect and negate it with care.
I hope she does well.
Some of our Springfield garden helpers have started a small manufactory of bike messenger bags, called Burro Bags. They coexist with a new bike cooperative called Zombie Bikes. These two operations inhabit the space between Chan's and Shantytown (name that compound, folks!), between 5th and 6th on Main Street.
I just heard about another small business start up: a bookstore in the Gateway Shopping Mall. I think it's called GateWay Book Store, from the caption of the photograph. The name of the shop isn't in the article.
The owner, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, has the right idea when she says, "We're trying to find out what the community doesn't have and try to attract it."
There are problems attached to our market economy, and to the profit motive run wild, but this characteristic of optimism and responsiveness is truly positive: find spaces and fill them. Find hungers and feed them. Find neglect and negate it with care.
I hope she does well.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Babes.
On the side of the garden facing The Pearl is a falling-down fence and a few small oaks. In one of these trees is a nest. In the nest are three tiny mockingbird chicks! Last night while dropping off a load of sand we noticed a mature mockingbird with a caterpillar in its beak. It stopped at the oak, and poked its head into the nest. We waited until it flew off, then snuck over to peek into the nest. The babies haven't even opened their eyes yet, but they open their wrinkled mouths to beg for food whenever they hear something nearby.
Life!
Life!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Earth Day.
This is just a reminder to pick your fill of loquats while they're here. The cool snap seems to have made them even sweeter.
Early on Saturday morning we will be hosting 30 high school students in the garden for an educational work day. After that a few of us head to the Landing to man the booth at JEA's ecology fair, in celebration of Earth Day. JCNI will be located alongside The Sierra Club and Jacksonville's Sustainable Future. Come say hello, sign up for our mailing lists, and pick up a few seeds.
Early on Saturday morning we will be hosting 30 high school students in the garden for an educational work day. After that a few of us head to the Landing to man the booth at JEA's ecology fair, in celebration of Earth Day. JCNI will be located alongside The Sierra Club and Jacksonville's Sustainable Future. Come say hello, sign up for our mailing lists, and pick up a few seeds.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Photgraphs from the fruit tour.
Hands stained with both mulberry and prickly pear juice (they remained purple the next day).
Check out the rest of Annie McGuire's photos from our public fruit walking tour.
An email from Annie the day after the tour says,
One new food we discovered on our first tour was white mulberries. They have a different, simpler flavor than the red ones, and are deceptive looking. They look almost exactly like unripe mulberries. We only saw one tree (although, since we were looking for red berries we may have overlooked more), it's in the second alley to the east of the garden lot.
Hands stained with both mulberry and prickly pear juice (they remained purple the next day).
Check out the rest of Annie McGuire's photos from our public fruit walking tour.
An email from Annie the day after the tour says,
sarah napier and i picked about 2lbs each today! the trees in the carCan't wait! The car lot she speaks of is the one right next to the garden. They not only give us access to their prolific mulberry tree, they also give us access to their water. As I type this it's raining, but we're learning that there's no good way to predict whether we'll have water one week or not. Until we have a better passive water collection system we're dependent on municipal drinking water to keep the plants alive, and without a tap onsite we're dependent on our extremely generous neighbors. I believe a thank you gift of mulberry jam (or pie!) is in order...
lot are incredible -- we barely made a dent in that fruit. there is so
much on the ground that the air smells like wine from the fermenting
berries. i'm chilling the crust for my first pie; we'll see how it
works out.
One new food we discovered on our first tour was white mulberries. They have a different, simpler flavor than the red ones, and are deceptive looking. They look almost exactly like unripe mulberries. We only saw one tree (although, since we were looking for red berries we may have overlooked more), it's in the second alley to the east of the garden lot.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Fruit tour of Springfield.
Last night we went on an impromptu edible walking tour of Springfield. More details and photos coming soon...
Monday, April 7, 2008
Two fun websites, Food for thought. Wild Asparagus.
I'd like to share two nice websites. The first is part of a long train of thought I've been following for some time. A recent post included a pdf of an essay from a book I'm reading, which brings up some of these issues. The first site is a good resource for one particular tool. The second site is just a nice piece on urban farming, and includes a lot more information besides that. It's a survival guide for a post-carbon world.
