Green Gal

"Every issue that's out there is your opportunity to step up," shared Amigo Bob Cantisano, one of the founders of the EcoFarm Conference, in his welcome address at EcoFarm 2017 on Wednesday evening. I was in the audience as a first-time attendee of EcoFarm, an annual conference celebrating its 37th year this past week at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, across the road from the glorious Pacific Ocean. The Ecological Farming Association that hosts this conference has a mission "to nurture healthy, just, and ecologically sustainable farms, food systems, and communities by bringing people together for education, alliance building, advocacy, and celebration." I am so grateful I had the opportunity to participate in the conference this year! I was able to do so with the help of my good friend David Shaw , who recently started a permaculture business called Santa Cruz Permaculture . He invited me to table with him for his business in the exhibit...

Last Friday, at my final UCSC Sustainability Inter-Organizational Retreat as a planning co-coordinator, I facilitated a world cafe -style dialogue with a room full of students, staff, faculty, and alumni affiliated with sustainability and social justice organizations. We had just heard from UCSC alum mark! Lopez of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice about what it means to decolonize sustainability and focus a critical lens on the environmental movement in support of equity for those who have been most impacted by not only environmental issues, but also the conservation movement itself. It was a powerful talk that left some in tears, others stunned by what they had just learned, and many grateful for an honest presentation that was critical and real without any attempt to sugarcoat. The world cafe consisted of two questions, which had been crafted by our planning team of students and staff. People at tables throughout the Colleges 9&10 Multipurpose Room had 20 minute...

Back in September, I submitted an application to the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture program. This six-month certificate program provides hands-on training in organic gardening and small-scale farming, and it's celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2017. The program is part of the legacy of Alan Chadwick and takes place on the 30-acre Farm and 3-acre Garden on the UCSC campus. I am ecstatic to share that I was selected to participate in this amazing program, which starts in April--only a little less than 4 months from now! About the Program According to the CASFS website, "The six-month Apprenticeship offers instruction and daily work experience in organic gardening and farming, focusing on ecological interactions amongst plants, soils, climate, insects, and pathogens. It also fosters an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural roots of our current food system and provides space to explore ...

As most of you know, I ride my bike to work every day. Well, technically I bike for about 40 minutes a day before, between, and after two public bus rides totaling 1.5 hours. The buses get me over the hill to the coastal oasis of Santa Cruz and then up a big hill to UCSC. The first, hour-long trip is simply infeasible to bike in the mornings (okay yes there are some people who do it, but they are super heroes). But the second bus trip I take with my bike, the thirty minute one, is not impossible to bike. In fact, I've biked it more times than I can count over the past three years, but it is hard and sweaty and painful for average humans and doing that first thing in the morning takes mustering up some serious energy. So, I just take the bus. But the other day, I pedaled up the hill to campus without barely breaking a sweat. I glided up it, enjoying the view and smiling. There was no pain. And I was going about 14 miles an hour while doing so. How is this possible? I was riding an...

Two months ago, I shared photos and instructions about how we built a raised bed in our backyard . Since then, I've planted numerous seeds and transplants into the bed, including pumpkins, corn, tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, sunflowers, watermelon, basil, and jalepeño peppers. We installed drip irrigation throughout the bed and draped some irrigation tubing into potted plants surrounding the bed, such as bell pepper, mint, strawberries, and another cucumber plant. It's turned into a lush urban jungle of plants out there, and I figured that those who don't follow my Facebook page would be curious to see what's been growing on! Note: You can click on the photos for a larger view. This was the bed shortly after planting seeds. I had a lot of other plants in pots around the edges. I transplanted a few tomato plants that I purchased at different nurseries. Two of the plants are heirloom. This is what the raised bed looked like in July, right before we left...

I'm filled to the brim with inspiration this afternoon after a delightful chat over coffee with my friend Cain at a cool little coffee shop in downtown San Jose called Social Policy (part of the Bellano "family of coffee lovers" ). (If you live in SJ, you may have seen Cain cranking down the street on his red cargo bike hauling huge boxes of awesome stuff for Cowgirl Bike Courier !) We discussed an upcoming bike/art event he is planning, a bike-to-farms ride that I'm planning, San Jose bicycle news and issues, Viva Calle SJ promotion, and more. Last evening, I also connected with friends at my house to plan our bike-to-farms ride. We had a potluck feast of homemade, vegetarian yumminess, and then we identified next steps for turning our vision into a reality. And the night before last, I attended a bike coalition meeting where I saw plans for putting bidirectional contraflow lanes around the SJSU campus and heard the good news that the Willow Glen Road Diet has overa...

A couple of weeks ago, we moved into our new place just down the way from our previous rental. We've been settling in, still sometimes discovering unpacked boxes hidden in our closets, and this weekend we turned our attention to the backyard. When we moved, we brought almost all of our plants from the previous place with us since most of them were in pots. Seeing all of the plants in a big pile made me realize how many plants I really have! It took multiple car trips to get them to the new place, and when we unloaded them, we set them on some cement along the side of the house. I rearranged them over the last couple weeks and have been watering them, but because they're on cement, they dry out much more quickly than when the plants were sitting on dirt previously. I put some of them on plant saucers or greenhouse trays, but I wanted a solution that included dirt, and I also wanted to be able to grow corn and pumpkins. What to do? Before we moved in, we had asked the land...