Saturday, June 27, 2009

Eating locally

I made $400 off my butternut squash today. I know, it sounds crazy. But they had a photo contest at work, and I submitted 2 squash photos and won first and second place! Clearly I am a fine and talented photographer.

Well, it would seem more impressive, except there were no other entries in the “green initiatives” category. Takes a little bit of the thrill out of it, except that, hey, $400. Then I won a book in a raffle. That was a little embarrassing.

And! This feels like a dream, but it actually happened. I presented on “eating locally” at my Big Corporate job. It went over big. Huge interest, lots of questions, and I had a quiz and corporate-sponsored lettuce seeds to give out. There’s talk of starting a gardening discussion forum. On the Big Corporate Internal Web Site. Turns out that public speaking isn’t as awful if there’s something you really want to talk about. (see previous Big Corporate
Public Speaking Experience).

I discussed the
Obama white house lawn vegetable garden, CSAs and farmer markets (Chicagoland 2009 Schedule), and the buy-these-organic dirty dozen. And how to know which foods are in season when at the markets.

Then I plugged Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver some.

I also went with the logic of trying to make gardening sound easy, so we discussed perennial fruits (strawberries, rhubarb, grapes, kiwi vine, raspberries), fruit trees (apple, pear, peach, cherry, serviceberry, etc.), vegetables (asparagus) and herbs (chives, oregano, sage, mint, thyme) for zone 5.

I have to figure out how to make a living at this.



4 comments:

arlopop said...

sounds like you ARE making a living out of this

Anonymous said...

And add to the herbs the delicious DILL!
p.

Steve said...

The question, as always, is whether once you start doing what you like for a living you'll still like doing it?

I could easily see you becoming a couch potato after a few years.

Actually, I couldn't. :)

statesofnewyork said...

you might like permaculture. its better than organic farming. it rebuilds ecosystems and produces lots of food at the same time. i like the website for midwest permaculture, because they teach people how to turn suburbs into beautiful gardens that produce lovely food.