Community and place. Property ownership. Profit. "Not-for-profit". Land. Debt. Food. These are a few ways to describe the things I've been thinking about lately. My day job is with a nonprofit community developer in Riverside. These past few months I've been able to learn a lot about property ownership as a tool for neighborhood revitalization and the slew of organizations that exist in this country to take advantage of federal funding programs for just that. My affection for the job has waxed and waned as I've learned more and more. I love my co-workers and I believe in them. On the other hand I see only problems with the funding sources and the funding intentions. There are a few ways to look at this situation. We are basically a "less bad" developer, and a "less bad" realtor than the conventional sort. We keep costs low, we're not seeking profit, we are building to green standards and pushing to do ever more in that regard. But we are also a gentrification engine. RADO, like the other organizations that exist to take advantage of housing subsidy dollars, works within the conventional mortgage system and real estate market. The stated goal of a group like us in a distressed area is to raise appraised values so that for-profit developers can make a buck. Then they roll in and voila! economic development occurs. Or something like that.
We do nothing revolutionary or even progressive. We are not set up to. We work within the same problematic system that every other realtor and speculator does. We have a few tools at our disposal to avoid speculation, but that's it.
A different model appeals to me quite strongly: the community land trust (CLT). CLTs and other progressive economic models are the focus of this website. This one is an example of a CLT in action, and has some detailed information about how the math works out.
CLTs are not an entirely different solution, but they are a step in a compelling direction. Under this model an organization (the trust) owns the land in a region, and buyers only own improvements to it (i.e. you own your house, not the earth it sits on). In various ways, this makes it possible to avoid treating the land itself as a commodity. CLTs still incentivize investment by allowing owners to keep the equity they build up over time. In the Rondo CLT, for example, anyone who sells their home gets 25% of the increase of its property value. Later I'll post a pdf of another essay I read about this model. It captures some of the more interesting progressive reasons why trusts work.
The Post-Oil Survival Guide for City Dwelling is pretty much self-explanatory. Definitely worth a look. It would be fun to make a Jacksonville-specific survival guide.
I'm working on a map of public fruit around town, which I could definitely use help with. Mostly mulberries at the moment, although I did find a wild asparagus patch on 2nd Street!
I'd like to share two nice websites. The first is part of a long train of thought I've been following for some time. A recent post included a pdf of an essay from a book I'm reading, which brings up some of these issues. The first site is a good resource for one particular tool. The second site is just a nice piece on urban farming, and includes a lot more information besides that. It's a survival guide for a post-carbon world.
Community and place. Property ownership. Profit. "Not-for-profit". Land. Debt. Food. These are a few ways to describe the things I've been thinking about lately. My day job is with a nonprofit community developer in Riverside. These past few months I've been able to learn a lot about property ownership as a tool for neighborhood revitalization and the slew of organizations that exist in this country to take advantage of federal funding programs for just that. My affection for the job has waxed and waned as I've learned more and more. I love my co-workers and I believe in them. On the other hand I see only problems with the funding sources and the funding intentions. There are a few ways to look at this situation. We are basically a "less bad" developer, and a "less bad" realtor than the conventional sort. We keep costs low, we're not seeking profit, we are building to green standards and pushing to do ever more in that regard. But we are also a gentrification engine. RADO, like the other organizations that exist to take advantage of housing subsidy dollars, works within the conventional mortgage system and real estate market. The stated goal of a group like us in a distressed area is to raise appraised values so that for-profit developers can make a buck. Then they roll in and voila! economic development occurs. Or something like that.
We do nothing revolutionary or even progressive. We are not set up to. We work within the same problematic system that every other realtor and speculator does. We have a few tools at our disposal to avoid speculation, but that's it.
A different model appeals to me quite strongly: the community land trust (CLT). CLTs and other progressive economic models are the focus of this website. This one is an example of a CLT in action, and has some detailed information about how the math works out.
CLTs are not an entirely different solution, but they are a step in a compelling direction. Under this model an organization (the trust) owns the land in a region, and buyers only own improvements to it (i.e. you own your house, not the earth it sits on). In various ways, this makes it possible to avoid treating the land itself as a commodity. CLTs still incentivize investment by allowing owners to keep the equity they build up over time. In the Rondo CLT, for example, anyone who sells their home gets 25% of the increase of its property value. Later I'll post a pdf of another essay I read about this model. It captures some of the more interesting progressive reasons why trusts work.
The Post-Oil Survival Guide for City Dwelling is pretty much self-explanatory. Definitely worth a look. It would be fun to make a Jacksonville-specific survival guide.
I'm working on a map of public fruit around town, which I could definitely use help with. Mostly mulberries at the moment, although I did find a wild asparagus patch on 2nd Street!
