Citywide Earth Day Celebration April 1

April 1, 2006
Great American Clean Up
9 - 11:30 a.m.
We invite you to help Greensboro Beautiful give the City a spring cleaning as part of the Great American Cleanup. Please volunteer to join your friends and neighbors, cleaning up our neighborhoods, roadsides, parks, and other littered areas. Contact Lynne Leonard at 373-2957, or Lynne.Leonard@greensboro-nc.gov to participate.

April 1, 2006
Greensboro City Celebration of Earth Day
Kathleen Clay Edwards Library
12 - 5:00 p.m.
Bring your litter-free picnic lunch, and enjoy a fun-filled day learning about our environment at Kathleen Clay Edwards Library, on Price Park Drive, behind Jefferson Elementary School. To exhibit, or for more information, contact Yvonne Foust at 373-2053 or fousty@greensboro-nc.gov, or Melanie Buckingham at 373-2923 or Melanie.buckingham@greensboro-nc.gov.

Prizes will be awarded for the first one-hundred displayed litter-free picnic lunches…Get Creative, you can Eat it All!

From Noon to 1pm, Have your litter-free picnic lunch while you enjoy music with local bands, gospel music and Radio Disney.

From 1p.m. - 5 p.m., Enjoy and learn from interactive exhibits, art, guided hikes and garden tours. Visit the Master Gardener Learning Station. Kids can enjoy nature crafts, live animals and face painting. Explore hybrid and alternative vehicles, teen challenge events, solar exhibits, food samples, Geocaching, hayrides, orienteering and much more.

Slow Food will have a information table. Slow Food members, please contact Laurie by email if you would like to volunteer to staff the table for an hour or so.

Shiitake Inoculation at Handance Farm

Saturday I drove out to Handance Farm in Rockingham County for their Mushroom Inoculation and Work Day. By the time I got there, much of the work had been done. The major task at hand was to help Pat and Brian Bush inoculate freshly cut logs with shiitake mushroom spawn. The first step is to drill holes all over the log. That's Brian in the middle.



The log is passed to the next team of two, who fill specially made plungers with shiitake spawn and press the spawn into the holes.



Then the holes and all other cut surfaces are painted with cheese wax to prevent them from being contaminated with other fungi (and critters). An identifying tag is nailed to the end, and it is stacked in a pile.



Here's how they stacked last year's logs. The mushroom farm (Dark Hollow, who moved) that Sandy and I went to last year made a mushroom house out of the logs -it seemed like a perfect place for a hobbit.

Mushroom Inoculation Work Day and Potluck

March 25, 2006
Mushroom Inoculation Work Day and Potluck
Handance Farm, 2541 Baker Crossroad Road, Reidsville, NC 27320
FREE - Please RSVP at 336-951-0811.

1-5 p.m. ~ Work with mushroom logs and spores, no children or dogs please.
3-5 p.m. Children's program
5-7 p.m. ~ Farm tour and potluck, children welcome, bring a dish to join us.

Get some hands-on experience and help Handance Farm with their new venture by helping inoculate 200 logs with shiitake spawn. Included in the day are a talk on growing mushrooms, a tour of Handance Farm and a potluck dinner. Bring a dish to share and a folding chair if you’d like. Be sure to wear work clothes and comfortable shoes. Children are welcome at 3:00 and for the tour and potluck (starting at 5), but please leave your dogs home. Please click here for a flyer.

Directions: From Greensboro take Church St. Ext. north past Hwy. 150 & 158 where it becomes Woolen Store Rd. and T's into Ironworks Rd. Go right, then take the immediate left onto Sandy Cross Rd. Go approx. 2 miles (you'll pass Breckenridge Mobile Home Park on right) and take left onto Baker Crossroad. Go about 200 yards and 2541 is the first house on right (2-story white with huge stump in front yard, a big holly tree and boxwoods).

Food with a View Tonight at the Scene

March 18, 2006
“Food With a View" Film Series
The Slow Food Movement
The Scene, 604 South Elm St., Greensboro, NC
8:00 p.m.
$5 suggested donation.

The Slow Food Movement, a documentary about worldwide food communities that are rediscovering some of the greatest joys of life: enjoying the flavors of their local region, renewing their health, and re-connecting to the land. Desserts and discussion.

Slow Foodie Profile

Name: Laurie O'Neill

Day Job: Secretary at a local university

Your interests: Organic gardening, voluntary simplicity, fiber arts

How did you get involved in the Slow Food Piedmont Triad convivium?
I was in Charlie Headington's "Simple Living in a Complex World" class at UNCG and he mentioned that a local convivium would be formed soon. Because food is so much a part of my simple living philosophy, I was excited at the opportunity to help organize it and meet others with similar interests.

What does Slow Food mean to you and how does it impact your daily life?
As a cook and an eater, I enjoy the freshness and the challenge of eating locally and seasonally. As a gardener, I am interested in healthy food and heirloom varieties of vegetables. As a small farmer's daughter and sister, I am concerned that my heritage and culture are fast disappearing. As a citizen, I am frightened at the rate that industry has taken control over our entire food system. As a member of Slow Food, I hope to make a difference in supporting small farmers and promoting the benefits of local food.

Describe a Slow Food meal you've recently prepared or eaten:
The other night, we had a simple organic meal of field peas, corn on the cob, and baked sweet potatoes. I grew the field peas in my garden and froze them. I bought the corn at Greensboro Farmers' Curb Market this summer and froze it. The sweet potatoes were from the same market and I served them and the corn with a small amount of organic butter that I bought at Deep Roots Market. It was a very easy, quickly prepared meal. Learning to preserve and store foods for year-round enjoyment was one of the most valuable skills that I learned growing up on a small farm.

Cable Access Kick-Off Meeting

When I sent out the invitation for the kick-off meeting of the Slow Food GCTV show, I didn’t know what to expect. It was entirely possible that I would end up at a meeting with my husband and sister – talented people, to say the least, but not quite an entire volunteer force. Instead, the Green Bean conference room filled with an amazing group of people with a diverse set of skills and interests. We have people experienced in film and editing, music and art, cooking and gardening and even a Spanish teacher!

Together we put together a list of show topics that could easily fill a season. Among the many ideas were:

• A blind taste-testing of local organic versus conventional foods
• The Wellness Policy
• Edible Schoolyards
• Slow Food at home
• A student food-related film competition
• Multicultural food within our community
• Farm to kitchen cooking shows
• Food and cooking for spiritual and physical health

And the list goes on and on. We are planning to film the mushroom inoculation at Handance Farm for one of our first episodes as well as the cheese making process at Goat Lady Dairy.

While we have a great group together, this is certainly a more-the-merrier situation. In addition to on-site volunteers for filming days, we would also like to have a volunteer to find and approach people and businesses to sponsor episodes (i.e. help pay for the show in exchange for a panel of recognition at the beginning and end of the episode) as well as volunteers to do a little research here and there. Even an hour or two a month of volunteer time could go a long way to making this show a success!

Please contact Sarah Jones with ideas, feedback and for more information: ThoughtForFood@bellsouth.net.