Open Letter to President Obama. (Stay in touch and please bookmark!)

Mr. President,

I know it's been since May 2008 during your campaign that I met you in Northern Indiana and gave you Heinberg's book on oil depletion with my blog address written on the inside cover. I really hope you remembered or chose to take the book with you to the White House during your move. I also hope that with recent news that you can keep your Blackberry, that you can/would bookmark this blog with its valuable links to the best of the best voices of the peak oil and sustainable living subculture!

A lot has transpired since then and I'm almost sure you haven't had the time to read the book, although you appear to understand a little about our oil situation already. Likewise, I've been so busy with your campaign in 2008 that I haven't even had time to update this blog as much as I like nor to experiment with a lifestyle that's more sustainable. But first things first. I had to prioritize.

Well, now, the goal has been accomplished! Congratulations! There are a lot of things I'm happy with concerning what your presidency means, however, the most celebratory idea you've put forward in your campaign coincides greatly with one of the core solutions in living in a world with less cheap oil.

This mutual idea is community service. Although I have a hunch that you lean towards economic globalization and are (and will be) pressured by large corporations, your roots are firmly established in local community activism. Relocalization has become one of the principles for sustainability and survival in the peak oil crowd, and your encouragement for the people of our country to give service within their own communities is a welcoming message for us.

You have propelled me to choose a community-oriented service which will address both my concern for sustainability while simultaneously helping others in need. I will be volunteering at my local mission on a routine basis not only preparing items to help the poor and homeless but also will assist in their local garden for the homeless providing their own food. I can save and share my seeds and supplies. In other words, I'll help them give themselves skills to support themselves--a hand up, not just a hand out. That's all people really want.

So this is my hope. I thank you for inspiring me. May you allow God's will to work through you, that others may be drawn to Him through you and be so inspired to act and do for others, may He bless you and keep you and your family safe at all times.

Can't Grow Sugar = Honey? Buzz grows over beekeeping: Boston.com

Click here for full article.

excerpt:

By Irene Sege
Globe Staff / April 28, 2008

All morning one cool, drizzly April Sunday, cars pull up to the Reseska Apiaries warehouse in Holliston - one driven by an attorney, one carrying a plumber and a machinist, another a yoga studio owner. The occasion is the arrival by truck of 270 three-pound boxes of honeybees from Georgia, all ready for pick-up by a diverse and burgeoning cadre of backyard beekeepers.
more stories like this

"When I signed up for bee school, I thought there would be six people," says Kristina Ward, a 38-year-old landscape designer from Norfolk. "It turned out there's a whole subculture."

Subculture indeed. Ward is among almost four dozen aspiring beekeepers who recently completed the Norfolk County Beekeepers Association introductory "bee school," up from 17 two years ago.

Across Massachusetts and beyond, interest in beekeeping is exploding. Plymouth County's bee school had 40 students this spring, up from about two dozen two years ago. Worcester County, home of the nation's oldest county beekeepers' association, attracted 200 to its most recent course, almost double its 2005 enrollment. Essex County turned away some 40 aspiring beekeepers this year and taught another 93, a dramatic increase in interest over 2007, when 90 students enrolled, and well above the 60 or 70 typical before that. The Massachusetts Beekeepers Association has 320 members with 2,000 hives, up from 93 members with an estimated 1,500 hives in 2006."

This is on my list of plans for the future--beekeeping. For some of us, it will be more than just a hobby! Not only would keeping bees be good for honey but they would also be good for the pollination of the food garden!

How to Make A Self-Watering Container & Other DIY Videos

Click here to go to Video Jug for demonstration on making a self-watering container (SWC).

Also check out these:
How to make your own compost.
How to plant potatoes. (something of interest to me since I'm trying out potatoes in the garden this year!)
How to plant onions.
How to plant carrots.
How to plant garlic.

I think I'll post a link to Videojug in my sidebar if I haven't already. I couldn't find any how-to videos on pruning my grapevine (which I need to to ASAP). Any contributors out there?

Kitchen Gardeners International

I found a new website dedicated to sustainable eating called Kitchen Gardeners International. They feature a YouTube clip of Richard Heinberg speaking about food and peak oil. Check it out!

TIME....and TIME again!

Click here for full article "After the Oil Crisis, a Food Crisis?" This a second oil-related article I've found from TIME this week.

"Is the world headed for a food crisis? India, Mexico and Yemen have seen food riots this year. Argentines boycotted tomatoes during the country's recent presidential elections when the vegetable became more expensive than meat; and in Italy, shoppers organized a one-day boycott of pasta to protest rising prices. In late October, the Russian government, hoping to ease tensions ahead of parliamentary elections early next year, announced a price freeze for milk, bread and other foods through the end of January.

What's the cause for these shortages and price hikes? Expensive oil, for the most part."...

"...On the demand side, one of the key issues is biofuels. Biofuels, made from food crops such as corn, sugar cane, and palm oil, are seen as easing the world's dependence on gasoline or diesel. But when crude oil is expensive, as it is now, these alternative energy sources can also be sold at market-competitive prices, rising steeply in relation to petroleum.

With one-quarter of the U.S. corn harvest in 2007 diverted towards biofuel production, the attendant rise in cereal prices has already had an impact on the cost and availability of food. Critics worry that the gold rush toward biofuels is taking away food from the hungry. Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on The Right to Food, recently described it as a "crime against humanity" to convert food crops to fuel, calling for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production."

Why is Urban Agriculture important?

http://www.ruaf.org/node/513
Why is Urban Agriculture important?

The rapid urbanization that is taking place goes together with a rapid increase in urban poverty and urban food insecurity. By 2020 the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America will be home to some 75% of all urban dwellers, and to eight of the anticipated nine mega-cities with populations in excess of 20 million. It is expected that by 2020, 85% of the poor in Latin America, and about 40-45% of the poor in Africa and Asia will be concentrated in towns and cities.
Most cities in developing countries have great difficulties to cope with this development and are unable to create sufficient formal employment opportunities for the poor. They also have increasing problems with the disposal of urban wastes and waste water and maintaining air and river water quality.

Urban agriculture provides a complementary strategy to reduce urban poverty and food insecurity and enhance urban environmental management. Urban agriculture plays an important role in enhancing urban food security since the costs of supplying and distributing food to urban areas based on rural production and imports continue to increase, and do not satisfy the demand, especially of the poorer sectors of the population. Next to food security, urban agriculture contributes to local economic development, poverty alleviation and social inclusion of the urban poor and women in particular, as well as to the greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban wastes (see below for further explanations and examples).
RUAF Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security