Friday, July 30, 2010

Farmers Market has new fresh vegetables, and vote so they can win

Hello everyone!! The last Saturday of July is coming up. Where has this month gone. I hope that everyone has been enjoying their summer. The vendors at the Duluth Farmer’s Market are having a great year. Heat and rain when we need it. The market is full of vendors and every booth is full.

Just when we thought no more roads in Duluth could possible close, 14th Ave E. coming up from London Rd is closed. So I’m hoping all of you great customers will brave the construction and shop with us anyway.

The new item this week is yellow beans at Barb’s booth. Yummy. I love fresh beans. Speaking of beans, there will also be a lot of green beans.

We will have a booth full of raspberries on Saturday. The heavy rain on Tuesday did not affect their productivity.

If you are looking for pickling cukes, they are starting to come in. I’m pretty sure this will be a good year for them, too.

What else is new this week? Broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, zucchini, potatoes, beets, lettuce, sun flowers, glads, tomatoes, did I mention zucchini? This is the peak of the season.

If you love the Duluth Farmer’s Market like I do, please vote for us on the following website as your favorite. http://action.farmland.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Market_Vote&searchTerm=55805&x=54&y=9 We can win up to $3000. Please vote and ask your friends to vote, too.

August 7th, we will be celebrating National Farmer’s Market week. You can take the “I buy local challenge” by signing up at the market. We will have a secret vendor going into the parking lot three times during the day and looking for the bumper sticker of window cling. Three lucky people will win market bags filled with goodies.

Thanks. See you at the market.

Lois

'Farmer' Doug & Lois Hoffbauer

www.farmerdoug.com

It's about growing green.

From Apples to Zucchini with Christmas Trees in between

doug@farmerdoug.com


Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Local Art Fairs

SUNDAY July 18 = Love Lake Superior Artisan and Info Fair, 10-3. Coppertop Church. Over 25 artist and education booths. WaterWorks ceramic exhibit by Tonya Borgeson. Open mic at 1 p.m. What do you love about Lake Superior. Poetry readings by Lake Superior area writers. One of the best views of the Lake in Duluth. Celebrate Lake Superior Day.

SATURDAY July 24- Woman-Made: Marvelous Things Made by Northland Women, 10-4 p.m. College of St. Scholastica, Somers Lounge. Over 35 regional female artists - cool things - all made in the Northland. 2nd year for this event. Food by the girls at Woodland Hills. There will also be chair massages available.

FMI wendyupnorth.com/duluthfairs 525-5098

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Three-day Sustainable Community Summit attracts 800 people

Green thinking will bring jobs to Duluth

Majora Carter spoke to a crowd of over 500 at the Clean Economy Dinner at the DECC. She grew up in the Bronx and has helped to revitalize the borough by both beautifying it and bringing jobs. Photo by Naomi Yaeger-BIschoff

Majora Carter is a New Yorker who grew up in the Bronx and spearheads a campaign to ‘green the ghetto’ and create green-collar jobs. She is nationally recognized as a sustainability pioneer and was the keynote speaker for a June 15 Clean Economy Dinner, which was attended by 519 people. She energized the crowd with her ideas for creating environmentally sustainable jobs.

The dinner was the highlight in the middle of a three-day Sustainable Community Summit, which was hosted by the A.H. Zeppa Family Foundation and Duluth Local Initiatives Support Corporation. Over 800 separate people participated in the Summit’s various events, which included cultivating job opportunities in natural resource protection, green building, transportation and energy production, and localizing food processing and growing.

Carter met with business, government, non-profit leaders and community members over a two-day period to discuss the Twin Ports Green Jobs Action Plan. Collaborators included regional and national funding agencies.

“Ghettos and environmentally devastated areas don’t just happen,” Carter said during her keynote speech, “They are planned.” She gave the history of how the Bronx started out as a sustainable, pleasant community where everyone could walk to work, shopping and school. She maintains that through planning it became blighted and referred to as a “war zone.” Suburbs and freeways were planned. A waste facility and prison placed in the neighborhood were also planned.

“The environment and the people living in it are not separate. When we damage our environment, we damage ourselves. No one should have to move out of their neighborhood to live in a better one, and this notion’s environmental and economic implications span the globe,” Majora said. playgrounds,” she said. Carter said she spent decades saying she was going to move out of the ghetto. After graduate school she ended up living with her parents in the Bronx and credits her involvement in the environmental movement to her dog, Xena.

During a walk, the dog pulled her through a dump where Carter was amazed to see a beautiful river, a river she had never seen because of the blight and waste that obstructed the access to it.
Her parents moved to the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx in 1948, shortly afterwards many whites left the Bronx, which was termed “white flight.” Money was spent to develop freeways to the suburbs, and the Bronx was “red-lined” by bankers. Red-lining is a banking term in which financial institutions refuse to loan money in certain neighborhoods, which stifles development, investment and renewal. Carter grew up watching buildings burn because the buildings were worth more burned down than standing. Often The Bronx was referred to as a war zone. “We were the poster child for urban blight,” she said. Her brother returned home after a military tour in Vietnam only to be killed when he returned home to the blighted neighborhood.

Carter’s job ideas include training people for green construction jobs like restoring wetlands, building parks and building smart roofs. “These are jobs that cannot be outsourced,” she said. “The work also gives previously unemployed people job readiness skills.”

“Race and class will tell you exactly where you will find waste and blight; and parks and